At The Vulture, Matt Zoller Seitz considers the second season finale of The Mandalorian and recognizing the structural problems in something you love. “The Mandalorian is earnest and lovingly crafted, easily the freshest thing Lucasfilm has given viewers since Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2003 Cartoon Network classic, Clone Wars. For two seasons, it has tapped into the light side of the franchise, represented by the humor, action, world-building details, and friendship narratives that have defined George Lucas’s science-fiction fantasies since 1977. But in the final moments of “Chapter 16: The Rescue,” the series succumbs to the dark side of parent company Disney’s quarterly-earnings statements, which keeps dragging Star Wars back toward nostalgia-sploitation and knee-jerk intellectual-property maintenance.”