At the end of a 40 some odd minute episode of The Mandalorian, we got a five minute resolution. That’s the big stakes thing, Bo-Katan taking back the Darksaber and the leadership of her people, and it’s all because of a side quest.

I liked the episode. I like the things happening in it, I’m having a good time, and that’s why I’m a little bothered by how quickly everything was resolved. I really wish we’d gotten more of it.

This is Season 3, Episode 6, Chapter 22, “Guns for Hire.” Din Djarin and Bo-Katan seek out Axe Woves, who’s leading a group of Mandalorian mercenaries operating on Plazir-15. I tend to want to give you the recap on these, but there’s a lot of nuance happening here, so let’s break the whole thing down.

Wear Your Helmet

The episode starts with Bo-Katan’s former forces. Axe Woves is leading the old mercenary Mandalorians, and almost none of them are wearing their helmets in that initial confrontation.

I find it a little bit convenient. There’s a sect of Mandalorians that are helmets only, and now the former Bo-Katan forces, the Mandalorians who aren’t quite so strict, are totally not wearing theirs. Look, I’m not trying to turn this into a PSA for helmet safety, but if you’re going to go around the galaxy protecting people and being mercenaries, wear your helmet.

Last episode Bo-Katan was tasked by the Armorer to go forth and find the other Mandalorians and bring all the tribes together, so that’s why she’s not wearing hers.

Plazir-15, Where Nobody Does Anything

Plazir-15 is clearly where her former forces are housing their fleet, and the first thing Din and Bo-Katan notice when they arrive is all these black droids. He’s asking her why they have Imperial droids, and she says she thinks they’re often reprogrammed. Then they take this really cool, very fast train thing to the capitol building, and you come to find out the entire place is being run by droids. The population doesn’t do anything. They’re all just chilling.

The whole planet is super peaceful and it’s a true democracy, by the way. Everyone gets a vote. It’s a literal democracy, where our current state of affairs is a representative one.

I remember a couple weeks back I said the Volume felt present. This episode it didn’t, and it should have. It’s funny, they shoot on the Volume, but I liked seeing the city, and I didn’t have a problem with any part of what they did. This place is very Alderaan meets Coruscant. Coruscant in that it’s technological looking, Alderaan in that it’s all very nice, white, shiny, very Tomorrowland, with your super fast tram and the buildings and everything interweaving. It was fun, man.

Lizzo, Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd

The rulers of Plazir-15 are our first cameos, and they’re the most obvious ones: Lizzo and Jack Black, whose character is a former Imperial who went through the amnesty program.

Lizzo can’t act. Let’s just be real. She’s gorgeous, and you can tell she’s throwing herself into it, and I do appreciate that. But everything she says comes across as if she’s reading dialogue and trying very hard not to sound like her normal self. She’s doing a great job trying to act, and it just sounds a little put on. That’s okay. She’s a singer, so take it with a grain of salt.

Jack Black, on the other hand, I am loving. He’s got this anime style giant beard thing, and it’s majestic and glorious. I love him anyway.

The droids are going bad, so Din and Bo-Katan get sent to the droid commissioner, who shows them a series of security camera videos. That’s the second cameo, Christopher Lloyd. Love him. I haven’t really seen him doing a whole lot lately, so I loved the opportunity to see him flexing his chops, and I think he’s doing a wonderful job. But there’s something kind of suspicious about him, and of course he’s got this big red button.

The Resistor

They go down to the floor where the Ugnaughts help them find the malfunctioning droids, and Din Djarin starts purposely poking at the battle droids. He’s pushing and pushing and pushing, finally he starts kicking, and one of them turns bad. It snaps, lashes out at him and runs. They chase it, track it down and shoot it, and at the scene Bo-Katan finds the equivalent of a business card for a place called The Resistor.

The Resistor is a droid bar. I half expected them to make a “we don’t serve your kind” joke when Din Djarin and Bo-Katan walk in. They don’t.

Din goes in really heavy, and Bo-Katan’s like, you need to calm down. And the bartender, who’s a droid, tells them this is bad for us too. Too many of us come from that Separatist era, and we’d be decommissioned or destroyed if something goes wrong in our home. Because that’s what this place has become. It’s their home. So the droids are very much, look, we’ve got to fix this, and he helps them.

He’s got records, and all the droids who’ve gone bad have been in there drinking the same lubricant. It’s called Nepenthé. It’s a special lubricant with little nano droids that fill in programming holes, which essentially defragments the droids. Normally it’s a very passive process. This time the nano droids in it are reverting the programming, back to what these droids were built for in the Clone Wars.

Then they find a blockchain. Blockchain technology, by the way, is a really great way of validating your credentials if it’s embedded in the programming. And it’s the blockchain of the commissioner.

That’s right, Christopher Lloyd is dirty. Why is he dirty? He’s a former Separatist, and he’s literally telling them Count Dooku was a visionary, and you’re like, bro, bro, bro, calm down. I half expected some young kid to come out and go, “Oh yeah, that’s right, Doc.”

It’s so distinctly a side quest they’re on that I can’t even try to hide it.

Two Minutes for the Darksaber

Once they accomplish their side quest, they’re given an audience with Axe Woves, and then we get a very quick, very abrupt moment that I feel like should have been the breadth of the episode. That’s the problem I have with it.

Axe Woves essentially insults Bo-Katan, she challenges him for control of the fleet, and he accepts, because he’s still honor bound as a Mandalorian. These are actual Mandalorians, by the way, the actual people who lived on Mandalore. They’re not foundlings like Grogu and Din Djarin and many of the rest of that particular order.

She tells him this has to happen, we have to come together. He challenges it, they fight, and she beats him. And he tells her you’re never truly going to be the leader. He has the Darksaber. You should be challenging him.

So Din goes to hand it to her, and she says it’s not a gift you can just be given. And he says he’s not giving a gift. He was captured, and she rescued him and slayed his captor. She defeated the enemy that defeated me. Ergo, she earned the Darksaber.

Bo-Katan is the leader again. Let’s go. I don’t know where you’ve been, but I’m excited.

I would’ve liked this whole final chapter better with room to breathe, though, because it felt very quick and very abrupt. Their fight lasts maybe all of two minutes, and then you get the explanation from Din Djarin. The episode ends with Grogu getting knighted by Lizzo. Come on.

The Verdict

The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 6 gets a seven and a half out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

Why? Because it felt disjointed, and everything I really wanted to see was crammed in at the end. I loved the front half, by the way. If you’d given me the front half, set up at the end that they’re going to fight, and then made the whole beginning of the next episode them fighting, I’d have been fine with that.

I know there’s clearly a direction they’re trying to go in. But I’m a firm believer that the storytelling needs to match the tone, and I feel like you gave us an awful lot of empty material at the outset. The season’s starting to kind of come unraveled for me.

Still here, though. We’ve got a couple more episodes to go, and man, I’m down. I can’t wait to finish seeing it. I’m starting to feel a little lukewarm. I like everything we’ve seen, but I wish it were better organized. Right now it feels very stream of consciousness, and I’m okay with that.

Let me know your thoughts. I’d love to hear your feelings on the season so far. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.