The Mandalorian The Mandalorian 3.07 - Chapter 23 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I honestly have no clue what Hux Sr is working on

 

I’m tired of all of the EU and TV shows just introducing new plot we know doesn’t matter much later on. Making 20 x Gideons or whatever would be lame because we know they aren’t relevant later on. Star Wars needs to quit being so afraid of committing detail and explanations to key events in books or TV shows. It’s making them feel less consequential. Shadow of the Sith was an improvement in that regard. Here’s hoping Mando and Ahsoka also are.

 

Well most things aren’t relevant later on.

 

This is Papa Hux, isn't it?

 

Yep. Hux Sr the abusive alcoholic father you hate to hate. Honestly I was cheering when he finally got killed. But yes that’s him.

 

Did Kylo Ren have much contact with Hux Sr? I have read none of the relevant EU. I guess I read your question as if it were about the younger Hux keeping it secret. Maybe he just didn't know?

 

I love how hilariously janky this shot looks.



Pitter Patter Pitter Patter Pitter Patter

 

I got to be petty, I said no Sabine, nothing above an 8. So there we go. Great episode though. Really cinematic.

Grogu with a little mecha suit is the best thing ever. "Yes!" "No!" and no it's not going to get old. He even had a little moment of growth breaking up the fight. Don't be modest Din. He did learn that from you. You've changed. Your not a cold badass any more thanks to him. I think Din confessing loyalty to Bo-Katan was really a confession of loyalty to Mandalore as a whole no matter what. The one thing he hasn't grown out of yet. I think that's the next part of his character that's about to be tested and shaken to the core. When the landing party got there. I was disappointed the Mando survivors weren't the regular jack ones like Sabine's dad or the poor citizens who gathered around the horror of the dude who committed suicide in "The Mandalorian Plot". I was just as disappointed they were the main red shirts of the battle. What a waste.

It was fairly predictable Gideon's forces were going to be waiting for the scouting party to arrive. I mean, they were told they were going to have to retake Mandalore. There is suspicion about that now since the planet only seems occupied by wildlife or more violent versions of the Poletecs. What's more. The landing party's goal was to get to the Great Forge which just happens to be where an active Imperial-looking base there loaded with Ties was waiting. That was a really polished-looking base to have just been reactivated yesterday. It has to have been there all along. Seems like the landing party was sent there on purpose.

There were quite a few smirks during their conference where the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn was being teased for the next episode after the credits scene. Look at Hux's face. Look at Warlord 2. They are in on something. I think Gideon has been allowed to go fight his big battle with the Mandos because the plan is for them to wipe each other out. There is a spy and a traitor somewhere but I think they are working for Thrawn's faction. It could be Axe who just seems like a dumb jerk with a punchable face. They pulled a fake out with Bo-Katan when it seemed like Gideon was about to call her out. There have been breadcrumbs throughout the season something is up with the Armorer and she did seem sad to me this entire episode. Paz continued a proud tradition for TV show characters in armor using the big rotary blasters.



Gideon has an obvious obsession with Mandos. I think he probably really is one. Maybe the horns connect to the Armorer, like they were both formerly in Death Watch. They have a longer history than we know. That doesn't mean she had to be a traitor or even that she was working for him. Could be the other way around.

I took it probably too literally when Gideon said his very own Clone Troopers have him in them. Like they are all really Clones of him and that's this egomaniac's idea of a perfect army. Hell, he could be like Twice from BNHA and they don't even know who the real Gideon is anymore. He may already be dead. Imagine if, in season 3 of The Bad Batch, Gideon just shows up to meet Hemlock and is like, "Stop wasting your time on your dumb experiments. Just Clone me. I'm the perfect warrior." Either way, they are probably templated from Mandos if not somehow Fett clones again.

One more episode. Geez that went by fast.

 

His cloning project is called necromancer. Sounds like the Palp/Snoke project to me.

 

I thought it was weird when the Imperials said that people were sick of the New Republic's "rules and regulations". Like wasn't the Empire a sprawling, controlling, bureaucratic, authoritarian nightmare that involved itself in every aspect of its citizens' lives?

Or maybe it's that for the elites (the only people the Imperials care about keeping happy), the rules were a lot more lax under the Empire - no one cared if there were slaves in your supply lines, bribes and corruption were par for the course, and there was no discouragement of industrial-scale environmental destruction.

 

Substantially better than previous episode, and one of the stronger ones for the season. Feels like the story is finally picking up, and that this could have been happening in episode 2. I think we're still pretty far from season 3 being as good as 1 or 2, but I will say, I'm looking forward to seeing how they wrap things up, the plot progression finally is building anticipation. I'll give it a 7.

The Good:

• Space Ships, Skating Ships and Kaiju oh my! - plenty of eye candy here, and a lovely series of rainy neon canyons for Coruscant at the beginning. The arrival of Mando fleet at Mandalore looked big, and the nomad "sail boat" was neat little design.
• Grogu gets a new shtick - remember when we expected that Baby Yoda would have a new joke every episode, and then he started doing the same jokes over and over, so we don't expect it anymore? Well that's how I remember it, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing at him again. Heck, I laughed twice, first at the jokes, then at myself for how dumb they are. Carl Weathers once again owns the stage, thank goodness LFL has kept him around.
• Praetorian Guards - while the choreography for their fight with Paz was nothing special, I like the design on these guys and it's nice to have some villains we know are strong enough to kill a hero.

The Bad

• Expedition Exposition - the problem with neglecting to tell a story for a whole season (even multiple season here, in a sense) is that when you finally get around to it there are loads of inelegant expository dialogue to wade through. This episode felt like Game of Thrones, and I don't mean that in a complimentary way. First it's the Shadow Council, then it's feast on Navaro, then a feast on the Mandalorian skate ship, then Gideon again, it just keeps going. The weirdest part is how they sit around all this food and nobody's eating
• A Series of (Conveniently) Unfortunate Events - Why did Paz stay and fight? Why didn't Grogu use The Force to save Din? Why did the Praetorian Guards wait to appear? This whole final sequence felt a bit clumsily assembled, but since Paz wasn't much of a character to begin with I guess it doesn't really matter
• Somehow Gideon Returned - he's not a bad villain, but we've seen enough of him already, and he isn't doing anything new here. What was the point of them defeating him in season 2 only for him to escape off screen and resume his reign of terror exactly where he left off? We needed a better villains roster this season.

The Ugly

• Battle of the Hallways - steel corridors are never an inspiring location for choreography, but even by the standards of Disney+ Star Wars we should expect better than two crowds of helmet people running up and down hallways shooting blasters in the air. Until they find better writers/directors who can make it work, please no more of this.

 

Yes Yes Yes, let this be the summary of this episode. I am looking forward to the finale, because it promises to be very interesting. For me it's an easy 9/10. I see that someone gave 1/10. Everyone can have their own opinion but .... maybe this series is not for this person .... why bother.

 

My guess is he was working on resurrecting Palpatine. At this point in the timeline. the clone is alive on Exegol, so maybe he’s still working on slowing down the deterioration of Palpatine’s body, as well as working to create Snoke. We know Snoke is a strandcast, we know Pershing was researching strandcasts. We know Gideon was supposed to turn Pershing’s research over to Hux.

I think Gideon had Pershing killed because he’s at odds with Hux. I think Gideon wants Pershing’s data all to himself so he can artificially give himself (or his beskar troopers) force sensitivity. Gideon mentions wanting an aggregate army drawing on the strength of kaminoans, mandalorians, and Jedi. He’s already got troopers (possibly cloned) in beskar armor, and in season 2, Pershing and Gideon were experimenting with transfusing Grogu’s midichlorians into volunteer subjects. I can only assume they were working on trying to create artificial force users.

 

Well, you have to watch it to know how you feel about it. It's not like the show's quality is consistent. Really it's rare for a show to have to same level of quality for every single episode.

This episode was good relative to the rest of season 3, but really I'd expect the rest of the season to be at this quality while the endgame arc would be even better.
And even some stuff in this episode, like Din pledging his loyalty to Bo-Katan feels a bit off since the rest of the season barely took the time to develop their relationship. Paz dies, but his arc was just "I don't like you. You saved my kid so I like you. I'm gonna start a fight over space-chess during this important mission. I'm dead".

The Gideon stuff, I'm hesitant to speak on, because I don't really care about the sequel trilogy setup. Outside of that, he's not really any different from before. He's more of a physical threat now with a fancy suit, but he's still just "the bad guy" to me.

The reveal that Bo-Katan surrendered Mandalore was pretty good though.

 

I don't like to focus on nit picks because I generally enjoy what we get and prefer to focus on the positives but I'm a little surprised the usual nit pickers haven't had a go at people being thrown off ledgers and falling to their deaths. I mean, at the forge at least where the battle started, it didn't look that far down, injuries sure but dying? Even if you can accept that, I mean...they all had jet packs, so why not just fire that bad boy back up and up we come again Super Mario Smash Brothers style.

 

Probably my favorite episode of the season but that a pretty low bar to clear. I agree with @Bor Mullet that they failed to do a good job explaining the conflict between the two Mando groups and the chess scene and Grogu being peacemaker was pretty ridiculous.

Why didn't Bo use her darksaber to cut open the door earlier instead of standing there listening to Moff Gideon give a big speech? That reminded me of when Reva waited to use her lightsaber to cut open the door in the Obi-Wan show.

I thought the only reason to include the fish romance story in the last episode was to make us think that Axe's "I'll do anything for money" Mando's were the ones that freed Moff Gideon. Turns out that was a red herring. So they filmed that entire silly fish romance scene for a lame red herring that most people didn't even pick up on. This is on top of the other red herring from a couple episodes back when it seemed like they were setting up a situation where the New Republic thought that the Mando's freed Gideon which could've lead to a NR/Mando conflict. Nope. Gideon was freed by his own people wearing Beskar.

More thoughts later. It's late and I'm still processing the episode.

Oh the IG-11 mech suit thing was more entertaining than I expected but also...why? What's the point other than, "isn't Grogu cute and funny?"

 

This episode got an instant -5 when I heard the words “Operation Necromancer” and still ended up at an 8 so I guess that’s something.

 

Man, cloning is ruining everything. It just can’t help but make most stories worse.

 

Greef Karga: The Anzellan spies planted surveillance hardware in the head of IG-12, my little friend. They're working with Captain Teva and a small band of Rebels, monitoring Imperial activities in this region. Your service has been invaluable. We will rescue Mando, I promise you that.

 

So it was great to see them finally get back on track with Gideon and his machinations. However it raised a question that I know the answer to somewhere but can't grasp it... The stormtroopers in beskar and jet packs, are they from one of the cartoons? I'm sure I've seen them before.

I'm assuming the imperial base on Mandalore was mining the beskar for Gideons troops. Are they really clones of him? The TIE's hanging upside down was a great little design idea. I never envisaged Palleon looking like that, and it was a surprise that he appeared, as soon as he was mentioned I was just like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme with me pointing at the screen. I can't stand TLJ with a passion, but when the Praetorian guards appeared I thought it was really cool, obviously very contrived to get that reaction, but cool nonetheless. Someone please tell me the backstory of those guys, what makes them so good and lethal and where do they come from?

 

I don't think I mind it in this situation. It makes perfect sense that space fascists would use clones for their army because most people wouldn't want to join up if the government wasn't forcing them to.

Of course, Gideon clones could lead to writers making crazy plots in the future, but we can hope they just keep it limited to what they've currently done. If they leave the masks on, for instance, most viewers won't even know.

 

Well, yeah. But if the masks come off and they all have Gideon’s grinning face? That’s my main fear for next episode.

 

Yeah, lol, it could be terrible. I don't think Rick will do it.

Also, MSW mentioned that the clones could be younger versions of himself. That might look better.

Or maybe, as someone else in this thread mentioned, the clones look hideous. That may be the best option.

 

All terrible, in my view.