https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Disney-Star-Wars-The-Mandalorian-Baby-Yoda-Boba-14830591.php

By Grant Marek

Updated 9:42 pm PST, Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Note So Important It’s In Italics: There are a bunch of spoilers in here for Episode 1 of Disney’s new streaming Star Wars show “The Mandalorian.”

If the Darth Vader spatula in my kitchen is any indication, I sort of have a thing for Star Wars.

If the Han Solo bobblehead on my desk is any indication, I maybe more than sort of have a thing for Star Wars.

Which makes writing an episode recap of the first episode of “The Mandalorian” — a series that’s set five years after “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi” and follows a Mandalorian who is 100% not Boba Fett — maybe a little unfair.

For the casual Star Wars fan, it was probably great.

There was plenty of Star Wars nostalgia pulled from the original trilogy (from the swipe transitions, to the familiar weaponry, to the carbonite casings on the bounty hunter’s ship), there were some solid new characters (the Ugnaught named Kuiil who teaches the Mandalorian to ride the big lizard thing that almost bites off one of his arms, for one), and a bounty-hunting droid that absolutely rules.

But for less-casual, Han Solo bobblehead owners, the first Star Wars’ first live action TV-ish endeavor since the ill-fated “Star Wars Holiday Special” presented a bit of a dilemma.

We’re very clearly now destined for a Star Wars world that is pre-Mandalorian and post-Mandalorian, when an entire generation of new Star Wars fans will have infinitely more backstory on characters that developed a cult-like following based almost entirely on their obscurity.

Boba Fett dies the most unceremonious of Star Wars deaths in “Return of the Jedi,” has four lines in “Empire Strikes Back” and zero lines in “Return of the Jedi,” but still somehow has an entire Jawa sandcrawler worth of merch online. People love Boba Fett. They get him tattooed on their arms, they dress up as him for Halloween, they play as him in virtually every good Star Wars video game.

But here we are in “The Mandalorian” learning ALL OF THE THINGS about Boba Fett’s race: There’s a Bounty Hunters’ guild which this guy is in, our Mandalorian hero used to be a foundling (which is very clearly just a regular human person); apparently Mandalorians should know how to ride the big lizard things (obviously, you guys); and the skull sigil we see on Boba Fett’s shoulder plate appears on a wall of the lady blacksmith, which means even more backstory is probably on the way.

And because Lucasfilm knew it would break Twitter, they finished the final episode with a reveal of the “bounty” the Mandalorian is supposed to collect on: baby Yoda.

No, it’s not actually baby Yoda (though we do learn that when Yoda was a baby, he was at least 50 years old), but it is the third time we’ve ever seen someone from Yoda’s species, which is one of the galaxy’s most mysterious (it doesn’t even have a name outside of “Yoda’s species”). GIFs and screenshots flooded the social media platform throughout Tuesday, a spoiler the studio is likely banking on to convert subscribers to the $7-a-month streaming service.

Which brings us to the most rhetorical of questions: Will Disney win the streaming wars? Almost definitely, but will they do it at the expense of canon and cult fandom? Episode 2 streams Friday on Disney+.

Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek