Awful. Especially coming off Andor, which was one of the best shows of a stacked 2022.

Mando has never been a good show. Seasons 1 and 2 were not good TV if you take out the Star Wars paint. This season, the Star Wars paint has been spread so thin (Boba and Obi-Wan being dogshit doesn't help), that the lack of production quality, fan film dialogue and acting, and absence of story depth is more apparent than ever. This show is directionless and I hope it continues to fade from public consciousness. Bringing Grogu and Mando back together in a spinoff show wiped away what little this string of shows had going for them.

Just counting down the days til Andor S2. And more Bad Batch, I really liked Season 2.

Massive revisionist history. General audiences had zero expectations from "that show based on that game with the awful fanbase".

And the same can be applied to Andor. Anyone who looked at the writing talent on that show; Tony Gilroy, Beau Willimon, would take away that it would've been a surefire hit. But nobody cared about the talent behind the show because "its just another OT-era Star Wars cashgrab and will follow the tone of the last three live-action shows".

Riot had done plenty of amazing animated work before Arcane. None of it long-form storytelling, but still fantastic. I have a ton of respect for them for the way they run their company, which is not something I can say for many other companies.

But WoW had some fantastic cinematics and an awful movie. Lord knows if Overwatch turned its animated shorts into full-length stories, it probably wouldn't end well. Even with a good track record, expectations from general audiences were on the ground for both Arcane and Andor.

...so is League of Legends??

Edit: Nevermind I guess Riot is an indie company.

Andor is already the Arcane of 2022.

Unexpected show of the year candidate from a franchise that's either (a) struggling to put out quality consistently or (b) has very low expectations when it comes to long-form storytelling. Both even came out around the same time of year.