The Mandalorian, Season Three

A steady trip through familiar territory.

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Here's what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...

MOVIES

The Iron Giant

I realised too late for this week that I hadn't written about this movie before - get ready for a review next week then!

GAMES

Assassin's Creed Origins: The Hidden Ones DLC

Wanting to clear some games from my hard drive, I finally got started with the DLC for Assassin's Creed Origins and will also be writing about this next week - I hope so at least, as I don't think it's too long.

Hacknet

I did give it a go but gave up before the three-hour mark for my 'Endgame rule' so I won't be writing a review of this game or scoring it as I don't think that's fair having played so little of it.

From what I did play, the only issue was being able to very easy 'softlock' your game, but otherwise had very little to criticise - it's just not my type of game.

Tyranny

I started playing this once before years ago when I would have literally dozens of games installed at a time and never committed enough time to trying out, so am doing so now and enjoying it so far.

Also currently playing: Batman: Arkham City, Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)

TV

The Mandalorian, Season Three

Season summary: follows Din Djarin as he seeks redemption among his people while navigating shifting alliances, Mandalorian politics, and a broader push to reclaim their home.

Episode 1, “The Apostate”

Lots of set-up rather than a story in itself, establishing the current status quo and what this season will be about.

Still probably confusing for anyone who didn’t watch The Book of Boba Fett though…

Episode 2, “The Mines of Mandalore”

A nice simple episode about trying to somewhere and the obstacles getting there – and nice to see Grogu and Bo-Katan take more of a central role.

Although the main character always needing saving is becoming a bit silly.

Episode 3, “The Convert”

Everything not set on Coruscant was fun – everything on Coruscant was shit and should’ve been a sub-plot across multiple episodes, not the focus of one, although it could easily have been handled with a single line of dialogue in a future episode.

Episode 4, “The Foundling”

Thought the title was about Grogu – only partially correct, which was a pleasant surprise.

And I get the feeling Bo-Katan is plotting something big.

Episode 5, “The Pirate”

A fun episode that just flew by with an ending for Bo-Katan that I wasn’t expecting, although the character must secretly be thrilled.

Episode 6, “Guns for Hire”

The episode itself was a bit pointless except to show off some stunt casting, but the ending paid off a bit of logic I’d been thinking about since “The Mines of Mandalore”, which I was very happy to see play out.

Episode 7, “The Spies”

Saturday morning cartoon levels of trash – the bad guy from the previous two seasons (who has had no impact this season) shows up suddenly with established resources that would’ve seen him win in previous encounters that happen to perfectly counter the Mandalorians’ strengths?

Give me a fucking break – this shit could, and should, have been set up much, much better.

Episode 8, “The Return”

Keeping with the Saturday morning cartoon level from the previous episode, the big threat that had little build-up was dealt with in 25 minutes.

Fortunately, the last 15 minutes setting up the new status quo for The Mandalorian and Grogu (characters and movie) was pretty decent, so not too bad a way to end the season.

Much like The Book of Boba Fett, this season of Star Wars TV was badly misnamed and really should've been called The Mandalorians, as it was far more about setting them up again in this universe than focusing on the title character, which is an odd creative choice to say the least.

The problem with Mandalorians is that there more of them there are, the more irritating they tend to become, and this season didn't really solve that, although I do admit to liking Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan, as well as Mercedes Varnado as Koska Reeves, just for some of her great action scenes.

The Mandalorian's third season does feel a bit 'safe', especially when the big threat for the season is ludicrously resourced and still taken care of in less than length of an episode, but I did still mostly enjoy it overall. [7/10]

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