S03.E07: Chapter Twenty Three - The Spies

[Guest]

1 hour ago, kimaken said:

I wonder where he thought he'd find back-up? They couldn't communicate with the rest of the fleet (or anyone else) and the Armorer took the ship filled with injured back to the fleet. I hope he's not one of the spies but it's looking more likely that he is.

I would think that they would bring a ship back to the surface. Otherwise the group on the planet would have no way of getting back to the fleet. 

[kimaken]

40 minutes ago, Dani said:

I would think that they would bring a ship back to the surface. Otherwise the group on the planet would have no way of getting back to the fleet. 

Perhaps, but didn't Axe Woves leave the group to find help right after the Armorer left? If they only had one ship on the surface, and it was already on its way back to the fleet, where was this help Axe Woves was lookiing for? Or did the group bring down more than one ship and left some of their volunteers with those ships while the rest went with the survivors's ship to find the forge?

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, kimaken said:

Perhaps, but didn't Axe Woves leave the group to find help right after the Armorer left? 

No. She rejoins the fleet in the scene before the rest find the Forge. By the time he could get out at back to where they landed there should be enough time for a ship to return to the surface. 

[Llywela]

3 hours ago, Gillian Rosh said:

This show still has me yelling out in the middle of the episode 😃 When the Mandalorians got trapped, I yelled "OMG, it's a kill box!"

As soon as they started to chase the retreating stormtroopers, I knew they were being led into a trap - unfortunately they couldn't hear me hollering at them!

2 hours ago, kimaken said:

I wonder where he thought he'd find back-up? They couldn't communicate with the rest of the fleet (or anyone else) and the Armorer took the ship filled with injured back to the fleet. I hope he's not one of the spies but it's looking more likely that he is.

I also wondered where he thought he was going to find backup, since the Armourer had already taken off in the only off-world transport available to the group. Perhaps he thought she'd be back by then.

[Athena]

Axe Wolves said he would fly back to the fleet to get back up. Bo-Katan told him it was too far but he said he could do it. This all happened very quickly while they were being attacked by the new Imperial Stormtroopers.

A lot of people are speculating that the Armorer is suspicious since she left the group, but she urged Bo-Katan to unite the tribes. At the beginning of the episode, Moff Gideon was surprised that the two tribes had united since they hate each other so at least he was unaware they were working together. Unless the Armorer is doing some long con which is possible but Moff and his spy didn't know about the Mandalorians coming together so quickly.

[tv-talk]

Did they have to kill the guy with the young son? Couldnt they have killed that woman Bo was with when they first met Mando? Or the guy who was leader that she beat up? No, it had to be the guy with the young son. That's too sad!

Gideon in ultra-advanced Beskar armor is going to be a load for someone to take out. I am thinking whether Bo or Mando gets him, Grogu is going to have to play key role helping them in that fight. 

I wouldnt mind of the Armorer was the traitor and in the end Din has the dark saber again, all the Mandalorians want him to lead. Bo wants to be in charge so badly, I just have a feeling they wont write it working out that way so easily.

[Shanna Marie]

When this episode screened early at Celebration London, people who saw it were saying you should rewatch The Force Awakens before watching it because there were ties you wanted to be able to notice, but I didn't catch anything other than Papa Hux, and you'd hardly need to rewatch to catch that unless you just didn't remember the movie at all. Or was there something else in there that was a deeper cut that I didn't notice in spite of rewatching The Force Awakens? It was a nice touch to cast the brother of the sequels Hux because there was just enough facial similarity to show they were related while they were different enough to clearly be different people. I was squinting at the screen, wondering if they got the same actor but then did a few makeup/prosthetics things because they had the same nose and mouth but were a bit different around the eyes/cheekbones.

23 hours ago, angora said:

As much as it cracked me up/warmed my heart to watch him jamming on that "yes" button as he and Din walked through Navarro, I was disturbed by the thought that they basically turned IG-11 into a mech for a toddler.

There are a couple of levels of creepy with IG-11. He started as an assassin and was reprogrammed to have the exact opposite purpose. While it's better to have someone who wants to be a nurse to Grogu than an assassin, if we're looking at droids as sentient beings, that's a bit questionable because it's completely erasing his identity and purpose. The change from IG-11 to IG-12 is less iffy, since IG-11 was dead and had no sentience left. They're just using the chassis. IG-11 2.0 would probably be okay with continuing to serve Grogu, since that was his purpose. IG-11 1.0 would hate it.

Although that did give us a few amusing moments, I'm iffy on why this is an improvement over the pod. It does give him arms and a voice, of sorts, but it seems like they could have added a yes/no button to the pod. The pod can close to provide a shield and can fly. In the pod, he could have escaped on his own from the ship during the creature attack, but in the chassis he only got away because a couple of Mandalorians grabbed him and flew him out. I'm not sure he could have made it out of the caverns below Mandalore the way he did in the earlier episode in this body because that took him being able to fly in the pod. I kept thinking about an article I once wrote about baby walkers in which a pediatric emergency room doctor said the problem with baby walkers is that they allow children to move faster than their cognitive abilities can manage. Crawling is the right pace for kids at that developmental level because it fits their reaction times while the walkers allow them to move faster than they can react to avoid collisions, and so they see a lot of accidents and injuries. I don't know if that entirely fits Grogu, since it seems like his cognitive abilities are far above his physical abilities, but it does seem perhaps questionable to put someone who's essentially a feral toddler in the body of an assassin droid. I wonder if it still has the gun capabilities. That would be really bad (though might have been useful here).

As for the spy(ies), I think you could make a strong case for the people who were already on the planet. They'd have lived under Gideon's rule so could have been co-opted then. If they'd found the Forge, then surely they'd have noticed the adjacent Imperial base, and surely they'd have noticed the TIE fighters coming in unless they just happened to be on the other side of the world that day and that was the only time they flew. (I liked their ship and was sad that it got destroyed.)

On the other hand, you could also suspect the people who conveniently volunteered to be away from the ambush, Axe and the Armorer. Axe might hold a grudge against Bo-Katan and might have set her up. I'm not sure what the Armorer's motivation would be, unless she sees Gideon as someone who could truly unite the Mandalorians into their destiny and she buys into the idea of him being the ultimate Mandalorian.

[Llywela]

9 minutes ago, Athena said:

Axe Wolves said he would fly back to the fleet to get back up. Bo-Katan told him it was too far but he said he could do it. This all happened very quickly while they were being attacked by the new Imperial Stormtroopers.

See, that doesn't seem any more plausible to me - I remember them saying that, it just seems implausible that a Mandalorian jetpack, which has been established as having a limited fuel supply, could get someone off-world and into orbit. They couldn't even follow that dragon thing back to its lair. Does the helmet come with an oxygen supply to allow spaceflight? We've seen Bo diving into deep water to save Din, so I guess it must, but I don't see where they'd keep the oxygen supply, given everything else they carry around, so again, it must be a finite resource which would only carry them so far. And then there's the turbulence of the atmosphere, which buffeted the transport vessel so strongly during both descent and ascent - Mandalorian armour is tough, but could a man with no more protection than that armour really expect to fly through that turbulence safely? I think hoping the transport would have returned by then would be the better option!

But, they were desperate, so. Any port in a storm, I guess.

[tv-talk]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm iffy on why this is an improvement over the pod.

He's going to end up fighting. It makes him on level with everyone else rather than a little floating egg that must be protected at all costs. Really there is no reason for Grogu to be there, they might as well have brought other kids too, but in the droid husk at least he has legitimate size and arms.

 

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

On the other hand, you could also suspect the people who conveniently volunteered to be away from the ambush, Axe and the Armorer.

Yeah remember that some Mandalorians rescued Gideon...that would seem more likely to have been Axe than the sailing Mandos and it certainly wasnt the Armorer. 

 

I suspect the Mythosaur will save the day at some point.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

Yeah remember that some Mandalorians rescued Gideon...that would seem more likely to have been Axe than the sailing Mandos and it certainly wasnt the Armorer. 

I don’t think that it was Mandalorians that rescued Gideon but is new troopers with Beskar armor. If it was, it still could be the Armorer.

I can’t see how it would work that Axe was working with Gideon because Bo had to come to him. 

[Kel Varnsen]

45 minutes ago, Dani said:

I don’t think that it was Mandalorians that rescued Gideon but is new troopers with Beskar armor. If it was, it still could be the Armorer.

My daughter pointer out that it was likely someone trying to set up and frame the Mandalorians. Because if beskar is supposed to be nearly unbreakable, how did a fragment get left behind on the shuttle? Unless someone with access to a bunch of it had a piece they planned to leave behind on purpose.

[Athena]

9 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

if beskar is supposed to be nearly unbreakable, how did a fragment get left behind on the shuttle? Unless someone with access to a bunch of it had a piece they planned to leave behind on purpose.

Pure Beskar is nearly indestructible but rare. See the spear from S2 which survived the Razor Crest being bombed.

Most beskar that Moff has been foraging is mixed and is Beskar Alloy.  Also the Empire don't have Mandalorian Armorers on payroll so I can see their stuff not being as good as the beskar alloy that the Mandalorian tribes have. It's probably good for blending into the armor, but not as durable in the long term and therefore cheaper. I can see that breaking off.

[tv-talk]

1 hour ago, Dani said:

I don’t think that it was Mandalorians that rescued Gideon but is new troopers with Beskar armor

Oh right, right, yeah it was the new troopers he developed. The armorer didnt have a ship to go intercept the transport.

1 minute ago, Athena said:

Also the Empire don't have Mandalorian Armorers on payroll so I can see their stuff not being as good as the beskar alloy that the Mandalorian tribes have.

Yeah about that....seems to take about 10mins to make a piece of Beskar armor? And the forges can be put together anywwhere pretty quickly apparently? I think they have been a bit loose with the forging aspect, the way it's presented you can envision Gideon doing it on an industrial scale, and given he has access to the original source, producing stuff (like his new armor) every bit as good as what the Mandos have.

[FnkyChkn34]

The YouTube guy that I've been watching lately thinks that the title just refers to Elia (and whoever she's been working with), and how she's been a spy for Moff Gideon and infiltrated the Republic.  She prevented Tim Meadows' character from aiding Nevarro, she mind-flayed Dr. Pershing, etc.  I hope he's right and the Armorer, Axe Woves, and the refugee Mandalorians are all on the up-and-up. 

I think we'll see if Axe made it to get back-up in next week's finale.  They have to have backup and more ships to be able to come to the rescue... right?  Right?!

I'm also wondering if our annual helmet-less scene will be for Grogu to use the force to heal Din of injuries.

[magdalene]

Moff Giddy better hope he can get the baby hand cuffs back on Grogu.   Because I think the little one has more stamina now, he didn't need a nap when he took out the cave creature in episode 2.  Grogu had good reason to hate the Moff even before Moff Giddy took his daddy captive.   We have known since the first season that Grogu has no qualms about using the force choke.

[HelloooKitty]

Since I prefer to dwell on the amusing bits, …

”BAD BABY! No squeezy!!!”

[Hanahope]

I think Axe is another spy.  He really did not want to yield to Bo, he forced a fight with Paz, he left during the fight. 

[dwmarch]

I'm not sure if it has been called out yet but I'm watching reviews of the episode and I can't help but notice one of Axe's crew is one hell of painter.

I'm also pretty sure the feast consisted of one of the space chickens Bo-Katan captured in a previous episode. Maybe that's why the fundie Mandos weren't disappointed about skipping dinner, they've been eating those things for weeks now.

Edit: I also noticed that when Axe's group says they are "flanking" they move about three feet to the left. And what do Axe and Paz fight about later? His poor understanding of flanking.

Edited April 14, 2023 by dwmarch

[tkc]

On 4/12/2023 at 1:08 AM, Peace 47 said:

And while Paz was dying, all I could think of was poor Ragnar’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day(s):  attacked by the sea monster, swallowed by the scary bird dragon and now his dad dies?  Yikes.

I heard that Ragnar's original character name was going to be "Ragnarok", but with all that happened to him, he's not ok anymore.

Too soon, sorry.

[Peace 47]

If Axe were to be the spy, I don’t know why he would have bothered to get into a fight with Paz over space chess.  Seems like he would have just laid low and built some trust with the Paz’s group so that he would not be suspected when the time to betray them came, unless he planned to yield to Paz before Grogu interceded.

Although I didn’t catch it until it was pointed out here, the Mandalorian land pirate survivors probably make the most sense for spies, since everything about their appearance and role is all a matter of convenience.  Maybe they were there just to spur the scene of Bo making her big confession, though, since their plight moved her to be honest.  But dramatically, I think that the survivors being spies would be the least interesting, because we don’t really have any investment in them.

The Armorer would be the biggest gut punch, but as was discussed here, no clear motives.  But it is interesting that here and on other sites, it seems that multiple people simultaneously picked up on a vibe with her that just felt “off.”  Maybe she’s a red herring, but the episode seems to want us to feel some kind of way about her.

On another topic, Ryan Arey at Screen Crush noted that the Star Wars character helmet intro at the beginning of the show added a Mando helmet this season bathed in red light (and the red lighted helmets denote “bad guys”).  Din’s blood was taken in episode 2 and it was never explained why.  Din is about to get “debriefed,” and the mind flayer concept is still hanging out there.  I am continuing to think that Din is going to get brain scrambled, cloned or something else pretty bad.  

[DoctorAtomic]

19 hours ago, Dani said:

I don’t think that it was Mandalorians that rescued Gideon but is new troopers with Beskar armor. If it was, it still could be the Armorer.

I think that was the point of the misdirect when they scanned the derelict and said it was Beskar. We were supposed to think it was Axe and them.

Here, in this episode, in the fire fight, they made a point to say, 'they're wearing Beskar'. So I think we were supposed to connect the dot there. I don't want it to be Axe that spung Gideon because I think Bo would just crumple and give up. It's supposed to be a big deal that these two groups are united. I don't really want that to blow up after like a day. 

I think Axe may have blasted up to the surface to send a distress signal to the fleet. I could see the suits having some broad band radio capabilities. 

[kimaken]

2 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I think that was the point of the misdirect when they scanned the derelict and said it was Beskar. We were supposed to think it was Axe and them.

I hope neither the Armorer nor Axe are spies, although I, like someone else posted, I think Toska Reeves might be a bit sus, too (unless she's another red herring). I can see the planet-bound mandos as spies--how could Moff Gideon and his people create a base for his fighters and bombers near the forge without them knowing about it, and if they did know but had stayed hiding all the time, why didn't they let Bo Katan and her team know about it?

[Shanna Marie]

17 hours ago, magdalene said:

Moff Giddy better hope he can get the baby hand cuffs back on Grogu.   Because I think the little one has more stamina now, he didn't need a nap when he took out the cave creature in episode 2.  Grogu had good reason to hate the Moff even before Moff Giddy took his daddy captive.   We have known since the first season that Grogu has no qualms about using the force choke.

I'm picturing Grogu going after Gideon relentlessly, Terminator-style, in his IG droid chassis, while saying non-stop, "No. No. No. No. No."

I'm starting to think that both the Survivors and the Armorer are working for Gideon.

It seems likely that the TIE fighters/interceptors that chased Bo-Katan and Din and blew up Bo-Katan's palace are the ones in the base we see here, so it's highly unlikely that the Survivors were entirely unaware of the Imperial base on their world with fighters flying in and out, especially if they knew where the forge was and the base was adjacent to it. It's also highly unlikely that Gideon and his people would have been entirely unaware of the steampunky land ship. They very conveniently led the other Mandalorians right into the trap. They could have been motivated by mere survival (selling out for food/not being slaughtered), could have wanted revenge on Bo-Katan, could have been among the Mandalorians who sided with the Empire or served Gideon in the first place.

But they couldn't have done it alone because they would have had no way to get the rest of the Mandalorians to the planet to begin with. It was the Armorer who set up Bo-Katan to bring in the mercenary fleet and then to come up with the plan to take them all to Mandalore, where they could meet up with the Survivors, who would take them into the trap. I've seen a couple of commentators point out that her helmet has the same kind of horns on it that we also see on Gideon's helmet and that were on the helmets of those who sided with Darth Maul. It's also convenient that she miraculously survived the attack on the covert in season one. She might have been caught and turned then, or she was always on their side. I don't remember who noted that the Survivors were in need of medical help, just that she was the one who volunteered to fly them back to the fleet. If they were faking just how poor their health was, then that means she flew a ship full of traitorous fighters into the fleet. As for motive, it may merely be a case of wanting to make Mandalore great again, and she sees this as the best path toward power, uniting Mandalore under Gideon with his troops. She might be making the classic blunder of assuming she can use and later discard Gideon to get what she wants, with the mythosaur as her ace up her sleeve that she may be able to use to get rid of Gideon and consolidate power.

The main strike against that theory is that she did fight against the pirates and was in favor of doing so, even though they were working for Gideon. But then that could tie back to her wanting to reunite Mandalore. She wouldn't want anyone like the pirates as part of Gideon's team, just Mandalorians. Or she might not have known they were working for Gideon. He might not have let her in on all of his plans. He may even have sacrificed the pirates as a way to spur the Mandalorians to make the move toward uniting so they'd be easier to either eliminate or take over.

[Kel Varnsen]

20 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm picturing Grogu going after Gideon relentlessly, Terminator-style, in his IG droid chassis, while saying non-stop, "No. No. No. No. No."

I honestly thought we were going to get something like that this episode. But it would be when Din gets captured we get a single "No", and the door flies off the room where Grogu and the others were trapped. And then Grogu alone completely fucks up those storm troopers.

[paigow]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm picturing Grogu going after Gideon relentlessly, Terminator-style, in his IG droid chassis, while saying non-stop, "No. No. No. No. No."

 

[Hanahope]

10 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

If Axe were to be the spy, I don’t know why he would have bothered to get into a fight with Paz over space chess.  Seems like he would have just laid low and built some trust with the Paz’s group so that he would not be suspected when the time to betray them came, unless he planned to yield to Paz before Grogu interceded.

I wasn't thinking him as a spy for intelligence, but more that he was a spy to try and keep the groups separate.  he was able to get Bo Katan's group to leave her when she would not fight Din for the dark saber.  he then got them to give up on retaking Mandalore and instead be mercs for hire.  

he didn't really want to fight Bo when she showed up, but felt he had no choice as the group leader.  and then it was the group that started saying they accepted the pass off of the dark saber to her, Axe had no choice again but to follow along.  so then he tried to foster dissension when he could with the groups.  he was not the first to volunteer to go to Mandalor, again he had to follow along to keep his standing.  

but we'll see how it turns out eventually.

[tv-talk]

11 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

The Armorer would be the biggest gut punch, but as was discussed here, no clear motives

My 8yr old son pointed out that if the Armorer turns out to be the spy, it could be because in her mind Moff Gideon is the rightful owner of the Dark Saber and rules the Mandos. Remember Din didnt kill him which was apparently required, so even though Bo has it now you can make the case that Gideon is the rightful owner. And he did ask for it as soon as he saw Bo.

Now of course, that doesnt really jive with the Armorer telling Din he was the bearer and training him with it and allowing for he and Paz to fight over it...but that doesnt seem like to big a hurdle for a show to hand-wave away somehow. Remember how bad Din was with the Dark Saber? They can say she knew then he wasnt rightfully heir or whatever.

[foxfreakinmulder]

So Din needs rescuing again. 

I'm over the Bo-Katan show why didn't disney just give her her own show instead of hijacking this one. Is Gideon going to fry Din's brain so this can be her show? What if Grogu had been captured by Gideon would Luke have to come save the day again?

Is it just me or does it seem like this season Din isn't that daddyish with Grogu?

I'm disappointed we didn't get to see Cobb Vanth we know he survived in Boba Vett cause we saw him in the bacta tank in a end credit. I would've much preferred to have watched him and Din take care of bad guys then watch this Bo-Katan show.

Sorry I'm so grumpy I really did like this show until this season.

 

[DoctorAtomic]

3 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

And then Grogu alone completely fucks up those storm troopers.

I'm putting all my chips in on this. 

[paigow]

44 minutes ago, foxfreakinmulder said:

I'm disappointed we didn't get to see Cobb Vanth

Out of his depth... Moff Gus is way beyond the common Scum and Villainy on Tatooine

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

I honestly thought we were going to get something like that this episode. But it would be when Din gets captured we get a single "No", and the door flies off the room where Grogu and the others were trapped. And then Grogu alone completely fucks up those storm troopers.

I thought so too but, when I think about it, this makes more sense. Grogu’s usual reaction to a sudden, dangerous situation is fear and to hide. I’m guessing next week we will get Grogu being more involved. 

3 hours ago, tv-talk said:

My 8yr old son pointed out that if the Armorer turns out to be the spy, it could be because in her mind Moff Gideon is the rightful owner of the Dark Saber and rules the Mandos. Remember Din didnt kill him which was apparently required, so even though Bo has it now you can make the case that Gideon is the rightful owner. And he did ask for it as soon as he saw Bo.

A fight to the death isn’t required. Besides it also sounds like Gideon didn’t win it at all and if he did it certainly wasn’t a fight to the death. Bo made it sound like she voluntarily gave it up.
If a fight to the death is required, Darth Maul would be the last legitimate owner. There’s so many different scenarios about who the rightful owner would be if Din beating Gideon wasn’t valid. I can’t think of a single one where it would be Gideon. 

2 hours ago, foxfreakinmulder said:

Is it just me or does it seem like this season Din isn't that daddyish with Grogu?

I think this season is the most daddyish he’s ever been. Particularly in this episode. With his reaction to IG-12, the exasperation over Grogu repeating words, the proud nod when Grogu stepped up and constantly checking in to make sure Grogu was okay. Daddy Din was on full display. 

[magdalene]

50 minutes ago, Dani said:

For me I think this season is the most daddyish his ever been. Particularly in this episode. With his reaction to IG-12, the exasperation over Grogu repeating words, the proud nod when Grogu stepped up and constantly checking in to make sure Grogu was okay. Daddy Din was on full display. 

Yes.  The  difference is he is no longer treating Grogu like a baby.  He is now acting like a proud soccer dad with everything positive and negative this comes with.

[Ottis]

I’ll never understand armor in Star Wars. Most everyone wears it, and it doesn’t protect anyone.

Mandalorians continue to not be the sharpest knives in the drawer. When one see a massive hazard on the starboard bow, one turns port, not sharp starboard.

Not a bad ep overall, though.

On 4/13/2023 at 9:13 AM, kimaken said:

I wonder where he thought he'd find back-up? They couldn't communicate with the rest of the fleet (or anyone else) and the Armorer took the ship filled with injured back to the fleet. I hope he's not one of the spies but it's looking more likely that he is.

Don’t think he sought back up, he was warning the fleet I assume. Hopefully that will allow them to avoid total surprise.

[Kel Varnsen]

2 hours ago, Dani said:

thought so too but, when I think about it, this makes more sense. Grogu’s usual reaction to a sudden, dangerous situation is fear and to hide. I’m guessing next week we will get Grogu being more involved. 

Isn't his reaction to Mando being in danger to start force ass kicking though? There was the beast in the cave in season 1 plus didn't he use the force on something in the big battle at the end of Book of Boba Fett (can't remember and have no interest in rewatching). Plus he seems to have better control over his powers since his time with Luke.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Kel Varnsen

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Isn't his reaction to Mando being in danger to start force ass kicking though? There was the beast in the cave in season 1 plus didn't he use the force on something in the big battle at the end of Book of Boba Fett (can't remember and have no interest in rewatching). Plus he seems to have better control over his powers since his time with Luke.

Eventually. In both of those instances he had more time to process and react. He has better control of his powers but we have also seen him struggling to overcome his fears. 

[tv-talk]

2 hours ago, Dani said:

A fight to the death isn’t required. Besides it also sounds like Gideon didn’t win it at all and if he did it certainly wasn’t a fight to the death. Bo made it sound like she voluntarily gave it up.

I dont follow all the cartoons. If Bo just gave it up then Mando could have just given it up to her which he tried to do- but Bo and Gideon said you cant just give it up. My point, or my son's lol, is that if the writers want to make the Armorer a traitor they can easily do so via the Dark Saber.

5 hours ago, foxfreakinmulder said:

Is Gideon going to fry Din's brain so this can be her show?

Was Pedro Pascal even on the set once for the filming? This guy is the supposed star of the show and he was filming The Last of Us while literally calling in his Mando lines. Weird dynamic to say the least.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, tv-talk said:

I dont follow all the cartoons. If Bo just gave it up then Mando could have just given it up to her which he tried to do- but Bo and Gideon said you cant just give it up. My point, or my son's lol, is that if the writers want to make the Armorer a traitor they can easily do so via the Dark Saber.

Gideon doesn’t care about the Mandalorian rules about winning the dark saber. Din also said that his group didn’t care either. It’s Bo’s group that cares about that. The Armorer turning on her clan for that reason would not work for me. 

[magdalene]

2 hours ago, tv-talk said:

as Pedro Pascal even on the set once for the filming? This guy is the supposed star of the show and he was filming The Last of Us while literally calling in his Mando lines. Weird dynamic to say the least.

It's not weird by Star Wars standards. I know very little about the actual Star Wars before The Mandalorian but I do know that Darth Vader himself was played by two men, the guy in the Vader suit and the famous actor who voiced him. Are you going to diss what's his name, James Earl Jones? for "only" voicing Darth Vader?

Before anybody knew anything about the Mando show people gave the show a try because Pedro Pascal was involved in it. One of those people being me. I would have never watched a single episode without Pascal being involved. Of course once I saw Baby Yoda I also stuck around for the little one.  But don't under-estimate that Pascal and his voice are a draw for folks.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, tv-talk said:

Was Pedro Pascal even on the set once for the filming? This guy is the supposed star of the show and he was filming The Last of Us while literally calling in his Mando lines. Weird dynamic to say the least.

It’s really isn’t that strange a dynamic for this genre. 3 of the 5 original Guardians of the Galaxy are voiced by actors who never have to set foot on the set. James Earl Jones was synonymous with Star Wars but didn’t spend any time in the Darth Vader suit. IG-11 and Kuiil were actors calling in lines.

Even if Pedro was on set every day, what we hear would still be voice over because the helmet makes it impossible to get any useable audio while filming. 

The actress who played the lab tech in the last episode posted that she filmed with Pedro. So he was in the suit for at least part of this season. I’m curious to see the making of special for this season to see if it is addressed. 

[Peace 47]

It bummed me out a little that Din was so quick to disclaim teaching Grogu about how to defuse the beef between Paz and Axe, since in “The Marshal” episode, Din was a deft peace broker who worked overtime to settle tensions between the Tuskans and the Mos Pelgo people. I think the point of the line was to prop up Grogu’s Jedi influences, but Din should be recognized for passing on good qualities to his kid, too.

[bethy]

3 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

It bummed me out a little that Din was so quick to disclaim teaching Grogu about how to defuse the beef between Paz and Axe, since in “The Marshal” episode, Din was a deft peace broker who worked overtime to settle tensions between the Tuskans and the Mos Pelgo people. I think the point of the line was to prop up Grogu’s Jedi influences, but Din should be recognized for passing on good qualities to his kid, too.

I definitely see what you’re saying here. But I also think that Din doesn’t see himself as a peacemaker, though we’ve seen him do that well a number of times. I hope, too, that there will be some recognition of Din’s positive influence on Grogu, but I doubt it will come from Din himself. 

[Kel Varnsen]

On 4/14/2023 at 4:27 AM, Peace 47 said:

The Armorer would be the biggest gut punch, but as was discussed here, no clear motives.  

Wouldn't the biggest gut punch with no clear motives be Din himself? It would make no sense but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

[paigow]

16 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Wouldn't the biggest gut punch with no clear motives be Din himself? It would make no sense but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

Especially since Gideon was ready to kill everybody including Grogu until Din disabled the TIE fighter in S1

[FnkyChkn34]

26 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Wouldn't the biggest gut punch with no clear motives be Din himself? It would make no sense but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

Definitely would be!  But I think it can be presumed that we know Din's whereabouts and who he talks to since the action of the show mostly follows him.  It wouldn't make much sense for there to be flashbacks or retroactive stories to explain that he's been a spy all along.  He risked his life and livelihood in season 1 for the green space baby... I don't think that was as a spy.

[foxfreakinmulder]

13 hours ago, magdalene said:

Before anybody knew anything about the Mando show people gave the show a try because Pedro Pascal was involved in it.

I had no clue who Pedro Pascal was before this show. I started watching because it was set in the Star Wars universe and took place a few years after Return of the Jedi. It was Mando being a bad ass bounty hunter why I  kept watching plus baby Yoda/Grogu was so darn cute. I don't care if Din ever removes his helmet it's his voice that I like.

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/14/2023 at 3:27 AM, Peace 47 said:

The Armorer would be the biggest gut punch, but as was discussed here, no clear motives.

Not necessarily clear motives, but there are reasons I could see her working with Gideon. We don't actually know a lot about her. We don't know where she stood in all the various factions during the Clone Wars or during the Empire. There were Mandalorians who followed Darth Maul and Mandalorians who sided with the Empire/Gideon. If she was among those factions, then it wouldn't be a huge shift for her to support Gideon now. Or she may see Gideon as a means to an end to unite the Mandalorians and restore Mandalorian power. Our history is full of people who supported "strong man" types because they saw them as useful and thought they could control them or eliminate them when they were no longer useful (and they're almost always wrong about that). With this mission, she conveniently got rid of the people most likely to resist or question her or challenge her for leadership. It's easy to go back and look at everything she's done in the series with some big question marks. Like was she setting up Din in the first place by saying he had to bathe in the living waters of Mandalore to be redeemed? Was he supposed to run into Gideon then? Was all her talk to Bo-Katan about walking both paths just setting her up to get her out of the way? She's a religious zealot, so this could be a kind of purge/inquisition, with Gideon as a tool.

So, I can come up with possible motives. I just don't know which of them might apply since she's kind of an enigma.

[magdalene]

8 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

Pure spite and wanting to torture him I would guess. Din taunted him, humiliated him, captured him and got the Darksaber from him. This is personal for the Moffster.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

It would make no sense but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

Killing him doesn’t get him the dark saber or Grogu. 

 

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Not necessarily clear motives, but there are reasons I could see her working with Gideon. We don't actually know a lot about her. We don't know where she stood in all the various factions during the Clone Wars or during the Empire. There were Mandalorians who followed Darth Maul and Mandalorians who sided with the Empire/Gideon. If she was among those factions, then it wouldn't be a huge shift for her to support Gideon now. Or she may see Gideon as a means to an end to unite the Mandalorians and restore Mandalorian power. Our history is full of people who supported "strong man" types because they saw them as useful and thought they could control them or eliminate them when they were no longer useful (and they're almost always wrong about that). With this mission, she conveniently got rid of the people most likely to resist or question her or challenge her for leadership. It's easy to go back and look at everything she's done in the series with some big question marks. Like was she setting up Din in the first place by saying he had to bathe in the living waters of Mandalore to be redeemed? Was he supposed to run into Gideon then? Was all her talk to Bo-Katan about walking both paths just setting her up to get her out of the way? She's a religious zealot, so this could be a kind of purge/inquisition, with Gideon as a tool.

So, I can come up with possible motives. I just don't know which of them might apply since she's kind of an enigma.

I agree. If she’s ends up being a traitor it won’t be hard for them to explain it. I noticed that she side stepped the Death Watch question. 

[Emily Thrace]

10 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Wouldn't the biggest gut punch with no clear motives be Din himself? It would make no sense but I do wonder why Gideon captured him instead of just killing him.

He thinks Din still has the Dark Saber so he wanted to capture him and keep the Saber out of anyone else's hands.

Which means if Moff has a spy in the Mandalorians thier information is out of date. So it would have to be one of the Death Watch tribe unless it was a merc who wasn't outside when Din made his speech. I also think that means it can't be the armourer because she noticed Din didn't have the saber anymore right away.

I wonder if someone in Navarro is the spy.  Not Greef but someone  who works for him. Moff Gideon was based on the planet there he probably had allies and spies all over the place there. It would explain how they knew the Mandalorians were coming but not that Bo Katan had the dark Saber.

Also Grogu is going to use his force powers to take control of the Mythosaur and use it to rescue his dad calling it now.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Emily Thrace said:

He thinks Din still has the Dark Saber so he wanted to capture him and keep the Saber out of anyone else's hands.

He knew Bo had the dark saber. He wanted her to give it to him and order tell her people the planet is his. Which I didn’t realize that he shouldn’t know that until I read your post.