Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Posted by: Matthew Ardill  •  June 6, 2026 @ 6:05pm

Filed under: Reviews

In May of 1983, I sat on the Vancouver SkyTrain with my uncle and father and literally vibrated with excitement. I had just seen an army of Ewoks assist a ragtag Rebel Alliance take down a galactic fascist empire. I was 9 years old and this was squarely in my wheelhouse (and unknowingly helped inform my spirituality, politics, and love of science fiction and fantasy for the rest of my life). Flash forward around 43 years later, and I'm sitting in a theatre after work waiting for the latest film in the same long-running series, now owned by an entertainment mega-conglomerate that clutches the rights to many of my favourite stories (not just the works of George Lucas but also Jim Henson, the Alien universe, and even The Rocky Horror Picture Show).

The Mandalorian and Grogu is a movie following three seasons of the television show The Mandalorian (three and a half if you count The Book of Boba Fett with its heavy Mando and Grogu content). Coming after a drought of content with the last Star Wars film being The Rise of Skywalker back in 2019, there have been a host of projects that have simply failed to launch for a variety of reasons – none the least of it apparently due to corporate disagreements shelving promising concepts that made it through initial scripting, like a Ben Solo redemption story. So it's in this landscape we get The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first project to launch after Kathleen Kennedy handed over the reigns of the Lucasfilm brands to Dave Filoni as President and Chief Creative Officer and Lynwen Brennan as Co-President, mirroring the creative/business divide that Warner Bros. has done with their DC properties. Needless to say, this is a period in Star Wars history that's complicated on a business and a creative front, which makes the context of the film all the more interesting.

Setting aside the inside baseball talk about corporate restructuring and leadership flow charts, the most important question is how was the film? The very short answer: fun. It wasn't a perfect film, it wasn't the best Star Wars film (that's The Empire Strikes Back obviously), but it's solid. Back in the post-Return of the Jedi era when Star Wars media started drying up, there were a couple of TV movies following the adventures of the Ewoks on Endor. We have an element of that here. It's a film that's aimed squarely at a kids' market in the latter half, but is unbalanced with the first half of the film being very much "John Wick in Space" with Din being a badass. I say this as lovingly as possible, but it's like Filoni and Favreau got together in the back yard with their favourite toys and played Star Wars – and I mean that in a good way.

Underneath that, though, there's a touching story about aging and letting go while building a relationship. There's a heart to this story that, while not moving the needle of the galactic narrative, moves the relationship between these two characters forward. Also, we get to see Rotta the Hutt as a pit fighter, so that's cool.

Two incredibly creative filmmakers told a story that had no big universe-shaking stakes, that played with some fun characters, and was cool. We got some laughs, we got some action, and we had a good time. For the film nerds in the audience, there were some extra nuggets of joy knowing the Adelphi hanger used to belong to Howard Hughes and was very involved in the hot rod scene George loved being in American Graffiti, or the fact Scorsese (who is a friend of George's but has beef with Disney) plays a space monkey sandwich vendor, and there's a delicious irony there. There's a lot to chew on coming out of this film, and it's both good and bad, but it's a nice palette cleanser. The next film (Star Wars: Starfighter) won't be out until next summer – another standalone, this time set 5 years after The Last Jedi – so we're in for another long wait. It's hard to tell what will make it to the screen, but if you have a chance get out and see The Mandalorian and Grogu, take it for what it is – a fun adventure that's just kind of cool and has a bit of heart.

Tags: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Star Wars, Disney, Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Martin Scorsese, Jeremy Allen White

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