#i still think clone wars did satine dirty but the way bo-katan and sabine's arcs unfold in rebels s3 at least built on it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nikxation · 2 years

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I just want to look at the ways I think this fandom is misinterpreting Bo-Katan and try to address the hate against her that's basically always filling up the tag!

Essay under the cut!

Bo-Katan is not a good person, but she's also not the evil conniving villain that this fandom seems intent on making her.

First off, she was young and really fucking stupid in Clone Wars. Does this erase the fact that she did a bunch of terrible things? Hell no. But the fact is, in her mind, she had a choice: 1) give up on Mandalore's warrior history that she believed in and join Satine, or 2) embrace that warrior history. And because the True Mandalorians were wiped from existence, that became a choice between the New Mandalorians and Death Watch. There's this implication that she was young when she joined, because she was very much embedded in Death Watch when we first meet her in Clone Wars, and she's only, like, 20. She made a shitty choice, and because of that choice (and I'm sure what amounted to quite a bit of grooming from Pre Vizsla, because hello, the Duchess's very own sister on his side, that's too good to pass up) she did some really fucking terrible things.

She spends the rest of her life (thus far up until what we've seen) trying to atone for that choice and those horrible things she did.

And before I get people saying "she's a terrorist, you can't forgive a terrorist", I'd like to point out that you also can't forgive a murderer, and your favorite characters who are "good guys" certainly have done quite a bit of killing. Maybe some of the people they killed were bad guys and maybe some of them deserved some kind of punishment, but if you're trying to equate this to real world morality, can you truthfully say every person your "good guy" killed deserved to die? How many dead stormtroopers were people like Finn who just needed a way out? And I hate to tell you, Din isn't exactly a great guy either. I love him to death, but bounty hunting is a dirty and fucked up profession. I would not doubt he's returned some escaped slaves and done other fucked up shit over the years. Hell, they basically admitted to it in the Prisoner episode. The "good guys" aren't pillars of morality.

Equating real world morality to fiction doesn't always translate 1-to-1. Your fave is a murderer, but that doesn't bug you. Hell, let's jump fandoms for a second. How do you feel about Marvel's Loki? Man literally tried (and halfway succeeded in) committing genocide of an entire race. But now he's reached anti-hero status? Where's everyone saying he's horrible and deserves to rot because of what he did to Jotunheim? The morality doesn't equate because it's fiction, and it's a lot more interesting to start out with a fucking terrible character and watch them grow into something better and more complex. Bo-Katan was part of a terrorist group and spent years trying to make up for that and to be better. The point is it's a character arc and she's seeking redemption, and that's interesting. And she is changing for the better, even if she's not perfect.

Please go rewatch Rebels, the Mandalore arc. She refuses the saber because she doesn't think she's worthy of it. She doesn't try to fight Sabine for it. She doesn't want it. She knows and acknowledges the horrible shit she's done and doesn't think herself worthy because of that.

It takes convincing on Sabine's part, and proof that the rest of the clans are behind her, for her to take it. And she takes it in Satine's name and honor (which is basically a confirmation she is no longer under Death Watch), under the hope of restoring Mandalore and freeing it from the Empire.

If y'all wanna talk technicalities, that "well she didn't have a right to the saber because she didn't win it in combat in Rebels"... Remember that, technically, it then would still belong to Maul. Because Sabine didn't win it off Maul, she stole it. And now Maul is dead by Obi-Wan's hand. Sabine only "wins it" off Gar Saxon later on, and even then, the "chain" back to Maul is still broken, and technically Ursa was the one to kill Saxon. So, the whole "winning it by combat" thing is basically screwed over at this point, Sabine has no intention to rule Mandalore and is just trying to find someone she thinks could.

At this point, the darksaber is a symbol, a symbol of unification and of strength, of a return to power for the Mandalorians. And even if Bo-Katan didn't win it in combat, the fact of the matter is that she had the backing of all the clans anyways, so ultimately it doesn't matter. The point of winning the saber in combat is to show strength and "earn" the respect and loyalty of the other clans. She does that without the fight here, and that's the point. It's honestly a lot more meaningful than if she won it, because she got the backing of the other clans without having to beat up a fucking teenager.

Which is gonna lead us into The Mandalorian S2.

It's been 10 years since the events of Rebels. A lot has changed. Namely, Mandalore is fucking... gone. Utterly destroyed. The Book of Boba Fett gave us that, showed us how fucking horrible it was. There's very little, if anything, left.

Take a look at Bo-Katan with that in mind. Here's a woman who was trying to free her people, to make her planet strong and united again... And it all blew up (quite literally) in her face.

Also, I'm going to make an assumption here: She didn't lose the saber to Moff Gideon, it got stolen from her or taken in an unfair way. I don't buy the idea that he beat her in a fight 1-on-1, I really don't. So yeah, I'll go out on a limb here and say that, yes, she was correct in saying the saber rightfully belongs to her.

So, what do we see in The Mandalorian when we meet her?

We see a woman, meeting a man from the fucked-up religion/cult that she broke off from (because yes, the Children of the Watch are a cult y'all, and I will happily go off about that too) and spent years of her life trying to distance herself and make up for her time in. He comes asking for her help, proceeds to claim that she isn't a Mandalorian (which, she's more Mandalorian than he is, she's actually been on the planet and knows her people's history, something that Din doesn't have because, again, raised by a cult that hid that knowledge from him, but I digress). So, here's a guy who's a pseudo-member of the people who are now basically her enemy, asking for help, and she decides to help him if he helps her first. But again, she doesn't trust him, he's Death Watch, so she doesn't tell him the whole plan, only what he needs to know that she knows will get the job done. It's shitty to do, but honestly, it's fair when she has absolutely no reason to trust him. Especially given that her main goal is getting the darksaber back, something that she would have reason to believe a pseudo-Death Watch member would know about and try to take if they knew she was after it. She keeps him in the dark because she doesn't trust him and is right not to. Din outright tells her he is Death Watch even if he doesn't know what that really means.

(And, to be fair to Din, I do believe that, if he knew the real history of Mandalore, he'd get the hell away from the Children of the Watch because that history doesn't align with his morality. He almost borders on being very True Mandalorian-esque, which is maybe why he gets on so well with Boba, a man raised by the last True Mandalorian, but again I digress).

Bo-Katan has no reason to trust Din, and she has no way to gauge how much he really knows without possibly screwing herself over and giving up info that, to her knowledge, he might choose to act against her on. She has no way to know his intentions, and so she has to do what she thinks is best to accomplish her goals. And you know what, she is completely in the right in the way she acts towards Din. We tend to forget how bad Din looks from an outside perspective, because he's our protagonist, he's the "good guy", so we forget the optics of what he would look like to someone like Bo-Katan. To her, he has the potential to be very bad news.

She is an antagonist against Din, and for good reason, but she is not the villain. I have a sneaking suspicion that, in S3, Din will get the full story and then they'll end up as true allies. That teaser trailer was playing into the "Bo-Katan bad guy" idea way too much, it feels like a red herring. And to be honest, if they go that direction, I really think it would be a disservice to her character and all the growth and shit she's gone through. But then I hear Katee Sackhoff talking about Bo-Katan and discussing redemption and growth, and I have hope they'll do good by her character.

She's gonna do whatever it takes to accomplish her goal, and her goal is to reclaim Mandalore, 1) as a "fuck you" to the memory of the Empire, because Lord knows she is angry and vengeful af about what happened on Mandalore, and she has every right to be, and 2) to reunite her people and help rebuild. She might do kinda shitty things to reach that goal, but at this point, it's basically all she has, and again, she's vengeful af, so you know that's driving her too. Every time people call her power-hungry, I swear they haven't seen Rebels because her entire arc completely obliterates that argument. She did not want it until she realized that the Mandalorians united under her, and she saw the future she could help build as their leader. She was never grabbing at power for the sake of grabbing at power. The only reason she's so gung-ho on the saber now is because Mandalore and the Mandalorians are in shambles and they are in serious danger of being wiped out altogether if they don't get their shit together. She wants to see her people strong and united again, and that is totally fair.

Which then leads to the question of why she doesn't take the saber from Din when he offers it up. To be honest, I think it was a little bit of a plot-circle on the part of the writers, but I'd also like to present this idea: she knew the optics of taking it from Din would be bad. It's one thing to take it from Sabine, a teenager, with all the other clans on her side and pledging loyalty. It's another thing to take it from Din, a full-fledged warrior who won the saber back from the Empire in a fight, with no outside-clan backing. That reads very bad and could lead to two very possibly bad outcomes:

1) The clans find out she didn't win it back, and she loses a certain amount of respect, not because she did it twice, but because the second time she did so without direct backing. Mandalore is already splintered and falling apart. It's a risk to hope that they'd be willing to unify under a ruler some might find "illegitimate". She can't afford that, she needs as many people on her side as she can get because... there aren't very many of them left. She needs to win it back from him fair and square to make sure she's in the right position politically to reunify Mandalore.

2) They hide it and pretend she won it instead of Din. Which might seem doable, except for the fact that now, everyone in that room would have leverage on her. And that is dangerous for someone looking to take back and rule a race like the Mandalorians. That's serious blackmail material. And she has no reason to trust the other people in that room (except for Koska). And even outside of her perspective, I could see quite a few people in that room choosing to use that against her. Maybe not for the most nefarious purposes, but using it all the same. And at that point, if the other clans found out through that means, that's grounds for serious trouble. Because not only would she be "illegitimate", but now she was blatantly lying to them. Whatever peace and unity they had going would immediately fall apart.

She's not in the wrong to decide against taking it, in believing the best option is to eventually challenge him for it. And honestly the fact that she doesn't challenge him right away, that she lets him leave with it and go about his business, means a lot more than people are considering. If she was this power-hungry person that people are claiming she is, she would have challenged him right then and there, or right after Luke left with Grogu, when he was weak and exposed and still injured from the fight with the dark troopers and distracted and, honestly, probably a pretty easy target. And you might say "Din had allies in that room, she'd be dumb to fight him". If she challenged him to a 1-on-1 and he agreed, Cara and Fennec and everyone would back off and let him (even if Cara maybe argued against it for a second). He would have to agree to the fight for it to be legitimate, and I highly doubt Bo-Katan would go for the kill either way, she seemed genuinely shocked when Maul killed Vizsla, which makes it seem like killing the loser isn't standard practice (ie. Sabine also not killing Gar Saxon) unless you're just... a shitty person or someone from an opposing view (ie. Jaster getting killed).

But she doesn't challenge him, she lets him leave. And that's telling in a way that she's not just... looking for power. And, yes, she's annoyed by the turn of events (it certainly throws a wrench in everything she's been working towards).

She will challenge Din, I know that for a fact. But I think, first, Din needs a lesson on what it means to be Mandalorian (what it really means, not that false shit the Armorer fed him). And then he needs to decide what kind of Mandalorian he needs to be, and I'd bet that it's going to align with a lot of Bo-Katan's goals and ideology (hence, she's going to realize he's not really Death Watch, not in the way that matters, and that maybe he's trustworthy). And I think there's a fair chance that Din will win the fight, and Bo-Katan will honor that.

(Whether Din becomes Mand'alor is up in the air at this point, count me as Interested and Excited to see.)

I am not saying Bo-Katan is a perfect character and the pillar for morality. She has done some fucked up shit. She still does some pretty shitty stuff. But overall, her character arc is one of redemption and fighting for her people. Her goals are good and right, even if her methods aren't always the most savory (I'm talking lying to Din and similar things). But Mandalorians have always been a bit brutal and slippery, it's not totally out of character.

I'm not saying you have to love her as a character. Hell, I'm not even saying you have to like her. All I'm asking is that you stop just... blatantly calling her evil and pretending she's this two-dimensional simplified version of herself. She's complex and has a pretty crazy and interesting arc, and all I'm asking is that she gets the same treatment that other characters like her (ie. Loki) get. It's... shitty to see a post about her and go into the notes and just see... mountains and mountains of hate on her. I resent the fact that the first thing I saw when I heard about the S3 trailer was... someone ragging on her and calling her a villain. It's missing such a core piece of her character and rendering her down to something that she isn't, and it's aggravating when you're someone like me who really likes her as a character and is just... tired of the undeserved hate she gets, when there are other characters out there who have done worse and gotten praised for the redemption they fought for.

It's okay if you don't like her. Just... stop filling her tag with hate. Try to look at her from the lens of someone just... trying to preserve what's left of her culture and people and doing whatever she needs to do to make that happen.

If anything, remember that she and Ahsoka are still associated in some positive way, enough so that she knew where Ahsoka was and told Din to say she sent him, which would entail Ahsoka trusts Bo still. If Ahsoka still trusts her, maybe trust Ahsoka's judgement?

Final things to address:

Her calling out Boba and being derogatory towards him and clones: Not a great thing of her to do. Again, definitely not a perfect character. But she was correct in saying he isn't a Mandalorian, and we don't know what kind of shit Boba has done and how much of it she knows about. For all we know, Boba was hunting Mandalorians for the Empire and she knew about it. We don't know that whole story. Again, a lot of this comes down to the fact that your faves aren't necessarily good people. Boba certainly wasn't. In fact, he was the definition of a secondary villain (because remember, in ESB, the bounty hunters are bad guys, and Jango wasn't really a good guy in AotC either), all until he took a tumble into the Sarlacc and got his ass humbled by the Tuskens. And heck, on the flip side, there's a chance she has no idea who Boba is, and to her, he is just a clone that somehow got his hands on Mando armor, which isn't really something Mandalorians are a fan of when their armor is so sacred. We don't know. I'd love if it's addressed some way in the future (maybe Bo discussing with Din that he's associated with Boba?).

Her not honoring Maul winning the darksaber and claiming a non-Mandalorian can't be Mand'alor: We knew from the get-go that Maul and Death Watch were both planning to screw-over the other for their own gain. I'd bet they each had an idea that the other had the same mentality. They didn't trust each other and were right not to. She knew he was bad news and wanted no part of it. She didn't have the best intentions initially, the Mandalorians are proud people to a fault (Din was willing to kill Cobb to get the armor back), they value their heritage and unity as a people. Maul was not a Mandalorian. Didn't take a Creed or wear their armor or follow any of their principles. He was someone Death Watch was using, they never expected him to go after (and win) the throne. For all intents and purposes, Maul was 100% an outsider, and Mandalorians are not fans of outsiders, let alone outsiders having power over them. Hence, Death Watch split in half. Half of them honored the old traditions and followed Maul, the other half didn't. And, lo and behold, he used his power over them to take advantage of them and then leave them when it was convenient for him. Wow, great leader there, great thing the rest of Death Watch trusted him and followed him. Bo-Katan was right to not trust him and to want him gone. He's literally a Sith Lord, expecting him to be good for their planet and people would be... stupid. It might have been a different story if he took a Creed and at least pretended to become a Mandalorian, but he didn't. Remember, Bo-Katan was (begrudgingly) willing to let the Republic invade to get Maul out. Part of it was because he was an outsider, but the other part was because he was Maul, the Sith Lord who would for sure use them and destroy them and not care about the repercussions. It was him she wanted out, and she was willing to let other outsiders in to accomplish that.

TL;DR: I mean, Bo-Katan is really just a more nuanced and complex character than fandom likes to make her out to be, please just read the essay, I swear I make some good points, the biggest one being that Rebels has the biggest instance of her character growth and everyone just tends to... ignore it in favor of ragging on her. There's a lot to it, I can't sum it all up in a short paragraph, hence the essay, sorry, I just have a lot of thoughts on it.

#thank you for coming to my TED talk #it's okay if you don't like her #at the very least keep it out of the tags ya know???#that's how we treat ships we don't like... why can't we do the same for characters???#star wars #bo katan kryze #the mandalorian #clone wars #the clone wars #tcw #death watch

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