Streaming service Disney+ premieres the the third episode of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, the first live-action TV series set in the Star Wars universe, starring Pedro Pascal and Carl Weathers. Werner Herzog guest stars.
The Mandalorian delivers the child to the small enclave of Imperial holdovers, but he is curious – and perhaps worried – about what will become of the creature. Even so much as asking is a violation of the code by which bounty hunters live. Rewarded with a fairly large quantity of Beskar steel, the Mandalorian has new armor fashioned for himself, though some of his fellow Mandalorians, tired of living in hiding, question his decision to accept work from Imperial loyalists. His concern for the child’s well being, bringing to the surface memories of his own tortured childhood on the run with his family until they could no longer shelter him, finally override his oath to the bounty hunter code, and he all but single-handedly wipes out the Imperial encampment to rescue the child. The price for the Mandalorian’s compassion: he is now not the hunter, but the hunted, and his survival depends on whether or not the other Mandalorians will cover his escape.
written by Jon Favreau
directed by Deborah Chow
music by Ludwig GoranssonCast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Werner Herzog (The Client), Omid Abtahi (Dr. Pershing), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Emily Swallow (Armorer)
Notes: The Mandalorian scoffs at the suggestion that he could travel to the Core worlds to alert the New Republic to report the Imperial activity – he regards the reconstituted Republic as “a joke”. Given that the child is clearly a member of the same as-yet unidentified species as Yoda, it’s possible that the “necessary material” Dr. Pershing is attempting to extract for his client could be those pesky Force-enabling, fandom-enraging midichlorians that have gone unmentioned since Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. (That movie also contained glimpses of the only other adult member of Yoda’s species seen to date, a Jedi Master named Yaddle.)
LogBook entry by Earl Green