Did the spider episode and the Krayt Dragon episode get a lot of views or something?
Have not watched Mando S3 and maybe never will, but the spider episode was very scary and I loved it.
I liked it too, but it feels like that episode style is being used too often.
Personally, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying last night’s episode. Maybe it was just my rock-bottom expectations, but I found the episode to be quite enjoyable. Even though the effects and overall importance to the plot were highly lacking, the action choreography and overall sense of fun were enough for me to still like it.
This season feels like it’s carving out a niche for the Filoniverse as the more action-focused side of modern Star Wars, as opposed to the more slow-burn character-driven approach of stuff like Andor and The Acolyte. From the rumors I’ve heard about Ahsoka, it seems like my suspicions are true: Ahsoka is being described as having more heavily-choreographed fight scenes than anything Star Wars until this point. It’s not exactly what I hoped for (I wish every Star Wars thing could feel like Andor from now on), but I can accept it.
My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX
Oh I enjoyed it in a similar way, but I’m worried that they’re just stretching out the character stuff so thinly at this stage. I’m amazed they didn’t get stuck on Mandalor for a week or something. Or that they’ve shown so much of science man but nothing of Gideon. It’s jumping between breadcrumbs and total filler more than S2 for some reason.
I enjoyed the episode overall, but also found some of it lacking in places.
Bringing back Ahmed Best as Kelleran Beq was a nice touch, especially to be one of the people who helped save Grogu, for the shit he got because people couldn’t tell the difference between JarJar and the actor playing him. But his fight scenes were flat, along with the choreography and direction too. Some cutaways of him swirling sabers, and then cut to a wide shot, then back to cutaways of him swirling sabers. The background to the Speeder chase thing looked weird and cheap too.
Did the big flying creature thing keep Vizsla’s son in his mouth overnight somewhere else? Instead of just feeding him to the 3 baby flying in the nest? Why would a carnivorous creature attack its prey and then wait an entire day before attempting to eat it or feed it to its young? Vizlas’s son got spat out very dry too, no spittle, goo or fluid on him at all. Is the budget a little tight? Or was it meant to be funny?
As others have said already, no lookouts or early warning system for these big flying creatures or swimming megacrocs that often come and try and attack the Mandalorians, then carry the kids off, or just eat them? Yet the Mandalorians continue to simply train out in the open and make lots of noise. These attacks have been occurring often and for a long time going on Vizsla lines of dialogues: “Follow it to its lair”, “It always gets away”, and “It will kill the foundling if attacked. It has happened before when it has taken others.”
Foundlings are meant to be important to this warrior sect, right?
Weirdly, this was still one of the better episodes so far. Though I think any hopes for this season to have tighter writing, better use of the Volume or cinematography, and less fan service, are long gone based on what he have seen so far. I’ve found the Bad Batch more enjoyable and higher quality across the board this year, despite a few “filler” type episodes early on.
I don’t know, if I will be watching much more of this season. Mando was never a series with great writing, but I thought the lone gunman approach for S01 was effective, for S02 it still worked although the memberberries became pretty intrusive, but ever since TBOBF the entire Mandoverse feels like a directionless mess with questionable writing. Like Boba Fett in his own show, the Mandalorians act like morons. Given that they’ve been in this situation before, you’d expect someone to be on the lookout for (flying) monsters, and why would you use your jetpacks for a chase knowing full well you don’t have enough fuel to continue the pursuit? Are Din Jarin and Bo the only Mandalorians with space ships? Why did they wait for a day to rescue the kid? Did the monster of the week have him in his mouth all that time just waiting for the moment the Mandalorians arrive? Why was the kid so clean coming out of that thing’s mouth? I have a bad feeling about this…
It’s pretty clear at this point that Season 1 is the only one for me. In a Star Wars show, we finally started into a story with new characters, new planets, new far far away adventures. Two seasons later were back to Tatooine, Corruscant, and he’s flying around in a Prequel ship. It’s evident the powers that be can’t leave The Solar System Far Far Away.
It doesn’t help that 30 or so Mandalorians practicing combat on a beach looks like bad cosplay LARP. Not to mention, they don’t seem to be the brightest. Everything they do is right next to where a monster lives. ?
In the end, when the baby dinosaurs walked off the ship, that was my ROTJ moment where I realized the show is going in a direction other than one I’m interested in.
And on other discussion forums everyone is going crazy over Ahmed Best showing up…declaring a 10/10 episode. Everything’s just about cameos, wink and nod to fans and the shock value of it. Utterly boring to me…all the conversations are about “who knows about who”…Does Thrawn know about Luke…Does Ahsoka know about Andor…etc etc. Just boring stuff. And I’m sorry but Ahmed’s acting was pretty weak.
Yeah it’s just a cameo for the super hardcore, or the handful of people that watched his Jedi gameshow or whatever it was.
This latest episode had the kind of simple, straightforward Star Wars plot that I feel should be the focus of a show like this. It would have worked nicely in Season 1: “Space pirates invade defenseless town, authorities are useless, so they call in lone gunmen to come clean up.” But unfortunately, in Season 3 this story is couched within a larger messy narrative that detracts from the simple charm it should have. (Plus the space pirates need the cheese factor dialed down by 20 to 30 degrees. Remember when Star Wars criminals spoke in alien languages?)
Also, given the lawless environment the show portrays here, it seems naive of Greef Karga to think he can build a colony with no protection without so much as some kind of anti-spacecraft defense system at least.
Plus, lately there’s so many annoying little details that constantly distract me while I’m watching. With almost every action scene, jet packs are never utilized in the most obvious, advantageous ways called for by the situation. And the plot often progresses or connects A to B in extremely arbitrary ways. Like for example, why does that New Republic traffic cop guy think to go ask a random clan of Mandalorians for help? How does he even know them? He pulled over Mando for speeding a few times like a year ago - on Tatooine and the ice spider planet. Why would it even occur to him to ask Mando for help with something like this? How would he know Mando has access to a squad of elite commandos? He claims he was able to find them because he knew that R5 droid? What does that even mean? Whatever.
I feel like there’s a lot of missing connective plot tissue. In the trailer they show this cool dog fight over rivers and ravines, with TIE fighters chasing Mandalorian fighters. In the actual show, when we see this dog fight, it just occurs out of nowhere with no real context or setup. It’s like a cool fan film designed to be watched as a clip on Youtube, instead of something integrated into the story.
The population of the settlement was like 20 people. But look over here, another cameo!
Episode sucked. But at least this was a good cameo.
And THANK GOD he was CGI. I was waiting for some awful practical effect Zeb akin to how Bane was handled.
i liked this episode but there are few bad things is moff gideon the villan ? AGAIN ? as the others said a city with a population of 20 or 40 people but at least now this is going somewhere now in the five episode
Episode sucked. But at least this was a good cameo.
The Mandalorian in a nutshell?
I have to give them credit for leaning less into beloved character appearances this season than they did in season 2. And obviously no one will be surprised that I loved seeing Zeb again. He looks great in live action and I agree it’s a massive relief they didn’t try him with a practical effect. I love the magic of practical effects but sometimes they won’t quite cut it.
“Remember, the Force will be with you. Always.”
Episode sucked. But at least this was a good cameo.
The Mandalorian in a nutshell?
I have to give them credit for leaning less into beloved character appearances this season than they did in season 2. And obviously no one will be surprised that I loved seeing Zeb again. He looks great in live action and I agree it’s a massive relief they didn’t try him with a practical effect. I love the magic of practical effects but sometimes they won’t quite cut it.
I love practical as well. But I think they’ve leaned way too heavily into it. There needs to be balance, some of these aliens would never look good with practical effects.
They also kept Zeb’s eyes correct! After seeing Jaro Tapal with his uncanny human eyes in Jedi Fallen Order, I thought for sure that every live action Lasat would ditch the green eyes. Glad to see they kept it the same as it was originally established in Rebels. It looks so much better!
Three episodes to go of this largely forgettable season. I was really hoping for something “big” as the reason why the resolution of Grogu training with Luke and then going back to the Mandalorian was shown in the Boba Fett series, and not in this series, but no. Ugh.
It was good to see Zeb again, and I thought they did that part well. I also enjoyed seeing Carson Teva again, and his role in the episode, but found the rest a bit “run of the mill”.
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Huge chunks of the episode could have been cut if R5 was the key to locating the covert though. You could write any old techno babble if that’s all it took for Navarro to get in contact. Like the whole mines plot the whole pirate plot is now done, resulting in no change. What happened to Grogu and Mando as a team learning about stuff? Who knows, and the last two episodes will probably be something like a Rebels villain coming back helping Gideon… or more Dark Troopers (saber proofed). It’s a mess and it’s leading into a bunch of cross overs, again. I don’t really care about Bo Katan to be honest, but that’s the only real story beyond the cloning stuff.
As much as I don’t think it was a good idea basing all of these shows on the Marvel model of everything connecting , and I thought this show worked better as a standalone like the first season ,it is what it is now .
Disney has been reporting on wanting to get the movies right in the future an there is one thing they could do that would be a cash cow for them ...all of this is obviously leading up to a reworking of the Thrawn trilogy , so I think that should result in a big event movie on the big screen .
I have a feeling it was the Imperial Supercommandos seen in Rebels and based on McQuarrie's artwork , that freed Gideon and placed evidence to implicate the Mandalorians of a crime . Probably uner orders from Thrawn . Seems like something he would do . Favreau and Filoni have said that Grogu was away training with Luke for 2 years and we saw the new Jedi temple being built at the start of his training .
I would love to see a battle betweeen Hundreds of Jedi and Mandalorians / super commandos on screen . It would be like taking some of the earliest lore , especially the bit from the ESB novel about Fett’s armor being the kind worn by a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars , only shown now in the post OT era ,rather than the Clone Wars era. It’s something I thought we would see in the prequels and many sources in the 80s and early 90s speculated on as well . Plus , with the cloning technology being a subplot in The Mandalorian ,it would make for an awesome reworking of The Clone Wars or even The Second Clone War if done right . And what better villain to bring to the big screen than Thrawn for an epic event ?
If Beskar Steel is kind of indestructible how can a shard of it be left at a crime scene?
Yeah this season feels like the show has definitely lost its way (ha).
It’s funny, I can see a lot of parallels between the three OT films and the three seasons of Mando. S1 is a lot like SW, new and refreshing and exciting and works on its own and appealed to a ton of people and had a wide open sandbox feel. S2 mirrors ESB in that it upped the stakes and delivered high tension drama with a huge cliff hanger but also began the shrinking of the sandbox which alienated some fans of the first one. S3 is much like ROTJ in that it is a significant step down in quality in many areas. The writing is worse, the acting often feels phoned in (Han…), it’s more kiddie/Saturday morning cartoon in its overall vibe. Hopefully it at least pulls together and delivers an epic, powerful finale like ROTJ was able to do.
Shifting gears…
While I like the character Bo Katan, shouldn’t she be rather old by now? She was already an adult during the Clone Wars. This is like 30 years later, no? It just seems like she should be in her 60’s at least. Am I missing something?
Yeah… Mando was a kid when the battle droids arrived.
Bo-Katan was introduced around 21 BBY and looked to be somewhere in her 20s though her age has never been confirmed. The Mando series started around 9 ABY. So she’s likely somewhere in her 50s. Katee Sackhoff is only a decade off from that herself so it’s fairly close.
I always assumed Bo-Katan to be in her late teens during the Clone Wars.
Well today’s episode was, erm, different.
I thought the early Romeo & Juliet scenes were like a bad episode of Doctor Who, and the light almost comedic tone of the Jack Black & Lizzo cameos was not a great contrast for what was to come with Din and Bo’s story. They very much contrasted with the events at the end of the episode. Just my opinion, I love Christopher Lloyd, but I thought he was wasted in this role. But I did have a good laugh at the “Sir Grogu” bit.
Short weekly video reviews from Master Samwise YouTube channel. Balanced, agenda-free critiques & praise, + suggestions:
Here We Go Again - Season 3, Episode 1 Review: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAOC-WLDXzk - 7 minutes
Ditches the Side Quests, but…, Episode 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ed3wMWgq5g - 10 minutes
I’m Conflicted About the Latest Episode, Episode 3 Review: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYZgTPE5WNM - 12 minutes
The Mandalorian is Inconsistent, Confusing, and Frustrating, Episode 4: www.youtube.com/watch?v=llIt0YmN1nY - 13 minutes
Disney Simply Cannot Write Show, Don’t Tell, Episode 5 mini review: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqgfSXWLd6s - 3 minutes
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Mando has officially entered the “requires-a-fanedit-to-be-watchable” territory. Everything that’s happened this season could have been cut down to 2 episodes MAX. There’s only like 5-10 minutes worth of decent content in every episode.
This season is giving Book of Boba Fett a run for it’s money. It’s honestly embarrassing.