Thoughts on ‘The Tragedy’

Welcome back to my breakdown series on The Mandalorian Season Two. I’m about a week behind, but we’re looking at Chapter 14 ‘The Tragedy’ this time around.

Boba Fett (played by Temuera Morrison, nice continuity!) has somehow tracked our Lone Wolf and Cub to Tython. I really have to wonder…HOW? Last we saw Boba, he was watching the Titular Mandalorian swooping into the sunset on Tatooine. After walking back to Mos Eisley, they went sublight with Lady Gecko to Spidery Ice Planet, then to Fish Planet, took a detour back to Navarro, then to Dead Forest Planet before heading to Tython. We know the ship has been tracked since Navarro due to Gideon’s spy, but how would Boba be able to follow that convoluted-ass trail?

Anyway, Boba shows up and I’ll be damned if he isn’t packing around the longest gaderffii I’ve ever seen…over five feet by my calculations, so literally as long as his long-ass Tusken rifle! Also, as this hobby includes an element of approaching on-screen things through a realism-and-practicality lens, I have to ask: just how is that gaffi staying on his back? (Note that we never see Boba take it off his back, he just magically has it in his hands in a different shot.) His rifle has a sling, but the gaderffii just seems to hover on his back, which is silly and purely just for ‘cool points’, to give a ‘Hollywood swordsman’ silhouette.

I noted that his stick is designed differently than any others we’ve seen, not only because of the ridiculous length, but also the proportions are off: every other gaderffii example is about 80% wooden club, with the bladed spear end a much more manageable length. This time around his looks like it’s 2/3rds spear and 1/3 club, which has a really weird curve in the neck, almost looking like a shepherd’s crook instead of a straight-shafted, right-angled club. Later on, he drags it on the grass behind him (because that’s what ‘badasses’ do) and it makes a grating metal sound! Haha, WTF?!  Watching this later sequence I noted that Boba does an awful lot of constipation-face angry grunting as he smacks troopers around. It’s really not my bag, and seems at odds with the calm, cool, collected, consumate professionals we saw in Jango and Boba in earlier versions.

As predicted from way back when, Fennec Shand from S01E05 is back. I didn’t feel very strongly either way about her helmet then, but now that it’s featured here and seen in broad daylight, I think the faceplate makes it look a lot like a medieval ‘frog-mouth helm’…she looks like she should be jousting instead of sniping. Speaking of Shand, the last time we saw her she had been gutshot by Wannabe Bounty Hunter Bro, but she explains her survival by opening up a silly panel on her clothing to reveal the cybernetics in her belly—why would you have that (besides to make dramatic reveals)? I also don’t get what Boba has to do with that, or how that helped her survive…dude just crawled out of a Sarlacc and has been wandering the desert. Whatever.

Baby Yoda turns on the Jedi Cerebro and unleashes a Blue Pillar of Light…it was only a matter of time before Star Wars would finally join Marvel and every other modern genre property in this overused trope.
Then out of the blue, two dropships of stormtroopers appear and start heading for the hilltop. Was it just me, or did all the stormtroopers’ armor in this episode look…matte?

After watching Boba whack stormies around for a while, we follow Shand and her rifle’s improbably bottomless magazine. Then we see something we’ve never seen before – mortar stormies! Not sure how I feel about something so Earth-grounded. (Naturally, they’re color-coded.)
The TKs set up an E-web and there’s a big setpiece where they shoot at Shand as she silhouettes herself running along a ridge…and they still can’t hit her. Dudes, do you not know how to fripping lead your target?!
This shouldn’t have even happened in the first place, as we had a scope-POV shot of her shooting one trooper in the leg immediately before getting the E-web in her sights and then taking a second to do nothing. Don’t tell me she couldn’t hit the damn thing because she does All Kinds of improbable reflexive shooting later on.
Possibly even dumber is her dislodging what’s probably a ½ ton boulder with her legs…I’m sure they’ll put out a retcon about how Tython’s rocks are lighter density than other planets.

There’s another of these weird right-side magazine E-11s like we saw in S02E04. It looks like his has a side-mounted scope. What’s up with this? Flipped shot?

Mando tells meditating Baby Yoda ‘I’m going to protect you, I’ll be back soon” just before Baby stops meditating and powers down the Sky Pillar. I don’t see how he expects to protect the kid by leaving him all alone. Running down the hill is exactly how you fail to notice when things happen behind you!

Mando and Shand have their backs up against the proverbial wall when Boba shows up guns-a-blazing in his armor (snagged it out of the Razor Crest when we weren’t looking). I’ve noticed that the best Fett appearances are ones where he is allowed to use the full range of his arsenal…wrist blaster, flamethrower, rope, backpack rocket, jetpack, knee rockets, boot darts, etc, and we came pretty close here. Before this, I think the best depictions of Fett in action are the OG Battlefront II (Kamino level) and the short story ‘No Disintegrations, Please’ (published in Tales From the New Republic). He takes out the two retreating Imp dropships with a backpack rocket…where’d he get that from? Thought they were using improvised-looking rockets back in S02E01?
People have been calling this ‘Dad Bod Boba’ but I think the reason he looks so chunky is just because he pulled his armor-vest over his black dress-thing.

Governor Preacher’s Son blasts Mando’s ship from orbit, and deploys…wait for it… “Dark Troopers” to kidnap Baby Yoda. Couldn’t we have come up with any other name for evil robot kidnappers? Couldn’t he have said “Deploy Task Force Five” or something generic? Considering their rocket-booted design and Jon Favreau’s involvement in the series, how about “Iron Troopers” as a wink at Marvel? But “Dark Troopers”? Just…no. Kyle Katarn is rolling in his proverbial grave.

Shand tells Boba, “The Outer Rim is under the jurisdiction of the New Republic!”, which made me laugh right out loud at that idea.

And then the Imp ship jumps to hyperspace from very much low atmosphere. Keep in mind the ‘Dark Troopers’ just carried the Child all the way from the ground to the ship above, which seems to be hiding just above the clouds and not in outer space, which is just dumb. Being within the atmosphere—especially low atmosphere like here—is very much within the planet’s gravity well, so jumping should be impossible.

And of course, because season two is pretty clearly about putting together a Super Group, Boba and Shand say they’re in Titular Mando’s debt because of some deal that I must have totally missed. They swing by Nevarro to see Cara Dune—who is probably going to be involved again—and say they want to find Bill Burr from last season, who is somehow going to help them track down Buggin’ Out’s ship. Why? How does Space Asshole Billy Corgan have anything to do with that? I really hope we don’t have to deal with the rest of the crew from S01E06 as well, because I couldn’t stand a single one of those loose cannons last time around. Finally, we see Baby Yoda throwing stormtroopers around aboard the Star Destroyer and there’s some villainous moustache-twirling and a reappearance of that stupid ‘Darksaber’. Ugh.
Aside from ‘The Marshal’ and some of ‘The Heiress’, I am not really a fan of this season. While I will reserve my final judgement until everything is said and done, even with lowered expectations I don’t like the way things are going towards lowest-common-denominator face character-fanpleasing and tightening connections to the larger Disneyverse. We will see.

What did you think of ‘The Tragedy’? I would love to know your thoughts!, leave a comment below and I’ll see you next week for our next installment!

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