The Mandalorian and Grogu hit screens this week and the reaction has been exactly what you'd expect from a Star Wars release in 2026 — half the room thinks it's a fine little adventure, the other half thinks the franchise has been cooked for a decade. Robbie Fox basically called it before the popcorn was popped.
A preemptive shrug at the inevitable Star Wars discourse cycle.
The takes are landing roughly where you'd expect. Kenjac was lukewarm on it as a theatrical experience, framing it as a glorified streaming episode stretched into a 2-hour kid distractor, with a hint of mourning for what Mando used to feel like back when the show was the coolest thing on TV.
A measured but disappointed read on whether this needed to be a movie at all.
THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU Not enough here to justify making it a movie but I think the table is set early that it is a 2 hour kid distractor. Sad how far the character has fallen but whatever https://t.co/TaBRps9mpo
And then there's the wing of the fandom that has one villain and one villain only. Clem is demanding that every bad review come with a Kathleen Kennedy body count, which is less of a movie review and more of a years-long grudge match finally being formalized in writing.
The Kathleen Kennedy litmus test, stated plainly.
I need every negative review of The Mandalorian and Grogu to include exactly how much that reviewer blames Kathleen Kennedy
Naturally, Robbie and Clem went 1 hour and 40 minutes on it for episode 500 of My Mom's Basement, billing it as the most polarizing Star Wars movie since the last polarizing Star Wars movie. That's the part of the cycle that actually matters — not whether the movie is good, but how long the argument about it lasts.
The MMB 500 tee-up for a feature-length breakdown.
Meanwhile, in the most Robbie move possible, the corresponding cash-grab has its own subplot. He dropped $34 to try every item on Burger King's new Mandalorian menu, which is honestly the purest form of Star Wars fandom left — buying weird tie-in food and reviewing it with a straight face while the rest of the internet argues about who ruined the saga.
A $34 deep-dive into the Mandalorian Whopper experience.
That's the whole story of Star Wars in 2026 in one news cycle: a movie nobody fully loves, a Kennedy blame quota, a 100-minute podcast trying to make sense of it, and a fast-food combo meal sitting on the desk. The Force, but make it discourse.