Today’s episode has me feeling pretty dejected. That was honestly a terrible experience. This can’t even be considered “filler”, it’s just completely wasted time and money. There was no more time to blow this season if it was going to turn into anything worthwhile. You had 3 episodes (~2 hours of content) to build a compelling narrative out of all the tiny teasers they’ve been throwing out, but they completely blew it with this one. There’s simply no way this season can be good now. Yes, we might get 1-2 entertaining episodes (except we STILL have to waste time on the “rebuilding IG-11” plot) but this has been as disappointing as Book of Boba for me.

I don’t mean to sound so dreary, but my honest reaction is that this sapped almost all of my excitement for the future of the Mandalorian. It took over 2 years to write and produce this? How? With such a long break I’m expecting absolute top tier content and Season 3 has utterly failed to deliver on that.

It’s not even that each of the scenes in this episode were outright terrible and this might have worked in a 15+ episode season, but this is inexcusable in an 8 episode storyline. “Filler” episodes need to provide further characterization and continue to build tension in some way by causing the viewer to become further invested in a particular character. For example, we could have had a filler episode here where we learn more about the Armorer and why she suddenly was okay with Bo taking the helmet off. But no, we go on a side quest to a side quest that only further reinforces the “Din hates droids” personality which doesn’t even make sense after his time with IG. It’s directionless and pointless. 3/10 episode in a 5/10 season.