The Mandalorian’s Bo-Katan is key to understanding Mandalore’s complicated history
When The Mandalorian season 3 premiere “The Apostate” ends, Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff, both in theClone Wars animated series and The Mandalorian) is in a rough spot, having forfeited her mission to restore Mandalore — for now. With Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) being the rightful bearer of the Darksaber blade by combat technicality, Bo-Katan is left with no legitimate claim to Mandalorian leadership. So her supporters have all but abandoned her.
Brooding on her throne, she mocks the eponymous Mandalorian for looking into the lost cause of the poisoned Mandalore. Din is left puzzled over her abandoning her cause.
But Bo-Katan’s background — a royal one, as she says in episode 2, complete with a sisterly rivalry — illuminates the dark past and pressures that lead her to this state.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Bo-Katan’s and Satine Kryze’s arcs in The Clone Wars.]
Introduced in season 4 of The Clone Wars animated series, Bo-Katan Kryze first appeared as the lieutenant of Pre Vizsla (voiced by The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau), leader of the Mandalorian extremist group Death Watch. While the New Mandalorian movement was in power and pushing for pacifism, Death Watch was a fringe group out to revive the ancient Mandalorian warrior culture: the way of wars, honor-bound duels, the weapons, and the beskar armor. Just to describe Death Watch’s own ethics: Bo-Katan partook in Vizsla’s enslavement and murder of a village and a long-term ploy to overthrow Duchess Satine Kryze (Anna Graves), Bo-Katan’s own sister, from Mandalore’s throne.
Bo-Katan held a great suspicion of outsiders interfering in Mandalorian politics, so she was skeptical of Vizsla’s alliance with Maul, a Zabrak and fallen Sith with
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