The Mandalorian Has returned! The Third season is here and with it, Chapter 17 titled “Aspostate”, which of course refers to Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) being an exile from The Children of The Watch for breaking the Mandalorian creed. This new chapter also kickstarts The Mandalorian’s new adventure, this being returning to the planet of Mandalore and uniting his people. While it’s a short but sweet episode, it covers some important ground and sets up future story possibilities, while also closing doors on others.
This is our FULL review of The Mandalorian Chapter 17, as such you are being warned for spoilers! Turn away now!
Children of the Watch
Interestingly this episode starts with the Armourer (Emily Swallow) of all people. From the two people left in The Children of the Watch, they seem to have bolstered their ranks with multiple other clans since we last saw them. We last saw the Children of the Watch on the Glavis Ringworld in The Book of Boba Fett.
A nice aspect of this scene is that we are seeing a child of Mandalore be given the creed and their helmet. The child seems to be the child of Paz Vizla, and I did wonder if he was going to die in this scene, giving us a reason for Paz to be somewhat more angry this season, but this isn’t the case. It could still happen but this is my observation
A giant star wars monster crocodile/turtle appears and even all these Mandalorians struggle to fight it, which for famed hunters that they are, they don’t do a good job. They shoot it a bunch, they use cables, they use explosives and it just doesn’t work. Luckily Din Djarin appears to save the day with his N1 star ship.
Even after saving all these Mandalorians from being killed, they still view him as an outcast. Mando’s only purpose there is to show the Armourer a piece of glassed Mandalore. This shows the surface of Mandalore is not poisonous anymore. That is really his purpose there, just to communicate to the Armourer that he is going to Mandalore now.
I guess for someone who was brought up in this cult, he somewhat needs their approval. Not for any reason other than himself. This is an interesting insight which we have already gotten about Din Djarin, but I am still intrigued about where this will go.
Purgil
A nice little moment after this, is that Grogu from staring into the hyperspace stream, sees the shapes of Purgils. Flying space whales that can enter hyperspace. Also Grogu can move from this little cockpit in the N1 to Din’s compartment, which I always wondered about since we have seen this new star ship.
The Purgil were introduced in Star Wars: Rebels and were used by Ezra Bridger to deal with Grand Admiral Thrawn. Using the Purgil’s ability of Hyperspace travel, to send the Chimera into the unknown regions. Whether this inclusion of Purgil was set up for the next Star Wars series Ahsoka we will have to wait and see
Nevarro’s Rise from the Ashes
Nevarro has become an amazing place, and seeing how it has developed since season 1 is amazing. This shows some actual tangible good that the Mandalorian has done, helping Nevarro to prosper. We learn that Nevarro has become an independent and official trade spur of the Hydian Way. The Hydian way is super important, as one of the 5 largest hyperspace lanes in the entire galaxy.
A nice aspect is that Greef really respects and admires Mando. Sure there is an aspect he gains from requesting Mando to settle down on Nevarro, being his new Marshall. You can still see the respect there regardless of if it benefits Greef or not. Offering to simply give Mando land and a title is a lot!
High Magistrate Greef Karga
Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) has become a very fascinating figure in The Mandalorian. He came from the head of the bounty hunter guild of Nevarro, profiting off murder and mayhem. We see his past catching up with him, with some former associates trying to enter the saloon now turned school.
However despite coming from a bad background, Greef is now High Magistrate of Nevarro. He even has tiny droids holding up his cape. But despite that he still has it, and manages to win a duel with one of these pirates and shoots a pistol out of his hand.
IG-11 & The Rise of Skywalker
Mando only trusts IG-11, which goes to show not only his hatred of droids, but the impact which IG-11 had on him. His original family were killed by separatist battle droids before he was rescued by Death Watch. He wants IG-11 to help him on his quest to Mandalore.
There is this really great scene of IG-11 activating, but reverting to his original programming of kidnapping Grogu. It looks like they used stop motion puppetry to create the motion of this torso of IG-11 moving about the workshop.
This isn’t the only time it seems this stop motion animation style is used in the episode. To fully rebuild IG-11 without him going haywire, Greef recruits the work of the Anzellans. The Anzellans are the droid-smiths that first featured in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. This is great world-building to use them as droid-smiths to repair IG-11, as they were said to be the best.
New Republic Special Forces Operative Cara Dune?
I will say I do like how they explain away Gina Carano’s character of Cara Dune, and that she was recruited by the New Republic Special Forces. We saw her in season 2 getting a medallion from the New Republic pilot, so she did take him up on that offer.
Presumably this is what the New Republic ranger show was going to be about, but we just won’t get it now. At least with Cara Dune unless they recast her. In any case, it is always a good opportunity for a book or comic series to cover.
Pirates
One of the main hostile forces in this episode of The Mandalorian are pirates. Now we have sort of dealt with pirates before in the show, mostly raiders, but it seems like from trailers and what this episode sets up, there will be more of a pirate threat to Nevarro.
They work for the Pirate King Gorian Shard, who we see later in the episode and is quite a swamp thing looking star wars alien, with a big mossy beard. The coolest thing about him though, is that at first I thought his vessel was an eclipse style star destroyer from Star Wars Legends. It has the same silhouette, but is much smaller, with deployable ball turrets giving an indication as to its smaller size.
The vessel was still probably an imperial star destroyer, but much smaller and eventually stolen by pirates after the fall of the empire. Gorian Shard is not dealt with here, and I am sure we will see more with him later in the series, especially as The Mandalorian just leaves him there in Nevarro’s system, with Nevarro being down a Marshall and probably not having the best defences.
Bo Katan
Mando heads to a rain ridden world in the Mandalorian system to convene with Bo Katan (Katee Sackhoff). We have seen some other Mandalorian style locations in some recent trailers. I do wonder if this planet is Kalevala. This planet was the homeworld of Bo-Katan and her sister, the late Duchess Satine Kryze, former leader of Mandalore.
It is an interesting contrast between Bo-Katan having a stately castle with no one in it but herself compared to the Mandalorians at the beginning of the episode who were living in caves. They were numerous and worked together against a threat. No one wants to work with her as she didn’t return with the Darksaber and now her former forces work as mercenaries.
Bo-Katan lets Din know that the mines of Mandalore, are beneath the civic centre in the city of Sundari. We have seen Sundari previously in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, as the capital city of Mandalore with its massive domed city structure.
I am curious when she states the Mines are underneath the civic centre, since The Clone Wars showed us there is an undercity underneath Sundari where Ahsoka would hunt down Maul. But maybe the entrance itself is located under the civic centre, and the mine extends much further underneath the city.
Conclusion
That was chapter 17 of the Mandalorian, episode 1 of season 3, “The Apostate”. This episode was Rick Famuyiwa who has directed some of the best episodes of the Mandalorian, and his directing skill does come through in this episode. It is a shame that this season premiere for the third season is only 27 minute episodes, but this episode was extremely dense.
I will say it does seem that we are steering quickly back into old mandalorian territory. Need the thing. Go to the place. Get the thing. Come back. I hope the season doesn’t devolve back into this, and with the Mandalorians and the pirate subplots, there is another to not be “Mando goes on a side quest Part 17”.
I will say aside from the story, the episode does fantastic with its use and style of animation. Mandalorian has always done this, doing the older less used styles that have gone out of fashion. Filming miniatures is a great example. But in this episode we get a lot of what looks to be stop motion animation with the Anzellan’s and IG-11
Overall a fantastic kickstart to the third season of The Mandalorian. Don’t forget, we’ve also got The Bad Batch Season 2 airing right now and both shows will take the Wednesday spotlight for a few weeks and run alongside each other. The second season of The Bad Batch will wrap up before the third season of The Mandalorian, so luckily, the show will get some breathing room, not that it needs it but here we are.
Season 3 of the Mandalorian is 10 episodes, and airs exclusively on Disney+
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