SPOILERS follow for The Mandalorian Season 3’s second episode.
In The Book of Boba Fett’s fifth episode, the Armorer told Din Djarin, “The songs of eons past foretold of the Mythosaur rising up to herald a new age of Mandalore.” With the end of the second episode of The Mandalorian Season 3, it feels like the prediction of the Armorer and the songs from the history of Mandalore might just be coming true.
As we saw at that episode’s conclusion, the Mythosaur is no myth at all, but rather a massive creature, slumbering beneath the living waters of Mandalore, and now awakened by the disruption caused by Din Djarin and Bo-Katan.
So what is a mythosaur and why is it important to the legend of the Mandalorians? And why does its return potentially mean big things for the future of Din Djarin?
Stories of Old
“You are a Mandalorian! Your ancestors rode the great mythosaur!” – Kuiil
Mythosaurs and their iconography have featured prominently in the history of Mandalorians since the first hints of their appearances in Star Wars storytelling. The mythosaur skull is something that can be seen on Boba Fett’s Mandalorian armor – even if he doesn’t claim to be a Mandalorian – as early as The Empire Strikes Back.
According to the legends, the first Mandalorians tamed these beasts and rode them, despite mythosaurs being gigantic creatures far more difficult to handle than a blurrg.
The sigil of the mythosaur skull can be seen on many Mandalorians, featured on their capes and armor. It’s an omnipresent and important symbol in their culture and a vital story from their history. You can see the ancient skull of an extremely small mythosaur in person at Dok-Ondar ’s shop on Batuu if you happen to be visiting the galaxy’s edge.
Mythosaurs went extinct at some point, or so it was believed. In Star Wars Legends stories (more on those below), some said they were hunted to extinction by the alien Mandalore the First and his Taung warriors, with their leader’s name then being used in the aftermath to name the planet they’d conquered. Others tell of a cataclysmic event on Mandalore that wiped out the mythosaur. Regardless, whatever drove them to this supposed extinction seems to have missed or forgotten at least one of their number, as Din Djarin discovered in the waters below Sundari.
The Mythosaur Rises…
and a Leader Too?
With the rise of the mythosaur comes a whole host of new possibilities for Bo-Katan and Din Djarin. Both of them were in the water and discovered it existed together. And if the stories of the resurgence of the mythosaur will lead to a new era for Mandalore are true, who exactly will lead them, assuming the scattered Mandalorians can once more reunite on their planet? The leader of Mandalore — although the pacifist government during the time of Duchess Satine and the New Mandalorians skipped this step — tends to be the one who wields the Darksaber.
Bo-Katan had previously been in possession of the Darksaber, and was considered the Mandalorian leader for a time, but now Din has the Darksaber and Mandalorian tradition demands it only change hands through combat – a rule Bo-Katan ignored once before but refuses to ignore again. There’s already tension between Bo-Katan and Din thanks to this, so will the significance of the resurgence of the mythosaur cause a greater rift between the two of them? Only time will tell.
The Legends Side
In the non-canon Legends stories, a mythosaur — or at least its remains — first appeared in the original Star Wars comic from Marvel in issue #69, written by David Michelinie and drawn by Gene Day. Released in 1982, the issue took place in a Mandalorian amusement park known as the City of Bone, which was built around the skeleton of a mythosaur (though it was only in later stories that we’d learn the name of the creature). The comic was set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and saw Leia Organa and the Mandalorian Fenn Shysa freeing Mandalorian slaves from their imprisonment by an Imperial garrison stationed inside the mythosaur’s skeletal structure.
In the Star Wars Legends stories, along with conflicting tales of the mythosaur’s demise and whether Mandalore the First caused it, mythosaur bones were used to make weapons by the Mandalorians – axes with fanned blades atop a pole. There was also a traditional mask made from a mythosaur skull that the leader of Mandalore wore. Whether either of these items or other aspects of previous mythosaur-related stories will be brought into The Mandalorian remains to be seen.
New episodes of The Mandalorian debut Wednesdays on Disney+.
