Not long ago, I went to Disney with my family. Much had changed since my previous trip in the 90s. In particular, Imperial music blared as Captain Phasma led Stormtroopers past me at Hollywood Studios. I have to admit, I find the Star Wars/Disney merger a bit disjointing — the studio of endlessly happy animatronic children singing It’s a Small World colliding with rifle-toting Storm Troopers seems a little out-of-theme for the theme park.

When the new Disney/JJ Abrams Star Wars movies were announced, I was worried. After all, even George Lucas made a mess of the prequels. To my pleasant surprise, The Force Awakens was a very good Star Wars movie. The scene where Rey and Finn first hop in the Millenium Falcon and shoot-it-out with tie fighters managed to be more Star Wars than just about anything that happened in the prequels.

Rey force-grabbing the lightsaber in the climactic battle was a goosebump moment.

Since then, we’ve had a sequel which somehow managed to squander having Mark Hamill as a star, and a swirl of mostly-unnecessary backstories. Nostalgia is the common theme stringing these together, and each in some way recycles the originals. Destroy the Death Star. Fight the AT-ATs. Keep the droid with the hidden message away from the Empire. Say what you may about the George Lucas prequels, they expanded the Star Wars universe into mostly new directions instead of simply conjuring larger Death Stars to destroy.

So, I greeted the release of the Disney+ original series, the Mandalorian, with trepidation. Was this a Boba Fett backstory, similar to Solo? Clicking the signup button, I gave it a try.

SPOILERS AHEAD

It is not a Boba Fett back story. In fact, it’s set five years after the fall of the Empire (after 1983’s The Return of the Jedi). You’ll recall that Boba Fett rocket-packed himself into the Sarlacc’s pit during Luke’s battle with Jabba, so, presumably, he’s been dead for five years. The Mandalorian is an actual Mandalorian warrior, earning his Beskar armor piece-by-piece, like a squire on a quest to become a full-fledged knight. He’s a member of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild and is also a part of a hidden enclave of fellow Mandalorians. We never see what he looks like — indeed, one of the religious tenets of being a Mandalorian warrior is that you cannot remove your helmet in the presence of others. He’s the type of character who answers dumb questions with a silent stare.

Star Wars always was a space Western, but the DIsney+ series goes all-in on this theme. The Mandalorian is the highly-skilled gunslinger, wandering into a new town each episode, inevitably crossing paths with whatever is causing the town’s problems. Usually, he’ll get what he needs in exchange for helping. It reminds me a bit of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica episode “The Lost Warrior”, which has Apollo stranded on a low-tech frontier world where a local crook has programmed a Cylon as his muscle man. Only Apollo, with his blaster, can take down the Cylon and save the town. He does so in classic cowboy showdown style.

What keeps the Mandalorian moving on to endless new towns is that he’s got the MacGuffin. And here’s where the writers pulled a bit of magic. Normally the MacGuffin is just something everyone wants - plans to the Death Star, the Jewel of the Nile - but in this case it’s a child version of Yoda’s race, dubbed “Baby Yoda” by fans (it’s not Yoda - Yoda died back in the Empire Strikes Back). Baby Yoda has no spoken lines, but steals every scene. So, he’s not a true MacGuffin; it would matter if you swapped him out with something else. The story wouldn’t be the same.

Sometimes the camera even switches to his POV, taking in all of the weird sights and sounds of whatever new town he’s arrived. When scenes of violence unfold before him, he watches passively, tilting his head. You get the sense that he’s judging what type of person the Mandalorian is, or may become.

The truly remarkable thing about Baby Yoda is that Star Wars managed to pull off cute without corny. Just about any time that George Lucas tried to make something cute, lovable, or funny, it backfired. You can tell George has a certain cartoon-like “step on a rake, get hit in the face by the handle” sense of humor which flops in the Star Wars universe.

Baby Yoda ends up being a perfect add to the self-sufficient warrior who is not used to being responsible for other’s welfare. This could quickly degenerate into Three Men and a Baby hijinks, but fortunately doesn’t. Now, granted, cinema has a well-worn trope of tough guys given a job to deliver a package, only to find out it’s a person, causing them to break their own rules to save them:

…but it’s one that works, which is probably why it’s so reusable.

I mentioned many of the recent Star Wars movies propped themselves up with too high a dose of nostalgia. The Mandalorian isn’t any different, but it goes about it in a slightly more subtle way. I remember back in the 80s collecting the Star Wars action figures, and there were always some pieces that you asked “was this even in the movie?” Case in point:

The Bounty Hunter Droid, IG-88, was in the Empire Strikes Back, standing right next to Boba Fett:

So, when a similar droid appears in Chapter 1 of the Mandalorian and fights beside the protagonist, it’s a nice, subtle bit of nostalgia. Plus, the writers fully realize how a bounty droid might operate, and watching it in action is a big addition, not just a nod, to the original films. It constantly swivels and fires on multiple targets in opposite directions in a way only a droid could.

In Chapter 2, when Jawas strip the Mandalorian’s ship, his resulting tactics - an all-out failed assault on a Sandcrawler, followed by threats, followed by reluctant negotiations - are fun. The Jawas chant their desired quest item - The Egg - like a frat party chanting toga and laugh at the Mandalorian’s attempts to speak Jawa, telling him he speaks like a Wookie.

And, as fun as this episode was, it also reveals the weakness in the series. The plot is very much video-game structured. Each episode unfurls like this:

1. The Mandalorian sets down on a planet because a part of his ship needs repairs

2. To get money for repairs, he must accept a quest from the locals.

3. Although the locals don’t have enough to pay him, usually it all works out.

4. If he collects enough Beskar pieces, he can upgrade his armor at the smith’s.

That’s really the plot so far. Start of episode: broken ship; end of episode: fixed ship. I just finished Chapter 5: The Gunslinger and had exactly that question: what was the point? At the end, he got his shipped fixed and nothing new was learned about him or Baby Yoda. The episode had its watchable moments - the speader bike journey over the desert and the conversation with the Tuskan Raiders were highlights - but I’m left feeling sometimes the series suffers from the same thing that scifi movies do…great visual artists but only okay writers. The ending credits illustrate this by scrolling through the concept art for the episode.

Unlike Netflix, Disney+ is releasing the episodes weekly, so the series isn’t complete yet. It’s good popcorn fun, though, and enjoyable. I just hope there’s more to the plot than just snacks in the remaining episodes.