Disney+
Director Rick Famuyiwa returned this week to helm ‘The Believer’, bringing back with him Bill Burr who also happened to star in one of the director’s episodes from last season, ‘The Prisoner’.
Finding Burr’s Mayfeld in a junkyard still serving out his sentence from last season, Cara Dune use her very new powers as a marshal to get him released into her custody for what seems like a very forced reason. You see, Mando and Dune want him to use his knowledge of Imperials to track down a location on Moff Gideon’s cruiser. Of course Mayfeld says he needs to get to a terminal inside an Imperial facility and there just happens to be one in a mining colony.
Right off the bat there are a ton of problems with this from a story perspective. Mayfeld says his Imperial days are long behind him, yet he has a working knowledge of their current protocols? Nothing has changed since then? Also as we see later, anyone with a face not flagged in the system can get information on a location for a high level leader? To cap it all off, it ends up being Mando and not Mayfeld who retrieves the data so why was he needed at all? Or even some other former Imperial? They went to a whole lot of trouble to make excuses to bring back Burr’s character, and you know what? I am here for it!
This was a perfect example of how good action and character development can hide huge logic jumps in writing. Frankly in most series this would have been a glaringly terrible episode. What they did here was front load all of the dumb, forced elements and then spend the following thirty minutes being amazing to the point you all but forget the setup was pointless.
Burr’s Mayfeld was fantastic last season and continued to be so here, but in a very different way as a voice of reason. Mando’s faith was shaken by the Mandalorians he found earlier this season, and here you see it even more. They drive a shipment of Rhydonium, a volatile and extremely explosive fuel, to sneak into the base. To do so after some more forced writing about people’s faces being on record, we end up with Mando and Mayfeld in Stormtrooper uniforms which Mayfeld smartly points out should violate the creed.
The running theme here is the line people draw for themselves. Mando says he can’t remove his helmet, now he removes it but wears a different one, so which is it? Seeing things from different perspectives changes a large chunk of the episode as the ‘pirates’ that try to blow up their shipment are definitely not pirates. They are blowing up shipments and sacrificing their own lives to do it. We also see the native people on the planet living in poverty under Imperial rule. So while it is fun to watch the action scenes of them fighting on the top of the shipping tank, and oh yes it is great action, if you take a beat you’ll realize those ‘pirates’ are likely freedom fighters or at the least enemies of the Empire, and Mando wipes the floor with them.
[IMAGE: THE-MANDALORIAN-S02E07-02 Caption: Disney+]
Seeing them as pirates makes the sequence of thermal detonator explosions a cool badass moment, but take a beat and look at the reactions on their faces of terror and sadness. It’s brief but it’s there. The context shift makes the whole sequence hit much harder and in a different way.
We even see Mayfeld in a different light after spotting a former commander and becoming terrified, leading to the aforementioned Mando-out-of-mask moment (you’re getting one of these per season kids!). Then stepping in to help after seeing Mando sacrifice such a core belief to save his child, and yes they directly call Grogu his child several times this episode making the shift from ‘The’ very purposely to let us know Mando is all in now.
This leads to a very tense conversation where Mayfeld starts admitting he knew the officer and served at a battle where the officer let thousands of his own men die. The tense build up in conversation and inevitable blasting of the officer and ensuing firefight felt reminiscent of the end of Django Unchained though far less bloody.
So after escaping with assistance from the whole gang, Mayfled obliterates the base and fuel they delivered, helping balance the scales again both for his soul and with us the audience. We of course see Cara Dune declare Mayfeld must’ve died in the explosion so he can’t be returned to prison, setting him free in this foreign world to have a second chance (or to cameo again next season).
Our big cap to the whole thing is Mando sending a message telling Moff Gideon he’s coming for him. Now personally I would have kept the element of surprise but that wouldn’t look as cool, so sure I guess warn him you’re coming?
There were a lot of problems in this episode and while overall I still found it very entertaining, they definitely are pushing the good will with some of the choices here. The direction was fantastic though as the action was riveting and some fantastic camera work could be seen throughout the episode. Very dynamic and thoroughly engaging. The strengths outweighed the weaknesses but they definitely were dancing close to the line this time out.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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