This review contains spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 2, episode 4, titled “Chapter 12 – The Siege.” To remind yourself where we left off, here’s our Mandalorian Season 2, episode 3 review.
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The Mandalorian’s world-building continues to be its greatest strength as the show slowly peels back the layers of this “new era.” Episode 4 pulls off an impressive feat, subverting what seems, at the outset, to be another standalone mission to sneak in some satisfying plot developments about Moff Gideon’s master plan and the state of the galaxy following the fall of the Empire.
Since we know Dave Filoni wrote and directed episode 5, it seems like a fairly safe bet that any Ahsoka Tano action will be saved for his installment, but episode 4 isn’t content to be a jaunty side-quest – episode director (and star) Carl Weathers and writer Jon Favreau are digging deep here, sowing subtle seeds for future storylines.
Watch our Bo-Katan breakdown to learn why her live-action debut is so significant, and check out our list of essential Bo-Katan episodes to help you catch up with her backstory:
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First, we have confirmation of what many of us suspected from the outset; that Gideon and Dr. Pershing are indeed interested in Baby Yoda for his Force sensitivity – aka Midichlorian count (or M-count, if you want to avoid using that dirty prequel word). While the details of Pershing’s procedure weren’t clear back in Season 1, he apparently harvested the Child’s blood to transfuse into a host body, seemingly hoping to imbue their “volunteer” with Force abilities.
So far, this has led to “catastrophic failure” and a “regrettable fate” (the mind boggles) for whoever they’re experimenting on, but given that the scientists have the same Kaminoan symbol on their uniforms as Pershing, and that the lab was full of suspiciously Snoke-esque mutated bodies in tanks, there are clearly some cloning shenanigans going on. The question is, are these experiments in service of eventually creating Snoke and fulfilling Emperor Palpatine’s ultimate goal as seen in Rise of Skywalker (if so, I’m far less interested), or is Gideon hoping to create an army of Force-sensitive troopers – or, long-term, give himself Force abilities?
This ties into the episode’s other big reveal, that Gideon seems to be developing what look like Dark Troopers, originally introduced in the now-Legends/EU Star Wars: Dark Forces game that also introduced Kyle Katarn (who would be a perfect addition to Mando’s world, let’s be honest).
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These enhanced battle droids were far more deadly and harder to destroy than regular stormtroopers (and in Phase Zero, were spliced with clone troopers to create cyborg hybrids, rather than pure droids, which would also dovetail nicely with the themes Dave Filoni has been exploring through Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Mandalorian), so it’s possible that Gideon wants to merge Baby Yoda’s Force abilities with a new army of supersoldiers. Those Dark Troopers aren’t to be confused with the Dark Troopers introduced in Tom Veitch’s Dark Empire comics, which were stormtroopers who had dark side Force abilities (phew!), but since the ideas are similar, Favreau and Filoni could be finding a neat way to tie these disparate Legends together and adapt them into canon.
But Gideon seems like the type of guy who would want to keep that kind of firepower for himself rather than sharing such abilities among the plebes, so it’s possible that his two projects are separate from each other, and that his new toys will remain in droid form – either way, Mando won’t be happy, especially when he figures out that Gideon’s planted a tracking device on the Razor Crest.
One downside of having such short episode run times (episode 4 was only about 33 minutes) and such a stoic main character is that there’s not much time for introspection, but the show always finds subtle and evocative ways to keep Mando evolving without the need for expository conversations (which is a relief, since the dialogue can be heavy-handed to the point of anvil-dropping in most episodes, something that I’ve just resigned myself to at this point).
Din Djarin received some fairly earth-shattering revelations about how he was raised and the realities of Mandalorian culture from Bo-Katan in episode 3, but since there’s always a new battle to fight and no one who can verbally challenge him on what he’s thinking, Mando can outwardly put off confronting this major shift in his worldview for a bit longer. Instead, the episode uses a brief but beautifully effective character beat, as Din raises his helmet just enough to take a drink in front of Baby Yoda, to hint that his perspective may be shifting without slamming us over the head with it.
Check out all the celebrity cameos and characters in The Mandalorian so far:
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While it’s satisfying to see Cara and Greef again and get a sense of how Navarro has flourished now that the Empire has been driven out of town, the episode does suffer a bit from the return of Horatio Sanz’s Mythrol. Your mileage may vary, but for me, he elicits a similar reaction to Amy Sedaris’ Peli Motto – both seem to be playing their characters so broadly, and they’re written with such an emphasis on comedy, it tends to throw the show’s tone out of whack. That’s especially apparent when compared with the more nuanced delivery from the likes of Timothy Olyphant and Taika Waititi, who manage to nail the inherent humor of the Star Wars universe without straying too far into caricature. The script relies on a few too many scenes of Cara or Greef yelling impatiently at Mythrol or threatening him with bodily harm while he makes some quippy complaint; you get the sense that Favreau’s going for a Threepio dynamic, but it doesn’t quite land the same way.
On the subject of homage, Weathers effortlessly evokes the iconography of the films here, from the Death Star-style halls of the Imperial Base, to a typically ill-fated speeder bike chase (of course a couple of the troopers would blow themselves up immediately), to Cara’s recreation of Luke’s trench run in the Trexler Marauder (with the Razor Crest subbing in for the Millennium Falcon’s last-minute save), to Mando utilizing Anakin’s favorite trick to get out of a dogfight: spinning! None of it is particularly subtle, but it’s deployed with enough adrenaline to make for an exhilarating ride.
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