The Mandalorian Helmets: Why?

See, I think we might be stumbling into a problem of what was previously established and what LFL (and possibly Favreau himself) would like to forget - because we know the older Mandalorians (the very ones that Death Watch worshipped and that the COTW model themselves after) were aggressive and violent enough to warrant a war from the Jedi that apparently broke their power to a significant extent... and that, of course, Death Watch were an overtly murderous and treacherous organization pushing for what was ultimately a negative "relapse" into the older warrior culture, ultimately damaging and even helping to doom their planet.

In that light, even if the helmet tradition *does* hail from some Ancient Mandalorians, it's about as much of a "defensive" habit as the Roman's Empire's "perpetual pre-emptive self defensive forward maneuvers."

Again, I think the problem is that geekier, in-the-know fans (even the ones who only know a *little* bit more) know that just going "They're like Orthodox Jews, or the Amish" isn't a good comparison when, explicitly, "weapons are a part of [their] religion" and "Born form a murderous terrorist organization that sold out their planet to criminals for a chance to overthrow a peaceful government" are also key parts of their past - and arguably more important than the helmet rule.

Add in how Season 2 positively portrayed Din taking off his helmet, Seaosn 1 made it a clear liability that almost killed him, and TBOBF showed that the COTW overvalue it nd were willing to traumatize Din over it....

...at a certain point it stops being a "quirky little facet of this fictional culture" and really comes off as what the literature is making an obviously bad (though minor) problem from a cult with serious issues - and then in Season 3 suddenly trying to backtrack on that.

 

I guess my praise and my objection would be that it adds *a* layer to Mando culture, but not *multiple* layers, which the cartoons did.

Right now, the helmet rule and it’s implications remain a static, totally unexplored, and simplistic subcultural dispute; the lack of exploration is its biggest problem, but even on a superficial concept level, it feels insubstantial by itself, and like it belongs to a much larger cultural dispute it’s only a visual shorthand for. After all, how different schisms of religiousness and cultures dress is usually more a *sign* of affiliation rather than the core components of that affiliation.

In contrast, I’d argue that even on a superficial, conceptual level, “pacifist government with a mandate from the people vs war mongering terrorists” (TCW) and “aristocratic and political factions competing for power and influence over a multi-planet culture” have a lot more obvious history, conflict, and depth to them right off the bat.

So the helmet rule isn’t bad or annoying - but having it treated as the only thing worthy of Season 3 addressing compared to the history of Death Watch, the clans, and the New Mandalorians *is* bad and annoying, particularly when they don’t even actually explore or explain the helmet rule.

 

Yeah, and I don't think it would cause any complaint if it weren't for the myopic, monomaniacal focus this last season had on *just* the helmet rule, to the extent it even contextualizes stuff like the Waters of Mandalore mostly only in the light of "Now you can rejoin us again even though you took off your helmet." The helmet rule wasn't the issue - it was the near-refusal to address the more interesting stuff the series and TBOBF brought up alongside the more interesting stuff from the cartoons and supplementary material. If it had been combined with the other cultural material, it would have been exponentially more interesting, and at least several times more interesting if they just explained the helmet rules cultural meaning (our speculations all have dramatic meanings, but we've got nothing from the shows thus far.) Heck, even the Darksaber and its traditions are more interesting than the helmet rule, and they clearly wanted to just ignore that so much that fans trying to read a "this mythos divided us" lesson into it are grasping at straws.

Bo Katan didn't get lamer by putting her helmet on for a few episodes according to the rule - she got lamer when it was clear they were going to dance around actually explaining the most significant information from her past as a former terrorist wrecking her home city to overthrow her sister.

The Children of the Watch didn't get lamer for never showing their faces - they got lamer when the STRONG cult-y vibes they'd been revealed to have were downplayed as just delightful quirks we shouldn't' question or be concerned about despite the poor treatment of Din in TBOBF, and when they're now-confirmed history as a Death Watch off-shoot was waved away as meaningless. The Nite Owls were similarly neutered more by having their history as anti-Maul loyalists ignored then by showing their faces.

It was the simplistic and rather vapid portrayal of the Mandalorians as a culture and as factions that was aggravating; the helmet rule merely catches slack for being horribly inadequate when abandoned as the sole divider in their culture compared to almost literal Saturday Morning Cartoons.

 

I don't think even Pre Vizsla was power-hungry by Star Wars standards, and I don't think that anyone else in Death Watch was more or less brainwashed than he himself was - they were all neophytes so obsessed with the idea that Mandalorians must be warriors that they raised hell and spilled blood in reaction to a government being peaceful and disarming, all while Pre's ambitions seemed to largely be limited to just Mandalore and its system.

And everything else we saw of them and Pre seemed to show they were all ill-disciplined, inexperienced, and hot blooded in the way that rookie warriors are, only really getting some actual martial mindset the more they fought, and even then I'd argue they only showed signs of sobering up and sombering up after they started fighting each other and they couldn't deny the reality of what they were doing. Death Watch works best as a "careful what you wish for" deconstruction of the glorification of war and to warrior cultures in general - as the counterpart to the deconstruction of pacifism that the New Mandalorians were, in a way that showed that between the two, the New Mandos were more right than the Death Watch was.

If your life is dedicated to being a warrior, you're always going to fall on a spectrum between being perpetually paranoid, prickly, and likely impoverished because of how narrow your focus is on one hand, and looking for trouble on the other - optimistically, to stop it in defense of others, and more realistically, as a belligerent and aggressive marauder.

And I sort of think that's liable to be the dramatic reality that makes LFL or Favreau skittish about digging up the rest of Mandalorian culture and history beyond "...they argue about headwear?" ; Mandalorians work as antagonists and villains as well as heroes, because the heart of their mythos in the franchise is a deconstruction of warrior cultures that don't have a mandate for heroism.

Mandalorian aren't a bluntly heroic faction, and most of our current factions have deeply shady pasts, and I think LFL might be leery of admitting that to a live action audience for some reason.

Like... yeah, Bo Katan is a hero *now*, but she works great when she's a formerly villainous (not just misguided) anti-hero, and honestly, the Children of the Watch would probably work best with that reveal as well.

 

I think the Armorer’s dialogue actually confirmed they were… but also coached it in roughly the same way that Jango Fett’s briefly covered history (through dialogue and his armor’s chain code) was: a sort of “Yes, there is a connection, but no, we’re not going to talk about it or it’s implications, because we don't think the larger live action audience should really be told that much about the Mandos.”

The Armorer was asked point blank about whether they were Death Watch and didn’t give it a “no,” instead sidestepping into declaring Death Watch gone and splintered in a way that, contextually, seemed to confirm their former affiliation while arguing it was irrelevant. Even the context of the question being asked implied that the Top Gun Scavenger Mandalorian regarded them as separate from Bo Katan’s own ex-Death attach group, leaving Maul’s supporters as the largest remaining group of them… but again, his dropping of the subject and the season’s seeming hatred of exploring Mandalorian history implies it’s irrelevant now.

This whole last season seemed to kind of run off the idea that the Mandos needed to be more “mysterious” again, that the rabbit needed to be put back in the hat; it’s not just the lack of exploration of known lore and its heavy implications, but it’s also how tight lipped and taciturn the show was in expanding the Mandalorian cast. Axe barely got expanded on, Paz turned out to have a son then died and that was it, Koska didn’t do anything, and we still know nothing about the Armorer.

I think in general, the idea was to just sort of pull the Mandos back into the shadows some more.

 

It would be mildly aggravating if such big information would be imparted to live action audience members and the rest of us outside of the show and season dedicated to the Mandos… but I wouldn’t put it past Filoni to even just accidentally reveal more lore and cultural facts about the Mandos while making Ahsoka.

TM as a show is dominated by a stylistic reliance on echoing spaghetti westerns, and they've sort of stated how much they think taking things back and down to less and less dialogue and more simplistic storytelling is their goal. Ahsoka, on the other hand, is Filoni’s personal continuation of his previous work, and could (or maybe “should”) be heavier on mythos building and exploration just stylistically. If Sabine is the deuteragonist of the show, Filoni could just casually give her lines or actions that echo her stories in Rebels, which definitely contained more lore knowledge than Favreau seems to want to do in TM.

Not that I’ expect it to be too in depth; Rebels started the whole “Bo Katan is totally unproblematic and the best and we don’t need to evaluate anything else about her and her history, m’kay?” in the first place.