THE MANDALORIAN SPOILER Review: Episodes 2×03 and 2×04- “The Heiress/The Siege”

The Mandalorian (2×03 and 2×04)- “The Heiress/The Siege”

Written by:         Jon Favreau

Directed by:       Bryce Dallas Howard (2×03) Carl Weathers (2×04)

Episodes three and four, here’s hoping more happens than the last episode.

The Heiress

The episode opens with the Razor Crest limping to Trask. Mando basically has to drop out of orbit like a rock and then hope his braking thrusters work and it almost works.  They land on the pad and then gracefully fall into the ocean. That’s probably going to drive up repair costs.

But it’s okay since the Frog woman is happily reunited with her mate. Well that’s good, now maybe Mando can get some answers.  But first… he’s being spied on by Sasha Banks which gives me an excuse to do this:

Mando heads to the inn that the Frog man pointed out and he buys a bowl of stew for The Child and some information for himself. The innkeeper points him to some Quarren fishermen that will let him book passage on their ship.  While on the ship he offers to show Mando and the kid how one of the larger beasts eats.

This turns out to be a trap and might spell watery doom for our heroes but in fly three mandalorian warriors to take care of the situation!  This is great! Not only are Mando and the kid not fish food but he’s found other mandalorians!  Things are going so well, the kid might be reunited with the Jedi by the end of this episode! I wonder…

… The mandalorians take off their helmets. Great, more poseurs! But hey! Katee Sackhoff and Sasha Banks and some dude that I don’t think I’ve seen in anything else! That’s something.

Considering the last time we saw someone in mandalorian armor they turned out to be a fake, Mando prepares to take back some more armor when he asks who they are. The leader (Sackhoff) says her name is Bo-Katan and the armor has been in her family for generation and it turns out Mando is one of the Children of the Watch, a group of religious minded mandalorians seeking at return to the old ways aka “The Way of the Mandalore.”

So Mando leaves Bo-Katan and the others behind but they follow him because they need his help to seize weapons from the Imperial Remnant in the hopes of raising an army to her banner to retake the homeworld and seat a new Mandalore on the throne. (A new Mandalore that looks a lot like her, I reckon.)

Mando’s even less receptive to her idea of retaking the homeworld than he was to them calling him a zealot and he reminds them that the Empire glassed the planet and now it’s cursed. No one that goes there comes back alive. Besides, he’s already bound by honor to take The Child to the Jedi.

Bo promises to help him on his quest if he helps her on hers first. He agrees to help them but first he take The Child to the Frog family and they agree to babysit. The next morning they jet pack onto the ship and seeing mandalorians in action is pretty damn cool.  Quickly enough, they take the cargo hold and if like Mando you thought that was all Bo-Katan had planned you’re mistaken.  She plans to take the whole ship, don’t you just love when people that talk about unity are completely upfront with you?

So they battle their way up to the bridge but after a call with Moff Gideon the captain has killed the pilots and started a suicide dive. While Mando and Koska Reeves (Sasha Banks) right the ship, Bo asks where Moff Gideon is and if he has the Darksaber. To which he replies, “If you’re asking, you already know.” He then bites down on a suicide pill.  So this is where Mando and Bo part ways but she at least keeps her word now that they’re done. He’s to seek out a Jedi by the name of Ahsoka Tano in the City of Calodan on the planet of Corvus and tell her Bo-Katan sent him.

Well it wasn’t easy but he got a lead on a Jedi and when he meets back up with the Frog Family the kid’s at least learned not to eat new friends.  When he returns to the Razor Crest he sees that was about the limits of his luck. The dock workers didn’t really do much more than fill up the tank for him.

But that’s how it goes.  Off to Corvus!

The Siege

Or maybe not.  The ship’s barely holding together so after unsuccessfully trying to talk the kid through some repair work they head off to Nevarro.

On Nevarro, it seems a group of pickpockets and petty thieves have squatted in the lair of Mando’s covert. They’re found by the new marshal of Nevarro, Cara Dune…

I’ve always wanted to be arrested. 

They’re welcomed back to Nevarro with open arms and promises of repairs by Greef and Cara.  Things seem much busier and happier on Nevarro, and they’ve even turned the Client’s safehouse into a school. They leave the kid at the school and you should know by now there’s no such thing as a free lunch (other than the blue cookies The Child uses the Force to take from some kid) and there’s definitely no such thing as free repairs.

They need Mando’s help clearing out the last of the Imperial presence on the planet.  They press the blue guy from the pilot into service to take them to the base and after creative use of his Jet Pack, Mando lets them in the back door.  From there the plan is pretty simple, shut down the reactor cooling system for the back and let the lava take care of the rest.

However, on the way out they find out why there’s still an Imperial presence on Nevarro.  They’re running some sort of scientific research. We also find out why they after The Child in the first place, since they seem to be creating something using his blood because of his M-count.  Even better, judging by the com logs they learn that Moff Gideon is still alive and he is still after the Child. 

After a firefight, Mando heads back to town by jetpack to get the kid while the others commandeer a troop transport to escape.  After some speeder bike and TIE Fighter pursuit they reunite with Mando in the new repaired Razor Crest and the base explodes.  Mando and the kid call it a day and it’s for the best that they head to Corvus to meet that Jedi now.

The New Republic shows up a bit later to ask about what happened and Greef’s not terribly helpful.  Neither is Cara but all the same, the New Republic pilot offers her a chance to return service in a new way, as a New Republic Marshal.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

Well, except for the tracking device one of Greef’s dockworkers place on the Razor Crest for Moff Gideon, that is.

Much better! Much better this time around.  No filler to in sight and plenty of questions were answered in favor of new ones.  Mando being part of a fundamentalist sect (for lack of a better term) of mandalorian culture not only clears up why he’s so hardcore about his helmet when others aren’t but give his character a new spin as he now finds that he’s going to likely be alone even amongst his own people.

I really liked Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan (I understand that she’s actually reprising the role from the cartoons) and her mandalorian cohorts were good in action.  I’m sure as the mandalorian reunification story starts moving to the forefront that Bo and her faction will be very important and judging by how focused she is on becoming Mandalore herself that when that time come it might be a problem for Mando.

The Siege was just as much fun and while it seemed like a bit of a filler episode there were plenty of revelations that went all the way back and a whole new brewing problem for Mando.  I guess it might also be the first hints of what to come with talk of a new “Order” so maybe we’ll see more of that as time goes.

I also like the New Republic’s appearance feeling more and more like signs of creeping civilization in westerns (usually represented by expanding railroads and telegraph lines in such stories) it grounds things in a way. The frontier won’t be the frontier forever.

Yeah, that was what I signed on for.  See you next time for “The Jedi” and “The Tragedy.”

The Heiress:

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The Siege:

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Things We Learned:

1. Mando was taken in by a fundamentalist sect of mandalorians called “The Children of the Watch.”
2. He’s made contact with Bo-Katan of Clan Kryze, Bo-Katan seeks the Darksaber in a bid to reunite the clans and claim the title Mandalore to reclaim their homeworld.
3. Moff Gideon is alive and still attempting to reclaim The Child.
4. The Imperial Remnant is experimenting with The Child’s blood.
5. Mando is seeking out a surviving Jedi named Ahsoka Tano.

Questions:

1. Is that only a fraction of Bo-Katan’s supporters? (I hope so, they’ll need more than three people to reclaim a world.)
2. Is Mandalore truly cursed or even glassed? Bo-Katan seems to have her doubt.
3. How big is the Imperial faction and is Moff Gideon the leader of it or does he answer to some? Snoke perhaps?
4. Will Cara take the offer from the New Republic?