Well, we’re a few days late thanks to the Christmas break, but we can’t ignore The Mandalorian FINALE in our recap series, so let’s do it.
In last week’s episode—effectively the first real cliffhanger of the series—Baby Yoda had been captured by some scout troopers. As this episode opens, we find out who those grunts are: Jason Sudeikis and Adam Pally. They’re apparently meant to wait for confirmation before bringing B. Yoda to Gus Fring, so they have a lengthy scene apt for their comic talents, where they smack at Baby Yoda and give us a painfully winking joke about how Empire troops can’t hit anything with their blasters.
Taika Waititi—who directed the episode and also plays its re-programmed robot nurse, IG-11—shows up in the latter form and confiscates the smallest of Yodas.
Meanwhile, back at the bar where Mando, Gina Carano, and Carl Weathers are hunkered down, Giancarlo Esposito has set up a larger-than-normal gun to shoot them out. Mando wants to escape through the sewer system that weirdly connects to a pub through a very large grate, but it turns out blasters can’t melt steel beams, and the crew remains trapped.
Like Han Solo before him, Esposito gives the team a hefty “I know you, asshole!” As part of that, he calls the Mandolorian by his birth name, Din Djarin. It turns out is not really that interesting nor memorable, and we will definitely just keep calling him Mando. A name or even a species for Baby Yoda is what we want, you assholes!
Anyway, Esposito is like, “I’ll give you until nightfall to sort this out. Seems as good a time as any.”
Mando knows that asshole too, though. It’s Moff something? Some other guy with a stupid name we won’t use. He tells Carl Weathers and Carano that, adding that he isn’t from Mandalore. Weathers is like, “Wait, I thought it was a race thing?” And Carano is like, “It’s more like Judaism, I guess? Where, the Jews are kind of a race, but also you can just be Jewish outside of being from Israel or whatever? It’s complicated.”
“It’s a creed,” Mando says, keeping me from making any more flawed comparisons to Judaism.
Thusly: FLASHBACK TIME!
Mando once again remembers the stupid memories he keeps seeing whenever he hers blacksmith clanking. All that’s added from before is that a Mandalorian guy in a jetpack is who saved him and took him to Mandalore. Like we hadn’t already figured that out.
Once he snaps out of that, Droid WaiT1T1 contacts him through their little comm nugget, and that bot goes on an absolute rampage killing the stormtroopers that would wish harm upon Baby Yoda.
A big firefight is kicked up, and it involves Mando and Carano literally just standing stationary as they shoot these giant chaingun blaster things. Somehow that works for a while, but then Esposito is like, “Why is no one shooting this guy who is literally just standing there, slowly rotating a giant gun? I’m going to shoot him and also shoot the giant power generator next to him.”
Once he does that very obvious move, the crew of fools are forced to (again) retreat to the bar, where at least now, with Taika IGG, they can cut through the weirdly prominent sewer grate’s bars. But it’s still weird that Werner Herzog was basically living here a few minutes ago, despite a large, open sewer grate feet away. Did it not smell awful?
Mando got clunked in the head pretty good, and Carano wants to help him get through the sewer, but he would rather die than reveal to her how handsome he secretly is.
Soon after, a whatever-trooper with a flamethrower bursts in burning up the place, and shoots some fire straight at them. Don’t worry, though, because Baby Yoda uses his force powers to stop the flame, instead of using them to save Mando’s noggin, even though he or someone else easily could have just shot the guy.
IG-11 stays back with Mando in the hope of saving him, even though Mando is still being really droid-racist. Mando is like, “No living thing may see under my helmet.”
Robo-titi is like, “I’m really glad you phrased it in that very particular, peculiar way, because I’m not technically living, so it’s fine,” and he pops off the helmet. It’s Pedro Pascal, who’s finally been forced to actually show up to the set instead of just phoning in his lines! IG spritzes this really good spray that heals brains somehow, and though it seems to just be an upside-down can of compressed air, it works.
Down in the sewers, Carano and Weathers prove that they’re very slow walkers as IG and an incapacitated Mando almost immediately catch up with them.
The idea of going to the sewers was to find the greater Mandalorian tribe, who apparently live down here as the Ninja Turtles of Star Wars. But once they get to the Mandalorian base, Mando finds a horrific sight: a pile of Mandalorian helmets. It seems they won the big football game without him, and no one picked up the equipment.
Wait, no, it turns out they’re all dead, and Blacksmith-lorian piled up their helmets to melt them back in her smelter. She’s the only one left there, and she’s like, “Hey, could I see that dude you said you spared? The guy who saved you?”
He pulls out Baby Yoda, and she’s like, “Jeez…”
Mando explains, “Nonononono, but see, he can move stuff with his mind, so it’s not as weird as it seems.”
“Ah, I’ve seen the prior films,” she replies. “Little green turd is clearly a Jedi. And now, to give you my pitch for season two, you will have to find the Yoda homeland and return him there, and also I’ll give you this Yoda-meets-Man signet on your shoulder, declaring this a two-hander through and through. No longer must fans fear losing Baby Yoda, because he’s definitely the Hooch to your Turner—at least until Disney+ can create that relationship more literally.
So, the team is off to the lava flats or something. But not before Mando gets his jetpack! He got him one of those, as promised.
After they leave, some stormtroopers come in and Smithy kills them with her hammers. It’s kinda cool, but The Raid 2 did it way better.
To get to the lava flats, Mando’s team apparently has to take a lava gondola driven by an R2-Gond0l4 driver. He starts taking them out of the lava river, but stormtroopers are guarding the exit. Instagram-11 saves the day by trudging through the lava and self-destructing among the guards.
Having been saved twice by this droid, Mando is hopefully re-thinking his droid-racist mindset. But, knowing some old racists, he’s probably just thinking IG is “one of the good ones.”
Anyway, the remaining crew gets out, but then Esposito is shooting them with a TIE fighter. Carl Weathers does his comic relief thing, begging Baby Yoda to do the hand thing, but when that doesn’t work, Mando jetpacks up, grappling guns the ship, and blows its wing off. What a guy! And handsome, too!
Mando meets back up with his team, Weathers gives a trite “maybe [Baby Yoda] will take care of you,” and Helmet Man and Lil’ Greeny fly off in their ship.
BUT! Back at Esposito’s TIE fighter—which tellingly didn’t explode when it crashed, so you knew this shit was coming—Moff Whateverthefuck emerges from the wreckage. His escape hatch jammed up in the crash, he escapes using A BLACK LIGHTSABER.
It’s big news for Star Wars fans: black lightsabers are Star Wars‘ equivalent of those little safety hammers that let you escape out of your wrecked car!
Very cool.
