[Warning: This story contains spoilers for The Mandalorian “Chapter 24: The Return.”] For Mandalore! Wednesday’s The Mandalorian season 3 finale picks up where the penultimate chapter left off: with Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) leading the ambushed Mandalorians into battle against Moff Gideon’s (Giancarlo Esposito) Imperial remnants to retake their home world of Mandalore. While an outgunned Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (piloting his IG-12 droid) infiltrate Gideon’s secret base embedded in the planet — defeating Gideon’s army of next-generation Dark Troopers and Praetorian guards — Bo-Katan, wielder of the Darksaber, commands the unified tribes to prevent Gideon from completing the Great Purge of Mandalore.
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With Gideon sending up fighters to destroy the Mandalorian fleet, Bo orders Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides) to evacuate their troops and use the capital ship as a decoy. If the Mandalorians can’t beat the Imperials in the air, they’ll beat them on the ground. As Axe jetpacks away to return with reinforcements, Bo-Katan gets her troops to safety with the Captain (Charles Parnell) leading the scouting party to the surface, where Bo-Katan realizes the bombed-out planet can still sustain plant life. Says the Captain: “Life persists.”
Meanwhile, Axe reaches Fleet Command and orders all available troops sent down as reinforcements. The plan to leave the capital ship behind as a decoy works, and Axe stays back to take care of the cruiser as the troops load into drop ships. The Armorer (Emily Swallow) delivers the reinforcements to Bo-Katan, who tells the tribe: “Let’s take back our planet.”
After R5-D4 assists Din in breaching Gideon’s command center, allowing the Mandalorian to flood Gideon’s cache of Force-sensitive clones, Bo-Katan arrives to help Din and Grogu to take Gideon out for good. “What’s it gonna be this time,” Gideon taunts Bo-Katan, “surrender or fight?” But Bo-Katan, who once submitted to the Empire and surrendered the Darksaber to save her people, gives Gideon his answer with a swing of her blackened blade.
As Axe kamikaze-pilots a flaming cruiser towards the surface to take out Gideon’s base, Bo-Katan defies the Imperial’s orders to hand over the Darksaber for a warrior’s death. Gideon, wearing armor forged from beskar alloy, crushes and destroys the Darksaber and goes for the killing blow: “You’ve lost everything. Mandalorians are weak once they lose their trinkets.” But the Darksaber is not her strength. “Mandalorians are stronger together,” says Bo-Katan, teaming with Din and Grogu to make the last stand against Gideon.
Axe bails out of the cruiser just before it collides with the planet, blasting the base — and Gideon along with it — to hell. It appears that Din, Grogu, and Bo-Katan perish in the fiery aftermath, but Grogu wields the Force to create a shield around the trio, protecting them from the flames. Din takes his adopted son, christened Din Grogu, as his Mandalorian apprentice and settles on Nevarro to help protect the New Republic from Imperial remnants.
In the end, what is forged is a stronger and unified Mandalore. Lady Bo-Katan Kryze and the Armorer reignite the once-extinguished Great Forge as their people, bound by the Creed to walk the Way of the Mand’alor, exclaim their victorious Song: “For Mandalore!” This is the Way.
All episodes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian are now streaming on Disney+.
