History Headscratchers / TheMandalorian

** The assumption that the rules for the CotW taking off their helmets are similar to other religiously mandated headwear seem to be just that - assumptions. That said, they are not unreasonable. The Mandalorians greatly pride strong family structures, both through the gai bal manda and through their trueborn children - therefore, it makes sense that you would be allowed to remove your armor in the presence of your spouse.

** Adding to the above, in ''The Book of Boba Fett'' Din is shown struggling with using the Darksaber, saying "It gets heavier with each swing." Meanwhile Moff Gideon has little trouble waving it around with just one hand. Apparently there is some kind of mental component to wielding lightsabers (or just the Darksaber) properly.

** Adding to the above, in ''The Book of Boba Fett'' Din is shown struggling with using the Darksaber, saying "It gets heavier with each swing." Apparently there is some kind of mental component to wielding lightsabers (or just the Darksaber) properly.

[[folder:Will The Child have a official name?]]
* I know fans have been calling him Baby Yoda but I still wonder if there will be a set in stone name for the little guy.
** I seem to remember Creator/TaikaWaititi confirming he has a name.
** We have one now: Grogu.
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* Finally, there are a lot of leadership and training principles to training. The US army and Marine Corps have dedicated specialist that train troops. They have to psychologically break people to give them a ''chance'' to resist panic in a combat situation (many of the best trained fighters still tend to panic their first fight and only survive because they break and fall back on training). She's not a leader and she probably has no training in, well, training people. Many drill sergeants and drill instructors are fired because they break under the pressure of training to train recruits or get power trips and go too far in harassing their trainees. Even if she was all of those things, a former military drill instructor with leadership skills, I doubt she's willing to subject her own village to that. A recruit is almost ''supposed'' to hate their trainer, but respect them and fall them.
* Is it that she knew how to ''fight'', or just had experience plinking around with dad's blaster? Some people have better hand-eye coordination and are naturally good shots (consider the case of Sgt Alvin York, a crack marksman whose main training was that he was a hunter prior to WW1), while others are never going to be very good shots no matter how much training they go through. Sometimes someone just picks up a new weapon and it feels perfectly natural to them, and in those cases they might be a very good shot indeed right out of the box.
* Also, there's knowing how to FIGHT, and knowing how to fight as a unit. She may be a crack shot with a blaster, but not be well versed in operating as a cohesive unit, with tactics, how to fight as a team with others. Mando, on the other hand, is trained to work with others, fight as a unit, and operate in tandem with support.

** Kuiil outright says that bounty hunters and mercenaries have been going after Grogu for so long that the valley is practically a warzone. So it's fair to assume that while everyone got a tracking fob, and a lot of them still hadn't decided to go after the bounty, and a lot more had already taken a swing at it either died or were driven off in the process.

[[folder:Mandalorian culture]]
* There seemed to be a lot of {{Retcon}}s of previously established Mandalorian culture: The quasi-religious tone , the "no removal of helmet", and the SurvivalMantra "This is the Way" didn't exist at all until now.
** Like said above, it might not be a {{Retcon}} so much as just various intra-cultural beliefs and differences.
** Still, no Mandalorian from the planet Mandalore behaved like they did. Granted, we never met a Mandalorian religious figure or a canonical Post-Endor Mandalorian so perhaps the Purge changes them and "the Way" is how they cope and survive.
** The Armorer explicitly mentions that there have been changes to keep them safe. The example given was only allowing one person topside at a time, but the "no removal of helmet" could have been another one.
** That seems to be the implication: Keeping the helmets on is the way to protect their identity, so they or their loved ones can't be targeted.
** Note also that Creator/DaveFiloni, who created/directed/produced ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' and ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'' (which contain most of the new canon's information on Mandalorians) is an executive producer of this show. So whatever the reason for the changes, there definitely is one, and it's not a case of ArmedWithCanon or a new creator simply forgetting what an old creator did.
** Helmet thing could be an oath or a {{Geas}} accepted by the Mandalorians until they avenge themselves or restore their honor or something like that. Perhaps this is building up to the DramaticUnmask at some point later.
** In episode 4, Mando mentioned that he never removed his helmet since the Clone War - before Rebels and the Purge.
** There's hints here and there that the group of particular Mandalorians that raised Din were a bit more fanatical then your average group. Given how they act, it's fair to call them a cult, perhaps some ultra-splinter group of Death Watch who were most devoted to Mandalorian ideals and old culture then anything else. It would do a lot for explaining the differences between Mandalorians seen in time periods set before this and the way they act now.
*** Confirmed as of "The Heiress".
*** This is psychologically plausible. They are essentially survivors of a genocide which came after major internal strife over the nature of their culture. Clinging to an ancient, strict code could be their attempt to protect and preserve their way of life. That can even be seen in their emphasis on armor over weapons. Though Din says weapons are part of his religion, it’s a generalized need for combat capability and he’s willing to lay them aside for courtesy’s sake. Their armor is part of their personal and cultural identity, and only protection of their foundlings is held as a higher ideal. Armor, hidden bases, intense group responses to threats, fanatical adherence to tradition, these all make sense as characteristics of a clan threatened with extinction.
[[/folder]]

** The assumption that the rules for the CotW taking off their helmets are similar to other religiously mandated headwear seem to be just that - assumptions, but not unreasonable ones. The Mandalorians greatly pride family structure, both through gai bal manda foundlings and through their trueborn children - it therefore makes sense that you would be allowed to remove your armor in the presence of your spouse. We know that you are allowed to remove your helmet for things like grooming and eating - this would be one more exception to the rule. Grogu is Din's foundling, so it stands to reason that the thing which got him in trouble was not removing his helmet in front of Grogu, but doing so in front of Fennec, Bo-Katan, Koska, and Cara Dune. He took it partly off in S2E4 in front of him without much issue.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Family helmet exceptions?]]
I've recently seen two pages that respectively said:
* "they cannot remove their helmet or armor in the presence of anyone except their immediate family"
* "It's also acceptable if the only others around are one's clan."

Is that true? I'm almost certain no such thing has been said on the show. It seems to run counter to Din's "no living thing" statement.

On the pages where these quotes came from, I edited it and removed the family caveat because I assumed it was incorrect. But I've realized maybe ''I'' was wrong, so I'd like to check. Is this family exception mentioned in another piece of Mandalorian media? (If so, which sect does it apply to?) Or is it merely a popular headcanon -- people extrapolating and assuming that niqabi rules apply to Mandalorians?

On the pages where these quotes came from, I edited it and removed the family caveat because I assumed it was incorrect. But I've realized maybe ''I'' was wrong, so I'd like to check. Is this family exception mentioned in another piece of Mandalorian media, perhaps? (If so, which sect does it apply to?) Or is it merely a popular headcanon -- people extrapolating and assuming that niqabi rules apply to Mandalorians?

** There is also a key moral distinction between killing enemy soldiers and [[WeHaveReserves killing your own troops]]. Mayfeld is, by this point, a [[DefectorFromDecadence turncoat]], which brings it's own ethical baggage, but Hess was a loyal Imperial officer when he ordered the wholesale killing of his own troops. In comparison, Mayfeld, acting as an agent of the New Republic, was in a much less morally questionable situation when he blew up the base, especially knowing what Hess had told him above. Under most circumstances, enemy soldiers would be considered perfectly legal targets, even if not actively taking hostile action, provided they weren't surrendering, taking to lifeboats, or similar specific protected statuses. If anything he did violated the Laws of Armed Conflict, it was doing all of that while wearing [[FalseFlagOperation an Imperial uniform,]] which is hardly unheard of among the heroes of this franchise.

* In chapter 15, Mayfeld snaps and guns down an officer due to a grudge from when said officer needlessly sacrificed imperial lives. Yet less than a few minutes later, Mayfeld himself shoots a container of volatile material, destroying the whole facility and everyone in it, ''needlessly sacrificing imperial lives.'' He was already in the clear and further violence was unnecessary, but he essentially made the same decision as the officer (wiping out a settlement for the sake of convenience) with no concern for the collateral damage. Is this a deliberate case of irony? Is Mayfeld simply indifferent towards his own hypocrisy? Or was there mitigating factors that I missed?

** Also if you read between the lines it seems like the operation Mayfeld served on caused him to start questioning what the Empire was doing. He could accept it that they were being more aggressive because hey the galaxy just came out of a massive civil war that devastated hundreds of words and uncountable communities. The Empire was rough but at least they put an end to droid armies roaming the rim committing small scale genocide and terror bombings on civilian targets. But then The Empire started doing things just as bad to their own people and Mayfeld started question them. It didn't come to fruition until after the disastrous battle that got not only uncountable civilians but his own comrades killed but he turned his back on The Empire in the end. [[/folder]]