This week's episode of The Mandalorian, titled "The Siege," gave us a little bit of everything. Though we mostly join Din Djarin as he ventures on another mission-of-the-week side quest, we discover far more relevance to the series and more Star Wars universe connections, if even on a vague, conceptual level.
We actually got quite a bit more humor this episode than the first three episodes of the season (or maybe it was just better, more memorable humor). The opening scene features a funny exchange between Din and The Child as Din tries to give a lesson in crossing wires. It was reminiscent of the scene with Rocket trying to talk Groot through setting off the bomb in GotG 2. Later, The Child plays class clown in a small school setting. Greef Karga (played by Carl Weathers, who also directed this week's episode) was lippy and quippy with Mythrol (the same creature Mando put in carbonite last season) throughout the episode.
We also got incredibly vivid, weighty action scenes. The show has been lauded for its return to special effects and smaller amounts of reliance on CG akin to the original trilogy. This episode gave us Emmy-nomination-caliber visual effects. Cara Dune, who makes her return, won a close-quarters shootout in a darkened vault-like room early in the episode (odd note: the entire building's architecture and composition felt very Star Wars, not like common structures we see every day). Later, Din and the crew win a shootout against a couple of lab techies hunched behind a computer console. The techies die a scorching death; you can see the smoke rising from their corpses! Simple, easy touches like that made this episode feel more realistic than probably any other episode of the series so far.
The actual mission at hand, which involves returning to Nevarro for ship repairs, felt a bit out of place, as in it probably should've been either Din's first mission this season, or at the end of Season 1. Instead, it seems like a lot of time has passed because Nevarro, the site of the big battle in the Season 1 finale, is bustling with small, populated towns with marketplaces and even schools.
A leftover-yet-operational Imperial base is still functioning on Nevarro. Din discovers he can disrupt the cooling systems of the base, which would allow lava to expand into the facility and burn the whole place down. It was weird that, after he disables the cooling system, we never really felt eminent danger that the place is about to blow. Losing the feel of those stakes slowed the momentum of the episode for me, though only a little bit.
While infiltrating this base, though, the crew discovers several terrible truths. They aren't in a military base, but rather a science lab. We see several tank tubes filled with deformed bodies in fluid. Something creepy is going on. It looked very much like what we saw in Episode IX when Kylo Ren is walking through Palpatine's science room; a room filled with experiments to create Snoke that went horribly wrong.
The crew also discovers that Moff Gideon is still alive! We, the audience, knew that already, but the crew listened to a recording sent to Gideon to explain the results of this lab work that has gone awry.
So what was happening here? The Empire is trying to use midiclorians to create life, or at least clone life. They got these midiclorians from The Child, but they've run out of his blood. They get blood from another, mysterious donor, but the experiments go horribly wrong. Apparently this donor doesn't have a high enough midiclorian count, so presumably Gideon will pursue tracking down The Child again to get more of his force-laden blood.
Later on, our "post-credits" equivalent scene shows Gideon in a room full of...dark trooper droids? I couldn't tell if we simply saw troopers who wore heavy armor, or if it was more of a line of droids, or what. But there were science guys there, so presumably they are infusing whatever these things are with the blood from their host.
Back to the mission: on their way out of the lab, Cara, Greef, and Mythrol get tailed by some Imperial troopers. It was fun to watch them chase the crew (now in a transport vehicle) on their speeder bikes. These scout troopers apparently haven't gotten any better since Episode VI - when troopers chased Luke and Leia on Endor - as two of them crash right into each other. The chase scene gave me a quick flashback to podracing as the speeders flew down a steep mountainside. The chase scene did go a bit long for my taste; that is, until it transitioned into Din taking to the skies in his newly revamped Razor Crest ship. It kind of had a cheesy ending as an anthem-like victory soundtracks played to cheers from the rest of the crew, but it worked.
We got one touching scene with Cara as she speaks with our Rebellion pilot from last week's episode. We find out that Cara was from Alderaan, and she lost "everything" when the Death Star I blew it to smithereens. Seems she's got a whole new motivation. Cara's work to rebuild that town on Nevarro - now that the Imperials are (mostly) gone - is inspiring. The moment felt like the writers were telling the audience we were not done seeing Cara. Maybe there's a bigger role for the character in the future. But if not, it makes for a decent send-off.
Notes:
-It was fun to see a classroom setting in Star Wars. We sort of got one in Episode II with the younglings practicing lightsaber techniques, but here, we get a full-on traditional classroom. The droid teacher non-chalantly mentions trade routes, including the Corellian Run, and the droid later mentions a "maelstorm," which we heard/saw in Solo.
-I can't remember if we've seen this before, but it was cool to see the TIE fighters perched on the ground with their wings in a V shape; then, when they take flight, their wings straighten to the traditional look.
-There was an incredibly deep cut in one of the throwaway lines. When the crew is infiltrating the base, Mythrol walks out onto a ledge and says, "There's no guardrail on this." I believe this is a reference to the joke in the Family Guy Star Wars movie (one of the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials may have made a similar joke) when the Imperial officer on the death star complains that his job is more hazardous than it needs to be because they don't even have guardrails. So funny.
-An Imperial officer talks with a spy on Nevarro, and she confirms that the spy placed a tracker on Din's newly repaired ship, which gives Gideon a way to track him. The officer then gives an interesting off-hand comment. She says to the spy "You will be rewarded in the new era." Hm, I wonder what that implies. It's too early for her to be referring to the New Order from the sequel trilogy, right? My crazy conspiracy mind is already dreaming of many movies and shows telling stories of the time period in between Episode VI and VII, both from the fallen Empire's view and from the Rebellion's view. If all of that led to a set-up of Episode VII, that would be amazing...Okay, enough with the pipedreams.
-No Ashoka Tano this week, which isn't surprising, but with four episodes down and only four to go, we'd better start ramping up to some major events to close out this season. Again, I really hope we are NOT just getting teasers/jumping-off points to spin-off shows, though I'd never complain if I got more Star Wars content.
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