The Mandalorian hits streaming screens on November 12, just two weeks from now, so it makes sense that Star Wars fandom gets a huge prompting to go sign up – here is the second and final trailer for the show. Watch, then come back to the article and let’s talk about it.
Pause the SCIFI.radio music stream while you watch. You’ll want to hear everything on the trailer soundtrack. The control is either at the upper right if you’re on your desktop, or at the bottom if you’re on your phone.
Ready? Let’s go.
What stands out as odd about this trailer is that the Mandalorian never once takes his helmet off. We know he’s male, because we can hear his voice at the end of the trailer, but other than that we have absolutely no clue what he’s like under the helmet. This is deviously clever. It lets anyone imagine themselves as the title character, the ultimate Mary Sue.
The Mandalorian himself stands out as shiny and new in a half-broken universe. The setting is sometime after the Clone Wars, and after the success of the Rebellion. These are, however, the outskirts of civilization, well out on the rim of colonized space. There’s a rule of law at work here, but it’s thin, and fragile. It’s up to bounty hunters to take down the bad guys, so we can expect a lot of episodic story-telling, with the opportunity for a sweeping story arc which creator John Favreau may or may not be taking.
We get a lot of local flavor in these clips. The settlements look a lot like Mos Eisley, or Ahch-To, or any of a number of other Star Wars universe frontier settings. We even get a peek at IG-11, the assassin droid, shooting up the place.
The clips appear to include scenes from multiple episodes, and if not for the science fantasy setting, would strongly resemble an old-school Western, with the tropes of one-against-many, protecting the farmers, riding off into the sunset, walking into a saloon, all of it.
Pedro Pascal stars in the title role as The Mandalorian. The series is the creation of John Favreau, and costars include Kyle Pacek and Brendan Wayne. You’ll need a Disney+ subscription to watch it when the first episode of the series drops on November 12. The episodes will drop week by week for eight more weeks.
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