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Trying to think through exactly what bothers me about how none of the main characters in The Mandalorian seem to recognize any of the big cameo moment characters. I think it has something to do with how nostalgia is a weird (broken?) form of dramatic irony.
When the audience knows something that the characters don't, that's dramatic irony. Usually, this sets up a moment where the characters suddenly learn what the audience knows, for a moment of intense dramatic change.
Think of Othello discovering Iago's treason, or Oedipus discovering his own sin. It's a huge moment, a "reveal" made stronger because we see it coming.
Even when characters never actually learn the truth, it's still a massive moment: Romeo and Juliet fail to find the truth, and the fact that we know it while watching them fail is heartbreaking.
Reference nostalgia, like in The Mandalorian finale, is also a form of dramatic irony: we as the audience know WAY more about these cameo characters than any of the onscreen characters do. Our knowledge freights their appearance with lots of significance.
But this doesn't pay off dramatically within the narrative in the way that normal dramatic irony does: the characters don't learn the truth, and more importantly, it doesn't *matter* to those characters whether they learn the truth. It doesn't change them.
That's because the nostalgia wasn't designed as a moment for those *characters*: it was designed ONLY as a moment for the *audience*. There is no interplay between the audience's knowledge and the characters' knowledge; only the audience side matters.
These moments could have been made to work as real dramatic irony reveals: for example, all [[bigtime cameo character]] would have had to do is introduce himself by name, and suddenly at least two characters in the scene could have had strong dramatic reactions to his identity.
But the show doesn't do that, because it doesn't care what the characters think of [[famous guy]]. It only cares what the audience thinks about him. Actually, it even seems like the show thinks that dwelling on the characters' reactions to his identity *detracts* from the moment.
The exact same thing happened earlier in the season, with Boba Fett (it's been long enough, I won't bother obscuring the name). Why does nobody know who Boba Fett is? Even characters that, reasonably, you'd think would know?
Answer: because the show doesn't care what the characters' reactions to Boba's identity might be. Doesn't care what Din would think about the most famous bounty hunter ever, because Boba's not there to affect Din (mostly; there's a bit about the armor, which is good but tiny).
Paying off that moment as real dramatic irony would distract from the moment's real goal, which is pure audience reaction. So they implausibly have Din not know who Boba is, show very little curiosity about him, and immediately move on to more plot stuff.
I think the problem is that this cheapens the non-nostalgia characters, because it makes their reactions irrelevant to the audience's reactions. I want to CARE about what Boba's reputation does to Din, or what [[guy's]] last name does to Bo Katan.
But The Mandalorian Season 2 doesn't want me to care about that. It wants me to just look at this cool character that *I* know stuff about, and stop looking at those other characters. But I don't wanna. So instead I get bothered and write tweetstorms.
