Last time on the Mandalorian, Mando
walked into an obvious trap. Sorry if that’s a bit harsh, but it felt like the best
way to put it. He got in contact with an old ally named Ran Malk who hired the
Mandalorian to help his crew bust out one of their members from a New Republic
prison ship. Despite all of the warning signs, his teammates not respecting
him, not being told who they’re rescuing, at least one member of the crew being
a spurned romantic interest, he goes along with the mission and is predictably
thrown in the prisoner’s cell upon springing him. Mando breaks out, obviously,
and then systematically takes out the crew before transporting the prisoner
home. Malk tries to double cross, possibly triple cross, Mando by sending a gun
ship after him, only to find out that Mando slipped a distress beacon on the rescued
crewman. The New Republic assaulted the space station while Mando tells his little
buddy the Child, “I told you that was a bad idea.” Let’s get to it.
Chapter 7: The Reckoning
The episode proper opens with Apollo
Creed… I mean Greef Karga sending a message to Mando, claiming that there are
no hard feelings about killing each other on his end. Apparently since The
Mandalorian and his clansmen left Nevarro, the planet has now been largely
taken over by the Client and his ex-Imperial forces. They’re a large enough
force that the Bounty Guild can’t remove them on their own, so Karga is asking
Mando to come in and give them some much needed additional fire power. He’s offering
Mando additional resources and manpower to complete the mission. If he kills the
Client, Karga will also clear him of charges against the guild. After looking
at his sleeping charge, Mando powers up his ship and flies off.
His first stop is to Solgren, to pick
up one of his newest friends. We find Cara Dune embroiled in some kind of futuristic
cage mage against an Iridonian of all things. That’s what Darth Maul was, FYI.
She defeats her opponent with a chock out as Mando and the Child walks in. She’s
hesitant to join up, as apparently, while she’s a veteran Rebel fighter, she’s
done some things to get on the New Republic’s $#%* list since the war ended. But,
once Mando mentions the target is ex-Imperial, her interest is Piqued. They
move out.
One the Razor Crest, he lets Cara
have a look in his armor. While she outfits herself, the ship starts flying out
of control, they find the Child attempting to fly the ship of all things. Strength
in the force does not always equal unusually gifted pilots, apparently. They
decide to drop the kid off with someone he trusts while they try to take care
of the mission. So, it’s back to Kuiil’s house.
 |
| Even for these two, an IG unit offering lunch must be pretty high on the weirdness scale. |
They arrive at Kuiil’s front door
and are invited in. While discussing their course of action, Mando offhandedly
mentions that he thinks that the Child might be some sort of clone or genetically
engineered organism, but Kuiil doesn’t think so. Apparently the Ugnaught once
worked in the cloning field and the Child looks too naturally ugly to be that
kind of science experiment. His words. It’s then revealed that Kuiil has since
gone out to the monestary where the Child had been held, took IG-11’s scrap
metal, rebuilt the machine and re-educated it. I guess Kuiil wasn’t enough of a
computer programmer to just rewrite its code, or something. Mando asks Kuiil
for his help, which he agrees to, so long as Mando agrees to bring IG-11 and
the Blurggs. Good thing his ship has cargo space.
While on the flight over, Cara and
the Mandalorian have a friendly arm-wrestling match that gets out of hand. Not
because either of them was taking it too seriously, but because I guess the
Child couldn’t tell it was a friendly match. He tries to “Help” Mando by force
chocking Cara into submission. Mando stops the kid before any serious damage is
dealt. Kuiil reveals that he thinks he knows what the kid can do, but is
interrupted by Cara being distrustful of the former Imperial. Kuiil explains
that he was, in actuality, a slave that spent roughly 240 years (if the human
life time in the Galaxy far far away is still about 80) yearning his freedom
and he won’t take any lip about that.
Mando and Cara talk about the
mission. Navarro was an imperial planet up until the end of the War, being a
heavily fortified location that with few ways into the major city. Their conversation
is interrupted by IG-11 asking if they want lunch, which Mando refuse. He tells
Cara that under no circumstances are their going to let it off the ship. I have
kind of glossed over it a bit, but Mando has serious issues with Droids. Even astromechs
(R2-D2 model) and other service droids. While it hasn’t been stated, his handful
of flashbacks early on seem to suggest that it’s because Droids were the main
soldiers in his villages massacre. But that’s just a guess.
Mando and the crew land on the outskirts
of Navarro, where Karga and his men are waiting. Mando, Cara and Kuiil go out
to meet them on Blurggs of all things. Karga attempts to keep manipulate Mando
into leaving Cara behind but he refuses. He asks about the Child, and Mando
shows him. There’s a tense moment while Karga looks the Child over, but he just
puts him down a second later. They move towards town, planning to set up camp
once the sun goes down.
 |
| Umm... this isn't the Mandalorian you're looking for? |
That night the group relax around
the fire, and Mando and Karga talk over the plan. They’re planning on bringing
the Child to the Client’s base, be brought inside and then have Mando execute
him. It’s so simple, there’s absolutely no way it’ll work. Just saying. Karga
thinks the stormtroopers will scatter once the Client is dead. Their meal is
interrupted by some kind of predatory birds attacking. They make off with two of
the Blurggs, one of Karga’s men and almost Mando before the blaster fire scares
them off. Karga got sliced by one when the attack began, the wound in his arm
looking really bad. The bird’s claws were venomous. Karga looks bad, as they
don’t have the medical supplies to heal him. But the child walks over and uses
the force to heal the wounds. Exhausting himself once again.
The next day the group continues
their trudge. Upon reaching the city, Karga says this is it, turns and executes
his surviving men. He reveals that the plan was to kill Mando and take the kid,
but after the Child healed him he changed his mind. Karga tries to convince
them to let him help them to get the Client. Cara wants to execute him, but
Mando is willing to figure something out. He sends Kuiil back to the ship with
the Kid. Cara will say that she captured Mando and brought him into the client for
payment. They take the Child’s hover stroller with as a decoy.
 |
| Oh no! They're hitting the broadside of a barn! It's not possible! |
They make it to the city gate and
bluff their way passed the scout troopers guarding the gate. While that is
going on, Kuiil rides hard back to the Razor Crest. The main group enters the
Client’s new abode. The Client is impressed with the Mandalorian’s armor, and
offers Karga a drink while they settle the bill. The Client asks the Mandalorian
as to why his people resisted the Empire, but it was a rhetorical question, I
guess. They’re interrupted by a call for the Client. His boss, the former Moff Gideon,
tells the Client to “Check again” on the client before someone opens fire on
the building, killing the Client, his stormtroopers and the droid bartender.
Through the hole the firing squad made, they see eight black armored stormtroopers
and then a horde of regular ones. Mando radios Kuiil and tells him to make a
run for it, unknowingly letting some scout troopers listening in to target his
Ugnaught friend.
A new age TIE fighter lands and
then opens up. It reveals Moff Gideon, whom steps out and up to the building.
He says that the Mandalorian has something that he wants. At the same time, the
Scout troopers catch up to Kuiil when he’s within spitting distance of the ship.
He’s shot and killed, and the Scout troopers pick up the Child, as Mando
screams into the commlink to try and get and answer for Kuiil.
 |
| Thy enemy has revealed himself. Gideon has risen. |
Part of me wonders if the obvious
trap that Mando stepped into last time was meant to prep him for this next,
slightly less obvious trap. Granted, I don’t think anyone who works with bounty
hunters for a living would completely trust Karga on his word alone, but he was
at least less obvious with the double cross. Or maybe I’m just predisposed to trusting
Carl Weathers. Who knows? I liked the friction between Cara and Kuiil. It made
the alliance with the Mandalorian seem more natural, with his two most trusted
allies not being completely trusting of each other. What? Am I the only one
that had friends in high school that didn’t like each other? Anyway, their friction
was good, as well as hearing a bit about Kuiil’s past. Sure, in retrospect
finding out he is an Ex-Imperial freed slave and at one point a genetic
engineer as well as a mechanical one was obviously setting him up for his death.
That amount of rushed character development always stinks of an early end. But the
info was still cool. It was also cool to see the Kid bust out a few more Force
powers. It’s been a while since he lifted the Mudhorn in the second episode, so
I was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to flex his metaphysical muscle
again. Curious how it seems that every Force user’s natural impulse is to choke
someone with the Force when they use it offensively. Weird. But it was also
cool to see the kid bust out some healing mojo. Which is something I don’t
believe was ever introduced in the films proper. I know that most of the games
and many of the expanded universe stories had examples of Jedi and other Force
Users healing themselves or others with their powers, but I don’t think Luke or
any Jedi pre-Empire ever showed off that skill. Maybe it’s a rare talent. I
know nothing at the time of writing this about Moff Gideon, but the dude’s
entrance was spectacular. Having his elite stormtroopers blow holes in his subordinates
before striding forward in his black armor was amazing. Fun fact, the
production crew didn’t have enough Stormtrooper costumes ready for these last
two episodes, so they turned to the international Star Wars fan group the 501st
to fill out the ranks. The group is big into cosplaying Stormtroopers and of
having as true to film armor as possible. So yeah, most of the extras in this
episode are die hard fans. I like it. While I’m usually hesitant of stories
that introduce the main villain just at the end of the arc, this intro was
pretty damned good, so I’m more hopeful than worried going into the season
finale of the Mandalorian. Have a good night everybody.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32709862
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment