‘The Mandalorian’ Kicks Into High Gear Thanks to Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan
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THIS POST CONTAINS spoilers for this week’s episode of The Mandalorian, “The Mines of Mandalore.”
After last week’s premiere suggested that a good chunk of this season would involve Mando going on various side quests in order to eventually win his way back into the Watch’s good graces, “The Mines of Mandalore” gets right down to business. Once Peli and her Jawa partners in crime explain that they can’t get a new memory circuit for IG-11, Mando and Grogu just head straight to Mandalore with Peli’s anxious R5 astromech droid(*) as their replacement canary in the coal mine. And Mando even gets to bathe in the famed Living Waters before the episode is even over. Clearly, Jon Favreau and company have a lot more planned for this season than may have been apparent a week ago.
(*) There’s mostly no point in comparing Mandalorian to Andor, as the two shows have such clearly different creative goals in mind. But when you look at the R5 unit quavering and sputtering, it’s hard not to think about what a high bar B2EMO set in the field of adorably neurotic droid portrayals.
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If the premiere suffered at times for trying to do too much — including a lengthy IG-11 passage that seems to have proven unnecessary — “The Mines of Mandalore” is among the simplest episodes the series has ever done. After the opening scene in Mos Eisley(*), almost the entire episode takes place in and around the titular mines, with a single goal in mind.
(*) Find someone who loves you the way Jon Favreau loves revisiting Tatooine.
Simple is not necessarily a bad thing for a show that made its bones on Adventure of the Week storytelling before getting a bit more narratively ambitious in its second season. At its heart, this is a throwback, all-ages series, with individual episodes designed to be enjoyed on their own merits, rather than as pieces of a 10-hour movie. And the execution on each installment, and on the various action beats within those installments, is high enough to make the micro entertaining, regardless of the macro.
“The Mines of Mandalore” at times verged on leaning too far in that streamlined direction. As various characters traveled into and out of the mines in different combinations, the episode for a while took on the feel of a video game(*), where you just keep repeating the level until you get it right. But, again, each suspense or action sequence worked very well, particularly once Mando got captured by one of the underground creatures that survived the Empire’s purge of the planet. Grogu’s solo trip out of the caves to get help for his dad(**) was a delightful hero moment for him. And Bo-Katan got some great spotlight battles of her own, including a reminder that she is much more experienced with the Darksaber than Mando. (“Did you think your dad was the only Mandalorian?” she asks an impressed Grogu, with a wryly amused twinkle in Katee Sackhoff’s eyes.)
(*) Not to be confused with the other current show where Pedro Pascal plays a master of violence escorting a cute surrogate child on a series of dangerous journeys.
(**) The little guy’s floating cradle typically comes across as the Star Wars equivalent of a high-end stroller. Here, though, we see that it can double as a sports car.
Last season made clear that possession of the Darksaber can’t be formally given, or even granted by picking it up off the ground when its master is incapacitated. So Bo-Katan still doesn’t have her badge of office back. But even though she only turns up for the final third, this feels more like her episode than anyone else’s. She is the one who grew up on Mandalore, and who can fully appreciate the tragedy of this entombed city. She’s the one who has given up on her civilization’s future, or on anything other than listlessly sitting on her throne.
You would expect her rescue of Mando to be the thing that reignites her inner fire, but it doesn’t — at least, not at first. Even though her suspicions are proven correct about the planet not being toxic, the sight of the ruins only seems to increase her despair and cynicism. She takes Mando and Grogu to the waters, but is snarking on the traditions and mythology of her homeworld the entire way…
… until, that is, Mando’s recitation of his oath is interrupted (the second time this season such a thing has happened) by the Mythosaur, a creature that seemed to be suitably-named, rather than something from the planet’s actual history. But when Bo races down to save Din (with her jetpack functioning just fine underwater), she gets a look at the enormous beast that inspired her people’s signet. When the two warriors emerge from the Living Waters, she is, like Din, exhausted. But she also seems filled with surprise and wonder in a way she hasn’t this season, or really at any point since Sackhoff began reprising the role on this show. If that feeling sticks for her once the adrenaline wears off, then it opens a host of story possibilities for this season, well beyond Mando getting readmitted to the Watch by the Armorer.
It’s a tricky line this show has to walk, since so much of its mythology comes from the animated series, even as there is a sizable chunk of Star Wars fandom that only watches the live-action stuff. If you watched Clone Wars and Rebels, you know a lot about Bo-Katan, including all of the history with Jedis that she briefly references with Grogu. But so far, Favreau and Dave Filoni have done an impressive job servicing both parts of the audience. They’re doing the exact thing — rewarding the people who watch everything, without punishing the ones who don’t — they unfortunately failed to do with putting Mando and Grogu’s reunion onto Book of Boba Fett. It helps that Sackhoff is such a strong screen presence, so that even if you never saw the thriving version of Mandalore on Clone Wars, her performance and her grief sells the idea beautifully.
“The Mines of Mandalore” also did a nice job of showing how the Watch’s stricter Creed isn’t always such a bad thing. Though she resists believing for a very long time, you can see Bo’s emotional armor gradually being eroded by Din’s utter commitment to his beliefs. (Like many religions here on Earth, the converts can often wind up more devout than those born and raised in the faith.) While it would be just fine to have a series where Din and Grogu just travel from planet to planet getting into trouble and being adorable, it’s definitely helpful to have some narrative signposts to head toward. Mando wants to be reunited with his people, but they’re just one small subset of the Mandalorian diaspora. The idea that he and Bo-Katan could team up to bring the whole race back together, to try to reclaim the planet, seems like a very promising direction if that’s where the season and/or series intends to go.
But in the meantime, Grogu and Bo-Katan kicking underground monster ass was fun enough on its own.
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