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MANDALORIAN HAVE BECOME QUITE A UNIQUE GROUP
within the Star Wars universe, being one of the great rivals to the Force-wielders of the galaxy. Besides their ability as warriors, much of their power comes from their weapons.
The documentary series Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian devoted an entire episode to the show’s practical effects and props work, which included a brief explanation by prop master Josh Roth.
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Beskar
Beskar, also known as Mandalorian iron or Mandalorian steel, is a highly resistant metal alloy. It can withstand damage from the most widespread weapons in the galaxy such as blasters and even lightsabers. For this reason, beskar is used as a currency of great value.
Only Mandalorian blacksmiths know the secrets to truly smelting beskar, which has drawn all sorts of unwanted attention to the creed. This led to the Empire’s invasion of Mandalore just a few years after its formation.
The Helmet
Known throughout the galaxy, Mandalorian helmets have long been associated with these warriors. It has a T-shaped visor and completely hides their faces.
Din Djarin’s helmet has a variety of perks on its HUD: night vision, tracking heat signatures, long-range audio pickup and detecting footsteps or footprints left on the ground.
Armor
Mandalorian armor, made of beskar, is not only beautiful and shiny, but also very tough and durable.
The Whip
Din Djarin carries his whip in his bracer, and it has helped him out of many sticky situations.
The whip serves both to hold enemies and to bring them close and knock them down (when thrown at the legs).
The Flamethrower
Din Djarin’s dual flamethrowers were also useful in many situations and saved the protagonist’s skin in difficult times.
Like any weapon, flamethrowers have their limits. When Djarin was surrounded by bounty hunters who wanted the Child in the episode titled “The Sin,” he used one of his flamethrowers to fend them off, but he quickly ran out of fuel.
The Devaronian mercenary, Burg, is apparently immune to Djarin’s flamethrower. When he tries to use it during a fight scene in the episode titled “The Prisoner,” it turns out that Devaronian hide is quite resistant to fire rendering the flamethrower useless.
Whistling Birds
In the episode where Djarin returns with his payment in beskar, The Armorer uses the excess beskar to build him a weapon: the whistling bird.
These small, guided munitions were placed in his left armband and when triggered, they fly while making a whistling sound before hitting their targets and killing them with a small explosion. This works great when he’s surrounded by multiple enemies and needs to eliminate them all at once with no time for them to react.
The Armorer tells Djarin these projectiles are rare, so he uses them with caution.
The Blaster
The IB-94 blaster pistol used by Djarin was a rare model of blaster pistol with impressive range and firepower. The blaster has a unique look for the franchise and was built on one of the earliest commercial semi-auto handguns: the Bergmann No. 1 or the M1894.
Amban Sniper Rifle
The crude long arm phasepulse Amban sniper rifle is tipped with a forked ion prod electro-bayonet.
The most versatile weapon in the Mandalorian arsenal just so happened to first appear while being wielded by Boba Fett in The Star Wars Holiday Special.
The single-shot rifle is nearly as long as a spear and is made even longer by an extended two-pronged blade-like muzzle that also acts as a sort of taser when the rifle is used like a staff in hand-to-hand combat. Each blaster cartridge is loaded from the breech, so it’s slow to fire but devastatingly powerful. Any biological target that the rifle hits is completely disintegrated, and it does some serious damage to hardware, too.
MANDALORIAN WESTAR-35 PISTOLS
In the first season, we see the Mandalorian clan spring into battle for the first time in a huge shootout with the Bounty Hunters’ Guild. We also get a look at their WESTAR-35 blaster pistols skinned on STI Perfect 10 handguns. A prop shell covers most of the slide and the front of the frame, but it still has a distinctive shape that’s more 2011-y than many other Star Wars blasters; though, without the hammer and the beavertail, the slide gives off heavy Glock vibes. We see more of these blasters in the second season — Bo-Katan (and her two Mandalorian compatriots carry twin WESTAR-35s.
The Jetpack
Star Wars fans often associate jetpacks with Mandalorian culture, as if EVERY Mandalorian has a jetpack like that, but it’s not so. The Armorer gives Mando a jetpack so he can reunite the Child with those of its own kind. The jetpack would happily come in handy later in the episode, when Djarin uses it to disable an oncoming Imperial TIE fighter which happens to be piloted by Moff Gideon.
The Darksaber
Of great importance to the people of Mandalore, the Darksaber has a history that goes back to the origins of this world. Indeed, it is a unique and legendary piece of equipment that carries enormous weight in its slim blade.
The animated series, The Clone Wars, tells us
The Darksaber was created a millennium before the events in the series by Tarre Vizsla, in a period known as the Old Republic. This individual is a legend not only among Mandalorians but throughout the galaxy for being the first of his people to join the Jedi Order. Precisely because he was so unique, he decided that he would not use a lightsaber like all the other knights but a weapon made with the beskar metal so present in Mandalorian culture. Thus, the Darksaber was born.
With such a peculiar weapon in hand, Tarre became a hero for his people and led them to a planet that would become the Mandalore we know. With Tarre’s death, the artifact was kept in the Temple on Coruscant until the conflict between the Jedi and members of House Vizsla during the fall of the Old Republic.
After that, its ownership was maintained until a duel between Pre Vizsla — one of the descendants — and Darth Maul, with the Sith winning and, thus, the new owner of the rare saber remained a secret.
Years later, in Star Wars: Rebels, the item was discovered by Sabine Wren — a Mandalorian — and Kanan Jarrus — a Jedi — who trained her how to use it during one of the most important battles in the animated series. She then handed the weapon over to Bo-Katan Kryze at the end of this story which takes place about a year before the events of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Shortly afterwards, the Empire decides to stop playing around and launches a massive offensive against Mandalore that practically devastates the planet.
Known as the Night of a Thousand Tears, it wiped out almost the entire population and forced a few survivors to scatter across the galaxy. This is where The Mandalorian comes in.
Beskar Spear
Nothing can penetrate beskar, except for other beskar, of course. In the Chapter 13: “The Jedi,” Ahsoka Tano gives the spear, owned by the Imperial Magistrate, Morgan Elsbeth, to Djarin after they overthrow Elsbeth and free Calodan from the Empire’s remnants’ control. Later, Djarin uses it to fight Moff Gideon, who has the Darksaber. The Mandalorian eventually triumphs against his enemy and effectively becomes the rightful wielder of the Darksaber. In the fifth episode of The Book of Boba Fett, The Armorer melted it down, sensing the danger in anything that could damage beskar.
Duchess
In Rebels, we get to know a weapon created by Sabine Wren when she was an imperial cadet and designed to attack any wearer of beskar. It is a Pulse Arc Generator affectionately nicknamed the Duchess - the title by which the last peaceful leader of Mandalore, Satine Kryze, was known. The Duchess generates a very powerful electrical current, attracted only by the Mandalorian beskar metal. The current is concentrated in the armor and, with nowhere to dissipate, completely cooks the wearer. The Duchess was destroyed during the Mandalorian Civil Wars.