User Reviews

No doubt, this is one of the the better episodes of the whole series so far! There are a couple better but this is definitely up there with my top three choices!

Big reveals, new characters, but the plot is really showing it's true colours, one of the best and 'thé' most important as opposed to the future Mandalorians in the Star Wars Universe!

Unite the clans of all Mandalorians, try and rebuild the lives, rebuild a whole civilisation!

Spoilers- Alert.....!!!!

Love the scene that reminds me of the'i'm Sparticas' where they stand with Bo-Katan on her quest!

Biggest Mandalorian get together is live action Star Wars history!

So Bo-Katan did Surrender to Moff Gideon to save her people! But Gideon betrayed her and continued the massacre of her people!

Fight a enemy from within the planet!

This part I now understand! The belief that Mandalor was uninhabitable spread the rumours people will stay away! Thus allow the remains of the empire to create a secret base within the ruins!

Soooo.. it was Moff Gideons hide out all a long...?

Such a great episode I'm loving it!

Also of note it's like a ancient Greek heroes story with armour and all on a ship sailing the glass lands!

But like Jason and the argonauts with a Mandalorian touch! As the hordes of Mandalorians make their way off the exploding sail barge and into the caves, they look just like Greek Hoplite soldiers!

Grogu is like the Witch Medea of the Crew of heroes!

Couldn't count how many mando's there were but it was a lot of them, when they fled the exploding sail barge!

When you see the imperial commandos in jet packs as they begin their attack on the mando's at the great forge, you can see they are truly not in control of their jet packs as they fight! Unlike the Mandalorians who are far superior in flight and combat!

When Bo-Katan battles Moff-Gideon for the Dark Saber, Bo-Katan is clearly more combat efficient as you can see she landed three decapitating blows to Gideon's neck, if it wasn't for his beskar armour he would be dead already!

I have not been the biggest fan of this season so far. Especially compared to the first 2 seasons. This episode was a massive step up, and I hope it's able to stick the landing next week.

However, this episode was a great lead up to the finale. We finally cut to the chase and get the whole point of this season: reuniting the Mandalorians and retaking Mandalore.

The scene with Moff Gideon and the Shadow Council was pretty sweet. There were some nice tie ins to other parts of Star Wars like Hux's dad. And of course, the set up for Thrawn's return and "Heir to the Empire". I'm pretty hyped about where this is going.

I hope next week delivers a great finale. Rick Famuyiwa is directing again so I have high hopes!

The Spies was an outstanding episode with forward momentum and great development.

Moff Gideon is back and The Mandalorians would throw a wrench in the Empire's plans. So he gets reinforcements to go to Mandalore and there's the set up.

IG11's sacrifice is not wasted and the showrunners actually find a clever way to turn around our expectations, as the new IG12 will serve as sort of transport for Grogu.

Mission is clear from the get go, and it is finally time to start the real story. The factions encounter each other and a recon mission is in order so the protagonists can start the rebuild.

The pacing is just right as we just hang out with the protagonists as they are on some kind of boat. And going through the motions felt right in that one. It didn't feel rushed or too slow and we even had the chance to stay with Paz and Axe Woves. The conflict felt natural.

But that ending though. The Ambush occurs at the end and Moff has a lot of fighters going off against the Mandos. Bo Katan shows true character, as Din encouraged her, and proved her excellent leadership. But as the group tries to escape, Paz stays behind and fights with every fiber of his being. He succumbs to his enemies and dies in front of us.

So the blocks are starting to build. The Mandalore plot comes finally front and center in the picture. But it wasn't without some twists and turns. Excellent episode. I would say the best of Season 3. Shame the season is ending next week. Hopefully that would give the creative team time to refine their stories and writing for Season 4.

I feel if the writing is solid for the finale, it would even the scales a little bit for the quality of the season as a whole. There are still some issues, but Chapter 23 is a step in the right direction.

This show is so dead. This season has been terrible. The dialogue sounds worse than AI-generated speech, has no plot, no purpose and no reason to continue watching. What on Earth is going on? I think Dave Favreau is on his way out. The death of his character in this episode felt symbolic. Why is any of this happening? Why are the Mandalorians so stupid? Why did a character pointlessly sacrifice himself? In the reality of the show it made zero sense. He could've escaped. He chose not to. His death therefore isn't noble, it's dumb. How were Mandalorians surviving on the surface of a devastated planet? Not much of a purge if people survived is it? Everything is dull and boring, and makes no sense. It feels like its been written by disinterested children. What a waste of time for me, and what a waste of potential for the show. This penultimate episode sets up nothing for the finale. Why is Din taken to a briefing room? Is that supposed to sound intimidating? What had happened to make Vizla's death feel earned? Why was I supposed to feel anything when he pointlessly sacrificed himself? This is awful, terrible writing which has ruined any legacy this show was hoping to leave. Why has Grogu forgotten how to use his force-powers after being trained by Luke Skywalker? Why was he put in an android? Not to serve the plot, that's for sure. This is a show that is killing itself.

There were a lot of things that just didn't make sense narratively in this episode.

Let's touch on the main one:

1) Paz Viszla's sacrifice. This man didn't even need to die. He single-handedly defeats an entire squadron of Baskar armored troopers... somehow. So what was keeping Bo-Katan and the others from backing him up? Oh, they were "trapped" you say. Well that leads to point 2.

2) Bo-Katan and the others being "trapped" by two doors when she could've sliced her and her teammates' way out of there at literally anytime she wanted using the Darksaber. Instead of cutting a hole in the opposite direction away from where Din and Paz were, it would have made way more sense for her to slice an opening on Paz Viszla's side so that she and her war party could have backed him up. The Praetorian Guard would have been overwhelmed no matter how well trained they were. The Mandalorians are a warrior people. Them running the opposite way when they were actually winning the fight just didn't make sense. The Mandos lost a few compared to the DOZENS the Empire were losing.

4) Moff Gideon and the baskar imperials weren't even a threat to the Mandalorians armed with blasters. The whole "oh, they're aiming for weak points and joints," is pretty moot, since Gideon is the sort of villain who would absolutely had his forces armed with baskar virboblades and spears, (which mandalorians consider blasphemous) and thus it wouldn't matter where the imperials landed a hit and thus it would have made them a threatening match to the Mandalorians.

5) The Mando warparty was still winning the fight against the imperials even with those imperials decked out in baskar, so why retreat after Din Djarrin was captured when they could have just went after him?

6) Din Djarrin being captured after being "cut off" from his team. He-llo, people! Bo-Katan has a literal lightsaber that could cut through the door and she could have done so a ANYTIME instead do stupidity shooting at it.

Like I said, the more you think about it, the more it makes less sense.

So contrived, so dumb, and so predictable.

I love Giancarlo Esposito, but his dialogue is worse than anything George Lucas has been criticized for.

He sings praises to the Empire, even though there is no known emperor.

Mandalorians are still surviving on the planet that Mandalorians couldn't survive on.

These survivors know exactly where The Great Forge is, but they don't know that there's an active imperial base present, literally steps away. Never noticed a ship coming or going, huh?

One Mandalorian distinguishes himself in the ensuing combat, and I suddenly realized they're going to kill this guy.

People think that Favreau and Filoni are capable of saving Star Wars. Sadly, I think that Star Wars is forever destined to be written by people who don't understand it. Lightning struck for episodes 4, 5, and 6 (and maybe for Rogue One). I no longer believe that we'll see the like ever again.

This is a true mandalorian episode. Amazing!

Moff Gideon is back and he has some secret plans with some imperials. And they talk about Thrawn. Just hearing his name gives me chills. They're waiting for him. It 's so cool seeing this side of the empire. Still fighting for their empire even they are "out of the battle".

Bo Katan and the mandalorians go to Mandalore to retake it and they meet with some other mandalorians. Then, they encounter Gideon' s fleet, who has a super cool mandalorian suit and some cool looking pretorian guards.

In the end( BIG SPOILERS)

Paz Vizsla dies. And I am quite sad because he had some character development this season.

Also, this episode has amazing dialog.

My favourite episode of the season and one of my favourite of the entire series. Probably in my top five episodes. 10/10.

The special fx to start the episode were great- Mandalorian fleet ready to go. Mandalore itself looks good too, along with the surviving Mandalorians and their sail barge. Great designs- Doug Chiang is the man!

But now the story. Grogu is Jedi trained (in English), can make decisions to return to Din and can now operate a mech suit with yes and no buttons. But can't even say yes or no. Whatever I guess.

Mandalorians fly an attach ship over the surface and then drop 12 mandos down to stand in a circle to 'secure' the landing zone. Lol Ok? Then start a long patrol 'over there' to look for the forge. Probably should have landed over there. And no need to drop a crew when surveying from the air. Time wasting garbage.

Crownest mando sees monster. Captain not only keeps going but steers directly for it. Ship destroyed and some crew dead. Ahoy matey.

Captain takes them right to the forge because "THEY NEVER LEFT". Literally walked 30 seconds away from where they originally entered the forge into a SECRET imperial base. "Whaaaaaaaaa???" I'm not even touching what's wrong with all that.

Vizla dies. AFTER he killed ALL remaining troopers ALONE. Then dies when he's outmanned by 3 praetorians. All the Mandos could have swarmed the praetorians. Contrived plot nonsense all for a death that has no impact because his character is so poorly developed. Oh, and Bo can fully wield the dark saber, but didn't during battle. Might have helped. A bit.

The most disappointing thing about this show is how easy it would be to take the story from average to one of the best series on television. Fantastic visual concepts and a good overall plot ruined by a horrible screenplay and worse direction/ execution.

Finally we get some suspense and real stakes - Moff Gideon attempting to eradicate the Mandalorians is quite a statement.

The SFX were superb in this episode - besides the scenes on the "dune ship" wich looked like the studio shots of Errol Flynn pirate movies.

However.

In Kathleen Kennedy Star Wars NOTHING matters. No matter what is achieved, it is getting reversed in the next episode.

Why did they spend two seasons to get Grogu to Luke and capture Moff Gideon just to undo that moments later?

Not even talking about the Sequels that undid everything from the originals, including Han Solos entire arc.

Shoving Grogu into this season obviously has only one reason: He is the only "new" Star Wars character that actually sells merchandise.

That is very likely the reason why they can't make him talk - at FIFTY years of age!

Now, if Yoda was "the wisest of all Jedi" (although clearly outsmarted by Luke in ROJ) because he was "900 years old" but his species develops so slowly that they can't even speak or properly walk at fifty, this is just plain stupd. Even if you assume that they develop at 1/10th the speed of humans, Grogu should have the level of a 5 year old - and I have never met anyone at that age who could not utter even a word.

The New Republic is even more stupid than the republic of the prequels - indulged in pointless bureaucracy and unable to supervise former high profile imperial officers or extremely dangerous prisoners.

Luke is on some planet finding his inner center and the entire leadership of the rebellion that knows exactly how to defeat the empire, including its remnants, have become useless and where is Mon Mothma??

Bottom line: Kennedy Star Wars is deeply insulting.

My only complaint is one i've repeated all season, that some of this episode's events could have been included in in the prior episode and been more effective at making the filler episodes feel LESS filler.

Honestly if the 6 mins of shadow council had been the end of the previous episode, or even Kane's message to Gideon had been chunked to put that part in the prior episode

I undertand why that wasn't the case, Its a western, most of season 1 we had 20-30 mins of the episodes arch with would be done when the episode was over and wed have another 10-20mins.

I think many fans are spoiled by season 2, where the opposite was usually the truth.