Chapter 19: The Convert

A former Imperial scientist struggles with life in the New Republic.

This is a solid episode with some interesting story development.

The plot spends a short time with the lead characters, but that time is spectacular and gives Din and Bo some great opportunities to be very cool.

I quite enjoyed when the plot deviated. There's only so much you can watch every week of the title character on various missions, so for me it's a welcome change of focus. It feels slightly jarring, as it comes out of the blue in the series narrative, but hopefully it is laying the foundations for good things to come. These scenes are more reminiscent of the style and tone of 'Andor' than other Star Wars shows, which works fine for me.

As ever the fan service and visual spectacle is top drawer in all aspects. I like the art design on Coruscant and the action sequences in the opening scenes are outstanding.

Omid Abtahi leads the episode well.

Update to review after finishing season - it would appear this episode only lays the foundations for a very small aspect of the overarching narrative so it feels now like an excessive detour. I still enjoyed it slightly more than the other episodes of series 3 for showing something different.

For me it's a 7.5/10, but I round upwards.

People claiming for longer episodes of The Mandalorian, but when they asked for longer episodes of the series they meant more of the Mandalorian, Din Djarin, himself not from a scientist people barely remember for season 1. Sure this might be some trigger for the season plot, but if you consider that next episode will be officially mid-season, the pacing of this season is quite slow and the only development we have seen was what happened in the end of this episode.

Unlike previous episodes of the season, the beginning and the ending were really awesome. The interactions between Din Djarin and Bo-Katan felt way better than on episode 2, not only on dialogue, but how both behaved in scene. Here we feel like Bo-Katan and Din Djarin are on the same level, both are amazing and can look after themselves.

As been said, the beginning and ending were great and relevant to the main plot.

It's the middle, which is the majority of the episode, that people are rating poorly. I thought it was very good and gave great insight into the New Republic and their way of life. The seasons are short, so this is the one exception I'm willing to give as far as filler goes.

The scientist was an interesting character and now this episode pretty much wraps him up. The acting is spot on. Coruscant was beautifully rendered.

There are always going to be people who whine about the show not being 100% about the main plot every episode. If the writers did that, you might as well make The Mandalorian a movie. If you look back at season 1 & 2 which are highly rated seasons, there were episodes with The Mandalorian and the child that were deemed filler and given low ratings.

I don't think writers should accommodate lazy and ungrateful fans.

I'm amazed this episode has so many people being negative. For my money, the Coruscant plotline - while technically a detour which takes up most of the episode's runtime - is some of the best worldbuilding, best acting and best writing to come out of any of the Disney+ Star Wars shows. It feels like Jon Favreau popped over to the Andor editing room, watched an episode, thought "hey this is good stuff, I should try that" and inserted a story of complex motivations, flawed institutions and heartbreaking intrigue. In terms of cinematography, tone and scale, it feels far closer to Andor than The Mandalorian, but what can I say? It's a welcome change from previously stilted, awkwardly structured and relatively emotionless episodes. Whatever new approach Chapter 19 was presenting, I think I prefer it.

A lot of the talk that came when "Andor" was released was about the political elements of "Star Wars" and how good it could be when it actually worked. Personally, I loved what that show brought to the current slate, but I was also okay with the other shows doing what they do best. For this, it's the character development through the adventure aspect that always got me hooked. However, this episode takes a bit of a left turn and focuses on the political landscape. And it was a very nice detour, although it felt like it was a bit misplaced in everything going on.

A majority of this episode is spent with Omid Abtahi's Dr. Pershing, a character who has been featured in previous episodes but never got much more than a scene in. However, with this episode, the show tries to juggle around some of the incomplete storylines from previous seasons, and for the episode that it was in, it worked very well. This hour was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, one of the great modern filmmakers, and his abilities are put to good use, although clearly limited by the medium that he's working in. But he manages to deliver a visually interesting episode that really captures the visual landscape of Coruscant and the rebranding that it's going through on the heels of the Empire's fall. It's also interesting to see where Dr. Pershing fits into it all, and it's clear that the work he did in previous seasons is the stepping stones that they're putting into place so that we'll get to where the sequel films went in later eras. All of that is very interesting, but it does feel like they're doing a bit of cleanup after everything that went down and the unnatural nature that went through those films in terms of connectivity and plot threads that were created out of nothing, and damage control is not necessarily what is needed from this show. However, the philosophical discussions and commentary that were to be found in this episode were very well-executed and hopefully, we'll return to Coruscant at some point so this episode isn't alone.

"Chapter 19: The Convert" is a fascinating hour of "Star Wars," although it does feel like it was dropped into the middle of something else. However, it definitely works for what it is and it's a great return to a beloved planet and a fascinating deep-dive into the psyche of a so-far pretty uninteresting character.