The Finale That Crashed Disney+
Contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season 2 finale, "Chapter 16: The Rescue"
The Mandalorian season 2 is officially a wrap, with its finale episode, "The Rescue," providing some of the biggest thrills and delights of anything Star Wars-related in the last few years.
The episode sees Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) teaming up with Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison), Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), Koska Reeves (Sasha Banks), and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) to rescue Grogu from the clutches of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). Din may have bested Gideon, but the real hero of the day was none other than Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who emerged at the last second to defeat horde after horde of Dark Troopers to bring Grogu with him to train him in the ways of the Jedi. As if that wasn't enough, there was also a post-credits reveal showing that Boba Fett will receive his own show called The Book of Boba Fett – something that wasn't mentioned when a slew of Star Wars Disney+ series were discussed at the recent Disney Investor Day.
Unfortunately, if you tried to watch the Mandalorian season 2 finale right when it hit Disney+ on Friday, December 18 at 12 AM PT/3 AM ET, you may not have gotten through right away. It seems everyone and their mother tried to see what the last Baby Yoda adventure for a while would be right when "The Rescue" dropped, and a series of tweets have revealed Disney+ actually crashed for a little bit when the last episode of The Mandalorian season 2 was released.
Disney+ crashed for about five minutes when The Mandalorian season 2 finale first dropped
Numerous tweets posted around midnight on December 18 reveal that fans had trouble accessing the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian right when it came out. It appears that all the traffic directed toward Disney+ at that time was more than the streaming service could handle, based on the error messages people received.
Twitter user @mrmedina wrote, "Did we crash @disneyplus?", alongside a screenshot of an error message reading, "We're currently experiencing slow internet connection speeds. Please check to see that you are still connected to the internet, and try again (Error Code 76)."
That fan was far from the only one having issues. On Twitter, user @Real_Mike_Meade posted a few minutes after the episode hit the streaming platform, "Disney + is giving me an error code on the newest episode of The Mandalorian and lemme tell you I'm FURIOUS. I've been watching this s*** at midnight for the past SEVEN weeks and if this is the week I don't do that I will throw hands with Mickey Mouse himself."
It appears as though the issue resolved itself fairly quickly, with many people being able to watch the finale after about five minutes or so of waiting. Still, it led to a stressful period of time for dedicated fans — like Twitterer @mike_smigielski, who joked about the incident, "ERROR CODE 76... more like ORDER 66."
The important thing is that people were able to watch the thrilling conclusion of The Mandalorian season 2 without too much of a delay. With numerous other Star Wars shows coming to the platform in the near future, hopefully Disney+ is ready for millions more users logging onto the service simultaneously going forward.