‘The Mandalorian’ Episode 3: Mando Finds ‘The Way’ (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
This Is the Way
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[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 1 episode 3, “The Sin.”]
Well, it’s not like the Mandalorian doesn’t need that Beskar steel.
After fighting that monster last week, his armor is all but toast. That precious metal would undoubtedly come in handy, but as he brings baby Yoda to his client, it’s clear Mando (Pedro Pascal) isn’t sold on turning it over to the Empire-following baddies — and doing dirty work for the Empire gives him a bad name among his fellow Mandalorians. What’s a bounty hunter to do?
The Guild Code
Mando and the child fly back to the city from the first episode, and the child finds a way to entertain itself by unscrewing the top of one of the levers on Mando’s ship (“That isn’t a toy,” Mando says, taking it back.) As per the transmission he receives from Greef Carga (Carl Weathers), he heads directly to the Client (Warner Herzog) and Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi) to claim his reward. And that reward is handsome.
How handsome? 20 blocks of Beskar handsome. Nonetheless, Mando can’t resist the urge to ask the Client what’ll happen to the child. “Is it not the code of the guild that these events are now forgotten?” the Client says, avoiding the question and noting that the Beskar will make a handsome replacement for his armor… if he knows where to find another Mandalorian.
Hunter and Prey
Thankfully, Mando does. He again descends to the underground city where his people have taken refuge and again finds the Armorer (Emily Swallow). She tells him the steel will draw many eyes. It already has — as they talk, Mando and the Armorer are surrounded by other Mandalorians. One calls Mando a coward for taking payment from the Empire, which destroyed their home during The Great Purge. He attacks Mando and they trade blows, but the Armorer puts a stop to it. “When one chooses to walk the way of the Mandalore, one is both hunter and prey,” she says. “How can one be a coward if one chooses this way of life?”
This calms the riled-up group assembled around them, and the Armorer offers to craft Mando’s new armor with the signet of a mudhorn, since the mudhorn damaged his old armor. Mando forgoes the signet, saying it wasn’t a noble kill because an enemy helped him. So, instead of crafting a signet, the Armorer crafts something called “whistling birds,” which sound incredibly cool and probably are very deadly. As she forges it, Mando has the same flashbacks he had during the first episode of his parents hiding him to keep him safe during a war.
Mando to the Rescue
Back in the present and outfitted in his new armor, Mando strolls over to the cantina. He doesn’t receive a warm welcome, since everyone there had been searching for the child, too, but he has reaped the reward. Carga, though, says Mando’s success is his success as well, and he shows him a few blocks of Beskar in his pocket. Carga gives him a new job, but after Mando heads back to his ship, he sees the ball the child was playing with and changes his mind. He snoops around outside the Client’s place and finds the child’s cradle in a dumpster, and with that — and after using his tech to eavesdrop and hearing the child may be killed — his mind is made up.
He blasts his way into the compound and takes down Stormtrooper after Stormtrooper, eventually making his way to the lab, where he takes the child back. After taking down even more Stormtroopers (and using those whistling birds, which function much like Yondu’s arrow on Guardians of the Galaxy), he makes it out onto the street with baby Yoda in his arms.
This Is The Way
Surely he’s safe now, right? Wrong. Everyone who had a tracker fob for the Client’s job has now been alerted that the bounty is missing, and everyone knows Mando has it. Thus, he’s cornered by Carga, who tries to get him to turn over the child. He doesn’t, and a firefight ensues. It looks like Mando’s toast, but just in the nick of time, the other Mandalorians show up. “We’ll hold them off,” one tells Mando, and when he tells his comrade that they’ll have to relocate yet again, his pal responds with, “This is the way.”
Protected by his fellow armored fighters, Mando makes it to his ship. Unfortunately, Carga has also made it to his ship, but he’s nothing a little steam from a pipe and a blaster can’t handle. With him out of the way, Mando and the child take off, and as they fly away, one of the Mandalorians flies beside them and gives a salute. “I gotta get one of those,” Mando says. He hands baby Yoda that ball from the lever it was playing with at the start of the episode, and they fly away.
The Mandalorian, Fridays, Disney+
