THESE ARE THE SPOILERS
This Is The Way. After two seasons, it’s become a ubiquitous and all-purpose phrase in Star Wars fandom. Like The Force, it’s just specific enough to make sense, but just elastic enough to represent just about anything. (“I prefer pancakes to waffles!” “This Is The Way!”) With season three, the storytellers behind the The Mandalorian seem poised to address a central question: what, exactly, is the Way of the Mandalore?
We know that Din Djarin lives by The Creed and is a “Mandalorian” by way of that creed. We know there are rules associated with The Creed (never remove your helmet being very high on that list) and a lineage, although what makes up that lineage appears to have as much to do with armor as blood. Din is a foundling and a Child of The Watch, not native to Mandalore. In fact, the titular Mandalorian of The Mandalorian has never set foot on Mandalore.
For decades, Star Wars lore was the Boba Fett was merely a bounty hunter using Mandalorian armor. Then, we met an actual Mandalorian in ‘Boba Fett armor.’ We were shown (in a ret-con that complicated and simplified things all at once) Boba Fett’s chain code (a mix of 23andMe and your Social Security number in the Star Wars universe) that proves he is from a line of Mandalorian Foundlings after all. So, is he a Mandalorian the same way Din is? Obviously not. Fett doesn’t live by the Creed.
The Jedi Order has a particular code with internal logic. The Jedi believe that attachments lead to greed and that greed is a path to the Dark Side. So? No marriages. Raise by the order as soon as they show Force abilities. It’s a code meant to prevent the bad outcomes that can come from having too much power.
The Sith have the Rule of Two, because the Sith are so power hungry and competitive that any more than two at a time causes chaos and bloodshed. The Rule of Two creates clean-lines by which the Sith can develop and evolve: there is a Master and an Apprentice and the Master rules through power. Once the Apprentice is strong enough to kill his or her Master, then that’s how the new Master rises and seeks out a new Apprentice, and so on.
What is the central idea behind the Way of the Mandalore? Is it to tame the natural world? Is it a warrior’s code? Is it an acknowledgment of ancestry? We may never get a complete answer, but we don’t need one. What’s more important is what the characters believe. Are they Mandalorians by way of ancestry or by way of faith?
“The Mines of Mandalore,” episode two of season three, brings us at last to Mandalore itself and puts that discussion in the mouths of Bo-Katan Kryze and Din Djarin, the deposed ruler of Mandalore and a humble foundling from The Watch. Far better than a lightsaber battle between the two is this uneasy alliance, based on her forbearance of his dangerous quest.
Bo-Katan represents the modern thinker. She is a cultural Mandalorian, a native of Mandalore, part of the royal family. She sees the ancient ways of the Mandolore as children’s stories meant to placate the people, not to be taken literally. Din Djarin represents the true believer, a person who is a Mandalorian by faith and commitment. They both claim to be Mandalorians, and both honor those who would die to defend Mandalore, and yet, they view the same stories and history very differently.
I recognize Bo-Katan’s attitude because I’m the son of an Episcopal priest and the husband of a very public pagan. Proximity to the trappings of religion can demystify those symbols. They can feel, as Bo-Katan puts it, like theater. When your father wears vestments and then goes home and eats TV dinners while reading grisly mystery novels, the very humanness of the religious can tempt one to think of the mystical as mundane. Bo-Katan has bathed in the very waters that Din treats as sacred, she could see them any day she chose. To Bo-Katan, the living waters are a place for tourists to read a placard on the wall, like the Basilica Cistern underneath Istanbul.
Din, though, has had no access to these same waters. The living waters in the mines of Mandalore are symbols to him: The Living Waters in the Mines of Mandalore where He Shall Be Redeemed. His dedication to The Way is based on faith, and that faith is fed by mystery.
So who is right? Wars have been fought over this type of difference, both in our world and in the galaxy far, far away. Bo-Katan knows the water are only water, ceremonial. Din knows the waters are redemptive and magical. They are both: the reality doesn’t cancel out the power of the ritual. Instead, ritual imbues reality with sacredness.
Above I said that being too close to religious ritual can demystify it or make it seem like theater. That uses the word theater, something I’ve dedicated most of my life to, as if it’s synonymous with being false. I’ll correct myself. Theater is not an act of showing the audience the false - it’s about showing the audience the truth. Not the factual, the truthful. Ritual and theater exist to take the physical into the metaphysical. Ritual is what alchemically transforms a mere helmet into The Way.
The moment Din steps into the waters and begins to recite the creed, we watch Bo-Katan experience those words in a new way. In that moment, she sees a person that reveres Mandalore in the same way she mourns it: with conviction.
When Din’s oath leads to a sudden, expected descent into the depths, she leaps after him. There, beneath the surface, debates don’t matter, only experience. She find there is something to the legend, and sees with her own eyes a living Mythosaur.
(Were Unobtanium and the Mythosaur named by the same person?)
I’m fond of saying that Star Wars works best in Capital Letters. This episode’s descent and revelation is a sterling example of what I mean. There’s something profound about the Skeptic receiving Hidden Knowledge when she follows the Faithful on his Path. There’s something dreamlike and rich about the Orphan who has never set foot on his ‘homeworld’ believing more fervently in its magic than the very person who ruled it.
There’s also something yet to reconcile. Bo-Katan isn’t wrong when she calls The Watch a religious sect of zealots. Are we to believe zealotry is the path to grace for Mandalore? After all, in The Clone Wars series, Death Watch rejected the pacifism that Mandalore had adopted. There’s a reason for Bo-Katan to be skeptical of The Way. I look forward to the season three reckoning with that complication.
There’s so much more that I could write about this week, from Grogu’s evolution, to R-5, to the sinister droid straight out of Horizon: Zero Dawn, to Amy Sedaris, to Boonta Eve, to Rachel Morrison announcing herself as the next big director-to-watch of Star Wars material. I’ll leave some of that for reviewers and recapers. I think it’s enough to say the cup of the Star Wars fan runneth over - with the living waters from “The Mines of Mandalore.”
as a Bo Katan fan, i really enjoyed this episode, but the first few minutes scared me. when i saw Tatooine i thought, "not this f*cking place again." :P
Beautiful and thoughtful piece of writing! I also love your idea of Star Wars in Capital Letters. It works so well.
One of my favorite parts of the episode--apart from the sheer delight of watching Grogu be Grogu--was seeing Bo-Katan's face transform as Din delved into the waters. She was shook on a spiritual level. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
The Mythosaur was a total 'holy crap' moment. I really dug how the episode played around with myth and mysticism, and let the two co-mingle. That's some Original Trilogy juice right there.