Okay, here we go, one last time.

2:25 It looks like Axe is trying to get to the fleet itself, not just clear of the mines to call for help. So Mandalorian jetpacks lack the fuel capacity to chase a giant flying lizard for very long and lack the speed to catch one before they run out of juice, but they ARE capable of escaping a planet’s gravity and getting to space ships in orbit? And he somehow has a hope of doing this before the fighters can get to the fleet? How does that make any sense?

2:32 Bo-Katan says to evacuate the fleet, using the capital ship as a decoy, because they can’t beat the Imperial fighters in the air (space), they have to beat them on the ground. HOW? Bo-Katan shredded a bunch of TIEs in her ship and the fleet seems to consist of a bunch of those. Is she the only competent pilot in the whole group?

3:14 Now I have to wonder if those bombs can actually affect the beskar armor of these imperial troops. As shown thus far, it completely immunizes the wearer to just about everything, even extending its protection to the parts of your body only covered by clothes. When Bo-Katan’s faction was introduced, Din resolved a stalemate by charging down a corridor with an armload of grenades, shrugging off blaster shots with no ill effect. And they want us to believe a couple of tiny bombs are going to have any effect?

3:18That they have not taken off his armor BEFORE tying him up is such bullshit.

3:50 Why did he use the flamethrower if it has no effect on the armor? You know what would have helped? Taking it off him!

4:00 Strangulation is a Mandalorian’s only weakness! Did they ever hear of gorgets?

4:41 He just waded through a firefight, then came alone to rescue Din from a couple of what the subtitles call “Commandos” (because highly visible white armor is a trademark of commando troops), so what does Din NOW think is going to require him to request Grogu be brave?

4:57 And how shitty are the Commandoes that they don’t notice the IG walker clumping up on them in a fight, and he can take them down more easily than any of the Mandalorians so far?

5:06 This episode is “The Return”. Return of who or what, or to where? They returned to Mandalore last episode, and Moff Gideon also returned. It better not be either of those.

6:23 How can he be said to have escaped, if you are tracking him live on a schematic? How is he not already recaptured?

6:32 Like, they can’t call these two guys and say “Hey, the targets are right behind you?”

6:53 Is “scomp” Star Wars for hack? And since when is he Djin’s buddy? Remember when Djin hated droids? Remember, like two episodes ago when his droid bigotry returned full force as he and Bo-Katan cosplayed Blade Runner in Jack Black’s city?

7:11 Remember when he couldn’t roll ten feet without exploding? They fly now. Or is flying “scomping” ?

7:26 He just flew down to this ledge! Why is he afraid of the height?

8:39 Confirmed. Mandalorian jetpacks cannot chase down a raptor thingy, but they can escape planetary gravity.

9:02 For a force this small, a capital warship is a huge asset. It’s not something you leave behind as a decoy, it’s not an excessive method of transportation, and step one after getting their hands on it should have been making sure it was properly crewed and prepared to be defended so they can hold onto it. Also, Axe seems to refer to it as a cruiser. Cruisers are not capital warships.

9:34 Shittiest futuristic army, ever. Leadership, politics and missions all change based on a single combat challenge, and they go fleeing on foot from a warship to get involved in a ground combat they don’t know if they can win.

Look, I get the meta reason, Mandalorians are badass warriors with armor and it makes sense to focus on their abilities in individual combat. But there was just a huge galactic civil war and the winners are decommissioning ships from the navy that used their “capital ship”. There have to be plenty of out of work Imperial navy personnel they could hire to operate the cruiser as support and a mobile base, and even fight off these fighters, so the Mandalorians can go on with doing their Mando thing. Especially if you are trying to restore a nation. Having strategic military assets is a critical first step to that. Just as Grief Karga and the people rebuilding Nevarro.

9:54 Y’all miss each other in the fog?

10:30 How is a capital ship ramming fighters? What is even the POINT of fighters if they are too slow to get out of the way of a moving warship?

11:13 If you don’t speak binary, how you know R5 is not protesting his inability to carry out your request?

11:23 What kind of defense system is set up to allow your guards to be defeated in detail? Why do they have guards just standing there staring into space, when the only people we see at this base are Gideon and the commandoes. There is no one for them to impress, and these red shields are easily bypassed by a hacking droid and need to be lowered for the guards to help out their fellows. So if Din just danced around in front of the first shield, would they have lowered it to go out and get him?

11:41 Inability to make beskar gorgets confirmed.

11:52 This is video game logic! Does each successive set of shields have troops with bigger and better weapons? WHY?! Why do you do it like that? That’s in stupid games to give you progressive challenges; real life soldiers are going to open with their most effective weapons because they ain’t playing around, and they are only issued one life.

12:06 First set of guards, he took on barehanded, and acquired a knife. Then he uses it to take out the next set and now he has a taser mace and a shield.

12:24 Third tier enemy defeated! New weapon unlocked: blaster pistol!

12:38 Why is he calling for the next shield, when he has not finished off this trooper? If he can’t beat one, why fight him plus two more?

13:09 That looks like a smaller blaster that I guess is more powerful? So only the last guards have a beskar-piercing gun? Or is it just powerful enough to knock them into the inexplicable crevices? When falling into bottomless holes appears to be the only weakness of these armored troopers, why do A. they not all have jetpacks, and B. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY HOLES IN THE BASE?!

14:51 He turned them off so they are all exploding now? You would think it would be harder for random strangers with no known technical or medical skills to activate the clone-disposal program.

15:30 “We’ve taken refuge in these surface caves since the purge.” Immediately subsequent line, spoken by the person closest to the speaker: “Do you live here?” What did he just say?

15:36 The people whose first lines in this series included a request for food, have just announced they have food caches all over the planet.

15:45 “You found underground gardens.” “No, we planted farms.” I thought you were starving! Why did they cast Skinny Pete to play one of you if you are running farms and have food caches all over the planet?

16:14 If I am understanding Bo-Katan correctly, when the Mandalorians LIVED HERE, the planet was not believed to be capable of sustaining life on the surface. So why did they leave after it was bombed? I assumed their departure was because it was now unable to sustain life, but apparently the bombing didn’t make the planet any worse to live on and only now are they discovering that the Imperial attack IMPROVED THE PLACE!!

Mandalorians suck so hard.

16:43 I feel like the locals have cloaks just to look ragged. What would they need them for? To keep their armor warm?

17:36 What has changed that they are going back to the place from which they retreated? How do greater numbers make the enemy who is immune to their weapons more easily beaten?

I am guessing, because that’s how these things go, that the Darksaber and the smith’s tools will go through the commandoes’ beskar like it’s cardboard and now the commandoes will suddenly go down like expendable red shirts, because the story needs them to.

18:29 Remember when Gideon left this room, ostensibly to deal with Din Djarin? Where did he go? Maybe if he had listened to his guy and simply used the schematic to direct troops to Din’s location, he could have kept him pinned down and not let him get in and trash his clone room?

18:50 I assume the one thing he never had is the Force? This is all about making a Jedi clone who can take his place?

18:57 He sounds really indignant, like Din has let him down or betrayed him, instead of only being in position to do what he has done, by specific actions and orders of Gideon!

19:11 Yes, he did all that. It’s called “winning”.

19:34 This is going to predictably be a big fight scene, with lots of motion, and Din getting beat and making it clear he can’t take Gideon on by himself, until Grogu screws up his courage to help. They might draw it out by intercutting scenes of the other Mandalorians whizzing around swinging weapons and shooting and commandoes falling out of the air.

20:21 Hey, let’s all three of us ignore the Mandalorian warrior who is not dead yet to gang up on a baby in an unprotected droid cockpit.

20:40 Remember when the jetpack on Din’s backpack was shown to be capable of sustained flight? Din does not, which is why he ran after Grogu slowly enough for Gideon to stop him.

21:27 You can’t lean on Grogu’s cuteness for the better part of three seasons and then expect there is any sense of peril, or gravitas to be found in showing him running from bad guys chasing him with sticks.

21:30 Why with the flamethrower again?

22:45 Still no sense of peril. This show has done nothing to establish limits on Grogu’s Force strength. We have seen him levitate large animals, and tear a critical part out of a giant armed droid. We don’t buy that he is struggling with a pipe that landed way too lightly to be pinning down even a Chihuahua, and we know that his abilities are exactly what the show needs them to be. He has just enough skills to survive until Din can rescue him, and his limitations are whatever allows the plot to happen. And limits go out the window whenever they need him to blast a way out of a corner they have written him or Din into.

22:57 It was such an effort to get out of that pipe! Now, let met fling a grown man around the room!

23:11 I wonder if Din and Grogu will finish off the “praetorians” in time to come to help Bo-Katan, or if the point of this portion of the scene is her proving her mastery of the Dark Saber and defeating him like a good protagonist.
23:52 That fight was inexplicable. Sometimes gunshots work, sometimes they don’t.

24:04 Last we saw, Axe appeared to be flying the ship. So why is he bringing it into the atmosphere? Why was he not flying AWAY from the planet to get the TIEs away from the base? Does decoy mean something else in Mandalorian?

24:16 That was NOT your orders! Why is he 9-11ing the ship into the base, when his mission was to effect the escape of the troops, who would take the base “on the ground”. Note that so far, Bo-Katan is the only member of the attacking force to touch ground. But the clear intent was to take the base, not destroy it, with an indiscriminate starship crash and do Force knows what to the just getting back to life ecosystem!

25:16 “Mandalorians are weak, once they lose their trinkets.” He’s not wrong. Considering how much shit they give you for taking off your helmet, it seems like this is a weakness they even cultivate.

25:53 So why were no commandoes flying out with the Mandalorians? Unless they are really stupid or somehow restrained or prevented from pursuing enemies out of the caves, the natural assumption is that the Mandalorians have defeated all the commandoes, so Axe is wrecking the base by crashing the ship for no reason.

And what happened to the TIEs? Did he defeat them all in orbit? If so, maybe the ship could have survived if the crew remained aboard to improve its functions?

26:39 Okay, that was nicely thematic, assuming Grogu held back the explosion from cooking the trio as well as Gideon. It was not exactly earned, because the final line of dialogue in that fight, “Mandalorians are stronger together” is only made true by a lot of nonsensical forced plot points. Was the plot of this whole season about a bunch of 40-something veteran soldiers discovering the concept of strength in numbers, and cooperation?

26:55 Your shield makes you look like a poser, Bo Katan. Put it away.

27:16 Remember four and a half minutes ago, when he had trouble lifting a pipe away from his torso?

27:53 It would be hilarious if they discovered ancient ceremonial records stating the wind instruments were essential to Mandalorian rituals.

28:03 Didn’t they do this ceremony for Ragnar already? What was wrong with the other lake? Is mythosaur pee a more sacred ingredient than giant crocodile-turtle pee?

Actually, the obvious answer is yes. I don’t know why I even asked. But how hilarious is that now that they have access to the Living Waters again, they are redoing Ragnars Not-Baptism? It means that they didn’t have the Living Waters to do it properly, so they just said fuck it, and used the turtle-croc river, but then they get all passive-aggressive about Din Djarin’s heresy and tell him there is no way to atone, because he can ONLY do so in the Living Waters, when they are faking it with substitute monster-hiding waters for their youngling rituals.

28:16 How does a Mandalorian know from audible indicators whether or not they are referring to Mand’alor, their patron saint or whatever, or Mandalore, their homeworld?

28:43 Anyone who objects to my kid getting Not-Baptized, we can just set off this suitcase nuke right here, and the survivors will be everyone who is cool with it.

28:47 You would think that a part of one’s induction into a warrior society would require them to walk to the ceremony themselves, but even Mandalorians have limits to their rituals, and don’t want to be here all day.

29:05 Back to technicalities. You’d think in service to the theme of growth and cooperation, there would exceptions made? Although she kind of has a point, even if she’s coming at it the wrong way. How can we know that Grogu is actually committed to this religion and lifestyle and whatnot?

29:38 Not earned. On the one hand, this should be no big deal, seeing as how everyone is just treating Grogu like he’s Din’s kid already, with Bo-Katan even referring to them using parental terminology on more than one occasion. And on the other, they have done nothing to establish the significance of the adoption request to Mandalorian culture. Which is so far removed from common sense, they can’t reasonably ask us to extrapolate that on our own.

29:53 I can tell from all of their expressions that this is truly significant and they are all having strong reactions to it!

30:07 So his given name is actually Djarin? Huh.

30:22 Oh, thank fuck. Are we getting back to an episodic bounty-hunting adventure show next season? Wasn’t that what we were implicitly promised before the merchandising gimmick Grogu took over the ongoing plot?

31:48 That fighter still sucks for bounty hunting.

32:04 Is this that Republic fighter base that Teva and Zeb from Rebels are from? (Yes, I am also watching the Rebels cartoon. I think it is a little better than this show so far, despite the presence of juvenile characters with dialogue, and getting to know Zeb has me very disappointed that his appearance in Mandalorian suggests he does not die at any point in Rebels. Oh, well. )

33:35 If he’s not going to tell the Republic where is Din Djarin’s pay going to come from? And why is it against regulations? And why are they decommissioning and scrapping Imperial Star Destroyers, if they lack the resources to cover all their territory? Privateers or independent contractors are an excellent way for a struggling new nation-state to fill in the gaps of their military capabilities while they get their act together.

33:43 Seriously, where is the money going to come from? Is Teva paid so much that he can just fund an operation out of his personal assets for the good of the Republic?

34:14 The way he leaned forward to emphasize “between adventures” does not make sense from a character standpoint, unless maybe he means that he does not want the Dins having adventures in the cabin. What it does sound like is that he is speaking across the fourth wall to assure the audience that Din Djarin is not retiring to the cabin, but will keep on having adventures.

But why does he need a house on Nevarro when he is a founding member and critical player in the reconquest of Madalore? Shouldn’t he be entitled to his own continent there?

34:57 If his memory chip or whatever got fried, how is he still the same IG-11? Are we supposed to feel good that a completely new droid with a completely new memory and none of the shared experiences with our heroes is walking around? Whatever happened to the land given by Nevarro to the Mandalorians who saved them from pilots? From the Lava Something to the Something Canyon, as I recall…

I think this season wasted a lot of time on nonsense and then rushed the Mandalorian reverse exodus, without doing anything to build up the Mandalorian culture and get us invested in it, or building some plausibility to the whole thing. Like, who is Bo-Katan, and why did everyone leave her because Din Djarin accidentally beat her to the Darksaber? Why did she spend all her time sitting on a throne in a castle that was otherwise empty on another body in the Mandalorian system? Why did the Empire track down HER personally, rather than the large band of Mandalorians with stolen Imperial ships, who were publicly serving as the security for a planet? Why are we supposed to care about the compliance with a religion whose rules seem to exist mostly to create hoops for Din Djarin to jump through? What is the significance of the cooperation of the covert and Bo-Katan's and Axe's group? How many Mandalorians are there anyway? That less than a hundred are not exactly enough to make a planet a going concern. But then Star Wars does not seem to know the difference between a planet and an island in terms of scale.

It felt like there was almost a plot going on, with Bo Katan's conversion and the Smith-Priestess unwinding enough to work with filthy heretics who expose their faces, but it got sidetracked with cameos and fetch quests and incompetent execution of EVERY fight.

Oh well.