quicksilvermad:

OKAY.

Today, I gave my mom a brief history lesson about Death Watch (I’m not confident I explained it accurately because I didn’t watch Clone Wars and only read the history on wookieepedia) because I finished my Lego forge and I had started to talk about why Din’s behavior changes around the Armorer and she wanted to know why.

She mentioned how he seems to see the Armorer like a mother figure and yeah—Din seems so desperate to please her that he always does what she asks.

And it got me thinking about what Bo-Katan said about Din being a “Child of the Watch”. The Armorer said they were “cloistered” on Concordia.

The Watch had been exiled, not cloistered.

The Armorer is the only Mandalorian I have ever seen with the horns on her helmet. And I can’t help but think that, either she is a Zabrak and that’s a functional design, or she supported Darth Maul and it’s a symbolic design.

What worries me most was how Death Watch is known for staging attacks and making themselves look like heroes for saving people. And how Din is considered a Child of the Watch. A child brought in by Death Watch who has no more ties to his home world and can be molded into what the Watch needs.

I don’t think Din’s heart could take it if the theory of his village being destroyed by battle droids in order to make Death Watch look like heroes is true.

Because here’s the thing—he was raised in a cult.

Din’s rescue and being called a foundling and having structure and security offered to him immediately was a form of love bombing. A tactic used in cults to draw someone in.

Din feels such a profound sense of duty to his tribe because they saved him when he was a child. He wants to give back to them to make them see that, yes, he was worth saving.

Then, he ends up as the one person who can go above ground in order to provide the covert with necessities and funds.

This also feels calculated.

Because Din—not spending extended time with the people in the covert due to him being the sole breadwinner—is alone. If he is killed during a job, he isn’t from a named clan and has no meaningful attachments. And his desperation to give back to the people who saved his life as a child is so strong that the rule of not removing his helmet very nearly cost him his life.

He was so afraid to break the helmet rule that he was ready to die for it.

I’m wondering if it’s always foundlings who were given the responsibility to provide for the covert. Paz Vizsla is from a major clan and gave me the feeling that he was always pissed at Din because Din got to leave the planet on a regular basis and Paz felt like he would do better. Because he’s a Vizsla.

So we have Din Djarin—a man who is already isolated by his tribe and desperate to remain with the people he feels he owes his life—immediately begging for a way to atone for removing his helmet instead of explaining why he took off his helmet in the first place.

Din doesn’t try to defend his actions. I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to him that he could.

And I think the Armorer saw this as an opportunity to get him to provide again.

In the scene where she is preparing to forge armor from Din’s spear, we watch the Armorer pour something into the quench bucket that already contains water.

So telling him he can only be redeemed in the living waters beneath the mines—a task that is impossible—feels kind of made up. Like she needs the living waters for her forge and here is Din, so desperate to atone that he will do anything she says.

The Armorer smugly saying “this is the way” when Din points out that the mines have all been destroyed was the moment that I realized how she views Din.

He’s another one of her tools.

Point Din Djarin in the right direction, and he will do all of the hard work for her.

He has spent his entire life lacking important information about the history of the galaxy because it is way easier to control a person who has been isolated and uneducated on the greater history of the people who have taken him in.

Textbook cult behavior.

Good catch on whatever the Armorer poured into the water - I wondered about that, too.

Also, did you catch how Paz told Din “We’ll put you to work soon enough” within a minute of Din showing up beaten to hell and back? Pretty clear how they both view Din.