This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season 3, episode 2.Star Wars may be exploring the future of the planet Mandalore in The Mandalorian season 3, but the most important Mandalorian story of all has never been told. When Pedro Pascal's Din Djarin arrived on Mandalore, he believed the world had been ruined – ravaged by centuries of warfare, and ultimately destroyed by the Empire in a sustained planetary bombardment. But, although Mandalore had indeed been left in ruins, the planet was not quite as desolate as he had expected; some life-forms survived, the atmosphere was breathable, and Din and Katee Sackhoff's Bo-Katan Kryze even discovered the legendary Mythosaurs. The Mandalorian season 3 is clearly setting up a story that will redeem Mandalore's future.
In part, it is doing this by interrogating the history of Mandalore – and using Bo-Katan as the lens through which that history is assessed. Bo-Katan's story is a heartbreaking one, because she played a key role in dividing the Mandalorians, leaving them vulnerable to the Empire. In truth, she sought the Darksaber not only because she wanted to restore Mandalore, but also in the hopes of redemption. Oddly, though, Star Wars has never told the story that seems to have been the inciting incident of all this – the story that set both Bo-Katan ahd her sister Satine on very different paths.
