It’s Wednesday morning, and that means we’re talking The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 3. Chapter 19: The Convert.

I’m not going to bury the lede here. The Know-It-All Index is probably going to be a little bit lower than normal today, and that’s down to the kind of episode this is. It’s what’s called a bridge episode, and anybody who’s watched me for any amount of time knows a bridge episode is an episode that gets you from A to B.

Those are normally bad. Your average writer doesn’t exactly make it entertaining, because they’re just trying to get to the next step. To most writers, the bridge episode is literally only designed to get you to the next episode, because the next episode is where their real heart and soul is. Most people think a bridge episode is just about getting you to your final destination. The truth is a really good, well done bridge episode gets you there and doesn’t make you worry about how you got there.

Landing Like a Boss

The episode starts completely where we left off, at the waterside, with Grogu looking over Din Djarin. When he wakes up, it’s all right, let’s get going. And from this moment forward, Bo-Katan doesn’t take her helmet off. That’s going to become important later.

They get back in Bo-Katan’s ship and head to her planet, and when they get there they’re suddenly set upon by Imperial TIE interceptors. Not TIE fighters. TIE fighters are the normal ones with the flat wings and the center pod. These are the ones with the wings at an angle, almost like parentheses when you look straight at them, and they’re longer, and they’re pretty deadly.

There are four or five of them, so he says get me to my ship, I can help us. He jumps out of her ship, does his little drop, and right before he hits the ground he activates his jetpack. It’s the dopest landing. You want to talk about landing like a boss? He’s falling, falling, falling, backs it up, lands, and just walks up, squares up and gets in his ship. He takes off just as they’re attacking him there too.

As they’re defeating the ones that came after them, they see what looks like more attacks, only not toward them. They’ve attacked her castle. She has effectively now lost everything. Everything. So he’s going to take them someplace safe, and we cut to the title.

A Day on Coruscant, and the Volume Showing Through

Then we jump all the way to Coruscant, and what I really love about this episode is we get to spend practically an entire day there. Funny enough, I think this episode is probably more of Coruscant than we saw in almost all the prequels. I say that because we’re actually living there. In the prequels you see a lot of stuff, but most of the first episode is spent on Tatooine. It’s fun to see Coruscant in its everyday style.

This is also probably the first episode where I really felt the presence of the volume, and I’m hoping that isn’t any kind of bias from what I’m seeing in the media. Normally it isn’t as prevalent. What should have been volumetric lighting felt like they were in front of a screen. I don’t know why. It just wasn’t jibing for me all the time. There are key parts of this episode where it totally works, and then there are other parts where I’m sitting here going, I don’t know, this feels awkward. Are you guys really just running big fans? You’ve got this train car on the volume, you need it to look like it’s traveling really fast, so the car is built to do this little sway while they blow fans for the wind.

Again, this is not a bad episode. There are elements that stuck out to me, though.

Dr. Pershing and the Amnesty Program

We see Dr. Pershing doing a talk, I guess the New Republic’s equivalent of a TED Talk, and you find out he’s been involved in what’s called the amnesty program. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Everybody’s been given what I’m assuming is a letter designation, and he’s L52, I believe.

For those of you playing at home who haven’t ever watched The Mandalorian (by the way, what are you doing here?), Dr. Pershing was the guy involved in the very beginning with Grogu and the cloning and the whole bit. He was there with the original guy who hired Din Djarin.

So you’re introduced to him again and you walk a day in his life. There are other former Imperial people, they live in amnesty housing, they wear specific outfits, the whole nine yards. You understand they’re being rehabilitated, but not in prison. And he’s not doing what he believes his calling is, which is scientific research, specifically cloning research.

He meets a woman who I believe is G68 or G36, something like that. She’s a former communications officer, not a pilot, and he’s a former science officer. They get to talking about what you miss the most, and he says, I miss those yellow ration biscuits. Well, the next morning those yellow ration biscuits have shown up at his doorstep. We don’t know who got them for him yet, but he’s being groomed.

It was her. She asks him about his work, and he says the research he used to do could totally benefit them, but the New Republic doesn’t want anything to do with former things of the Empire. And I get that. It’s literally Nazi Germany. Who wants anything the Nazis built? Really? That’s where he’s at: but this is all perfectly good and useful.

Elia Kane Turns the Dial

Her name’s Elia Kane. I’m not going to bury that for later or try to keep myself from saying the name like I’m going to surprise you guys somehow. She was a communications officer for Moff Gideon, on Moff Gideon’s little offshoot ship, and she recognizes Dr. Pershing. She seems to be pushing him toward something, and he goes toward wanting to continue his research, even if privately.

He asks the droid who’s monitoring him, can I pursue some of my former research in my own recreational time? And the answer is, your former research has been banned by the New Republic. He’s very disillusioned with life right now and he wants more. A lot more. So he goes to her and says yeah, let’s do it.

She takes him on this whole little adventure. They barely escape some tickets-please droids, and they get to where everything’s being decommissioned, this giant area of the city where former Star Destroyers are being dismantled. I’d assume the technology’s being reclaimed and the rest is being turned back into raw materials for other stuff. That’s when they start to hear things and see lights, and when they get out, she’s totally set him up. I don’t say spy. Spy is the wrong word. But she’s setting up these former Imperials to see if they’ve truly converted. She’s the convert from the episode.

Then they put him in a machine, and he recognizes it as former Imperial technology they called the Mind Flayer. They used to use it to torture you. On very low settings, though, it can enhance feelings of calm and make you feel better. It’s got actual uses beyond the horrific ones.

There’s a New Republic guy there who tells her, for every failure there’s a really good success like you. He’s all trusting her. And she says, with total sincerity, I really care about him, he’s my friend, I know he relapsed, but I want to watch. So they leave. She turns the device up, and he begins to get tortured.

You don’t know what her deal is. This is a bridge episode, and they’re introducing new elements because they want to get us somewhere. I believe very clearly we’re going to see these things collide.

By Creed, So Have You

We finally get back to Din Djarin. He’s brought Bo-Katan to the covert, the one from the first episode with the water source where he fought the big giant alligator turtle thing.

They arrive, and Paz Vizsla’s a dick, bro. I do not curse on this channel, but man, that frustrated me. He’s all, you’re both apostates. And Din says, I’ve been redeemed, I’ve bathed in the Living Waters of Mandalore. We’ll see, and he gets out of the way.

They go to the Armorer. She tests the water, and it is indeed the Living Waters. She tells him, you’ve been redeemed. Then she looks over and says, by Creed, so have you, Bo-Katan.

And Bo-Katan’s like, I’m sorry, what? The Armorer asks, have you taken your helmet off since you bathed in them? She says no. Okay. Then until such time as you leave us, while you’re here and you don’t remove your helmet, you’re one of us.

This is where I believe Jon Favreau is doing some double-pronged stuff, because she could very well also be a convert. Even if it’s not intentional, she’s technically a convert right now to the Children of the Watch, and so long as she keeps her helmet on, she’s technically protected. Everyone’s immediately like, hey, welcome. It’s just a moment. And the episode ends.

The Verdict

The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 3, “Chapter 19: The Convert,” lands at a 7.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It’s a bridge episode, and I normally rate those really low. I did like this one, though. This was a very serviceable bridge episode, and they kept everything very interesting. I was curious why we were suddenly over in this other area, and now I realize we have, I believe, two converts being spoken about in the title. The first is communications officer Elia Kane, formerly of the Empire, now for the New Republic. The other is Bo-Katan. Whether or not she stays that way, that’s a whole other thing.

And if you see a 7.5 and figure I must not have liked it, I love this episode. I enjoyed it immensely. I think it’s a very good episode. It’s an excellent episode, in fact.

Let me know what you thought of the episode. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.