It is up to Bo-Katan to try to play peacemaker with her people. But she harbors a sad secret that won’t make it easy.
Season 3, Episode 7: ‘The Spies’
The original “Star Wars” opens with a Rebel Alliance ship being pursued by an enormous Imperial Star Destroyer, which — in one of the most famous and fearsome images in the entire series — slowly fills the screen, obscuring everything else in the frame. This week’s episode of “The Mandalorian” features an echo of that moment, as Bo-Katan’s reassembled army of Mandalorian privateers descends on Nevarro in an old Imperial Light Cruiser, sending the locals into a momentary panic.
High Magistrate Greef Karga though reassures his anxious droids, however, that this massive warship is a welcome sight. It is, perhaps, a harbinger of a brighter tomorrow, signaling that the scattered Mandalorian tribes are reuniting.
I say “perhaps” because one of the themes of this episode is that “getting the band back together” may not always be such a good thing. While the Mandalorians are gathering on Nevarro, the freed Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) is meeting virtually with “the Shadow Council,” consisting of former Imperial warlords who have been dismissed by the New Republic as a mere disorganized “remnant” of the former Empire.
With the Grand Admiral Thrawn still in hiding (including from “Star Wars” fans, who have been waiting for him to make his debut on this show), Gideon takes control of the cabal, insisting that the time has come for them to stop focusing only on their own territories and to begin sharing resources. Specifically, he would like them to give some of their arsenal to him so that he can eliminate the growing Mandalorian threat.
“The Spies” is an odd title for this chapter given that there is not a whole lot of cloak-and-dagger action. Instead, the bulk of this nearly hourlong episode is about the different Mandalorian sects struggling to put aside old grudges. The more devout types, like Paz Vizsla, seethe in the presence of the more independent types, like Axe Woves. Those two get into a dispute over the proper rules of a combat board game, letting their lingering anger over what happened to their planet spill over into a violent skirmish. (To be fair to Axe, though, Paz should have known that only a wing guard can flank-jump.)
It is up to Bo-Katan to try to play peacemaker with her people. But she harbors a sad secret that won’t make it easy. When a large cohort of Mandalorians travels to Mandalore to assess the state of their home-world and plan for its future, they run into a group of haggard Bo-Katan loyalists, who stubbornly survived “the Night of a Thousand Tears” because they knew their leader would never surrender to the Empire.
But the thing is: The Princess did, in fact, surrender. She handed over the Darksaber to Gideon to save her people. And then he slaughtered most of them anyway, leaving the divided remainder to fight among themselves.
Something unexpected happens, though, after Bo-Katan admits what she did. Din picks up on something she says — about how “Mandalore has always been too powerful for any enemy to defeat” and how “it is always our own division that destroys us” — and he acknowledges that the planet was probably dying long before the Empire swooped in.
“We were taught that everyone but us had forsaken the Way,” he says, noting that his faction did not even care about the Darksaber or its meaning. “Your song is not yet written,” he tells the Princess. “I will serve you until it is.”
The director Rick Famuyiwa and the credited screenwriters, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, bring a sense of grandeur and heft to this episode, with a lot of scenes that survey the assembled forces and their various vehicles and weapons. The action sequences really pop, too — including one that is not necessarily essential to the plot but is still very cool, as the giant land ship piloted by the survivors on Mandalore is wrecked by an underground monster.
Everything builds steadily and cleverly to the big climactic twist, when the Mandalorians arrive at the planet’s Great Forge only to find a secret Imperial base, filled with fighter ships that hang from the ceiling like bats. They also find Gideon, surrounded by next-level stormtroopers and protected by three Praetorian guards. He is sporting his new state-of-the-art beskar alloy armor, boasting, “The most impressive improvement is that it has me in it.” In the ensuing attack, Bo-Katan is able to lead a safe retreat for almost all of her people; but Vizsla is killed and Din is captured, setting up next week’s finale.
What is most troubling about Gideon’s ambush is what he says to the Mandalorians before he orders their destruction. He ties many of the threads from the past few seasons together, saying that with the help of old and new technology he is building a new Dark Trooper army that will combine the ancient skills and lethal modern power of the galaxy’s strongest factions: like the Jedi, the cloners and the Mandalorians.
In other words: He is reassembling the broken pieces of the old order. And this particular reunion is not so sweet.
This is the way
The closing credits this week feature a softer orchestral version of the theme music, sounding a note of solemnity rather than the usual triumphant fanfare. A nice touch.
Famuyiwa and the crew bring some cool noir vibes to the opening scene, which sees Elia Kane slipping stealthily into Coruscant’s red light district — bathed in “Blade Runner”-style neon and mist — to deliver a message to Moff Gideon.
Grogu has a new toy! The Anzellan mechanics have remade the killer droid IG-11 into the armed and armored vehicle IG-12, with a little seat for a Baby Yoda-sized pilot and buttons that make the machine’s voice say “yes” or “no.” In a rare bit of comic relief in this episode, Grogu has fun grabbing things and lurching dangerously about while pushing the “yes” button repeatedly. (As the Anzellans would say, “Bad Baby!”)
This was a good episode overall, but it remains somewhat troublesome just how much Favreau is leaning into the B-movie roots of “Star Wars” this season, with even clunkier dialogue and hammier acting than in seasons past. Esposito is an excellent actor who usually has a keen grasp of behavioral subtleties, but he goes distractingly broad at times this week as Gideon. And some lines — as when Din says, “This isn’t working for me,” to Grogu after his IG-12 adventures cause him problems — sound jarringly modern.
Isn’t it weird that Karga still calls Din “Mando” when Nevarro is now full of Mandalorians?
Source: Television - nytimes.com
