A lot to like in this episode and the series continues to do what it does best - namely create situations & visuals that feel like genuine (i.e. original) Star Wars - but ultimately it demonstrated many missed opportunities to create tension
Having Carl Weathers & Gina Carano back on board is welcome, & it looks like they may gel as a team for future encounteres (allowing for the hero being a loner) but there was something rather off about how lackadaisical the battle scenes are playing out. It might be that the producers don't want things to get too serious for the sake of its younger viewers, but there doesn't have to be gore for there to be some sense of actual combat. This is potentially a big problem. Stormtroopers are iconic villain figures in their own right. They're supposed to be based on the nazi stormtrooper, i.e. a genuinely frightening foe, that you wouldn't expect to be able to effortlessly defeat. This is now the second episode in which the stormtroopers are despatched like so many swatted flies, while there is absolutely no sense of risk of harm to the protagaonists - in the last episode the combined forced of Mandalore & in this case a bunch of seasoned soldiers. Sure, storm-troopers won't be a match for a Mandalorian but the other two (in this episode as opposed to the last) don't even have armour.
Having said that the chase through the canyon was excellent for the most part. The twist, when it came, made some sense of how they could just turn up at door and ring the doorbell so to speak without a care in the world, but despite that it doesn't feel as though it were set up properly. After all 'the child' was left unguarded at school the whole day, in the rough vicinity of whoever it was who planted the tracking device.
I don't like to be a complainer but an episode like this, with just slightly tighter writing, and an effort to ramp up the tension by making the villains of the piece reasonably competent, could have made this a genuine 9 or a 10.
Having Carl Weathers & Gina Carano back on board is welcome, & it looks like they may gel as a team for future encounteres (allowing for the hero being a loner) but there was something rather off about how lackadaisical the battle scenes are playing out. It might be that the producers don't want things to get too serious for the sake of its younger viewers, but there doesn't have to be gore for there to be some sense of actual combat. This is potentially a big problem. Stormtroopers are iconic villain figures in their own right. They're supposed to be based on the nazi stormtrooper, i.e. a genuinely frightening foe, that you wouldn't expect to be able to effortlessly defeat. This is now the second episode in which the stormtroopers are despatched like so many swatted flies, while there is absolutely no sense of risk of harm to the protagaonists - in the last episode the combined forced of Mandalore & in this case a bunch of seasoned soldiers. Sure, storm-troopers won't be a match for a Mandalorian but the other two (in this episode as opposed to the last) don't even have armour.
Having said that the chase through the canyon was excellent for the most part. The twist, when it came, made some sense of how they could just turn up at door and ring the doorbell so to speak without a care in the world, but despite that it doesn't feel as though it were set up properly. After all 'the child' was left unguarded at school the whole day, in the rough vicinity of whoever it was who planted the tracking device.
I don't like to be a complainer but an episode like this, with just slightly tighter writing, and an effort to ramp up the tension by making the villains of the piece reasonably competent, could have made this a genuine 9 or a 10.
