Involuntarily, his fingers reached out to touch the characters that made up Clan Mudhorn. They slid downward, where Din Djarin was buried in the stone. And right below that, Grogu Djarin, the single other member of his clan, was marked among the rest of the warriors.
Din traced the name reverently, a knot in his throat and a pained crease in his brow. He remembered the stifled pride he held when it was first engraved, the melancholy that hovered close by when he realized that Grogu would never know it was there.
“What is your foundling’s name?” the Armorer had asked him, her tools hovering over the blank space beneath his name.
“But he’s…you said until he was reunited with his own kind,” Din had argued back halfheartedly. In retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he said that. Maybe, at the time, it still seemed like distancing himself would quell the everlasting pain.
“He is a member of your clan, is he not?” She had brushed her hand over the chiseled rock to cleanse the gathering dust from it. Then she stepped back to check her precise work from afar. “Clans are permanent. Even death cannot undo what the Creed has set in stone.”
man look i love Din i do, but I know a lot of the time on merch Boba usually gets passed over for Din as The official mandalorian
but something about the sw celebration poster having them all on there (or most of them at least) and putting Boba front and center on top just like thats him!!! thats THE first mandalorian thats the one that started it all!!
the armorer is not being mean, or necessarily brainwashing din as a cult leader (she can still absolutely be a cult leader, i’m just not personally convinced).
no, i think the whole point for that episode is that the armorer is preparing din for kinghood.
SPOILERS FOR BOOK OF BOBA FETT EP 5.
the armorer clearly approves of din’s character from the moment she’s put on screen. when din says his crest hasn’t been revealed to him, she assures him that it will be revealed soon–meaning he is worthy of one, he simply needs more patience.
she actually has allowed some flexibility in the creed, even if it’s barely an inch of leeway compared to modern religion. din states that weapons are part of his religion but when pressed he gives them up without a fight. given din’s tendency to confess whenever he thinks he has breached the creed, it implies that the armorer has heard of this and allowed it. the weapons rule is more of a scruple than a grave offense, kind of like working on sundays for christians. it’s preferred not to, but it can be done without putting your soul in mortal peril. (also technically the armorer doesn’t have any weapons herself, only tools, but given her status this is probably different for her.)
paz vizsla declaring that din is no true mandalorian for sharing tables with the empire is basically a debate (as much as it can be without din saying a word). however the armorer doesn’t state that either of them is wrong. she asks “have you ever removed your helmet” to din, and when he answers no, she reinforces the fact that fraternizing with an enemy who was already defeated is ultimately less important than following the basic, most unshakeable tenet of their creed–don’t remove your helmet in front of others, and don’t let others remove it.
as for the weapons thing: yes, the armorer makes whistling birds for din and then like two seasons later states beskar is only used for armor and melts down his spear and it’s very sad. she’s not necessarily a hypocrite. it’s a scruple like keeping weapons on your person. the bullets themselves might well be made of an alloy or durasteel because the tiny amount of explosive wouldn’t be enough to shatter pure beskar, and also it looks like they’ve got glass of some sort for the lights anyway so it passes as not being beskar. they could just as easily be made of pure beskar anyway or the explosive was some special one that does shatter beskar. so yeah. either way, she bent or outright broke the beskar is for armor rule because it’s not as important as the helmet rule.
why did the armorer bend the rule? well, din just brought a whole ingot of stolen beskar back to the tribe and gave it to the armorer to distribute it as she saw fit, rather than keeping it for himself. it was a reward for his resourcefulness, generosity, and humility. she approves of din enough to bend the rules or break a less important rule for him. and later he brings back like twenty times that amount of beskar, so in this case, the ends justified the means.
now let’s talk about din’s spotlight in the book of boba fett!!!!
the armorer, in her stoic and ultra-orthodox mandalorian way, does nothing but approve of din throughout the episode. din comes back limping with a stab wound? she doesn’t leave him to fend for himself, she has paz vizsla patch him up. din finishes his quest? he’s welcomed back to the covert with open arms.
din comes back with the sword of the rightful ruler of mandalore, which he won in honest combat?
she starts holding him to a higher standard. she bent the rules before in making whistling birds for din, and that was all right when din was just a bounty hunter, but a giant beskar spear given by a jedi that could probably make a whole other set of armor? definitely won’t pass muster, so she melts it down. and then she very pointedly says “the darksaber is a more noble weapon for you to wield.”
this is basically the armorer accepting him as her liege lord.
also, prior to this, the armorer was the one deciding what she made with beskar, but this time din actually asks her to forge something, the entire conversation is basically her saying “i will gladly forge something at your behest, my king, even if it is a little indulgent. there’s no rule saying you can’t give a gift to your former foundling.”
she trains din to wield the darksaber (and gives him a rap on the helmet with her hammer) because the mand’alor can’t go around accidentally stabbing himself with the darksaber, you ninny.
she lets paz challenge him because assassins and challengers will be a part of ruling life.
and, when it turns out din has broken the one unshakeable rule of removing his helmet, she holds him accountable for it. yes, it’s sad. but after a whole episode of saying “bo-katan didn’t follow the rules for the darksaber and it did not end well for her or mandalore”, she can’t let the new mand’alor break a rule without suffering consequences.
notably, there’s no rule saying that an outsider can’t win the darksaber and become mand’alor. and modern mandalorians? they wouldn’t even bat an eye, the helmet rule is very old and ultra-strict.
but din wants to belong to that specific tribe. and because the armorer likes him and approves of him, she tells him an obscure means of atonement that nobody knows can really be fulfilled due to mandalore being a smoking ruin. and really, din making a supposedly impossible pilgrimage to mandalore in atonement for breaking a core tenet can only make him look better as mand’alor.
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.
I’m still working on Monument Woman, but I have had this bang up ass idea for a fic where you get to choose your own adventure for The Mandalorian? Like you have options on who rescues you, if you fuck or not, blah de blah blah.
If I were to write this, I’d have to do it all at once, so the options can be properly linked or maybe even on a separate tumblr dedicated only to that fic?
I guess the question is would people be interested in that? It will be a lot of fucking work on my part and not be an ego bitch on main, but I don’t want to put all the effort into an interactive story for like 5 notes.
I’m still working on Monument Woman, but I have had this bang up ass idea for a fic where you get to choose your own adventure for The Mandalorian? Like you have options on who rescues you, if you fuck or not, blah de blah blah.
If I were to write this, I’d have to do it all at once, so the options can be properly linked or maybe even on a separate tumblr dedicated only to that fic?
I guess the question is would people be interested in that? It will be a lot of fucking work on my part and not be an ego bitch on main, but I don’t want to put all the effort into an interactive story for like 5 notes.
ALT
