Mandalorian warriors prepare for battle in “The Mandalore Plot,” an all-new episode of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS premiering at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, January 29 on Cartoon Network. TM & © 2010 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.
Since Season Two was pitched as “Rise of the Bounty Hunters,” and since the iconic Star Wars bounty hunters are probably Jango and Boba Fett, there has been a palpable desire for Mandalorian characters. This week, with “The Mandalore Plot,” the wait is finally over, as a three-episode story reveals much more detail about the warrior culture.
According to Dave Filoni, Supervising Director of The Clone Wars, the first thing to remember is that we don’t really know that much about the Mandalorians yet:
“people immediately think of the iconic Fett armor, because that’s all we’ve had to go on for so many years; it’s mysterious, and we’ve built up that mystique as fans. But Boba and Jango Fett aren’t necessarily what I would consider accurate representatives of the Mando culture. They’re bounty hunters and outlaws – totally rogue. If you go way back to the original concepts, the Mandalorians were a group of supercommando troops; it’s only now that George is really bringing that to the screen. They’re in the series because he wanted to define their culture, to explore the foundations of this warrior faction.”
That phrase “warrior faction” is important: Karen Traviss had already said back in December that the Mandalorians were being ret-conned as a pacifist culture.
Apparently, though, fans weren’t the only ones anxious to see a proper Mandalorian-Jedi battle. Filoni reports that this has been a desire of the crew since the earliest days of the show:
“This was a running joke among the crew early in the production. . . A lot of people on the crew wanted to see the Mandalorians – especially our head writer, Henry Gilroy – but they were off-limits to us at the time. George definitely has a sense of pace, and of a natural order for Star Wars storytelling; plus, it’s his universe, so we had to set aside our Mando ideas for the time being. Ultimately, though, he came back around and gave us his blueprint for how he wanted to see the Mandalorian culture represented, which is great because they bring so much to the conflict. The first season was pretty straightforward; we had the Republic versus the Separatists. But now we have these splinter groups – like the Mandos, the bounty hunters, and the Geonosians – who each bring something totally different to the table.”
Any episode arc featuring the Mandalorians was going to be highly-anticipated; the fact that Jon Favreau is the voice of the lead Mandalorian tightens the screw one notch more:
“I had mentioned that I would love to do a voice, and that I’d done voices before – and the idea for me to play a Mandalorian came up. I wasn’t holding out for a cool character, but I think the Mandalorians are probably the ones that the die-hards are going to be the most curious about . . . I grew up a fan of Star Wars. It was the first time I had ever experienced that really iconic, mythic archetypal storytelling. What’s fun about Star Wars is that it still has as much relevance and impact now as it did then. It seems to be a set of characters and a world that is timeless, and every generation seems to embrace. So it’s fun to be able to share with my family and my kids the excitement that I had when I was young.”
Here’s the clip:
