With the “OK Boomer” meme, and the war between the Millennials and the Boomers still going strong, more than a few media outlets have observed that the generation between them, Generation X (those of us who were in our teens or early 20s in the 1980s) has been ignored.

“What about the latchkey kids!” and all that.

Recent pop culture, though, is steeped in GenX. “Stranger Things,”while it bypasses many of the actual harsh realities of the ‘80s like the devastating AIDS crisis and racial resegregation, is quintessentially about us. IT is GenX. “The Get Down,” “GLOW,” and “Pose” are, too.

I’m going to go ahead and add “The Mandalorian” to that list. 

This article contains a minor spoiler regarding the Mandalorian’s background, if you have not seen the first episode of the show and would prefer to remain 100% unspoiled, then wait to read this article until after you have seen the episode!

For the first time since Rebels fourth season, the masked warrior people, the Mandalorians, are the focus of a Star Wars property. While the details regarding the martial culture have changed over the years, be it simply the whims of George Lucas or Disney’s decision to erase old canon to make room for new, the Mandalorians have been a unique part of the franchise’s story of diversity and representation (to keep things simple, we’re going to stick mainly to the cinematic/television canon). Like most Star Wars stories, it began a long time ago (all right, a few decades ago).

Now maligned, as much praised, Boba Fett was the first Mandalorian to capture the imaginations of the franchise’s fans; first in the Holiday Special and later, more widely known, The Empire Strikes Back. In the both cases, Fett’s identity underneath the mask remained one of mystery. Portrayed under the mask by two different white actors, mainly by Jeremy Bullock, and in one brief instance, John Morton (who also played the ill fated Dak). The legendary universe that sprung up around the highly popular character cast the character as a white male, which, to the chagrin of some members of the fan community, was changed to Pacific Islander in Attack of the Clones with the casting of Daniel Logan as a tween Fett. More so, Boba Fett was revealed to be a clone of Jango Fett, played by another Pacific Islander, Temuera Morrison. As much as it seemed the Mandalorians, then, were a people of color, Lucas again fiddled with the background of the people in The Clone Wars.