Curate, connect, and discover
been thinking about how din's religion doesn't seem to be very... religious. there is no deity that we know of, no afterlife, no legends. it's a code of conduct, not a belief system, and furthermore it's a code based on practicality rather than morals. when the armorer talks about the importance of helmets or foundlings, she talks about how they help mandalorians survive. neither aspect of the code has anything to do with belief or morality. is it really true that mandalorian isn't a race, but a creed? or is "the creed" just a set of rules designed to preserve a dwindling race?
I think both the show and Din himself associates removing his helmet with death. maybe not always literal death (in ch8 he would rather die with his helmet on than live and take it off), but there’s a sense that he would meet a permanent and irrevocable spiritual end of some kind, something he won’t be allowed to come back from. I think in his mind he pictures it as a singularly traumatic event where nothing that happens after will matter, because whether he lives or dies, he won’t be a Mandalorian any longer. This would be the bookend moment to losing his parents as a child, which is the day he STARTED being a Mandalorian. It’s a very cinematic, very easy way of thinking about his life.
But that doesn’t happen! IG-11 removes his helmet and he has to keep on living as a Mandalorian. That transgression is a bit easier to rationalise if he’s being incredibly literal about the Creed (IG isn’t technically “a living thing”, as he says), which I don’t think Din is normally prone to doing, but it’s enough to keep the panic about losing his identity under control. In ch15 though, he shows his face to a bunch of Imperials and then has to put his helmet back on and keep being a Mandalorian, which would normally be a plain and simple End Of My Life event. but in that moment he puts his helmet back on anyway and keeps fighting, because being a Mandalorian means protecting the kid more than it means hiding himself from other people.
The common interpretation I see of this sequence of events is that Din is learning there’s more than one way of being a Mando, reinforced by his contact with Bo and Boba. And I suppose you can make that case, but for me personally I think it’s much more interesting to understand it as Din having to confront a deep contradiction in his own beliefs, which is whether to prioritise his armour and his own self, or his duty to those he loves. Din’s ties to his mando-hood have always been based in his larger community, but in the show itself he’s framed as a perpetual loner, a singular individual unit in a vast galaxy that is unconcerned with his well-being or his beliefs. And Grogu is presented as the first time he has to confront the idea that he is more than himself and his responsibilities, that he has to take care of himself for other people, and that his principles need to accommodate for that shift in priorities. It doesn’t mean he suddenly has this moment of clarity where he thinks “oh god, I’ve been living by this set of rules my entire life and they don’t actually matter”; it’s moreso “I am finally in a place in my life where I have to make real compromises, and I would rather compromise my own personal safety and comfort than my relationship with my own son.”
Which is such a great arc for him to go through!!!! It isn’t a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes moment, nor a ledge-i-can’t-come-back-from moment. It’s a continual and subtle shift in his beliefs that he has to consciously attend to and confront every single day. Din has to practice being a Mandalorian for Grogu, which is different from being a Mandalorian for himself or his covert.
questions about the children of the watch:
why do they never speak in mando’a?
why are they the only type of mandalorian that the average person has heard of?
how are they connected to death watch?
if they’re a split-off group from death watch, how did they transform from a terrorist group into a religion?
and how did it go from a race to a creed?
why doesn’t din recognize bo-katan’s name or know what the darksaber is?
do the other members of din’s tribe know as little about mandalorian history as he does? if not, are they intentionally concealing information from him? and if so, is that unique to him or something that happens to all foundlings?
is “the watch” death watch, or is it something else?
how many coverts are there?
what are the specific tenets of the way?
when were the children of the watch founded?
are there children of the watch who actually call themselves that, or is it a term only used by non-believers?
food for thought.