The Good:
- The moment when the kid leaps up to embrace Mando is pretty good. Heartwarming, even. He clearly missed him a lot.
- The rancor had some good sound design. Real solid.
- The Pikes had a lot of neat gun props. Lots to dissect there.
- Cad Bane was just as menacing. He really felt like he’d strolled off the set from a Sergio Leone film…then gotten some makeup, then arrived here. Loved the musical motif that accompanied him as well.
- Amy Sedaris finally justified her presence in Star Wars! She acknowledged that “Grogu” is the absolute worst possible name that they could have come up with for the kid.
The Bad:
So many missed opportunities here.
- Bane throws out the old “always knew you were a killer” thing, but that hasn’t been a theme of the show at all. That would have been interesting, Boba fighting his “nature”, trying to determine if it was learned or genetic, etc. But no. Instead they did nothing.
- Fennec makes a big deal out of “money to be made off the spice”, but that went nowhere. That’s why I didn’t comment on anyone guessing Shand was a double agent. This show isn’t clever enough to even do that, and that alone is not particularly clever.
- Real shame the mods didn’t freaking die. Not one of them. Gonna have to keep seeing the Spy Kids Battle Angel Power Rangers, I guess.
- Shame, too, that Bane died. I’m sure that was meaningful to the throngs of Bane’s fans that Boba finally took him out, but it felt so flat and like such a waste to me to have it happen after a minute and a half of screen time.
- Why the hell wouldn’t Boba have retrieved the rancor from the get-go? “Dramatic reveal!” That’s it. There is no logical reason he would have waited. Hell, he could have started with the rancor and probably ended it on his own. Sure, in a version of this show that wasn’t shot off of post-it notes, there would be scenes of Boba training the rancor, learning to ride it, him not taking it out initially because it’s too young/not ready, and only retrieving it when things got dire, but no, instead they 1. briefly showed it for fifteen seconds five episodes ago, and then 2. brought it out to Deus T. Rex Machina the bad guys, then become the new problem.
- I guess instead of seeing anything meaningful about the Jedi, balance, choice, etc., we just get the kid showing up on his own. Undoing the ending of Mando S2. I already didn’t like the end of S2 because I felt the kid should have chosen then that he wanted to stay with Mando. I felt the reason he was having trouble at New Mexico Stonehenge in The Tragedy wasn’t because he couldn’t find a Jedi, but rather he didn’t want to. Then Luke showed up and ruined that idea. And now they’ve walked that back, too.
- Distinctly worried this may have ruined S3 of Mando. We’ve talked about how E5 of this show felt like a really solid pilot for S3–now I worry that, A, the whole kid situation removes some of the potential conflict, and B, too much has either been resolved or tangled into their affairs for the season to be all that great.
The Ugly
- Good grief, was this bad. The action was not very sharp or quick, not very visceral, and not stylized or fun. It just was. It’s exactly what I would expect out of a TV show on the CW or something.
- Mando and Boba are both ****king idiots, just landing out in the middle of the street to just stand there and keep shooting. Didn’t go for cover or anything. Once again proof that this show did not have anyone capable when it comes to choreography or action.
- I was really, really hoping Mando’s helmet would have gotten some gashes from being chomped on. Nope. Clean as a whistle.
- The EE-3 sounded weirdly muffled.
- Funny how Fennec managed to once again do the bulk of the important stuff, despite not seeming to have any motivation to do so.
- Even a hairpiece would have helped Tem in my opinion. I get out of all the physical changes that makes the most sense, considering the acid from the Sarlaac, but he just looks so goofy with the cue ball head and the plastic teeth and the perfectly shaped, perfectly dyed eyebrows. I guess none of that would be a problem if he had some way of, I don’t know, covering all of that up…
- I hate Boba’s helmet. It’s so squashed and vertical on the sides. Terrible. Bring back ESB!
- Boba’s stupid little knee flourish the second time he used his darts was awful, the one where he throws his leg into the air like an ice skater. Tying this into the Winter Olympics, I guess.
- Ironic visuals at the end—this Boba Fett was ineffectual and could only succeed standing on the shoulders of a giant…
- Was really expecting the kid to pull out the lightsaber. Not wanting per se, but expecting it.
- Hate the Major Domo. Thought he should have been blasted by Amy Sedaris the moment she spotted him.
- Thought the mods’ blasters were stupid on both a visual and aural level.
- End scene was stupid. Vanth in a vat, with the stupid idiot turning people into Spy Kids™.
- After all the talk on here, and after revealing that Fennec, not Fett, was the one who killed the rest of the Pikes and the treacherous other gang leaders, I was sure the end scene would be her making contact with Qi’ra. Nope. Too clever for this show.
Overall, my biggest concerns are on how this will affect Mando going forward. I really don’t want to see any of those characters again, even Vanth, as much as I like him. Seeing him again would mean going back to Tatooine and running into one of these clowns.
