Ricky Church reviews the sixth episode of The Mandalorian season 3…
The fifth episode of The Mandalorian marked a nice bounce back as the third season crossed its halfway point with plenty of action, character development and story progression as Din Djarin and Bo-Katan had a clear mission to unite the Children of the Watch with Mandalorians who do not walk the way. It’s unfortunate then its follow up episode ‘Guns For Hire’ was largely a one-off as the pair set out on an entirely different mission with the only big story progression and character development coming at the tail end of the episode.
It was nice to see what Bo-Katan’s former group of Mandalorians were up to as mercenaries, taking on odd jobs such as the one the episode opened with to bring back the son of a politician who absconded with a woman they don’t approve of. Making a welcome return was Simon Kassianides and Mercedes Varnado as Axel Woves and Kosska Reeves respectively, the former of whom sat out of season two’s epic finale, and Kassianides did well bringing more personality to Woves since his previous appearance only had a few lines and was mostly relegated as Bo-Katan’s muscle. The way he conveyed the ‘kidnap’ job was nothing personal and he’d prefer to do it without bloodshed spoke to his integrity as a leader and mercenary, yet also gave the air this job was beneath him and what Mandalorians should be doing.
In fact, it’s quite a contrast seeing Woves’ Mandalorians against the Watch’s as within the last couple episodes we witnessed how hard and relentlessly the Watch trains, even with their older members, while the Mando mercenaries were mostly relaxing and tossing a ball around. The Watch even succeeded in a noble mission to liberate Nevarro while the Night Owls were reduced to acting as a planet’s protection and taking on any job they could get hired for, and that’s with a much bigger and stronger fleet than anything the Watch had their hands on. It does also show Bo-Katan’s development as the younger Bo would have simply killed Woves with no hesitancy or mercy in her challenge for leadership, but instead spared him and appealed to the collective sense of honour and identity as Mandalorians, displaying how she’s picked up some of the Watch’s ideology and somewhat buys into the Armorer’s words of how she can walk both worlds of Mandalorians.
Despite the intriguing opening and premise as Din and Bo sought to recruit them, the majority of the story dealt with them getting dragged into a job by Plazir-15’s ruling elite – with Jack Black and Lizzo making surprise cameos as the planet’s Duchess and her husband – to investigate a string of droid malfunctions that are endangering their city. It had the sense of a side quest in a video game: in order to speak to this person/advance to this objective, you first have to do this. After some fairly serious and dramatic episodes this subplot provided a lot of lighter fare, but when compared to the main plot seen at the beginning and ending the tone just felt out of place and the story went on longer than it should have. This far into the season, with only two episodes now left, it feels late in the game to dedicate the majority of the story to a seemingly one-off episode.
That said, there were a few interesting concepts presented, such as Jack Black’s Captain Bombardier being a former Imperial and having a whole set of rules and protocols to follow as part of the New Republic’s Amnesty program, including their planet not being allowed to have a standing military which allows them the loophole of hiring the Mandalorians for protection as long as they stayed outside the city. It’s even more intriguing as Bombardier is not the typical Imperial, but quite jovial, eccentric and seemingly honest with Din and Bo. Additionally, Christopher Lloyd’s portrayal as the Commissioner was well done given he was the one making the droids malfunction all along due to his still-held Separatist views and it was cool to see Battle Droids in this era of Star Wars – and also a fun little Battlestar Galactica nod that Katee Sackhoff once again had to deal with potentially rebellious robots to humanity.
For as much cool ideas there were, including how much Plazier-15 (as well as most of the Star Wars universe) relied on their droid workers, they weren’t enough to fully justify such a diversion this close to the finale. Granted, there were some potential beats that could play into the larger story later like the information Bombardier gave of the Republic’s Amnesty program or how much control they really held in the galaxy, but they were so few and far between without a great amount of depth that they could very well not be of any importance. Lizzo, Black and Lloyd gave good performances with Kassianides and Varnado and Sackhoff did well against them and in her speech to the Mandalorians. What is also notable is how the debate over the Darksaber is finally put to bed as Din used his capture on Mandalore as a means to give the saber to Bo-Katan. The set up for the final two episodes is bigger now, but it lacks the punch it should since so much more time was spent on a subplot.
Rating: 6/10
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
