Month: December 2020

Where’s the New Republic going to put its prisoners to work? In a TIE fighter scrapyard, of course. Who better to sort through the destroyed remnants of the Empire?

At the scrapyard, we see another AT-AT turned into a crane, like we first saw in Chapter 11. In that episode, one pulled the Razor Crest out of the water on the planet Trask.

Someone got a paint job! After getting his armor back last week, Boba Fett emerged in this episode with a brand new coat of paint, looking good as new.

Although Morak is the name of the forest planet in this episode, It’s also the name of a creature from the planet Irudiru. Moraks appeared in the novel Aftermath: Life Debt.

Morak houses a rhydonium refinery. Rhydonium is a volatile starship fuel that can be scraped up or salvaged. It has appeared in The Clone Wars and Rebels. In Rebels, Sabine Wren referred to rhydonium as one of her “oldest and most explosive friends”.

The ISB is the Imperial Security Bureau. It’s an intelligence agency of the Empire that deals with internal state security and enforcing loyalty to the Empire. While it has been mentioned throughout the franchise, the ISB was heavily featured in Rebels.

Mayfeld comments that neither Mandalore nor Alderaan exist anymore. As we all know from A New Hope, Alderaan exploded. While Mandalore the planet still exists, it doesn’t have the power it once had, and is no longer ruled by the Mandalorians.

Those space pirates sure do love thermal detonators. There were a shocking number of them armed in an attempt to blow up the rhydonium truck. There were so many, it makes you wonder if Disneyland was looking for a way to get rid of the Diet Coke and Sprite it can’t sell with the theme park closed.

Does Pedro Pascal have it in his contract that he gets to show off his face once per season? He removed his helmet in this episode, for considerably longer than he did in Season 1. Thankfully, Mayfield promised never to tell anyone that he saw his face, so his Mandalorian pride is still intact or whatever.

When trying to explain to the Imperial officer why they had to leave, Mayfield says he and Mando had to file the TPS reports, which is clearly a shout out to Office Space. In the movie, the TPS report was mentioned throughout and was a quality assurance report.

Mayfield says he was part of Operation Cinder on the planet Burnin Konn. This mission was actually featured in the video game Star Wars: Battlefront II. That’s not its first appearance, though. Operation: Cinder was referenced in the second issue of the Star Wars: Shattered Empire miniseries in 2015.

At the Imperial mess hall, we see Mando and Mayfeld face off with some coastal defender troopers, aka Shoretroopers. They are trained for combat in tropical environments. You probably recognize them from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where they patrolled beaches on the planet Scarif.

Mayfield spent much of the episode proving he’s not such a bad guy, but his parting shot with the Cycler Rifle put a nice exclamation on his evolution. Cycler Rifles were most notably used by Tusken Raiders and were first seen in A New Hope.

In one of the most satisfying scenes this episode, Boba Fett releases a seismic charge from Slave I. Seismic charges draw sound in from their surrounding vicinity and explode in concussive waves of blue light, causing everything in their wake to shatter. In Attack of the Clones, Jango Fett released a few seismic charges from Slave I in an attempt to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi in an asteroid field near Geonosis.

In his hologram message to Moff Gideon, Mando simply sends him a recording of the same message Gideon sent him in Chapter 7. “You may think you have some idea what you are in possession of, but you do not,” he tells his nemesis.