Summary
The third season of The Mandalorian really begins to tie all its various plot threads together here, giving us a much clearer picture of what the rest of the story may look like.
If there has been a consistent criticism of The Mandalorian over the years it’s that it has been prone to a video game-y structure, with side missions and fetch quests taking up the bulk of the time in each episode while something resembling an overarching narrative plays out in the background. Season 3 seemed to have inherited this tendency. Episode 3 turned into Andor for an hour. Episode 4 was an isolated rescue mission that had nothing to do with anything.
Only it did! And that’s the secret of this season, I think. The chickens are coming home to roost, narratively speaking. What seemed like a time-killing stop-off in Navarro in the season premiere, and the seemingly pointless introduction of a pirate king with a face made of seaweed, turned out to be set up for not just a return to the planet and the conflict but also development of the ongoing Mandalorian redemption arc.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 5 Recap
Things aren’t going too well for High Magistrate Greef Karga, then. His turn to legitimacy has left him with a few bitter old associates, including Gorian Shard, and precious few allies. The New Republic, for all its bluster, doesn’t seem especially interested in helping the defenseless planet out. When Karga turns to Captain Carson Teva for help, Zeb Orrelios, making his live-action debut in as blasé terms as you could possibly imagine, wistfully mentions that he had high hopes for the planet that seem to have been dashed.
At one point, Elia Kane pops up to vocalize an explicit link between the pirate attack and the escape from custody of Moff Gideon, an idea returned to at the end of the episode (we’ll get there).
Why do the Mandalorians decide to help Nevarro?
Tying together plot threads like that isn’t something The Mandalorian is typically prone to do. And get this. When Teva is shut down by the New Republic, he instead goes to visit Mando – after being given the location of the covert by R5-D4, it seems – and implores him and the Mandalorians to help instead. It takes some convincing, but an impassioned speech by Mando and the support of Paz Vizsla after Mando and Bo-Katan helped to rescue his son last week get the entire tribe on side.
You can see how everything is beginning to matter. The Mandalorians join the fight because a) Mando has earned their respect after his personal redemption arc and b) the tract of land that Karga promised Mando earlier in the season might represent a new home for their people. And they’re in need of a new home. They’re all, through recent events, coming to realize that the Mandalorian way of doing things is experiencing something of a resurgence. They no longer need to live in hiding. They’re on a comeback tour.
This obviously excuses a lot of very nice-looking action on land and in the air. There are aerial dogfights, jetpacks, Paz Vizsla mowing down pirates, and the Armorer bludgeoning people to death with smithing tools.
Why does the Armorer tell Bo-Katan to remove her helmet?
But it’s everything else that really matters. The Mandalorians have their new base of operations. And with it comes a new belief that Mandalore can return to its former glory. The Armorer, having chewed over what Bo-Katan told her about the Mythosaur, instructs Bo-Katan to remove her helmet and jet off looking for new recruits. It’s time to bring all the Mandalorian clans together and retake Mandalore.
Bo-Katan is okay to remove her helmet because, apparently, she has “walked both worlds”. She can unite the disparate clans of Mandalore and be a central figure that the people as a whole can rally around.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 5 Ending Explained
Anyway, in the episode’s closing moments, Teva discovers an abandoned Lambda-class vessel out in space, with a dead New Republic crew inside, signs of a mighty struggle, and traces of Beskar steel. This, it turns out, was the ship transporting Moff Gideon, which suggests that his escape may have been facilitated by a Mandalorian.
Is there a traitor in the midst of the tribe? Or is this a red herring designed to turn the clans against each other? A ruse of that type would be difficult to pull off and would require a decent amount of influence, a rich knowledge of culture, and an incredibly strategic mind.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 6 Recap
Who are The Dutchess and Captain Bombardier?
Of particular importance this week is the remnants of Bo-Katan’s fleet, now led by Axe Woves and still including Koska Reeves, played by professional wrestler Mercedes Varnado, aka Sasha Banks. In the cold open we see how they’re functioning as well-spoken mercenaries, but their base of operations is on Plazir-15, where they’ve been hired as protection by The Dutchess (Lizzo) and Captain Bombardier (Jack Black).
Bombardier is a former Imperial who has helped to reinvent Plazir-15 as both a flourishing independent democracy and a colorful monarchy. Given his past service to the Empire forbids the planet from having a military, the planet has hired the Mandalorian privateers as a security force, and the day-to-day operations of the planet have been automated by battle droids that have been reprogrammed for civic duty.
But that’s the problem. The droids are malfunctioning in what seems like a coordinated way. Some are flipping out and destroying things. Others are assaulting people.
Since Plazir-15 is a pluralistic society, and weaponry is intrinsic to Mandalorian culture, Mando and Bo-Katan roaming around armed is basically a social equality matter, so Bombardier and the Dutchess hire them to investigate the matter. In exchange, they’ll petition the New Republic for Mandalore to also be recognized as an independent system.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 6 (Credit – Disney+)
Why can’t the droids on Plazir-15 be shut down?
So, as we know, the droids on Plazir-15 were initially reprogrammed for civic duty, which seemed to be going well until it wasn’t. Now they’re harassing people and breaking stuff, but despite the fact there’s a failsafe cutoff switch, nobody can push it since the citizens voted against any interruption in droid services. Automation means they don’t have to work. If the droids are gone, they won’t know how to survive.
Mando and Bo-Katan, then, need to track down and decommission the problematic droids until the issue is fixed. This takes the form of, essentially, an episode of a procedural mystery show with all the usual hallmarks — a chase scene, interrogating witnesses, a trip to the morgue, and so on, and so forth.
The Ugnaughts who maintain the droids are adamant there has been no malfunction, but since Mando knows how to communicate with them thanks to his experiences with Kuiil, they hand over a list of droids that might be prone to kick off. One is at the loading docks, where Mando starts kicking the battle droids over until one flips out. He and Bo-Katan chase it and ultimately shut it down, and on its person, they find a spark pad leading them to a droid bar.
How were the droids reprogrammed? And by who?
The proprietor of the bar explains that the droids are worried about being replaced by humans. If you were wondering, droids drink nepenthe, a lubricant that also patches their programming. All the deviant droids happened to drink from the same batch.
After having some fluid pulled from the droid they caught, Mando and Bo-Katan learn that it still contains active nano-droids imbibed through the nepenthe. The nano-droids have a chain code that reveals they were originally manufactured by the Techno Union and were illegally requisitioned directly by the Security Office, in particular Head of Security Commissioner Helgait, played by Back to the Future‘s Christopher Lloyd.
When confronted, Helgait threatens to press the failsafe button and turn all the droids back into their hostile battle variants, unleashing them on the unsuspecting public. He’s a Separatist and launches into a big spiel about Count Dooku before Bo-Katan is able to stun him unconscious.
Helgait is sentenced to exile by the Dutchess. Mando and Bo-Katan receive the key to Plazir and are granted an audience with the Mandalorian privateers. Even Grogu is made a knight of the Ancient Order of Independent Regencies despite doing nothing other than helping The Dutchess cheat at space croquet.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 6 Ending Explained
When Bo-Katan finally gets face to face with Axe Woves, she challenges him to single combat. This is the Way.
While Bo-Katan wins the fight, it doesn’t do much for her public standing. Mandalorians believe in the outcome of duels, sure, but they believe more in the Darksaber, and their leader should ideally wield it. At present, Bo-Katan doesn’t.
However, Mando does. And since he never wanted it in the first place, he offers to give it to Bo-Katan. It doesn’t work like that, though. Bo-Katan has to earn it. However, since she saved Mando from his captor back on Mandalore, she technically did. Mando explains this to the group, who all agree. If Bo-Katan defeated the opponent who defeated Mando, then she technically defeated him. The Darksaber is rightfully hers.
So Mando gives it to her. The episode ends with her proudly igniting it, leader of the Mandalorians once more.
What did you think of The Mandalorian Season 3 Episodes 5 and 6? Comment below.
