Chapter 23: The Spies

I enjoyed this episode but didn't love it. The story was exciting but the script, acting, and production leave much to be desired.

Now that Mando has lost its novelty - and unfortunately shed its samurai/western pastiche - its quality depends on its story, characters, and spectacle. It has spectacle aplenty, that's the good news.

This episode crams a season's worth of exposition and plot into a few flat monologues. It "tells" and doesn't "show". The story has substance but the storytelling lacks finesse.

As for the characters - the show puts the entire weight on Giancarlo Esposito and Katiee Sackoff's shoulders because everyone else is hidden behind a mask. It's difficult to emotionally connect with masked characters and the production is allergic to the subtle and intimate moments that show who these characters are inside their armor and inside their minds.

I'm mostly disappointed by "what could have been" which admittedly isn't entirely fair, but my time is valuable and I'd rather spend it watching truly great entertainment.

Penultimate episode and they've rammed as much predictable cliches as they can into it.

Gave it a 7 because the last 5 minutes were excellent but even those were cliched nonsense.

Moff Gideon character gets more annoying with every scene he's in too. He's a cut and paste bad guy who just happens to have all the best tools all he's missing is a top hat and a moustache long enough to twirl.

Grogu is being forced into these eps but I love him and have nothing bad to say about him, he's too cute.

All in it's a decent episode but honestly, if this had been spread across the whole season it would have been as good as the first one.

Spoiler Free: The garbage that will forever be known as the "jack black episode" had me wondering if the show had jumped the proverbial shark. Everything that has been "teased" this season finally pays off. While I wish that Disney would release all of their episodes at once, apparently they know what they're doing. "Waiting for Wednesday" is some thing my 12 year old son, and I talk about all week. Instead of wasting a weekend of our lives, binge watching an entire season, the Mandalorian is the topic of conversation for a couple of months... This episode had it all. The Mandalorian's fighting in battle is what we all love to see. Grogu doing adorable Grogu things brings a smile to everyone's face. Furthering the character development of Bo Katan Kryze (who somehow became the main character of this season) has been a pleasure to watch. And there were more subtle Easter eggs tying the show's storyline to the Star Wars universe we've come to know. Throw in a monster and some heroic deaths...yah, this is why we love this show.

We Finally Get What Should've Been in Episode 2 or 3, an actual scene of the antagonist of the season apparently, only after 6 episodes out of the 8 have passed without any antagonist or a coherent and clear story and plot.

And obviously, they couldn't have shown the intro scene in episodes 2 or 3 since the story development of Mandalore's plot line wasn't there yet. But you know what I mean. Actually reintroducing your antagonist in the first few episodes of the season is not a bad idea maybe? Is it blasphemy and an outrageous thing to ask for the plot and story and the antagonist to be revealed at the beginning of the season? Is it too much to ask for decent storytelling?

And we have yet another cliché senseless sacrifice we've seen in a hundred other shows and movies. They don't even try to make the situation look dire enough to warrant this sacrifice to make at least make some sense, but nope, amateurish writing we've seen before all the way through. Sure it's a nice way for a character to get out, but make it make sense maybe? Make it look and feel less artificial and contrived and an attempt at emotionally manipulating the audience to feel bad for a semi-random bozo we've seen a few times throughout the season.

And as much action there is in this episode and the whole season, they're not even that good and I've become numb to these action and fight scenes as they keep having them every 5 minutes, and most of them are choreographed poorly and shot so blandly that you just get bored after the nth shootout scene starts.

I'm sure the hardcore Star Wars fanboys creamed their pants when they saw Red Praetorian Guards, and it wasn't even a good fight scene, but I'll give them that it was a nice introduction to them or whatever. But for someone who doesn't gobble up Star Wars theory and stories and animated shows every day, and has only seen these annoying red guards in the Fallen Order games, it's like "Oh, cool, I guess these guys are in this show too". Like the season and the show as a whole feel like a giant fan service with celebrity cameos that ruin the immersion and just references after references to other shows and movies to make the fanboys become the star eyes emoji instead of having its own story.

I guess this has been the case since season one, but we gave them a pass since it was a new thing and it was gonna hopefully find its own story and interesting plotlines after a while. But this is the after of that while and they totally should've canceled this show after season two because it's obvious that they had no idea what to do with the show anymore. But for some reason which we all know why, they didn't hand over the show to writers who are more competent who can actually write actual plots and characters.

It is fascinating how the writers manage to both drag and rush the storytelling of the season at the same time. But I guess that's what happens when you send your supposed "main character" to do fetch quests and side quests for 80% of the season.

The overly high rating of this episode doesn't surprise me a bit since you only need one 5-second cameo from Luke or another Clone Wars show character to please the fanboys and make them forget all the mid and trash previous episodes, and forget that the antagonist should've been introduced way earlier into the season, not in the penultimate episode!

Nearly 90% of the show has passed and not once did we have a decent episode with actual good writing, so I doubt the last episode would be much different. Overall a really uninteresting, boring, and below-mediocre season. Imagine actually paying monthly and waiting each week to get something like this.

As a viewer I was like the the first 20 mins is actually really good and then in the middle 20 mins was like exposition ( which they could have told through out the whole series ) but whatever it was nice hear the lore but then last few part was good I didn't felt anything truth to be told , it felt like the writers thought let's do this and make the viewer emotional but it wasn't and kind of flat but it does feel like they want to character develop everyone in one episode instead of doing it through out the whole series and it was kind of pirates of Caribbean vibes which I enjoy and there are lots of plot holes in this episode which was like yeah you guys didn't think through .