Warning: Spoilers follow for The Mandalorian and Grogu.
Did you know that it’s been seven years since a Star Wars movie was in theaters? Yup, that’s how long it’s been since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, which ended the Star Wars sequel trilogy with, well… an ending. Despite how many projects have been announced post-Episode IX, the first one to materialize in nearly a decade is The Mandalorian and Grogu, which has the asterisk of being a continuation of a Disney+ series. The movie is also not very good, with IGN’s Tom Jorgensen saying in his Mandalorian review that it’s “missing the thrills, the surprises, the challenges, or the addition of really anything of note to the franchise.”
But setting all that aside, one thing that did stand out to me both as something worth explaining and being a microcosm of the film’s problems is the scene where Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin, aka The Mandalorian, fights alongside Rotta the Hutt in a gladiator arena. The event is called a “dejarik match,” and features one of the film’s most elaborate references to Star Wars lore, specifically the holographic chess game seen in A New Hope.
What the hell is dejarik, you say? I’m glad you asked! Let’s get into it.
Dejarik, aka Holochess, Explained
During A New Hope, there’s a pretty famous scene where C-3PO and R2-D2 play a game on the Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca. If the phrase “let the Wookiee win” just flashed in your mind, you’re on the right track. This is the first appearance of dejarik, also called holochess, which is a two-player game that’s basically a cross between traditional chess and Dungeons & Dragons.
Each player gets several pieces (there are both eight-piece and 10-piece variations) representing various monsters like the Mantellian Savrip, the Kintan strider, or the Ghhhk, each with their own stats representing things like attack power, hit points, and movement speed. Players take turns moving their pieces around the board and battling until one side’s forces are exhausted.
Although dejarik plays only a tiny role in the film, basically being a background world-building detail, the game has sparked a lot of fascination from fans, some of whom have developed their own rulesets to play it since an official ruleset has never been released by Lucasfilm. Dejarik has also made further appearances in the Expanded Universe of both the Legends and canon timelines, including in shows like Clone Wars and Bad Batch, which have introduced new monsters not depicted in A New Hope. The Mandalorian and Grogu invokes the original film’s depiction of the game, but not as something Mando and Grogu play for fun; instead, dejarik takes on a whole new form as a type of arena match where it’s intended for the participating gladiators to get killed by the creatures.
The monsters from A New Hope appear in their living forms and are set loose in the arena, with only some laser grid fences preventing them from escaping into the crowds. Commander Janu Coin (Jonny Coyne), an ex-Imperial officer turned pit fight manager that Mando is hunting, has set up his indentured gladiator Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) to die in the final match of his contract. Mando, who’s been hired to rescue Rotta on behalf of the New Republic, winds up in the arena alongside the Hutt, and they work together to battle the monsters. It’s an agreeable enough setup for an action scene, but the way it calls back to dejarik raises a lot of questions, many of which have unfortunate implications for the franchise’s creative priorities.
