Katee Sackhoff Arrives To Make The Mandalorian Interesting

 

It has been made clear in these reviews that I do not much care for the characters of The Mandalorian. Well, in so much as there are characters. It is mostly a formerly racist suit of armor and its pet frog accomplishing nothing as they bounce from planet to planet. Not this week! This week there are actual characters involved. Ok, there is one character. Ok, she is not particularly interesting here; I just like her based on appearances in Clone Wars and Rebels. Really, there are not any characters here but the presence of Bo-Katan and a name drop of Ahsoka spice it up. This leads to some hints about both the past and future of The Mandalorian and The Mandalorian.

From the beginning, the Mandalorians of The Mandalorian have been completely inconsistent with those that have appeared elsewhere. The catchphrase, the religious devotion to the title Mandalorian, the rules about their helmets. It was all new. Granted, the show is set in a mostly unexplored period of Star Wars, but this was presented just how Mandalorians are. The most important part of this episode serves as an explanation of the discrepancy.

After Bo-Katan and her crew arrive to rescue Mando, they remove their helmets and this confuses Mando and causes him to lash out. Eventually, he accepts that they are Mandalorians and they work together. Bo-Katan explains that Mando is a “Child of the Watch”. This is likely a reference to the Death Watch rebellion from Clone Wars. This episode implied that they found children and raised them isolation according to ancient Mandalorian tradition. This little wrinkle added to the lore instantly makes every Mandalorian contradiction on the show make sense. Hopefully, the exploration of the dichotomy continues.

This episode ends on the promise of the long-rumored Ahsoka Tano appearance on this show. Because this is The Mandalorian, that likely will not occur next episode because Mando will crash his barely functioning spaceship on a desert planet and have to help a small village kill some wild animal. When he does end up finding Ahsoka, we will likely find some other obstacle blocking Mando’s path to returning his frog son to his people.

The most exciting aspect of the whole Ahsoka thing is that we might get to see Sabine Wren! Sabine is one of my favorite Star Wars characters and her last appearance had her leaving on a journey with Ahsoka. She is a Mandalorian that once wielded the Dark Saber so she may be important to upcoming plots. Hopefully, she makes an appearance. The pair could also have Rebels protagonist Ezra Bridger with them as well. Ezra is another favorite of mine and a Jedi, so he definitely counts as someone Mando is searching for.

The fact that the two preceding paragraphs were me getting excited about the potential appearance of characters from actually good television series is certainly an indictment on The Mandalorian. At least this episode answered some longstanding questions about Mando’s backstory. It also had guest appearances Titus Welliver and Giancarlo Esposito, although the latter was a brief cameo. Overall, this episode was best thus far of this lackluster season. The future is looking bright. Let’s hope it can stick the landing—unlike Mando in the last two episodes.

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