The S3 finale was extremely disappointing

So they were hinting at Thrawn for 1,5 seasons now, and they wasted the finale on killing the pointless sub-boss, Gideon.

Let's face it, Gideon's arc was over in the previous finale, but they tried to milk Esposito for a whole more season. No offense to the man, I liked his performance, but his character was so underdeveloped, that every encounter lacked true stakes.

What was his evil plan again? Oh, he made some clones... which were destroyed immediately after they were revealed. Forgive me if I coiuld not buy into those stakes in 3 gorram seconds!

And the whole finale feels rushed. The whole season was about gathering the Mandalorians to retake their homeworld, just to setup that battle between the new beskar troopers and the Mandos. Visually it was OK I guess, but the character moments were so few and far between, I did not care who is shooting who in some scenes. Paz Vizsla was unceremoniously disposed of in a fairly ridiculous way. I mean the elite troopers did not really display any advanced moves, while strength and bulkiness was not on their side... still they defeated him, because the Plot Armor was revoked from Vizsla. A sad moment, where I found myself being sad at the poor setup from the writers, instead of the death of the character himself.

And then again, a rather anti-climactic death (?) for Gideon. I included a question mark, because Thrawn was not shown at the end, so... I don't know, can they really make S4 to be about Gideon (or a Gideon clone!) again?

Yes. Yes, they can, and they will. Or an even worse scenario could be that they show Thrawn... to be just as uncharacterized, underdeveloped and pointless villain as Gideon was. Yep, that would be worse, so I think that's what they are going to go with.

Couple this with the fact that S3 as a whole was - again - the victim of a phenomenon I call "video game storytelling", where episodes of a show follow such pattern that is similar to that of a detail-oriented player in an open world game. You know the one who does all the side missions and explores every nook and cranny, before advancing the main storyline. In other words, S3 as a whole was a drag - just like S1 and S2 before it.

Such a shame, because the Mandalorians have an intriguing and rich history, that could have been capitalized on. But all we got was two characters being worthy to lead the Mandos, and for an inexplicable reason, Din handed the opportunity over to Bo-Katan, and... that's it. And we, viewers are still waiting for the main storyline (Thrawn!) to advance. And it never does.