Bo-Katan, who was voiced by Katie Sackhoff in the animated shows, is played in live action by her in her live action debut in this new episode, and... surprisingly, she looks about perfect in the role.
This was one of the better episodes that we've had, but in some ways, it's also one of the worst, because it highlights a few things that Dave Filoni is just plain getting wrong about Star Wars, where he's bought into the wokeness garbage and injecting it into the show. Even as he's making episodes that are actually pretty good; the wokeness is mostly buried deep in the assumptions rather than hitting you over the head like it did in stupid movies like Birds of Prey or the Charlie's Angels remake or Terminator: Dark Fate, or any number of big budget and high profile major flops of 2018-9 or so that flopped specifically because of their wokeness. But it is nonetheless very built into the assumptions, and it was a major difference between Clone Wars and Rebels; the level to which those assumptions dominated the way the show rolled out.
Rebels also suffered, of course, from having thoroughly unlikable principle characters, for the most part, who were defined by their whinyness, entitlement, and Mary Sue-edness, although this was not unrelated to the wokeness. Because what is wokeness other than resentment, envy, covetousness, bitterness and spite? That's basically the definition of wokeness entirely right there, except that they lie to themselves and to others to try desperately to make it seem justified and vindicated. Although they don't really deny in any meaningful way that they aren't exactly all of those adjectives, because it's so obvious that that's exactly what they are.
Anyway, what in the world happened to the Mandalore that they showed in the Clone Wars, where the population was homogenous, and it was clear that the Mandalorians had a very Nordic, specifically Finnish look to them (one of their world's is named Kalevala, which is why I specifically say Finnish as opposed to, say, Swedish.) Din Djaron, the titular character, doesn't ever show his face except for a very brief moment, but the actor is a Chilean communist who fled as a child when Allende was ousted, because his parents were embedded in his corrupt and evil administration. But he's supposed to be a Foundling, so him not being an ethnic Mandalorian is OK. Bo-Katan is played by Katie Sackhoff who isn't Finnish, but is at least an American of traditional American descent. Her two companion Mandolorians are played by a Hispanic woman and a Greek man respectively. In fact, the only people who look like they could be Mandalorians (other than Katie Sackhoff) are in fact the Imperials who don't wear stormtrooper helmets. That's OK, they look traditionally British, which the Imperials have always been, but again; in the first Star Wars, the Rebels were heritage Americans against the Imperial British. What woke Star Wars has evolved to is women and the Pox (peoples of color) fighting against white men. Why that bit of underlying woke messaging, especially in a show who's fanbase was traditionally heavily slanted towards white men goes unremarked on has always seemed very odd to me. It's a deliberate insult to the fans.
In a related bit of wokeness assumptions, I've once pointed out on a Youtube video's comments (a The Quartering video, actually) that although it's become quite mainstream, it's actually quite evil to present women as interchangeable with men in action movies, because it's contributed to the monstrous evil of thinking that women in actual, real combat roles in real life in the military is a good idea. It should be excised from our fiction because 1) it promotes the worst kind of dis-civilizational behavior imaginable among Americans, and 2) it's biologically and psychologically nonsensical, and most normal people find it a bit off-putting to see it all of the time. The Quartering, which positions itself in the market as an advocate of free speech and anti-wokeness who constantly like to bang the drum about cancel culture deleted my comment within minutes; in fact, I was editing it to add another clause and when I hit approve it was already gone. (Needless to say, I decided to unfollow the Quartering immediately. I'd already found that I'd gotten a bit tired of his repetitive schtick, and that was the final straw.)
In any case, all of these changes were already given to us in Rebels. Sabine Wren as an Asian teenage girl Mandalorian who is the most irritating Mary Sueish character ever written, who's only marginally less irritating than Ezra Bridger, and never has to work or strive or anything for any of her "accomplishments" and who is smug and unlikeable about them as well. Yes, because that's what the Mandalorians need for their warrior culture; a teenaged girl who's into grafitti because it's what's popular with the SoCal hipsters for a queen. Suuuure. I hope Moff Gideon cut off her head during the Purge. He won't have, because the creators think not only that Wren is all that but that it would be a betrayal of their insane equalitarian cult to have a women actually be treated as equal to a man in similar circumstances. She has to ride in on a white horse and become the queen again without any effort, because that's what happens to women in Star Wars now.
I couldn't have explained this bizarreness to you or to myself without understanding the reality of r-selected evo-psych behavior vs. K-selected behavior, but I see all of the hallmarks of r-selection; the entitlement, the sense that you shouldn't ever need to actually work or strive for anything, because resources (up to and including the position of soverign leader of an entire nation) should be free to whomever wants to show up and take it (explains Hillary's shock and reaction to the 2016 Presidential election too, for that matter), the low threshold of disgust, and the tolerance for "Diversity™", etc. I'll refer you to the Godfather of r/K-strategist theory as it relates to politico-social ideology so you can understand it yourself, of course.
https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-selection-theory/
But I just have a hard time believing that the Mandalorian will ever be able to rise above mediocrity, other than a handful of brief moments here and there, because it's clear that it's saddled with wokeness assumptions. While it is wise for them to reject open wokeness preaching, like so many big flops have probably wished that they had done, and like the Star Wars sequel trilogy has been hampered with for that matter which has been disastrous for the brand, the reality is that it's still a Trojan horse and the wokeness is still there. You just can't see it as clearly from the outside because they're trying to sneak it past the gates.
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