The Mandalorian Comes to “The Rescue” of Baby Grogu

It’s time for the last of my episode by episode reviews of season 2 of The Mandalorian again. Previous installments may be found here.

Also, since Star Wars is a Disney property now, may I remind you once again that Disney is not paying the royalties due to Alan Dean Foster and others as well. Andrew Liptak has more, including the names of some other authors affected, in this in-depth article at Polygon.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

Honestly, I mean it. Don’t read on, unless you have watched the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian.

“The Rescue” begins with an Imperial shuttle carrying cloning specialist Doctor Pershing under attack by Slave-1. A shot by Slave-1 disables their systems and a voice tells the pilots (who look as if they stepped straight out of a Nazi recruiting poster) and Doctor Pershing to stand by for boarding. And indeed, Doctor Pershing and the pilots raise their hands, when Mando, Cara Dune and Fennec Shand board the shuttle. “Is the child still alive?” Mando asks Doctor Pershing. The Doctor confirms this, but before he can say any more, one of the pilots draws his blaster, shoots the other pilot, when he insists that he has nothing to do with any of this, and then puts his blaster to the head of Doctor Pershing.

The pilot taunts Cara Dune about the destruction of Alderaan – it turns out that the rebel crest as a tear tattoo Cara wears is a symbol worn by the survivors of Alderaan – and informs that he was serving aboard the Death Star and has a front row seat, when Alderaan was destroyed. He also declares that millions of Imperial soldiers died aboard the two Death Stars and that the destruction of Alderaan was a small price to pay to stamp out “those terrorists”. Before he can rant any more, Cara shoots him and I for one can’t even blame her.

Though it’s interesting that for the second time in a row, The Mandalorian has attempted to give us however briefly the Imperial perspective on the Star Wars universe. Of course, the destruction of the Death Star(s) and the deaths of millions of Imperial personnel, some of them probably coerced into service, and the fact that this would be viewed as a terrorist act by the Empire nor would they be wrong to view it that way have been discussed in Star Wars fandom for a long time now and even spilled out into popular culture – see the Death Star contractors scene from Clerks. However, this is the first time this has actually been spelled out in a Star Wars series itself.

Doctor Pershing has a scorched ear from Cara’s blast, but otherwise he’s little worse for wear. He’s positively eager to spill his guts and tell Mando and his friends everything about Moff Gideon’s cruiser, its crew, where Grogu is being held and that Moff Gideon has a squad of Dark Troopers, nigh indestructible robotic soldiers (“The human element was the weak spot”, Doctor Pershing explains). Those Dark Troopers are kept in cold storage, because they draw a lot of energy, and require a few minutes to power up. Once they do, they’re nigh unstoppable.

Against odds like this, Mando needs more help and so he returns to Trask to enlist the help of someone he knows bears a grudge against Gideon, namely Bo-Katan Kryze, would-be heiress to the throne of Mandalore. There is something of a stand-off in the bar, where Mando and Boba Fett track down Bo-Katan Kryze and her associate Koska Reeves (Bo-Katan’s other associate is notable by his absence). Because it turns out that Bo-Katan and Koska really, really don’t like Boba Fett and insists that he is not a proper Mandalorian, because he’s a clone (and because his father helped to bring about the rise of the Empire), albeit accidentally. So I was correct that the other Mandalorians frown on the Fetts.

Nonetheless – and I can’t believe I’m siding with Boby Fett here – Bo-Katan’s and Koska’s “You’re not a real Mandalorian” attitude towards Boba Fett irked me. After all, it’s not his fault that he’s a clone. And the fact that Boba Fett is a clone is probably the least objectionable thing about him – his chosen professsion as a bounty hunter and the fact that he worked for Jabby the Hutt and even the Empire itself are a lot more objectionable than whether Boba Fett popped out of a human womb or a glass tank. And besides, Boba was raised as a Mandalorian by Jango, so he has at least as much right to call himself a Mandalorian as Din Djarin, who was a foundling after all. Also, considering that Din Djarin fully accepted Boba Fett’s right to wear the armour and call himself a Mandalorian, I really wonder who is the religious fanatic here, Din Djarin or Bo-Katan and her group. Not to mention that Bo-Katan still wants to reconquer Mandalore, while both Boba Fett and Din Djarin insist that the planet was “turned to glass by the Empire”.

Before Boba and Koska can come to blows, Bo-Katan and Din Djarin interrupt them. Din asks Bo-Katan for help, but she has her own mission (reconquering Mandalore). Then Din mentions that he’s going up against Moff Gideon and that he happens to know where to find the man’s cruiser and Bo-Katan is in. After all, Moff Gideon has something she wants and – it turns out – desperately needs, namely the darksabre.

So Din and his team are off the rescue little Grogu. In order to get aboard Moff Gideon’s cruiser, Din, Cara, Fennec, Bo-Katan and Koska board the captured Imperial shuttle and Boba Fett pretends to fire at them with Slave-1. The beleaguered Imperial shuttle now requests an immediate landing permit aboard the cruiser. Though considering how highly recognisable Slave-1 is, I wonder whether it’s on any Imperial watchlists.

Moff Gideon – who after all knows that Mando is coming for him, because he unwisely told him – grants the landing permit, but orders some TIE fighters launched. The cruiser bridge crew inform the shuttle to leave the launch and landing tube clear for the TIE fighters. This was not at all planned and the shuttle ignores this request, claiming that this is a dire emergency. Nonetheless, we are treated to some footage of TIE fighters being launched, which made my geeky heart very happy. The TIE fighter launch scenes reminded me a bit of the fighter launch scenes in the original Battlestar Galactica (whose special effects were done by John Dykstra, who also worked on A New Hope), only that TIE fighters are stored hanging.

The TIE fighter launch is stopped, when the shuttle enters the launch tube to land. Slave-1 plays cat and mouse with some TIE fighters and then jumps to hyperspace. A squad of Stormtroopers rushes towards the errant shuttle, only to be promptly met by fatal blaster fire dispensed by Cara Dune, Fennec Shand, Bo-Katan and Koska. The plan is that the four women distract the Stormtroopers and fight their way to the bridge, where Bo-Katan can take out Moff Gideon. Meanwhile, Din Djarin will sneak aboard the cruiser, disable the Dark Troopers, free Grogu and then heads for the bridge himself.

Most reviewers enjoyed the scenes of four awesome women kicking arse. See Germain Lussier’s review at io9 or Emmett Asher-Perrin’s at Tor.com. I enjoyed those scenes as well, because hey, sometimes I just like watching awesome women kick butt. Season 1 of The Mandalorian wasn’t all that great on the gender front – during the first three episodes, the Mandalorian armourer played by actress Emily Swallow was the only woman with a speaking part and we never even saw her face. Season 2 has improved greatly and we have female characters with speaking parts in every single episode, often more than one, culminating in the four women assault team in the season finale.

However, The Mandalorian has been playing with gender roles in general. After all, this is a show whose protagonist is a man who – though a great warrior – is mainly shown caring for a young child. Din Djarin still gets involved in plenty of fights, but his main priority, as illustrated repeatedly in this episode and throughout the whole season, is keeping Grogu safe. So we have a male character placed in a nurturing role. Meanwhile, none of the many female characters we meet during this season are mothers with the exception of the unnamed frog lady (who very much feels as if she wandered in from a completely different movie). And all of the women are not just tough, they also work in masculine coded professions. Cara Dune is an ex-soldier turned marshal, Fennec Shand is an ex-soldier turned outlaw, Bo-Katan is a warrior and the aspiring queen of Mandalore, Koska Reeves is another warrior, Peli Motto is a mechanic who hangs out in the Mos Eisley cantina, Ahsoka Tano is a Jedi knight (and remember that until the prequels we never saw a single female Jedi nor any hints that women could become Jedi knights), Morgan Espbeth is a crime boss and villainous dictator who is good at fighting with lances. Now Star Wars has given us strong women from the very beginning on, but until well into the Disney era, the strong women of Star Wars were solitaires with usually only one notable woman character per trilogy or movie. The season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, however, gave us four women fighting together, even if it was to help a man recover his kidnapped child.

I also find it interesting that “The Rescue” is already the second time this season after “The Jedi” that Din Djarin goes sneaking about, rescuing prisoners and quietly sabotaging the enemy, while one or more women go in guns or lightsabres blazing to keep the enemy busy.

Since Stormtroopers have never been much of an obstacle, our four tough ladies quickly make it to the bridge, only to find that Moff Gideon is not there. And since they unfortunately shot the bridge crew, there’s no one left alive to answer questions either.

Meanwhile, things don’t go nearly as well for Din Djarin. For starters, the Dark Troopers have already been activated by the time Din makes it to the storage area. Din does manage to close the blast doors on the Dark Troopers just in time, but one Trooper got out and this one Trooper is more than a match for our favourite Mandalorian. It’s only his trusty beskar armour and helmet that saves Din Djarin’s life, until he gets lucky and manages to take out the lone Dark Trooper with his beskar lance. Meanwhile, his comrades or punching against the doors and about to break through, but Din opens an airlock. The Dark Troopers are sucked out into space and taken care of… for now.

Unlike Stormtroopers and the goofy battle droids from the prequel trilogy, the Dark Troopers are genuinely frightening with their glowing red eyes, their lockstep and particularly the way their fists relentlessly punch at anything – whether it’s a blast door or a Mandalorian helmet – like steam hammers. And indeed, the episode did a great job building up the Dark Troopers as a genuine menace – particularly in the light of what happens later.

After tangling with the Dark Trooper, Din Djarin heads for the cell where Grogu is being held, only to find another unpleasant surprise waiting for him. For it turns out that Grogu, who’s in handcuffs and clearly still groggy from having so much of his blood taken, is not alone. Moff Gideon is with him and threatening the kid with the darksabre. Din Djarin tells Moff Gideon that he doesn’t care about the darksabre or Bo-Katan’s quest, he just wants Grogu back. Moff Gideon appears to agree, but then he attacks Din anyway. Grogu manages to warn his Dad and we are treated to the second instance of Din Djarin fighting a duel with an impressive opponent. And once again, his trusty beskar armour saves him, because beskar is the one substance through which the darksabre cannot cut. Though Din’s beskar lance glows red hot, when he uses it to block Moff Gideon’s strikes.

In the end, Din Djarin prevails and manages to disarm Moff Gideon. Rather than kill him, he takes Moff Gideon prisoner (Cara Dune did want him alive, because the New Republic wants to question him) and struts onto the bridge with the darksabre in one hand, Grogu in the other and Moff Gideon in handcuffs. Cara and Fennec are happy to see him and Cara promises him double the bounty on Moff Gideon, because he brought him in alive. Bo-Katan, meanwhile, seems not at all happy, even though Din Djarin has recovered the darksabre for her.

Moff Gideon – who is still a manipulative bastard even when beaten and in handcuffs – reveals what exactly Bo-Katan’s problem is. For in order to cement Bo-Katan’s claim to the throne of Mandalore, she needs to win the darksabre in battle. Just being handed the sabre is not enough – she needs to fight for it. After two nearly fatal duels, Din doesn’t want another fight, least of all against one of his own comrades and so he deactivates the darksabre and offers it to Bo-Katan with the words, “I yield.” But Bo-Katan still isn’t satisfied (and note how Cara Dune shifts her aim from Moff Gideon to Bo-Katan). “It’s not the weapon itself that’s important, it’s the legend,” Moff Gideon taunts.

Now I’ve said before that the Star Wars universe in general is dysfunctional, though not quite as dysfunctional as the Terran Empire from Star Trek, which truly raises dysfunctionality to an art form. But up to now, the Mandalorians had seemed like one of the more functional of the many fractions of the Star Wars universe. Yes, they’re weapons toting religious fanatics who worship their armour, but they’re remarkably honourable for people who earn their living as bounty hunters and they have at least a semblance of a functioning social system that makes sure that orphaned kids are taken care of, which is more than you can say for most other groups. Of course, we have seen the toxic elements of their religious beliefs before – at the end of season 1, Din was willing to die rather than remove his helmet – but this moment really brought home how toxic the Mandalorian way can be, if driven to extremes. After all, Bo-Katan was fully willing to fight and potentially kill someone who’s one of her own people and an ally besides, all for the sake of her pie in the sky dream of ruling Mandalore and because her own beliefs don’t allow her to just accept Din’s offer, take the darksabre and simply pretend that she won it in combat. Never mind that Din Djarin doesn’t even want the darksabre and neither seems to realise nor care that he is theoretically king of Mandalore now, even though it’s likely just a radioactive lump of glass floating in space. There is a Mandalorian fanatic in this scene and it’s not Din Djarin.

In the end, Bo-Katan and Din Djarin don’t fight after all, because they have another massive problem to deal with. For the Dark Troopers that Din flushed out into space have come back – they are not organic, after all, and have jets in their feet, as we’ve seen in “The Tragedy” – and are heading for the bridge. And considering that Din Djarin barely managed to beat one of them, even five excellent warriors are no match for a whole platoon of Dark Troopers, as Moff Gideon gloatingly points out. Honestly, by this point I wondered why no one has gagged him or just knocked him out yet.

For now, our heroes close the blast doors to the bridge, but we know that blast doors don’t stop Dark Troopers, but only slow them down. And so the blast doors soon begin to buckle, as the Dark Troopers hammer against them relentlessly. At this point, the system on the bridge report the arrival of a single X-wing. “Oh great, now that’s going to help”, Cara Dune says. And indeed, I initially assumed that the pilot of the X-Wing was one of the X-Wing pilots we’ve seen before during this season, neither of whom would be much help against the Dark Troopers. However, then Grogu’s ears suddenly prick up and we realise that something quite different is going on. The look on Moff Gideon’s face, which gradually changes from smugness to fear, tells us the rest.

Soon our heroes on the bridge – and we at home – watch via the bridge monitors as a cloaked and hooded figure emerges from the X-Wing. A lightsabre ignites, though we can’t see the colour, because the bridge monitors are unfortunately in black and white. “It’s a Jedi”, someone says. Meanwhile, Grogu is very excited about this development.

Moff Gideon makes one more attempt to break free. He fires at Bo-Katan, whose beskar armour saves her, and then at Grogu, but Din throws himself in front of his kid and both are saved by his beskar armour. Amazingly, Moff Gideon survives not just that attempt, but the episode. The New Republic must really be desperate to apprehend him.

Our heroes – and we – now watch breathlessly as the cloaked and hooded Jedi proceeds to turn the Dark Troopers into scrap metal. We still only see the battle in black and white, though the Jedi only has one lightsabre, which rules out Ahsoka, since she has two. Eventually, the scene cuts from the bridge camera view to the location of the fight. We still don’t see the face of the Jedi, but we see the colour of the lightsabre – green – and that the hand that wields it wears a black glove. By which point, every Star Wars fan yelled excitedly, “Could it really be… Luke Skywalker?”

I had this surprise semi-spoiled for me, because when I opened up Twitter after lunch, The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Luke and Lauterbach were the top trends on Twitter in Germany. I joked at the time that I was certain that Karl Lauterbach, a terrible German politicion whom I intensely dislike, was definitely not in The Mandalorian. Boba Fett clearly was in The Mandalorian and as for Luke, the Twitter trend might either have been referring to German comedian Luke Mockridge or to Luke Skywalker. In the end, it turned out to be the latter.

Cause to cut to the chase, yes, the mystery Jedi is Luke and he’s as impressive as he’s ever been. And so we watch him chopping and cutting his way through the Dark Troopers and even force-crushing one Trooper, just because he can. The scene is very reminiscent of a similar scene towards the end of Rogue One, where Darth Vader cuts and chops his way through a whole squad of rebel soldiers. Over the course of the past two seasons, The Mandalorian has paid homage to many of the works that inspired the original trilogy, from samurai movies via westerns to war movies. For the season 2 finale, it does pay homage to Star Wars itself and offers several scenes that are a direct callback to similar moments on Star Wars. And so Luke Skywalker cuts his way through swathes of enemies just like his father before him, we have our heroes sneaking into an Imperial stronghold aboard a stolen shuttle as in Return of the Jedi and we have a cellblock scene like in A New Hope.

Luke finally makes it to the bridge, introduces himself and removes his hood to reveal a bad case of creepy de-aging CGI. Now Star Wars has used CGI de-aging effects before in Rogue One and The Rise of Skywalker, as did other movies from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 to The Irishman. But while CGI de-aging is pretty impressive, it still has an uncanny valley quality about it. And so Luke looks more like an ethereal force ghost than himself. And since Din Djarin and everybody else looks crumpled and battered by their experiences, the contrast is even greater. To be fair, I have no idea how else they should have handled the appearance of Luke Skywalker. At 68, Mark Hamill is much too old to play Luke Skywalker at about age 30. And recasting as iconic as Luke doesn’t work, as the experiences with Solo have shown.

Luke is here to take Grogu away for Jedi training, because as he tells Din Djarin, “talent without training is dangerous”. He’s not even wrong, because Grogu clearly is strong in the Force and he can be dangerous and not just to random Stormtroopers either. After all, towards the end of season 1, Grogu force-choked Cara Dune, when he mistook a friendly arm-wrestling match for an attack on his Dad. However, given what we saw during the sequel trilogy, I don’t think Luke Skywalker should be entrusted with anybody’s kid, considering that he turned out to be a terrible Jedi master (sorry, Luke) who tried to kill his own nephew and drove him to the dark side of the Force. Add to that that I’m pretty sure that Luke has never changed a diaper in his life nor even that he even knows that diapers are a thing (I know imagine Leia rolling her eyes, when a desperate Luke calls her to tell her that his newest student has wet himself again). Luke is simply as woefully underequipped to deal with a young child as Obi-Wan was, when he inherited Anakin from Qui-Gon.

And so Din Djarin, who spent most of this season trying to find a Jedi to offload Grogu upon tells Luke quite bluntly, “He doesn’t want to go with you.” “He just wants your permission”, Luke replies. And so we come to the sweetest and most heartbreaking scene in all two seasons of The Mandalorian, namely Din Djarin and Grogu saying good-bye to each other.

Din is trying to be very brave and tells Grogu he must go with the nice Jedi now and learn how to use the Force. Grogu, meanwhile, reaches out and touches Din’s helmet. We know what he wants and Din knows it, too, and so he does what had seemed unthinkable until two episodes ago. He takes off his helmet, even though there are seven other people looking on, at least two of whom don’t like him. It’s powerful moment, simply because the show has shown us over and over again what a huge deal removing his helmet is for Din. The previous two times he took off his helmet, the first time was to save his life (and he had to be talked into it) and the second time was to save Grogu’s. This time around, no one’s life is in accute danger, though Din still takes off his helmet for Grogu, to allow him to look at the face of the man who has become his father in every way that matters. And Grogu strokes his cheek in a tender good-bye. The scene intentionally echoes the moment towards the end of Return of the Jedi, where a mortally wounded Darth Vader begs Luke to remove his helmet, so he can look upon his son with his own eyes.

I’m not someone who cries at movies and I managed to sit stone-faced through such infamous tearjerkers like Love Story, The Champ, Gone with the Wind, Out of Africa and Doctor Zhivago (as well as Terms of Endearment and/or Ordinary People, except that I keep getting them mixed up and don’t recall which one I saw), while wondering what on Earth all the fuzz was about and thinking that the saddest thing about those movies was that they had won Oscars and accolades. However, when I do cry at movies, I cry at genre movies. All three movies of the original trilogy have moments that infallibly make me cry and some of the other Star Wars movies have managed that rare feat as well.

However, I cried when Din handed Grogu over to Luke. And so does Din, even though we’re not sure if he notices or if he even knows what tears are, since he clearly has no idea that smiles are a thing, considering he can’t even manage one for Grogu. Come to think of it, I take it back. The way of the Mandalorians is as dysfunctional as everything else in the Star Wars universe. Because Din Djarin is clearly unable to even admit that he has emotions, let alone deal with them.

After the tender moment they shared, Din sets Grogu down on the floor. Grogu hugs his legs once more – he is very small after all – and then toddles over to Luke and R2-D2 (because where Luke goes, R2 goes). R2 wasn’t a fan of the adult Yoda, but he clearly likes the toddler version and Grogu likes R2 as well. Luke scoops up the little one and the door closes behind them. The screen fades to black and the credits roll.

But wait, there’s more. Because this episode of The Mandalorian has something we rarely see in the Star Wars universe, namely a post-credits scene. The binary stars show us that we’re back on Tatooine and then Jabba’s palace comes into view. Except that we know that Jabba is dead in this timeline, so why exactly are we here? The scene shifts to the interior and we see Jabba’s former mayor domo Bib Fortuna sitting on a throne on Jabba’s deis. Now I wasn’t even aware that Bib Fortuna had survived the excursion to the sarlacc pit, though come to think of it, we never see him die nor do we see his body. And as Jabba’s mayor domo and second in command, he is clearly perfectly situated to take over Jabba’s criminal operations – because we knew that someone would. Bib Fortuna also seems to be determined to become Jabba in other ways. He has gained a lot of weight since we last saw him and he also has a chained up Twilek slave girl, though at least she is the right species for Bib Fortuna, cause I for one never knew what exactly Jabba wanted with human and Twilek slave girls, since they’re compatible with his species.

However, Bib Fortuna’s reign is about to come to an end, when shots are fired and Gamorrean guards fall down the stairs, quite dead. Fennec Shand appears a little later. She shoots some more Gamorreans and Weequay and also shoots through the chain of the slave girl, freeing her. And where Fennec goes, Boba Fett is not far behind. So we soon see Boba Fett descend the staircase. “Boba, I didn’t know you were still alive,” Bib Fortuna begins. Boba doesn’t answer. He shoots Bib Fortuna, throws his body off the throne and sits down in a pose that recalls Conan and Kull during their times of King of Aquilonia or respectively Valusia (and it’s notable that George Lucas and John Milius, director of the Conan movies of the 1980s) were classmates at university), while Fennec finds something to drink for herself. Cue a text overlay, which promises us that we can expect The Book of Boba Fett in December 2021.

Now Disney just announced a shit ton of Star Wars series and movies, but one thing they did not announce was a Boba Fett series. Of course, they may have held back that announcement so to not spoil the ending of The Mandalorian. Nonetheless, there is some debate whether the Boba Fett series is an all-new series or season 3 of The Mandalorian, which had previously been announced for December 2021.

Personally, I would prefer the former. I like Fennec and I even like Boba Fett now, which surprises no one more than me, since I never much cared for Boba Fett beyond the fact that he was a cool looking villain who worked best as a mystery antagonist. However, as James Whitbrook points out in this article at io9, The Mandalorian has turned Boba Fett from a cool looking suit of armour into a character. And surpising as it may be, Boba Fett and Fennec Shand are not the worst thing that could happen to Tatooine. Just as Din Djarin, who is now theoretically King of Mandalore, though he neither wants the job nor even seems to be aware that he has it, is not the worst thing that could happen to the Mandalorians, whether they still have a habitable planet or not. Though I really hope that someone in the Star Wars universe will eventually invent that revolutionary concept called democracy.

However, while season 2 of The Mandalorian was extremely good and an improvement upon season 1, which already was very good, the ending – though cracking good – very much feels like the downer cliffhanger at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, as the AV-Club‘s Mike Vanderbilt and the Guardian‘s Paul MacInnes point out. Because it’s really not clear where the show will go from here.

For me, the main attraction about The Mandalorian – apart from the fact that the show managed to capture the magic and beautiful absurdity of the Star Wars universe better than anything else since 1983 – was the relationship between Din Djarin, a man so emotionally damaged and numbed that he is literally encased in a suit of impenetrable armour he never takes off, and a small and seemingly helpless alien child, who turns out to be not just extremely powerful but also very special and the way these two damaged souls managed to become a family. I’m a sucker for found family stories and it was this aspect of Star Wars that I always liked most, even though I loved the aliens and lightsabre duels and space dogfights, too, because everything is better with lightsabres and spaceships.

But with Grogu off to become a Jedi, where will Din Djarin go next? Will we even see him again or will the focus now shift to the adventures of Boba Fett and Fennec Shand, King and Queen of Tatooine? Of course, I expect that Grogu and Din will eventually be reunited – with Grogu sporting a few new Jedi skills and maybe even being able to talk – if only because Disney won’t let go off its breakout sensation and moneymaker Baby Grogu. Also, considering that Kylo Ren will destroy Luke’s Jedi Aacademy and murder all the students in approx. fifteen years or so, I fervently hope that Grogu gets out of there before that massacre happens (though Grogu has already survived one Jedi purge).

Talking of which, how exactly did Luke where how to find Grogu? Of course, the logical explanation is that Luke sensed Grogu through the seeing stone in temple. But it’s also possible that Grogu used the Force to call for help from aboard Moff Gideon’s ship and that Luke heard him. After all, Grogu was scared and he cannot contact Din Djarin, since Din is not Force-sensitive.

Another question is why did Grogu agree to go with Luke, when he wouldn’t go with Ahsoka, but made it clear to her that he wants to stay with Daddy? Now we know that Grogu, though physically a toddler, is a lot older and more intelligent than a looks. We also know that Din had his entire life upended and was pretty non-stop in danger, ever since he picked up Grogu. Mere minutes before Luke arrives, Grogu has witnessed his adoptive father engaged in a duel to the death with the man who hurt Grogu and about to face another duel with someone who is supposedly on his side. It’s quite possible that Grogu decided to leave Din Djarin behind to keep him safe from the danger that seems to follow in Grogu’s wake. After all, Grogu already saw everybody he ever cared for murdered once and then spent more than twenty years alone and scared. It makes sense that he would want to keep the one person in the universe he cares about safe. After all, he’s on the Light Side of the Force, even though he occasionally steals cookies and eats frog eggs.

Anyway, I do hope that Grogu will eventually grow up to be an awesome if tiny Mandalorian Jedi who uses the force, the darksabre and a suit of beskar to fight the minions of the Dark Side and protect the powerless, because “The Way This Is”.

I guess we’ll find out… in December 2021.