Alright, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, What Are We Doing Here?

By Mike Redmond | TV | March 3, 2023 |

By Mike Redmond | TV | March 3, 2023 |

Hi, hello. Welcome to the weekly recaps for The Mandalorian Season 3 where I swear to God I’m going to try and give this show a fair shake, which is definitely an uphill battle after the freaking masterpiece and a half that was Andor. That said — and I’m really tipping my hand here — but if you absolutely love this show and don’t want your enjoyment of said show to be ruined, this first recap might not be for you. Which is totally fine! Thank you for the click. No harm, no foul. Enjoy the rest of your day.

However, if you watched the season premiere and a little voice in the back of your head kept saying, “Something’s not right here,” you’re among friends. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not talking The Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi levels of dreck here. The Mandalorian Season 3 still has a lot of promise, and director Rick Famuyiwa added some interesting energy to the premiere that I’m hoping we’ll see more of as the season progresses. Famuyiwa is now an executive producer alongside Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, and I could be interpreting this all wrong, but he seems to be giving the action scenes some much needed scope and flair that no longer feel restrained by The Volume. Case in point, the opening scene.

Episode 17, “The Apostate,” kicks off with The Armorer forging a helmet for a young foundling boy to join the ranks during a beachside ceremony. A surprising number of Mandalorians are present with shiny unblemished armor, including Paz Vizsla, and there’s kind of a neat ambiguity to the whole thing. Are we watching a young Din Djarin/Mando say, “This is the way,” for the first time? Maybe! But just as the boy promises to never remove his helmet, The Armorer quickly snatches him out of the water as a massive alligator/dinosaur thingie attacks the ceremony. After watching Marvel sh*t the bed with horrible looking CGI, it’s a breath of fresh air to watch Industrial Light & Magic showcase why they’re the masters of their craft. The visual effects are crisp, and the stunt work is on point. There’s also a badass moment where a Mandalorian jet packs into the sky after planting a bomb on the creatures back, and the camera follows him all the way up while hugging close to his helmet. We’re really seeing this show flex its muscles and not rest on its laurels when it comes to delivering action sequences fit for a blockbuster movie.

Just as the fight with the alligator monster looks like it’s going to show a young Mando bravely enter the fray, the episode throws a curveball as the actual Mando comes zooming in with his new ship, a refitted Naboo fighter. Turns out, this wasn’t a flashback. Mando blasts the creature into bits and lands amongst his rapidly-growing old clan as Baby Yoda pokes his head out in the droid cockpit. It’s a neat “Daddy’s home” moment, but it unfortunately highlights a gaping problem with the show’s storytelling.

If you’ve only been watching The Mandalorian and completely skipped The Book of Boba Fett, you’re probably very confused to see Mando not only tooling around in a new ship but with Baby Yoda riding shotgun. The Season 2 finale saw the little guy leave with Luke Skywalker in a heartbreaking moment where Mando agreed the best place for his green son is with another Jedi. Mando even took his helmet off to say goodbye to his special boy.

So how the heck are the two of them back together? The answer: Some real bullsh*t.

In a creative decision that’s come back to bite Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni in the butt over the past few weeks, Mando and Baby Yoda were inexplicably reunited during The Book of Boba Fett spinoff. After four episodes, that show wildly switched gears and straight-up became The Mandalorian Season 2.5 for the remainder of its run. Literally, two full chapters were dedicated to Mando being exiled from his clan after admitting he removed his helmet and Baby Yoda being trained by Luke Skywalker, who he ultimately ditches to go back to Mando in The Book of Boba Fett finale.

Granted, one of those episodes, Return of The Mandalorian, is probably the best episode of The Mandalorian to date, but it was a dick move to tuck a pivotal moment into a completely different show. That decision becomes even weirder when Disney+ doesn’t even show a lick of Mando and Baby Yoda’s reunion in the recap that runs before the Season 3 premiere. They’re just back together, adventuring it up like nothing even happened, which is another major issue going into this new season.

Anyway, after saving the day with his new ship, Mando meets with The Armorer to discuss redeeming himself in the eyes of his clan. Despite spending all of Season 2 discovering that his bond with Baby Yoda is more important than his Mandalorian code, Mando is suddenly very intent on returning to the fold. It’s an awkward step back that really only exists to give him a new mission: Namely bathing in the Mines of Mandalore, which is easier said than done considering the whole planet has been bombed to shit by the Empire and all of the Mandalorian civil wars. They love them some factions.

After showing The Armorer evidence that Mandalore is no longer poisoned, she agrees that Mando will be welcomed back if he somehow makes it to the mines. With that assurance locked in, Mando and Baby Yoda jet off to start their mission. This involves a trip through hyperspace where Baby Yoda spots some ominous-looking space whales swimming alongside their lane. Is this just a cool moment highlighting the mysteries of the Star Wars universe? Haha, no. It’s a total set-up for the Ahsoka spinoff, streaming later this year on Disney+. The Marvel-ization is in full Force, folks.

Because this show refuses to move forward, Mando and Baby Yoda arrive in Nevarro, the city from the first two seasons that’s now being run by Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga. Although, it’s notably different. Instead of looking like a locale pulled directly from the original trilogy, it’s an overly sterile set that reads more Disney World attraction than gritty space port. That feeling becomes even more unavoidable when this show inexplicably decides to go big on space pirates, which were honestly one of the weaker elements of The Clone Wars, and they didn’t get any better in live-action. It’s mind-numbingly ham-fisted, and not in a campy kind of way that Star Wars can sometimes do really well.

As for why Mando is back on Nevarro, turns out he’s back to hating droids again. Never mind that he just spent two seasons (and a spinoff) getting over that, we’re going back to the well, people. In order to traverse Mandalore, he’s going to need a droid even though he spends most of the episode saying the planet isn’t poisoned before. The problem is Mando doesn’t want just any droid. He wants IG-11, who notably self-destructed in the Season 1 finale. However, Greef kept a statue of IG-11 old parts in the town square, and Mando is determined to bring him back to life.

After a failed attempt to revive IG-11 results in a surprisingly horror-like scene for the family-friendly series, Greef takes Mando to the best droidsmiths in the galaxy who happened to be in town. Who’s ready for some fan service?

If there’s one thing you think Star Wars would want to avoid mentioning ever again, it’s The Rise of Skywalker. A film so bad that Kathleen Kennedy has been terrified to release another Star Wars movie since. (Disney+ series? Take as many as you want!) However, there was a lot of internet love for Babu Frik, and The Mandalorian is becoming more and more blatantly engineered to deliver viral moments for Twitter. Which is how we end up with a season premiere where Baby Yoda hugs the other cute tiny alien from Star Wars. Yay?

If the shameless fan service wasn’t bad enough, the whole scene sets up Mando for another fetch quest, which have plagued this series from the jump. This time around, he has to find a new memory circuit for IG-11 if he wants to bring his old friend back. I know this show is basically a live-action cartoon, but do something new. I’m freaking begging you.

With another side mission locked in place, Mando and Baby Yoda take off, but not before getting into a space skirmish with the aforementioned pirates. Admittedly, this scene ends up being kind of cool as Famuyima toys with some slick camera angles as Mando’s ship slips in and out of asteroid shadows to take out his prey like some sort of space Batman. There’s also a seaweed-faced pirate king that comes out of nowhere, and I’m guessing we’ll see more of him this season. Although, it’d be great if we didn’t.

After the space pirate encounter, Mando apparently has a pit stop to make before knocking out his growing checklist. He lands at a Mandalorian castle on the planet Kalevala where he finds Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan sitting on her throne. (Twitter tells me her vibe is both “lesbian” and “mother.” I have no way to confirm any of that, but sure, why not?) After the events of Season 2, which saw Mando taking possession of the mythical Mandalorian Darksaber, Bo-Katan’s crew abandoned her quest to retake Mandalore. Alone and dejected, she’s not entirely thrilled to see Mando, who was hoping to join her forces, and lectures him on how his “cult” was one of the many factions responsible for her planet’s ruin. Unfortunately, Mando is an idiot now, and like a child, tells her how he’s going to redeem herself by bathing in the mines even after she’s repeatedly pointed out that his clan’s ways are extremely messed up. Despite all of that, Bo-Katan still tells Mando where to find the mines, and he once again vows to prove the planet isn’t poisoned. Bruh, we get it.

And that’s it. That’s how the mercifully short premiere ends. Mando tells another person he’s going to take a bath because, “Nuh uh, Mandalore is not poisoned,” and the show fades to black. Not gonna lie, the whole thing could’ve been better. Normally, I watch these Disney+ shows once in the morning and then again at night with my son, who is more of the target audience. His enjoyment is infectious, and I can usually count on him to see the positive. He even loved Quantumania! (He’s all about Kang.) This time, something very telling happened. When the episode ended, I asked him what he thought, and he’s never said anything this negative before in his life: “That was one of the weaker openings.” Yikes!

Mike Drops

— Did you like how I went the whole recap without once comparing the show to Andor? That was hard. Let’s be real, as much as Andor benefitted from Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan being total shithouses (and also being beautifully written and shot in every way) The Mandalorian had the unenviable task of following a well-crafted piece of sci-fi. Granted, the two are operating on entirely different frequencies where one is a Buck Rogers serial and the other is a taut political thriller, which is fine, but they don’t exist in a vacuum. That said, the nearly four-month gap was a smart idea. The best thing that could’ve happened to The Mandalorian Season 3 was letting time push Andor way into the background. — But also watch Andor. I really can’t stress that enough.

— I’m not even touching how time works on this show. I don’t know what the hell Jon Favreau is saying out there, but it’s some real Jeremy Bearimy shit.

— Best part of the episode? Bo-Katan’s line about waving the Darksaber around. As much as The Mandalorian is supposed to be a fun romp, it can get way up its ass. Katee Sackhoff’s line delivery was a breath of fresh air, and I look forward to hopefully seeing more of her Bo-Katan in full zero f*cks to give mode.

— Is it me or is Baby Yoda just not hitting the same anymore? I love the little guy, but the minute he hugged Babu Frik, I felt like something broke. They pushed our boy too far. Definitely hoping to be wrong, but we’re not off to a strong start.

— No, wait, I take it back. The best part of the episode was when they Poochie’d Gina Carano right out of the show. In the scene where Greef tries to talk Mando into staying on Nevarro as a marshal, Mando asks, “What about Cara Dune?” Greef says that she got promoted to special forces by the New Republic after bringing in Moff Gideon. It reads like a throwaway line, but it’s actually a brutal burn that highlights how big of a bag Carano dropped. There was an entire spinoff, Rangers of the New Republic, built just for her, but nope, she had to anti-mask and anti-pronoun her way right out of a job. Have fun making movies with Ben Shapiro, Gina!