The Mandalorian season three finale airs tomorrow and fan expectations are sky-high. Up until the penultimate episode, a consensus was building that the show might be past its prime, though last week’s episode slammed the accelerator to the floor by bringing back Moff Gideon, delivering a big reveal on his goals, and teasing many upcoming story strands leading to the rise of the First Order and the resurrection of the Emperor.
The finale probably won’t answer all of our questions, but it will at least point us in the right direction. But, sadly, it’s going to have to do a lot in a fairly compressed time. The runtime for the finale has just appeared online, coming in at a paltry 38 minutes and 56 seconds.
Strip out the “Previously on,” the opening logos, and the credits and we’re looking at roughly 30 minutes of new material to wrap up the season. Previous The Mandalorian finales have clocked in at around 10 minutes longer with season one’s “The Redemption” at 48 minutes and season two’s “The Rescue” at 46 minutes.
As you’d imagine, fans aren’t happy.
Can they squeeze everything in?
Well, I guess we’re about to find out.
Then again, as they say, it’s not the length that counts, it’s what you do with it. We’re not necessarily opposed to shorter episodes as we’d prefer great pacing and wall-to-wall action than the show dragging its heels. Even so, we were hoping for an all-out battle for the future of Mandalore tomorrow, and it doesn’t seem likely they can cram all that into so short a space.
We’ll be burning the midnight oil to watch this when it drops, so fingers crossed Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, and director Rick Famuyiwa know what they’re doing.
