This is gonna be controversial, but I really don't think the first season of Mando was anything special. As a fan of Star Wars canon, it's fantastic, but in terms of actually being good television, it's subpar.

The characters are bland and cliche: Mando is the reluctant father, Cara is the tomboy who loves a good fight and has an *interesting past* (ooooo), Kuill is the old wise sage---I've seen all of this before, and I've seen all of it *done much, much better*. Despite the Volume being game-changing, the CGI wasn't anything to write home about, especially given the enormous budget. The dialogue is iffy most of the time.

Episode 4 was a silly attempt at giving a boring character *some* depth, but that "veteran with desires to settle" trope has been done far too many times to count, and nothing new is done with it here. Even the Seven Samurai aspect was done better by Filoni in The Clone Wars' second season. Episode 5 was a joke, from poorly done fan-service, the absolutely *atrocious* acting from both Princess Carolyn and the "Hey, Mando!" kid. Both of these, along with episodes 2 and 6, do nothing for the plot that couldn't be done in 20 minutes. This show had so much more potential to be *genuinely great* from the first season, but it wasted it.

I still have *a lot* of hope in future seasons of the show, but it definitely didn't deserve the Emmy nod for Best Drama over masterpieces like Dark, Mr. Robot, or even The Expanse. Filoni has never let me down and he's made a habit of weak first seasons followed by incredible subsequent ones, so I'll remain very excited for upcoming seasons, especially if it can maintain the Star Wars flair as well as it already has.