Lemuria

Think how much worse the Leader!Sam storyline would have been if Badd and Co. had actually known what the qualities of a good leader were. At least, instead, we got a Sam who: *couldn't prioritize; *couldn't delegate (either for his ego of thinking he was doing everything or because he didn't trust his people enough); *had his "troops" wasting their time on ordinary hunts--which they were not expert at and which any other hunters could do--instead of doing what they did have experience and knowledge in: fighting angels and finding Michael (we also never really saw Sam train them in hunting monsters); *couldn't make the hard choices; *couldn't say "no" (I mean, in the first ep they're going into what they know is a trap and therefore Sam needed his best people and he ends up letting two useless people come along because he couldn't put his foot down); *couldn't apparently get any of the older more experienced fighters to stay with him except the one who was jonesing for his Mom; *makes an arrogant, egotistical boast that, if he had been dealing with real demons instead of those Hell rejects would have sneered at; *needed his Mom and her boyfriend to tell him (and the audience) what a great leader he was; *couldn't even get his people to stop calling him something he swears he didn't want them to call him (yeah, right! Pull the other leg, Sam); Just to name a few things!

That was funny--cruel but funny. 😈😄

@Morrigan2575 The Robot Chicken documentary not just cleared up the question of how Fett got out of the Sarlacc pit but also gave us a key piece of information: He's clearly a Child of the Watch just like Mando, since he never took his helmet off! 😄 Like other posters here, I wondered how the Slave I tracked the Razor Crest--and the show was really careful about not calling our attention to the issue. Otherwise, you would expect Din to ask at some point how Fett found him and the Child. I doubt we'll ever get a reference to it from the show runners.

Luke didn't knock him into the Sarlaac pit, Han did. We don't know how old he looked as he always had his helmet on. And it's been 5 years since ROTJ. I never liked the look of the Slave 1 (or the name, to tell you the truth). OTOH....when I first went to see "Star Wars" (as it was known back then) on the first day it opened, I was having some problems with Luke right off the bat. He was trying to weasel out of a deal with his uncle, to go to the Imperial academy even though he knew about the Rebellion (and one of his friends had gone to fight with the Rebellion); he lied about a task he'd been asked to do; he whined and sulked; and when offered the opportunity to go with Kenobi, he flat out refused, giving a fake excuse that involved his uncle needing him when we'd seen him try to leave his uncle earlier (for the Imperial academy). Worst of all, when we left the cantina and headed to the hanger where Han and the Falcon was and we walked in, I fell in love: That was the most beautiful spaceship I'd ever seen on screen to that point. And Luke? "What a piece of junk!" "OK, you little pissant. You can get off my screen now!" 😄

That's clearly why Din is all "wherever I go, he goes." Grogu is a "chick magnet." 😄 (I also like the smile she had when she was "talking" to Grogu and they both glanced over at Din. I wonder what Grogu told her!)

I don't think that Tython (I'm not sure of the spelling) will be reached until near the end of the series. I'm basing that on how I read the choice that will be presented to Grogu. I've seen reactions on YouTube where various people suggest that the choice will be whether to go light or dark with the Force. But Ahsoka suggested, when she said she couldn't/wouldn't train him, that is might be better to just let his connection to the Force fade. So I think the choice Grogu will face on Tython is to choose whether he wishes to walk the path of a Force user or the path of a Mandalorian. And I think that this choice would be left to the end. Of course, I have a terrible track record, so...😄

I have to respectfully disagree. I have my issues with Disney at times but they are not responsible for declaring "Legends" to be non-canonical. You have to go to the High Mucky-Muck himself for that. Lucas has been adamant from the beginning that these books were none of them canon (with one exception at the time but that's changed since Lucas changed the story). Timothy Zahn said back then--and I was more than old enough at the time to read all the interviews--that Lucas didn't care what they wrote, so long as they didn't do what Lucas intended to do. You can't have a better definition of fan fiction than that. (Another clue was "Mara Jade," a fan fiction name if there every was one and one that did not comport with the usual names in the Lucas universe. Lucas, BTW, is virulent in his hatred of that character). Fans convinced themselves over the years that they were canon, despite Lucas' position on the subject, but you can't blame Disney for following Lucas' position on the subject. (It's also funny to me when some fans complain that the sequels changed the story. As an "originalist", it was actually the prequels that changed it because Lucas, after waiting some 14 years or so to return to the Saga, decided he had no intention of doing the original 9-part story and now he needed to focus the films on a character whose story ended in 6 chapters) While I liked Ahsoka well enough, she lost points with me when she called Anakin "the best of us." (It also ruined any interest I might have had in watching the Clone Wars, since it seems that they series works hard at redeeming Anakin). The prequels bookended Anakin, and they showed us a whiner--"it's not fair!"--who was self-absorbed and arrogant, with anger management issues. He was faithless and dishonorable: whether or not you think the Jedi's rules were good or sensible, those were the rules. If Anakin wasn't willing to give up attachments--he pursued Padme--then he should have walked away from the Jedi, not sworn an oath he was not really willing to honor. In a college anthropology course I took (a really long time ago!), one of our course materials was a study of a Native American tribe and it noted that, if a chief's wife intended to leave him for someone else, she would do so when he was in council, because if he left to go after her, he would be dishonored for putting his personal feelings above his tribal responsibilities. Not only that but Anakin apparently never really learned much of the deeper aspects of the Force or the Jedi, because while what happened to his mother was terrible, he committed equal atrocities, a mindless slaughter, which says to me that he totally lacked control and self-discipline, things that are part of the core teachings of the Jedi. If Ahsoka failed to see Anakin clearly because he taught her and she apparently formed an attachment, then it makes me doubly glad she isn't teaching Grogu because I have doubts about her judgment. JMO. YMMV

I apologize but this doesn't quite scream great teacher to me: one went darkside and the others were incompetent. My feelings exactly. I liked her in this episode but I won't be sorry if this is the last we see of her in this series.

I really enjoyed the episode. I thought the scene setting was fantastic. I loved how we managed to have a western-style confrontation in the town and a samurai-style confrontation in the compound at the same time. I loved getting background on BY (yeah, Grogu will take a little a time 😄) and seeing some more development between him and Mando (who was really a totally excited Dad when his "kid" pulled the gear shift handle to him). I love that Din ended up with the beskar spear: while beskar armor provides a defense even against lightsabers (or laser swords!), it does leave areas around the joints open to permit flexibility; the spear would enable Din to fight, say, the dark saber from enough of a distance to prevent sustaining an injury in the unprotected areas. I like the two-saber fighting style, though two things occurred to me: one was that, especially in darkness or in foggy conditions, they sure do give your position away. "OK, sniper. When you see the two beams of light, aim right between them!" The other is that: "Yeah, we all really wish we could have real lightsabers but the truth is, by 5 minutes after we got them, we would have cut off both of our feet!" 😆 I definitely liked that BY stayed with Din. That story line is the heart of the show. I also--and this is pure speculation--don't think that we will see Ahsoka again, or at least, not for a long time. I suspect that Disney is thinking of an Ahsoka live action spin-off after seeing what the reaction to the character will be, and all those characters from the animated series belong there, because they are already part of her story. They have no actual connections to Din or BY. Yet there seemed to be a lot of SW fans on YouTube who just wanted the characters from the other shows--and the same Republic-Empire, Jedi-Sith story lines--to move to this show, and Mando can just wander off and they don't care. So...go off an watch those shows and stop trying to mess up the one I prefer to watch. I also don't think that BY will be making his choice any time soon. I see arriving at the ancient Jedi temple as more of the endgame because of the massive effect on the show that either choice would make. And now for an unpopular opinion: I have no interest in seeing Luke Skywalker. In my opinion, he's a great Jedi only in fan fiction. Many fans complain about Rey not having any training (and I'm not disagreeing) but neither did Luke. He had a half-day with Obi-Wan and--what? A week? A month?--however long it took Han to get from Hoth to Bespin, with Yoda. And most of the time he didn't really listen. When he left and then screwed up, did he pull a Dr. Strange and pound on Yoda's door for 5 hours and beg to be taught? No, he went off on his own for 3 years before returning, and taught himself. You can't teach yourself what you don't know (maybe he attended the Handy Dandy Jedi Correspondence School that he found on a matchbook cover). And he showed he hadn't learned much: Do we really think that Obi-Wan or Yoda would not have been able to control the Rancor? Or that DV would be able to read their minds like an open book, as he read Luke's on the Death Star? And Luke has accomplished nothing. He started a school for Jedi (to teach them all the stuff he didn't know, I guess) and then what? Did he have only one student, you know, the one who totally went darkside? If he had others, what happened to them? Did he manage to lose his entire class to the dark side of the force? For that matter, where are even the few Jedi that Ahsoka says are left? They aren't doing anything to prevent the rise of the First Order, are they? This is why I'm bored to death by now with the Jedi and the Sith. There are only 2 Sith apparently at any given time--there are hundreds of thousands of troops. They could just turn on them and take them. And the Jedi seem to be basically useless. Sorry--getting off the soapbox now.

It didn't help that Dabb also fed the Wincesters, at least from their perspective because there really was no one else visible in Heaven except Bobby and because Sam just seemed to never really move past Dean's death. Covid clearly had an effect but they could have written around it if they'd cared to, which apparently they didn't. Also apparently, this was the group that Dabb gleefully said (without identifying the group) would be the only ones that liked it. For some reason, he thought it would be fun to be as hated as Beniof and Weiss. I also wonder why we had to put up for three years with Jack the Vanilla Pudding Show Killer when he really turned out to be pretty much a dud who has already faded into the woodwork.

I think it will be interesting to now watch the alliance turn on itself. 😈 I don't have a problem if one team tells another that they'll find the location they need "a couple of blocks down on the right side." But these teams have outright either been doing the work for the other or at least showing another team how to do something step by step. I was thinking that a time penalty might be able to stop that: if Team A gives Team B the answer or detailed instructions on how to do the task, Team A--but not Team B--gets a 30-minute (for example) penalty. So Team B now gets the time advantage of the assistance, plus Team B and all the other teams--who may have been disadvantaged by Team B getting all that help--get a time advantage against Team A.

The blondes were never going to win the race but I came to like and admire them. They never gave up, they never turned on each other, they never got mean toward the other teams, they felt badly about yielding Leo & Alana. I really don't like any of the remaining teams anymore.

Especially as smart racing would be to use it against a strong team that could beat you in the finale.

I would say that it was ironic (but that might be giving Dabb too much credit) that the title of the finale is "Carry On," when Dabb made sure that no one could or did.

As unhappy as I am with this finale as a Dean fan, I wouldn't be all that happy if Sam were my favorite. Not just the death scene--where Sam was written as taking everything his dying brother was trying to give him but not giving even a single sentence of comfort back--but also with his life. Yes, Sam was given the years that Dean was denied but what did he do with them? A family (perhaps, since the mysterious woman was recently described as "partner/co-parent" and not wife, so maybe temporary) and what else? What else did he do with all those years? What did he achieve (not that raising a child is not an achievement but you know what I mean. It certainly wasn't the achievement that the supposed smartest, most accomplished Winchester would be expected to have), as far as what many of his fans have said over the years. What's more, he never had the strength to truly let Dean go, and it seemed to cripple him. While Dean never got to live a free will life and whatever you might think about the fight, Dean still died a hero, fighting to save children. Sam died old, worn out, possibly ill. Dean did not live long enough. Sam lived too long.