The Star Wars Stories We Want Are Quite Simple

Despite all the evils of social media, I always enjoy going through the daily "Memories" on Facebook.  Over the holidays, one consistent theme has been a family trip to the movies to see the latest Star Wars film on the big screen.  

Unfortunately, it was one family tradition with increasing disappointment.  The only Star Wars Christmas release that I enjoyed was Rogue One, and the sequel trilogy got so bad that my girls, who were six and eight at the time, picked apart The Last Jedi, and two years later, thought Rise of Skywalker was a steaming pile of bantha poodoo.  The only benefit of slugging through that two-plus hour disaster was listening to the girls try to rewrite portions they thought would be "more fun."

But now we have "The Baby Yoda Show" (aka The Mandalorian).  Sixteen episodes with the underpinning storyline that facilitates the "Get MacGuffin X" plot.   It pays homage to the Western, Samurai, and Pulp serial roots of Star Wars.  It hits on my nostalgia-tinged worldview of the franchise, the Star Wars d6 RPG/Tramp Freighters/People other than Jedi view of the galaxy that I want more of.

Don't get me wrong, like every other kid, I was wielding a yellow wiffleball bat like a lightsaber in the backyard, pretending to be Luke Skywalker, or his long-lost brother/4th cousin/force-sensitive milkman.  However, enough raps on the hand with a hollow plastic tube is enough to put those down and play with the action figures.  

I still suspect Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau play with action figures....

Sure, by the time I was able to wander the neighborhood to a friend's house with a red wagon overflowing with toys, it was a mixture of Star Wars, GI Joe, and anything generic our parents picked up (That Fisher-Price helicopter made a great speeder), but we didn't necessarily.  We set up the story, set up figures, and resolved things... usually badly, but playing pretend beats paging through a rulebook for a rules clarification in the blazing Summer sun.

Outside of the "Frog Lady" arc, each episode was a self-contained "adventure" fitting into the main storyline of "Find Baby Yoda's Family."  Character came and went, but ultimately helped out for the greater good in the finale.  I can only hope that a Mandalore-focused season three doesn't lose that simple magic of the movie serial or Western and turns it into Games of Thrones in space.