TV Review: THE MANDALORIAN: Season 2, Episode 6: The Tragedy [Disney+]

The Mandalorian The Tragedy Review

Disney+’s The Mandalorian: Season 2, Episode 6: The Tragedy Review. For many people growing up with Star Wars, there were quite a few characters to admire, especially when it came to the original trilogy: the stoic, brave Luke Skywalker, wisecracking smuggler with a heart of gold Han Solo, not your typical damsel in distress Princess Leia, and the wise Jedi Masters of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, just to name a few examples. But perhaps the strangest fandom cult of personality was for bounty hunter Boba Fett.

First introduced in the notorious 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special in an animated segment (usually considered to be the best part of the special), Fett was Darth Vader’s right hand man in The Empire Strikes Back, a cool, calm, and mysterious figure who successfully tracked down Han Solo to Cloud City, and successfully froze him in carbonite. But despite this initially cool image cultivated by the film (maybe the Kenner toy accompanying the film’s release with the rocket-firing backpack also helped), the following film made it appear as merely posturing: In Return of The Jedi, despite briefly tying up Luke, Han blindly bumps into Fett’s rocket pack, sending him comically crashing into Jabba’s sail barge, and tumbling into the carnivorous Sarlacc pit below, an apparent ignominious end to a character that seemed full of promise. Nevertheless, the character was popular enough to be featured in several comics, games, and novels, most of which are now considered non-cannon.

Thus, it is a testament that in only 32 minutes (the shortest episode of the series) that director Robert Rodriguez, writer John Favreau, and actor Temuera Morrison (who portrayed Boba’s father Jango Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones) manage to offer a complete character image rehabilitation for Boba Fett in The Tragedy, able to fully realize the potential the character has to offer. But besides Boba Fett’s superb reintroduction into the Star Wars universe, The Tragedy sets up an event that will decide the course of the remaining episodes.

The cold open provides more character bonding between Mando and Grogu, as enroute to Tython, Mando repeats the silver knob Force exercise with him. When Grogu gets it from his hands using the Force, Mando exclaims “Dank ferrec!”, but reassures Grogu that he’s not mad at him, as he looks up in concern. “You did good, it’s just when the special lady said you had training…” and after a pause, admits “You’re very special, kid”, Pedro’s Pascal’s head movements convey a resigned sadness, along with Ludwig Göransson’s score. It’s a sweet, if sad moment overall.

Arriving to the ruins of the Jedi Temple via jetpack (“Sorry buddy, I can’t land on the top. Too small. Looks like we’re gonna have to travel with the windows down” Mando jokes), it’s a lonely, rugged place, and Rodriguez emphasizes this beauty with several extreme long shots, a Stonehenge-like structure that exudes a mystic nature. When Mando puts Grogu on the seeing stone, he is frustrated that nothing seems to happen, and we get several POV shots of Mando circling around the stone, while Grogu idly tries to catch a butterfly. But this serene idleness is interrupted when Slave I streaks across the sky, landing nearby. “Time’s up kid. We gotta get out of this”, Mando warns Grogu, but it’s too late, as Grogu successfully sets up a force field (heh) to commune with the Jedi both past and present, with it repelling Mando upon trying to break through.

When Boba Fett finally arrives, he asks for his armor, which Mando had retrieved from Cobb Vanth back on Tattooine in the season premiere. When Mando asks if he is Mandalorian, Fett’s response tells everything you need to know about him: “I’m a simple man making his way through the galaxy. Like my father before me.” Dressed in black robes, armed with almost nothing, Fett makes a striking figure even without armor, and when Mando asks why he shouldn’t waste him right then and there, he warns Mando that he has a sniper posted “that will unload when my body hits the ground”, the target actually being Grogu. In a twist, said sniper turns out to be Fennec Shand (Ming- Na Wen), the sharpshooter that Mando had left for dead in the first season episode The Gunslinger, whom Fett had found and installed with cybernetic parts, rendering her into his service. Fett makes a deal that in exchange for the armor, he and Shand will protect Grogu from harm, as according to Shand, “The bounty on your little friend has risen significantly. You can buy ten suits of armor for the price on his head.” Before proper negotiations can begin though, an Imperial cruiser arrives, heralding a much bigger fight.

The fight, which takes up the majority of remaining episode time, is fun, exciting, and satisfying, despite stormtroopers relegated to usual cannon fodder. As they approach the temple, Fett hides behind a rock, and strikes out with a gaderffi stick taken from the Tusken Raiders on Tattooine, smashing, stabbing, and in one instance, clubbing an officer so hard his armor breaks with a sickening crunch, white plastic shattering all over the hill. It’s a simultaneously cool and wince-inducing moment, emphasized by the medium closeup of the trooper laying lifeless faceup. Fennec Shand also has her moments to shine, picking off stormtroopers with ease, sniping in the air,  and in one instance, when hiding from a trooper with a Gatling laser gun, heaving and pushing a heavy boulder which serves as her cover, leading it to crush the trooper and the surrounding infantrymen, despite his fruitless attempts to blast it to smithereens.

When Fett impales the last of the stormtroopers using the end of his stick, it looks as if the Imperial menace has ended. Grogu is still in a trance, despite Mando’s attempts to retrieve him as he struggles through the force field. Yet almost immediately, another cruiser lands, depositing out fodder, and this time, Mando promises “OK, I’m going to protect you. Just stay there. I’ll be back soon”, just as the force field (and Grogu collapse). As Mando joins in the battle alongside Shand by firing mini-rockets at the troopers, she mutters “This isn’t looking good,” and he mutters with an “I’ve seen worse”, though they clearly are outnumbered, despite his beskar armor proving invulnerable against laser blasts.

Cue the Fett ex-machina, signaled by dropping a thermal detonator on the ground. Though the sequence comes off as being a tad cheesy, it provides additional moments for the bounty hunter to show off his skills and weapons, basically becoming a one man army: shooting kneepad rockets, blaster whipping opponents, and punching a poor trooper so hard it sends him flying. The whole battle is wonderfully capped off by him using the last missile in his backpack to target a fleeing cruiser, causing it to collide into its twin, as both crash to the ground, with him looking behind with the explosion in the distance. “Nice shot” Mando comments to Boba, as Fett coolly replies “I was aiming for the other one.” Legendary bounty hunter indeed.

But no sooner have those words left his lips then a laser streaks out from the sky and instantly incinerates the Razorcrest in the blink of an eye, a brilliant shot of orange, red, and yellow as it explodes into smithereens. The Imperial cruiser of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) has arrived, after tracking the Razorcrest,  and accompanying him are the Darktroopers, unnerving  black robots in perfect formation that land atop the temple. Though Rodriguez cuts to shots of Mando and Fennec frantically running in desperation to retrieve Grogu, they are too late, and the Darktroopers swiftly kidnap him.

Retrieving the silver knob and the beskar spear amongst the wreckage of the Razorcrest, Mando gives them to Fett, claiming that the deal is off, because “The hild’s gone.” Instead, Fett and Shand state that because Grogu wasn’t returned safely, they are still in his debt, so they have a responsibility to help him, and after a classic vertical wipe, they return to Nevarro to recruit Cara Dune (Gina Carano). Though she’s now gone legit as an officer of the New Republic, “they’ve got the kid” is enough for her to jump back in. Cutting to Gideon’s cruiser, it’s revealed that Grogu is taking his anger out on stormtroopers, smashing them around like rag dolls. For such an adorable character, its downright chilling, a possible glimpse into what he could become if he goes down a darker path. Moff Gideon uses the Darksaber in front of him, yet also leaves little handcuffs on him, and the final shot of the episode is Grogu asleep on his side, a tiny figure inside the gargantuan ship.

Overall, regardless of being heavy on the action rather than plot, The Tragedy is a winner of an episode, as Rodriguez and crew dramatically raise the stakes by having the bad guys kidnap Grogu and literally exploding Mando’s ship. Most importantly, it functions to give fans a visual realization of how they’ve always imagined Boba Fett to be, an honorable man who nevertheless, can kick ass effortlessly.

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