First off, when it was first rumored in S2 of the Mandalorian that Asohka would appear, I said that I didn’t like the idea, but that if they’d pulled off the character better than the cartoons, I’d eat my words. Well, that time has come…for Cad Bane. Yep, still think Rosario is actually worse than the cartoon by virtue of being totally bland and talking like a prequel Jedi. But, Bane was realized really well and had a very menacing presence. To me, big improvement. His face was super expressive and disturbing in a great way. The parts involving Mos Pelgos, Vanth, and Bane were some of the better parts of the episode. Very Sergio Leone.
On to…the not so great parts.
To start off on a high note, Luke’s face doesn’t just look better, it looks astoundingly better. It’s not even that it looks necessarily “exactly” like him, but it looks like a real human face the whole time. His voice is still flat and robotic, which turned me off quite a bit. The training felt very amateurish and underwritten. “Look, Luke runs through the woods like Dagobah! He does a flip!” I wish he’d had a more interesting outfit as well. It felt very low-effort. I’ll swing back around to Luke in a second, because I have bigger problems.
The kid…I feel should have grown and maybe even starting speaking, if even just a little. Furthermore, I really don’t appreciate being reminded of some of the worst changes made to Yoda in the prequels. I don’t want to see Baby Yoda flipping around like AOTC, and I don’t think Yoda would have had a lightsaber. But it’s all worse than that.
Everyone cried over TLJ, saying Luke was ruined, and how he wasn’t the same character, and yet I haven’t seen anyone say the same thing here, despite him being ruined far worse. Of all things they could have had him say, in my opinion the worst was to reinforce the dogmatic view of prequel Jedi towards attachment. He, of all people, would accept that the least. I’m very frustrated that no one seems to care that they’ve replaced literally the hero of an entire generation with another bland, sterile, cardboard cutout prequel Jedi with no personality, humanity, individuality, warmth, or any other quality he had in the OT. People are just “so happy to see him do what he did in their headcanon/fanfiction”.