1x06 Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger

I feel like a miserable person because everyone seems to enjoy this episode but me. And when I think about how the Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian and The Clone are probably my top 3 of the Star Wars shows and movies I should normally love this, right?

Of course I was excited when all these iconic characters showed up but maybe it's because of how many of them were introduced in just a single episode, but it felt a little cheap. Not to mention, I think this show is extremely predictable; for example the Cad Bane scene went just as I thought it would, him shooting the other guy while only wounding Vanth. And it's not just the scenes that are predicable - the dialogue in this whole show feels cliche and uninspring.

I'm always here for more Luke and the cgi for him is very impressing, though I'm a bit disappointed that he is so harsh with the attachment rule, I don't think it fits his character very well considering his arc and own attachements in the OT. But this may as well be a test he puts Grogu through so we shall see.
And even though I adore Ahsoka, I'm also personally not the biggest fan of Rosario Dawson's potrayal of Ahsoka, not sure why. On a sidenote, I know they can't really make her lekkus longer in live action because of the stuntwork but I wish they could at least somehow make her "horns" (montrals, right?) bigger. It just doesn't look good the way it is now.

But hey I'm nitpicking now, my biggest problem with this show is the dialogue and overall writing; With the exception of the 5th episode (I loved that one) I just don't think it's very good. And of course the lack of Boba Fett in his own show is jarring but then again whenever the focus is on him it's not very interesting either. The story is lacking and it's a shame.

[7.???/10] I love and hate this episode. I love Luke. I love Ahsoka. I love Grogu. I love Cad Bane. I like Cobb Vanth. But what the fuck are they all doing in the same episode of Book of Boba Fett? Why are we plundering the rest of the canon so severely when this show is a chance to expand it? How can Star Wars keep falling back into the same small universe problem?

And look, I’m a total hypocrite, because I gasped and cursed so loud when Cad Bane showed up in live action for the first time ever that I spooked our cat. Watching the badass bounty hunter who made his bones in The Clone Wars stalk out from the edge of the horizon, issue threats on behalf of his latest benefactors, and then get into a gunfight with Space Seth Bullock is unbelievably cool.

Would it feel as cool if I didn’t already know or appreciate Cad Bane? If my wife’s reaction is any indication, maybe a third as cool. He’s still a badass Lee Van Cleef homage with a steely gaze and one of Cory Burton’s patented scary voices. The character works here for the same reason he worked in The Clone Wars on his own terms. Dave Filoni, who directed the character in animation, now gets to direct him in live action (more or less), and shoots the whole thing like a riveting western. It’s great. I love it.

And it’s also bad news. One of the cool things about The Clone Wars is that it expanded the Star Wars Galaxy. Sure, they shoehorned in Chewbacca and Boba Fett and brought Darth Maul back from the dead. But they also widened the universe and the lore with original characters like Cad Bane and Ahsoka, or dove deeper into the identical clones of the Republic Army until they were well-rounded and full of humanity, or you know, widened the aperture of what we knew about the freakin’ Mandalorians.

This is good, or at least a lot of it is. But it feels like such fan service, much of which seems to have more to do with setting up season 3 of The Mandalorian than advancing anything of importance here.

Ashoka is probably my favorite character in all of Star Wars. From the moment she popped up in The Mandalorian, I went back and forth with my friends about whether or not she would ever run into Luke. And she does! They know each other! She guides him regarding his training temple and gives him perspective on his first student!

But the scene feels like it exists solely to play on our excitement of seeing those two characters on screen together. Ahsoka’s there with his master’s only son, and it’s an oddly flat and awkward scene. There’s a cheesy line about him being like his father, and she seems to give him a nudge about letting Grogu choose which path he wants to follow. And yet, it doesn’t have the momentousness such a meeting should. BoBF just wants to say, “Hey! These two luminaries of the franchise are having a conversation! Isn’t that cool?” and leave it at that.

Don’t get me started on the training sequences. Again, it’s neat to see Luke training someone! It was neat in The Last Jedi! Watching him as the master instead of the student is a nice flip from The Empire Strikes Back. But these scenes are unbelievably derivative of Ep. V. Luke just does the same sorts of shtick Yoda did, only slightly modified given the size disparity. He quotes his old master, uses the same sort of training ball that Obi Wan did with him, etc. etc. etc.

You can handwave some of this away. Luke was only trained by Obi Wan and Yoda, so of course he’s going to fall back on the same techniques. But the episode does nothing to show Luke growing on his own, or differentiate what and how he’s approaching this with Grogu. It’s great to channel the audience’s collective affections for Yoda here, but it’s also a cheap trick in some ways, conjuring up goodwill that George Lucas earned [gulp] forty-two years ago rather than generating some on your own.

Maybe it’s just the awkwardness of having to recreate young Luke. The digitally remade version of the character looks a lot better here than he did in season 2 of The Mandalorian. It’s trickier to pull off the sort of virtual facelift in bright lighting, but Luke looks plausible as a real human being, much as he was in Return of the Jedi, a good ninety percent of the time, which is impressive.

Occasionally, the mouth syncing is ever so slightly off, which gives you some of that uncanny valley effect, but there’s remarkable improvement from what the Favreau corner of the Star Wars Galaxy trotted out a little more than a year ago. Likewise, Mark Hamill’s voice sounds much more accurate and unmodified than it did in the other series. The problem is that his delivery is off here. Hamill is a master voice actor, so I chalk it up to either the direction or the awkwardness of how his character is done versus other performers, but so many of his lines have the same upward inflection.

His dialogue is also strikingly generic. I feel like I wrote something close to the same shtick in my sixth grade fan fiction. It’s just a regurgitation of the same Jedi bromides that scads of others in the franchise have uttered for decades now. There’s nothing new, no added insights, nothing specific to Luke and his experiences in all of this. It’s just warm broth for old souls who remember the warm feeling of watching Luke’s training and now get to enjoy it slightly remixed and reheated for their continued consumption.

I don’t know. Fanservice isn’t inherently bad. Oftentimes it works and works well on me. (See: the Cad Bane material.) But there’s something so blunt about it here, so crass even, in the way it’s deployed. I respond to it with the force of someone who’s waited to see this mix of characters interact for years, but also as someone who can feel himself being manipulated by nostalgia and recognition to prop up something with very little “there” there.

I suppose we can cross that bridge if we come to it, but god help me if they’re setting up Grogu to return to Mando in s3 of his show. Once more, you can handwave it. Ahsoka suggested he’d been through too much to be trained, even if she doesn’t get in the way of Luke’s efforts. The last two episodes have set up that maybe there’s too much of an attachment between Din Djarin and Grogu for the little guy to be able to follow the Jedi path. But I don’t like building to such an emotional climax in s2 of The Mandalorian and then seeming poised to undo it in a couple of episodes of someone else’s show.

Despite all that, I like the parts of this that feel closer the thrust of Book of Boba Fett. There’s logic to the idea that Mando would help Boba Fett, and Fett’s crew needs foot soldiers to fight the Pykes, and Mando has a connection to Cobb Vanth and the people of the newly-dubbed Freetown.

Vanth’s opening skirmish with the Pykes is badass as all hell and establishes not only his gunfighter bona fides for anyone who missed The Mandalorian, but also his disdain for the spice trade. His conversation with Mando himself is warm and wry, with good points from Mando about how the Pykes will eventually be Freetown’s problem and smart but knowing remarks from Vanth in return. And as predicted, Cad Bane showing up brings those problems to Vanth’s doorstep, putting a thumb on the other side of the scale for a reluctant Freetown to get involved with Fett’s war, but perhaps giving Vanth a personal stake in joining the fight. (I’ll believe Vanth’s dead when I see his body burning on a pyre.)

These scenes also play on characters we know and (in my case at least) like. They bolster players introduced in other series and mediums, but they also advance the cause of what’s going on here and now. They show real change in Mos Pelgo/Freetown, in Vanth, and in the relationship between him and Mando which bears out in interesting ways. In short, it uses those characters to further the story at hand and to advance them as people and figures in the broader narrative.

The scenes set on the site of Luke’s new training temple just don’t do the same. They mix and match characters from the Original Trilogy, the animated wing of Star Wars, and the key figures of the franchise’s recent live action expansion. But beyond a bit of “Gee, it’s sad for Mando and Grogu to be apart” which we already did at the end of Mando s2, it’s all empty calories, familiar motifs, and recapitulations of past successes. I like all of these characters and pieces of Star Wars past and present, but I wish the show was using that foundation to take them all to new places, rather than to reheat some well-loved leftovers and shuffle toward restoring the status quo.

I dislike how it now seems like the new episodes will be half book of boba fett and the other half will be mandalorian season 3 seriously Disney pick a lane a stick with it obviously I don’t mind seeing more of mando I think he is an excellent character with a good story but not when it consumes one and a half episodes of BOBF I assume next weeks episode will be the same and it’s just stupid that boba has less than 5 minutes of screen time in the whole episode and I don’t think he has any lines possibly some but not that any I can remember and that’s the problem book of boba fett has morphed into mandalorian season 3 all this tells me is how Disney can’t even do a series properly and the worst thing is no one seems to see this everyone just seems to be blinded with stupid love for grogu and the amount of fan service I don’t mind a bit of fan service but not when two whole episode are shaped around it yes maybe re-introduce some old characters but not when it takes up an entire episode and forcing mando into these episodes is just sickening I think they shouldve just left well enough alone lastly I have to mention how bad Luke’s face is and his voice just sound so abnormal the whole time I am looking at him it is just so uncanny valley it looks real but it also really doesn’t also the puppet for grogu looks so bad not the head just the body the whole time I am looking at him I’m just thinking what his actual body looks like because of how misshaped it is finally I actually audibly gasped when I saw cad bane as he is one of my favourite characters and seeing him come back is so awesome but again the face is bad first of all it’s the wrong colour and the nose area is to fat and the mouth is too high and the teeth are wrong and he never closes his mouth which is just awkward looking and I’m not sure how Disney did this I am constantly baffled as how Disney is always making these live action characters characters look bad Ashoka is the only live action character that actually looks half way decent!

I enjoyed this, but I'm still confused as to why, when we should be steadily building to the finale of Book of Boba Fett, we're still firmly locked on following the Mandalorian around. The last episode was entirely Mandalorian. This episode has one scene with Boba Fett and a couple with his show's main cast, but is otherwise largely following around the Mandalorian. Is this Boba Fett's series, or have we pitched that and just turned this into Mandalorian season 3? I mean, there's only one episode left, and they've completely killed the momentum of what's supposed to be the plot of this show by letting another show take the reins.

That said, the Mandalorian stuff continues to be great. Visiting Grogu. Meeting up with Vanth who then has an entire side arc. Both are really entertaining and nice to see. Vanth especially in his classic throwback to great westerns. I'm still early and sporadic in my viewing of Clone Wars, so my knowledge of Cad Bane doesn't go beyond seeing his face from time to time in advertising, but he's a great foil for Vanth in their climactic standoff.

As charming as the training of Grogu subplot is, I'm still iffy on parts of it. I get that they really want to show off their effects of recreating a young Mark Hamill, and it does look and move gorgeously, but it still feels false in the way the majority of his dialogue happens off screen as it's flatly read by either an impersonator or replicating software that doesn't put much emotion behind the delivery. It's like they don't trust their ability to fully synch things up, so every scene is constructed like those shows where they do hasty rewrites during the ADR phase. I mean, Sebastian Stan is RIGHT THERE. Just recast the role so we can actually spend time with Luke and let him believably interact with the cast. Also, I'm not a fan of how fully he's gone back to the rigid ways of the Prequel Era Jedi. Luke is still fresh off Return of the Jedi, where his mastery DIDN'T come at the expense of leaving behind his emotional connections, so why isn't that part of the training, of finding a way to guide and mentor Grogu while still allowing the kid to hold on to what's important to him? It feels like a step back and doesn't show the growth Luke needs to not only start up the Jedi again, but rebuild it in a new way. Granted, maybe this rigidity is there to set up why he ultimately fails down the road. Regardless, when he put the choice to Grogu, it pissed me off. Same with Ahsoka. In a pair of shows that's been all about breaking down the uniform mystique of the Mandalorians into a range of individuals who relate to their culture in individual ways, it's a bummer to see this generation of iconic Jedi conforming to the extinct ideal instead of expanding what it means through what they as individuals bring to it. If Grogu bails on this, I don't blame him.

Went on a little longer there than I intended. It is still a good, entertaining, solidly directed episode, I'm just not fond of how much they've sidelined the series we've started with, and some of the directions they're going. It's like they're so eager to make Mandalorian season 3 that they jumped the gun and gave away too much too soon instead of waiting for the natural point of that next season to let this all play out.

Another cool episode :) It's nice to have Mando back and see more of the Jedi (Ahsoka, Luke, and Grogu).

However, it's still "weird" that they seem to use a puppet for Grogu. The body animation is too unrealistic. This could be much better with CGI.

Mando's friend is badass but she should've indeed kept his armor... :o I hope he isn't dead yet but it doesn't look good at all. Cad Bane is definitely a character that I didn't expect to see again. Might be nice but I'm already mad at him (even though he didn't seem to be the first to pull the gun).

Luke using the force to walk with Grogu was funny :D It's also nice that he's building a school. I just hope that he won't hold on too much on the old ways of the Jedi. Attachment can be a bad thing for a fighter but it doesn't have to be (although Anakin isn't the best example here... :o). Anyway, I didn't like the choice that he offered to Grogu. Would be funny if Grogu doesn't choose Yoda's lightsaber though or if he chooses neither.
Ahsoka saying "So much like your father" to Luke was quite interesting.

I also hope the The Mandalorians will be able to change their way a bit. It could be nice if Mando would return to lead them with the Darksaber.

Really liked this episode... and I have to say they did young!Luke much better than Leia back in Rogue One. So kudos for that.

I still think, though, that the jedi simply get the whole attachment thing wrong. Just being close to someone doesn't mean they're attached - so what's so bad about Grogu having contact with the mandalorian or wearing some armour? Because some jedi go dark or are so obsessed with a single person (i.e. Anakin) doesn't mean everyone goes dark. And don't tell me there's no attachment within the jedi themselves. Attachment per se isn't bad, you don't have to leave everything behind just to be a jedi. Especially when there's just one jedi left, one might think that some rules should be changed perhaps - I mean, Luke himself started training a lot later than per the rules, so him being rule-bound's quite ridiculous. So, in my opinion the whole "making Grogu choose" thing is ridiculous in the situation the jedi are in - and especially given the fact that his species has a long life-span... why not spend a few years with the Mandalorian and return to the Jedi afterwards? I'm looking forward to seeing where this is going, especially as I can't imagine the next season of the Mandalorian won't contain Grogu.

Otherwise: stupid deputy.

Okay. I honestly don't know how to rate this episode. It was amazing, but at the same time, cemented for me the fact that this show has lost its true identity. What even is this show anymore? The Book of Boba Fett? Or The Mandalorian Season 3?

I don't like focusing on the negatives, because just like the last episode the content within the episode was amazing. It's more about how these last two episodes have contributed barely anything to the show at large. I just don't understand why they didn't leave this stuff for the actual third season of The Mandalorian???

Negatives out of the way, lets talk about the positives. And trust me, there are a LOT.

Dave Filoni directed this episode, and you can tell because so many things happen that reward the Clone Wars fans.

Firstly, Cobb Vanth makes a return which was awesome to see, and it got me super excited for him to hopefully team up with Boba.

Next, R2, Luke and Grogu all made appearances and I couldn't stop smiling. Seeing Luke training Grogu just like Yoda did with him was so fun to watch, and was a clear homage to the training scenes on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. And can I just say, Luke looks REALLY GOOD. Like REALLY REALLY GOOD. Compare him here to back in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian and BOY does it look so much more obviously CGI back then. Great to see that using CGI and digital voice rendering is a feasable option going forward for Luke in the future. All the moments with Grogu were great and made me realise how much I missed seeing him.

Oh, and did I forget to say ORDER 66 FLASHBACKS WITH GROGU!!!! Finally we get to see Clones in live-action again since 2005!

Then, while Din is waiting, who comes out of the trees? AHSOKA FREAKING TANO. My first thoughts were LUKE AND AHSOKA HAVE MET and while some part of me was disappointed we never got to see that first interaction between them, when Ahsoka said to Luke "You remind me of your father" I FREAKED OUT. I've been waiting for the day the two of them talk with each other for soooooooo long!

Then, just when I thought Filoni had finished blowing my mind, we get the legend himself, the deadly, the badass cowboy hat bounty hunter CAD BANE. Like I was jumping out of my seat when I saw him walking towards Cobb Vanth in the distance of Tatooine. And honestly, they did a really good job of transitioning the character to live-action. Very impressed.

And then Bane kills Cobb and I stared in utter shock.

I have to say though, I had predicted that Cad Bane would be working for the Pyke Syndicate if he did make for an appearance. That was the only way that made sense to me. So I'm glad I was right.

So while this episode had me riding on high after high, it also made me question what the actual goal of this show even is anymore. For that reason, it gets a solid 9/10 for me. If this was The Mandalorian Season 3, then I would've given it a 10/10. But I choose to rate episodes based on not just the events that occured in the episode itself, but also how it relates to the overarching plot of the whole show.

I really enjoyed Grogu's storyline, but the story about the Mayor and the Pykes seemed like an unnecessary addition. It was delightful to see the Baby again, he is cute as ever but still does not speak human language and continues to communicate like a baby. Luke said that Grogu's species is very longeaval so maybe he would develop slower but it is sad anyway. The whole Grogu plotline is very sad, as Mando travels far to give his present to Grogu and only sees him from afar. It was great to watch lots of favourite characters in the episode, such as my favourite robot R2D2 and Ahsoka (who is apparently using droids to build a school for the Jedi, but the school looks more like a barrow than an educational institute) and we finally get a glimpse of a beautiful natural environment as opposed to high-tech cities and spaceships, but the Jedi's belief that all attachment should be removed is a huge exeggeration, as it could lead to eradicate love and bond between friends and family, and the world would be empty without these relationships. It was so sad to see Mando leave the planet after Ahsoka convinces him not to visit Grogu. And the ending is even sadder, when Luke forces (bad pun!) Grogu to choose between his past with Mando and his future as a Jedi, as becoming a Jedi would mean never seeing Mando again. I remember a meme in which this is compared with Bilbo Baggins giving the mithril armour and Sting to Frodo, but Bilbo was no niggard as Frodo could have both. It seems a bit harsh of Luke to force Grogu to take such a hard decision. Though the armour made of bescar looked like the mithril coat in this scene, I wonder what happens to it when Grogu rejects it? Forging it was a bit of a sacrifice for Mando as it was made out of his bescar spear, which was a very good weapon and Mando gave it up for Grogu.