Main cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Gina Carano (Cara Dune), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Horatio Sanz (The Mythrol), Omid Abtahi (Dr Pershing), and Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon)
Director: Carl Weathers
Of course, given the shape of the “repaired” Razor Crest at the end of the previous episode, it’s not really unexpected that the ship is in no shape to take Mandy and Baby to meet Ahsoka Tano in Corvus. Daddy Mr Favreau needs to pad out the season as much as he can, after all! Therefore, what better way to do so than to have these two reroute back to Nevarro. Yes, let’s bring out the old faces again for this episode, because the season will end once Baby meets a Jedi, and we can’t let that happen until the bare minimum episode count is met.
Wait, how much time had passed since the end of the previous season? Nevarro City is now… semi-respectable. The alien Mandy captured in the first episode of the previous season is now a receptionist at Greek Karga’s office; Karga is now bossing people in a legitimate mannet and poking his nose more into paperwork than anything. Cara Dune is now the marshal of that place, taking down undesirables and all. The place has a school now too, the perfect dumping spot for Baby to do his cutesy antics and sell more toys. Mind you, it’s still not 100% respectable, as where is the fun in that, after all.
Of course, now that Mandy has some downtime, Karga and Cara—is it just me or every buddy buddy duo’s names rhyme in this show?—persuade him to join them on what is supposed to be a simple detour: head over to an abandoned imperial military base, destroy the reactor and hence the base, and rid Nevarro of the last remnant of the old Empire once and for all. Oops, the military base is far from deserted, as it turns out, but don’t worry, these mooks are Stormtroopers. Our heroes will be fine. In a chase scene, two of them manage to eliminate themselves right off the gate without the good guys having to even start opening fire, so that is the caliber of the enemies of this show.
You know, that’s why a part of me will always want Star Wars to move beyond the Skywalkers and Stormtroopers. The enemies are a dead horse of a meme at this point. They are beyond horrible when it comes to doing anything competent, so there is hardly any suspense whatsoever during the confrontations between the good and the bad guys. Mandy having a bulletproof armor, when the bad guys don’t, is just overkill at this point, because I’m sure our guy will be able to take them on even if he were naked.
Speaking of Mandy, they are giving Cara Dune her own show, right? The Siege is actually her episode, with Mandy just tagging along. She gets a kick-ass opening scene, she and Karga share exposition duty, the Mythrol and Baby provide the comic relief, and Mandy just sort of hang in there as extra firepower. Gina Carano is okay in this episode—acting lessons paying off, maybe—so I honestly won’t mind seeing her show.
Back to our hero, though, well, this episode is another alright one. It has all the makings of a good episode, but the enemies turn out to be classic incompetent Stormtroopers, so the whole episode devolves into our good guys flexing, whooping, and making wisecracks while curb-stomping the bad guys without breaking a sweat. Instead of a glorious siege like the title suggests, I get what is basically the pilot of the Cara Dune show. I’d watch that show, but I’d also like to watch The Mandalorian.
