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The latest episode of The Mandalorian is called ‘The Spies’ and it feels like it’s a more straightforward (in theory) reference to Moff Gideon and the various shady shenanigans he’s been up to. The longtime series antagonist finally shows up in person in this penultimate episode, revealing to a post-Empire ‘Shadow Council’ that he’s but one of several former Imperial bigwigs running in his ‘sector’.
Of course he lies and manipulates even there — he mentions that apparently secrets are his business (they are?) and downplays a mention of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a well-known bad guy character in the animated Star Wars Rebels series and the upcoming Ahsoka series. But here it simply feels like a tease, just to get people excited about things — I do wonder how well people will really appreciate the reference in general as opposed to fans that watched the Rebels show or those that didn’t.
There’s also a ‘Hux’ character that’s obviously meant to be related to the Hux character from the Star Wars sequel movies (Episodes 7-9) and their cloning of Palpatine in the ridiculous Rise of Skywalker. ‘Project Necromancer’ is an absolutely super obvious name for it, of course, and I feel again that the show is trying to clean up plot holes and plot issues with the other Star Wars properties. In fairness it’s easier to do that with a longer TV season than a single movie.
Of course the way Gideon shows up at the end of the episode with Beskar-enhanced Stormtroopers as powerful enough foes since we never saw them in Episodes 7-9, either he’s dead or in hiding by then. Otherwise it wouldn’t logically flow, would it? Although I don’t know how the season finale will wrap things up or won’t, because as an antagonist Gideon is immediately more troubling than anything else we’ve seen this messy season so far.
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The little adventure to Mandalore is fun enough, with the two groups of Mandalorians meeting up and agreeing to scout their planet with Bo-Katan leading them (the Armorer continues to make efforts to ease things in general, a leader in many ways). There’s also a really broad sort of comedy with Grogu piloting the frame of the IG-11 battle droid and pounding the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ buttons — it’s funny overall but it’s weird to see this sort of comedy in the same world as the odd comedy from last week’s episode.
When the group of Mandos is traveling to find the Great Forge, Bo-Katan reveals to the group that she really did surrender to save her people, but was betrayed (obviously) by Gideon and the Empire. Our Mando Din pledges to serve her due to her honor ‘until your song is written’ which is a nice poetic little refrain — and I remain curious if there’s meant to be romantic tension between these two characters or not.
A giant monster (the Mythosaur?) suddenly shows up and destroys their little land ship, but it doesn’t really affect the story at all — so why did it show up other than a beat of action? Will it actually be relevant later? I mean that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Otherwise it feels like a ‘cool moment’ for the sake of it which isn’t as interesting.
The actual ambush was obvious enough to us as an audience because we already heard about Gideon’s plans at the start of the episode, so none of it is a surprise — but it is the good kind of ‘I know this is coming and I’m dreading it’ sort of surprise. It does seem to be notable that the episode ends with the highly capable (if irascible) brute Paz Vizsla sacrificing himself to save the others, falling to the Praetorian Guards we saw in The Last Jedi fight against Jedi type warriors — so it’s no surprise Paz falls here.
Overall though it was a pretty fun episode, the right sort of pre-season finale episode because it definitely makes us more invested in the finale. Still, I think this season has been all over the place, and I wonder how weirdly it was affected by the choices made in the Boba Fett show, but I suppose we may never know the full extent of how this became the messy lesser season, even if the finale elevates it all.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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