The Mandalorian seems to be telling a few different stories this season. Or, perhaps more accurately, maybe it’s been telling several different stories all along and that’s just now becoming noticeable. There’s obviously the story of Din Djarin and Grogu, but in some respects that story appears to be over — or at least to have entered a long plateau. They’re together as father and son. There is no suspense about that anymore (even if it did get resolved in an episode of another series). There’s also the larger story of the Mandalorians, their troubled past and possible future — a future that increasingly looks to be in the hands (gauntlets?) of Bo-Katan after this episode.
A third story is starting to come into focus, too. One of the great unaddressed questions of the sequel trilogy: Why did the New Republic last for less than a human lifetime? A kid born ten years before the events of Return of the Jedi, for instance, wouldn’t even be particularly deep into middle age by the time Rey and Finn started hanging out. So what went wrong? This season keeps coming up with a single answer: bureaucracy. It’s what led Dr. Pershing, a truly reformed ex-Imperial, to pursue his research through extra-legal means, and it’s what allowed Elia Kane to hide in plain sight after faking her way through Imperial rehabilitation. (She may have fought for the Empire, but her paperwork checks out, so she can be trusted.)
In “Chapter 21: The Pirate,†we meet Colonel Tuttle (Tim Meadows, always a welcome face), an official who would love to honor Captain Teva’s (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) request that the New Republic come to Nevarro’s aid … but he just doesn’t have the manpower — sorry. And as for Teva’s theory that something fishy is going on in the Outer Rim and that it may be related to Moff Gideon? That just seems unlikely, by Tuttle’s reckoning. Sure, Tuttle has Elia in his ear discouraging any kind of intervention, but he’d probably come to the same conclusion even without her input. Also, Nevarro never signed the charter, and Tuttle already has a backlog. His hands are tied! “This isn’t a rebellion anymore,†Tuttle tells Teva. “We have a structure.†The First Order might have used force in its assault on the New Republic, but laziness and paperwork softened the target.
Of course, The Mandalorian also has some more concrete villains — like, for instance, a mossy pirate king named Gorian Shard (Nonso Anozie) who arrives on Nevarro with bad intentions and insults for the newly respectable high magistrate Greef Karga. He’s also smart enough to call Karga’s bluff. Nevarro is pretty much undefended, and it takes only a few cannon blasts to undo all the hard work Karga and the citizens of Nevarro have done and send the populace into a panic. With no other choice, Karga gathers the Nevarrans he can and heads to the desert, where he can’t offer much beyond reassuring words (that at least some in the crowd don’t buy).
He’s right, though: Help is on the way, just not the help he told them is on the way. It’s not the New Republic that shows up, at least not directly. With some inside intel courtesy of Rebel Alliance hero R5-D4 (there’s a story waiting to be told), Teva shows up at the remote Mandalorian covert asking for help. Thanks to a past assist, Din assures that Teva at least has an audience and offers a sympathetic ear to his theory about all the weird, only seemingly coincidental happenings in the Outer Rim.
Message delivered and Teva takes off, leaving Din to make a case for a Mandalorian intervention on Nevarro — and for why that may be in the Mandalorians’ best interest, since Karga offered him a plot of Nevarran land. (Sure, he had only Din and Grogu in mind, but it’s not like he’s going to argue too much after they bail him out.) “Perhaps,†Din suggests, “it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome so our culture can flourish and our children can feel what it is to play in the sunlight.â€
The speech, thanks to the support of frenemy turned plain old friend Paz Vizsla, wins the Mandalorians over. And with that, they’re off, commanded by Bo-Katan, who has a strategy to take down Shard even though they’re outnumbered. They’ll have their work cut out of them. Shard’s pirates have made a mess of Nevarro, drunkenly stumbling about the town and terrorizing the locals, but they spring into action when the Mandalorians arrive.
Nonetheless, Bo-Katan’s strategy proves to be a solid one that finds the Mandalorians holding their own in the air and on the ground in a sequence of urban warfare that briefly makes this episode feel like Star Wars: Black Hawk Down. We even get to see the Armorer in action, proving she’s not just adept at making weapons, she knows how to use them.
It’s a humiliating defeat for Shard. Vane, one of Shard’s top lieutenants, flees rather than going down with the ship. We don’t yet know where he’s headed, but if Teva’s suspicions about Moff Gideon being the architect of all the Outer Rim unrest are correct, we kind of do.
One inspiring speech from Karga later, the Mandalorians prepare to settle in and the Armorer asks for a private audience with Bo-Katan. Both remember the Great Forge of Mandalore, but the Armorer observes that the humble ruined forge of Nevarro has served the same purpose — and will serve it again. The point isn’t lost on Bo-Katan, as the Armorer’s speech continues and the Armorer suggests that Bo-Katan, like the forge, can be used to keep the Mandalorian flame alive (and maybe reclaim their home world).
The Armorer also proposes an unorthodox approach to shoring up the Mandalorian orthodoxy. Bo-Katan seeing the Mythosaur, by the Armorer’s reckoning, is a sign that “a new age is upon us†and that Bo-Katan, having “walked in both worlds,†is just the Mandalorian to help usher in that new age by bringing more who have strayed from The Way into the Mandalorian fold. Perhaps Bo-Katan’s dreams of reclaiming Mandalore haven’t been thwarted, as she once believed, but redirected.
Not that it’s going to be easy. As the episode ends, Teva comes upon a wrecked shuttle that has fallen victim to an attack meant to extract … somebody. And though the details are classified, Teva’s detective work leads him to conclude it was Moff Gideon who was whisked away. What’s more: The wreck contains traces of beskar. Maybe a new age is dawning. But it’s also possible that elements within the Mandalorians could be doing their best to keep that dawn from arriving.
Bounty Pucks
• Another sign that The Mandalorian’s focus has shifted away from Grogu, at least for now: The little guy’s mostly just along for the ride this episode (sometimes literally). No doubt he’ll soon be hopping around and eating things he’s not supposed to, but in this episode he doesn’t have much to do beyond hanging around.
• Still, it’s a pretty satisfying episode, filled with narrative developments with far-reaching implications and a thrilling battle scene. Will The Mandalorian ever revert to following Din and Grogu from planet to planet, where they encounter a new adventure at every stop, the setup that won viewers over two seasons (and one Book of Boba Fett interregnum) ago? Maybe not, but it also seems unlikely that Din and Grogu will continue to be supporting players in the ensemble for the rest of the season, either.
• The Adelphi Base, home to veteran Rebels who keep the old ways alive far away from Coruscant, is a neat idea. They hang out, have some drinks, play their music loud (the closed captions specify it as “psychedelic rock musicâ€), and undoubtedly trade war stories, then occasionally rescue some Outer Rim residents in need of help. Seems like a cool place.
• Not only is IG-11 still down for the count, but his statue in the town square is in ruins. (And so is … most of the town. The Nevarrans have a lot of rebuilding to do.)
• Is it supposed to be a running gag that the Anzellan language is just high-pitched English (or Galactic Basic)? Pretty funny, if so. A waste of subtitles, if not.
• RIP, Gorian Shard, though maybe one of those vines will regenerate a new pirate king. Who knows?