This review contains full spoilers for episode five of The Mandalorian Season 3, now available to watch on Disney+.
The threads are finally coming together in Episode 5 of Season 3 of The Mandalorian, which connects the pirates on Nevarro, the dysfunction in the New Republic, and the dream of retaking Mandalore. A lot of the plots in “The Pirate” have been heavily foreshadowed and Jon Favreau’s dialogue is at times a bit repetitive, but there are also a few big surprises that hint at good things to come.
The episode kicks off with Greef Karga’s urban planning meeting interrupted by the inevitable return of Captain Gorian Shard. It’s certainly understandable that Greef didn’t want to depend on a remote bureaucracy, but it’s disappointing that a man who’s been a pirate, a bounty hunter guild leader and worked for an Imperial remnant had no plan for a big threat beyond begging the New Republic for help by sending a droid with a message, Princess Leia-style. Yes, his warden was pulled away, but even the most competent individual can’t fend off a capital ship. New trains sound great, but you should first spend resources on protecting them given how dangerous life on the Outer Rim is. There’s a reason why you can’t have nice things there unless you’re part of a huge crime syndicate or other power block people don’t want to mess with.
Greef’s distress message is delivered to Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), who’s hanging out in a New Republic base with Star Wars Rebels’ Zeb Orrelios (Steve Blum) making his live action debut. The gruff Lestat looks great and it’s wonderful that the extremely talented voice actor is getting to reprise the role. He’s probably being reserved to join other crew members from the Ghost in Ahsoka, but it’s a shame we don’t get him and Teva immediately heading to Nevarro with any other former rebels they can muster. Instead, The Mandalorian continues to lack a sense of urgency and Teva flies to Coruscant to request aid through the proper channels.
This goes about as well as expected given the bureaucratic mess that the New Republic has become. “Captain, this isn’t a rebellion anymore,” Colonel Tuttle (Tim Meadows) tells Teva. The scrappy do gooders may have won the war against the Galactic Empire, but they’re losing the peace. Shard mentions that the New Republic can’t even protect the Mid Rim from the Pirate Nation, further evidence that The Mandalorian is following the First Order origin story from Dave Filoni’s Star Wars Resistance. The dialogue is pretty blunt and repetitive in the scene on Coruscant, as Teva repeatedly connects the dots between the Imperial remnants, Moff Gideon and the pirates. Yes, he’s trying to make his case to an indifferent bureaucrat, but it feels like Favreau is working a bit too hard to prepare viewers for what seem like fairly obvious plot points.
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Even worse for Teva, Tuttle is taking advice from Elia Kane (Katy M. O’Brian) who just has to give him an easy out to avoid intervention by reminding him that Nevarro didn’t sign the charter that would make the planet the New Republic’s responsibility. Meadows does a great job bringing a bit of humor to his exasperation with Teva, particularly his slightly smirking “Uh-oh” when Kane strategically introduces that fact. That means Teva has to look for help elsewhere.
Peli Motto presented R5-D4’s experience in the Rebellion as a selling point to Din Djarin, but apparently it’s also a bit of a liability as the droid was willing to give up his current whereabouts no matter how secret they were supposed to be. The suspense about whether the Mandalorians are going to intervene feels forced, padded with exaggerated murmuring and grandstanding from Paz Vizsla (Jon Favreau), who obviously was going to help Din after he earned enormous goodwill by rescuing Paz’s son in the last episode. However, it is hilarious that the Children of the Watch use the Armorer’s hammer as a talking stick.
As big a threat as these pirates are meant to be, it’s hard to take them seriously when Shard looks like Swamp Thing and the crew’s carousing on Nevarro seems cut straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean as they stumble around drunkenly and harass the few people that remain in the city. When Din says he likes the 10 to 1 odds, his swagger is pretty obviously warranted. A civilian population being bombarded should be horrific, but the scenario is instead played for laughs, from the gawking Anzellans to the Kowakian monkey-lizards helpfully pointing the Mandalorians in the right direction.
That strips away the suspense from the big fight that follows, where the Mandalorians dominate the pirate forces on land and in the air. There’s a bit of the Season 2 episode “The Tragedy” in the escalating weaponry used in the ground battle, but “The Pirate” lacks the intense and overwhelming pressure that came from having such a small group fending off a seemingly unlimited number of stormtroopers.
Shard keeps fighting even when his Mr. Smee-like ally points out how bad things are looking, lending further credence to the idea that he’s working for someone else and his failure would be met with a worse fate than being blown up. It’s a pretty funny touch that he steers the ship using a console that resembles a pirate ship’s helm. While most of the fight is lacking in drama, the fall of his ship is beautifully animated, the percussion of Joseph Shirley’s score blending perfectly into the explosions. Music is always a highlight of The Mandalorian, and it’s particularly well utilized this episode in the scene with the Armorer and Bo-Katan at Nevarro’s broken forge, haunting and building with the subtle chimes resembling the ghost of hammers.
This is a victory lap for the Mandalorians, with even the Armorer getting to show off using her smithing tools as weapons. It also represents the final piece falling into place for Bo-Katan to truly earn the allegiance of the Children of the Watch. After the dubiousness the Armorer expressed about Bo-Katan seeing the Mythosaur last episode, it’s a bit odd how she seems to now take the princess’ claim seriously. Perhaps the evidence that she is the foretold leader just comes from her tactics again winning the Mandalorians a big victory and the reward of a new home that’s a lot less monster infested.
But Bo-Katan’s quest to reunite the Mandalorians is going to run into a big snag given the reveal at the end of “The Pirate” about what happened to Moff Gideon. Was he taken by Mandalorians who want him to answer for the Great Purge of Mandalore or by those who would follow him because he wielded the Darksaber? Presumably his defeat would undermine his claim to relic, but the significant imperial remnant presence around Mandalore could indicate that Gideon’s forces and a group of Mandalorians are now working in concert and have their own goals for the planet.