Wednesday, April 19, 2023

'The Mandalorian' Season 3: Latest episode to be released today

 The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 8: Release date, time

Viewers can watch the season 3 finale of The Mandalorian on Disney+ starting from 12 am PT, 3 am ET, and 8 am GMT on Wednesday, April 19. The season finale reportedly is around 39 minutes long.1 day ago

The Mandalorian Recap: Did Any of Those Fan Theories Pan Out? — Grade the Finale and All of Season 3

Mandalorian Season 3 Finale Recap

As it turned out, The Mandalorian — more than either prior season — ended Season 3 with a true two-part finale, given that this Thursday’s “The Return” was extremely continuous with “The Spies.”

Literally, the action picked up with Bo & Co. giving chase after the hogtied, kidnapped Din.

Er, the kidnapped Djarin, I mean.

Heading into the finale, fan theories were of course abound. Would The Armorer and/or Axe be revealed as a spy for the Imperial remnants? (Nope, though the latter was looking sus for a hot second as he claimed sole control of the light cruiser. Also, The Imperial Remnants is a great band name.)

Would Grand Admiral Thrawn make his live-action debut at the end, even in a post-credits scene, to declare, “Frak Moff Gideon, I’M the true Big Bad of this TV universe”? Hardly.

Would there be a loss that “hurt too much”? Fool us once, Brendan Wayne….

Mandalorian Moff GideonI honestly don’t know how to feel about this finale, soon after viewing it. The fan theories were provocative (as fan theories always are), but instead we got a series of events that, if I asked you last week to sketch out the scenes of the finale, you’d have been 90% correct in foreseeing them. Djarin got free and faced off against Moff Gideon, only to get owned again… so Bo stepped in, Darksaber and all, only to see her mighty, coveted and iconic weapon get crushed like a cosplay prop during a Hall H stampede. The merged Mandalorian tribes engaged in mid-air battle with scores of troopers, but save for the Armorer braining one bogey good, it wasn’t a very decipherable set piece.

Mandalorian finaleMy heart did skip a beat when the door closed behind IG-Grogu being surrounded by three Praetorian guards — I thought we’d be left to fret at least a beat longer how that turned out. It was a nice callback to see R5 deliver a clutch, R2-like data retrieval moment. And to be sure, the image of Grogu protecting Djarin and Bo from the fiery cruiser explosion with a Force bubble was instantly-iconic.

Mandalorian finaleLastly, no one could not “Awwww” when Djarin told the Armorer that he would formally adopt Grogu so that the Child could be his official Mandalorian apprentice. . .'

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STREAMING DISNEY +

The Mandalorian S3 Finale: Din Goes Full John Wick After A Season Of Mild Action

Lucasfilm/Disney+

BY PAULI POISUO/APRIL 19, 2023 7:40 AM EST

Contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian" Season 3 finale, "Chapter 24: The Return"


"The last episode of "The Mandalorian" Season 3 was never going to be anything other than a full-on onslaught. 

With Moff Gideon's (Giancarlo Esposito) new Beskar armor and plans to fully finish Mandalore's destruction, things would seem dire even without the previous episode's cliffhanger, which involves titular Mandalorian Din Djarin's (Pedro Pascal) capture and Paz Vizsla's (Tait Fletcher) death at the hands of the Praetorian Guards. "Chapter 24: The Return" finally reveals Gideon's plan in its full glory, as we find that he's not only been setting up his forces with cool Beskar armor, but he's also creating multiple Force-sensitive clones of himself. 

The villain might have gotten away with his cunning plot, too, if it wasn't for the fact that Din chooses this exact episode to rediscover his combat mojo, and proceeds to tear his way through Gideon's forces and plans alike. Though he's had the occasional chance to shine, Din has spent much of "The Mandalorian" Season 3 as a punching bag while Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) has taken care of the heroics. In the finale, however, he firmly reestablishes his position as the main Mandalorian in the show by spending the entire episode taking down the opposition with cool combat moves that make him seem like John Wick in Beskar armor. 

Din Djarin's action hero antics show why he's still the star of the show

Lucasfilm/Disney+

"The Mandalorian" Season 3 finale devotes much of its runtime to showcasing Din Djarin's ability to wreck bad guys with skills that remind us just how capable he can be when he's not getting blindsided by hulking cave cyborgs or giant battle droids. It may have been worrying to see him get caught in the penultimate episode, but here, he immediately makes clear that all concern for his well-being has been unwarranted.  

Din's very first scene shows him expertly tackling two captors with his arms tied. He then proceeds to track down Moff Gideon while tearing his way through the opposition, rearming himself with his defeated opponents' weapons as he goes. Though Gideon proves to be a hard nut to crack for a single Mandalorian, he's still able to defeat the three Praetorian Guards who killed Paz Vizsla. 

Of course, he's not at it alone. In keeping with the season's "Mandalorians are stronger together" theme, Grogu's timely intervention saves his life multiple times over the course of the episode, and Bo-Katan provides an equally able assist against Gideon. Even so, Din's fighting moves and penchant for inventive Gun Fu-style action make it very clear that this is one combat-capable Mandalorian ... and anyone who's seen him fight all those Beskar-enforced Stormtroopers in the force field gate corridor will find it hard to argue otherwise. 

Read More: https://www.looper.com/1262071/the-mandalorian-s3-finale-din-john-wick-after-season-mild-action/

Meta’s next round of cuts shows that this isn’t the end of tech layoffs, it’s only the beginning of the next wave.

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Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs

The company plans to lay off employees on Wednesday, according to sources.

Mark Zuckerberg in a suit walking across an entry with a cameraman pointing a large shoulder-mounted camera at him.
Mark Zuckerberg leaving a federal courthouse in San Jose in February 2022.
 David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Shirin Ghaffary is a senior Vox correspondent covering the social media industry. Previously, Ghaffary worked at BuzzFeed News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and TechCrunch.

"Meta will conduct another mass round of layoffs on Wednesday, several sources working at the company told Vox.

In an internal memo posted to a Meta employee message board on Tuesday evening and viewed by Vox, the company told employees that the layoffs will start on Wednesday and will impact a wide range of technical teams including those working on Facebook, Instagram, Reality Labs, and WhatsApp. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the memo was sent to employees but declined to comment further. The cuts could be in the range of 4,000 jobs, one source said.

“This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” Lori Goler, Meta’s head of people, said in the memo.

Meta employees in North America will be notified by email between 4 am to 5 am PT Wednesday morning, according to Goler’s note. Outside of North America, the timelines will vary country to country, and some countries will not be impacted.

Meta is also asking employees in North America, whose job allow it, to work from home on Wednesday to give people “space to process the news.”

The layoffs come after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in March that the company would cut 10,000 more jobs in the coming months, after already cutting 11,000 in November. Zuckerberg previously said that cuts in April would impact tech departments, while another planned round of cuts in May will impact the business side of the company. At the end of last year, Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, had around 86,000 employees.

Sources spoke with Vox on the condition of anonymity because of concern about professional repercussions.

Meta’s continued layoffs are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for a “year of efficiency” in 2023. The layoffs are a reminder that after nearly two decades of almost uninterrupted growth, major tech companies like Meta are now undergoing an intense period of cutbacks and belt-tightening measures. Silicon Valley as a whole has been going through an economic downturn that has drastically changed what was once considered a free-spending work culture. Long gone are the days of unlimited perks, travel, and nonstop hiring. And in the past year, almost every major tech company has had rounds of layoffs. Meta’s have been particularly painful, with the company issuing the cuts in waves.

“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post last month. “Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates.”

While the stock market responded well to Meta’s layoffs last year, employee morale has suffered. Vox reported in January that internal employee sentiment surveys about optimism and confidence in leadership at the company were the lowest they had been in recent memory. Several sources described working in a state of limbo for the past few months and that it’s hard to get any work done.

“I think people are getting tired of all this and are just ignoring this now,” said one Meta employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They added that it’s “too stressful to keep worrying when you can’t do anything about it”

Meta’s next round of cuts shows that this isn’t the end of tech layoffs, it’s only the beginning of the next wave.

Update, April 18, 2023, 10:05 pm ET: This article has been updated with further details about the layoffs shared with Meta employees on Tuesday evening.

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