Catching Up - The Mandalorian Chapters 20 & 21: Of Foundlings And Pirates

Photo from Vulture

Chapter 20: The Foundling

Oh Mandalorian. You predictable beast you. This is par for the course at this point, so I’m still not disappointed because another filler this week means something awesome is going to happen next. But the thing about it is that I believe this ties in with something that I wrote about several weeks ago, the idea of the disappearance of “filler episodes” in the modern streaming landscape. It’s yet another thing that people complain at nauseum about online without actually understanding the purpose of it. The term “filler” previously would refer to when television would traditionally last 22 episodes and run from September all the way through May. In that world of television writing, there was no POSSIBLE way you could keep a story sustained and interesting for that amount of time, resulting in writers making up a lot of side stories, usually comedic, or “filler material.” This was most often best used in sitcoms, since most of the time the “story” of sitcoms usually revolves around workplace romance or just major changes in the workplace that would typically happen in the finales while the rest of the seasons would revolve around whatever the adventure of the week was.

That all went away in the streaming era, in which the average episode count of a season went from 22 to 8-10, making room for a much more streamlined story and a lot less time for these run little side plot episodes, even though sometimes they would result in people’s favorite episodes. A lot of people have stated that the Mandalorian is trying to have it both ways, attempting to have a streamlined story that takes up the eight episode count that it’s established while also having a fun side adventure of the week type feel to it. But what’s interesting about this season that the first two were still feeling their way through is that even the side plots are starting to build and add up to something.

The plot of this fourth episode is simple: now officially part of the convert again, Din is attempting to train Grogu with the rest of the Mandalorian foundlings, (mandalorian term for younglings) when one of the kids is snatched up by a giant pteranodon-like creature, forcing the rest of the convert to give chase. It results in some great set pieces, great action, some more creature feature stuff which we know Favreau loves and a chance for Bo-Katan to prove herself to the Convert by providing her ship and strategic expertise. While the plot is once again simple and technically “filler” since it doesn’t contribute to the main story or whatever, it also provides another flashback to Grogu’s past, similar to the vision he experienced while training with Luke in “The Book of Boba Fett,” which shows an extended version of him being spirited out of the Jedi Temple during the events of Order 66, and also allowing for one of the most surprising cameos/redemption stories ever: the return of Ahmed Best, aka Jar Jar Binks, previously maligned for his portrayal of Star Wars’ most hated character, as Kelleran Beq, who proves quickly and efficiently that he is one with the force as he quickly decimates clone trooper after clone trooper in his efforts to get Grogu away from the temple.

All of this is to say that despite this episode not really contributing much to the “story,” two things: one, people need to stop going after this show so much for there not being much of a story, because nobody batted an eye or complained when this was in animated format. Clone Wars & Rebels took years to build up and set up their conflicts, and it allowed for some of the greatest moments that Star Wars has ever had. Two, despite the fact that one could make an argument that the show’s not had any real direction up until this point, this is the first season where it feels like we’re going somewhere. This is still the only original Disney+ show in the streaming era, it’s still delivering on largely unknown regions of the Star Wars universe, and it’s still such a well made show that frankly, people really just need to shut their mouths and enjoy what they have.

Chapter 21: The Pirate

This is what we Star Wars fans live for. We truly are the new horror fans. Horror fans would sit and wait through years and years of crap just for that one awesome piece of content that would go down in the cultural lexicon. That has now officially transitioned over to Star Wars, since they are not the corporate product of an entity intent on treating them as such, which means that even though we get more of the thing we love, the quality is going to go down unfortunately. But every once in a while, we get a gem like this one. We get an Andor, we get the animated shows, and we get episodes like this.

Directed by the third of the new directors this season, Peter Ramsey of “Into the Spiderverse'' fame, the Pirate sees Din & Bo-Katan rallying their convert to take to Navarro to intercede on behalf of Karga’s colony, which has come under attack by the pirates Din avoided in the premiere, led by Gorian Shard (Nonzo Anonsie). It’s a great series of events that lead up to what turns out to be another breathtaking action set piece, which this show is still delivering in spades, but it also feels right at home with what we fans grew to love about the animated Star Wars shows: they brought it back to the underdogs, reminding us that there was a much bigger galaxy out there other than the Jedi, the Sith & the Skywalkers. It made us root for random characters who would team up against a greater foe and this is no different. The Mandalorians flying down from the skies and taking out the bad guys one by one, using all their tricks, advanced weapons, combat skills and everything that made us fall in love with them harkens back to that absolutely gangbusters finale of Clone Wars where we saw Mandalorians fighting alongside out beloved Ahsoka and clones to take back their homeworld. It’s breathtaking and emotionally invigorating at the same time, the best kind of storytelling.

Not only that, but this episode also plays a crucially important role in the grander overall story, which is why I ALWAYs caution people against criticizing each individual episode so hard, because the best TV will always have the seasons add up to something huge. And this show is definitely doing that. Besides introducing yet another major character from the animated shows into live action, the one and only Garazeb “Zeb'' Ourellios, it also continues the Coruscant storyline from 2 episodes ago with the character Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), who is Karga’s first contact upon the pirate attack. He attempts to relay it up to his commanding officer, only to be walayed by Elia Kane, who is quickly becoming another villain, and continuing the non-stop train of corruption that has plagued Coruscant since the early High Republic years. It also ends with a banger cliffhanger ending, with him trusting his gut and discovering Moff Gideon’s ship floating in space, confirming his suspicions that the Moff was never brought to trial and is still out there somewhere conducting his experiments to bring back the empire in some capacity. What this will lead to, who knows, but if he’s got some Mandalorian allies as Teva discovers Beskar embedded in his ship, who knows? But this was a great episode nonetheless, easily a candidate for television episode of the year.

Recaps are provided by Dom of @movienerdreviews