4. Bo-Katan and the Purge of Mandalore
While this episode and previous ones have discussed Bo-Katan’s past as Mandaloriane and the destruction of Mandalore itself by the Empire enough that you get the point, now that we actually have seen the surface of Mandalore and the ruins of its capital city Sundari on The Mandalorian, it bears looking a little deeper at what kind of baggage Bo-Katan is carrying here.
During the Clone Wars, Mandalore was ruled by Darth Maul. But he was defeated, the Republic won the Clone Wars, and Bo-Katan became the new leader of the Mandalorians, aka Mandalore. But there was no lasting peace to be found. As soon as Chancellor Palpatine became Emperor Palpatine and founded the Galactic Empire, he ordered the occupation of Mandalore, which he put under the rule of a Mandalorian servant of the Empire named Gar Saxon.
Bo-Katan didn’t take all that lightly, but many Mandalorians were content to live under Saxon and the Empire. But a little over a decade prior to the events of The Mandalorian, one of those Mandalorian clans, Clan Wren, had enough and started an uprising against the Empire and their loyalist Mandalorians. Clan Wren recruited Bo-Katan to the cause, gifting her the Darksaber and propping her up once more as Mandalore during this new Mandalorian Civil War.
But the war didn’t last long. The Empire realized it couldn’t hold Mandalore, so they bombed it into oblivion. The Mandalorians have been scattered ever since, with survivors believing the surface of Mandalore to be too tainted to visit. But as we saw in this episode, the surface was actually quite livable, and in fact some people have been living there. For example…
