Din and Grogu take their first trip to Mandalore, and it’s better than Din expected. That isn’t saying much.
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
By Noel Murray
Season 3, Episode 2: ‘The Mines of Mandalore’
The advantage to having Baby Yoda around in a show like “The Mandalorian” is that the little fella helps coax the story along just by being himself. Sure, the child is super cute, with his gurgling noises and the clunky, puppet-y way he hustles about. But it is more important to the overall narrative construction that Grogu does not speak, because it means his traveling companions feel compelled to fill the silence with information, sharing whatever is on their mind as they gaze into his big eyes.
Twice this week, Grogu descends through the shadowy, monster-infested depths of Mandalore’s devastated underground Civic Center — first with Din, and then with Bo-Katan after Din gets captured. Both times, Grogu’s escorts gab away, explaining more about themselves, their equipment, their mission and their people’s history. It helps keep what is happening on-screen crystal clear: the plans, the motivations, the back story, et cetera.
After the planet-hopping of last week’s Season 3 premiere, this latest chapter — although about seven minutes longer — hews closer to the stripped-down storytelling mode that this show does well. After a quick stop in Mos Eisley on Tatooine to do a little shopping at Peli Motto’s garage, Din and Grogu are off to Mandalore, where they will spend the rest of the episode. It all feels much more focused.
Before they leave, Peli (Amy Sedaris) persuades them to buy an R5 astromech unit, since her Jawa sources cannot yet find the memory circuit they need to repair IG-11. And although R5-D4 is not certified for spelunking on Mandalore — and although the droid vigorously shakes its head “no” when Peli says it is made for “piloting starfighters across the galaxy and fighting tyranny” — it is functional enough to analyze the planet’s atmosphere. Granted, R5-D4 promptly gets waylaid on Mandalore by a band of large, shaggy, club-wielding humanoids known as the Alamites; but once Din rescues the droid, it does give him the “go” sign for exploration.
So begins the first descent, and the first mini-monologue. On their way to Mandalore, Din talked about growing up on the moon Concordia and how he had never actually visited the home-world of his people. On the planet’s surface, he reminds Grogu of the path Bo-Katan told them to follow — way down through the Civic Center to the beskar mines — and he marvels at how despite what he has heard for years, Mandalore’s air is habitable, meaning the world is not “cursed.”
Source: Read Full Article