Who doesn’t love a creature in a large mecha suit that… oh no. Oh wow, that’s just disgusting.
Recap
Peli Motto is busy swindling customers on Boonta Eve by having Jawas steal parts to their speeders, letting them come into her shop, and then charging a premium while the Jawas return the parts immediately after. Din shows up with Grogu and asks if she can help him locate a memory circuit for IG-11. She can’t, and instead convinces him to buy R5-D4 off her, altering Grogu’s little astromech alcove back for droid use. Din brings Grogu and R5 to the Mandalore system, telling Grogu all about the history of their people. They make a rough landing and Din sends R5 to scan the atmosphere to see if it’s safe.
R5 disappears off their scopes, so Din seals his helmet and steps out onto the planet. There are creatures in the caverns up ahead that he has to fight called Alamites, but R5 is intact and the atmosphere is breathable; Mandalore isn’t cursed, as his people suspected. Din tells Grogu to accompany him down below and leaves R5 with the ship. As they go deeper underground, they’re beset by a number of creatures, one which eventually snaps Din up into a spider-robot casing and pulls him deeper underground. He’s set aside by the creature (it’s a small organic being that has several mecha chassis it an make use of) and Grogu tries to free him, but is nearly caught. Din tells him to run and go find Bo-Katan.
Grogu rushes back to the ship and heads immediately for Kalevala. Bo-Katan sees the ship arrive and is prepared to tell Din off, but one look at the kid has her dumping the whole crew into her own ship so they can stage a rescue. She talks to Grogu about what the planet used to be like, and fights off more Alamites, which have always been native to the planet. They find Din getting his blood sucked out by the mechanical, encased creature, and Bo-Katan has to take up the Darksaber to fight it off. Din regains consciousness sometime later and thanks her for saving his life. She feeds him a traditional Mandalorian soup (that he’s never had), and means to leave, but Din tells her that he won’t be going until he’s completed his task. She agrees to lead him to the mines, knowing he’s unlikely to find the living waters on his own.
As they journey down, Din asks Bo-Katan about the planet in its heyday, and empathizes with her loss. She tells him about the rituals she was required to perform as daughter of the ruling family and how ridiculous she finds many of these traditions, but when they arrive at the waters in the mines, she reads the plaque aloud to him for the full effect: This was the place where the first Mandalore wrestled the ancient Mythosaur, the emblem of their people. Din steps down into the water, saying the appropriate words, but before he can finish, he vanishes beneath the surface. Bo-Katan dives down after him, finding him at the floor of the waterbed. As she drags him up to the surface, they see a Mythosaur in the water.
Commentary
We’re just diving right into the mines of Mandalore section, huh. No prep, no talking, no nothing. Time to mine-dive.
Am I dying over the fact that Din gets himself damseled twice in this episode, necessitating rescue from a person who did not want to see his face helmet again? Yes, this was a key factor to my enjoyment this week.
Another key factor was that weird gross creature that uses two separate mecha suits to capture prey and drain its… blood? in order to survive off of it somehow? I’m going to say something that sounds like an insult, but really isn’t—big Ewok Adventures vibes on that thing. Just weird ‘80s-style fantasy elements done grossly for no discernible reason. Please never tell me what that creature is or how it found/built its mecha suits or when it got there or why this is ostensibly how it eats. I don’t want reasons, I want to enjoy knowing that horrific things exists now. It would have haunted me as a child.
The dialogue is still largely stunted as heck, which is unfortunate because we’re on the cusp of getting into some important things here. The talk between Din and Bo-Katan is interesting, but sounds like two robots exchanging information when it should be hinging on both of their feelings about this culture that they have very different ties to. This is especially true when both characters are often helmeted; the words need more flow.
I have a question about the Alamites, being a question that rarely comes up in Star Wars even though it seems highly relevant to everything about the universe: Are they the native species to the planet? Because humans are obviously not native to most worlds they inhabit in Star Wars—they spread out millennia ago, though we don’t know which world (likely in the galactic core) they originated from. Which means that the Alamites might be one of species that evolved on Mandalore ahead of human settlement. Just curious on that, and also bemused that they look like morlocks.
Grogu has become Din’s golden ticket, unsurprisingly—even people who don’t want anything to do with him will happily lend a hand once the kid makes sad ears at them. It’s helpful having a little Force-wielding widget as your loving child. Curious about how they’re going to handle Grogu just using the Force however he likes going forward; obviously he can, but Star Wars has always been weirdly vague on what it means to be a casual Force-user who isn’t a Jedi. After all, if you’re not getting the guidance, then who will panic over potential use of the Dark Side every time you get a little aggro? (This is not a genuine complaint, by the way: Star Wars could stand to loosen up on that front.)
Of course, we get a moment of potential awe from Bo-Katan as Din enters the water that is promptly interrupted by him getting dragged under and the appearance of an actual mythosaur. Which… we should have seen coming, but what’s the payoff here? Does Bo-Katan wrestle the thing to prove that she’s the rightful Mandalore? Does Din? Do they commune with the big guy? Does Grogu? And more importantly, are any of those options going to be truly satisfying on our journey to (likely restore) Mandalorian society?
Because I’ll be honest, fighting a mythosaur right now seems like a waste of time. There are deeper conversations that need to occur here about what Bo-Katan wants to rebuild and why; Mandalore went through significant upheaval well before the Empire laid waste to their world and none of the big questions about the future their people wanted were answered in that period. That’s where the show needs to go.
Bits and Beskar
- So yes, the R5 unit that Din buys from Peli is in fact that exact same droid that blew a motivator in front of Uncle Owen, thus leading to Luke Skywalker’s suggestion to buy R2-D2 in A New Hope. Which is likely the point of Peli’s comment that he used to work for the Rebellion—it’s probably a joke derived from knowing that background.
- Peli Motto speaking Jawa again. It is all I want. Don’t ever stop doing this.
- But again, how much can you gut this ship and where is all the space for the kid now? And also… what was the point of making a big deal about needing IG-11 when Din gets over his robot issues at the drop of a hydrospanner? Just too much convenience, as per usual.
- This is technically the first time we’ve seen Mandalore in live action, and the city wreckage does look a great deal like what we were shown in The Clone Wars.
- I love the fact that Bo-Katan remembers to use her jetpack when Din forgets. Just a great example of how Mandalorian abilities are predicated on familiarity with their equipment; Din isn’t used to the jetpack, so he often doesn’t think to use it at appropriate moments. The arsenal is only as good as your comfort with said arsenal.
- Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder are finally receiving co-star credit for all the time they’re spending under the Mandalorian armor as Din’s stunt doubles. (How often are we actually watching them on screen? Who can say, but considering the high quotient of action in the show and how busy Pedro Pascal is, it’s probably the majority of the time.)
Next week we’ll hopefully see more mythosaur? More R5? More Grogu flips?
My understanding is that Wayne and Crowder are the usual suit performers for Mando, that Pascal mainly just provides the voiceovers and appears in scenes where Din takes off his helmet. Maybe sometimes he’s there for the dialogue scenes with other actors like Katee Sackhoff or Carl Weathers, but I understand he’s starring in another series at the same time, one where he’s actually visible on camera, so that’s probably where he spends most of his time.
It was nice to see my boy R5-D4, the only Star Wars action figure I ever owned in my life. (He hung out with my two Tomy wind-up robots in a science lab whose consoles I assembled from cardboard boxes, a busted transistor radio, and assorted bibs and bobs.) Apparently Peli wasn’t lying about R5’s history in the Rebellion, which was established in a canonical short story: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/R5-D4
It was weird to see Din telling Grogu to seal himself in his pod after that pod had already been converted back into an astromech slot. Is there another pod somewhere inside?
I was worried it was going to turn out that Bo-Katan was really just coming to claim the Darksaber and would leave Din to die, claiming that she’d fought him for it. But I guess she really is honorable after all.
I don’t think Din was dragged under at the end; rather, he stupidly stepped into water of unknown depth while wearing really heavy armor, so he stepped off an underwater ledge and sank like a dang stone. I doubt the ritual intended for him to bathe with his armor on, but he’s so blinded by his quest that he didn’t think it through. Basically, the problem was that he was too dense, in both senses of the word.
As for the mythosaur, I don’t think Bo-Katan is going to fight it; rather, she expressed disbelief that it existed (I mean, it is called a mythosaur), so discovering its reality is likely to make her reassess her beliefs.
This episode could’ve stood to be edited a bit more tightly. Did we need to see both Din and Bo-Katan descending into the mines on jetpacks with Grogu and walking through the same area? Maybe the parallel was intentional, the two of them following the same path to symbolize their connection, but it just felt like padding to me.
@1 CLB
It took me a minute too, but I think he meant for Grogu to seal himself in the hover pod he uses when Din is out and about on foot.
My question is this – since Din was defeated and lost the Darksaber, and Bo-Katan defeated the individual who was in possession (removing it from Din and tossing it aside in your lair counts as possession to me), shouldn’t she be the rightful owner of it now?
@2/Tribbles: Oh, good catch. The question is, where does that pod get stored? Where’s the trunk in that hot rod?
@3/Kalvin: I don’t think it counts, because Din wasn’t defeated in honorable combat, he was caught in a trap and divested of the Darksaber while incapacitated. Also, the captor merely discarded it, which suggests its intent was merely to disarm Din rather than take possession of his weapons.
Perhaps more importantly, Bo-Katan did not take the Darksaber from the scavenger in combat. The scavenger discarded it and Bo picked it up without resistance. That’s no different from Din just handing her the Darksaber and saying she could have it. It wouldn’t count unless she gained possession of it through the act of defeating the possessor in battle.
So Din is still the rightful owner, because no one has defeated him in combat in order to take possession of the saber. That’s why Bo gave it back to him.
I’m heartened by Mando getting to the mines this week. I was really hoping that was not going to be the arc for the season. Last week had strong get-a-crew-together vibe that I expected to take a few episodes.
I wish interdimensional streaming was a thing. I’d adore watching an alt universe Mandalorian anthology show with a Bo Katan season.
I really enjoyed the second half of this episode. It felt to me like two characters moving through the same scenes but on clearly different journeys. And the way they used the mythosaur was far more effective than a CGI fight would have been. Bo Katan got a solid story beat there.
But the first half I’d skip on a rewatch if the show wasn’t so dang pretty to look at. It frequently felt like Din was explaining things the viewer could infer on their own or were actually watching the actor perform.
@1: Hah, he absolutely just walked off the end of the stairs. I’m not sure how he got to the bottom faster than a jetpack but so much better than adding in another jump scare.
@5/kurtzwald: “It frequently felt like Din was explaining things the viewer could infer on their own or were actually watching the actor perform.”
Part of it was Din explaining things to Grogu so that Grogu would know where to go to find Bo-Katan later on.
“I’m not sure how he got to the bottom faster than a jetpack”
Seems simple enough — he plummeted straight down, whereas she took a more roundabout path trying to spot him.
Either Din or Bo-Katan needs to tame the mythosaur, as per the legend. That particular claim to be the rightful Man’dalor clearly predates the Darksaber and would be a clear step toward uniting the Mandalorian clans.
A minor complaint, but I would have appreciated it if the episode had spent at least a little more time and emotion on the fact that for the first time in who-knows-how-long, a Mandalorian has returned to Mandalore. And then later, the last of the ruling house of Kryze has returned to her ancestral home (I’m assuming her castle on the other planet is a getaway, and the royal family resided for the most part on Mandalore). Instead, it treats it almost flippantly. A slightly more reverent beat for the ruins of a once-great civilization.
The dialogue this season is peak Star Wars (which is not a compliment–I certainly don’t watch these show for the witty banter).
I thought Mando was willing to settle for R5 because he is so non-threatening. Even a robo-phobe isn’t scared of that old bucket of bolts.
I need to watch this episode again at night, as in the daylight, you could barely make out what was going on. (That’s been a thing on Bad Batch lately, too. Everything is set in caves or at night.)
I thought Bo Katan won the Darksaber from mecha-spider guy, who won it from Mando. I kept expecting him to say, “Thanks for saving me by defeating the guy who beat me. Now you can keep that darn laser sword.”
If my Lego N-1 ship model is any indication, there is a lot of room in that ship, with a large cargo compartment forward of the cockpit. And the ship flares out under the cockpit, with a rather wide boat-shaped hull. The hover-pram always seems to appear from under the ship, which suggests the presence of some little bomb bay doors. Like the Millennium Falcon, its outside doesn’t seem to match its interior.
@9/AlanBrown: “I thought Mando was willing to settle for R5 because he is so non-threatening.”
I think it’s more that he considers Peli one of his few friends, and was thus willing to be talked into it for her sake. It kind of fits — the reason he wanted IG-11 back was because that was the only droid he trusted as an ally. He’s driven by his attachments to people (don’t tell the Jedi). And he and Peli have bonded through their rebuilding of the fighter, and she and Grogu like each other, so Din was willing to go along with her offer, more as sort of a favor for a friend (or the acceptance of the favor she offered him) than anything to do with R5’s own merits or lack thereof.
All I could think of during this episode is that Mandalore is apparently Star Wars’ version of Florida. The sewers have a couple variants of meth gators and after noticing that, my first thought was to call the Allimites Floridamen before Bo-Katan stated their official name. I literally burst out, “Oh no, the meth gators can fly,” as one unfurled its wings.
@5 @6 I sorta posited that Din stepped off into the deep end, got sucked down by the weight of his armor and got knocked on the head on the way down, thereby stunning him…
@9, the Lego model is drastically oversized. There’s never been any indication in prior onscreen appearances or printed illustrations that the N-1 has any kind of baggage compartment, much less one big enough to hold Grogu’s baby carriage.
“The dialogue is still largely stunted as heck,”
I think you meant “stilted as heck” there
@9/AlanBrown: “Like the Millennium Falcon, its outside doesn’t seem to match its interior.”
A perennial problem with sci-fi spaceships, at least before the modern age of 3D computer-aided design. The Trek: TOS shuttlecraft, the ST:TMP Enterprise, the Eagles from Space: 1999, the Delta Flyer from Voyager, Starbug in Red Dwarf, etc. (And the TARDIS, of course, but that’s intentional.)
Of course, there are also a fair number of TV houses that are bigger inside than out or otherwise don’t quite make sense. Even Jim Rockford’s trailer in The Rockford Files occasionally had a fistfight extend a bit beyond where the fourth wall would be.
So that entire Bo Katan fight made the episode for me. She’s just way more casually competent than Mando, and that goes double for fighting. And she certainly doesn’t have any hangups using the darksaber. More of that please!
The baby Yoda pod thing threw me – it shows him jumping out of it into the ship, then when he’s gone to pick up Bo Katan, he’s back in it in her ship (which is cooler than the Razorcrest and the N1 combined, don’t @@@@@ me). Makes sense it goes into a compartment underneath, but would it have broken the CGI bank to show it?
I’m now giggling at Space Florida and the flying meth gators, so thanks for that /11.
And the big one, which comes back to some of my complaints from last week – there’s just too much computer game fetch quests and fast travel going on. I can’t blame the show specifically for the last one – live action Star Wars has always been terrible at showing how long it takes to get anywhere. Mando goes from the Mandalore system all the way to Tatooine (canonically in the ass-end of nowhere) and back as if it’s just a quick trip to the shops. Why would it matter where any specific person was if you could just nip around to their place for lunch and be back in time for dinner? The entire Rebel fleet is massing near Sullust? That’s actually a problem as they could be at Endor by the time you’ve gotten the word out to turn the death star shields on.
But that bloody droid. Why can’t the ship tell Mando that the atmosphere is safe? And if it can’t, it can at least tell him it’s not full of radiation, so he can SCUBA his helmet up and take a portable atmosphere sensor outside (you know, like the one that’s built into the droid, so obviously smaller than it)?
It’s what, an eight episode season? It doesn’t need to fill time with utterly pointless contrivances. Especially with fan-wankery like making sure we all know it’s the same droid that Luke didn’t buy in the first film.
@16/TheMongoose: “Mando goes from the Mandalore system all the way to Tatooine (canonically in the ass-end of nowhere) and back as if it’s just a quick trip to the shops.”
Not necessarily. It’s not like there were any parallel plots running at the same time to give us a time comparison, so there could have been days between his two visits to the Mandalore system. Even in the original film, it took the Falcon less than a day to get from Tatooine to Alderaan. After fleeing Imperial pursuit on the way out from Tatooine, we next saw Han coming back and saying he’d outrun the Imperials and that they’d be at Alderaan by 0200 hours (at least in the script posted online). And from the maps I can find, Mandalore is only a little farther from Tatooine than Alderaan was.
The impression I’ve always gotten is that hyperspace travel in SW is fast enough that galactic travel is comparable to modern air travel on Earth, taking no more than a few days to get anywhere in civilization, and as little as a few hours if your transport is fast enough. Unlike how Star Trek traditionally portrayed it, more like the age of sail when journeys between ports were a matter of days or weeks and home was months away. (Although modern Trek has forgotten that and uses a more Star Wars-like model where interstellar journeys are casual commutes of hours or less, which kind of takes the “trek” out of it.)
“Why can’t the ship tell Mando that the atmosphere is safe?”
Din told Peli that he needed a droid capable of spelunking — not just to test the planet’s atmosphere, but to check that the air inside the caves was breathable, like a canary in a coal mine. That’s why R5 had to go ahead into the caves to do the atmosphere check. It couldn’t be done from outside them.
Although by that logic, R5 should’ve come with them the whole way. Just because the air is good near the surface doesn’t mean there can’t be toxic pockets further down, which was the point of the canaries.
“Especially with fan-wankery like making sure we all know it’s the same droid that Luke didn’t buy in the first film.”
That Owen didn’t buy, rather. Luke didn’t even want to be there.
I think there was a continuity error when Grogu left Mandalore to fetch Bo Kanan. He lept from his buggy into the cockpit then took off. Later in Bo Katan’s ship he was back in the buggy.
@6, ChristopherLBennett: “Part of it was Din explaining things to Grogu”
I agree, there were a couple spoken points that were plot critical and that was one. I was thinking more of dialogue along the lines of “I’m going over here now” or “the mines are below us”. Not exact quotes but things along those lines. Some of the dialogue was for Grogu’s benefit but I felt most was for the audience’s benefit with Grogu as the audience surrogate.
@8, Ecthelion of Greg:I think it’s possible that her current residence is Clan Kryze’s ancestral holding. Satine’s clan, Wren, had their home on another planet. So there would have been the palace on Mandalore House Kryze ruled from and then their home.
It raises the question for me of what happened with the larger Mandalorian diaspora when Mandalore itself was destroyed. I had the impression there was an entire Mandalorian sector beyond the capital world. Perhaps the vast majority of the civilian population lived on the homeworld and it was mostly the nobility who had manorial holdings offworld.
@9, @13: It would make sense to me that the buggy would enter through the lower astromech droid port and take up the lower space where the droid would usually fit. But there is no way you could bring the buggy along in addition to an astromech.
Given Grogu’s propensity for animal bonding, maybe he will be the one to bond the mythosaur, and be another Mando-Jedi hybrid….I’ve heard that theory a few times, but the one thing that is holding me back from it is that they need to eventually age this kid up. They made a few references to it, like to Peli swearing he was talking, but I do wonder how the audience is going to react once Grogu DOES actually speak, unless they are going to do the sitcom thing of keeping him a baby forever.
I actually do think the dark side panic is a worthy thing to explore in this series. The Jedi don’t have a monopoly on the light or ethical Force use, BUT, if the dark side is addictive I can see it getting easier and easier to fall to that as a solution to your problems, especially with no guidance. Even if you do posit that ethical Force use can include the Dark side (I personally don’t, generally, although I guess some of that also depends on how you define Dark side use…which is a bit of a circular argument sometimes!)…it’s still an issue to think about.
I am kinda interested in Bo’s story here – wondering of Din and Bo-Katan will have slightly parallels journeys here in that Din will leave off some of his more rigid ideas (eg, walking into a pool IN ARMOR not thinking about the possibility of a lake shelf), whereas Bo-Katan will rediscover a sense of wonder/faith. I’ve seen this attitude disparaged in various reviews/reactions but I think Din does have a point when he talks about their traditions/Creed being part of what binds them together and makes them who they are. I don’t know that they believe the waters are literally magical, but it’s part of what it represents, and what it says about a person who manages to go there that matters, I guess. I don’t know…granted, I’m religious myself so I suppose that gives me a different perspective on why we have ritual, even when the ritual itself is not strictly required.
As for Bo though, I still find myself at times frustrated by her character. I just feel like the narrative has never given me sufficient belief that she has really introspected and thought about her own role in Death Watch, her role in the civil wars she disdains…and what needs to change there, or even what she really believes. I’m not really sure I want her in charge of Mandalore.
As an aside, ScreenCrush has a REALLY good recap of Mandalorian history over the course of the various canon sources that was pretty informative and I’m glad I watched it before this episode because there was a bunch of stuff I forgot (especially from the TCW arcs).
@18 – I think you mean Sabine’s clan (Wren). Satine was also a Kryze.
That’s more like it. The one quibble I have is that they should’ve showed us Bo Katan’s face in that last shot to emphasize her astonishment of seeing the mythosaur. That and, well, I always appreciate looking at Katie Sackhoff’s face.
So, the droid is an R5 model. This means Luke misnamed the droid back in A New Hope, referring to it as an R2 unit in his best whiny tone: “This R2 unit has a bad motivator, look!“.
So I was wrong. We weren’t going on a season-long scavenger hunt. I’m surprised the R5 could do the same job as the IG droid. This means pretty much all droids are able to survive toxic atmospheres, which makes Din’s specific request for IG-11 all the more baffling. Either he has no understanding of which droids are able to survive atmospheres (maybe some models can rust depending on the atmosphere?), or he’s so stubborn and set in his ways, he just had to get the one droid he knew could be trusted rather than one he never met. Given his distaste for droids, it’s probably the latter.
I love an episode so plot-focused that it’s this easy to follow. Pretty much a series of obstacle courses with an equal solution for each one. You get the occasional reminder of Din’s laser-focus on his quest for rehabilitation into Mandalore society every now and then, and we’re set.
Nice that we got to spend some extended time with Bo-Katan in action, and I never get tired of references to the animated shows. It’s good that the premier live-action show is willing to proudly display and share its connections to the days of Duchess Satine and Sabine even when half the viewers have no clue as to what happened on Clone Wars and Rebels. In essence, you couldn’t do a show about a Mandalorian and not delve into Mandalorian history. They are a people trapped in the past after all.
One last thing of note: I unabashedly LOVED nightime Tatooine with fireworks as they took off. I almost wish they had stayed for the Boonta Eve week. I would have adored to revisit a podrace event.
@18: Whoops, you are right. I meant to type Sabine.
@3 – that’s what I thought too. Ambush or no, Katee Sackhoff saved Pedro Pascal’s life, surely that counts as a “victory”!
@19/Lisamarie: “they need to eventually age this kid up.”
Do they? Grogu’s life expectancy is around 900 years, if Yoda’s lifespan is typical of their species. Grogu is already around 50 years old and still effectively a toddler. I always figured Yoda’s species would mature at a normal pace and just live very long as adults, but they’ve gone with the idea that every stage of the life process is proportionately elongated. (Well, maybe not proportionately. If the 50-year-old Grogu is in the equivalent of the Terrible Twos, then proportionally Yoda would’ve died in the equivalent of his early 40s. So it seems the infant stage is proportionately even longer.)
In any case, if this is Grogu at 50 or so, it stands to reason that he wouldn’t change much even if the show ran for a decade.
@21/Eduardo: “This means pretty much all droids are able to survive toxic atmospheres, which makes Din’s specific request for IG-11 all the more baffling. Either he has no understanding of which droids are able to survive atmospheres (maybe some models can rust depending on the atmosphere?), or he’s so stubborn and set in his ways, he just had to get the one droid he knew could be trusted rather than one he never met. Given his distaste for droids, it’s probably the latter.”
Yes, that was made clear last week. Din has always hated and mistrusted droids, but IG-11 was a comrade in arms, the one droid Din made an exception for, and thus the only one he was comfortable working with. It’s partly about his general stubbornness, partly about his prejudices, which he’s only begun to grow beyond.
Also, wouldn’t the holiday be just Boonta, as Peli was referring to it? Logically, Boonta Eve would be the day before Boonta.
@24 – I meant, they need to age him up IF they are going to try and move the plot in such a direction that involves him taking a more active role/leading Mandalore, etc.
(Granted, if they do, I’m sure they will be able to just hand wave how aging works. I also have been unclear as to whether or not Grogu has regressed a little due to his trauma, because Ahsoka said he’s had ‘many Masters’ on Coruscant. Then again, maybe for Yoda’s species, speech is a later ability in development.)
Maybe Boonta Eve is like Halloween :D (But seriously, I love getting little tidbits of Tatooine culture…and it’s kind of interesting to see how even Mos Eisley seems to have some fancier clientele these days…)
@25/Christopher: You’re absolutely right! For over 20 years, I memorized Phantom Menace’s dialogue, and I was quoting Anakin’s reference. Somehow, I failed to realize “there’s a big race tomorrow on Boonta Eve” meant something else entirely. I missed the use of the word eve as being a prelude to a bigger event. For these two decades, I just assumed ‘Boonta Eve’ was the name of the actual racetrack the podrace took place on. I was wrong. According to Wookieepedia, Boonta Eve* is actually a celebration of a Hutt lord into godhood. It’s a yearly festival apparently.
*Though Wookieepedia referred to Boonta Eve as the full name also. Maybe the word ‘eve’ doesn’t mean what it means on SW lore.
It’s a nice touch – it expands on Tatooine lore, and it provides a counterpoint to the recent meteor shower that was celebrated as a divine event on the planet that Andor’s mission took place. It’s small details like these that really help to expand the SW universe.
@26/Eduardo: I saw the Wookieepedia link, but it had limited sources cited. Given that Peli referred to the holiday as Boonta here, I think that takes precedence over the wiki’s assumptions.
@4/CLB
“The question is, where does that pod get stored? Where’s the trunk in that hot rod?”
Bigger question: where do the astromech’s legs go in the droid socket on an N-1? I’ve been wondering since ’99.
@19/ Lisamarie & 24/CLB
My personal lampshade puts Grogu in carbonite or some other form of stasis for some of the intervening years. I’m still wondering who hired the small army of mercs that Din and IG-11 took on in the first episode.
I have a feeling they will eventually age-up Grogu, probably via some weird alien cocoon. I believe they call it the putrid stage.
I’ve also been wondering if maybe the purification ritual wasn’t a trap and ‘apostate’ children of the watch aren’t supposed to survive it. Maybe Bo Katan went with him because she knew what would happen?
@30/Tribbles: Except Bo-Katan didn’t go with him the first time. She only came after Grogu let her know he was in danger. So clearly she didn’t know in advance.
Also, it wouldn’t have happened if Din hadn’t been stupid enough to leave his armor on when stepping into the water. So maybe it would’ve been safer for him if she hadn’t been there, because then he wouldn’t have been inhibited about taking his armor off. (I mean, despite what they say about always keeping it on, obviously they have to bathe and stuff, so they must just mean in front of other people.)
@27/Christopher: I browsed my old copy of the Phantom Menace novelization (penned by Terry Brooks). There are several references to Boonta Eve (deliberately written in upper case) as the racing event itself. Phrases such as the following:
Anything was possible if he won the Boonta
bright early morning sky that promised good weather for the Boonta Eve race.
at nine years of age, the youngest winner ever of the Boonta Eve race.
And the book refers to the racetrack itself as the Mos Espa Podracer arena. I assume the book is heavily based on the shooting script. This leads me to believe the Boonta as a festive event came as a retcon at some point afterwards. I tried looking up some of the notes and reference links on Wookieepedia, but most of those pages are already defunct (the internet needs some form of preservation of old useful archives ASAP).
@32/Eduardo: None of that is inconsistent with the race being an event held on the day before Boonta. By analogy, a race held on December 24 could be known as the Christmas Eve race, and might be shortened to “the Christmas” among those in the know.
” (the internet needs some form of preservation of old useful archives ASAP).”
It’s called Archive.org.
@31 CLB
“Except Bo-Katan didn’t go with him the first time. She only came after Grogu let her know he was in danger. So clearly she didn’t know in advance.”
I don’t think that is clear. She was very much in a ‘drown yourself for all I care’ mood the first time. I think that her position toward him changed over the course of the rescue after she had committed herself to it. It’s all speculative of course, but I think she still may have let him go through with the ritual because he would not have believed her otherwise.
@34/Tribbles: “She was very much in a ‘drown yourself for all I care’ mood the first time. I think that her position toward him changed over the course of the rescue after she had committed herself to it.”
That’s just it, though. If she didn’t care if he killed himself, why bother going to rescue him in the first place? Although I guess maybe Grogu puppy-dog-eyed her into it.
@35
That, and a possible darksaber opportunity may have gotten her on the ship. From there I think she was battling with the angel and devil on her shoulders, so to speak.
@30 & @31 It has seemed clear to me all along that the Armorer, while being a hardass about it, has been sympathetic to Din’s predicament; I don’t think she’d send him off to die. Before the purge this was probably a fairly easy penance for (apparently) a fairly old-fashioned transgression. The steps probably also did not always break off short like that – either that happened in the, y’know, planetwide bombing, OR it was a known hazard that pilgrims were warned about, in which case the Armorer herself may not have known it. (Bo-Katan might, but it’s been a while since she was last down here and she’s not in an encouraging mood.)
Okay, so doing it in full armor was not optimal, and he should have stopped to figure out the logistics. But to be fair, this moment means a lot to him, and he’s just been hung in a cage for half the day and nearly desanguinated, which will do a number on anyone’s judgment. Bo-Katan, although she did come to his rescue, is still being sneery about the whole business; if he asks her to step out of the room for a few minutes, how does he know she won’t just mock him?
@36/Tribbles: “That, and a possible darksaber opportunity may have gotten her on the ship. From there I think she was battling with the angel and devil on her shoulders, so to speak.”
If that had been the writers’ intent, I think they would’ve shown her wrestling with whether to give the Darksaber back. Instead, it was treated as a complete non-issue; IIRC, she gave it back between scenes.
It seems much simpler than that. She didn’t believe in Din’s quest, but that didn’t mean she actually wanted him dead or would do nothing to save him given the opportunity. Those are two fundamentally different levels of disregard. So she went to his rescue out of basic human decency, period.
With its reference to fusion bombs, radiation threats, and heating the rocks into glass, is this the first explicit mention of nuclear weapons in the Star Wars universe? I don’t remember any previous mentions of either nuclear power or weapons in any of the movies, shows or books. Instead, there have been all sorts of imaginary devices like superlasers and coaxium and such.
@39/Alan: It’s not quite the first mention of nuclear weapons in current SW canon. They were alluded to in the novel Phasma, and the bombing of Mandalore was previously mentioned in Book of Boba Fett. Plus there were mentions here and there in Legends continuity. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nuclear_weapon
If I recall the dialog correctly from Empire, Yoda says that “for 900 years have I trained Jedi.” To me, that implies that he has been an adult, and a respected one, who trained Jedi for 900 years. Which would mean Yoda was considerably older than 900. Given what we know about Grogu, I would estimate that Yoda had to be over 1000, and perhaps considerably more if all his species’ stages of life are exaggerated.
Question for the Star Wars experts from a casual watcher: Any thoughts on the fact that when Din takes off from Peli’s hangar for the Mandalorean system, Peli quietly says: “May the Force be with you”?
Everything what I think about this episode has already been said.
But I have one question, RE: 20. Dingo
That’s more like it. The one quibble I have is that they should’ve showed us Bo Katan’s face in that last shot to emphasize her astonishment of seeing the mythosaur. That and, well, I always appreciate looking at Katie Sackhoff’s face.
Is it clear that Bo Katan actually saw the Mythosaur? I got the impression that this was more a plot hint for the viewers, but time will tell if the mines will be revisited, or Mandalore maybe recolonized and they will have to deal with another Mythosaur?
And on Mando not using his jetpack, as has been said above he was not as used to it as Bo Katan was, and maybe lacked the reflex of switching it on. I’d like to add that perhaps he was not even aware that it would work underwater…
If I recall the dialog correctly from Empire, Yoda says that “for 900 years have I trained Jedi.”
@41/Costumer: That’s not right. On Empire Strikes Back, Yoda says he trained other Jedi for 800 years. When we get to the next movie, as he lays on his deathbed, he says Luke won’t look so youthful when he gets to 900 years of age. Evidently, Yoda didn’t become a Jedi Master until he was at least 100 or more.
Also, I’m not so sure Grogu is supposed to be an analogy for the ‘terrible twos’ age bracket. We know he’s 50, but I’m pretty sure that would be equivalent to a 5 year old. I’m pretty positive Grogu could speak basic right now, if he was in his right state of mind. But we know Order 66 and the subsequent Jedi purge had a traumatic impact on him. That would make him a silent infant with stunted emotional growth.
@42/Larsaf: “Question for the Star Wars experts from a casual watcher: Any thoughts on the fact that when Din takes off from Peli’s hangar for the Mandalorean system, Peli quietly says: “May the Force be with you”?”
Nothing remarkable about it. It’s a standard farewell in that universe, basically just the equivalent of “Good luck!” or “God bless!” https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/May_the_Force_be_with_you
And as I recall, Peli called it out rather loudly.
@43/Fiddler: “Is it clear that Bo Katan actually saw the Mythosaur?”
It certainly seemed that way to me.
As for the jetpack, Din took it off before wading into the pool.
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, even though I thought it was a bit redundant that Din had to be rescued twice. That’s alright, because I think Bo-Katan is awesome, so more of her being awesome is right up my street. As for where the show is going, I think the reviewer will be disappointed, because I can almost guarantee there will be mythosaur-taming in the future.
Eduardo,
I stand corrected. I did not remember the line correctly. Training for 800 years means that Yoda was, likely, around 900 years old. We don’t know, though, if he died of old age or some illness he contracted. The life span for Yoda’s species is still uncertin, though likely around the 900 year mark from available evidence.
My point was not about maximum lifespan, just that Yoda was depicted as elderly. His character design was based somewhat on Albert Einstein, as I recall. So if a 900-year-old Yoda-oid corresponded to, say, a 72-year-old, then if it were proportional, a 50-year-old of the same species should correspond to a 4-year-old human, not an infant. But maybe Eduardo’s right about trauma arresting his development.
Don’t underestimate Grogu just because he doesn’t talk yet. He’s a clever little guy.
“When 900 years old you are, look as good you will not!”
Yoda in Return of the Jedi
I can’t believe no one has commented on the Muppets like looks of the Alamites. I thought they were awful costumes. The spider robot and flying monster were cool.
As was mentioned earlier, the Alamites seem to be another species displaced by humans. They also seemed pretty effective fighting a guy in full body armor with only clubs. Yeah, They lost but it wasn’t easy for Mando.
Mandalore having an indigenous population has an added level of tragic irony, as the Mandalorians themselves (or rather the Taungs, their founding species) were themselves displaced refugees, according to Legends lore; they were the original inhabitants of Coruscant before being forced offworld by the Zhell, who may have been (proto-)humans.
@51. To be fair, nothing is easy for Din. ;)
I know the performance gets knocked because he’s not able to use his face and much of the time it’s not even him in the suit, but Pedro Pascal’s measured Din Djarin voice is one of my absolute favorite things about the series.
That said, I’m scratching my head over the narrative choice of him wanting to revive IG-11 to sample the atmosphere on Mandalore, as it’s the only droid he’ll trust; searching out a new memory circuit even though IG-11 wouldn’t be his old self anymore; settling for R5-D4; and then after all that having to go in himself. The latest in wonky storytelling from the people who brought you everything great about this series but advanced critical plot elements in another show entirely to the detriment of both.
@9 – I get the impression that Bo-Katan has gotten fed up with the Darksaber and its rituals. We got a hint of this in the previous episode where she tells Mando to wave the Darksaber at her former followers if he wants their help. She’s obviously frustrated with a situation that judges leadership ability in such a narrow and arbitrary way. To paraphrase Dennis the peasant, ritual combat for possession of jedi artifacts is no basis for a system of government. Sure, if you’re picking someone to represent Mandalore at one of those gladiatorial arenas that seem to be everywhere in the Star Wars galaxy that’s a pretty good metric, but it seems very poor way to choose the leader of a planetary civilization (or a former planetary civilization trying to get back on its feet).
I find it a little confusing how easy it was to establish that Mandalore is still habitable. In the years since the purge did no one bother to send down a probe droid to test the atmosphere? In Empire Strikes Back Luke’s X Wing can detect life form readings on Dagobah from space so couldn’t someone have sat in orbit of Mandalore and detected there was still quite a lot of life there? Considering the sheer size of the mythosaur, assuming it’s carnivorous, there must be a LOT of life still on Mandalore to sustain it. I guess it could be hibernating though.
I loved Bo Katan in this episode. I hope she’s in every episode. I love how competent she is compared to Din. The more I watch The Mandalorian the more I start to think that’s he’s actually not that skilled. He’s just got special armour that lets him shrug off getting shot where everyone else avoides getting hit in the first place. He’s basically me playing Battlefront. No skill but cheat codes (offline) see me through.
@55/Kyle: It could be that the surface atmosphere was still toxic until recently. Heck, realistically it might’ve taken decades or more for all the ash and dust and toxic gases to settle out of the atmosphere after all that devastation. And all the life we saw was subterranean, so it probably wasn’t detectable from orbit. Whether such a large creature as a mythosaur could sustain itself in a fully subterranean environment is questionable realistically, but this is a universe where Naboo’s entire interior is made of liquid water, so normal rules of physics and biology don’t apply.
@55 – I feel like the second episode of Mandalorian established that Din – while talented, isn’t exceptionally talented – he takes a lot of hits when fighting the Jawas, and they get the best of him at times.