The Mandalorian Civil War Needs To Be a Major Topic On-Screen; It’s So Important To the Overall ‘Star Wars’ Canon
The Mandalorian’s first season did a great job of setting the stage for Mando and The Child, giving them a unique story away from the Skywalker saga that just ended in 2019. The avenue of Jedi vs. Sith is typically what Star Wars has come to be known as and so this new series was one of the first times it veered away from that. In TV format, that is. Movies like Rogue One and Solo focused on non-Jedi and non-Skywalker-centric stories too.
They’re all in the same galaxy, of course, but going forward, there is another part of Mandalorian history that Lucasfilm should adapt, and that’s the Mandalorian Civil War. [Spoiler alert: Minor spoilers ahead for The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 3, “The Heiress”].
Katee Sackhoff recently said she wants to see a spinoff about Bo-Katan and Satine’s relationship
For fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Episode 3 of The Mandalorian was a big deal. It was the episode where Mando finally came in contact with other Mandalorians, like he’d been searching for, but it wasn’t just any Mandalorian. It was Bo-Katan, a warrior from the animated series and a fierce fighter. Plus, she’s portrayed by Katee Sackhoff who voiced her originally, so that was a huge bonus.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she said that she’d of course be interested in a spinoff, but she’d love to see something pre-The Mandalorian.
I would also love to see what Bo-Katan’s life was like with Satine, her sister, and what it was like losing her sister the way that she did. For anyone that doesn’t know that, you need to go watch Clone Wars and [Star Wars] Rebels. But her life with Obi-Wan and things like that. I would love to know what happened through all of that and how that actually impacted Bo-Katan as a leader.
Duchess Satine and Bo-Katan were on opposite sides of Mandalorian ideologies, with Satine being a pacifist and Bo-Katan being a warrior. However, Satine was killed by Maul and that obviously impacted her sister, even though viewers didn’t get to see them interact a ton on screen. They have a pretty tragic story, if you think about it, and yet so little is told of it. And a lot of it stems from the Mandalorian Civil War.
The Mandalorian Civil War is a part of the reason for Mandalore’s problems in ‘The Clone Wars’
One of the main reasons why there’s this notion that Mandalore is this cursed place, as Mando tells Bo-Katan in Episode 3, is because of the wars fought on it. It was once pretty prosperous, but it’s seen so much violence. This is why people like Satine Kryze were so anti-violence. She was part of a pacifist movement, which of course butted heads with the martial traditionalists. They were the ones who wanted to keep up with and honor their ancient warrior ways.
Essentially this is what leads to Satine’s rule as Duchess of Mandalore, which is how viewers meet her in Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 2. However, she and Obi-Wan Kenobi had gotten to know each other very well during the civil war on Mandalore when he and Qui-Gon Jinn went to go protect her during the war. This is before Episode I: The Phantom Menace. That’s when the bulk of their feelings developed for each other.
Of course, none of that is seen on screen, but it’s all heard about through stories. But it’s such a formative period of time. Because it not only puts Satine in charge, where she establishes a pacifist rule on Mandalore, but it creates the terrorist group Death Watch. Because the civil war decimated both sides, and splintered these warriors off into extremists. It broke apart Satine and Bo-Katan, although viewers never see how they were before the war. And it created the domino effect that led to The Mandalorian fans have today.
The Mandalorian Civil War has a domino effect that can be traced to ‘The Mandalorian’
How did the Mandalorian Civil War give us The Mandalorian? It was one of the last big wars fought on the battered planet, before the Siege of Mandalore. The Mandalorian people were fewer than ever, which is why there are even fewer at the time of the show, decades later. But the biggest reason is that Mando’s version of Mandalorian is a religion that came from Death Watch after the Siege of Mandalore. Or, so it seems; there are still some missing pieces the show hasn’t filled in explicitly yet.
But, regardless, if the history given in The Clone Wars serves fans well, the Mandalorian Civil War sounds epic, tragic, and well worth a series of its own. And that’s the thing; fans don’t know the specifics and they haven’t had the privilege of seeing it yet. With the fantastic way that Star Wars: The Clone Wars went down in its seventh season, an animated version of this would be a great way to go.
An animated recollection of these events would also give original voice cast members a chance to come back and reprise their roles, if they wanted to. Although there is something really enticing about a live-action Mandalorian war series.
And, to tie it all back, seeing Satine and Bo-Katan’s relationship descend into what fans know to be a painful ending will be hard to watch. But it would also be a great story to tell, since, again, fans never saw them actually interact as sisters. We only ever saw Bo-Katan show remorse and regret after the fact.
