The Mandalorian didn’t have to make Bo-Katan look like such a chump

There is a version of it The Mandalorian season 3 where the titular Mandalorian isn’t Din Djarin, but Bo-Katan Kryze. Katee Sackhoff’s deposed warrior princess carries the clearest arc of the season, going from one of many exiled Mandalorians to the leader of a Mandalore reborn, leading her once-divided people in a united campaign to restore their homeworld. The problem is, The Mandalorian continued to undermine her every step of the way – making her a leader, sure, but an extremely uninspiring one.

When we first reunite with Bo-Katan in “The Apostate,” the third season premiere of The Mandalorian, Bo-Katan is in a position that can best be described as embarrassing. She has taken up residence in an abandoned castle, where Din Djarin learns that her crew of (secular) Mandalorian minions have abandoned her to work as bounty hunters after learning that she failed to defeat Moff Gideon in combat and that Din wields the Darksaber. .

This makes matters worse, as Bo-Katan was previously infamous for surrendering to Moff Gideon after the Night of a Thousand Tears, when the Empire set out to wipe out Mandalore and Gideon forced her to give up the Darksaber, in exchange offering grace for it. (He lied.) This only gets worse when you look at the character’s Clone Wars history, where she and fellow Mandalorian Pre Vizsla are absolutely worked on by Darth Maul, who used them to temporarily seize the throne of Mandalore and the Darksaber.

That pesky blade continues to haunt Bo-Katan. After she challenges her former colleague Ax Woves for leadership of her old clan and wins, he undermines her by saying she can’t be a true leader without the Darksaber, which she refuses to take from Din. So Din awards it to her due to a technicality as she saved Din from a monster that defeated him in the second episode of the season.

It’s a disappointing resolution to a huge ideological conflict, essentially coming down to who has a better understanding of the Monopoly regulations. Doubly so when, for almost no reason, The Armorer decides that her cult’s strict creed allows her to team up with heretical Mandalorians for the purpose of reconquering Mandalore, and that Bo-Katan has “walked both worlds” after falling into the Living Waters had dived to save Din and keep her helmet on for a few days.

All told, it’s such a light hearted way to handle a character who has such a deep history running through multiple Star Wars series. What’s worse is that The Mandalorian also fails to meet Bo-Katan’s primary conflict this show, as Moff Gideon beats her in every fight, destroys the Darksaber (which curiously isn’t a big deal in hindsight?), and only goes down after Paz Vizsla crashes a giant starship into him.

The MandalorianThe Season 3 finale ends on a triumphant note with all the Mandalorians united under Bo-Katan, but because of it all, it feels like a hollow victory. For three seasons, The Mandalorian‘s writers constantly emphasized the various creeds, prophecies and beliefs of the Mandalorian people, and when Bo-Katan takes its place as the fulfillment of all these things, it is only hardly according to those rules. This sucks! Bo-Katan’s journey on paper is really heroic epic stuff, the kind of thing that’s worth it The Mandalorian‘s flowery language about adding someone’s name to ‘the song’. It is triumph over lingering tragedy, the victory of a people represented in one of their most legendary citizens. Her story deserved its own show, not an underdeveloped subplot in another man’s journey.