There's such a thing as too many fan shoutouts, and the place for it is evidently on Tatooine. After a fantastic space battle--the kind Star Wars has been lacking in lately, thanks very much--The Mandalorian sets an emergency pit-stop on the Skywalker clan's desert homeworld, and nearly every six seconds on average "The Gunslinger" painstakingly recreates sets, puppets, shots, and quips from previous Tatooine sequences to such a reverent level that it overshadowed some much better elements of an otherwise solid standalone adventure. It's still really fun, it just feels more like what I call 'grilled cheese,' sort of how Stranger Things sometimes catches flak for being nothing extraordinary underneath the 1980s Stephen King/Steven Spielberg coating. I wholeheartedly believe that "The Gunslinger" would have been a lot better if it would have relaxed and stop trying to establish nerd-cred.

This episode was written and directed by Dave Filoni, and …