Thoughts on ‘The Rescue’

Aaaand just like that, I think I’m done. Erm, I meant…Welcome back to my commentary series on Season 2 of The Mandalorian; for this installment we’re breaking down the Season 2 finale, Chapter 16 ‘ The Rescue’.

We open with Slave 1 chasing a Lambda-class shuttle, and wasn’t it nice to hear those high-pitched lasers again? We see the inside of the shuttle, and it was amazing how much more open the cockpit feels versus what we saw in Episode VI—is it something to do with being widescreen, depth of field, or is the set here just twice as big? It just feels like we’re seeing two totally different ships to me.

How Exactly Does the Slave 1 Dock With This Shuttle? I really wish I had my Action Fleet ships handy so I could try out some ideas, but I feel like neither of these craft are a very docking-friendly design. We see Slave 1 rise up in front of their viewport followed by a rattling clang, and suddenly Mando and Cara Dune just appear onboard behind them…so I guess we’re cool with them just totally hand-waving that issue away, right?

The pilot holds Dr. Out-of-Place-Spectacles hostage and eggs on Cara about being Alderaanian, claiming that he was on the Death Star when it destroyed the planet…um, then how are you still here?

Next Mando and Boba go to a bar to recruit Bo-katan. There’s a bunch of in-universe dishes on the menu if you care to translate the Aurebesh. This scene had me checking my watch because there’s a bunch of blathering on about who’s a ‘real Mandalorian’ that devolves into an fight between Boba and Braidface. Meh, I felt like I was watching The Avengers–they should be allies but they distrust each other until they fight, blah blahhh.

During our now-obligatory point-at-a-hologram exposition scene, Pershing talks a bit about the dark troopers are said to be a ‘third generation design’, and that they’re no longer suits but autonomous droids. Dark Troopers are a whole regurgitated can of worms I don’t have the energy to address here, but if you weren’t around in the 90s to play Dark Forces, the Dark Trooper project was shut down 1 ABY by Kyle Katarn, the end!

Dune says that the ‘dark troopers’ are “going to be a real skank in the scudpie”, which is this chapter’s second poor attempt at an in-universe idiom in less than four minutes. (Earlier Boba says Braidface Kaska is a ‘quackta calling the stiffly slimy’). Both of these exemplify the worst kind of worldbuilding-through-language…when writers lazily replace elements in an Earth phrase with something totally alien to sound ‘sPaCeY!’ For the record, Stackpole and Allston do in-universe lingo best, usually by reversing our expectations of a phrase while retaining the meaning.

We see the Slave 1 and the shuttle traveling together in hyperspace…it feels like a first…is this something we’ve seen before? I assume they show it this way so they can have an exchange between Boba and Bo-katan. Normally multiple ships jump together, are out of communication while in their own hyperspace ‘tunnel’, and then drop out at the end of the jump, where they can regain comms. For authenticity’s sake, I would’ve preferred if their little conversation—which is all last-minute plan-reminder stuff anyway—had taken place before a jump. Also, Boba says ‘prepare to exit jumpspace’, which is totally dumb.

On approach to Gideon’s cruiser, we get a little TIE fighter action; it’s always nice to see them launching properly from ceiling racks. I was a little confused about the apparent officer in charge of the hangar and deploying the fighters—he looked to be dressed just as any Imp Navy officer like you’d see on the bridge: since Disney established an actual Flight Marshal role in Rouge One, why didn’t they reuse that outfit? When there’s the possibility of being sucked into space, surely having a sealable helmet and flightsuit is the better choice?
While creating a diversion, Boba has Slave 1 flip her laser cannons 180° to blast a pursuing TIE—I like that; as young Anakin said: ‘that’s a good trick!’

Did anyone else get The Old Republic flashbacks when the insertion team crash-landed the shuttle in the cruiser’s launch tube? Visually it was almost identical to the Darth Malgus’ method to breach the Jedi Temple way back in 3653 BBY.

I might not care for their style of videogamey combat, but I never expected we’d see a four-woman squad of Badass Ladies front and center in a Star Wars title. Doubly cool that they skew older (28, 38, 40, and 57), half the squad are women of color, and one would be considered ‘husky’ in the mainstream fashion scene (I would love to see Gina Carano snap a runway model in half like a toothpick)…regardless of how I feel about The Mandalorian as a whole, it’s a great step forward for common-sense representation and inclusivity in pop culture.

Like I said, while it’s not my cup of tea to see characters running around with arms outstretched and recoilless dual pistols a-blazing (I hated it when Captain Rex started the trend back in The Clone Wars), it’s fun to see how a squad functions when two of them have jetpacks…brings some three-dimensionality to the scenario. The stormtrooper falling through the magnetic containment field was a fun touch (though they weren’t in a hangar, so why is there a giant hole in the floor?). Fun fact: per the Rogue Squadron books, we know such fields are useful for keeping atmosphere in a hangar bay, but since thermodynamics says that heat energy always travels from hot areas to cold, any warmth in a magnetically-contained area just goes right out into space—so every time we see characters on one side of a forcefield like this, we should probably see their breath or something.

(When the Lady Squad is blasting their way through that storage area, I realized that BoKatan is by far the least physical member, since Katee Sackhoff is the only one without a background in martial arts or wrestling!)

And then Cara Dune says her “gun’s jammed”! WHAT? Lady, it’s an energy weapon – it doesn’t have moving parts to jam! (of course, she immediately starts using the damn thing as a club—probably not the best idea when it’s not working properly to start with, but Gina has to get her contractually-obligated clobberin’ time in somehow). While trying to fix the blaster by shaking it around she mutters, ‘Son of a mudscuffer!’ – so there we go again with the hamfisted idioms…just remember: when in doubt, you can’t go wrong with ‘Blast it‘! Anyway, after all the shooting the ladies did in this sequence, I feel like we should’ve gotten at least one blaster reload in there somewhere…alas.

The one-on-one Mando vs. ‘Dark Trooper’ fight was…eh? It was mildly entertaining to see such our hero fight such a detached, robotic opponent; I definitely got the feeling that the DT would’ve gone on punching the Mando’s helmet forever if able to. Using the Beskar Spear was pretty gnarly—I love the subtle arterial spray of oil/coolant—but if you watch the sequence again, it seems Mando might have some Force powers because there is no way he grabbed the spear off the floor when he spins around.
Anyway, after spacing the rest of the troopers, Mando finds Baby Yoda being held captive by Governor Preacher’s Son. There’s a bunch of blah blah blah here and throughout the rest of the episode about the kriffing ‘dark saber’, which I have hated since it first showed up in The Clone Wars season 2, and my chief disappointment with The Mandalorian is how they finally gave us a long-promised ‘underworld show’ only for it to be highjacked by this High Fantasy ‘dark saber’ poodoo.

Throughout the second half of this episode—basically every time Gideon opens his mouth after he’s been captured—I found myself wondering, ‘Doesn’t anybody’s blaster have a stun setting?’ He’s just there to give exposition, so all of his annoying smug goading and proverbial mustache-twirling could be easily eliminated if somebody just gave him the ol’ Glowing Blue Circle treatment.

And then a single X-wing shows up. I was halfway expecting it to be a Pilot Dave Filoni cameo to swoop in and save the day, but instead we get an extended appearance of CGI Luke Skywalker…most fans might lose their mind, but I sighed realllllly hard.
I know I predicted we would get a de-aged Mark Hamill to show up and take the Child, but considering they didn’t have any Baby Yoda stuff for Christmas 2019, I find it really hard to believe that Disney would remove the Child from the show after only one year of merchandising…surely they could’ve kept the kid around for another season of adventures and then handed him off?

As for ‘Luke’, it’s better than Leia but not quite Tarkin. They’ve come pretty close but it’s still cutscene-uncanny…his head seems to jerk up and down just a hair in an unnatural way. Since they’re keeping his Episode VI look (except for the cloak—which was really brown!) it might’ve landed better if his hair matched when we last saw him on Endor?

‘Luke’ says he’s there for the Child, and we get a !Second! Helmet-less Mando scene, and somehow Pedro Pascal looks really different from when we saw him…last episode. That was what, a week ago? Besides shaving his moustache, why does he look so different?
At one point in this final hand-off sequence—which drags on for wayyyy too long—we hear John Williams’ Force leitmotif in the soundtrack, which really helps ground the scene in the Star Wars setting…while at the same time reminding me that I really don’t want to hear John Williams cues in The Mandalorian. Let the show do its own thing!
Anyway, I was kind of okay with Luke’s cameo as some somewhat-believable fanservice, but when R2-D2 rolled in, my partner and I both let out a big “UGH!” at this complete pandering. Also, R2 is clearly CGI in a couple shots, not sure why. So then ‘Luke’ walks off with Baby Yoda and everyone is left standing around on the bridge, without any  closure on the whole Bo-katan conflict—not that I care much in the first place. It seems like that will probably be front-and-center if there’s a Season 3, which is a good reason for me to bow out now.

After the credits, there’s a sting scene teasing a Boba Fett spin-off. We see more of those weird Fit Gamorreans, another lady Twi’lek with post-Disney (incorrectly shaped) lekku, and fatass Bib Fortuna mumbling random Huttese phrases; Boba and Shand show up and dethrone Bib. Since this show is clearly just reveling in the fact that it’s grown men playing with their action figures, I rolled my eyes at first, thinking that they’d brought Fortuna back from the dead. Then I remembered my EU, in which he survived the sail barge explosion by taking a private skimmer back to Jabba’s palace, and was given the Bomarr monk treatment to put his brain in a spider-walker. Within about 6 months, however, his brain was put back in the body of Firith Olan so he could continue running Jabba’s criminal empire. While there’s nothing in the EU about Boba taking over Jabba’s operation (he was more concerned with getting his revenge against Solo and keeping in the bounty-hunting game), if they had used a Twi’lek who wasn’t Bib Fortuna, it almost could have jived. Alas.

Here’s a question—if Bib Fortuna is so fat now, why doesn’t he look like Orn Free Taa, the only other obese Twi’lek we’ve ever seen? (For the record, I never bought the claim that Taa was actually a Twi’lek).

So yeah, I don’t know if there’s going to be a Season 3 (or if the plot will be covered in the THREE spinoff series) but I think I’m done with this show. Season One was like 90% my tastes, but I realized that—as predicted—this season’s drawing in characters and elements from other Filoni projects (Clone Wars & Rebels) and then putting them front & center only served to limit its scope.
Whatever…at least they didn’t bring back every supporting character and put together an Ahsoka/Boba/Bo-katan/Cara Dune/Cobb Vanth/Frog Lady/Greef Karga/Mayfeld supergroup this episode.
What did you think? Am I being too hard on this season? Let me know what you thought in comments below!

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