3x02 Chapter 18: The Mines of Mandalore

[7.7/10] Let’s start with the obvious here. You couldn't fucking see for a third of this episode. I get wanting to create a sense that the titular Mines of Mandalore are an abandoned, descreated space, and I also get wanting to lean into the theme of fear by making it difficult to discern what’s lurking around the corner. There’s a purpose to the darkness here. It isn’t just random.

But you can also go too far, to the point that the audience can't see what’s going on. There were so many fight scenes, so many intense bits of skulking through the caves, where I may as well have been looking at the floor for how much I could make out of what was on the screen. This has been a problem in prestige genre television going back to Game of Thrones, and it’s increasingly frustrating as a known problem. Light these damn sequences to where we can see them

If you can set that aside, this is a very cool episode. Once again, Amy Sedaris steals the show as Peli Motto, the Mos Espa fixit tech. I can't get enough of the way she fleeces a Rodian, or double-deals via the Jawas, or talks Mando into taking a scaredy cat astromech droid (the same one Luke rejected in A New Hope?). I just get a giant kick out of her character, and even seeing her bond with Grogu a little more is adorable. I don’t want them to overdo it, but she’s such a welcome part of this, and that's a hell of a way to get this one started.

There is also something powerful about the Mandalorian going to Mandalore for the first time. My wife asked me why he brought Grogu along, and it’s a legitimate question, but one I think ahs an answer in the show. Mando is raising Grogu to be a Mandalorian. Yes, this is dangerous, and he should probably have left Baby Yoda in the care of Peli Motto. But as we’ve had glimpses of, Mando himself had a pretty intense upbringing, and so teaching him to navigate for himself, to face his fears, is part of Din Djarin’s parenting style in some way.

Grogu has a good little arc there. Mando wants to teach him how to navigate, “so that you’ll never be lost.” And when Mando is incapacitated, Grogu is able to get back to Bo Katan with the help of Chekov's astromech. Grogu seems terrified to be on the decimated Mandalore, worrying for R5 and only proceeding gingerly with his dad through the mines. But again, when push comes to shove, he musters his courage (with a little nudge from new surrogate mom Bo Katan) to soldier on and find his father. This is, in many ways, an episode about the childhoods of Din and Bo, and so balancing that with a tale of how to raise Grogu as Mandalorian with a few hurdles for the little guy to overcome, is a good construction for the episode.

The creature work in the mines is good too. I’ll admit, as a Star Trek fan, there’s something fun about Mando basically fighting a bunch of 1960s Gorn down there. The prospect of a flying lizard creature coming at you is good. And while the look of the Grievous-esque cyborg scavenger felt a little too Prequel-esque for my tastes, the design of it was positively creepy, which I appreciated.

The only problem is that I wasn’t really scared by any of this. There’s some unnerving moments in there where the scavenger is draining Din that make your blood run cold. But for a lot of the “skulking through darkness” material, it was either too black to see much, or too standard issue Star Wars spelunking to really evoke the mood of fear the show was going for.

That said, I love where the episode goes in its second half. There’s always something a little gutsy when The Mandalorian proceeds without, well, the Mandalorian. Focusing on Grogu needing to enlist help to rescue his dad, rather than Mando being an unstoppable badass who works his way out of any situation, is a nice change of pace.

Plus holy hell Bo Katan is so cool! I’m an easy mark, because I both enjoy the character from her appearances across the animated corner of the Star Wars universe, and because I’m a big fan of Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see Bo Katan getting to be the Mandalorian badass for half an episode. Watching her fend off the lizard people in the caves, give Grogu an equal amount of instruction and guidance, and even wield the darksaber again is a total thrill.

But I also like the contrast between her and Mando once she rescues him. He is awed to be in the Mines of Mandalore. This is the home he never got to see, so it reached almost mythical significance for him while in the diaspora. He is a true believer of the creed. It’s directed his life and he fully accepts that the only way for him to cleanse himself is to find these mythic waters. This is a holy place, and a sacred quest to him.

It’s different for Bo Katan though. She lived here, so now all she sees is the remnants of a great society that crumbled due to infighting and succumbing to an outside force. She never believed in the songs and stories, and only sees the fabled living waters as the place she was expected to perform the usual rituals by her father, for the sake of keeping up appearances. She is disillusioned, both with the Mandalorians and the creed, and so has rejected much of the awe and wonder that still consume Din Djarin.

I love how the episode turns that on its head. The show telegraphed the appearance of the mythosaur in both the “Previously On” and the plaque-reading. But it’s still cool to see a skeptic like Bo Katan dive into the living waters whose history she decried as fables dive in to rescue her ally, only to catch a glimpse of the creature whose very name suggested it was merely part of some fairytale. If these two can work together, there’s hope to reunite the Mandalorians and start their people anew, and finding a common ground and a common history to believe in is a good first step. (Even if, hey, the whole “never take off your helmet” thing is still a bit excessive.)

My only big complaint is that, again, for such a cool episode, I truly wish I could have been able to actually see more of it.