Why So Blu?

The Mandalorian: The Complete Second Season – Steelbook (4K UHD Blu-ray Review)

The Disney+ television shows roll out to the 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray continues with the exciting dive into their Star Wars programming. And no better place than to star than with The Mandalorian. And not just the first season, they’ll be doing both seasons in steelbook packaging, complete with art cards, Atmos sound and a pair of never before seen featurettes for them. In this review, we’ll be looking at the second of the show, which really pivoted to what this and other Star Wars shows would start to become. You can order yourself a copy to own by using the paid Amazon Associates link that follows after the review.

Season

The Mandalorian and the Child continue their journey, facing and rallying allies as they make their way through a dangerous galaxy in the tumultuous era after the collapse of the Galactic Empire.

In the second year for both Disney+ and Star Wars flagship television show, The Mandalorian becomes less of its own entity and starts revealing its place in the Star Wars Galaxy. Again, the show is very careful with what it is doing and until the last moments of the season, feels like a natural progression true to itself and the corner or the universe it is starting to find itself connected to. We are still given plenty of standalone adventures, but a more refined, serialized approach is carried.

With the introduction of live action iterations of both Ahsoka Tano and Bo Katan in The Mandalorian’s second season, we can see that this show is now an official continuation of Dave Filoni’s two animated series that have run post-Prequel trilogy and concurrent the Sequel trilogy. There is also the return of Boba Fett which serves as both a follow to that show as well as the original trilogy. With them, the show is less about having its own adventure and now more about juggling the interconnectivity of the different eras of the movies and the television shows to become one. And arguably for this season, it does quite well at handling it all while still feeling like the show it was in the prior season.

Again, the season continues to build upon its influences and deliver some individual bangers as well. One of the best Star Wars as samurai stories comes in the form of the Ahsoka focused episode which features some excellent stylish touches and a heck of a duel. There is also Bill Burr’s return that delivers a fantastic bit of character work while also producing a love letter to William Friedkin’s Sorcerer in space fantasy form. That is one thing the show was able to do well while trying to link itself, it still followed in its own path with its characters, planets, and storyline as a primary focus despite the potential distraction with cameo characters.

One of the more disappointing things for me was the climax of the finale in this season. Yes, I acknowledge making stuff up in my head and it coming true is something that you should never fault a film or show for. A CGI, face swapped, de-aged, voice modified, pull-string catch phrase Luke Skywalker shows up for the first time in this show to save the day when all hope is lost to the delight of many old aged white men who love their Star Wars (Of which, I probably fit that description too LOL). For me, with what Filoni and Favreau had built through the season, introducing characters and plotlines from the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoon shows, I fully expected that hooded figured showing up at the end might be Sabine Wren or the return of Ezra Bridger. It felt like the obvious solution to that narrative and/or clues being left. Luke felt like an easy out of it all. However, I feel like the majority went nuts for it, so that makes me the minority. But, said constant nostalgia hits become solidified with this appearance.

While I boo hoo’ed the final moment of the season right there, its significant for me personally as that’s where I cite Star Wars starting to change for me with the Disney+ programs. However, this second season of The Mandalorian is rock solid and really picks up where the last season left off and added to it. It carries everything you loved before and starts carrying things even further. The introductions of some of the animated characters as live action is fun and serves the story and overall narrative quite well. There was a lot for this season to live up to after the great appreciation for season one, and I believe it succeeded in doing so.

Episodes

1. Chapter 9: The Marshal

2. Chapter 10: The Passenger

3. Chapter 11: The Heiress

4. Chapter 12: The Siege

5. Chapter 13: The Jedi

6. Chapter 14: The Tragedy

7. Chapter 15: The Believer

8. Chapter 16: The Rescue

Video

Disclaimer: Screen captures used in the review are studio promotional images, not the 4K UHD Blu-ray disc.

Encoding: HEVC / H.265

Resolution: 4K (2160p)

Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

Layers: BD-100

Clarity/Detail: The Mandalorian: The Complete Second Season has a consistent look with the first season, no surprise as a I believe they were sort of in the same production block. This one still features some one note/tone planets that don’t err on the side of a colorful pop. Nonetheless the image looks bold, crisp and impresses with its color palette it does have. The image is sharp and clear with plenty of fine details and textures visible.

Depth:  Depth of field is pretty strong with some nice open and big feeling imagery on display. Scale is quite impressive for a TV show. Motion is cinematic and smooth with no issues regarding motion blur or jitter during the action sequences.

Black Levels: Black levels are deep and natural with terrific shadowing, nighttime and darkened ship interior sequences. No crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: Colors do have some boldness to them. Its a very used, dirty, worn, rusted out and desert look to most of the show, so nothing is meant to pop. Though some alien skin tones, fabrics and the like do stand out and above. HDR helps too with glowing on blaster bolts, lasers, engine fire, explosions, planets in space and more.

Flesh Tones: Skin tones are natural and consistent from start to finish of the season. Facial features and textures on both human and make-up/puppet work are clear as day.

Noise/Artifacts: Clean

Audio

Audio Format(s): English Dolby Atmos, English 2.0 Descriptive Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish

Dynamics: Again, like the first season, The Mandalorian: The Complete Second Season has a nice Atmos track that you gotta turn up just a few clicks and its perfect. Layering and depth is strong to give even the most outrageous space stuff and lived in and relatable feel to the viewing space. This also has some good boom and keeps the audience plenty engaged throughout the 8 episodes.

Height: From above you get ships flying over, debris falling, crackling ice, laser bolts whizing, jet packs flying over and much more.

Low Frequency Extension: The subwoofer hits with some really nice, rich impact. From explosions, to stomping giant aliens, to sandcrawlers rumbling and ships flying across, it is felt.

Surround Sound Presentation: The room is well designed for maximum enjoyment. The rear and side channels build terrific room ambiance with nice light touches as well as keeping track of offscreen activity and angle changes. Sound rolls around and is felt in any direction it travels.

Dialogue Reproduction: Vocals are clear and crisp.

Extras

The Mandalorian: The Complete Second Season is a 2-Disc set. This particular version comes in collectible steelbook packaging and includes 3 art cards. For a look at the packaging, see the video above. All Extras are found on Disc 2.

Designing The New Republic (HD, 4:46) – This featurette has a focus on evolving costumes/props/ships designs of the original Star Wars trilogy and then pre-emptively making them grow into The Force Awakens.

Forging The Covert: Part Two (HD, 6:02) – The Mandalorian armor, characters that wear them, and their weaponry is the prime focus of this piece.

Summary

The Mandalorian’s second season keeps alive what worked in the first season, while opening up to try and make a connection and find its place in the larger Star Wars universe. While the first season praised that the show embraced a larger galaxy, the second season wound up praised for making that galaxy a little smaller. Nonetheless, this one comes with strong technical merits. Again, nice that they have exclusive bonus features, but the more extensive (and impressive) Disney+ docs should have been included here, too. Fans, its on you for the price, but I know many want to own it, so you gotta shell out at this time.

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