New Wednesday and we have a forced visit to the distant Star Wars galaxy with a new episode of ‘The Mandalorian’. The first act of season 3 is focusing on the redemption of Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and we have reached a rather interesting point on his journey with Grogu and Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff).
By the way, from here spoilers for ‘The Convert’, episode 3×03 of ‘The Mandalorian’.
As a curiosity, to say that we find ourselves with the longest episode of the series so far, with about 58 minutes of total footage. Plenty of time to put two stories into one: the first is the main one in the series, with Din Djarin recovering after being rescued from the rushing waters. Asked by Bo-Katan, that he saw a mythosaur, he replies that he saw nothing in the depths.
It doesn’t matter much because “it would already be”, so they leave the planet for Kalevala only to be chased by a squad of Tie-Fighters and witness the destruction of Bo-Katan’s palace. Given the obvious numerical inferiority, there is no choice but to flee.
This is no longer the Empire
Its course is unknown to us (although we intuit it) because the central part of the episode takes us to the second story… and to Coruscant. In the capital of the still in its infancy New Republic we meet again with an old acquaintance: Penn Pershing. Moff Gideon’s chief scientist played by Omid Abtahi. Like “remnant” of the Empire, the scientist has taken refuge in a city amnesty program.
In “the house”, where he receives the name of L52, he will make friends with G68 (Katy M O’Brian), former communications operator of the same ship as Gideon. Little by little, they will forge friendship in which the scientist begins to see that Not everything is as I had imagined and, despite the fact that they repeat that “this is not the Empire” as a mantra it does not quite see it.
On the one hand, he is not amused that in the New Republic they are dismantling all Imperial material, since it is still useful. For the other, would you like to continue doing your research in the field of genetics and cloning… but it will soon come crashing down as it is totally prohibited.
The Andorlorian
This way Noah Kloor and Jon Favreau seem close to what made it special ‘Andor’ to offer us a glimpse of what goes on in the ins and outs of the New Republic. We are not, of course, immersing ourselves in the thriller genre… but it is quite grateful that we are once again soaking up the streets, bureaucracies and government offices.
The culminating point takes us to an escape of Pershing and G68, who reveals that his name is Elia Kane, to the scrapyard, to the guts of an imperial ship to rescue a portable laboratory. Leaving there, there will be a betrayal of her towards him, who is subjected to a mental redirection treatment not too different to what was used in the days of the Empire.
Why exactly this betrayal or the degree of Kane’s collaboration with the Amnesty program remains unanswered. Taking into account that as soon as he is not under supervision, he decides to fry the scientist’s brain more, one can theorize about if there is some revenge or there has been more common history in the past than they let us see.
With these theories swarming in the head, the episode ends with Din and Bo-Katan flying to the secret hideout of the Mandalorians, where the return to the Mandalore path is made official, not only for our character, but also for the “separated” one, since it is considered that the living waters suppose an automatic redemption. Welcomed back, a new act for the season begins.
In Espinof | How Patton Oswalt Predicted ‘The Book of Boba Fett’