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?
