“The Mandalorian” season 3 starts with Din Djarin and Grogu on a mission to Mandalore to prove it is not poisoned, with our favorite Mandalorian apparently leaving bounty hunting behind to become the “Star Wars” equivalent of explorer Roald Amundsen (but hopefully without the same tragic fate).
Before he does that, he stops at Nevarro, where he helps his old pal Greef Karga kill a band of pirates. Except the two make the grave mistake of letting one of the pirates go, who of course goes on to report to his boss and swear revenge. Who is his boss? None other than the King of Pirates, the owner of the One Piece, Gol D. Roger! Wait, that’s not right, it’s just some random dude named Gorian Shard. While that name is nowhere near as good as Monkey D. Luffy, what makes Shard not just interesting but immediately our favorite new character is the fact that he is made entirely out of moss and vines, and looks like he came straight out of the set of DC’s “Swamp Thing.”
And yes, he specifically looks like “Swamp Thing.” If the writers just wanted a green guy covered in moss, they could have easily made him a homage to Marvel’s Man-Thing. How hard would it have been to just grab the same suit and use the digital assets for Man-Thing that Michael Giacchino used in “Werewolf by Night?” But no, this Pirate King looks just like what comic book artists Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson envisioned back in the ’70s, complete with the little moss nose thing, but with the addition of a cool bushy swamp beard.
This is the coolest new character “Star Wars” has introduced in years, the kind of character whose toy would feed the imagination of millions of kids around the world.
