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Yippee kay yay! Mando and The Child have returned and they did not waste any time getting the action rolling in the season premiere. Still searching for The Child’s people, Mando’s first goal is to reconnect with his own clans and use their vast network to help him on his way. Searching out information from a supposed Mandalorian aficionado Gor Koresh, voiced by actor/ comedian John Leguizamo. It looks like last season’s habit of casting notable comic actors in many roles is continuing on.
Seeking Koresh out in fighting pits it isn’t long before Mando is at gunpoint as usual as Koresh wants his armor and is willing to kill for it. From here we get a fantastically choreographed scene of Mando just wiping the floor with Koresh and his muscle. Hand-to-hand combat and a few of Mando’s gadgets make short work of them before he leaves Koresh tied up and in the dark to be eaten by the creatures of the night after finding out there are reports of a Mandalorian on Tatooine. The look of red eyes they use here for the animals in the dark is just so effective and much creepier than seeing them could have been, just brilliant in the first five minutes.
So back we go and our old friend Amy Sedaris is still there and still smitten with The Child. Mando quickly finds his way to a small mining settlement called Mos Pelgo. Now can I just say it’s nice to see a good old-fashioned travel montage. We need to bring back the art of the montage. But anyway, it turns out after the fall of the Empire (shown in a very cool flashback) the town was attacked and then subsequently saved by a Marshal who happened upon the armor of the one and only Boba Fett, sold to the Marshal by Jawas that is.
This Marshal is played by modern western mainstay Timothy Olyphant and while I love Olyphant in most things, this included, he looks downright silly when fully geared up and helmeted. Now to their credit this is likely intentional as Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett, is about five inches shorter so it makes sense his armor wouldn’t quite fit. Like a child who had a growth spurt overnight the chest piece is just a bi too short and Olyphant’s long neck makes his helmet kind of bobble further from his shoulders than it should. They smartly keep his mask off for most of the time.
When seeing this impostor to the creed, Mando seems to be heading for a gunfight until we get the real thrust of the episode as a Krayt dragon, basically Tremors times a thousand, rolls literally through town and the Marshal offers up his armor if Mando can rid them of it. It was here our western motif suddenly got mixed up with some medieval dragon slaying. They cheat big time at this point as Mando is told he can’t simply use his ship as the Dragon senses the vibrations and will not surface, or in other words because then the episode would be twenty minutes.
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After a little recon that leads the pair to some Tusken Raiders we learn the Raiders have also been terrorized by the creature and a team up is volunteered by Mando. Of course the Raiders and the town have been at odds killing one another in the past so you get a very typical gearing up scene where both sides are angry at each other, nothing terribly new here other than it being done under the Star Wars banner.
Frankly the rest of the episode is pretty basic cut and paste of a million others. They plan to draw the dragon out and have explosives set in the ground to attack from below where they’ve been told it is the softest. When you see one of the giant Banthas also laden with explosives it pretty much spells out someone is going to get eaten to take it out from within.
The lead up to that though is great! Firing harpoons, trying to drag it out of its cave, both groups fighting and dying together, all riveting. Boy oh boy do they die though, between the two groups they must lose damn near a third of their people fighting this thing. And that’s all before the thing starts vomiting acid on everyone, just a vicious and graphic battle. Once they finally blow it up from beneath of course it doesn’t work, and Mando and the Marshall jetpack to the sky in a desperate attempt to stop it. It must be said this show knows its fan service as not once but twice does the Marshal actually use Boba Fett’s infamous rocket launcher, this one not glued in place like so many of its toy counterparts.
But yes in the end Mando charges head first into the belly of the beast, Bantha in tow, and launches victoriously out as he blows the monster to kingdom come. We even get to see the Raiders begin to butcher the corpse for meat which Mando happily takes some of.
Tagging out the episode a lone man on a distant cliff watches Mando as he speeds away with his won armor. To those in the know this is actor Temuera Morrison, who it must be assumed is playing a somehow still alive Boba Fett.
This episode was about as basic and by the numbers as you can get. Nothing was really that shocking and I saw most of the twists coming a mile away …
Yet I still loved every damn minute of it! There is just a feeling of passion and love for the material that bleeds through every scene you can not help but enjoy. Still managing to dance that line of in-jokes and references without getting too obnoxious, with effects that are nearly perfect on top of all that (a couple speeder moments are a bit off). I have to say if this is any indication of the rest of the season we are in for one hell of a ride.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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