The Mandalorian Season 3 Premiere Recap: Bad Baby! — Who Is Din's Surprising Recruit for His New Mission?

The Mandalorian (as we will still call him, don’t @ us Armorer!) is on a new mission, with Grogu again at his side — and he has a most unexpected additional sidekick in mind to help him see it through.

Season 3 of Disney+’s flagship Star Wars series opened with a sequence in which a Mandalorian confirmation ceremony, led by the Armorer on an unidentified planet, was literally crashed by a giant sea turtle. The many Mandalorians on hand did their best to fend off the beast with blaster fire, heavy guns, flamethrowers and explosives, to little effect. It was not until Din Djarin’s N-1 Starfighter dropped in from the clouds above to pepper the creature with torpedoes that the threat subsided.

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Din’s saving of bacon, alas, curried him no favor with the Armorer, who maintained that he is “a Mandalorian no more,” due to voluntary helmet-removal stuff. Din voices his resolve to redeem himself by bathing in the living waters beneath the mines of Mandalore — and to that end, he proffers physical evidence that their home world was not in fact forever poisoned by the ruthless assaults of the Purge. Clocking the artifact that was obtained by a traveler who safely visited Mandalore, the Armorer signs off on Din’s redemption mission.

Mando’s next stop is Nevarro, where he is warmly greeted by High Magistrate Greef Karga. Greef offers his friend a plum parcel of land outside of the newly built-up “gem of the Outer Rim” and a sweet life as a landed gentry. Mando, though, explains that he has new, pressing business to tend to. Their meeting is cut short by some trouble being caused by pirates outside Nevarro’s cantina-turned-school. Greef does his best to make peace, but Vane and his pirate pals insist on having a drink at their old haunt. A firefight ensues, and Greef and Mando leave only Vane standing.

Greef offers Mando the job of marshal, since Cara Dune’s derring-do in the course of capturing Moff Gideon got her bumped up to Special Forces (read more on Gina Carano’s exit from the series), but Din passes. No, all he wants right now is… IG-11, the bounty hunter droid he briefly teamed up with to find the Child in the series premiere! IG-11 now exists as a town square statue/droid remnants hybrid, so Mando at first takes his own crack at powering back up the torso — only to have it madly lunge, Terminator-like, at its last target, Grogu. After Mando and Greef barely KO IG-11, Greef has some Babu Frik-like Anzellans do their best to fix the droid, but they need a specific part — which Mando sets out to locate.

After departing Nevarro, Mando in the course of schooling Grogu on how to pilot the Starfighter (foreshadowing?) sees that Vane and several not-dead pirate pals are in pursuit. He picks off several of them using very nifty maneuvers, only to realize that Vane had led him into the crosshairs of pirate king Gorian Shard (played by Nonso Anozie of Zoo and Sweet Tooth) and his own mighty cruiser — though Mando manages to hyperdrive outta there before they fire upon him.

Mando’s next stop is Kalevala, a planet in the Mandalore system, where he finds in its throne room Bo-Katan. When Din questions why she isn’t out leading the Mandalorians, she explains that without the Darksaber rightly in her possession, her minions splintered off — and they took Gideon’s cruiser with them. Bo scoffs at Din’s plan to redeem himself, asserting that the whole “living waters” thing is a bunch of malarkey, but she doesn’t temper his resolve. So she does offer up the detail that the mines he seeks are situated beneath the civic center at Sundari.

What did you think of The Mandalorian‘s Season 3 opener, the plan to fight alongside IG-11, and Bo-Katan’s self-pitying funk?

Launch Gallery: <I>The Mandalorian</i>: Here Are 14 Major Things to Know Before Season 3, If You Blew Off <I>The Book of Boba Fett</I>

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