Main cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan Kryze), Katy M O’Brian (Elia Kane), Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Emily Swallow (The Armorer), Tait Fletcher (Paz Vizsla), Simon Kassianides (Axe Woves), Mercedes Varnado (Koska Reeves), Brendan Wayne (Mandalorian Warrior), and Lateef Crowder (Mandalorian Warrior)
Director: Rick Famuyiwa

The Spies feels like an actual episode of The Mandalorian, unlike the last few episodes that were pretty much turd that was flushed from a crappier show. However, it’s not quite there yet, as this is like a slice of chocolate cake after eating a last few meals of stinking slime and fresh turd. The awful aftertaste of the dumb elements in the last few episodes remains, and even then, this episode is riddled with inconsistencies.

Anyway, now that the show has abandoned two seasons worth of Mandalore rules and what not just so that Bo-Katty can be handed the right to be the new leader of the tin can clans, Dave Filoni naturally steps back into the show to do some writing. Why not? Pilfering stuff from the scrapped extended universe stuff and slapping his favorite waifu into things as the Mary Sue savior of all is his specialty.

Before we get to that, the opening scene of this episode is a visual spectacle that is entirely wasted on the “revelation” that Moff Gideon is alive and Elia Kane is still his minion. Oh my god, I totally didn’t see it coming, so let me put on my best fake shocked expression… oh wait, Disney isn’t paying me to shill for them so I’m forced to be honest and say I’m not impressed.

Still, it’s a good opening scene with great atmosphere and Moff Gideon being the most bad-ass he has ever been without actually lifting a finger to do bad-ass things. That’s awesome.

Then it’s straight to tin can stuff and it gets nowhere as awesome anymore.

Hold on, let’s focus on the good things first. Despite Bo-Katty now being the boss of all tin cans without actually earning any right to that aside from the usual Current Year Women Are Entitled to Having Everything Handed to Them privilege, Mandy and Baby actually feel like lead characters here. That’s nice, as I’m starting to believe that this show is called The Book of Bo-Katan. and the previous seasons of The Mandalorian had just been my imagination.

Greef gives Baby control of a refurbished IG-11 so that it can control it like a giant baby pram of mass destruction and even speak through the droid’s voice program. This is adorable, as it means that Baby actually gets to act cute in a baby-like way and still have something to do on this show, instead of just being a toy tossed around via invisible wires like a drug-induced fever dream of a meme.

However, this is also a vehicle to showcase one of the many examples of crap writing here. Mandy announces that he thinks Baby is too young to control IG-11, but in the same episode he has no issues correcting other people’s suggestion that Baby is too young to do this or that as well as signing Baby up on dangerous missions alongside himself.

The meeting of the tin cans that we have seen so far and the tin can remnants that still survive on Mandalore is pretty well done, as it’s tension-filled and the cinematography is pretty good considering how the budget for Disney+ shows have been slashed a lot since a few years ago.

Then these tin cans decide to retake the Great Forge and it’s amateur hour time. Just a few examples:

• Dropping tin cans down from a ship to “scout”, as if they couldn’t scout around on the ship itself, especially when stealth isn’t needed in the first place.
• The scouts then walk to a specified destination. Wait, why can’t the ship drop them straight there?
• Oh look, there’s a monster in their way. Ship charges at it and gets blown up. Gee, no wonder these tin cans don’t seem to have many spaceships of their own. They are really bad at staying alive while on one.
• Wait, there’s a secret Imperial base conveniently hidden just near the Great Forge? LOL. I suppose it’s hard to come up with a more convincing excuse to include some fights in this episode.
• Why on earth can’t Paz Vizla take down a few enemies when he could single-handedly slaughter an entire battalion without breaking a sweat?
• The guy that becomes the noble sacrifice plot device here is a complete flop because that character is barely there most of the time and is so poorly written that I don’t care. Seriously, whether this character dies or lives has zero impact on the rest of this episode, and the entire season as well.
• Why doesn’t Bo-Katty use her darksaber of entitled supremacy to fight? I’d like to imagine that she wants them all dead because she is in a secret plot with Moff Gideon to destroy these tin cans, but something tells me this show will never dare portray a female character in less than perfect light anymore. Not that these two should have bothered even if there were such a plot—the tin cans are doing fine on their own to eliminate themselves, what with living in places with hungry big beasts and doing nothing to protect themselves from these beasts.

So, in the end, this is an episode that is more like The Mandalorian I used to know, at least in terms of visual and cinematography, but the script is still lodged inside the nefarious collective rectums of Kathleen Kennedy’s approved story board people.