4/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The Mandalorian season 3 continues on with a silent cameo from Boba Fett, played by Temuera Morrison.

I think this may have been the best episode of the series yet. Admittedly much like with last week’s episode it is concerning that the episode without Fett in them pretty much at all are the best ones, considering this is Boba Fett’s show. In my mind this has now just become The Mandalorian but under a different name.

I think this episode does a lot right, I enjoyed that it brought back Timothy Olyphant’s Cobb Vanth, Olyphant can do no wrong and he was on fire in this episode. Likewise I thought they nailed the emotional reunion between Din, played by Pedro Pascal, and Grogu: though not much of a reunion took place. I thought the episode’s cliff-hanger cruelly played with our emotions in the best way, though I have a fairly good feeling I know where it is all heading.

The things I don’t enjoy about this episode all come back to the same thing, the effects. Ashoka, played by Rosario Dawson makes a return to the show and continues to look like a cosplayer, there is something deeply uncanny about the way her character looks as she moves, especially when there is a focus on her talking. It is quite jarring. Moreover, the bad effects continue with the return of a de-aged Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, and the less said about this the better. What I will say is that every time the character talked or we got a close up of his face it looked like a video game cut scene from over ten years ago, there were major issues with the dubbing. The de-aging tech clearly isn’t there yet and I really don’t think they should be showing this much Luke Skywalker if it is going to look this bad. In a final example of horrendous special effects this episode marks Cade Bane’s, played by Dorian Kingi and voiced by Corey Burton, first appearance in live action and my word does he look terrible.

Overall, in terms of emotions and action this episode is ahead of the pack sadly the tech and the effects really stop the episode from being perfect.

Pros.

More Mando

The emotion

Bringing back Olyphant

The ending

Cons.

The effects and the look of some of the characters   

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3.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

An almost entirely flashback set episode, that explains how Boba Fett, played by Temuera Morrison, and Fennec Shand, played by Ming-Na-Wen, came to be associates.

For the most part this was an enjoyable episode, I liked most of the flashback stuff and it was nice to see that journey come to an end. I would have liked to see Boba do more during the reclaiming of his armour and ship action wise, but the show seems to only allow Fennec to do the action set pieces. She is cool, but this is supposed to be a Boba Fett show. That said I thought seeing Boba gun down the bikers who killed his Tusken tribe was a nice moment, and showed the character’s harder side better.

I can’t quite move on from the flashback scenes until I talk about the return of the horrible cyberpunk elements. So during the episode Boba takes a near death Fennec to a modifier to try and save her life, whilst there he is surrounded once again by bad cyberpunk cosplayers that remind you of the budget for the show. To make matters worse they play some god awful techno during this scene which feels incredibly out of place in Star Wars.

The present day stuff is all a big tease, but an exciting one at that. We see the character preparing for war with the pikes and see a familiar face return. I enjoyed all this well enough and hope that the next episode is truly crazy in order to make up for the tameness and general lameness of the series so far in most aspects.

Overall, a nice episode though it would be better if Boba actually did something and didn’t just let Fennec do everything.

Pros.

Ending the flashbacks

Teasing the war to come

Seeing how Boba became the crime lord

Boba breaking bad slightly

Cons.

Boba does nothing during the action scenes and is further watered down

The cyberpunk elements  

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