Hello there!
Welcome to my latest episode review for The Mandalorian. I’ve really enjoyed writing my episode reviews of Resistance so there was no way I was going to miss the chance to do the same here. The reviews will take on the same format: an overview of the plot (so be aware, there will be spoilers!), my review of the show, then a few “Moments in canon” – references that link to other media and the galaxy as a whole.
I have been looking forward to this show so much, so there was no way that I wasn’t going to watch this as soon as I could. Unfortunately, living in the UK, Disney+ is not going to be available over here for a while, so I’ve had to channel my inner Hondo Ohnaka to see this! Today, we’ll be looking at Chapter 7: The Reckoning.
Plot Summary
While on the Razor Crest, Mando receives a transmission from Greef Karga. Greef tells him that The Client has taken over the city on Nevarro, which is impeding the Guild’s business. The Guild want to take out The Client but can’t get close enough to him. Greef makes a proposal: Mando returns to Nevarro with The Child, they use The Child as bait to get close to The Client. With The Client dead, the bounty on The Child will be void, and Greef can clear Mando’s name with the Guild.
“Looking for some work?”
Deciding to take the offer but not fully trusting Greef, Mando returns to Sorgan to bring Cara Dune on board to help. While she initially turns him down, she agrees when she hears that it will involve fighting an ex-Imperial warlord. Back on the Razor Crest, Cara is checking out Mando’s supply of weapons, when The Child starts playing with the ship’s controls. Getting control of the ship back, they realise that they will need someone to watch over The Child. The pair go to Arvala-7 to recruit Kuiil, who insists that IG-11 (who he rebuilt and reprogrammed) and 3 blurrgs come with them.
During the voyage to Nevarro, Cara and Mando are arm wrestling while The Child watches. Thinking that Cara is attacking Mando, The Child starts to Force choke her, until Mando stops him. Cara gets into an argument with Kuiil over his past serving the Empire as a slave, but Mando splits them up and asks Kuiil to create a new pram for The Child, explaining to Cara that he refuses to leave The Child with IG-11.
“Very curious.”
“Curious? It almost killed me!”
The Razor Crest arrives at their rendezvous with Greef on a remote part of Nevarro away from the city. Greef has come with 3 Guild members, while Mando goes out with Cara and Kuiil (all on blurrgs) with The Child’s new pram floating beside them. While IG-11 stays with the Razor Crest, the rest of the group begin to make their way to the city. As they rest around a fire that night, they are attacked by flying creatures. Though they fight the creatures off, it is at the cost of 2 blurrgs and one of the Guild members, while Greef has also been bitten on the arm. Cara tries to help him but the group do not have any medpacs and the bite is venomous. The Child comes over and places his hand on Greef’s arm, and the group watch on in shock as he uses the Force to heal Greef.
Arriving near the city the next day, the 2 remaining Guild members attempt to ambush Mando and Cara, but Greef kills them. He explains that they intended to double-cross Mando and take The Child, but he was unable to go through with it after The Child healed him. Mando comes up with a new plan: Kuiil will return to the Razor Crest with The Child, while the rest go into town. Mando will be cuffed and brought in as a prize along with the empty pram supposedly holding The Child, while Cara and Greef act as his captors.
“Can I offer you a libation to celebrate the closing of our shared narrative?”
Everything is going to plan and they end up face-to-face with The Client, but there are more stormtroopers than expected in the room and a lot more in the city. The Client gets a message from Moff Gideon and before they can react, a group of death troopers outside open fire into the cantina, killing The Client and his stormtroopers, but not Mando or his group, as they hid behind a table. Looking out the window, they see the death troopers and watch as an Imperial Troop Transport arrives with more stormtroopers. Mando contacts Kuiil on his comlink, telling him that they are outnumbered and telling him to get The Child back to the Razor Crest run, but their conversation is intercepted by a pair of scout troopers, who chase after Kuiil on their speeder bikes.
An Outland TIE fighter lands and Moff Gideon emerges from it. Coming to the front of his troops, he tells the group that The Child will be his very soon and that it means more to him than they will ever know. Kuiil is approaching the Razor Crest and lowers the ramp, but the scout troopers are gaining on him. Mando tries contacting Kuiil but gets no response. The Child is seen lying on the ground, until it is picked up by one of the scout troopers, who starts making their way back to the city, leaving the corpses of Kuiil and his blurrg behind.
Review
What a fantastic episode! Before The Mandalorian, Deborah Chow was not a name I was familiar with, but now she is a name that I will definitely be keeping an eye out for. This is probably my favourite episode yet, with Chapter 3 (her other episode) being my next favourite, so I feel confident that the Obi-Wan Kenobi series is in very safe hands.
“Does your contact need to vet me?”
“Doesn’t know you’re coming.”
After a couple of episodes that felt largely stand-alone, it was great to get back to the main story this week (no real surprise, given this was the penultimate episode) and it was brilliant to see some of the characters from earlier episodes returning. Cara Dune has been one of my favourite supporting characters so it was great to see her teaming back up with Mando and I think Gina Carano did a great job with the role once again, while Carl Weathers is perfect as Greef and it was great to see him return and teaming up with Mando. Kuiil was great in the early episodes so bringing him back was great, while I was so happy to see IG-11 return, though I hope he has a larger role in the finale. It really felt like this team all had their own unique roles and personalities, and the group worked together in a way that felt completely natural, helped by moments of distrust from Cara towards Kuiil due to his past working for the Empire and towards Greef for having intended to kill them. Meanwhile, Greef’s decision to not turn on Mando felt completely justified after The Child saved his life. Moving over to the bad guys, I continue to love Werner Herzog as The Client! He was suitably menacing and really felt like a true believer in the good of the Empire, while Herzog made some crazy lines sound absolutely amazing. Moff Gideon may have only been on screen for about a minute, but already he feels so dangerous and commanding. I just really hope that with their only being one episode left, he isn’t dealt with too easily in the finale to make him feel too weak.
Visually, the episode looked stunning once again, with all the different environments on show and also the fight in the dark with the aerial predators, which really felt like a horror scene. The stormtroopers felt threatening in a way that the movies have rarely managed and there was a real tension throughout the episode from the moment Mando got his team together, which came to a real height with the way the final moments were cut to intersperse Moff Gideon’s speech, Mando trying to contact Kuiil and Kuiil being chased by the scout troopers, which came to a heartbreaking climax seeing Yoddle get taken and then the reveal that Kuiil had been killed.
“That thing is programmed to kill the baby!”
I loved the way that Yoddle and the Force was approached through the episode. Yoddle showed back in Chapter 2 that he will try to protect Mando (when he lifted the charging Mudhorn), but as a baby he wouldn’t understand the difference between arm wrestling and fighting so it makes sense that he would try to protect Mando, while he would also not understand that force choking someone is wrong. I loved Mando’s double take as he realised that it was Yoddle choking Cara and his instant reaction to assure Yoddle that Cara is a friend. I’ve seen some people find it strange that none of these characters appear to recognise the Force, but given the Empire had changed the story of the Jedi to make them sound like a small insignificant cult (for the size of the galaxy, there were not really that many before Order 66), while during the Civil War there would have only been a couple of Force-users, so there is no guarantee any of the group would have seen the Force be used before, though I like how Kuiil did seem to have some knowledge, only for an argument with Cara and then his death to deny the team any chance of finding out what the Force is. I feel that Yoddle’s darker moment will mean that his time with Mando is limited, either Mando will find out about the Force and find someone to train him, or else I can see Mando taking Yoddle back to Omera on Sorgen – and maybe settling down himself until season 2.
I know it’s almost Christmas, but I’m finding that my countdown is already for Taika Waititi’s Chapter 8!
“You trust me?”
“From what I can tell, yes.”
“Then you will trust my work.”
A few final thoughts from the episode:
- I love how there were more hits to Cara’s past. She suggests that after leaving the New Republic, she got into some very shady work. Meanwhile her hatred of Imperials is clear by the way that the very mention of The Client being an Imperial changed her mind about joining Mando
- Similar to Cara’s hate of Imperials, I love the way the series keeps coming back to Mando’s hate of droids. The flashbacks in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 gave us a very clear reason as to why he dislikes droids, and I loved how it was expanded here to be even more focused towards battle droids and other combative droids, while I think that Kuiil’s talk of trusting the programmer and (my prediction) a lot of help from IG-11 in the finale, will help him become more accepting
- I loved the way that Moff Gideon’s stormtroopers all had clean armour in contrast to The Client’s troopers… these guys mean business!
Moments in Canon
- Nevarro was still under Imperial control at the end of the Galactic Civil War
- The Imperial Troop Transports were commonly seen in the series Star Wars Rebels
- The Outland TIE fighter is a new model we haven’t seen before – not all TIEs can land like that!
- The Client refers to Mandalore’s resistance to the Empire. From the way he talks about it, it sounds like the Great Purge the Tribe referred to was the Empire pacifying Mandalore
What did you think of the episode?
Thanks for reading. This is the way.
The Canon Padawan 