Just like the planet Mandalore and the Mandalorian culture made their way from Legends into the main “Star Wars” canon, so did beskar’s resistance to blaster fire and, more importantly, lightsaber attacks.
This matters because, for as long as the idea of Mandalorian has existed, so too has their conflict with the Jedi. Indeed, the idea of Mandalorians as a group was first introduced in the novelization for “The Empire Strikes Back,” in which they were described as “a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars.” That conflict ended up changing over the decades but one thing remained true — from the moment the Jedi first encountered the Mandalorians, they fought.
The comics and the “Knights of the Old Republic” video games portrayed long and arduous wars between the two groups from the moment they first encountered each other. In the current canon, the war between Mandalorian and the Old Republic eventually caused a cataclysm on the surface of Mandalore that turned it into a lifeless desert. When Dave Filoni and his team brought the Mandalorians into the main canon for “The Clone Wars,” he looked at these portrayals to the long and tumultuous history between the Jedi and the Mandalorians that the cartoon implied. From those stories, he also took inspiration in the way fighting the Jedi informed the Mandalorian arsenal.
“Their technology had a massive increase once they collided with the Jedi and found these Force-wielding people that had abilities they didn’t understand,” Filoni told ComicBook.com. “Their armor is a reaction to the Jedi.”
Of course, other than just being resistant to lightsaber attacks, Mandalorians had arsenals of different weaponry — no two of them the same. From flamethrowers and missiles to jetpacks and more, each Mandalorian is unique.