The Porkchop Express said:

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TCTTS said:

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Actual villains!

With clearly stated goals!

Mandalorian factions coming together!

With clearly stated goals!

Well-articulated stakes that affect each side and not just The Problem of the Week.

THESE are the things that should have been established in, say, episode two or three of this season. Instead, there was so much needless wheel spinning just to get here.

For budgetary reasons, obviously they couldn't have given us this much action in one episode, so early in the season. But if they just would have established these opposing forces earlier, and established their respective goals and stakes like they did tonight, they could have drawn this basic story out for so many more episodes - the story so many of us were expecting this season to actually be about - and it would have been so much more engaging.

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TC being my junior high basketball coach the time I made a game winning shot and the first thing he told me was that I left too much time on the clock.

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If you'd have played better all four quarters, there'd be no need to hit that last-second shot to being with.

We went on and on about Maverick this week and then Warlock shows up on The Mandalorian.

TCTTS said:

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Mandalorian SPOILERS...

Kinda? Not explicitly confirmed, yet, just my take...

HOW CONVENIENT for the Armorer to duck out of there at the right time.

An episode called "The Spies."

Horned helmets.

Called it!

— Erik Voss (@eavoss) April 12, 2023

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Yup. Been skeptical of her for a while, then they kind of threw me (and maybe others) off with her "time to retake Mandalore together" move. Then, this episode goes right back to hinting at a nefarious nature with all the back and forth scenes. Tops it off with Gideon's helmet being so similar. We are going to get some sort of Darth Maul/Death Watch call back, right?

No doubt next episode when Din is being interogated the armor walks in to reveal the betrayal.

Early in the episode I was wondering if the other female nightowl was the spy.

So a lot to unspool after I slept a few hours.


1) The Shadow Council! - From the post-Disney acquisition books that started coming out after 2012 and throughout the sequels. We saw Thrawn's #2 Captain Pelleaon and Brendol Hux, the father of General Hux in the sequels, and played by Domhall Gleason's older brother last night. I didn't see anyone else have their character named in the credits. The Shadow Council formed soon after the Empire's defeat at Endor. A year later some of Imperials intentionally lost a battle at Jakku to give the illusion that they had been completely defeated and started preparing for their ultimate return to power. One of their original members plotted to kill the rest of them during said battle, but a few survived.

2) Project Necromancer: 50 billion nerd points for making an LOTR reference in a Star Wars show.

3) Imperial Intentions: Very fitting from the books -both legends and canon - that the remanants of the Empire are in disagreement of what their strategy should be - Hux in charge of cloning Palpy, Pelleaon insisting they wait for Thrawn, and now we know Gideon appears to have gone AWOL for his own plans, and that his cloning project is NOT connected to Palpatine's return. His line to the Mandos about "taking the best of the Jedi, the cloners, and the Mandalorians" was pretty awesome.

4) Nevarro really needs to develop some sort of a radar tower somewhere so that their first indication that ships have arrived is those ships appearing overhead. I'd also like a DIY video on how to paint a Mando symbol on your 5,000 foot long starship.

5) Gideon had a base on Mandalore the whole time. I loved the "oh ****" moment I bet a lot of us had when the Mandos pursue the dark troopers and suddenly there are well lit tunnels and familiar surroundings. I liked how the TIE Interceptors were hanging like bats. Almost like an unspoken thing telling pilots, you gotta be really bad ass to fly one of these. I also like that he called his troopers armor "a Beskar alloy" which suggests that he doesn't know how to forge it like the Armorer can, which then makes more sense why the Mandos were able to beat his troops.

6) The reveal that Bo Katan tried to negotiate with Gideon, gave up the saber willingly, and was betrayed. Her life has supremely sucked for a long time.

7) if Mando isn't going to bump Beskar with Bo Katan, he at least needs to hit up Koska Reeves. She was checking him out over and over again last night. You could cut the sexual tension with a vibro blade.

8) Going back to Sundari, which we first saw under the rule of Duchess Satine Kryze (aka Obi-Wan's side piece) during CLone Wars. Building on an episode of Clone Wars that came out 13+ years ago that include Pre Vizsla, terrorist attacks by Death Watch, Count Dooku, and the first appearance of the Darksaber.

7) Paz Vizsla's death. I loved seeing his gun start to overheat and then the whole thing just melt. Then he turned into a professional wrestler. But honestly the best part was that he Praetorians only needed about 30 seconds to gut him like a fish and establish themselves as bad asses. Shout out to 52-year-old Tait Fletcher, who played Paz (with Favreau's voice). He looks pretty much exactly what I would imagine Vizsla looking like with his helmet off.



8) So, most of us are running with the idea that Bo Katan somehow rides the Mythosaur in the season finale. Considering that their fleet is about to be swarmed by TIEs and they have no way to get off the planet or communicate, and that the TIE Bombers are probably going to rain fire down on wherever the Mandos are, that seems like about the only way out. Perhaps the bombers crack open the ground above the Mines of Mandalore to let it get out. It would also make sense for a big monster to save them considering how many monsters have been a huge problem for Mandos this year. I'd even speculate that somehow the Mythosaur responds to the Darksaber being lit, although that doesn't make that much sense because the first Mandos apparently rode them well before the saber was created. Plus, how big could it be to be able to defeat TIE bombers?

Kate Beckett said:

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Ah-ha! I thought I knew him from somewhere, it just wasn't computing in the middle of the night.

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Skinny Pete from Breaking Bad showing up as well.




Warlock-alorian: "You're all Great Purge survivors. The elite. The best of the best. That was yesterday. Moff Gideon's third-generation Dark Troopers have leveled the playing field. Success, now more than ever, comes down to the man or woman in the Beskar. Half of you will make the cut. One of you will be named Mandalore. The other half will be sacrificed to the Mythosaur. Your instructor is a former Mandalore with real-galaxy experience in every mission aspect you will be expected to master. Her exploits are legendary. And she's considered to be one of the finest Darksaber combatants this planet has every produced. What she has to teach you may very well mean the difference between life and dank ferrik. I give you Lady Bo Katan of House Kryze. Call sign: "Starbuck".

Oh yeah, Favrea/Filoni fans of Bluey confirmed.

redline248 said:

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Oh yeah, Favrea/Filoni fans of Bluey confirmed.

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Ha!! My daughter and I just watched that episode yesterday.

Not gonna lie, I'd cackle so hard if this actually happened. Found on tumblr.

FINALLY!

This episode was great. I get the need for some of the fluff episodes but man, we could've easily dropped one or two of them and gotten to this point sooner and people's sentiments towards this season would be MUCH different.

Episode was so good that no one is really talking about Din casually announcing he's the supporting character, now.

By far the best episode of the season. Why all the fluff for the rest of the season? I just don't get it. They could have gotten us to the point where we begin this episode by episode 3, and then given us the rest of the season to flesh out the inner struggles of the Mandalorian factions, and the struggle to retake mandalore.

Was there plot convenience? Oh, definitely. Apparently Bo-Katan wanted to sit around talking, instead of immediately whipping out the Dark Saber and cutting a hole in that blast door to save Din.

I guess I still don't understand this theory that the Armorer is a traitor. There has literally been no hint to this throughout the show, aside from people pointing out that she has horns on her helmet; apparently a nod to something in the cartoon.

CC09LawAg said:

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I think anytime there is someone who is clearly pulling the strings and being intentionally mysterious/only divulging information when it is convenient, that will lead to suspicion of motives.

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Not only that, the camera work on her while things are happening around her is telling.

They did the same with Din this episode. After Bo Katan's admission of surrendering, they closed that scene with a close up on Din, so you know he's impacted by it. The next scene he goes over to tell Bo she has honor and he'll serve her no matter what.

The did A LOT of those kind of close ups on the armorer, especially focusing on her as she's flying back to the fleet. There is something going on, there. It may not be anything more than misdirection, though.

One thing that still bothers me about the show is how chaotic the Mandalorians seem to fight. For an entire culture we are told is centered around their combat capabilities, I just don't ever seem to see any tactics displayed.

I really wish they had special forces advisors on this show to display small unit tactics and CQB in all these fights. It would make the Mandalorians look absolutely deadly and effective. Instead, it's always a big gunfight with mandos running around with blasters and firing all over the place. Really, the only thing that makes them harder to fight than a storm trooper is their armor and ability to zoom around with jet packs.

The Armorer perpetuated the story that Mandalore is completely uninhabitable for apparently years and years despite not being there when it got destroyed. That's a bit sketchy on its own.

When Din wanted to go there to be redeemed she had a really, really, really long pause before agreeing he'd be redeemed. It's possible to connect that to the idea that she made a deal with Gideon to have her people stay off Mandalore so nobody found his hidden base.

You would assume that she knew Mando had visited Bo Katan in her castle. Then that castle is randomly destroyed by the Empire. If they knew she was there, why wait so long?

Him returning, having been redeemed, still possessing the Darksaber and with Bo Katan in tow and Grogu as well could be a threat to her power structure.

Taking out the pirates on Nevarro is one thing, because none of the Mandos know of their connection to the Empire.

Once on the surface of Mandalore, she leaves fairly soon before they get ambushed, taking their only ship, with no way to make contact. And the three primary Mandalorians who could dispute her taking command of the fleet - Din, Bo, and Axe Woves - are all stuck surface-side.

It means losing her right-hand man Vizsla, but his recent actions had him siding with Bo and Din, so maybe he's an acceptable loss.

They could all be related or all just there to have us thinking one thing when something else or nothing is going on. But you can at least see some tenuous threads connecting if you squint hard enough

I guess I'm just confused why all of a sudden the armorer is a spy.

She's been consistently seen as one of the last remaining true Mandalorians, the leader, the one who passes on the legacy, close to the last armorer left. A mentor of everyone in a way, the historian, the judge.

Suddenly a spy? Yeah that seems cheap and all of a sudden to me to be honest.

Besides, why do they even need a spy at this point to move the story along? Why has it become part of the plot? They can't move forward without one?

Haven't the Mandalorians suffered enough with their population genocided and planet glassed?

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Armorer is a red herring, imo.

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so a variant Mon Calamari race?