We’re finally getting to he real meat of The Mandalorian’s story. The Mandalorian has his bounty and he made it off the planet. Now, he just has to give it to Werner Herzog and get his money. That’s it, folks. Show’s over, it’s been a fun ride. I wonder what strange creature he’ll have to track down next season. Yeah OK, we all knew this wasn’t going to be the end of the story. Just in case we didn’t, the show telegraphs it from moment one. As The Mandalorian heads back to turn in the bounty, we get lots of shots of the baby looking extra cute. When one comes right after Greef Carga mentions the possibility of The Client eating it or hanging it on his wall, you know the baby isn’t staying on this planet.
The show drags out the reversal much longer than I thought it would. It’s easy to imagine a Star Wars story where the hero looks around the room, doesn’t like what he sees and cancels the deal. That’s not what The Mandalorian does. Instead, the show gives us a full Han Solo-style character arc in under 40 minutes. It’s a satisfying one too, though the beginning of it is painful to watch. As The Mandalorian turns the baby over to the client, the baby looks confused and scared. It’s looking to The Mandalorian for help, not realizing that he’s sending it to its probable doom. This is how you show a character at his lowest point and instill a sense of disgust in the audience. Here we have the cutest creature in the universe, who saved his life by the way, calling out for help, and The Mandalorian ignores it.
Pedro Pascal (via Lucasfilm/Disney)
He takes his payment, a giant case full of Beskar steel, and leaves. The whole time, I’m hoping he’ll turn back and slam the payment down on the table and take the kid. He doesn’t do that. Instead, he takes the steel to the secret underground Mandalorian armory. There’s so much worldbuilding crammed into this one scene, I was in awe. We learn that there was a great purge at one point, sometime after Order 66, when the Empire nearly wiped out the Mandalorians. As a result, many Mandalorians think it’s shameful that this one would take a job from anyone formerly in the Empire and accept payment in plundered steel branded with the imperial insignia. Those beliefs aren’t the dominant ones though, and the armorer sticks up for him. They all need to take jobs to survive. And since there is no Empire anymore, what does it matter where your clients used to work?
It’s interesting that the Mandalorians all where their face-covering helmets and have a religious compulsion to never take off their armor. We’ve seen Mandalorians in Star Wars canon that don’t wear the armor. In the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, we meet a few Mandalorians who take off the armor when they’re not in battle. I wonder if that’s a function of how religious a person is. Or if it’s a more recent development brought on by the Empire’s purge. In any case, The Mandalorian gets his shiny new chrome armor. Now, he just wants to wash his hands of the thing he did to get it.
Carl Weathers (via Lucasflim/Disney)
He refuses Greef’s offers of vacations and bathhouses, and accepts a job that will take him far away. Look, as painful as it was to watch him turn his back on the baby, we all still knew there was no way he was going on that job. He gets on his ship, sees the handle the baby was playing with and realizes he misses it. He’s grown soft on the kid and didn’t like the way no one would tell him what they were going to do with it. Though after spying on The Client, he has an idea. The Client tells someone to extract some material from the baby. That doesn’t sound good. The Mandalorian breaks in, and we get a scene that’s basically Star Wars Batman. Stormtroopers are walking nervously through dark hallways only to be grabbed and taken out by a Mandalorian in the shadows.
He finds the baby being tended to by Dr. Pershing. Strangely, Pershing’s first response is to beg The Mandalorian not to kill the child. He also claims to have protected the child, and kept it alive. He’s clearly working for The Client and his stormtroopers, but is it possible he’s not entirely on the same page as them? I’m guessing this isn’t the last we’ll see of him. The rest of the episode is a chaotic, harrowing fight scene. It might be the best of the show so far. The Mandalorian uses all the gadgets at his disposal to take out room after room of stormtroopers, and it’s just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
The fight continues after he escapes too. By rescuing the baby, he broke the Bounty Hunter’s Code. At the bar where Greef Carga hands out the jobs, a device carried by every bounty hunter flashes red. The Mandalorian is their next target. They ambush him outside his ship, and it’s time for another old west town shootout. The Mandalorian dives behind cover with the baby and manages to take out a decent number of bounty hunters on his own. They’re shooting from everywhere, though, including the tops of buildings. It doesn’t look good, and the way the baby coos when The Mandalorian accepts that he’s probably going to die is heartbreaking. That moment is what makes the rescue so unexpected and triumphant. The other Mandalorians fly in and take out the bounty hunters, allowing our Mandalorian to escape. (We’re going to need some names soon.)
(Via Lucasfilm/Disney)
Before he can take off, there’s one last Fistful of Dollars-inspired shootout between The Mandalorian and Greef. The Mandalorian fills the room with steam, allowing him to dodge Greef’s blaster fire. One well-placed shot puts Greef on his back. The Mandalorian takes off with the baby, earning a salute from another Mandalorian with a jetpack. We all know he’ll have one of those before the season’s over. The show even leaves us with a minor cliffhanger. The blaster shot didn’t kill Greef. It was blocked by a piece of Beskar steel with the Imperial insignia on it. (That’s where the Fistful of Dollars connection comes in.) Now where could he have gotten that?
The Mandalorian has been getting better with each subsequent episode. Now, we’re just getting to what I assume is the main thrust of this season’s story. The Mandalorian betrayed everyone he was working for. He’s being chased across the galaxy carrying some precious cargo that everyone wants to get their hands on. That’s a great story for a Star Wars TV show right there. Beyond the effects, the fight scenes and the fun western homages though, the show’s greatest asset so far is its willingness to take its time. In any other show, these last three episodes would be one pilot. Instead, The Mandalorian took its time and got us invested in the relationship between the bounty hunter and the baby. If that hadn’t happened, him turning the baby over to The Client wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. Sure, this episode’s character arc was predictable, but it worked anyway because the show took the time to connect us with these characters. Now that the story’s really getting going, I hope the show remembers that.
The Mandalorian streams Fridays on Disney+
Previously on The Mandalorian
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