Noam Ebner
Din Djarin's life is exhausting. In addition to the grueling physical aspects of his work, and schlepping all that armor around, he lives the life of a single dad making his way in the universe, and his ride keeps breaking down. With the Child down for the night, there are all those ethical decisions keeping him awake:
And on, and on. Decisions, decisions.
This chapter charts a metamorphosis in Djarin's ethical decision‐making across the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. His changing perspective generates a new outlook on other people, the Way, and of course, life's core question: When can I remove my helmet?
“How do I make ethical decisions?” ranks high on the list of Big Questions philosophers have addressed. Most proposed answers for finding the right choices fall into one of three schools of thought: virtue ethics (do what a virtuous person would do), consequentialism (do what will bring the best outcome for all involved), and deontology (do your duty no matter the consequences). Appealing in theory, these approaches are devilish to apply in practice, as they deal in absolutes. They all assume a rational process of moral deliberation that runs counter to the way we actually process ethical conundrums.
We do not conduct most of our moral decision‐making sitting in a library of philosophy books; rather, this takes place in the basements of our minds as we go about our lives. It's guided by psychological formations laid down before our encounter with any theories. As human younglings grow, philosophical questions of ethics and virtue merge with psychological development and decision‐making to constitute their moral development.
Traditionally, philosophy and psychology have centered on moral reasoning and developmental processes based on logic, reasoning, and a primary concern with oneself, sometimes tempered by respect for others. A bounty hunter informing their quarry, “I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold” expresses morality‐in‐practice, not an edgy threat. “My needs justify bringing in bounties” goes their moral reasoning, so “out of respect for their individual rights, I let them choose whether to be brought in warm or cold.” In a nutshell, this is Mando's moral stance at the beginning of The Mandalorian.1
Before going further, let us acknowledge one shortcoming of this traditional approach to moral development: it ignores half of humanity. In the 1970s, Carol Gilligan exposed how the psychological study of moral development had traditionally assumed both the male psyche and male morality to be the default baseline for decision‐making and research.2 Her own research, listening to the voices of women speaking about moral issues, uncovered an entirely different vocabulary of moral reasoning, one focused on emotion, caring, and relationships. She realized that this wasn't evidence of women's flawed moral development, as previous generations of male psychologists asserted. Instead, it was evidence of an entirely different process of moral development. Men and women, she concluded, typically grow into significantly different conceptual frameworks of morality.3
Gilligan saw that typical male development orients men toward “ethics of rights”: People have rights, and are entitled to develop, achieve, and take within the scope of those rights. However, all individuals have rights, so when my rights collide with another's, can I pursue my own benefit over theirs? The answer is found by logical reasoning: quantifying benefits, harm, and fairness, and resorting to rules and theories of justice if necessary. Mando thinks, If IG‐11 and I both put equal effort and risk into recovering the bounty, we'll split the reward equally. Logical? Fair? You bet.
Female development typically orients women toward an “ethics of care”: People have responsibilities toward others as well as themselves. Ethical dilemmas present themselves when these responsibilities clash, bringing relationships into conflict. To what extent must I care for one person at the expense of caring for another or myself? The answer is found through inclusion, restoring relationships, empathy, communication, and nonviolence. Mando might've thought, My new droid partner and I have discovered clashing preferences regarding the delivery temperature of a jointly captured bounty? Should I shoot it? Let us talk.
Of course, men do include care in their moral decision‐making, and women take rights into account. Originally introduced by Gilligan as a gender‐based feature of psychological moral development, the moral notion of care has since developed into a moral theory that people of any gender can apply.4 The Mandalorian is the story of one man's moral overhaul toward care. And, you guessed it: it's all because of the Child. But Djarin's metamorphosis is not simply him discovering his nurturing side. It involves a far deeper shift in how he views himself and his relationships. At the heart of this change lies his gradual disenchantment with moral decisions based solely on the ethics of rights and their replacement with the ethics of care.
Watching Chapter, “The Mandalorian,” I was struck by one odd characteristic of early Mando: He does not negotiate. And it gets more interesting – he does not simply avoid negotiation by using force to take anything he wants. Early Mando often pays when he could take, and does not negotiate even when he has everything to gain by doing so. Why did he not haggle when Greef Karga, head of the Bounty Hunters' Guild, slashed his pay in half? Sure, he complained, but rising to leave was theatrics, not negotiation. And, couldn't he have asked the Client for just a little more beskar as a down payment?
This raises the question: what is early Mando's system? What moral approach guides him when he wants something from another person, another wants something from him, or they both want the same thing exclusively for themselves? Patrons of the bar in the opening scene might conclude that Mando simply applies a hunter's ethic of “might makes right.” They could not be more wrong. Consider that Mando does not negotiate with the unnamed Mythrol, because he's bringing him in under the legal authority granted by his bounty hunter license.5 He does not negotiate with Greef Karga or the Mandalorian Armorer, because he respects their positions above him in the hierarchies of the Guild and the coven, respectively. Above all, he keeps the faith with his coven and creed, because “this is the Way.”
Taken together, early Mando's moral decisions are based on hierarchy, status, rules, fairness, maximizing benefit, and values. They reflect an ethics of rights, in which logic and reasoning bring deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics into combined action.
The shift in Mando's decision‐making approach occurred gradually, beginning with the impact of a rampaging blurrg. Breaking his typical silence, Mando engaged in lengthy conversation with Kuiil, who clearly confused him. Kuiil extended assistance and care, asked for nothing (or nothing Mando values) in return, and brushed aside Mando's offer of a rights‐based reward. He taught Mando one profound lesson about helping people and another about people having different needs and preferences, shutting down any protest with his signature “I have spoken.” In opening Mando's mind to notions of care and new forms of cooperation, Kuiil primed him for metamorphosis.
Our map of loyalties, allies, and adversaries connects to the broader ethical scheme of how we relate to others, and Mando's had begun to change. That day provided several further moral shake‐ups. Mando was betrayed by the Guild, shot by IG‐11, and partnered with the assassin droid in mowing down gazillions of Niktos protecting the asset.
And then, he met the asset.
Looking down into the hovercrib, Mando knew his rights with regard to his target, yet also faced a sudden swell of obligation marked by conflicting duties to his Client, target, partner, Guild, and the Way. Even Mando could not articulate his sudden objection to bringing this particular bounty in “cold”; it's kinda something you can only express by shooting your partner, y'know?
One reason might've been that the bounty was a child, yet we know that Mando wasn't simply protecting the Child as an official Mandalorian foundling (only much later did the Armorer declare it as such). Whatever the cause, upon seeing that little green critter, something clearly stirred in Mando (his facial expression said it all). Both the ethical clash and its resolution must've deeply surprised him.
But this remarkable day was just getting started. Apparently forgetting where he'd parked his blurrg, Mando walked toward the Razor Crest, in the meantime surviving an attempt by fellow Guild members to steal his bounty. In the course of an hour, he had been both hunter and prey, and finally – a victim, wronged by Jawas, unethical scavengers who stripped his ship.
At this point, he recalls that he is not alone. Dusting himself off, he seeks Kuiil's help and receives another profound lesson: some situations can be resolved without disintegration. “You can trade,” Kuiil explains. Mando objects: “With Jawas? You must be out of your mind!” We can recognize Mando's objection as the plaintive reaction of someone who, having suffered a moral offense, seeks a rights‐based remedy from a source of justice.
Kuiil teaches Mando that such situations can be resolved through recognizing that fractured relationships can be restored by setting weapons aside and fostering communication and connection. Restored relationships allow for care and provide outcomes leaving everyone more content than before (and sometimes, flying high on mudhorn egg‐yuck fumes).
Mando has taken his first step into a larger ethical world.
The bounty hunter returns to Nevarro a changed Mando; he just doesn't know it yet. In an emotional haze, he even neglects to freeze his bounty. Or was he concerned for its safety? Mando delivers the bounty to the Client, seemingly all business as usual. However, maybe Greef Karga's comment, “I do not know if [the Client] wants to eat it, or hang it on his wall,” is churning beneath his helmet. More importantly, we can reasonably believe he's beset by new questions: What are my responsibilities to myself, and what are my responsibilities to others?
Mando, beskar prize in hand, watches the Child being floated away. He asks the Client, “What are your plans for it?” At this possible turning point, the Client urges Mando to respect the rules of contract and his Guild's code, take his beskar, and walk away – no questions asked. And, this works … at first. Forty‐odd years of moral development, after all, aren't undone instantly.
Mando returns to his ship. Rather than considering what he's entitled to – new armor, the next target – he contemplates his responsibilities: What do I owe the Client? The Bounty Hunters' Guild? The Child, who did not know I was its enemy? The Way? Myself? Remarkably, he resolves these questions in favor of rescuing the Child, breaking ties with the Guild.
Soon providing target practice for the entire Guild, Mando almost pays the ultimate price for his ethical awakening. When his coven rescues him, he realizes his nascent ethical shift is not directly opposed to his upbringing. Whatever else it might include, the Way's doctrine on foundlings represents an untapped well of generalized care for others. In coming out of hiding to support him, the coven reiterates that to care is ethical: you shield the Child with your body, and we risk our lives for you, all out of care. They also reinforce the lesson he's slowest to learn: You cannot go it alone, dummy.
Escaping Nevarro with the Child, Mando finally gets it: You cannot do this on your own; it takes a village. For a loner like Mando, living “in a village” with others implies new relational and ethical considerations.
Mando begins gathering a figurative village. Kuiil, Peli the mechanic, Cara Dune – with whom he saves an actual village – and others form bonds with him; increasingly, they take each other into greater consideration. He relies on their self‐assumed responsibility toward him and the Child, even as he acts out of responsibility to them. Consider the sharp contrast between this new village and the people Mando used to associate with. In Chapter 6, “The Prisoner,” we see that Ran (Mando's former partner‐in‐crime), Xi'an (his former lover of sorts?), and the rest of the team gathered to bust Xi'an's brother Qin out of prison are fundamentally disloyal to anyone but themselves.6 Mando's tangible discomfort with them stems not only from the threat they pose him and the Child, but also from his regretting earlier choices in ethics and relationships. Xi'an and Qin offer a window into Mando's earlier ethics, alluding to a previous heist in which Mando succeeded at the cost of Qin being captured.
Pop quiz: A woman is dying from a disease. A pharmacy has a life‐saving drug, but she and her husband cannot afford to buy it. The husband considers breaking into the pharmacy and stealing the drug. What do you think he should do?
Gilligan discovered that male respondents considering this situation tend to focus on the husband's decision, rules about theft, and balances between the rights to life and to property. Females, on the other hand, tend to focus on the relationships involved as well as on the pharmacist's responsibilities. Why is the pharmacist not responding to this woman's needs? These fundamentally different framings of what this situation is about, morally speaking, is a dead giveaway that two completely different ethical frames are at work.
What would Din Djarin choose? After all, Djarin acts in ethically iffy ways while protecting the Child, analogous to the husband's choices in Gilligan's scenario. Let's be honest: Djarin leaves a lot of bodies lying about, and things often tend to blow up around him. However, he rarely “robs the pharmacy,” preferring to pay cash or trade services for help. In one intriguing exception in Chapter 3, “The Sin,” Mando hijacks a vehicle at gunpoint to escape the Bounty Hunters' Guild with the Child. The droid‐driver refusing to drive him is Gilligan's pharmacist, withholding life‐saving means (transportation) at its disposal. Mando not only robs the pharmacy in this case, he endangers the pharmacist and ultimately costs it its life. I know, IG‐11 – you were never alive. But still.7
The hypothetical scenario about the pharmacy illuminates something crucial for understanding Djarin's gradual adoption of ethics of care: often, our choice to frame an ethical dilemma through one perspective or another winds up determining our moral decision. One aspect of this framing is the very casting of the characters in a hypothetical ethical situation.
In Chapter 9, “The Marshal,” Djarin instinctively applies the ethics of rights upon encountering Cobb Vanth clad in Mandalorian armor: my right to reclaim Mandalorian armor supersedes Vanth's rights to property … and life. Caught up in rights‐based thinking, Djarin ignores Vanth's efforts to direct his attention to other responsibilities, like to “the little one” and the bartender. He forgets Kuiil's lesson: you can trade. If we think of the Mandalorian creed as his sick wife, the armor as the medication, and Vanth as the “evil” pharmacist, Djarin's duty as the husband is clear to him.
Once violence takes a back seat to communication, Vanth explains that the armor protects the town. If Mando would support this cause and kill the Krayt dragon, Vanth would voluntarily relinquish the armor. From a rights‐based perspective, nothing has changed. Offering Djarin to risk the same fate as a frog hopping toward Grogu does not change the ethical balance.
However, the new information causes Djarin to recast the entire dilemma through a care‐based perspective. He is now the pharmacist, with responsibilities toward a husband (Vanth) and wife (the townspeople Vanth seeks to save). The Djarin Pharmacy's drug (fighting skills) can save her life. Can he ethically withhold it? Balancing his responsibility to the Way with responsibilities to Vanth and the townspeople, Djarin decides that the ethical course is to work with them to kill the dragon, even if the easier way would be to decline Vanth's offer and kill him for the armor.
Reoriented toward care, Djarin even helps Vanth relinquish his own rights‐based justifications for fighting the Tuskens in favor of nonviolent communication and joint action. Vanth, in turn, encourages the townspeople to adopt this new mindset regarding the group with whom they share a desert.8
Once we acknowledge Djarin's shift from a rights‐based to a care‐based ethical framework – allowing for the fact that old instincts die hard – it's fascinating to explore other decisions he makes along the way. He defends Alliance Lieutenant Devan on a prison ship against his own teammates; he protects Frog Lady's eggs against a voracious green killer seeking to guzzle them down; and he offers or asks Onara, Ahsoka Tano, and finally Luke Skywalker to adopt Grogu.
But having come this far, we have to face why Djarin's ethical metamorphosis is key to answering the series' most enigmatic question: Can he take it off? Will he?
The Way seems very clear regarding helmet‐removal. As the Armorer explains in Chapter 3, “The Sin,” helmet rule‐observance is ultimate, irrefutable, proof of Mandalorian virtue. Early Mando is so helmet‐virtuous, he almost never unhelmets even when alone. Only in Onara's barn does he finally grab a bite and let himself look on the Child with his own eyes.
Any helmet‐dilemmas, framed in his rights‐based language, were simply resolved:
Can I remove my helmet to down a spotchka? The rules say I should not. I will not (note to self: ask Armorer for some sort of beskar drink‐straw). Can I remove my helmet to facilitate riding a blurrg and completing my mission? The rules of the Way say I should not, superseding the Guild's creed of “Get 'em!” I'll keep it on (and work harder at blurrging).
Yet as Mando's ethical perspective gradually shifts, he frames helmet‐removal dilemmas differently, requiring more complex reasoning: Might I remove my helmet to connect with Onara? I'm obligated to the Way; I have the right to unhelmet, but this would end my relationship with the Way and its community. I'm also responsible toward this kind woman and do not want to hurt her. And, what about myself? Could I, as Cara so delicately suggested, just slip off the helmet and settle down here with that beautiful young widow and raise my kid sitting here sipping spotchka – no straw needed? Only as Onara's fingers gently begin to lift his helmet does he decide: “I do not belong here … but he does.” He resolves his ethical quandary by keeping the helmet on, while still expressing deep relational trust by leaving the Child with Onara.
Later: Should I remove my helmet for a mission‐critical facial scan, in full view of everyone in the Imperial officers' mess, including that jerk Mayfeld? How does all this weigh against my responsibilities to Grogu, alone on an Imperial ship somewhere, waiting for me? What do I owe myself? Meriting significant deliberation, the resolution of this ethical quandary was heavily weighted in favor of removing the helmet because of Grogu's predicament, held captive by Moff Gideon.
In Djarin's final helmet‐removal deliberation, there were no facilitating factors: no technicalities, no conveniently available stormtrooper helmets, and no life‐threatening danger.
Do I remove my helmet, in front of just about everybody I know and this cloaked stranger? Do my responsibilities to the Way, myself, and Grogu, allow me – require me, even – to show Grogu the love in my eyes before we part, and ensure that he'll recognize me in the future? His ethical metamorphosis complete, Din Djarin found this final dilemma to be the easiest of all to resolve.