Why The Mandalorian Season 3 Didn't Show More Of Bo-Katan's Backstory
"The Mandalorian" season 3 was a bit of a mess. After two great seasons, the most recent batch of episodes was overstuffed, and it felt aimless, without a clear goal in sight. This season was less about Din Djarin — you know, the Mandalorian — and only kind of about reclaiming the Mandalorian people's ancestral home of Mandalore.
This plotline moved the attention toward Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) taking a bigger role in the story, as we followed her attempt to find redemption for losing Mandalore to the Empire. There were some great moments, for sure, like when we saw Lizzo and Jack Black in space, or when the show introduced us to space Swamp Thing, the best pirate in the galaxy. There seemed to be time for many detours from the main plot, but there was one thing the show seemingly never had time for: Bo-Katan's backstory. Yes, we got to see her sitting in her fancy chair for weeks at a time, but unless you have seen not one, but two full cartoon series, "The Mandalorian" never really shows why the character matters, or why anything matters to her.
No time for the past
During an interview with The Big Thing podcast, Katee Sackhoff acknowledged the lack of backstory for Bo-Katan for people who didn't watch the animated shows, and revealed that was part of discussions for the character's live-action debut. "I think the problem with a show like this is that you're straddling that line between keeping the episodes shorter and then stuffing them so full ... There's a lot I wanna know ... We've talked about her entire backstory, we've talked about all the things that happened," she said. "And for me, I really loved those moments where we saw a different side of Bo. We saw the pain, we saw her regret, and I always would love to have more of those, selfishly. But you know, maybe in a different time and a different place."
We don't really see any of that in "The Mandalorian." Granted, the show takes place many years after we last saw Bo in "Star Wars Rebels," but the crux of her character arc in "The Mandalorian" is that Bo-Katan once held the throne and lost it to the Empire. The thing is, so did countless other systems. But what makes the story of Bo-Katan interesting is much longer and nuanced than what we see in "The Mandalorian," and to ignore it is to do a disservice to the character and the story of Mandalore in the new "Star Wars" canon.
Would someone remember Satine?
Though "The Mandalorian" spends much of season 3 with Bo-Katan wrestling with her people's history of in-fighting and her painful exile from her homeworld, the show never once mentions Bo's sister Satine, who went through the exact same thing 30 years before. In fact, Satine is the biggest victim of the Disney era of "Star Wars," as she has never been mentioned despite audiences having not one, but two shows starring characters deeply impacted by her (the other being "Obi-Wan Kenobi"). This is a shame, because Satine's tragedy is one hell of a story, with the duchess wanting to break a cycle of violence and make her people pacifists. Sadly, her efforts are met with assassination attempts that drive her to exile, and eventually, a coup that claims her life.
Not mentioning any of this, or the fact that Bo-Katan was part of the terrorist organization that pulled the coup on Mandalore that caused the death of Satine, does a disservice to both characters. Bo-Katan's desire to reclaim Mandalore is not out of personal shame for losing the planet, but the resolution of decades' worth of conflict.
Now that Ahsoka Tano is getting her own show, and the "Ahsoka" trailer caused some controversy online after it described her as a Jedi, it remains to be seen whether executive producer Dave Filoni can actually bridge the animation and live-action worlds. Ahsoka leaving the Jedi Order is a pivotal chapter in her story, and to ignore that is to betray the character and the audience that has supported her for 15 years. Yes, it may be too much information to add on top of these shows' own stories, but to completely ignore these backstories is downright insulting.