I bet the on-screen explination is that Sabine thought it looked weird, so she painted creepy eyes on it.
However, without actualy moving eyeballs, even painted eyes can't realy always tell us where he is looking, plus he doesn't really need to look anymore, it's just a thing for show for other people; he likely needs to adjust the angle of his head to better capture sound with his ears.
That design actually has a rather significant meaning. They're called "Jaig eyes" and IIRC they originate from one of the early paint jobs of Boba Fett's helmet in tESB. In the old EU Mando lore (mostly invented by Traviss I believe) they're meant to be the mark of honour for leaders. So it make sense if Sabine or indeed Rex himself would do that.
As for the other thing, it's not so much about showing where he his gauze is focused since of course they're static markings, but it gives a sense of motion and context to his head moments so you can see where he turns his face. There are other animation tricks and queues they can use to help him emote without being able to animate his eyes, brown and upper cheeks. An eye-roll for example is impossible to do without actual eyes, but with the makings a subtle movement will register as an equivalent gesture. Without the markings, it'll be too subtle to pick up the motion and the emotion is lost.
It's difficult to truly appreciate the necessity since it's the kind of thing you'll only notice when it's not there, but don't underestimate how important even the illusion of eyes are to human communication.
Then there'd be no point in blinded Kanan like Maul did. It was only a temporary upper hand with no guarantees. The better move would have been to cut Kanan off at the knees, or do that seconds after blinding him.
As he says himself, his intent wasn't to blind but to kill. Kanan reacted just fast enough to avoid a fatal blow, but not to do so unscathed.
I realized part of why I was so attatched to the EU Dathomiri Witches, Tenel Ka. I really liked her in the books I read with her, so she's the first thing to come to mind when the EU Witches are brought up.
There's a lot of the EU that I never read, or only started reading and stopped because it was awful, but as I understand it, Tenel Ka as a character had almost nothing to do with Dathomir. Or rather I should say that aside from it being her mother's homeworld, Dathomir didn't figure all that much in her story.
An even better way to put it perhaps is that they never really bothered to expand or elaborate much on Dathomir's culture and history beyond what was mentioned in that one novel. So she really could ahve been from any semi-primitive world and it wouldn't have changed her basic character much.
It's all academic though since she's post-RotJ EU and so not likely to ever be relevant to the Clone Wars era. After all, her function within the narrative was always "friend of the Solo kids". You may as well lament the omission of Cade Skywalker. It was never going to be applicable.
Definitely sounds better. I've never read any of the EU Mandolorian stories, so if that was directed at me, I have no attachment to them.
Not at you specifically perhaps, though you did express concern over their track record of not doing due justice to EU material. I'm just trying to understand which instances you specifically felt were lacking and why.
The other thing that changed was that Jango Fett is not considered to be a Mandalorian at all anymore (at least that's what we are told in The Clone Wars by Pre Visla, and that it was Lucas' idea to change that). Probably because of the massive amount of EU material on Boba Fett that conflicted with each other, that he had it wiped for his own version. This also negates all the concepts that the Clones were trained to be Mando fighters and had that culture to them as well. The only thing that lingers is the eyes painted on Rex's helmet that were on the early concept version of Boba Fett's armor. Or course it is possible that Visla has denounced Fett as a Mandalorian because he's a bounty hunter, or he just thinks he stole the armor (much like the Mandalorian on Concord Dawn thought Sabine had stolen her armor, when in fact she crafted it with her family). Meaning Fett could be Mandalorian, but not to Visla.
IIRC the current canon cites Jango's homeworld as Concord Dawn, which is a Mandalorian colony world in Mandalorian space. So he's not from Mandalore the planet specifically and thus not a Mandalorian, but he was from a Mandalorian based culture. It's like the difference between being British and being Australian. They're far from interchangeable, but there's still a close cultural bond. So all that stuff about some old Mando ways brushing off on the clones in their early training can still be in play.
As for the armor, I think Filloni has said that it's implied that he shouldn't have it and thus probably acquired it though illicit means (i.e. he stole it.) It's not like just anyone can wear it, just like not just anyone can wield a lightsaber without instantly raising the question
"where did *you* get that from?".
There also appears to be a stigma in Mandalorian culture regarding soldiers of fortune (recall how Fen Rau's men reacted to Sabine's armour), so it would make sense that such a one would be disavowed. Very loudly if that person was implicated in consorting with the instigators of a galaxy-wide war. Sort of like a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
On the other hand I know a woman who hates the idea of not only Boba being a clone, but being played by a Moari. He wanted the actor from the Empire Strike Back in the suit as she's met him already at that point. While I think she's still a Star Wars fan (its been years since I've seen her and she's never shy with her opinons) she was done with Lucas' prequels right then at Attack of the Clones.
Though it is interesting that a lot of the concepts for the Mandalorian are still in place, just not the whole swath of it as envisioned by Karen Traviss. The older elements are there. The ones that existed before Attack of the Clones.
Here's the thing: the original concept for Boba Fett going all the way back to tESB was that he was a relic of the Clone Wars; a left-over Clone wearing Super-Commando armour. So on that score, Lucas didn't change anything, he just elaborated on his original notion and added some context.
As has been said numerous times he took little notice of what the EU authors were up to. So it's not that he felt the need to erase anything, he simply didn't care about it one way or the other and told *his story* as he saw fit.
