Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points in the Season 3 finale of “The Mandalorian,” currently streaming on Disney+. It took all eight episodes of Season 3 for “The Mandalorian” to find its way back to itself, which is to say, back to Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his (now officially!) adopted child, Grogu. For most of Season 3, the core relationship of the series — the reason why “The Mandalorian” became an instant global phenomenon — was shunted aside in favor of tracking how Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan Kryze rallied the estranged factions of Mandalorians to take back their devastated homeworld. Audiences have not responded kindly. Legions of reviews, tweets and YouTube videos vivisected this season of “The Mandalorian” for being “detached,” “unsatisfying,” “sloppy” and “the worst.” What had been a loose and uncomplicated story of Din and Grogu’s ongoing adventures had become instead a sprawling narrative steeped in Mandalorian lore that was brand new (and, even worse, uninteresting) to most people watching. An ironic strength of the show — audiences projecting themselves into Din’s helmet in the absence of Pascal’s deeply expressive face — became a major liability, with episodes in which dozens of helmeted Mandalorians talked to each other in a dry, monosyllabic monotones, with nary a human face to be seen.
