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.
Do we know anybody like that?
You can stream The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 5, “Chapter 21” exclusively on Disney+.
