The return of Din Djarin and Grodu with season 3 of ‘The Mandalorian’ started with ‘The Apostate’, a quite entertaining episode in which the character of Peter Pascal He was on his way to redemption. Those responsible for the Disney+ series had already made it clear during the promotional campaign that this installment of the series was going to focus on the Mandalore universe and the second chapter has also gone in that direction.
Beware of spoilers from here.
Heading for Mandalore
After a nice comeback by Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris), who does not hesitate to cajole Din into taking a droid in a most questionable state -although at least he ends up warning him about it at the last minute, because his other clients are simply deceived-, the series travels to Mandalore to see if his protagonist can find redemption there for breaking their creed.
Once there, Rachel Morrison -director of photography for titles such as ‘Mudbound’ or ‘Black Panther’ who also has television experience having made episodes for series such as ‘Quantico’ or ‘American Crime Story’- has the opportunity to delight the viewer with a vibrant science adventure fiction that leads Din to face a multitude of dangerous ones.
The battle-hardened creatures he encounters end up being too much for Din and only a heroic escape from Grogu prevents irreparable defeat. By then and it has become clear that Mandalore is not cursedbut that does not mean that the planet is in a lamentable state, far from the splendor it exhibited not so long ago.
All of this helps remind us that ‘The Mandalorian’ is, above all else, a great visual spectacle and that in some cases it looks much better than most of the blockbusters that come to us from Hollywood. That arrival at Mandalore with several battles and Grogu bringing out his jedi powers they are a good reminder of that.
Then we return to Bo-Katan, who looks like he’s definitely going to fill the void left by Cara Dune in Season 3. No problem on my part, since his character is even more interesting and I also fully believe that katee sackhoff he can kick anyone’s ass from the days of ‘Battlestar Galactica’.
In her own way, the remainder of the episode is a way of continuing to show us the apathy that her character goes through -she herself says that “I want to be alonebefore seeing that Grogu hasn’t returned accompanied by Din- but also his incredible abilities and that he transmits more information about Mandalore in the process.
There the episode could have become expository too much, but the truth is that it sknows how to manage that extra information with everything that is happening and its effect on the characters. On the one hand, Din remains hell-bent on reaching the living waters and redeeming himself, while Bo-Katan even less than takes the mythology surrounding them to heart until that shocking ending changes everything forever.
It is evident that this creature at the bottom of the waters is one of those mythosaurs that until now we only knew about by hearsay. Perhaps a first sign that the Mandalorians are called to resurface or, at least, to try? What does seem clear is that this has to affect Bo-Katan in a key way so that he tries to reclaim his position at the head of that disgraced society.
All this combined with somewhat more intimate moments -those Bo-Katan talks with Grogu before rescuing Din-, new details around the mythology of Mandalore and a good dose of action. Thus, the second episode of the third season rightly balances the need for a fleeting pastime that fits the eye with the need to keep advancing on Din’s journey.