The Mandalorian embraces good old-fashioned Star Wars heroics
Why be a cult of masked hermits when you can be a cult of planet-hopping, pirate-killing mercenaries?
TV Reviews Mandalorian
Yarrr, mateys! It’s Pirate Week on The Mandalorian, and this episode gave us a long, exciting battle between a bunch of filthy space-scoundrels and our favorite helmet-wearing hermits. As teased by a “previously on” recap that was heavy on stuff from the season premiere, this episode saw the return of Pirate King Gorian Shard, who is still mad about his goons getting hassled by Din Djarin and Greef Karga a few episodes ago (not to mention Karga’s decision to gentrify Nevarro and kick out all of the old criminals that used to hang out there).
Unfortunately for Karga, Din Djarin never took him up on that offer to be his town’s lawman, which means Nevarro is pretty much completely defenseless when Karga’s ship drops in and starts blowing things up. Karga sends a message asking for help and then everybody just kind of runs out of town and starts walking through the Nevarro deserts as the pirates take over.
His message reaches Captain Teva, one of the “traffic cop” X-Wing pilots from much earlier in this series, who is now stationed at a swingin’ New Republic outpost on a tropical planet. Teva seems unusually worried to hear that something is up on Nevarro, since the planet has a history with Imperial occupation, but nobody else is particularly concerned—including none other than Star Wars Rebels friend Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios, canonically one of the very first people to join the Rebel Alliance.
Teva goes all the way to Coruscant to talk to Tim Meadows, who seems to be a former shot-caller in the Rebellion even though he’s now just some guy behind a desk, and their conversation about things happening on Nevarro draws the attention of none other than former (“former”) Imperial Officer Elia Kane, last seen brain-blasting Dr. Pershing a few episodes ago. Her vibe is even weirder here than it was there, but Tim Meadows just rolls with it and basically refuses to do anything. Another indication that the New Republic fully sucks at this point, just a few years after deposing the Emperor. No wonder the First Order is quietly able to assemble a massive army before too long.
Anyway, Teva then tracks down the Mandalorian covert by the big lake, thanks to his old Rebel buddy R5-D4 (remember when we talked about that during the premiere?), and he explains that Greef Karga is in trouble and nobody is willing to help. Din brushes him off, because it’s important to him to always be Too Cool, but as soon as Teva leaves he starts trying to convince the other Mandalorians to help. I like the argument he makes, that this is their chance to be heroes and find a place to live in the light rather than in a stupid cave next to a lake full of turtle monsters, but I really like that noted grump Paz Vizsla does a big “Greef Karga is a JERK and a lot of Mandalorians died protecting Grogu on Nevarro” just so he can surprise everyone by saying that he actually agrees that they should help.
The Mandalorians are supposed to be these great warriors, renowned throughout the galaxy, and this episode finally started to recognize that they’re better than just lonely mercenaries. Mandalorians should be able to hold their own against Jedi, they should be out in the galaxy wrecking shit—not hiding in a cave by Turtle Lake. With everyone in agreement, the Mandalorians quickly put together a plan (let the named characters do the hard work, let everyone else do everything else) and blast off to Nevarro.
Everything from here on out is a lot of fun, with Din blasting pirates in the air as Bo-Katan drops off Mandalorian SWAT teams down to the planet to kill pirates, and the episode keeps cutting back from cool air battles to cool land battles. Even the Armorer gets in on the action, beating a bunch of pirates to death with her hammer. It’s always very cool when she gets in on the action, particularly since it highlights that she’s not just in charge because she likes making helmets (and tortured metaphors about how we’re all like helmets, in a way).
The good guys win, Swamp Thing Captain Shard gets killed (probably), and Karga presents the heroic Mandalorians with a big tract of land—saying that they may no longer have a home planet, but they now have a home. I like it! It’s nice, classical Star Wars storytelling. Cartoonish bad guys attack innocent people, good guys say “hey, let’s be good guys!” and they save the day. What more do you need?
Well, there is more. The Armorer meets with Bo-Katan and asks her to remove her helmet, explaining that she has proven herself to both these hard-lined Mandalorians and the more freewheeling helmet-removing Mandalorians and therefore seems to be the best person to unite all Mandalorians together—especially since she also saw the fabled Mythosaur on Mandalore. The Armorer leads Bo-Katan back to the others, with her helmet off, and explains that she’s going to send Bo out into the galaxy to find other Mandalorians and convince them to retake their planet. Bo-Katan then gets a nice hero shot, once again establishing that this season has been more of her story than Din Djarin’s.
Another exciting new quest! Will this one also be abandoned as quickly as possible like the others? Maybe not, because in a pre-credits scene that feels like a post-credits scene, Teva stumbles onto a derelict Imperial Shuttle floating out in space. It turns out that it was being used as a New Republic prison transport that was carrying Moff Gideon, but all of the details about it are classified on New Republic computers. Hmmm! Teva’s droid sends in a scanner, and though they don’t see any sign of Gideon, there is evidence of Beskar armor residue. Then, in case you don’t get it, the guy on Teva’s radio says: “Are you saying Moff Gideon was taken by [dramatic pause]… Mandalorians?” Bum bum bum.
Stray observations
- I like that the IG-11 “statue” is still in the middle of the town, missing a bunch of parts. I thought that was teasing him coming back, but maybe that’ll happen later.
- I’m choosing to take it as a cute meta gag that Zeb was an obvious CG character even though all of Shard’s pirates seemed to be made with puppets and prosthetics, since everyone was a CG character on Rebels.
- The sequence of showing the pirates being all rowdy on Nevarro includes some of them getting drunk on green goo and knocking a big square pizza out of some poor guy’s hands.
- Din and Bo-Katan going after the engines of Shard’s ship felt like a mission out of a Rogue Squadron game. They should make more of those. (Star Wars: Squadrons was okay.)
109 Comments
you guys really need to proofread your articles. “Karga’s ship drops in and starts blowing things up. Karga sends a message asking for help”Lazy
I am all for rehabilitation, but perhaps former Imperials shouldn’t be working in the Republican army. Especially in such key posts.
It’s a plot flaw that has been bothering me so much. It’s just too easy.
Well, would you look at that, turns out they didn’t just randomly decide to focus an entire episode on Dr. Pershing for literally no reason like a whole bunch of people were whining about. Who would have thought?
that episode was one of the highlights of this season anyway. apart from it kinda interrupt Din and Bo’s story in a slightly jarring way, I’m not sure what all the whining is about
While watching that episode I thought it was setting up Pershing for the rest of the season, but now I wonder if that was a misdirect and it was actually setting up Kane instead, which is much more intersting.
I don’t get why nobody suspected Kane of doing that to Pershing when she was left alone in the control room, especially since she’s a former Imperial.
Mandalorians should be able to hold their own against Jedi, they should be out in the galaxy wrecking shit—not hiding in a cave by Turtle Lake.I’ve always put them a couple rungs below Jedi, in terms of average combat skill. Its a less extreme “Superman vs Batman” situation, the guy with superpowers and an incredible weapon just would normally not be too greatly troubled by the well trained guy with mundane weapons……but just like the “Superman vs Batman” scenario, it’s boring if the superpowered guy wins as expected, so Mandalorians tend to get the wins to prove how cool and awesome and badass and definitley not an author tract for hack writers who hate Jedi they are. It’s a thing you kinda get used to, but the general point is that they’re not quite at “space wizards with laser swords” tier, they’re just the group that, on average, comes the closest.This episode handled them well. They’re skilled, strong, quite badass fighters, but they’re not uber gods or anything. A heavy cannon with high ground and good cover is going to fuck them up just as much as it would anything else, their aim isn’t perfect, they can’t just win every fight they show up in with pure “I’m a Mandaloria fuck you” energy, a good ol’ flanking maneuver can still make their day a painful one.Also: I love love LOVED the Armorer in this episode. She’s always been very inscrutible, and even now, you’re not entirely sure what she’s up to. She seems more solidly on the side of the angels right now, and maybe a lot of her hardliner stuff was more “I need to keep the clan together” stuff, now that it’s less of a critical concern she’s softening and liberalizing a bit……. but still, you can’t be sure, can you…
The Mandalorians were certainly more competent in this episode than they were in the previous few, but they’re still not as formidable as Jango Fett was in the prequels like I think they should be.
I don’t think they should be, frankly.Jango Fett wasn’t “Random Mandalorian #6232″, he was explicitly hired by the Kaminoans to become the base for the clone troops because of his physical attributes and combat skills. At the very least, we should think of him being in the top 5% of Mandalorians, combat-wise, if not higher. Otherwise, why pay him so much money?The majority of the Mandalorians in this episode, though, are “Random Mandalorian #6232″. Not fated warriors of legend, not the pinnacle of the culture, not in peak physical form. They’re the Mandalorian equivalent of “just some guys”.So, still quite capable and strong, but still a notable step below the named heroes and iconic legends.
But for an entire culture dedicated to being warriors shouldn’t all the Random Mandalorians be more formidable, especially since these are the ones who have survived? I understand what you’re saying about how some will be better than others and maybe Jango is in the top 5%, but I wouldn’t expect there to be this much disparity between the top 5% and the 50th percentile Mandalorian. Compare the Mandalorians to the Spartans in ‘300′. These Mandalorians come across more like the guys who were on your high school baseball team who then drank too much beer after graduation and gained 60 lbs but still think of themselves as athletes.
Did they all survive or are they all foundlings?
Mmm, I see what you mean.We should also keep in mind that these Mandalorians haven’t exactly fought a lot of people in real, you know, fights. They’ve trained a lot, they’re great with their equipment, and they’ve been in some scraps, but they’ve mostly been in hiding. Meanwhile, the pirates? They’ve got shit formal training and no warrior culture to speak of. What they do have is a lot of experience, though, because “running around and shooting people” has been their life for a while. It stands to reason that they’d be able to put up a pretty good fight in the end, but even then, I’m not even sure if any of the Mandalorians died…
Jedi gained a huge power boost in the Expanded Universe, though. Same way Superman used to be a guy who leapt tall buildings and ran faster than a train, but writers ran out of ideas on how to use his limited power set, so they just kept making up new powers until he could fly, lift apartment buildings, run faster than the flash, and live forever. Now he’s basically a god because the mythology around him outpaced the common sense of writing to his abilities.Jedi are kind of the same way. Writers got bored with Jedi powers, so they kept inventing new Jedi powers because they didn’t want to work within the limits of their capacity. This creates sort of an opposite problem than you’re suggesting. It’s not that The Mandalorians get selectively power-boosted to make them more formidable against Jedi. It’s that the Jedi weren’t that formidable until writers just started treating them like D&D wizards.In the OT Force users just moved things with their minds, jumped high, and ran fast. Yoda took a lot of concentration and time to lift an X-wing out of some mud. Luke’s biggest power boost was force choking dudes and deflecting blaster bolts with his lightsaber (which is basically just moving fast). Palpatine shot lightning out of his hands and that was a huge deal.Go to the PT and Dooku can… move a slightly heavier thing with his mind and Yoda can catch lightning and he and Sidious can move an inexplicably numerous collection of things with his mind and every single Jedi is deflecting blaster bolts everywhere they go.Meanwhile, in the Expanded Universe, Force users are eating planets….Eating planets.It makes complete sense for a Mandalorian to put up a fight against a Jedi in the PT and OT because the Jedi aren’t living weapons, they’re just highly-trained melee fighters with limited telekinesis. But the EU basically broke the entire collective power levels of Jedi by giving them the ability to do absolutely anything they want.The fact that we’re treating Jedi like the OT versions again, where Ahsoka actually has to struggle in a one-on-one fight against some random Beskar-wielding combatant with battlefield awareness and discipline is probably where the Jedi should be dragged back down in order to tell these stories again in a way that the audience will care.
Meanwhile, in the Expanded Universe, Force users are eating planets….Eating planets.The fact that I know multiple EU Sith who’ve done that does lend some credence to your words :D.That said, this?The fact that we’re treating Jedi like the OT versions again, where Ahsoka actually has to struggle in a one-on-one fight against some random Beskar-wielding combatant with battlefield awareness and discipline is probably where the Jedi should be dragged back down in order to tell these stories again in a way that the audience will care.Granted, he wasn’t fighting to kill (but neither was she really), but it felt more one-sided than that, in Ahsoka’s favor. He pulled out some neat tricks to try to gain the upper hand, and she took advantage of her powers in clever ways to negate that.But yeah, I’m not saying Jedi are super-powerful in this, just that, on average, they should be assumed to have a notable edge on Mandalorians. Not an insurmountable advantage or anything, just “they’re going to have to be quite clever and work at it” more than anything.
Kind of related but there was a great comic which came out in the early 2000s from Wildstorm called StormWatch: Team Achilles in which the United Nations crisis response team frequently ends up fighting superheroes super powered beings.The point it makes early on in the series is that most superheroes are (by genre convention) just normal people who wake up one morning with super powers and have no training in combat and rely entirely on their powers, meaning they can be defeated in hand-to-hand combat if you know how to target their weaknesses
“Unfortunately for Karga, Din Djarin never took him up on that offer to be his town’s lawman, which means Nevarro is pretty much completely defenseless when Karga’s ship drops in and starts blowing things up. Karga sends a message asking for help…”So Karga is both the attacker and the defender at the same time?
“The enemy of thy enemy is… me?”
“I’m me?” – Jimbo Jones.
Hey don’t … jerk me around, maclunkey.
Zeb (!!!) was probably CGI because they couldn’t get his established range of expression using prosthetics and puppetry. Most of the “aliens” have visible human actor eyes or are just emotionless puppet heads (Trandoshans, Mon Cal.) Zeb’s huge yellow eyes would be a lot for a puppet to carry.It’s impressive how subtle they made Zeb’s CGI mannerisms. Since a lot of effort went into this cameo I’m hopeful they built him up for Ahsoka.
Yeah, my own thought was “NO WAY they put this much work into Zeb’s model for just a walk on cameo.”
I said that about BD-1 as well.
I’ve been noticing more and more another drawback of shooting on StageCraft. Any time there is a group of people shot together, they take up roughly the same amount of space as the size of the StageCraft “stage” is a limited size. The Turtle Lake beachfront, the Nevarro refugee group (they even walk very slowly so they don’t run out of room), the mechanic lady’s “garage”, the cave hideout in Obi Wan, etc. It doesn’t matter if the scene is in a mountain range, or a cave, or a city, the scenes are consistently shot in the same size space. Contrast this with how much better scenes from Andor look when the rebels are hiking through the mountains on the way to their heist and they are spaced out amongst the natural landscape.
i noticed this on ant man 3 as well. you can basically see the seams.
Oh God Quantumania in its entirely felt like the actors were plastered onto it. I don’t think there’s an issue with the CGI tho I just think at some point slapping actors on top of purple and pink gobblty goo looks fake af.
I had a similar experience during Thor 4 on Omnipotent City. It so heavily felt like the audience was CGI and that the group of them were just standing in a massive empty studio room with Russell Crowe sitting alone at the other end of the big empty room. Did I say big empty room yet?
It reminds me of classic Doctor Who, where indoor scenes tended to have everyone in shot, as if it was a stage play being filmed for the screen, and you could see characters waiting patiently to deliver their lines.
Yeah, it’s better than green screen, but still pretty obvious.
Yeah it was kind of weird that this amazingly large thriving town only had about 25 people in it, whether they were camping in the outskirts,or welcoming 20 mandalorians to their planet. I mean, hell, you can use Blender (a free 3d program) to digitally add some blurry people in the background if needed. Surely Disney could afford that for a few wide shots.
Yes this issue with scale made that scene towards the end silly, where Greef is ceding land of indeterminate size to the Mandalorians (is it the size of Long Island or the size of Texas??), but it seems like he could cede an entire hemisphere because the planet only seems to occupied by about 50 people.How much room do the Mandalorians need exactly?
The IRL Army needs a lot of space for field training, especially if live rounds are involved. Think of Fort Irwin in California — enough acreage for two full mechanized brigades to maneuver.Extrapolate from that, plus the likelihood Bo-Katan succeeds in recruiting more Mandalorian tribes (shouldn’t she need, like, the Darksaber to help with that?), and pretty soon Karga’s gonna regret his generosity.
Sure, the Mandalorians need extra space for training, but Navarro appears to be an Earth-sized planet containing one city with a population of about 200 people.Just seems like land isn’t exactly a scarce resource there.I was thinking the same thing about Greef regretting his decision. Just this one Mandalorian covert could easily conquer the planet if they wanted to, and now Greef just invited dozens or hundreds of other coverts to show up. They’ll be living under the constant threat of a Mandalorian military dictatorship.
Actually now I’m curious as to what happens to the 3 “foundling” dragon thingies that the Mandalorians adopted. Like do they bring them to this new planet and all hell breaks loose because there’s no natural predators to keep them in check?
It really is amazing how this show is cool and fun from scene to scene, but the most basic elements of the story make no sense, and nothing ever holds up to scrutiny.To your point, what was the long term plan with those baby bird monsters? Won’t they all grow up into vicious child-snatching predators? I can’t imagine the soccer moms Navarro will be cool with that even if they are technically considered foundlings by the Mandalorians.
Nevarro had those flying reptavian monsters from season one that attacked Greef Karga, when Grogu healed him. So I suspect the inhabitants of Nevarro have at least experience with that kind of stuff.
So, that kind of leaves me sad, I kind of want the show to turn into that early Simpsons episode where they keep having to import larger and more dangerous non-native animals to control the population of the previous non-native animal.“Ok, Mando…NOW you need to go off to Bahuuta and bring back a mating pair of Giant Sand Gorillas to deal with the Flying Shrike Lizards.”“(sigh) this is the way.”
Oh, I like that, they could just do an escalating series of creatures for Ragnar Vizsla to get carried away by each episode. Very Perils of Penelope type vibes.
It seemed obvious that the Mandalorians plan to raise those 3 baby dragons into adult dragons that have imprinted onto the Mandalorians so they can ride them into battle.
We already know that those 3 baby dragons will fit into Boka’s ship, so she can go back and bring them to Navaro.As far as there not being any natural predators on Navaro to keep them in check, it appeared from the previous episode that the Mandos plan to raise them so that by the time they become adult dragons they will have imprinted onto the Mandos so as to let them ride them into battle.
The IRL Army actually has to take personnel safety into account. These Mandalorians were literally shooting at each other with flamethrowers last week…
Fair point. Of course, another reason the covert was shooting blindly into the lake was maybe to deter another Giant Turtle visit. Let’s hope Nevarre doesn’t have oversized predators…but this being Star Wars, I’m sure that’s a vain hope.
Every Manadalorian location be like
Jesus, imagine not being able to enjoy fantasy shows and films because you’re thinking this way
Did the pirate guy buy his ship from Chris Foss?
“…cede all land from the Western lava flats to Bulloch Canyon” was a very, very nice tribute to the 1st (live action) on-screen Mandalorian.
That episode was fun as hell! It really didn’t seem as short as it was, which is a fun bonus.- I love that that pirate captain is just Davy Jones. Why is he Davy Jones?? Oh well, RIP Space Davy Jones.- I saw a Lasat walking up and was like “oh cool, a live-action Lasat! Wow, they look better in live-action by far. I kind of miss Zeb.” and then it was Zeb!! That’s pretty amazing. Very curious if he’ll show up in Ahsoka for the Rebels reunion.- Star Wars has always been wildly inconsistent with travel times, especially in the old EU, but I feel like far more time passed than what was shown. Greef sent a message to the Ranger, who traveled from the Outer Rim to the Galactic Center, then traveled back to the Outer Rim to seek out the Mandos, who then went to Navarro. That should have taken months, easily.- The guest stars in this episode were fantastic. Tim Meadows!? Amazing. And another Deborah Chow character! I’d like to think her Jedi survived the 15 blaster bolts and that’s her hiding peacefully.- During the Coruscant episode a few weeks ago, people insisted to me that Kane was perhaps the actual good one and was working for the New Republic for real. I feel like this episode kind of proves she’s absolutely not. Her sketchy looks, her reverse psychology, and the way she holds herself are just not right. Giving her major side-eye until we know what her deal is.- I love that Skippy just broadcast the super-secret Mando location out. What a dummy.- The Mandalorians seem really easy to rally. Viszla was doing that trick “Why should we help them?” speech, and they were all grumbling and “Yeah, boo, people suck!”, and then when Viszla was like, “Because we’re Mandos! Let’s go!” and they’re all “Yeah woooo let’s get ‘em!” Bo should have zero problems getting the rest to come back if they’re all like that.- When does my Anzellan show air? I could watch them forever.- The pirate first mate that got away for some reason was like, “I’m on the N1!” before anyone else got there. No duh you’re on the N1, it’s the only thing you’re fighting.- I thought for sure they were going to hot-drop the Mandos onto the corsair and capture it. Why did they not do that?? That would have helped defend Navarro down the line.- Is all of their armor not beskar? I thought it was, but a few times some went down after getting hit in the plate.- I’m really enjoying the Armorer loosening up a bit. She’s such a badass, and basically declaring Bo the leader and letting her go sans helmet made me very happy.- THE R2 SCANNER CAN DETACH AND FLOAT!? That was one of the coolest/cutest gadgets we’ve seen in a while.- So the Mandos are totally being set up in the Moff Gideon thing, right? I feel like that’s his revenge against Bo and Din.- I’m still not fond of the New Republic being portrayed as uncaring doofus bureaucrats, but I guess that’s how the First Order happens so it tracks.
– Star Wars has always been wildly inconsistent with travel times, especially in the old EU, but I feel like far more time passed than what was shown. Greef sent a message to the Ranger, who traveled from the Outer Rim to the Galactic Center, then traveled back to the Outer Rim to seek out the Mandos, who then went to Navarro. That should have taken months, easily.Hyperspace moving at the speed of plot, as usual. Attack of the Clones was even worse, with Obi-Wan traveling *beyond* the Outer Rim to Kamino and back in a…week? Tops?
I’m convinced it takes no more than 12 hours to travel from Coruscant to the Outer Rim. An X-Wing doesn’t have a bathroom or a kitchen. How do you pee and eat? If it only takes like a day then maybe pilots are in the habit of splitting the journey into two hyperspace trips and then we just never see Obi-Wan stop on some planet for a burger on the way to Kamino.
Space suit had this design for astronaut to pee. They probably incorporate that to xwing flight suit. Pooping however, let’s just say appa took a big dump at Corruscant
The Air and Space Museum in DC has a Hall of Astronaut suits and they all have fecal containment systems.
I think some of the Mandalorian beskar is cheaper quality bc it sounds like the Empire took most of it after the Purge.
It’s probably not all beskar, no. Din only had a few pieces of beskar armor before he got it from the Client, after all.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they gradually upgrade the armor to beskar as they find some.
Great points. On the travel some of the explanation goes back to old EU stuff of hyperdrive ratings. So an X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon have super fast ones, where as your puddle jumper has a much slower one.As to the beskar on the Mandalorians I think most only have a chest piece and a helmet. the Only reason Din has a complete set is from the beskar he got for initially turning Grogu in.As to the beskar in the shuttle, I think it would either be that Gideon still has some Dark Troopers with beskar on them, or that it was Mandalorians but they went after him for revenge of the destruction of Mandalore.
– So the Mandos are totally being set up in the Moff Gideon thing, right? I feel like that’s his revenge against Bo and Din.
That, or it’s just a sign that the Mandalorian diaspora, acting as mercenaries, take any job that pays regardless of who is paying. And that’ll be something that Bo & Co. have to address, with some Mandos likely ending up on the wrong side. Mando fighting Mando, this cannot be! Much drama!
It could also just be Gideon pulling strings and being evil. It’s kind of his thing.
It could be both.
I agree, this was definitely a fun episode. For those of us who like to turn our brains down (not off) a little to enjoy this serialized Space Western, this was a real treat. From Tava the Good Space Cop (that’s right, he’ll go up the chain of command until he’s forced to circumvent it!) to Mandalorians kicking ass and taking names (the Armorer just wailin’ on pirates with her hammer and tongs, like damn) to Bo-Katan being set up as the next big thing, this had some nice storytelling moments.This has a lot of cheese, sure, but also a fair amount of cool aesthetics. I agree that they should have captured the Corsair (I was calling it a Thanos-class ship because the utilization of the guns reminded me of Endgame, and Vane reminded me a lot of one of Thanos’ lieutenants, heh…) but hey, big explosions and crashing ships are also fun.I rather like that the supposed main character of this series wasn’t the end-all be-all of the actual fighting and victory. Sure, he contributed, but it was a team effort.I enjoy this show. It’s fun.
“RIP Space Davy Jones.”Spacey Jones was right there
Kevin Spacey Jones?
Im pretty interested to see where this all goes. It all seems pretty bleak because this is heading for the future we saw in the Sequels…Which means the likely fall of the Mandalorians, (unless they were part of the magical reinforcements at the end of Rise of Skywalker) Another fall of the Jedi and Grogu unless like with the Mandos they are part of those reinforcements. What does it mean for Ashoka and even Boba fett at this point.
Not necessarily. Mandalore tends to stay out of galactic politics unless they’re building an empire of their own. They’d likely be one of those “leave them to their own devices for now” factions for the First Order.
There may or may not have been Mandalorians at the controls, but Mandalorian fighter craft were part of the Galaxy Fleet.
“You, Bo Katan, must reunite all the stray Mandalorians out there and bring them here, so they can join a cult that doesn’t let them take their helmets off.”“Jesus Christ just one stupid fucking job after another”
Wasn’t she trying to do exactly that when she had the Darksaber? And wouldn’t this task be a lot easier if she borrowed it from Din?
Just borrowing doesn’t work, as Bo-Katan found out the first time.
OK, but then she should bring Din along; even just standing there with the Darksaber would help her recruiting drive.* Grogu’s on a safer planet, well-protected by the covert.* Unless Bo-Katan is up to something.
“Also, when you recruit these stray Mandalorians to join our helmet-wearing cult, make sure you have helmet off when you do it.”
Unfortunately for Karga, Din Djarin never took him up on that offer to be his town’s lawman, which means Nevarro is pretty much completely defenseless when Karga’s ship drops in and starts blowing things up. Karga sends a message asking for help and then everybody just kind of runs out of town and starts walking through the Nevarro deserts as the pirates take over.I didn’t watch the episode yet but I’m pretty sure this can’t possibly be correct. He’s attack himself?
Mandalorian tactics continue to be dumb. Everyone walking as a squad on the ground. Hello, you have jet packs! Maybe have some dudes on top of buildings. Then one dude yelled “we’re boxed in!” during the ambush and I yelled at my tv “YOU HAVE JET PACKS!” And when the heavy gun is firing from above maybe scatter USING YOUR JET PACKS instead of sitting in one place to be bombarded.
Can anyone explain to me how the entire galaxy suddenly lost the ability to use contractions?
I cannot get over the fact that Paz Vizsla shares his name with a breed of dog.
Gina Carano as Cara Dune, huh? Good job, good effort.
I feel like this whole series is super boring when it focuses on Din and Grogu. Once the good side characters come in (Bo-Katan, Greef, Moff Gideon) then the show gets more interesting. Bo-Katan has way better action scenes and is a character that is actually interesting. Din just has shiny armor.
Man I know it was Nonso Anozie playing Shard, but he really really sounded like peak John Noble.
More og battlefront than rogue squadron imo
Why are space derelicts always so scary? Great scene.
All derelicts are scary.
Teva finding a shard of beskar in the derelict made me think of Richard Dreyfus pulling a great white tooth out of the shipwreck for some reason
It feels like Bo-Katan is fully taking over being The Mandalorian. I miss the title referring to Pedro Pascal. I miss him. He’s not gonna take his helmet off again is he. Blugh. It’s starting to feel like a sound-alike could play Din at this point. Or just mix together words and phrases from old episodes (kid, don’t, blaster, kill) on a mixer to put together this supporting role.
It’s fair since Din Djarin took over Book of Boba Fett
Mando can remove his helmet whenever he wants. He just has to go back to the Mando planet, bathe in the water, and he’s redeemed again. It’s liking sinning and going to confessional.
After they let the last surviving pirate guy escape , they had to know that he would go back and report what happened to the pirate leader. So it seems pretty irresponsible that Karga had not spent every minute in between calling for reinforcements and putting together an army to protect their planet from the attack that he had to know was coming.
goddamn, this season has just been bland as hell to me. feels like the two driving forces of fun in the past two seasons – getting Grogu to the finish point of his quest, and seeing weird new worlds/aliens every week – are both gone because of the baffling BoBF asspull they did. now it’s just three episodes on a dull-as-dishwater desert planet, or Navarro getting attacked by these goofy and very unthreatening piratesit’s been kind of wild watching Bad Batch (the underdog/overlooked/not getting reviewed anywhere I look animated show) completely outdo Mando, the big-budget flagship show, every week for the past few weeks. maybe now the former is finished on an absolute heater of a finale, Mando will look a little better without the competition – but I doubt it the way this season is goingwas cool seeing Zeb though! needed him to throw in a “Karabast” to really sell it
Yeah, it’s jarring that Bad Batch airs the same day and one can see the difference in quality every week. Ill keep watching mandalorian, because spacecowboy, but I really look forward to Wednesday evening tv because of bad batch.
Hints of Ukraine in the plot. The Empire is threatening to get a foothold but they’re not part of the treaty so the Republic is reluctant to help.Of course, here, it’s Greef who’s waffling on the treaty.
lolwhat
Really?Some think the US shouldn’t get involved in Russia’s war on Ukraine because they’re not in NATO. The problem is if Ukraine falls it will get worse elsewhere.Tim Meadows thinks the Republic shouldn’t help Greef because they’re not part of the Alliance treaty. The problem is, as spelled out on the show, is that the Empire can get a foothold there and make things worse elsewhere.
Ted Lasso being on at the same time weekly is really hurting my commitment to The Mandalorian right now. I’m solid 3 weeks behind. Kind of a cruel twist of fate after that other big genre show Pedro Pascal was in recently aired their finale the same time slot as the Oscars.
Same time? What? Watch one after the other fercryingoutloud.
It was funny that HBO rescheduled The Last of Us earlier in the season so it wouldn’t go up against the Superbowl, but when the finale was going up against the Oscars they said “Bah, let it ride.”Apparently it worked – TLOU finale got the highest ratings of the season.
“Same time”? Ummm….you do understand how streaming works, right?
The Mandalorian was a much better show than The Mandalorians.
My only gripe about these SW shows is that I wish the composers would try to sound more like the John Williams SW music. Williams music is such an integral part of Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved some of the music in the SW shoes, like the tracks in Andor, but once in a while I’d love to hear the SW fanfare music again or something similar.
The second I saw Meadows I turned the show off and I’m just done. As if the Amy Sedaris role wasn’t bad enough. I”m about over all disney+ crap.
I didn’t used to care about the Star Wars universe but The Mandalorian and the assorted cartoons have totally made me care. It was important to me that they step up and rescue the townspeople. I was so happy when they did.
Just great having a Star Wars show that knows what Star Wars is again.
“The Mandalorians are supposed to be these great warriors, renowned throughout the galaxy, and this episode finally started to recognize that they’re better than just lonely mercenaries. Mandalorians should be able to hold their own against Jedi, they should be out in the galaxy wrecking shit—not hiding in a cave by Turtle Lake.”The crazy cult Mandalorians aren’t the only Mandalorians. Bo-Katan’s old crew demonstrated their effectiveness.
Since it doesn’t get covered anywhere, using this space to say this season of Bad Batch was excellent. Definitely check it out
that finale was unbelievable. i was yelling at my TV
I’m way behind on Batch but I’ve been enjoying it so far… just got through the episode where the Imperial Senate is debating funding the stormtrooper army and that one Clone gives up the admiral for firing on Kamino — before getting killed, of course. I am wondering how Rex went from helping exfil clone defectors to living in an old Republic tank with Wolfe and Gregor.
In the mid-credits scene, when the droid activated its probe and it took off, for a few seconds that probe looked a bit like Marvin the Martian.
Can we get these credits updated? Sackhoff is literally in the main cast this season, Weather is a guest star, and the less said about Carano the better.
I will not stand for this Jawa erasure
I did like the Salacious B. Crumb species tipping off the Mandalorians as to which direction to go to find the pirates.
I was worried they were going to blow up space traffic cop in that end scene…phew! So funny that Shirley Henderson is still voicing those little Anzellan guys (after Babu Frink)…she’s a really good actress! You probably remember her as Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter.
So when Elia Kane “brain blasts” Dr. Pershing when she was left alone in the control room, didn’t anyone suspect her? She’s just back to work as if nothing happened.
I kind of like that Elia Kane and Moff Gideon are slipping through so many cracks so easily due primarily to plain old government bureaucracy. It sort of mirrors our failed banks situation. (“How could this happen? Oh, negligent bureaucracy. Again.”) It does add a bit of realism and relatability to the story.
Is it me, or did it look like Carl Weathers dropped a bunch of weight in the scene right after the battle ended? (When he awarded the Mandalorians the tract of land)
I thought the same thing. He looked downright skinny.