Main cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan Kryze), Emily Swallow (The Armorer), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Brendan Wayne (Mandalorian Warrior), and Lateef Crowder (Mandalorian Warrior)
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Previously… oh, you think The Apostate follows the final episode of the second season? Ha, fooled you, because Disney did some cunning Sith trickery and actually made the last three episodes of The Book of Boba Fett the unofficial season 2.5 of this show.
So yes, this episode refers to a quest that was given by the Armorer to Mandy, now the apostate in the title, in order to cleanse his Mandalorian honor for taking off his helmet and showing Grogu his sad crying face.
Some time has passed since then. The Mandalorian order has increased in numbers and they are taking in kids now, although seeing how they keep having initiation rites for these kids in waters full of hungry giant alien sea crocodiles that they are ill-prepared to take down without losing two-thirds of their numbers, I suspect they will soon have to intensify their recruitment drive.
Of course, Mandy shows up in his ship to blast the creature and save the day, demonstrating that the Way is no way without superior firepower.
Seriously, if I were one of those kids that survived the silly beach monster attack in the opening scene, I’d do a Shania and say that don’t impress me much, before running off to join the… hmm, really, having to choose from these sorry tin cans, the just-as-sorry Stormtroopers, and the ineffectual Jedis suggests to me that these kids are better off running after Cara Dune.
Speaking of Cara, a fully bling-upped High Magistrate Greef Karga leads a thriving Nevarro, now a trading hub bringing in the moolah. So where is she?
Well, Greef tells Mandy that she “was recruited by special forces”, which still paves the way for her to come back once Kathleen Kennedy and her coven are finally fired—if that would ever happen, because Disney is dumb—and these people have made so many stupid decisions that they needed to pull a stunt casting to get people interested again in a franchise that they have defecated on for so long.
Anyway, Mandy happens to arrive at the nick of time to prevent the extinction of the tin cans before they could even start a little revival, but the Armorer hag isn’t grateful. After all, he is no longer a tin can, and since the mines of Mandalore are no more, he can’t undo his dishonor and be a tin can again,
Aha, think again, Mandy says, because he has found evidence that at least one mine still exists beneath the surface of the planet Mandalore. He is going to go there, strip naked, jump into the salty waters, and slowly rub his hands over every muscular contour of his gloriously naked body, massaging those heaving pecs to move slowly down… ahem. Sorry, my imagination went to some place else for a second.
You know, I’m a bit confused. Grogu is practically his kid now. Are tin can parents also not allowed to show their faces to their own kids? Do married tin cans make babies with those pails on their heads? What is this? Why would anyone want to join this order? I bet their hair stinks to high heavens and are probably covered with every type of alien lice in the galaxy.
Back to Mandy, he first makes a stop at Nevarro because, come on, this is the first episode of a new season. They have to kill time and stretch things out to a full season, after all. He wants IG-11 reconstructed to help him explore Mandalore in the near future, and also because Taika Waititi needs a way to pay rent after spectacularly embarrassing himself earlier last year.
Along the way, Mandy learns that despite the thriving bustle, all is not well with the place, as pirates from Greef’s past are causing trouble for him and the folks in the neighborhood…
Actually, this episode doesn’t have anything resolved, which makes sense as it is after all setting up seeds for the rest of the season. It is, however, still a well-paced, entertaining watch because Jon Favreau is one of the few people left over there, it seems, that write a screenplay designed to entertain first, instead of hitting me in the head with clumsily inserted social justice anvils. Things move at a solid pace, the acting is solid, and Grogu thankfully doesn’t get to hog the episode and make himself outstay his welcome.
In fact, I admit that scene of him cuddling up to Mandy in their ship is so cute.
Ahem. At the same time, I also find the dialogues in this episode to be more cheesy than usual, especially Mandy’s lines. There’s a deliberate campy kind of cheese designed to capture the feel of cowboy movies of the old days, and then there’s just that kind of cheese that feels hackneyed and unimaginative, and the one here is dribbling into the latter kind.
However, I enjoy the scene of Mandy with Bo-Katan. It’s a brilliant compare and contrast of two tin cans: one more forward-thinking and yet bitter and cynical, and one stuck in tradition but somehow finding solace and even purpose in doing so. Maybe there will something these two can learn from one another later in the season…
All in all, this is a perfectly adequate season-opener that gets me intrigued to watch more. Now, all I can do is to hope that this one doesn’t fizzle out into hot mess ass soon. Dear lord, please keep those clowns behind Obi-Wan Kenobi far, far away from even sneezing at the direction of this show, that’s all I ask.
