- Title: The Mandalorian – The Believer (Chapter 15)
- wiki: link
In an episode that brings back another familiar face, which has become The Mandalorian‘s bread and butter, the quest to rescue Grogu begins with Cara Dune (Gina Carano) using her clout to get the cutthroat Mayfeld (Bill Burr) released from prison into her custody. Using their captive’s knowledge of Imperial codes and procedures, the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and his pals hope to locate Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). However, in another constant theme of the show, things turn out to be a bit more complicated from the firefight just to get into an Imperial facility to Din’s latest compromise when deciding how far to go to rescue Grogu.
The episode offers a little redemption for Mayfeld who turns out to be useful into getting the pair into the facility while also showing some strong anti-Imperial stripes. Mayfeld’s monologue about compromise only takes a few minutes to force the Mandalorian’s hand into revealing his face to keep the mission alive and play to Valin Hess‘s (Richard Brake) ego… at least until Mayfeld shoots him. In an action-heavy episode, Dune and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) get to play sharpshooter, but Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) is kept mainly in reserve aboard Slave I, although does manage to steal a scene that unsubtlety hearkens back to the worst Star Wars movie ever made.
The episode isn’t without it’s puzzling moments. The “pirates” attacking the caravans don’t seem to be very pirate-like (more like guerilla freedom fighters). Maybe they are simply misclassified? Also troubling is the series of events that gets Din to show his face. Not only does Hess not recognize Mayfeld, making his inability to get the intelligence moot, but the idea of a security system needing to scan someone’s face but not actually check it against a database is one of the more ridiculous security measures ever invented. Closing out the episode, Din’s threatening of Gideon feels oddly tacked on here if only to get Gideon on-screen in an episode that is also notable for not featuring Grogu.
