Summary: Mando and Bo Katan head to Plazir-15 to get Bo Katan's army but they are diverted by the planet's rulers who want help for their malfunctioning droids. Mando and Bo Katan track the malfunction to Helgait, who is a Separatist. The rulers allow them to meet the Mandalorians and Bo Katan challenges Axe to a duel for leadership of the army. Bo Katan wins. Mando surrenders the darksaber to her.
The Good: This episode has some decent references to the prequel movies with the presence of battle droids, separatists, and a mention of Count Dooku. It makes sense that separatist loyalists would still be around, and I appreciate that the show touched on this idea. The final scenes of the episode had some good stuff to them. Everything that came before was useless filler, but the ending had enough plot relevance to keep me engaged. Bo Katan fighting Axe was decent fun, and it felt triumphant to see her back on top after how miserable and alone she was at the start of the season. The Bad: From the first minute, this was a bad episode. The opening sequence is intended to reintroduce Axe and his group of Mandalorians, but the sequence is really bad. We're thrust into a random situation where a boy has run away with a girl and has to be retrieved. The show actually attempts to flesh out this relationship, and it does so with some of the most disjointed and clunky dialogue I've ever heard, voiced by voice actors who are doing a terrible job. On top of that, the introduction of the Mandalorians is also awful. The dialogue is again terrible, completely lacking in subtlety with characters simply saying everything that the writers want us to know. Lines like "we're privateers, individuals for hire" and "we are [honourable] kid, all it takes are a few credits" are so cheesy and predictable, illustrating their point without a shred of subtlety. And this is not just localized to the opening scene. The whole episode is written with spotty dialogue like this. The main story is the purest definition of filler and a waste of my time. The Plazir-15 plot is filler because if you remove it from the show, absolutely nothing is lost. Bo Katan and Mando could have easily gone straight to Axe without any issue and nothing would have changed at all. Instead, the rulers of Plazir-15 are inserted into the story as a needless "obstacle", providing a random task for Mando and Bo Katan to complete, a task that I have zero investment in, wasting my time until these two inevitably complete the mission so they can move on to the important stuff. The entire story was a yawnfest. We get a sloppily executed mystery story, and it is painfully bland because it's one of those stories that gives you no reason to emotionally invest and tries to make up for it by throwing in a bunch of random plot. It doesn't work at all. The Helgait twist is extremely predictable (just look at his name, for god's sake), and it adds nothing of note to the show since separatists have played no role in this series up until now. It feels more like a poorly hidden Easter Egg instead of something interesting in the world. The rulers of Plazir-15 are terrible. Jack Black and Lizzo completely took me out of the episode, and it feels like these characters only exist to justify these cameos. They were boring and nothing meaningful was explored with them at all. The planet of Plazir-15 could be a good opportunity to explore a different society in this world with unique living conditions, but this episode does not even attempt to explore any of the deeper ideas behind this story. That's very disappointing. Oh, and we get a dumb scene where Grogu gets knighted. I literally could not care less. The ending of the episode sees Bo Katan get the darksaber back, and I could not be more disappointed with how this happened. Mando is able to give it back to her through the silliest of technicalities which makes the culture behind the darksaber seem like a joke. It also raises the question of why Bo Katan didn't just fight Mando and have Mando throw the fight so she could get it back. Furthermore, this cheap technicality concludes the arc of Mando having the darksaber in such a disappointing way. Mando getting the darksaber for himself was a pivotal moment in season 2, and now it has been undone in the most uninteresting way imaginable with minimal conflict or drama. That's a damn shame. With Grogu retrieved again and the darksaber back with Bo Katan, season 2's ending feels almost completely pointless now. It hasn't even been a full season since then, and we are already back to the status quo for Mando and Grogu. The Unknown: Was Bo Katan's army the group that freed Gideon? Was that one of the jobs that they did? Is Bo Katan going to keep the darksaber for good now? Best Moment: Bo Katan fighting Axe was the one moment that felt like it had actual stakes. Character of the Episode: Bo Katan. Conclusion: This is what I don't want to see from "The Mandalorian". 90% of this episode was spent on a meaningless filler side story, and the other 10% was a poorly written, disappointing resolution to a long-running story thread. With only two episodes left in the season, we desperately need to see something better from this show. Score: 43
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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