The Mandalorian Tusken Raiders (spoilers)

Oh, I get it. No need to get your panties in a bunch over this. I'm not locked into "Tuskens are evil." The Tuskens in The Mandalorian were not seen doing anything bad. Yes, the Pykes were obviously evil too. Torturing and enslaving people are evil acts. Boba and the rodian slave did not slaughter Tuskens, but that's what the Tuskens did to them. Cliegg nor Shmi slaughtered Tuskens, but they tortured her to death. There is no nuance that changes that. A dance around a fire doesn't change that. I think you're misguided if you take this to be some glowing portrayal of real world indigenous people. It is said that the other Tusken tribes survived by killing.

 

No need to get your panties in a bunch over this. Major projection going on in this statement. Take a deep breath kid.

I can't tell if this is flying too far over your head or if you are just "arguing to win" no matter what, but...

 

We know next to nothing about Cliegg, really. Nor do I think we're likely to.

I think it'd be a really cool bit of worldbuilding if we were to learn about the various Tusken tribes. As much as we see Tatooine in media, we really don't know much about it or ever really explore it beyond the same few locations.

 

I hope at some point we get a Cliegg's leg cameo at some Tusken tribe camp.

 

It better be before we get smell-vision, it's going to be gangrenous and rotting.

 

It's a semantics argument. Was it evil for Michael Corleone to kill his brother? Certainly Michael Corleone was victimized by the family he was born into, the corrupt police, and other dangerous people in his life. He was acting out in revenge when he did that. Seems to me like your take essentially says there is no such thing as good or evil, because you rationalize it with an explanation. I would venture to bet that almost all evil can be traced back to some perceived victimization of the perpetrator. Doesn't mean it's not evil. Also, taking revenge, in my experience, is not simply just the way things always go.

 

There is pain and desire when it comes to revenge. Good and evil, however, are dependent on the choice of acting upon it or not acting upon it. And really, true evil is when the person has a complete understanding of what is right and wrong, and yet still choose to do the wrong thing.

 

That's why a lot of people make excuses for their actions

 

The Nikto biker gang taking them out seemed a little...odd to me, in terms of consistency with the previous episode. Like sure, guess we have no gauge on the actual numbers of the gang, the Tosche station drunks could have been just a breakoff segment of a greater whole and they came after the tuskens in huge numbers later. Fair.

But we don't get much of a sense of all that, they've been presented as pretty smalltime outlaw hooligans so far. And coming right after an episode showcasing just how badass even this less-warlike tribe of tuskens can be, felt a little odd. You wouldn't figure the swoop bikers would have much of a weapons advantage - the tuskens have their cycler rifles, and Boba made a big deal of all the "you have machines now too" stuff last week with the bikes. On top of all that, surely the survivors at Tosche reported back it was a human who kicked their asses there and stole their rides, right? Guess there could be a time jump, Niktos have witnesses a bunch of sandpeople out there riding around on speeders, but it just felt a little half-baked within the episode.

Not a huge thing, kinda rubbed me the wrong way though. And the freakin' Pyke syndicate of all people even seeing the Nitkos as a concern and worthy of paying off...the Pykes - I mean, damn. Especially with all the backup muscle we're shown they have on-call at the end there. All the politics power dynamics of Tatooine as a whole have felt pretty iffy & inconsistent to me overall though, guess I'm nitpicking it too much.

 

The Pykes are racist and clearly humiliated at the thought of paying money to a “less civilized” species like the Tuskens. I wouldn’t be surprised if they BS the whole payment deal to Boba Fett just to give him a scapegoat and not actually pay. The Pykes do have the resources and motive to kill the Tuskens.

 

I meant why are they paying the Niktos?

This is the Pykes, one of the giant prime mafia families in the galaxy, they've been presented as nothing but big-time and pretty vicious/ruthless by nature. Running huge slaving rings and all.

They're on-world with armed freight trains and landing giant cruise ships full of dudes in Espa. It's a full expeditionary force looking to get a foothold on Tatooine, not some little recon mission with no muscle behind it.

Forget Boba & the Tuskens for a second. They've been paying the little swoopbike gang of Niktos protection up until now. Boba commanding their attention a little more makes sense: he headed up a raid that took down their freighttrain, and was decent enough to spare every one of the damn dirty space-crack-dealers aboard so long as their bosses agreed to pony up some regular dough.

Okay. Going forward that makes sense.

But why's a giant Hutt-equivalent (probably way more powerful than the Hutts by this point in the timeline, actually) syndicate paying off a little local 1%er gang of bar-brawlers? It just feels like none of this Tatooine stuff has really been thought through. If the Pykes want Tatooine, surely they were expecting some resistance even in the wake of Jabba being dead for a few years. They're not prepared to squash the local few-dozen-strong Hell's Angels chapter? Some cartel, huh?

 

It really depends on the size of that gang I think. If they are big enough than paying them off might actually be cheaper than investing the resources to squash them. Sure the Pykes cut probably pull it off but as long as they aren't asking for too much protection money paying them and keeping them on retainer as local muscle might just be cheaper than moving troops in and fighting it out with them. To quote the Twins from last episode "War is bad for business".

 

A lot of it is assuming the Pykes are telling the truth and not lying to Boba Fett. Pykes would pay small gangs money to cover their tracks of genocide. After all, better to have Boba pit against these smaller biker gangs than plotting to destroy the Pykes.

 

True. But the fact still remains, the Pykes are clearly not in the gutter as seen in the present day considering their legion landing on Mos Espa. So it's clear they have no reason interest in paying the Tuskens anything other than a massacre. They would have to be really desperate to do otherwise.

 

May be the Pykes have gotten a little overstretched during the flashback period, they started paying the Nikto's before Boba had trained the Tusken's into becoming a serious threat to their spice operation as it was easier. By the time we get to the later time period they've either increased their strength, believe Boba's a serious enough threat they need reinforcements or elsewhere they're no longer overstretched throughout the Outer Rim.

 

Yeah, them lying to Boba in the meeting makes sense I guess, they're certainly the type.

It just feels weird. Taking pot-shots at the Tuskens every time they passed by felt more like just the Pykes are ***holes to me, not them worried about the tuskens potentially taking the train and the cargo. Likewise a few unemployed former-Jabba-goons on swoops just seems like they'd be worth the brief (inevitably victorious) tussle with rather than paying them beer money once a month.

 

This is actually one of the more realistic elements of the show. They're paying the Niktos to do the small-time dirty work of keeping the Tuskens out of their way. The Pykes are way too galactically powerful to bother with that kind of work. So they pay some biker low-lifes to do it.

 

I get that cartels will occasionally pay a biker gang for thoroughfare through their territory, not wanting to bother with them. It just seems strange in this instance. Paying off the local tribe who're in cahoots with a galaxy-renowned bounty hunter who's just wrecked your **** is one thing. But, as you say, the Pykes are big bads, and until Boba shows up they didn't seem to be having much problem with the tuskens - a few pot-shots from the train was enough to keep them at bay. The Pykes have their own muscle.

Doesn't seem like the Niktos were representing anyone, Fortuna or Hutts or whoever else. Some Nikto biker guy shows up in Eisley demanding protection payment if the Pykes want to do trade on Tatooine, sort of seems like something the Pyke grunts on that train could handle.

They're paying dues to the Tuskens due to Boba demanding it in the wake of a raid Boba organized/facilitated. I doubt the Tuskens could get one red cent out of them if Boba hadn't come on the scene. Surely the Niktos aren't wielding a big negotiation stick like that, they're punks.

 

The Niktos may have simply threatened to disrupt the Pyke trade routes themselves. And the Pykes responded with "Forget that. We'll pay you a nice sum instead. All you gotta do is keep the Tuskens away from our trains."

And we don't know that the Pykes shooting from the trains is enough. The implication in the Chief's tent was that there were other more aggressive Tusken tribes out there. If the Pykes pay a small sum to keep the Nikto gang and the Tuskens away from their routes, why not?

 

Because you're a gigantic evil gangster/slaver syndicate trying to establish dominance on the planet and you have the means & muscle to just kill them all?

Guess it's probably an 'agree to disagree' thing at this stage though, no point in us going around in circles over it.

 

Hm, hadn't even thought of that. Yeah, guess framing the Niktos is a possibility. Tend to think it'll be as we assume on face value, but sure, could theoretically be some Crimson Dawn type shenanigans trying to use Boba against the Pykes too.