Heading into The Mandalorian's season 3 finale, it's fair to say fans had some pretty strong opinions about how the show was going to end.
For the most part, "The Return" was light on jaw-dropping twists and actually felt more like a series finale that simultaneously set the stage for The Mandalorian to get a fresh start when that fourth batch of episodes hits Disney+ likely at the end of next year or early 2025.
However, the most popular fan theory revolved around The Armorer. Based on her quick escape from Mandalore and the fact Moff Gideon was decked out in a near-identical helmet, the prevailing theory online was that she must be allied with the Imperial and was, in fact, biding her time to betray Din Djarin and Bo-Katan Kryze.
After all, uniting these clans and bringing them to Mandalore to be destroyed by Gideon seemed a suitably dastardly plot for such a mysterious character. Ultimately, The Armorer instead proved herself a hero, fighting alongside Bo-Katan against the Empire before allowing Din to officially adopt Grogu.
In an interview with The Direct (via SFFGazette.com), actress Emily Swallow shared her thoughts on the theories about her character.
"I was confronted with that. I've been doing a lot of conventions this year, and I was at a convention the weekend after that episode aired and almost everybody that came up to my table, they were kind of looking at me out of the side of their eyes, they were like, 'Can we trust you?'"
"And it was so fascinating to me on many levels. I mean, first of all, it made me question whether I knew what was actually going to happen in the finale because people were so certain. We'd shot it a year before, and so I came home to my husband and I said, 'I've got to look at my script for that last episode again. I don't remember there being anything that would suggest that I turned, but did they have me shoot fake scenes?' Like, I didn't know. You hear about that happening."
"I was surprised at how personally I took it, and not because it hurt my feelings as Emily, but more because this character is somebody of such integrity and it seems to me that she cares so completely about her people more than she does about herself, and I felt like for them to cause a character like that to turn would be sort of a gut punch to the audience. Sure, it would be exciting and thrilling, but to me, it felt like it would just be so disappointing."
"But it also, then, on another level, it's just very telling to me of what we have come to expect of our heroes, or the caution that we have in the way that we feel like, 'Well, they're gonna let us down inevitably. She's probably not a good guy. No big deal.'"
It's surprising to hear that Swallow took those theories so personally, though it arguably shows just how much she cares about The Armorer. Plus, we can see why she'd be a little hurt after so many fans concluded that The Armorer was about to betray her people and be outed as one of The Mandalorian's most despicable villains!
This character's story is bound to continue in season 4 and, now she's in charge of Mandalore's giant forge - and allied with Bo-Katan-Kryze - we're sure there will be lots more warriors decked out in Beskar before too long thanks to her.