The latest episode of “The Mandalorian” on Disney+ showed a backstory into little Grogu’s life and how he and his adoptive dad Mando (Pedro Pascal), aren’t all that different. In a brief scenario, we were taken to a flashback memory of the little green guy, and what’s more, his memories of trauma were also triggered in a similar way as that of Mando. Way back in Season 1, Din Djarin was reminded of his traumatic childhood, and this week, Grogu got the painful reminder of his own past, although he’s not quite out of his childhood yet. Here’s how the dad and his green son might be related in more ways than they might know.
If Grogu and Mando couldn’t be any more like-father like–son, the latest episode of “The Mandalorian” proved us wrong because we got to see a deep dive into the childhood of Grogu, and it resonated strongly with Din Djarin’s past. Back in Season 1, when Mando brought the Beskar steel to the Armorer, the hammering action of the Forge triggered the childhood trauma that he had forced down. As a child, Din Djarin was an inhabitant of a village on the planet of Aq Vetina, but when the Separatist battle droids attacked his home planet, Din and his parents became collaterals. Through a 3-minute montage, we’re shown how Din’s parents ran through the streets, shielding their child from the blaster fire of the droids that shot down everyone in sight, and the streets were littered with the bodies of the casualties. The parents put the child Din into a hiding place and shut the door, but an explosion kills them immediately next, only for the child to watch a monstrous droid approach Din and aim its blaster at him. As he closes his eyes in fear, the droid is blasted apart by someone who seems heroic in the child’s eyes, and soon he watches several warriors arrive in jetpacks and destroy the droids. This was the first time Din met the ones who were known as Mandalorians, with the ones coming to rescue him hailing from the Shriek-Hawk clan – the same clan that Paz Vizsla belongs to.
Although Din was rescued that day by the Mandalorians, every time he heard such hammering noises, his trauma of watching his home planet being obliterated and his parents being murdered by droids would resurface. This also explains why he used to hate droids until the IG-11 nurse droid sacrificed itself to protect them. Months later, we found his adoptive son Grogu also had a similar trauma. Perhaps the fact that both adoptive dad and son had similar issues that shaped their childhood is the reason the two became such close companions. In the latest episode where the Armorer created the circular armor for Grogu, the hammering action triggered a similar reaction in the little green guy. Not too long ago, when Order 66 was executed and the Stormtroopers cracked down on every Jedi, several of the Force-users rallied to defend the infant Grogu from the oncoming attackers. However, with more and more Stormtroopers cracking down on the Jedi Temple in Coruscant, Grogu lost all his protectors until he was suddenly rescued by Kelleren Beq (Ahmed Best), who shepherded the scared child by defeating hordes of Stormtroopers.
On a side note, the fact that Disney+ gave Ahmed Best such a redeeming role, after the actor went into a severe depression from the online hatred he received for his role as Jar Jar Binks in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” is really commendable. Best spent years away from the limelight because a section of fans couldn’t tolerate his role as the character in the movie and hurled severe insults at him. Decades later, Ahmed Best returned in such a positive role as Kelleren Beq, where he defeated multiple Stormtroopers and maneuvered his vehicle through Coruscant traffic with the child Grogu by his side, dodging the Stormtrooper blasters. The two met up with his friends in the New Empire, who gave Kelleren a ship that Padme used in “Attack of the Clones.”
Din was accepted into the Mandalorian creed as a foundling, and he rose to the ranks of one of the highest-regarded Mandalorians, with him gaining control of the Darksaber, which allowed him to be the potential ruler of Mandalore. He walked the path of the ones who rescued him and became a member of the Children of the Watch, while Grogu was saved by a Jedi, and his powers were further developed later on. While Din was trained by the Mandalorians, Grogu got the best of both worlds, with training from Jedi as well as from his adoptive dad’s clan. Since we didn’t see what became of Kelleren and Grogu after they jumped into hyperspace, there’s a possibility that we might see him again, and it might be him who gives Grogu his initial training in the ways of the Jedi. Both Mando and Grogu have had a similar traumatic past, the memories of which are triggered by the Forge’s hammer. In this way, the two are related through their traumas, creating an invisible bond between the two. It’s possible that this link shall be explored in future episodes, where both dad and son explore how they were rescued from invading forces as children and how they grew up taking after the ones who saved them.
