It’s Wednesday morning, and that means we’re doing one thing: talking about The Mandalorian, specifically Season 3, Episode 7, “Chapter 23: The Spies.” And this episode takes a turn.

It starts with us following Elia Kane through some back street areas, until all of a sudden you see one of those old Imperial probe droids, the drones they’d send out, like the one on Hoth. One of those guys comes floating out of the smoke and lands, and then you get your very first shot of Moff Gideon. That’s right. He’s in the hologram, talky talky version of himself, and he finds out everything she has to report. Specifically, that the Mandalorians are looking to take Mandalore back.

The Shadow Council, and a Bingo Card Full of Names

We join Moff Gideon on his ship as he leaves that conversation and heads over to a different one, with a Shadow Council. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. These are former Imperial officers who are still holding their small areas of space, their little fiefdoms if you will, and several Easter eggs get dropped here.

The first is what they call, and I wanted to say Project Phoenix, but that’s something entirely different, that’s a different franchise, sorry about that. It’s Project Necromancer, or something like it, which I’m assuming has something to do with Palpatine, or what would be the cloning of Palpatine. There’s a lot of question about that in this meeting, and Moff Gideon is basically like, look, that’s your thing, that’s whatever, I know what I need to do.

And they mention Thrawn. For those of you playing at home, Thrawn is a huge callback if you caught the Ahsoka trailer, which I did, by the way. It’s a massive throwback, specifically to a series of books from the original canon called Heir to the Empire. In the Ahsoka trailer they actually give you that phrasing, which is pretty cool. Total geek moment there.

They also mention a Commandant Hux. If you’re keeping track with your Star Wars bingo, the main dude who was helping Snoke in the First Order, his name was Hux also. So again, like last week, you’re starting to mix that pot that’s eventually going to take us to the First Order. Eventually we’re going to be dumped at the front porch of the First Order.

Gideon is steering the Shadow Council to support him and his conquest of Mandalore, and it’s kind of still been a thing, because as he’s walking toward this meeting you saw these force field things, and in between the force field things were some very special looking stormtroopers. Either stormtroopers or stormtrooper armor. I’m guessing they were actually the stormtroopers in their armor, because these are stormtroopers wearing beskar armor.

Now remember, the New Republic still thinks, from last week, that Mandalorians rescued Moff Gideon. We know better. Gideon stole the beskar and has been building his own mini army. Even the dark troopers were all in beskar armor as well. Remember the robot ones.

IG-12 Is the Coolest Thing Ever

That’s when we cut to our first shot of Nevarro. Greef Karga is in his office, and all of a sudden, from above, you see what looks like an Imperial ship arrive. His droid is all worried, and he’s like, no, take a look at the markings. It’s a massive Mythosaur symbol. It’s the Mandalorians, of course. It’s the privateers, and they’ve arrived and brought their little mini fleet with them.

They park, and while they’re there, Greef Karga brings them some stuff, as well as bringing Mando a gift. The gift is IG-11, who’s now IG-12 and is essentially an exosuit for Grogu.

Dude, it’s the coolest thing ever. I’ve got to admit, that’s pretty awesome. Come here, buddy, we’re going to take good care of you. He literally climbs up into the little suit and starts driving the thing, and at one point Mando’s like, yeah, I don’t know how I feel about this. Because it has a yes button and a no button, and he’s just autonomously walking around saying yes, yes, or no, no, depending. He’s able to articulate. And Mando’s like, okay, I get it, fine.

My first thought when it comes to this: I have the feeling this could very well be the thing that leads us to Grogu eventually having his version of Mandalorian armor. A Mandalorian suit of some kind. It’s a thought.

Two Kinds of Mandalorian in One Camp

When they arrive, it’s literally the two things you see. The Death Watch Mandalorians versus the Night Owls, the regular Mandalorians, actual Mandalorians from people born on Mandalore. That’s when the Armorer welcomes them as fellow Mandalorians, which kind of puts a stop to all that. Obviously Axe Woves and Paz Vizsla are going to sit here and butt heads every now and again, because they’re both alpha males and that’s what you do. But it’s fun to watch.

That night the Mandalorians gather together and Bo-Katan lays out their entire mission for them, in detail. She needs volunteers, because the main fleet is going to stay in orbit of Mandalore while an exploratory group goes down to the planet to scout. What they want is to secure the Great Forge. Once they secure the forge, they start building a perimeter and basically retake the planet in stages from there.

This is also the very first time there’s been this massive of a unified group of Mandalorians. A concentrated group of Mandalorians, if you will.

Lady Bo-Katan and the Night of a Thousand Tears

When they arrive on the planet, they’re greeted by Mandalorians. These are people who recognize her voice and immediately refer to her as the Lady Bo-Katan. These guys are rough. They’re rough looking. But they’re still like, we’re here to serve the royal house, the princess. Because she’s still a princess. One might argue Bo-Katan is a Disney princess.

They all have dinner together, and you find out what happened on the night of the Purge. You find out from Bo-Katan that at the end, in the final days of the bombings, she and Moff Gideon had come to a deal: a ceasefire in exchange for the Darksaber. She hands over the Darksaber, and the Purge happens anyway. The Night of a Thousand Tears and all the other stuff.

It’s a rough story, especially when you find out that Bo-Katan was betrayed while trying to surrender, which is a very un-Mandalorian thing to do. But everyone realizes she was doing the best she could to save and protect her people, and that’s the thing that mattered the most.

While they’re headed to the forge, and it’s going to be a bit of a travel, Mando comes over to her. I keep calling him Mando like everybody else. Din Djarin comes over, and she’s telling him it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be difficult, I don’t know if I’m going to bring them together. And he basically encourages her. You can do this. But at the same time he kind of swears fealty to her. I wouldn’t call it full on fealty, but he’s very much, you know, that’s why I serve you. It stops short of the Creed, and it still feels very much in that vein, if that makes sense. I’m interested to see where they continue to take the story.

The O.K. Corral

They go further into exploring underground, and this massive creature comes out of nowhere. I mean it’s huge. It’s monstrous. It bursts out of the ground and they scatter, and they’ve got to run and escape, and it’s very bad. You see several of them on fire, so probably some of them died.

Where they escape to, they find themselves in a hangar with Imperial looking TIE fighters hanging in there and whatnot, and they suddenly get attacked by these new and improved dark troopers in beskar armor. That’s when you fully begin to understand the complexity of what’s going on.

And as they get cornered, who shows up in black armor? It’s him. It’s Moff Gideon. But his helmet has these little crown like things on it, and I’m like, dude, what are you, a child? I want a crown for my head. Get out of here, dude. You’re an idiot.

It’s rough, man. This is a very O.K. Corral moment, and by that I just mean, if this was a western, this is most definitely one of those moments where you go, oh, the bad guys are winning. This is not good. So again they’re changing the motif, and I’m down. I think you needed to move the story along a little sooner. I would have liked to have seen something along these lines a little earlier. At the same time, I’m happy it finally happened where it happened.

Paz Vizsla Holds the Door

Gideon wants the Darksaber. He wants her unequivocal surrender, and he’s talking to her as if she’s still the person who made the deal with him.

Instead, Bo-Katan takes the Darksaber and cuts a hole in the back while everyone else is shooting, and they open the blast doors. Paz Vizsla is the only one still there, shooting his big giant Gatling gun thing, just spraying fools while everyone’s rushing out. You get to the very end and she’s like, we’ve got to go, and he goes, just go. He closes the blast doors and keeps shooting.

And he is doing an amazing job. The gun in his hand is overheating from how much he won’t stop shooting it. Eventually it jams up, and he takes the gun itself and throws it at a guy. There are two final guys, he slams one over the ledge, and he’s defeated everybody.

Then the Imperial guards show up. Three of them. And he’s no match. It’s rough. It’s very rough.

So they’re on the run, the fleet’s up above, and everything looks very bad right now, which is what you expect from your getting close to the end episode.

The Verdict

The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 7, “Chapter 23: The Spies,” lands at an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I think this was an okay episode, and I’m glad things are happening, finally. So I really think I’ll give this an eight and a half. It’s not bad. It’s a good episode.

Tell me your thoughts. I’d love to hear what you thought about the episode. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.