“The Mandalorian” - Season 3, Episode 6: “Guns for Hire” Review

Story posted April 11, 2023 in Arts & Entertainment by Adrianna Gallucci.

This week’s episode of “The Mandalorian” was slow to start but set up an awesome plot point by the end.

It starts with Axe Woves and his clan of Mandalorians putting on a guns for hire show.

Din and Bo-Katan travel to a planet called Plazir-15 to find Woves, try to convince him to join their clan and bond the Mandalorians together.

They find themselves on Plazir-15, an isolated and strange planet ruled by unique monarchs, the Duchess (Lizzo) and Captain Bombardier (Jack Black), with their main mission being to find Woves, but they end up going on a top-secret mission to discover who is manipulating old Separatist droids to hurt innocent people.

Din and Bo-Katan meet with Commissioner Helgait (Christopher Lloyd), who explains that the droids are malfunctioning and returning to their Separatist program, and that the problem needs to be fixed.

On their mission, Din and Bo-Katan meet with Ugnaughts, and Din introduces himself as a friend of Kuill from the first season of the show. The Ugnaughts hand over the information, and the duo goes on their way (Din has spoken).

Din and Bo-Katan get into it with battle droids and B-2 droids but are able to stop them. While investigating the fallen droid, Bo-Katan finds a spark pad with an address on it, so they check it out.

They end up going to a droid bar, and while Din gets hostile for information, the bartender remarks that if the incidents continue, the droids who came to Plazir-15 for a safe haven will be replaced.

The bartender tells them that the malfunctioning droids must have consumed a drug called Nepenthé, which re-programs them to their original mainframes.

With this information, Din and Bo-Katan meet with a technician who helps them discover that Helgait, who tells them that he “supports democracy” and that “Count Dooku was a visionary” (weird name-drop and weird logic, but okay).

After bringing Helgait back to the royalty, the Duchess grants Din and Bo-Katan access to speak to Woves and the clan.

Woves, for good measure, isn’t happy to see Bo-Katan, and the two go into an old-school Mandalorian battle for rule of the clan. Bo-Katan wins, and Woves questions how she is going to rule without possession of the Darksaber.

Din happily gives it up but explains that on Mandalore, Bo-Katan slayed the creature that captured Din, so by defeating the enemy that defeated the possessor of the Darksaber, it belongs to her.

The episode ends with a pan of Bo-Katan igniting the Darksaber.

Between this cameo and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” premiering on the same day, this episode sparked the Jack Black Renaissance, though there was no musical number in this production.

However, with two episodes left in the season, the pace of “The Mandalorian” this far has been very concerning, and this episode didn’t do much to help.

The second episode of the season gave viewers the most plot, and it seems like it has just been “The Bad Batch”-ification of the show since then.

Viewers can’t forget that they last saw Din and Grogu in “The Book of Boba Fett,” where Grogu had been training with the greatest Jedi alive, Luke Skywalker, for months. Where is the closure of that episode? When are the events of “The Book of Boba Fett” going to be mentioned?

Bo-Katan receiving the Darksaber once again was cool and helps move the Mandalorian unity plot point forward, but viewers have already seen this clip in “Rebels.”

This show has a very short amount of time to wrap up some major plot points and get a move on with the actual content of the show.

Rating: 2.5/5

Adrianna Gallucci is a first-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email amg7989@psu.edu.