Star Wars: The Mandalorian just completely changed Bo-Katan

When then The Mandalorian As Season 3 began, the stage seemed set for a major confrontation between Din and Bo-Katan. Surely the Mandalorian warrior wouldn’t just let go of the Darksaber that easily? But when Din Bo-Katan finally pays a visit in the Season 3 premiere, he’s greeted by someone who has given up fighting. A surly Bo-Katan informs Din that the other members of her clan left her and went to work as a bounty hunter after she failed to secure the darksaber. She says she is no longer interested in retaking Mandalore and would rather sit alone in her throne room and sulk. Bo-Katan doesn’t even take this opportunity to challenge Din for the weapon. Why bother?

The last piece may come as a surprise to fans of The clone wars who has watched Bo-Katan wage war against countless Mandalorians, including her own pacifist sister, Duchess Satine Kryze, to get her way. She’s never had a problem fighting her peers, what makes Din so different? In the second episode of Season 3, “Mines of Mandalore,” Bo-Katan even briefly wields the Darksaber again to save Din from a biomechanical cyborg spider thing, but even then doesn’t attempt to claim the weapon. She seems really over it. This is a very different side of Bo-Katan than where we left it The Mandalorian Season 2.

“We have to go back to see why she’s doing what she’s doing,” Sackhoff said meeting this week when asked about Bo-Katan’s decision to abandon her quest for the ancient weapon. “This is a person who fought against his own people. She’s been struggling forever and she realizes it’s not working. You can’t keep arguing. I think with Din – I don’t know if I’ll go so far as to say that she respects him and trusts him – but she doesn’t. If [he] Darksaber hadn’t, he didn’t do anything that would make him their enemy. She will not fight someone she has no reason to fight for.”

Sackhoff suggests that Bo-Katan feels like she tried everything to achieve her goals, even fighting her own family in a civil war on Mandalore, but that it was all ultimately for naught: “Every single opportunity, every Place she is in right now, every direction she made before didn’t work before. That’s what she’s trying to find out.”

Of course, destiny and destiny are very difficult to shake when it comes to the war of stars Universe, and just one episode after she refuses to join Din’s pilgrimage to the Mandalorian homeworld, she’s thrown back into his story anyway when Grogu knocks in The Mines of Mandalore. And by the end of the episode, her belief in what she believes to be true — that the ancient warrior ways and rituals are just Mandalorian babble — has been absolutely shaken by the very real and living Mythosaur she encounters in the living waters of Mandalore. Now that she feels Din’s beliefs aren’t utter nonsense, will this inspire Bo-Katan to reclaim her clan and throne? Well, that’s easier said than done, according to Sackhoff.

“If you stick to the timeline that Jon [Favreau] and David [Filoni] act because after a few years she had time to lose all her people,” explained Sackhoff. “They don’t follow her anymore, which means she’s not a leader without the Darksaber, but she doesn’t know how to get the Darksaber in a way that doesn’t mean losing her people… That’s what she says they left as soon as she was without that.” Darksaber returned. I think these are people who thought Bo would do anything to lead, that Bo would fight anyone to lead and that was what she wanted and that’s why they followed her. And when they saw something about her they didn’t respect, they left. She lost her people, her home, she lost her family, she lost everything.”