‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3, Episode 2 Deep Dive, Plus Katee Sackhoff
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These minds date back to the age of the first Mandalore. According to ancient folklore, the minds were once a mythosaur lair. Mandalore the Great is said to have tamed the mythical beast. It is from these legends that the skull signet was adopted and became the symbol of our planet. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I'm Joanna Robinson and fear not, even though I am doing the introduction today...

Your fave and mine, Mallory Rubin, is also here pawing at the screen of me. Love to see it. Love to hear it. Hi, Mallory. How you doing? Oh, you hear that? She's purring like a nuzzle shrew.

Uh, I'm miserable. I'm really sick. I feel like shit. Yeah. I have so much Sudafed in my system right now, but nothing could keep you. The only thing I would love more than a nap is to talk about this episode of the Mandalorian with you. I couldn't miss it. I apologize in advance to you and our listeners. If I am an incoherent babbling loon all pod, but I,

We only get so many chances to chat about Mando together. I just didn't want to miss it. Thanks for having me. Mallory sent me so many texts over the last 48 hours about how she's dying. And every single time I was like, you know, you don't have to do this podcast. And she's like, but I do. So, you know, flowers for Mallory for being here. We're just trading. Yeah, we're just trading ailments and...

I was on the red eye that went wrong, you know, so we're just doing our best here. But we're thrilled to talk to you about season three, episode two of The Mandalorian or aka chapter 18. They call it a mine. The Mines of Mandalore. Before we get into all of that, programming reminders, of course, here on this feed, we

The Midnight Boys, pew, pew, are doing their instant reactions to The Mandalorian. It's great stuff. It's great content. I love to listen to it. I love those boys. What is also true is that sometime in the next few weeks, uh,

DC is putting on a movie called Shazam and we're going to talk about it. That's fun and that's exciting and that might be a bit of a crossover and it's been a while since we've had a House of Midnight. So that is exciting and that is on the horizon. And then also over in the Prestige TV podcast feed, Mallory and I are covering The Last of Us.

I mean, I don't know if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, I would like to see a show about Pedro Pascal and a special child and navigating dangers of the world. Yeah, that's the last of us finale is coming up is upon us, Mallory. And we're devastated. We're very devastated. Also, big announcement. Mallory's here. Chalk full of Sudafed. I'm here on little to no sleep.

Ben Lindbergh will be here. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Yeah. And then also, one Katie Sackhoff. Starbuck herself. Bo-Katan. I'm young!

is here on the podcast this week. Mallory and I got to talk to her. It was absolutely delightful. Just absolutely delightful. There was a small dog there the whole time. It was the whole vibe. Thankfully, it was also before I got sick and you had 47 hours of travel. We were neither of us on fumes for that interview. So that'll be really good. We'll be coherent for that. So that'll come at the end of our discussion of this week's episode. Just a really, really, honestly, genuinely great chat with Mallory.

with Katie. Mallory, I'm not going to make you do this. I'm just going to tell you. I'm just like, we're going to give Mallory a break. Guess what? If you want to keep on top of everything that's coming up now in the future, in the past, I would recommend you subscribe to the Ringerverse feed. Why not do that? Go ahead and subscribe to the Prestige TV podcast while you're at it. I think that's a smart thing to do. Follow us on social.

Twitter, Instagram, Mallory's beloved peach, TikTok. Jomie's just really crushing it at the ringer verse on all of those feeds. And then if you want to email us directly, and we had a ton of great emails this week, like some really, really thought provoking stuff about what's going on in this episode, hobbitsanddragonsatgmail.com.

your apple opinions, your mushroom recipes, your dipping dots, theories, like whatever the case may be. That is what we are here for. Did I miss anything, Mallory? No, I'm just wondering when you're going to update the email alias to NuzzleShrewsAndAlamitesAtGmail.com, but we can talk about it later. I thought we agreed that for branding purposes, we're sticking with Hobbits and Dragons. All right. Mine's a Mandalore.

directed by Rachel Morrison. Rachel Morrison is a well-known cinematographer. She's got a really cool CV. She worked on Fruitvale Station, Dope, and she got nominated for an Oscar for her work on Mudbound. She's the first woman ever to be nominated for in that category of cinematography, which is shameful, but a very cool accomplishment for her. Shameful that it took until 2017 for that to happen. And this episode was written by Jon Favreau. Ever heard of him? Yeah.

It is 45 minutes with the credits, which are, I don't know, 10 minutes long, however they are. That takes us now to our opening snapshot. Steve found such good music for this season of television that I cannot believe that like John Williams himself did not compose some of these things. I was going to say, it's just like working with Lydia Tarr, you know, watching a maestro at work in real time. Yeah.

You love a fine, a finely cut suit, a well-tailored suit, Mallory. Okay. Overall impressions of episode two, Mallory Rubin, giving you time to drink some water. I need a long sip of water. Thanks for really stretching out my name there. Honestly, genuinely helpful. You're a pal.

I loved this episode. I absolutely loved it. I kept texting you, yo, this rolled like 50 times in a row. I was so excited when Van and I were watching it because they showed this at the premiere. I was like,

I was doing the thing that I can't help but do when in real time I'm having like a physical response to how excited I am watching something, which is I kept digging my fingers into Van's arm. And he was very accommodating and very sweet. But like, I thought that it was a genuine shock that

To see, you know, we chatted a lot last week in the premiere about the ground that we revisited, the plot points, the actual conversations that were retreads of events in Book of Boba Fett for the viewers who missed that and why that needed to happen there.

Based on the decisions they had previously made. And while I enjoyed episode one and thought it was fun and just genuinely loved being back in the world, despite some of those parts of the episode that felt slower, it without question did feel slower as a result of that. This episode was not only like fast paced and vibrant and thrilling, but zipped us straight to the

events that I had assumed heading into season three would be episode six, episode seven, possibly finale territory. So it makes me not only, not only am I loving the episode, it makes me so full of anticipation for what comes after this. Because if we thought this was the end and this is episode two, then what fun awaits? It's so exciting. What about you? How did you feel about the episode? Oh, I loved it.

But it's so interesting to me to think about the fact that you watched the premiere and this episode sort of back to back. When you went to go see the premiere event, they sort of surprised you with episode two. And so you watch them in short order next to each other. And something that you and I have talked about off pod, but I want to bring the conversation to the pod is this question of like, should- Is how you think Darth Maul is hot? No. Oh, is that not? Okay. It's on the agenda today, Mallory. We'll get there.

As you know, I have shoehorned away talking about Darth Maul in this podcast. Yeah. Should this have been, these two episodes, one supersized premiere? And the more I think about it, the more enamored... Not only am I enamored with that idea of those two episodes, sort of their powers combined, creating like a great, exciting, invigorating return to this world. I like them individually. I think they would have been stronger together. And then I think that...

When you look at some of the plotting in this episode and some of the things that happened in terms of like Din going to see Bo last week, but then also like leaving and then coming back and some of the IG stuff, like all of it sort of seems like maybe initially this was one episode and they chopped it up for whatever reason that they have. And so like a little bit of there's a little bit of funkiness around the way in which this

Din and Grogu are zipping around that I think, I don't have any insider information, but it seems like this was one arc chopped into two. And we'll maybe talk about some of those specific reasons why. But so that's not to say, I mean, I loved this episode. I just think, like, I heard some people's criticisms last week, especially as we talk about that whole, like,

How do you feel about Mandalorian after Andor? And I think that first introduction last week, which we likened to delightfully sugary breakfast cereal on a weekend, you know, felt a little lightweight for people. And I think if it had been paired with this episode, it wouldn't have felt as lightweight. Does that make sense? What do you think? I think it's a great point. It's a... I love when you, whenever you have these insights about maybe an edit or a repositioning, I'm always so fascinated. You have such a keen eye for that. And it...

In addition to agreeing, it kind of forces me to do something I've been a little reluctant to do, which is maybe concede the point that the Book of Boba episode should just not have been in Book of Boba Fett. Like, I've really been, as you know...

a little bit like, okay, well, if we're going to have this expanded, connected universe, then actually it's a cool and good thing that the characters pop up in each other's shows. It makes it feel more authentically entwined. I enjoy seeing those crossover event team-up moments. But this also, I think, gets to what we were talking about at the beginning with the genuine shock you feel as a viewer when you see the Mythosaur. Yeah.

right here in episode two when we're spending all this time on Mandalore. It's like, maybe that was supposed to be episode four because maybe episodes, maybe chapters five and six and a little bit of seven of Boba Fett were supposed to be the opening couple episodes of this season. Now, again, I remain genuinely glad we didn't have to wait inside of this season to see Din and Grogu together that we picked up with them together and just zipped ahead. But,

If those had been the opening episodes, then you pull out from episode one entirely all of the scenes that repeat and you take what was left of episode one and combine it with what's here. You, I think, arguably have three of the strongest installments in the history of the show to open this season. And you're talking about this as a historically good season of not only Star Wars, but sci-fi TV, which is a little bit different. I'm having a blast, but a little bit different.

of the conversation right now. So it's worth the, you know, we won't know until we're four seasons deep to Book of Boba Fett really what the grand design was. No, I'm kidding. Except am I? Because Peli mentioned the Hutts and Boba. So who knows? That's like a jump scare. You're saying four seasons of Book of Boba Fett is like a jump scare on a Friday morning for me. Quickly.

I am going to address the controversy that I kicked up last week. An amazing bullet point in our outline. Incredible stuff. I a little bit knew what I was doing, but I didn't know to the full extent. So we got an email from Justin and many...

many other people. This is what Justin wrote. So I have a dog and a cat, and therefore I don't take sides on the is Grogu a dog or a cat debate. But for the dog owners this week, doesn't Din Djarin turn... Doesn't Din Djarin turn into Timmy and Grogu Lassie with the way he goes back and gets help from Bo-Katan? Yeah, like... Like...

Didn't literally went down a well. Like, it's a very lassy storyline. But the point is, the dog owners are very mad that I call Grogu a cat. And mostly it's the dog owners with small dogs. And I will concede this. I have been cuddled by a small dog. A small dog has like curled up in my lap by my side, blah, blah, blah. I did not mean to imply that only cats ever cuddle.

cuddle with their owner. So I apologize that that is something that you guys felt like I was, I might've literally said that and I apologize. I don't apologize to the large dog owners. No, dogs are wonderful. Dogs are wonderful. And Grogu is a cat. And Grogu is a cat. And both of those things are true. It's fine. Both of those things are true. Also, Justin saying I have a dog and a cat and so I don't pick sides. This is like saying you don't have a favorite child. Like, of course. Ever.

got a side. Everyone's got a favorite. Justin, write in and tell us which side you're really on. We won't tell anyone. We promise. But we won't read it out next week. All right. Next, we have a question for you, Mallory. This email comes from Ryan. I'm a real idiot because I just said something about needing to pick a side before you were about to read this question. This shows you I'm off my fucking game today. Disaster. What an own goal. Go ahead.

It's my favorite sports phrase. So in this episode, Ryan writes, our sweet little baby P. Grogu was attacked by both a droid and an animal.

I need to know if Mal was conflicted or if she was 100% with Grogu the whole time. Yeah, Mal, you've been wearing your droids rights conversations now. How do you feel? First of all, this was a blood sucking eyeball sack inside of a droid skeleton. Cyborg rights.

Do cyborgs not deserve to live? Do cyborgs not deserve to suck the goo out of our hero in order to live? I can comfortably say I was not rooting for the cyborg against Grogu, nor was I rooting for the winged lizard birds that were snapping at him. It made me think back to the moment where, you know, they're in one of our favorite episodes, Sanctuary, or they're wandering in right before my guide down some restorative bone broth. I could go for some of that right now, I gotta say. And the Loth-Cat, like, jumps out. He's got the little scare. You know, I love a Loth-Cat.

But in that moment, my desire was to bring Grogu to my breast and nuzzle him against me and feel his heart beating flush with mine. And that will always be my desire because I love him more than anything in the world other than my cat, Halo. And so while I love animals and while I love droids and while I don't want to see harm befall animals or droids, I'm taking Grogu's side a thousand out of a thousand here. This is easy. This is easy. Who was

the lizard creature against Grogu. Listen, to the monsters were the monsters. Maybe they were just trying to live their lives down in their creepy little caverns. All right. Last but not least, speaking of nuzzling Grogu close to your chest, I wanted to make sure we addressed a very important moment in Mandalorian fandom that happened this week, which was Pedro Pascal appeared on the show Hot Ones. Great show. Love it. Um...

He was great on it. But most importantly, and I would be shocked if you're listening to this and you haven't seen it yet, he does, Pedro Pascal did an impression of the Grogu puppet.

I really recommend you watch this because there is a visual component that goes with it. But I just thought we would treat ourselves on a Friday morning and listen to Pedro Pascal's Grogu impression they did on Hot Ones. Steve, will you play that for us, please? This puppet is making me cry. Right. You know, it's like, you know, you know, I fully and I'm like, damn.

My favorite part is the next line after that where he's like, this is like the only time I get to have my helmet off, bro. You're stealing it. You're stealing it. So funny. Mallory. Yeah. How did you... Tell me, take me through your emotional journey seeing Pedro Pascal do a Grogu impression. This is just one of the true joys of life so far. That's how I feel about it. In September, I'll turn...

I'm 36 and a half. And, you know, it's long enough, I think, to say with confidence, like what the life highlights are. And this is up there. It's up there, Jo. How about for you? Where's the rank? I'm so sorry that this is just an audio podcast because I wish you could see the Sudafed gleam in Mallory's eyes. She was talking about that. That was delightful. Yeah, it was incredible. Incredible content. It was so amazing.

Amazing. Pedro Pascal really knows the angles on how to like make a clip go viral. This guy, this guy knows what he's doing. Also just rocking an incredible fit. Oh yeah. He loves hot pink. He's a big hot pink guy. Amazing. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've done a lot of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.

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Steve, after this episode, we're going to need you to sub out the sound design for this segment for the sound after Bo pulls Din out of the living waters of the Beskar helmets clanking against the stone and everyone going into concussion protocol. Can we go with that instead in future episodes? I was like, can we have a more gentle landing? What did that sound like again, Mallory? Yeah. Please use the isomallory version of that. All right. Um...

To misquote Jurassic Park, we're back on tattooing. Tell us how you're feeling about it. Tell us how you're feeling, Jo. Well, conflicted. Honestly, I feel, you know, similar to Justin trying to pick between a cat and a dog here because...

Arjuna and I were talking about Tatooine last night and he texted me and he was like, so many lightsabers in the sand. And I kind of feel like that should be Tatooine, so many lightsabers in the sand. There's just like, we're constantly going back to Tatooine. This is something we've talked about a lot. However, as fatigued as I may be to be back in Tatooine, I love Palimoto. So I was just sort of like, I was like, oh,

You know, and really we just like, we were just like in her hangar pretty much, you know. It's like shit, oh no, this is so mean, you know. We're going to talk about Peli's look a little later. Wait, wait. What? You got to be honest with us though. How full of resentment and dare I say rage are you that we went back to Tatooine and didn't get an update on Cobb Vanth?

I was going to talk about Cobb Vanth anyway. Will you stand for it? I was going to talk about Cobb Vanth in this episode anyway because so many people are now like, oh, Bo-Katan, Din Djarin, do I ship it? And I'm like, guys, let's be really clear. Din Djarin's not on the market. Like, he's not on the market. He has a boyfriend. His name is Cobb Vanth. So I can't support it. But yeah, all I would have taken is one little like,

shot of a back to tank. You know what I mean? Perhaps Cobb emerging from said back to tank. Who am I to say? You know, I don't, I don't make this show, but maybe I should. No, I, I, I, I know I feel, I feel my faith restored. Now that we've seen the Mythosaur in episode two, like the opportunities for where we're going to go are boundless for in this season. So I feel I've been, I've been worried and doubting and you've been strong and confident that Cobb Vanth is coming. I'm not worried that we didn't get him here.

We'll get him. But here we get, you know, another one of those scenes that you've been talking about last week, this idea of like, hey, where did Din Djarin get his fancy new ship? We got to remind people who didn't watch Book of Boba Fett that Peli Moto, you know, he built it essentially with Peli Moto and Book of Boba Fett. Peli Moto and BD, all the folks out there who are like,

Oh, the only droid that Din ever bonded with was IG-11. No. Let's remember that meaningful time that BD and Din had restoring the N1 Starfighter. That little bubba holding his light and getting some feedback from Din on whether or not he could see. I like that...

the point that a lot of people are making that this inter interchange between Peli Moto and the, and the Rodian customer here. Yeah. Customer? The mark. The mark. Peli is a scoundrel. She's like running a scam. The way that the Rodian like looks so fancy and the way that he is this like nice blue speeder is meant to show that perhaps like Navarro,

Mos Eisley is on the up and up under the excellent management of one Mr. Boba Fett. I mean, I have to be honest. This literally didn't even occur to me. I don't think that Boba has managed to get Mos Espa under control, let alone extending to the neighboring Mos Eisley. I assume this was a Boonta Eve get up that he's like dressed up ready for the holiday. We're just a few minutes away from fireworks. Pelly's going to start complaining about how she's got to work on the holiday. Maybe this is just as Boonta Eve garb for

Perhaps I will concede that I do not know the dress protocol for Boone to Eve. What would you wear to Boone to Eve celebration, Mallory? I'd be prepared for the pod race. You know, we got a little glimpse of some racing in the opening stretch. So am I participating in the race? Am I watching from the stands? What sort of concessions am I trying to lock down? Am I near a hut at any point? I'd factor all of this in and then I'd land at the same place I always do. Comfortable waistband. Comfortable waistband.

A jogger, perhaps. A pair of Air Maxes and a loose-fitting T-shirt with a zip hoodie. Speaking of droid bonding between Din and our nuts and bolts brethren, R5-D4, a key original droid of the Star Wars universe, is...

A lot of people are losing their minds over the fact that this feels like maybe a confirmation of something we probably already knew. But Peli using the full name R5D4, good old bad motivator himself, is here saying,

to really quickly just sort of jettison the IG-11 plot in a way that is very confusing to me. Din is like, it can only be this droid. I have to fix this droid. And then it's like, nevermind any droid will do, I suppose. Speaking of marks, Din Djarin is definitely a mark of Pelimoto's scam here. Because if people look at the timeline, it seems like R5-D4 has never left Tatooine.

So when Pele Moto talks about him coming back from the, like serving the rebellion, do you think R5-D4 ever served the rebellion or do you think this is all part of Pele Moto's like snow job that she does here?

Uh, yeah, I think, you know, Peli has been studying from a certain point of view, specifically the story of the red one in the new canon. And, you know, like, like the rest of the, the star Wars fandom, she's like, man, this guy's been in our life a long time. You know, we spotted him back in attack of the clones, long time Tatooine resident, obviously in not the canonical timeline, but our real lives as viewers. The first time we saw him in new hope, you know, could have been the droid with, with Luke and, and Owen, except obviously,

as canonized in the story in a certain point of view, basically asked R5 to throw the game. Asked him to have the faulty motivator malfunction so that Luke would take R2 instead, discover the hologram within, and hey, as they say, Joe. I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi. I was going to say the rest is history, but then decided to say that instead because it always makes me laugh. I was going to say,

Hey, she's pretty hot, which is essentially what he says about his sister in that moment. Incredible stuff. But yeah, so there is information in the canon about how R5 had been with the Rebellion, ended up with the Jawas,

wants to go back to the rebellion, feels like he can serve his duty best for the mission by listening to what R2 is saying here and then goes to serve in the rebellion after. And I, for one, I'm not going to take that away from him. There is that clip of Dave Filoni when they're talking about how they wanted to...

treat him like how they wanted to prep him, I believe, in season one. Am I remembering this correctly? Like, kind of wondering about maybe the alt history on the R5 CV. So are you questioning R5's record? No, to question R5's war record is to take sneaky credit away from R2. And R2 is like constantly on the sneak and, you know, an angle, an agenda. I'd like to say that even if he never...

went into another droid port in an X-Wing, he did partake in a meaningful moment in the rebellion with what he did there, with what he did at the Lars homestead. You know? Big moment. He's like the rat in Endgame, Joe. Like, where would we be without him? Let's think about it. Wow, how do you think R5 would feel? Great. Speaking of droid rights, how do you think he would feel compared to a rat? A living sentient hero. Just like me. How do you feel about R5?

How do you feel about our friend Peli Moto when she calls R5 the help? Listen, I love Peli. I love my time with Peli. These scenes genuinely always make me laugh. Love some levity. Yeah. I think Peli needs to look inward and reflect on how she treats her droid pals here at the workshop. She's consistently demeaning and dismissive and rude. Yes. And...

I don't think that they should stand for it anymore. So when the rebellion, when the droid rebellion comes, they're starting with Palimoto. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

It's just like, Pelly, let's reflect a little bit. Let's reflect. I mean, the only thing I'll say in her defense is she's distracted by how cute Grogu is after he flips into her arms and who can blame her. But she's never too distracted to run a scam, as you noted, because as soon as they're about to disembark and the N1's about to take off into the fireworks, she's like, actually, just kidding. But you can't. No take back. This droid is a bucket of nerves. Sorry, bye, joy. All right. You want to talk about the Grogu flip? Well... My little acrobatic gumdrop? I want to talk

I want to talk less about the flip. You love the acrobatics. I love the potential of a verbal Grogu, right? Because... So there's this moment, right, where Peli's like, you know, did he talk? Like,

Did he just say Peli? Like, was that his first word? Like, is that what I just heard? And like, parents are always... Peli is like a godmother, let's say. But parents are always like looking for meaning in nonsense syllables from their pre-verbal children. That's the thing that happens. However, as you noted last week, there has been a serious, serious ramp up in the babbling and the cooing and the gurgling. So much so that like...

we wouldn't be like, it feels like they were leading up towards a verbal Grogu. This is something that we are like interested in, but maybe a little nervous about because I feel like the, you know, we talked about this, but like the first time we hear the Grogu voice, we're going to be like, well, is that right? But it might be similar to Grogu where when we heard that name, we were like, is that right? Let's workshop it. Yeah. And now I'm like, this is the most perfect thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. We never had a doubt.

Mallory, I love you so much. You are often hyperbolic, but this is a record. This is a record. This is hyperbole Friday.

Over under on when Grogu speaks in complete sentences. I want to wait. I want to wait a full... I'm not ready for it, I don't think. I'm just... Here's the thing. I'm having the time of my life with the gurgling and the babbling and the cooing and the trilling and all of the other descriptions that we get. For the record, Pelly, just want to say that the subtitling on Disney Plus for this moment was, quote,

So on the subtitles, at least they think we're still in the babbling zone. But here's the thing. I'm just going to repeat what I said last week, which is, yeah, Grogu's already speaking. Did he say a word here in basic? No, I do not think so. I do not think this was his first utterance in basic.

However, I think he's speaking the whole time. He's communicating just like Halo does with me. What was that little chirp? The different cadence, the tone, the volume, the urgency. I know exactly what he means.

When he speaks to me, and similarly, Grogu is communicating quite effectively, I think. We're about to get a really good example of that momentarily. We're mere minutes away, but before we get there, I just want to mention something that someone did say with their mouth and words and basic, which is Pelimoto saying, may the force be with you. I thought you were going to say who taught you how to leap like a Lerman. Well, that's my next tattoo, as you know, but like, may the force be with you.

Feels like a really monumental moment, especially when we come from... As we continue to think about Grogu as someone who is both Mandalorian and a Force user. We see him use the Force quite effectively in this episode, in a bid to save his dad. And Bo speaks to him about it, about his prowess. So I just think it's... They're trying to keep it at the fore for us. But I just think it's interesting, like the May the Force Be With You...

And obviously, like, that there's that, like, member-bearing nostalgia key factor to it, but also just to think about the evolution of Din Djarin's character and his relationship to the Force, his knowledge of the Force, its existence, what it means, and his comfort with it. That someone could just say, I mean, whether or not they heard her over the fireworks and the roar of the engine, who knows? But, like, you know, someone could say this to him is, I think, interesting. I love it.

All right, speaking of the intelligible babbles of one G-R-O-G-U, um...

Grogu and Din are off on an adventure, right? He says, all right, kid, you ready for an adventure? Also, that all right, kid felt very Han Solo to me, right? All right, kid, you ready for an adventure? And of course, it reminded me, and I don't know if it reminded you, Mallory, of one of our favorite lines from the much maligned Rings of Power TV show that we enjoyed in the finale. Alone is just a journey, now adventures.

they must be shared. And so you think about, you think about when we met Din Djarin doing his, you know, doing his work alone, wandering the galaxy, bringing bounties in, so alone. Now he's got his little, his son, his partner, his buddy. He can have an adventure. Go find the home world, kid. Let's go. Incredible. It's an adventure. Yeah.

I love this. Clan Mudhorn. Family. Found family. Beautiful. Found family. Love it. Beautiful. Okay. Those intelligible babbles and coos and gurgles. I think this is a really good example here. We're going to listen to Din talking to Grogu as they embark on this adventure. Steve? It looks scary, I know. But it was once green and beautiful, back when the songs were written. It's Mandalore, the homeworld of our people.

Every Mandalorian can trace their roots back to this planet and the Beskar mines deep within. And you know what? I've never been there either. I grew up there, on that moon, Concordia. And that's Kalevala where we visited Bo-Katan. It's in the same system. A Mandalorian has to understand maps and know their way around. That way, you'll never be lost.

I just envisioned based on like what we were just talking about in that Hot Ones interview, Pedro Pascal listening to this and being like, I'm giving a really emotional, beautiful monologue. And like the sound designers have put it in like a like over the top of it. But anyway, it starts with...

That sound from Grogu, you know, like that little like, like, I'm nervous. I'm worried. I'm scared. And this is what Din says in response. And so to your point, Grogu is communicating emotions. Absolutely. Even without forming words. There's some key words we want to pull out of this speech here. I think we want to start with

Homeworld of our people. Yes. It says our people. Underline bold. Clan Mudhorn. You're a Mandalorian. You, Grogu, are a Mandalorian. You're a foundling. We have moved officially, formally, without a doubt, from the phase of the quest and the mission into the phase of family. And the...

The sweetness with which Din is greeting that uncertainty that you're identifying in Grogu, that trepidation, like, facing so much that is unknown and unfamiliar to him. The way that he, like, moves up to the little perch to look out the window. This paternal side that we're seeing in Din, but also, like, we talked about this last week, and I really am feeling this so...

keenly in the season so far, Din was so focused on finding Grogu a teacher previously. And the moments now where he is embracing that role, I'm the one who will help you learn. I'm the one who will help you acclimate, I think are just even richer and more meaningful as a result of that. And he's sharing his history too. He's sharing his life and his backstory. And that's like a vulnerable and meaningful thing too. You know, we knew...

We knew from the book of Boba Fett, chapter five, from the armorer, she had said, had our sect not been cloistered on the moon of Concordia, we would not have survived the great purge. So we knew from the fact that Din had been a part of this sect that he, or we had deduced, I should say, maybe more than we knew that, that he had grown up on Concordia. Um,

That was one of the many, you know, many, many, many data points that the Children of the Watch were an offshoot of Death Watch. There are a number of others. We've talked about them on many other pods. That was a big one. So, you know, I thought this was interesting, too, because we'll get too bogged down in the weeds of the timeline, especially we're about to talk to Ben about the history of Mandalorian warfare. But I did think this was interesting that Din said he'd never gone to Mandalore because...

This, he grew up, he was rescued during the Clone Wars. Like, when we saw Death Watch rescue him, you saw that Death Watch signet on the pauldron of the Mandalorian soldiers who rescued him. They're fighting...

I mean, this is, there are a lot of moments in that scene that place that in the Clone Wars. And so the reason I mention that is just to say, Mandalore had not been destroyed yet. The Purge is after that. The Purge is after the events of Rebels when we see Bo-Katan inherit, when we see Sabine Wren give her the Darksaber. The Purge takes place between the end of Rebels and the beginning of the Mandalorian and that slice of the timeline. So in theory, the planet was there to be visited. Why couldn't they? Because they were exiled! The reason!

that they're on Gagordia is because they weren't allowed to go to, but don't you think that's interesting in terms of Din's larger awareness of like where his sect fits into the larger stretch of, like was he never like, why can't we go there? Why are we not allowed to visit?

I just find that so interesting. I feel like Din Djarin has spent a lot of his life not interrogating much. Like, that has been his thing, and this is a whole awakening for him, leading to the larger question of, like, is this the way, right? But I think to go back to that quote that you pulled out that the armorer said in the Book of Boba Fett episode, cloistered, right, on the moon of Concordia. Like, that is just a very specific word to use. And so this idea that, like,

And it is so Mandalorian to be so close and yet so far from your home planet, to feel entitled to something, to feel shut out from something, to feel frustrated by that, and to then burrow deeper into... Because Children of the Watch, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this lore, but if Children of the Watch are a spinoff of Death Watch...

Again, they're just like a much more extreme version of that because the Death Watch folks, Bo-Katan was one of them, they took their helmets off. Like, this is not a Death Watch thing. This is a I'm burrowing deeper and deeper and deeper into the old ways sort of thing that the children of the Watch have adopted. Yeah, and I think that what we can glean from the nuggets of...

we've gotten from the armor is that they credit their survival of the purge with adhering to the creed and thus leaned into it even more fully. And it compounds and the zealotry builds, et cetera, et cetera. Like another thing that the armorer said in that Boba chapter five episode, the armorer has said as much that the fact that they have

this creed and the way so strictly is the reason that they were able to make it out. So that's like pretty alarming. And I think if we pair it with the way that Dan is presenting this geography lesson to Grogu and that idea of that way, you'll never be lost. There's, there's this, this aspect of Dan's character yet again, where I think like we've, we've really, I think love talking about this in our primer pod and our conversations about this season so far, he is, uh,

already positioned, I think, to have a view that is distinct from some of the more strict adherents in their covert, and yet he really subscribes to and abides by these beliefs. So when he says something like that to Grogu, there's like the very handy, here's where Kalavala is, reminder for the rest of this episode. You know, we've started to get the navigation set up, the Chekhov's maps last week, but that was presented as like, you never know where you might be heading next.

next. Be ready for the unexpected. This, you'll never be lost. These are kind of bookend ideas that you can make your home and find your way wherever you are as long as you have your clan. Gives us a little bit of that Grogu, the navigator that we were talking about with Ben last week as well in his lore segment, potentially setting up the Purgle

Grogu path to Ezra, right? Bo calls him quite the navigator in this episode. Yeah, so they're drawing our attention to that time and again. So that armor, the full quote from the armor in chapter five is interesting because it is explicitly set in contrast to Bo-Katan. She says, Bo-Katan Kryze was born of a mighty house, but they lost sight of the way her role ended in tragedy.

Had our sect not been cloistered on the moon of Concordia, we would not have survived the Great Purge. Those born of Mandalore strayed away from the path. Eventually, the Imperial interlopers destroyed all that we knew and loved in the Night of a Thousand Tears. Only those that walked the way escaped the curse prophesied in the Creed. So, totally normal, cool stuff from the armor as per usual. Okay, but again...

It makes no sense to me that Din Djarin would go to Kalavala, then go to Tatooine, and then go back to the Mandalore system. And that's where I get that weird, like, I think that scene was pulled out. Yeah. Like, I think if you rewatched that scene, if you rewatched that scene, which I did, that ended last week's episode, there's, they land...

and R5 isn't on the ship, obviously, but like that's something you could really easily digitally take out. And like, I can see a version of this story where they leave Tatooine, go to Boe,

With R5. And Bo's like, I don't want it. I'm done. Like, no, go away. Then they go. So they were just there. And then they go to Mandalore and then Grogu comes back and she's like, I told you didn't try. Oh, oh, no, it's the cute baby. So anyway. OK, before we go to Ben, I just wanted to give you, Mallory Rubin, a quick second to

We get Din Djarin talking about the importance of maps here. You have some opinions about another Pedro Pascal character and maps. So here we go to Map Corner with Mallory Rubin. What do you want to say about one Mr. Joel story?

Miller on The Last of Us versus Din Djarin. I'm just thrilled that Pedro Pascal has the opportunity to play a deft navigator here in The Mandalorian. No real contextual spoilers for The Last of Us here on a podcast about another show, but at least nobody shoved a dagger into Grogu's mouth and said, you know, show me where we are. And it better match where R5 says we are.

If you ever decide to catch up with The Last of Us, if you're not listening to our coverage of The Last of Us, just know that Mallory is a recurring bit where she talks about how shit Joel Miller is at reading maps. And so the fact that Din Djarin's like, maps are really important, it's just pretty funny.

This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email or something and you're like, I thought I canceled that. Well, this is what happens. These days, anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of, it's the ones that they have better deals.

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Estimated savings of one plus cancellation. Paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See Experian.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Alien Romulus, the scariest movie of the summer. Alien Romulus is now playing in theaters everywhere, including IMAX. This movie looks terrifying.

And I cannot wait to see it. Alien Romulus comes from Fede Alvarez, the director of intense horror movies like Evil Dead and Don't Breathe. And it is produced by the legendary Ridley Scott, the mastermind behind iconic films like Blade Runner and the original Alien. Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, now playing only in theaters. Get your tickets now. Sounds to me like a perfect time to go to our pal Ben Lindbergh to get some lore from

about Mandalore. Ben! What happened on Mandalore? It's too confusing to explain, I've heard. But I'm here to make it more comprehensible. It really is confusing. Bo is not kidding about that. How did we get here, Ben?

A lot of wars, a lot of conflict, just a martial race and lots of conflicts with others and with themselves. So we know about the Great Purge, right, and the Night of a Thousand Tears. But that was really just the last act of the

millennia of warfare on Mandalore, which is why, you know, it's a nice place to visit, but not a nice place to live, really. Actually, it's not that nice a place to visit either. I take that back. If you're really into escape rooms, it's a nice place to visit. Yeah, sure. There's a series of cataclysms, I guess we could say, about Mandalore. So I think maybe what the show would lead people to believe is that this was just a beautiful, verdant planet.

before the Empire bombed the hell out of it. But that really isn't the case. It was sort of a wasteland prior to that. There was a war between the Mandalorians and the Jedi. There were squabbles among the Mandalorians. And so it was really sort of a wasteland for a while, which is why when we visit Sundari, the lovely ruins of Sundari, it's a dome, right? It's a biodome, which presumably

preceded the Night of a Thousand Tears. So you might wonder, well, why were they living in a dome? It's because it was a desert before that. It was a pretty barren place. So even though it's technically habitable, it's definitely not hospitable. How do you think we got from like the sandy surface that we saw in some of the animated shows to Rebels specifically, I think, to like this shard-like situation? Yeah.

Right. The shards specifically seem to be a remnant of the fusion bombs that the Empire dropped, that Moff Gideon dropped. But again, the people were largely confined to domes, bio-cubes, they called them, right? So they were sort of living indoors anyway. So when Bo is talking about how it used to be beautiful, either she's talking about a long, long time ago or...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I mean... Yeah, I like a dome. Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm indoors a lot, so... Syracuse fan, Ben. You're married into a Syracuse family. Big carrier dome family. You love a dome. So long, Jim Bohan. It always looked nice when Obi-Wan and Satine took a stroll talking about pacifism and terrorism. Looked like a lovely place. Sure, yeah. I noticed that...

Bo doesn't talk much about terrorism these days. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Selective version of Mandalorian history. But...

The purge was just kind of the culmination, really. That was just the straw that broke Mandalore's back, really, because the Mandalorians had already been decimated by just the fighting among themselves and with others. So it's really been a long, painful history for them, which is why it would be quite important if they were able to come together and set their differences aside. But

I guess what I wonder is what would reclaiming Mandalore even look like at this point? Because, I mean, again, like, I guess the planet's there for the taking, right? So as I wrote in my recap this week, it doesn't seem like there's great intel or effort to explore the place in that everyone just seems to think that it was unbreathable air, that it was toxic.

doesn't seem to have been anything stopping anyone from just landing and checking the place out, taking some air samples, right? So I wonder about just the curiosity of the zealots here who just sort of wrote off their most sacred place as impassable and destroyed, apparently on faulty information here. But it's not a nice place. So they got it wrong to some extent, but not totally. Yeah.

I want to talk about, I mean, we don't know a ton or really anything about the various critters that we encounter here on Mandalore, but I do want to talk about those in a second. But I just want to bring up an email that we got that I plan to talk about later, but I actually really want Ben's take on this. So this email comes from Blake, who wrote, Do you ever feel like the Mandalorians are on a cultural level too much?

dumb to live. I know this is not a problem exclusive to them within the Star Wars canon, the Jedi, ever heard of them, but between a battery of self-inflicted wounds, routinely falling for the grift from outsiders, a suffocatingly inflexible code and leadership structure, a tendency to live in exclusively dangerous environments.

The big shark thing last week, the living waters being three steps between a half mile drop off this week, and current savior Din Djarin being with love, kind of hapless. I can't help but feel that the Mandalorians are people in ten over claiming this is a way as they jackass themselves.

out of existence. Ben, will you stand for this Mandalorian slander? How do you feel? That's not wrong. Yeah. I mean, we can't call it an adaptive behavior, this society. I mean, they have kind of driven themselves extinct. Now, not to let the empire off the hook here either, but...

But they had already driven themselves into quite a plight. And that's why when Bo is sort of bemoaning all the fights and the squabbles, you know, it's like we're all trying to find the gal who did this sort of situation because she had a hand in that. I mean, there was a new Mandalorian movement. There were pacifists, but...

Bo's sister was in charge of that movement. I mean, things were orderly for a hot second there. And then the Mandalorians decided, actually, we don't want peace. We want to be at war constantly. That's our tradition. It's called Star Wars. Yeah, exactly. It's not Star Peace. Come on. So it's like, who are we if we are not constantly at war, which will maybe be a theme of the season. We will see. But anyway.

When they've tried to figure that out before, it didn't take. And that's why we are where we are with the people scattered to the stars and the surface of the planet. Just sort of a slag heap. Slag heap. Mal, where do you stand on Mandalorian's too dumb to live? How do you feel about that? The phrasing in Blake's email just absolutely slayed me. Iconic stuff from Blake. Thanks for chiming in. You know, I like, Ben, what you said about what you said about Bo and

Something that we've been chatting about on the pod and amongst ourselves and in our slacks and in our texts, I think all three of us are really harping on that rightly and are curious to see how much of this progress that is central to Bo's arc, which is a good and cool thing, will allow room for...

owning that past direct hand. But like the thing I really like about it, what you're observing is it's not specific to Bo. You know, if you think about a character like Sabine Wren, another cherished Mandalorian figure across the canon, who's going to be debuting in live action this year, uh,

Sabine literally made the most lethal weapon that the Mandalorians have ever had to face. Yep. An arc pulse generator that could specifically target the Beskar alloy in the armor. They named it the Duchess to mock Satine's pacifism. And when Sabine realized what the Empire was going to use it for...

She left the Academy. She became a part of our beloved Spectres. She righted her wrongs right down to destroying the machine once she realized that they had used the prototype designs to attempt to recreate badly, though, in terms of the range, a version of that machine. And...

Bo was a part of that arc and was the character who actually helped pull Sabine back inside of the, this is the opening couple episodes of season four of Rebels, to,

to a more measured and hopeful and forward-looking approach rather than sinking back into the rage and the despair. So that gives me hope for a character like Bo, that these recurring patterns, the number of people who have fallen into some sort of harmful path and then have been able to work their way forward and then work their way forward even more effectively together, maybe there's hope there for Bo and Din. But yeah. And I think bringing up Sabine, and you already mentioned that,

Bo and her sister Satine were on opposite sides of their own Mandalorian civil war. Sabine's is at odds with her own family also in that storyline. And so the story of Mandalorian conflict is all often related

of families ripped apart, internal conflict within a family unit. And so I think it's so interesting. You know, we got a bunch of emails from people in general about this idea of like, well, don't Din and Bo and Grogu make kind of an appealing little family unit in this episode? And it's like, I think intentionally so. I don't know where this is going. We'll talk about it more as we go on. But like,

I don't know if they're setting us up to be really into this connection just to rip it apart so that they can really make us feel that Civil War constant cycle of the Mandalorians, you know? Yeah, it's either like a real path to progress and a rich one and a rich redemption arc or...

Or it's this recurring cycle that these characters can't escape, even, and this would be most tragic of all, when they have awareness of it. And that's, I think, like a very real, what feels like a very real risk right now with Bo. Like, I keep hearing Tony Stark's voice from the beginning of Iron Man 3 in my mind watching these episodes. You know, we create our own demons. And that's just like a very present thing for the Mandalorian figures at the heart of this story. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm all for Bo growing as a character. And given where she was in the past, it would in some ways be more meaningful if she were to just lay down her arms and set aside differences. I just I don't know whether the full arc of her character would be obvious to people who are just watching live action here without her whole history in the animated series. Right. It's just sort of...

glossing over some of the more unsavory aspects of her past. But again, it's a lot of history. They haven't had the, hey, remember when you used to be a terrorist conversation? Yeah, exactly. But I'm hoping they will. And not to continuously tease the interview that's at the end of this episode, but we did talk to Katie about this a little bit. So she had some interesting things to say about that, which made me really excited for where this is all going to go. Me too.

I know you don't have a ton of information on the Alamites, the folks that we meet in this episode, nor the eyeball spider droid. I don't know if that one has a technical name. But any thoughts or feelings? I'm going with Spideborg. Spideborg? Yeah, instead of cyborg, he's like a spiderborg and like, you know, makes me think again of Tony. Spiderling? Spiderboy? General Devious? I don't know, like something like that. General Devious, I like.

What do you have to say about these critters, Ben? I love the design, at least, of the cyborg, right? I mean, that was one thing I liked about this episode is that it had this sort of almost mystical Mines of Moria sort of, you know, ruins of a great civilization.

And that it also had just almost like a body horror aspect to it right there in the middle, you know, and Mal and I were talking about this, but yeah, very Grievous-like, just the cyborg nature, sort of the stalking, you

Yeah, the electrostaff. Yes. Yeah, almost like a Dianogen eye. I mean, just a great design, I think. And like any boss, three different forms, right? Just the head form, the intermediate body form, and the giant crab droid form. So I love the design. I mean, it reminded me of, I don't know, like a Geiger or like a Matrix sort of, you know, just...

Like sentinels just capturing humans and feeding off them sort of situation. I mean, you'd think that the cyborg probably has to be hungry because there can't be a ton of foot traffic down there, I wouldn't think. Well, let me throw this your way in real time. Theory. Theory corner.

Guys, what if the reason that everybody thinks the air of Mandalore is poison and no one can live there is because every time someone goes to scout, this guy drains them of all of their bodily fluids and life force and they never make it out alive. And they're like, I guess the atmosphere is toxic. Not maybe there's just one spyborg in the basement. Oh, I guess using mountain-esque tubes to pump blood. Yeah.

I was thinking that the toxic air was going to be some sort of misdirection, right? That like someone wanted people to think that, right? Like, oh, well, it would be almost like a Camino. It doesn't appear on the star charts sort of situation. It doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, it doesn't seem like anyone's around except the Alamites and the cyborgs. We only went to one place. Yeah, right. I mean, there aren't that many people.

that are all that populated as far as we know, but we don't really know. I'm going to quote Joanna here, though. This is a point Joanna makes that I think is a really smart one and a good one to keep in mind. Sometimes in Star Wars, we both, the viewing public and people who make Star Wars are like, yeah, this one room is the whole planet or this one city is the whole planet. It's not. Like, Mandalore's a whole place. Theory, again, for you and Ralph, three cities. Okay. Three.

Three is a big part of our lives now. All right. I got another. This is just this is coming to me in real time here. Another theory for you. Wow. What if the spice is flowing now? I just so much to defend. What if this was propaganda and intentional misdirection from the Empire?

And they do, in fact, have a base on the planet. And they are still mining materials. Well, this is like, I mean, several people pointed this out. Like, it's similar to the Canary situation, right? With Cassini and or this whole, like, it's an uninhabitable planet. Nope, there's a group of feral lost children living on this planet. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's interesting. But I think no matter what, the...

What we have to think about because we go to Tatooine again, right? But thinking about Navarro and the sort of improvement that we saw in Navarro last week and thinking about...

What we saw in Tatooine and that they're like celebrating, you know, they're shooting off fireworks and stuff like that. I think that to me feels like it's hitting that theme that we like to bring up again and again, which is like, what is the distinct flavor of these home worlds that the Empire is looking to flatten and homogenize?

And so when you get a place like Mandalore that has been literally flattened, you know, that it's like literal architecture has been sunk into the ground. That's sort of, I mean, you know, I love a theory and I love a conspiracy corner. So if there is a secret base, and I love a secret base, honestly, that's no wrecked Mandalore, you know, something like that. But...

I think it stands in contrast to these other thriving communities that we see, you know, leading up to it. And when Bo and Mando talked and she calls him a fool and then she tells him to go home and he does in a roundabout way, go to Mandalore. Is that his home? Is that their home? Is that going to be the place where all the Mandalorians flock back? Like, is that the happy outcome here? Or is it less about actually doing

resettling this home planet and more about making a home somewhere else among the stars. I mean, it seems like it would take a lot of terraforming. Seems like it would take a lot of effort to turn this place back into a... I was going to say, but like, don't you think they should have mastered the art of terraforming by now in this...

advanced civilization, civilized age, you know? If anyone can revitalize an urban center, it is Greef Karga. So I think we need to get Greef. The High Magistrate has got to do something. Work his magic, the Navarro magic on Mandalore. But then we're going to end up with a Pirate King, Gorion Shard problem on Mandalore a few episodes later. And honestly, who wants that? I think this is interesting because

I think you're both right. On the one hand, it's a very present theme throughout the show so far, but certainly in the first couple episodes, we've really had this idea, like we were saying, Ben, Joe, and I were saying last episode, like, you know, it made us think of Asgard, the Mandalore is in a place, it's a people. Yeah, it's a people. And we hear in both episodes, Din talking to Grogu about needing to be able to make your way across the galaxy, which has a number of potential implications and, like, a lot of thematic richness. You know, that way you'll never be lost. Like, this...

the diaspora of the Mandalorians across the galaxy and the idea that you can be at home anywhere as long as you have your family, your clan, and your customs with you is a really beautiful thing that I think the show has embraced. But also, I think without question, Mandalore is positioned...

by Favreau and Filoni who love the Mandalorian canon and are deeply connected to it as a special place, as a place. And we're seeing it with the living waters, with the myth of sore, with the best of our minds, with the stuff that is actually specific to that place. And so I'm kind of interested to see where those two things meet, because I do think both of those things can be true at once. And the characters can hold both of those truths in their heart at once, but it's not like,

We're actually at the point in the story where we're saying, eh, what do we need there, really? There is stuff we need there. And I'll just say also, I think this place looks great. Beautiful. You hit some sand. Listen, did a cataclysm turn your planet into an uninhabitable desert unless you're inside of a biodome? Sure. But we all love the beach. Also...

You hit the beach with lightning. You're a beautiful, pillowy Southern California beach. Well, it's not a beach at all anymore. Now it's like an ice skating rink, right? It's like turquoise, molten sand turned to glass. And I love it. It's gorgeous. You're inhospitable Northern California beaches. And I say that with love because I love the Northern California beaches. A rocky cliffside. Beautiful. You cannot walk barefoot along the beaches of Northern California. You'll get a Gorean shard in your foot. No. The

The climate doesn't seem great. They're fine. I mean, maybe this was just a bad... Is the magnetic field an issue, maybe? A bad weather day. Yeah, I can't communicate off-planet. That could be a positive or a negative. Joe, you love Mendocino. Famous for no cell reception. Isn't that part of the draw? No one can bother you? Yeah, you're off the grid. And also...

There might be an oasis somewhere. As you said, we're only seeing part of this in living waters. I mean, maybe they're bringing life to some other area. If this ecosystem is supporting alamites and cyborgs and pipe critters and a mythosaur, I mean, a mythosaur seems like it's got to require a lot of calories, right? Thriving ecosystem. Yeah, there's got to be something growing somewhere. Wow, you guys should join the Mandalorian Tourism Board. Look at this thriving vermin. We're flying right now in real time.

Yeah.

Not cursed. Definite planet. Ben, before you go, is there anything else you want to say about the Shards of Mandalore or the Pirate King Gorion Shard and how disappointed you were that he wasn't in this episode? We will see him again, I am sure. But it was tough to be introduced to him and then not get to see him this week because I'm in this mostly for Pirate King Gorion Shard at this point. Yeah, me too. This is a Pirate King Gorion Shard fan podcast now. So sorry to all other characters. Thank you, Ben.

My pleasure. As always, you're the best. Thank you. As Ben mentioned in that segment, we as Star Wars fans don't know anything really about the Alamites other than what we learn in this episode. There isn't like some...

deep canon on these characters. But I think, I mean, first of all, my first thought upon seeing them was of these creatures called the Morlocks from the H.G. Wells' Time Machine. We actually got a lot of emails about that, but that was my first thought as well. Coincidentally, I went to a school with a girl whose last name was Morlock, and I always thought that was a little unfortunate. Okay, and then also, they seem to be native to Mandalore. They have tusk and lunch with a mythosaur. But what is really key in this first fight with

Din and the Alamites is what we see where he is with his dark saber skills. Mel, how would you categorize them? Can I rewind for a second before we get to the Alamites and just talk about the inbound flight? Because I was really struck by the contrast between

Of him entering the system and Bo. Like, it's just... His entrance is just so choppy. It's very clear. And obviously the magnetic field and the fusion rays and the destruction and carnage is what's causing that. But...

You can feel that he has never been there. They were drawing our attention to that. And when Bo goes in, even though she has gone from, yeah, let's go retake the planet so this place is cursed and to the point where it didn't have to say last week, make up your mind, you feel the confidence with which she enters that atmosphere later. She even has a smile on her face. Oh, it's smooth the whole way. The whole way. She's excited to be home, but everything she does...

is meant to underline how at home and competent and specifically drenched in Mandalorian, you know, weaponry and all this sort of stuff, she is in contrast to the fumbling through of Din Djarin. This has been the context of her life, this place. And it just really, really stood out in those little moments. As did, and I know we've talked about R5 already, but...

I'm sorry. I was appalled when Din was just like, I'm not asking, buddy, and dropped him down out of his port into that beautiful, again, beautiful, I think, glassy surface. Grogu. I just want to credit Grogu for having...

That gentle heart that our guy Jorah Mormont used to talk about, the way Joanna, that his ears and his eyes positively droop with worry as he is watching R5 being sent against his will onto this mission. It just endeared me. I didn't think I could love him anymore, but I somehow every time he does something, I do. I love

I love him more. I just thought that this was and then the way that he turned it in and begged him to go check and see if if our five was OK. Like we've seen Grogu do some really terrible, like some scary things. Right. His powers is intense. And these little moments on some frog eggs. Yeah. You know, just a casual force choke to to to defend dad. Yeah. So he's like frog people aren't people, but droids are.

You know, I think he's got a complex relationship with the family. But the point is, the point is, it was very sweet. But the larger point is Din Djarin's skill level with the Darksaber is what we would call piss poor. He cannot, it's not just that he can't wield it with anything resembling Djarin.

a fully realized connection to the blade. He's right where we left him and maybe even has regressed. He can't lift it. He's dragging it on the floor. Again, the contrasts across the episode between what we see with Din and what we see with Bo, which those contrasts are heightened because...

Because of the parallels. We get parallel shots with Din and Grogu descending. Go and Grogu descending. We get, of course, the kind of like instant pantheon line. Did you think your dad was the only Mandalorian? All these connections. So then the contrasts are all the starker. It's a very intentional cycle through. Were they not trying to do this, you would say this feels a little like, oh, we're doing this whole thing again with a different character, okay? But the point is to show us

how Din Djarin does it versus how Bo-Katan does it. Steve, I have this clip scheduled for later, but can you play the armor training clip from the Book of Boba Fett here? You are fighting against the blade. It gets heavier with each move. That is because you are fighting against the blade. You should be fighting against your opponent. Stand up. There. Feel it. You are too weak to fight the Darksaber.

It will win if you fight against it. You cannot control it with your strength. I want to try again. Persistence without insight will lead to the same outcome. Your body is strong, but your mind is distracted. I am focused. The blade says otherwise. You cannot control it with your strength. I love it.

We love Din Djarin, but like there is something about, and perhaps it is his affection for Grogu, but we support his affection for Grogu. So we can't call that a bad thing. But there's something in him that is uncertain, unfocused. The blade betrays that in him. And as soon as Bo-Katan later gets her hands on it. Right.

Clear power. Yes. Strength, clarity, all that sort of stuff. I think that like the episode went out of its way in a line that we got from Bo about the, you know, too complicated to understand history to say to the audience, um,

rest assured you're not going to be expected to know everything that happened in Clone Wars or Rebels to understand season three of The Mandalorian. However, I do think this is a moment where we need to once again mention our pals Kanan and Sabine because the trials of the Darksaber sequences that we spent a lot of time talking about in our season three primer pod are basically

basically a direct, you map them directly onto that scene with the armor and Din. And so then if we play out that string. I almost pulled that clip instead of the armor. Yeah, but you could pull either and it would achieve the same thing, right? Your thoughts, your actions, they become energy. They flow through the crystal as well and become part of the blade. That sword is old, heavy, but powerful. Respect that.

It's strength. Sabine saying the blade feels lighter. Kanan saying you're connecting with it. It's becoming a part of you. Kanan saying you're not fighting me. You're fighting yourself and losing these parallels. Sabine gave up the blade. The result of those lessons was not her saying, I am the one meant to wield this. She's the one who gave it to Bo-Katan, sparking this next series of events that led to Gideon and where we are now. So,

I think that the symmetry that we have between Din and Sabine, and then the contrast that we have between Din and Bo, it leaves us asking this interesting question, which I think becomes even more interesting at the end of this episode when the Mythasaur enters the chat, you know, another signifier of

legitimacy of rule, your credibility as a person that the Mandalorian should follow, someone who could and should rally the realm. It's like Rhaenyra seeing the white stag. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly, exactly. And so is Din on the journey?

of connection so that he is the one who wields the blade, who rides the Mythosaur. We'll talk about the Mythosaur more later. Or is he not on that journey? Is it going back to Bo? Is that where it belongs? And what I love about where we are in the season is I genuinely don't know. Right. I don't see the clear arc here for these characters because, like,

If you were asking me to vote, if this were a political ad and you asked me to vote who at the end of this episode should lead the Mandalorians, I would say Bo-Katan. Like, Din is, you know, made extra incompetent in this episode to highlight Bo's competency, I think. You know, like, that's something that they did narratively, right? But is that to make it even more tragic when she...

When she falls. If she falls, if she betrays, right? And we, because we have the context of the animated series, like we've seen her play the villain already, right? And so, again, we'll talk to Katie Sackhoff about this a bit. And I think there's just something really... Again, for the way in which people complain or admire The Mandalorian for its simplicity, I actually think it has so much more on its mind this season. And that's my hope for it. Before we...

We got this really incredible email that I cannot wait to read. But before we do, I have to bring in my guy, Darth Maul. Mm-hmm. Because... And this is... This sounds flimsy, but this is real. Like...

We watch, as you mentioned, both Din and Grogu and then Bo and Grogu, like, jump off and go underground. Yes. We are underground in this sequence. The covert that Din Djarin belongs to, they're in caves, they're in sewers, all this sort of stuff like that. Yep. So this line from Darth Maul in this episode of The Clone Wars...

It is really fascinating to me to think about what is the nature of, again, as we continue to interrogate, what is the nature of the Mandalorian? Where do they belong? Maybe who is Darth Maul to decide that? But Steve, will you play the incredibly attractive voice of Sam Whiteworth, please? It is not the way of your people to hide here in the gutters. I mean, right? They spend the whole episode underground. Yeah.

Do we agree with Darth Maul that it is not the way of the Mandalorians to hide here in the gutters? Like, what do you think? I think that the bulk of the time that we've spent with them has put that question at the fore because you have a character like Sabine who's living her life in the air, in space, with new friends, with found family, trying to make a difference, forging new connections. She's not on Mandalore. And the moments where she has to confront the great horrors in her life are back then.

there. But then also doing that, working through it, putting in the time is how she reconnected with her family again, how she was able to atone to repent for some of her failures. But like you think about where we find the covert in season one of The Mandalorian, our guy, Paz Vizsla, your personal favorite other than Darth Maul. He was so appalled when he saw the imperial ignorant of Beskar that Din had received his payment.

These are the spoils of the Great Purge, the reason that we live hidden like sand rats. There's this deep resentment that they are hidden and sequestered and cloistered. And the armorer's response to that was, our secrecy is our survival. Our survival is our strength. Once again, the armorer voicing, basically, the way we survive is to live in this place

Tight, confining, rigid view of one thing that worked. Not to try to branch out, go to the surface. What happens when they go to the surface when we see them on the surface in episode one of this season? The dino turtle attacks them. Like, this is not where the armorer wants to... And they're ill-prepared to handle it. Exactly. That word cloister that she used is like...

seclude or shut up as if in a convent, you know, or a cloister. And you're talking about characters defined by like jet packs, by the ability to take flight and soar. Like that's a tragedy. Speaking of the distinct armor of the Mandalorians, as you mentioned when we were talking to Ben, there is a very specific weapon that targeted the Beskar alloy. We find a helmet here that looks like

roasted and toasted as if it had been subjected to that very specific weapon. What do you make of that, Mallory? Interesting. It, I'll be honest, hadn't occurred to me. I thought it just looked really dirty because it had been covered in the ground and I thought it had been laid there as, you know, the trap of our guy Spyborg. And it reminded me just of the collection of hollowed out empty armor that the armor herself had collected at the end of season one. Like, people used to wear this, now they don't because they're dead. But...

I have to be honest, I kind of like this theory because on the one hand, I think this would be almost unbearably painful if when Sabine enters live action, we have to see her confront yet again the fact that something she designed was used by the Empire to destroy her people. But wouldn't that feel true to the Empire? Yes. Are they going to stop? Because...

They failed once to recreate this thing and expand its range? No, I don't think so. How many other rebuilt prototypes did they have? So again, it hadn't occurred to me, but once you put it in the dock, I was like, damn. That would be painful, but powerful. What they love to do, and we saw this a lot in Andor, but we see it in the original trilogy as well, whatever, is like use people, turn someone against their own people. That is a thing they do time and time again, whether it's with the Jedi or, you know,

any number of people in Andor. And so this idea of like, Sabine has not been turned against her people, but used against her own people, you know. Or you could think of it as sort of like seeing this hollowed out helmet

whether or not it's melted or roasted or toasted, that's like finding a skull, right? Absolutely. Of a Mandalorian. You know what I mean? It's equivalent given, you know, their connection to their armor. There's no Mandalorian who wouldn't stoop down to pick that up and think about who had maybe worn it before, which is what our guy Spyborg is counting on as he snaps Din up and wraps him in this rusted latticework coffin that...

almost wrapped him like a burrito. It reminded me... I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm going to be honest because it's only you here listening. Yeah, it's just me. It reminded me of Chuck's sex swing on Billions. The way that he was kind of like... Not Shelob in Lord of the Rings? No? No? Oh, my. Anyway, just me. Just me. I love you forever being you, always. Um...

Grogu fucks up some people on his desperate bid to go rescue his dad. Dude, I have to ask you, did you think Grogu was going to pick up the dark saber? Because Spyborg has pulled it away from Din. It was on the ground. And Grogu, he had hidden in his pod at first and he's watching and then he chooses his moment, gets out of his pod. He waddles over, he climbs up on a rock. He uses the force to try to free his dad. It's just like...

Perfect all around. It's so darling. The subtitles are straining, panting, iconic, absolute Hall of Fame caliber work. And he waddled right past the Darksaber. And I was like, holy shit, is this it? Is this when Grogu's going to wield the Darksaber? Is he going to pick it up? Now, of course, that's what happens in the episode later. It happens with Bo-Katan, not with Grogu. But I did wonder. No, no. I thought I was pretty sure given that

Din was like, that's where Bo-Katan is. That like, all that was going to happen is that Grogu was going to go get Bo-Katan. This is another moment though, where we see his progression, not only in the way that he's using his powers across the episode, but when Din can only get out

One sentence, right? Get to Bo-Katan. And Grogu's like, got it. I'm on it. And his comprehension is at a really high level. I, as you know, was so appalled during the Boba Fett run by Luke using the training remote and zapping Grogu. But he was, as a result of that, prepared to avoid this electro staff blast and flipped right into his little carrier and shot off past all those creatures and

up that Alamite. We had seen this in the trailer. So as soon as he's, you know, we know this is going to happen here, but it was still great. And double force usage back to back. He tried to free Din. He attacked the Alamite. Guess what he didn't need after back to back force action? A nap. A snooze. Our guy is leveling up. This is a big deal. And then he's like,

He's like pointing at the map and communicating with R5. And he's like, we need to go here. We need to go here. And it just, it worked. He was able to communicate what he needed to R5. And it was just amazing. I think that, I think that my understanding of what Din's intention there was, was not like go get Bo so you can rescue me. Just like go to safety. Very, like very, throwing rocks at Nymeria. Get out of here.

Go to safety. You know what I mean? But Grogu's like, I'm going to come back and rescue you. It's Grogu's initiative. Bo jumps into action and we will... I'm just going to let Katie Sackhoff talk about that and why. But before you need to talk about a certain accessory, Mallory, is this very important to you? I was really struck by seeing her on the throne again for two reasons. One, because her droid enters to tell her that they've got an unscheduled visitor. Yeah.

And, you know, last episode, we chatted about the way that we found Bo. And like you said, Katie, we'll talk about this too and explain what aura Bo is trying to cultivate with her throne position in the premiere. But we find her because no one's there. She's not welcoming Din or anyone into the room. She's not putting on an air. She is leaning forward.

head bent. She's bowing in despair. And it was just really, really sad to see this. It's just a picture of defeat. And she has a blanket. But how quickly

But how quickly when she has purpose. Yes, she springs. Exactly. That she snaps back into, you know, action mode. There's like a blanket, like a throw blanket next to her on the throne. Now, I love a throw. I love a blanket. I love comfort. I'm like, is she, does she never leave? Does she just sit there all the time thinking about the ways that she's failed? This is devastating. You think she sleeps on the throne? Maybe, maybe it's just chilly. It is a

vast, drafty throne room. I don't think there's good lumbar support on that thing. Also... I don't think Bo's sleeping on there. You know I have the Bo-Katan Beskar helmet. I've got the Darksaber. Yes. Do we need to get you a throw blanket? We might need the blanket, but we have... Bo and I have something else in common, and it's this. When she walked out to, you know, act tough, I told you I didn't want to be bothered to the end one.

She just starts talking. She's like feet away from the glass canopy of the N1 and doesn't see that Din Djarin is not in it. And I'm like, I'm not the only one who needs to go to the eye doctor. Bo-Katan is talking to Din Djarin and he is not there. And she should be able to see that. I await a text from Bo-Katan's mother urging me to urge her to go to the optometrist. The way the little girl popped up though and just cried his need to her. Wonderful.

Bo takes the ship, the gauntlet. Yes. Joe, if you can keep flying the ship that you flew when you were a Death Watch terrorist, you have to do it. You got to do it. Why would you remodel? Why wouldn't you just keep your little Nazi airship? You know what I mean? Unbelievable. So she's still in this same ship, the gauntlet. We get this walk and talk once they're on the planet. We get this walk and talk. And this is where I want to hit this email.

that I was really struck by. Yeah. And I want to premise it. It's from a rabbi, Rabbi Howard Tillman. And I want to premise it in the same way that we premise anytime we talk about religion and spirituality on the show, which is that, like, I'm an atheist. Mala's, you know, her own relationship that she can explain or not or whatever. But...

But, so this is not any manner of proselytizing, but what it is, is these questions of spirituality and faith are so foundational to our storytelling in general, to our broader human experience. So I always find it worth examining these various nooks and crannies of applying the

ideas of faith and spirituality to the stories that we're talking about. And I think specifically, once I read this email from Rabbi Howard Tillman, I was reminded that Jon Favreau, like, is not just Jewish, is like a very, you know, devout practicing Jew. And to the point where

I learned this story when I was writing my book about Marvel, the MCU, but that he pressed pause on production on Iron Man in order to host a Passover Seder. And the person I was interviewing about this was like, we didn't have time really to pause for Passover, but we did. And that was sort of the kind of set that John was running. Like that was point, but like,

this is something that's very important to him. So, you know, this is a Filoni-Favreau co-pro. It's not just like Filoni's point of view, but if this question of like faith and specifically like Judaism and relationship to homeland is interesting to him, I can see how it might run through the season. So here's the email from with much,

Here's the email from Rabbi Howard Tillman who writes, During Bo-Katan and Grogu's epic walk and talk, she tells him, quote, The empire tried to wipe out our memory from existence. Compare that to Deuteronomy 2519, which speaks of God's command to the Israelites to wipe out the memory of the people of Amalek who attacked them on their journey out of Egypt. You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.

Last week, the armorer tells Jyn, quote,

This is true in the sociological sense, but beyond that, the Armour's reference here speaks to the loss of a spiritual connection too. For the quote-unquote extremists in the Children of the Watch, much of their spiritual and religious identity was based on connection to a specific religion.

physical space. So too in Jewish history. For about the first 1,000 years of Jewish history, from the construction of the first temple in Jerusalem, approximately 950 BCE, to destruction of the second temple, 70 EC, Judaism was probably

primarily focused on the temple in Jerusalem. That's where daily prayer services were held, where the people gathered on holidays, and most importantly here, where sacrificial offerings of atonement could be made. For people who made mistakes or strayed from the path, the only way to atone was to bring an offering to the temple in Jerusalem. But after the second temple was destroyed by the

Jews asked themselves, how is redemption possible now that our temple and homeland is destroyed? For certain sects of Judaism in that era, this was an existential crisis. It is only thanks to the leadership and innovations of the rabbis of the time that Judaism was able to evolve and adapt successfully.

Instead of focusing solely on the temple in Jerusalem, the focus became community synagogues. Instead of religious systems based on sacrifices, the system evolved to focus on prayer. And instead of redemption slash atonement being based only at the temple, the focus of atonement shifted to include ideas of repentance, justice, charity, and prayer. These are the three major themes of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement,

Also, Bo speaks about her father, and thanks to Ben Lindbergh's great recap, I clicked on his link to Wikipedia to find that her father's name was Adonai Kreis. Adonai is a Hebrew for Lord and the most commonly used name for God. I suppose it could also be a reference to Georgia Bulldogs wide receiver Adonai Mitchell. I'm not sure what to make of all these references, but I'm just so fascinated that they're there. Yeah.

So great email from this rabbi. Thank you so much for writing in. I don't want to put this end here without just saying I understand that the question of Judaism and homeland is not an unfraught subject, but I think the correlation between

If this is something that is on Jon Favreau's mind, this idea of like a specific homeland, a specific place and atonement and all of these things that run through the Jewish faith, I think that's really interesting to think about in the context of Children of the Watch versus Bo, Din versus Bo, et cetera. Fascinating email.

Yeah. Really good stuff. There was even more. I mean, it was even longer than that. That's my abridged version. So forgive me for abridging that. Bow fights. It's incredible. Yeah. And bow fights specifically with these Mandalorian weapons. The force shield, the whip, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. How do you feel seeing her in action here? This whole stretch was really wonderful. It

for Bo's character, for the relationships that Bo has with the other characters in the show, with the objects, with the lore. You know, we get to see right before the fight, Bo asking Grogu about the Force, talking to Grogu about

the Jedi saying, like, I knew quite a few Jedi, you know, and then we can think of her history with Ahsoka and Ezra and Kanan. We can think about, you know, when she says specifically, I really love the line about, like, I don't know what they taught you about us, but there was a time we actually got along quite well, fought side by side. So actually then heading into a fight sequence, a battle sequence using the Darksaber, this object that

We can think back to a moment where Pre Vizsla is using it against Obi-Wan and saying, since then many Jedi have died upon its blade. Prepare yourself to join them. And the role that object is played often as a source of division, an active weapon, a way for the Mandalorians to harm the Jedi. Right. So like these, these scenes being back to back felt really intentional to me. Like,

more support, number one, for Grogu's path as both a Jedi, a Force user, whatever framing we want to use, and a Mandalorian. Not needing to choose the way that Luke made him think he had to, right? It can be both.

for more alliances in the future. We've mentioned the Purgle, Ezra, Thrawn. We've mentioned Sabine, et cetera. Like these characters are all going to be in this timeline together. What alliances are they going to build in the future together? This conversation lets us think about that. Seeing Bo in action makes us think about the time she's been in action before with those characters we just mentioned.

And it shows us how Bo herself has changed and evolved because, you know, when I'm citing that pre-Vizsla Obi-Wan fight, that's when Bo-Katan was a member of Death Watch and was aligned with him. So we think of then the bonds she made with Ahsoka and Ezra and Kanan and others after that. We think of the prospect of more change and ongoing evolution in the future. That's important.

And it's especially top of mind when we see her wield the saber because that reflects her being deeply stuck and trapped by the things other people think and other people tell her. Well, who does that remind us of? The Jedi. Like we've talked about these parallels so many times, right? Attachment, bad. Here's the way you're going to go wrong. The thing you're feeling, it's the path to the dark side. And so she's asking Grogu, right?

how good are you with the Force? You must be quite good. If you got to me all alone, we're like, this is just great. We love it, right? Way to recognize talent. Five-star prospect. Got all the tools. Love it. Yeah. But once again, I think the adjacencies of these conversations and that fight scene with the Darksaber, it's not accidental. Did you think your dad was the only Mandalorian moment heading right before she even... This is like the Alamite fight, right? Yeah.

you know, before she then goes forward and uses the saber itself. We're watching this like pretty horrifying blood pumping stretch with Din. We're cutting back and forth. And then when she picks up the saber, it's like Syria and Arya, like, can you drop a part of your arm? She's just one with the blade in a way that Din has not even realized.

Like, the fluidity, the ease, the grace. It's like a feather in her hand. And so, yeah, we can't help but think, like, is she supposed to have it instead of him? And what would it mean for the characters and their forging of their new way, as we've been talking about, if...

If she could say, fuck these people. It doesn't matter what they're saying. It doesn't matter that Moff Gideon says in the season two finale, the Darksaber doesn't have power, the story does. Like, if we can get past that, we can move forward. But those rules of transference and the weight of those beliefs have to be on our mind here because Ben wrote about this in his piece. This has been a big conversation point among fans this week. Like, there is a way you can view this scene and just say, well, Spyborg,

disarmed in period. And then Bo beat Spyborg. So the dark saber is hers. Now, I guess you could say technically that's true. My read on it. I'm really curious to know what you think is Bo is too burdened by her losses in the past to think that that's enough. Like maybe in episode three, particularly after the myth of store appears to have like chosen din, um,

maybe she's going to say, hey, by the way, you know how you just mentioned 10 times that I saved your life and that you're in my debt? That's mine now. Hand it over. And that could be part of the split that unfolds from here if that's the way we're going. Like you said, a number of possibilities still. Maybe the pitch is in the future. I think she's just certain that she needs to win it in a more public and definitive way, not by technicality, that that's not going to be good enough given her past. I completely agree.

All right. Um, I, I might sound a little different for the rest of the episodes because I had to move locations. I'm on the road. Sorry about that. But we just like, could not leave it there. We have so much left to talk about. We definitely want to talk about, I don't know, the mythosaur. Yeah. But before we get to that, um, uh,

As you may or may not know, Mallory Rubin and I used to cover a show called Game of Thrones. And we would be remiss if we did not mention some parallels we see in Din and Bo. I just want to shout out our pal Ryan Airy over at Screen Crush for sort of underlining this for me. The idea of Bo Katana as sort of like a Daenerys Targaryen corollary is someone who like

I mean, at least before she got all depressed, throw a blanket on her throne, like really wanted to be the leader of Mandalore. And Din Djarin in comparison to Jon Snow, someone who's like, I don't want it. Take the Darksaber. I don't care. You know, so how do you feel about, does that sound like an ominous comparison? How do you feel about that, Mallory? It's interesting because I think Bo...

also actually began a little bit as a John. You know, Sabine had to kind of convince Bo that she was the one, that she was the right person

leader, the deserving leader, and crucially the leader that other people would follow. We see how that has crumbled or cracked like the glass of the Mandalorian surface that she's now firing her blasters into to unearth the alibis waiting and lurking. But I like the idea of moving in and out of these states. It's a great thing for us. We love to talk about the reluctant leader trope when characters are in that spot, when they're not. And the character who moves in and out of that state

I find particularly fascinating. I think that what's so interesting, I'm glad that you noted that Ryan made this observation because what strikes me as really rich here is if...

Bo goes from the, well, then you lead him, you know, shake that thing around, wave that thing around of the season three premiere into if Din's got the saber. If Din after this episode or after next episode, perhaps, who knows what the pace will be, is riding the Mythosaur, is heralding that new age from prophecy that we'll talk about more in a second when we get to that scene. And legions flock to him the way that people wanted to follow Jon.

then yeah, that feels like the resentment, the bitterness that built in Danny could be building even further or maybe heightened because it's already there in a different way for Bo. What strikes me is the difference. I suspect you'll agree with this, Joe, though I don't know because I have to say Ben hit an important point earlier when we were talking to him about how much is present for Bo in the live action versus how much we as Clone Wars and Rebels viewers bring to it. I was going to say...

I think that if Bo turns heel and becomes the foe or a rival or a villain, I would buy that completely and feel like it had been pretty well established and set up. But that's from like episode after episode after episode of animated storytelling. I wonder if live action fans would feel the same. What do you think about that?

Well, I think, you know, again, we keep teasing this. We talked to Katie about this a little bit and like, I feel like it's not something they're going to ignore. But the question eternally for the live action shows is how do we seed in this information from the animated series without making people feel like they're being inundated with exposition?

And also in a way that doesn't make fans of the animated series feel like they're just being refed information they already have. So how do we sort of like subtly shade it in? And again, I'm optimistic that they're going to be engaging with this. And as you say, in a way that wouldn't, you know, if there's a Bell's moment for Bo-Katan, it won't be, it won't shock us that same way. Yeah.

I also wanted to really quickly read this email from Tyra because each of us accused the other of having written it. So I just want to thank you, Tyra, for speaking for the both of us. Tyra wrote, the shot of the back of them being bowed in, walking, made me think of the back shot of Danny and John coming out of the cave on Dragonstone. Look...

Like, look at this power couple walking towards their kingdom. And Bo's suit is doing wonders for those hips, let me tell ya. So, yeah. Mel and I love Bo's look. We're really into it. Absolutely fantastic. And Pog Soup also seems fantastic, Jo. Bo, a lot of tension in her heart. Still finds time not only to rescue Din, but to make a warm meal for our little family. And...

I'm sorry, but I can't get through the pod without noting once again that Grogu spends this entire sequence reaching out for the soup. And our guy needs more sustenance. Din has got to start packing snacks when a father and son hit the road. Like, we need a lunchbox. We need a little more on hand at all times. Our growing baby boy is always hungry. He needs nourishment. I do like, though, this conversation that they have here. You know, Bo saying...

you don't even soup, bro. Like you call yourself a Mandalorian. Right. So like this, this is the ongoing conversation that we've been so interested in is like, what makes a Mandalorian? Right. And for Bo, it's a steady diet of soup. No, I'm just kidding. Like, you know, there's, there's these things, these weapons that she uses in these episodes, the trappings of being a Mandalorian, her culture. And for Din Djarin, it's like, don't take your helmet off ever. You know, the fact that they could have these clashing definitions of what meat, what it means to be Mandalorian is because they,

The Mandalorian culture has set that up so well in terms of their foundling, their fractured identity, all this sort of stuff. But I love also the connection that they find because as separate and different as they are, there is this concept. I won't read out the email. We got this email from Anna on this concept, this idea that like...

In exile, in exodus, and we got that passage from Exodus in last week's episode, in a diaspora situation, whatever, if you meet someone who's from where you're from, even if your particular flavors of that culture, of that belief, whatever it may be, there is still that sort of bond of, oh, you're from where I'm from. We have something connecting us.

And so, and I just, I think, you know, I really admire the storytelling in this episode of, I feel like I understand Bo-Katan as a character even better than I did getting to know her in the animated series, getting to know her last season. Like there's just so much they did with, with just an episode and a scene that,

to really get us to invest in her in a way that like, if Katie Sackhoff as Bo-Katan is like the third lead of this season, I'm super interested, um, in a way that I wouldn't have been like in fear. I mean, we love Katie Sackhoff. So like, you know, we're excited about her and we like, we're interested in Bo-Katan, but like, if you were like, Hey, what if this is the Bo-Katan season? I'm like, okay. But now I'm like, okay. Um, and so I think, you

you know, that's all done in these scenes and these moments watching her be so competent, efficient. That's all part of it, you know, but also just these quieter moments of talking about the soup or talking about her life as a Royal child. And this is like new canon, like, you know, the animated series watchers know a lot about Bo-Katan, but her, and we knew that she shaved against her family. We knew that she was separated from her sister, all this stuff like that. But this idea talking about her father, um,

who has like no information on wikipedia we don't know much about him so like we're learning about her father here we're learning about this idea that yes she knows the creed yes you know that that ceremony that we saw at the beginning of episode one of the season she did that but it was all for show it was pomp and circumstance and pomp and circumstance that she looks down her nose at and so again there's that major different there's like i know that

this thing, but you and I hold it differently. What do you think, Mel? Yeah, I agree completely. I think that this stretch where, again, like the episode goes out of its way to show us what is shared so that the things that are different are all the more potent and all the more potentially meaningful to overcome, to bridge, or...

impactful as a wedge, as a divide. And so you have a moment like after she shares what she shares with Din about her father and the ritual and taking the creed and the theater, she calls it, for the masses, but says that he gave his life for Mandalore. Din Djarin stops in his tracks, bows his head, and says, this is the way with as much emotion in his voice as we've heard from him at any point other than when he was saying goodbye to Grogu in the season two finale. And she's...

despite everything she thinks about the children of the watch, despite everything she thinks about the creed, she looks at him in a way where it's like, she's almost considering him fully for the first time and thinking about the nuance and the different aspects of that belief. But then we think back to a moment, like just in the conversation prior where he says to her, Hey, actually you were right.

Mandalore is not cursed and she's not so sure anymore. She says, was I look around? So any step back, any step forward, there's a step back in whether they're seeing things the same way or not. And I liked that idea of,

that curses come in many forms, that the way you would perceive that reality is completely specific to your experience. The curse for Bo is not just about literally whether the air is breathable or poisoned. It's the fall of this place. It's that constant infighting that she talks about. It's the endless battling and warring and strife. It's the fact that that glass that they're walking over, those shards that are all around them,

or may as well just be hardened blood given the history of this place, right? And when we think about

I love the number of times in talking about this episode that you've drawn attention to what experience Din doesn't have. And even hearing him, like, listen with such, I don't know, genuine interest in her talking about her childhood and her experiences, it's like, right. He never got to see that. And then, you know, I think that, like, the soup moment

can you appreciate the irony? Any Mandalorian worth their armor was raised on them since they were his size. Well, also now Grogu is raised on it since he was his size, which is a nice little touch there. But there's a charm, there's a quirkiness and a cuteness to the way that Bo is like, you know, winking at the situation. Can you appreciate the irony? Like you're the guy with the dark saber and you don't know about this, right? But I did have a hard time in terms of, again, trying to always like forecast where might we be heading? Are these allies? Are these foes?

Not thinking about a line that you called out in our primer pod, an outsider. Bo's stance on outsiders and how she thinks about an outsider and who is an outsider to her. And has she grown beyond that? Yes, we think so. We see that. That's good. But are those elements...

of pure Mandalorian right still there in a way that will maybe heighten her resentment of somebody like Dain being the one that people follow. It's a pretty rich text, I think, whichever direction they take it in. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, are you a Mandalorian if you didn't have the suit growing up? And Din's like, are you a Mandalorian if you take your helmet off? And it's again, from a certain point of view, because it all depends on how you say it. I think that that delivery of this is the way, which her reaction to that, his delivery of that, I thought was so strong. It goes back to the conversation we were having last week due to a listener email about this idea of like, every time someone says this is the way it means something different. And so, you know, what it means here is, you know,

I'm sorry for your law. There's just like a million different things that it means, but it lands for Bo. And it all depends on how you see it.

The curse thing that you were just talking about, this plaque that Bo reads out, we heard this at the top of the episode, this audio of the way that Kitty Sackhoff or, you know, Favreau or the directors decided she should read it is a mocking sort of jeering, oh, the mythosaur, blah, blah, blah. You know, she's like sneering about it.

in good humor, but sort of just sort of like rolling her eyes. And you can imagine that if Din Djarin had been the one to walk up to that plaque and read it, he would have read it reverentially, right? And so, again, it's just, it's the same information. It's just, how do you process it? And how

how would Bo-Katan read that plaque at the end of this episode? You know, this is just like a real turning point for her. I love that question, especially because we're coming off for the second episode in a row. Her...

mocking the idea of belief. Mocking is the wrong way to put it. Her no longer being able to find her way to that belief directly. She said to Din, I honestly think it's adorable that you actually believe these children's stories, but there's nothing magic about the waters. And I,

This is something that we ask Katie about in our interview with her. People will get to hear her response to this. We chatted about this in our Mando season three premiere pod. But is the Mythosaur going to rekindle her faith? Or is it going to spark potentially like further resentment if the Mythosaur and Din end up paired, much like she adheres to the...

weight of the story of the dark saber and then says she doesn't believe in this other magic that is so central to her her people her history their culture the store the children's stories language in particular here like it made me think of it made me think of voldemort like it made me think of the fact that he doesn't know about the hallows because he wouldn't read that he wouldn't have read the tale of the three brothers and that like in fantasy stories characters who dismiss

the possibility of magic or the centrality and wisdom of a quote unquote children's tale are often the ones who are inclined to fall into the dark, who don't let that light into their heart. And that that was there to like make us really worried about what Bo is on the precipice of. Right. But it just feels like, and you know, jumping ahead a little bit, but it just feels like that gasp, that underwater gasp with the like bubbles of air that accompany it in terms of her, her,

seeing, I mean, again, she's got a mask on, but in terms of like her seeing the Myths Wars real again, we'll, we'll find out next week, I suppose, or I hope like, you know, how this is landing with her, but it felt like a, a reawakening, a rekindling of, of something in that character. That's my hope anyway. And I think that, um,

what happens next. So she reads the plaque and then Dan walks into the water and recites the creed. And again, to the conversation we were having at the top about this idea of putting episode one, episode two together. I just think if you're, if you're creating that as one story to start with that boy who we thought was Din Djarin in flashback, maybe when we first watched it to start with that boy reciting the creed in the water and to end with Din Djarin doing the same, the creed in the water at the end of an episode, it's,

That just seems like a really natural sort of bookend concept to me. And then Din walks forward and either falls off a cliff or gets yanked underneath. I can't 100% tell you what happened there. Feels like a yanking, but you would think we would have seen a tentacle or something. Did the Mythosaur do that? The Mythosaur seemed like it was sort of chilling and napping until Bose swam by it. So I don't really know what happened there.

Beskar armor, not very buoyant as it turns out. And Din goes right to the bottom like Jaime Lannister falling into a suspiciously deep river after the loot train battle. I always love to think of the change in water depth on the heels of loot train. Just

Remarkable stuff. I think that these questions that we're asking is it's going to be a rekindling of faith. What does it mean to be a Mandalorian? I want to know something else that stood out to me, which is the way that Grogu is looking back and forth between them as they are discussing these very questions. I think this pairs with our observation of his enhanced and heightened comprehension. He is thinking about this stuff, which I think is really cool and interesting. We've mentioned Thrones a few times in the last couple of minutes, and so I will share one more Thrones comp that

honestly gave me like reflexive PTSD when Bo was talking and we've, we've, we've hit this a lot in our, our primer pods and these couple of pods already this, like her own role in the history that she keeps citing when she talks about what pains me is seeing our own kind fight each other time and time again.

But when she talked about what the Empire did, she said to wipe away our memory. And it made me think of the conversations about Bran, you know, in the Long Night. He wants to erase the world. I am its memory. If I wanted to erase the world of men, I'd start with you. And then like Tyrion invoking that idea in the finale. We don't have to talk about that, but I found it hard not to think about it in a way that was like

Confusing. Anyway, when we get to the water, we get to the potential claw hook from the Mythasaur. I thought that there was this really sweet moment when Din starts to disrobe where Grogu was like, am I about to see dad's face again? Like, is he going to take off the Beskar helmet? How far are we going here? And I was like, I had other stuff on my mind. As I know you did too, Jill. Oh, boy.

Great stuff. Just wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful. I mean, I want a chance for you to talk about the mythosaur and anything else you want to say about that. But I do here at the end just want to really quickly read this email we got from Aaron, which circles back to that concept of faith that we were talking about earlier with the previous email.

And I love this encapsulation. Aaron writes,

Mando has only had the religion, the trappings, rituals, and rigid dogma of Mandalore, but he's not yet had a true connection. This explains why she's so capable and he's so out of sorts. She's disillusioned but still has some internal belief and faith

He is seeking a real connection via the rigid dogma he was born into, but the dogma actually weakens him. At the end of the episode, the waters and the mythosaur turn out to be the real deal, the Tao, the unknowable, the Yahweh, that we cannot truly fathom in our interactions with mysticism or spirituality. That's why Mando falls in and almost drowns. He's relying on dogma, which will always fail someone seeking truth.

Bo-Katan, for all her skepticism, is still a believer. And I think now that she's seen the Mythosaur again, it will bring them together and rekindle her faith. Mallory. That is also what I am...

hoping for that is what I what I want and what I desire that I think there are three okay I think there are three possibilities for the mythosaur I thought it was so cool when the mythosaur opened its eye and bow you just the the response again you get these great moments on the mandalorian where the characters wearing a helmet but you can you feel like you're staring at their face and seeing the response based on just the positioning in the scene and

You read the, we heard the inscription on the plaque, this line about Mandalore the Great is said to have tamed the mythical beast. You know, we talked a bit last week with Grogu and the Purgle about this idea of like the animal bond and like Ezra's history with the force and animal connections. We're talking a lot about Din and Bo. I think the three, the three possibilities are

Clear, right? Will Din ride the Mythosaur? Will Bo ride the Mythosaur? Will Grogu ride the Mythosaur? The line we got from the Armorer in Boba Chapter 5, the songs of Eon pass foretold of the Mythosaur rising up to herald a new age of Mandalore. Sadly, it only exists in Legends. We heard Queel back in Season 1 when, you know, it's time for some...

Some blurb riding training and Din doesn't know how and doesn't think he can. And Quill's like, my guy, like your ancestor rode the great mythosaur. So they've been planting the seeds for this for a long time and planting them specifically with Din in a way that

And for various other reasons, I think makes him the leading candidate. Did the Beast choose him? Will he ride it? If so, will the Saber make its way back to Bo and where it seems to belong? And then they both have one of these symbols of legitimacy and maybe they can unite Mandalore in this quest together. Will it go the other way? Will Din keep the Saber and learn to connect with it? Will Bo...

who has her faith in the stories, in the lore, in the magic, rekindled, restored, hopefully, by this glimpse, by this realization, will she be the one to bond with the beast, to tame it, to ride it? Will she think she doesn't need the saber anymore if that happens? Wouldn't that be a cool way forward? Just like the language, you know, you called this out already, but like,

Myth-o-saur. Mando-lore. Like, the idea of myth-lore is so central to this part of the story. Like, this is going to be a big part of whatever happens next. I'm not ruling out Grogu, though. Who's the one literally best positioned to tame the mythical beast? It's our guy with the animal bond force power.

But then if he's got the Mythosaur and didn't have the saber, Bo's going to be like, fuck this, I'm out. And then we get back to the poster with the split helmet and the saber in between them. Could go that way too. What do you think? This is a really exciting setting, setting us up again. We thought this was going to be a family. This is setting us up for a really exciting season of television. Um,

Just one thing I will say aesthetically is like in contrast to some of the Rancor stuff we got in Book of Boba Fett, like the scale of the Mythasaur, like when we see you sort of like get what feels like a wide, even though it's CGI, what feels like a wide shot, right? Of like Bo and Din look so small compared to the enormity of the Mythasaur.

That is thrilling. And in the deep and the dark and all this other stuff like that. And then as we've been talking about faith and spirituality throughout this episode, this is another clear baptism. It's not just Din that goes in the water. Bo goes in the water, experiences something radical that is challenging her understanding of how the world works, her faith in...

in myth and legend and, and lore and all of that and comes out the other side changed, changed in what way we will find out. But definitely those two characters are changed coming out of the other side of this little dip in the living waters. So there you go. Time for corners now. I just, it took, imagine the nap and snack Grogu was going to need after he uses the force on the myth. The store, I mean, he napped for a while after using it on the rank core. He's got a big day ahead of him.

I can't wait. I cannot wait to see episode three, chapter 19. I can't wait. Will this be the next scene? Will we pick up right there? I just, I'm really excited. I'm really hyped. I'm hyped. We'll be get, we'll be get a solo episode with Cara Dune. Just finding out what she's up to. Who's, who's to say, who's to say where we'll go. Uh, but we're going to go now to our Easter egg corners. Shout out and Easter egg from each of us that we enjoy. Yeah.

Molly, what do you got? I really loved the... There were a lot in the Peli stretch, and I loved the who taught you how to leap like a Lerman line. The Lerman are these almost meerkat-like pacifists.

the Clone Wars. They're part of a great arc in season one of the Clone Wars, Jedi Crash, Defenders of Peace. Those are really fun episodes that are cool to watch if you're just interested in getting a Clone Wars vibe. But again, to mention characters who are pacifists in an episode so focused on the cost of war felt like an extra nice little nod there. So that's my pick. What about you? You going with Chance Cubes? You love Watto. You love Qui-Gon. I think I

have to give it to the this jawa scam that pelly is running with the jawas because it's the same exact scam they ran on obi-wan kenobi and the obi-wan show so just like they're like let's stick with what works if it ain't if it ain't broke why fix it if it ain't broke break it so that then someone pays you to fix it yeah it's a sound business model all right speaking of pelimoto we got it we have to do a wig watch corner

I forgot about that. Steve, you genius. All right. So Bo-Katan, as we've already discussed, and Katie will talk about this, has a glorious new wig this season. Palamuto also has a new wig this season. It's a little higher and tighter. The perm is a little higher and tighter. I saw someone compare it to like a...

Sigourney Weaver in the 80s. And I think it is a very, like, a very Sigourney Weaver, like, permullet situation. How are you feeling about it, Mel? Do you like it? It pairs well with the missing tooth from the Boba Fett finale. It's really all coming together. It's a new look for Peli, and I'm here for it. I love it. I love wig watch.

All right, the Netflix subtitle award that Mallory likes to call Coos and Gurgles. And we'll see this week if she is branching beyond the Coos and the Gurgles. Here we go. Oh, darling. I already gave my winner. There were some amazing Grogu ones this week, but straining panting.

quote, parentheses, straining panting when he was attempting to use the force to free his father was historic stuff. We got a lot of panting from Gurgle. We got a lot of sputtering. We got some whimpering and lots of Gurgle's babbles and coos. And all of them were fantastic. We got a sequence when Bo said to him, I know that you're frightened, but I need you to guide me to him where we got sputters, babbles, trilling all in a row.

I love a trill. A trill is the sound that I would describe. It's a sort of universal cat sound. If your cat is like sleeping or otherwise unaware of you and you just touch it, it'll give a little like, you know, like a little like, oh, hi, a little trill. I am going to stick to my side of things and not do any babbles and coos. I'm going to do something gross because that was the origin of this. I like, I appreciate you going for Grogu, but I'm going to stick with gross stuff and say,

I think this is what it is. I wrote it down somewhere that I can't access right now, but I believe it was something like plasma drains languidly. When all the bodily essence, the mana is being sucked out of Din Djarin in the tubes. Malor is making Horfing of Horfing face. So sorry for that. Absolutely revolting. Great work. Don't blame me, but blame Spyborg, which brings us to our final corner. Okay.

Secret Force. Okay. Secret Force user. Let's go through the motions, but we have the same answer again. Steve, Secret Force user. Secret Force user. It's Fyborg. Obviously. Oh, clearly. Without question.

It's the Pirate King Dorian Shard and it is Spyborg. And this is the fearsome Skrull army that is, or the secret force user army that is invading our story. All right. Well, you've heard us tease it 1 million times. Why don't you just actually get to hear her speak for herself? Let's hear from the great Katie Sackhoff. All right, Katie. There is, I think we can all agree, only one place to start our discussion today.

And that is Bo-Katan's instantly iconic throne pose. We need to know everything. How did you and Rick land on this particular lean? How does the Beskar armor impact one's ability to lounge and luxuriate atop a stone plinth? What are the central ingredients in the vibe that you're working to cultivate there? You know, this was like a group collaboration. This was like a John and Rick and Katie moment.

And I remember just like trying, it was really hard because like, I'm quite dinky compared to said throne. So for me to just like, you know, at one point I just sat in it and they were both like, oh no, no, no, that doesn't look right. Like, okay. So we, we worked at it for quite a while. And our goal was for her to look very dismissive of it, very disrespectful of it. Um,

and disrespectful of him and his presence. And I think that she is in a really bad state. You know what I mean? My husband last night on the way home goes, how long was she sitting on the throne like that? So she'd be like that when he walked in. It's a great question. I know it's a great question. And I was like, oh no, no, no. She was like at the window and saw him and was like, ran back and was like, do I look like I don't care? Perfect. Perfect.

Does the disrespect come from like, this is a consolation throne. This is not the throne she wanted. So I'm sure. I think, I think for, for Bo, she's lost everything, everything that she thought that was important, everything that she thought she knew, everything that she wanted, her family, her planet, her dark saber, her respect. She's lost everything. And I think that she is at a point where she,

She may or may not be trying to figure out if everything she's done in her life was misguided. And she has a lot of... For fans of Clone Wars and Rebels, this is a woman who has a lot of guilt. And I think it's sort of playing itself out now. Speaking of Clone Wars and Rebels, it's a nice transition into something we wanted to ask about. We are...

We're big fans of the animated verse here on the pod. We talk about it a lot. Part of our real hype for season three was bringing that backstory to the fore of live action. And you're in a really rare position of playing in live action a character who you voiced in the animated shows. You've been with Beau for a stretch of story that well predates The Mandalorian and Beau's past.

with Death Watch, with Satine, with the Mandalorian Resistance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is a really complex one. And we often say on our pod, this is a frequent refrain from us, that we love a character on an arc. And so we're really

curious about this, particularly given those views on the children of the watch, her words to Din in the premiere about how the factions that came before fractured and shattered our people. How does Bo's own past as a part of that fracture often influence the way that she thinks and seeks to lead today? And are there are any of those the more like

and unsavory aspects of that past. Her time with Pre Vizsla, for example, something that the character is going to actively grapple with in this stretch of the canon. Well, I think that the easiest way to sort of explain some of the stuff that she's talking about with Din is, you know, it's sort of like one of those things like, you know, if someone's cheating on you, they, you know, accuse you of cheating on them all the time because it's that self-guilt. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so I think that, I think it's one of those things where I think that a lot of the things that she says to him are things that she hates in herself. Yeah. Times previous. I mean, like, let's be honest, you know, uh, uh, misguided in who she put her faith in. But I, I think that, that, you know, it's been a long time. We've been with Bo for a long time for, you know, over 25 years of her life, you know, um, and,

She's changed and she's grown and she's learned and she's made a lot of mistakes. And I think that she's got quite a bit to atone for. So we may see a little bit of that to answer your question a little bit. Something we love about the introduction of Bo here in contrast to Din and his covert from the very beginning, from your first appearance, is this connection.

of what it means to be a Mandalorian. What does it mean for Bo? What does it mean for Din? I love these lines in episode two. You know, did you think your dad was the only Mandalorian? You know, or talking about the soup that any Mandalorian with their armor was raised on. You know, all this sort of stuff. So I was just wondering

And I love that idea. The show is called The Mandalorian, but this idea of Mandalorian identity plays into all the Civil War stories that we're talking about here. So I was just wondering, like, if you...

Either Katie or Bo have an idea of what it means to be a Mandalorian? And what do you think about as the larger question of the show? I mean, I do. I know what it means for Bo, for sure. And I think that one of the interesting things about this show and the way, if you, you know, to use the show's words,

is that I think it's one of those things where everybody can read the same text and then just interpret it differently. And it leads to disagreements and arguments and wars and all of these things, because we, we took the exact same words and, and it meant something to different people based on life experience and, you know, their own standings and the things that they've been through in their life. Um,

And so I think that it means very, very different things to a lot of different people. And, and so, and, and we definitely, you know, you'll see that play out this season, as you talked about in episode two, you know, you, we definitely, we definitely hear Bo's sort of disdain for it, you know, or the spectacle of it all. She believes that this,

what others view as a religious ceremony was a spectacle, you know? And because she felt like a prop piece. And so she, she has this sort of like child who's, you know, she is the,

This sister that was thrust into this life that never wanted any of it. You know, she's a warrior. That's who she is. That's who she was raised to be. And Satine was raised to be in government, not Bo. Oh, boy. Jo, another one of our favorite talking points, a reluctant leader. Yeah.

You know, you mentioned a few things there, including the way that it gets to something else we wanted to ask about, which is, of course, the Darksaber, but not just the object itself, more what it represents and what it represents for each of these character arcs. So in episode two, chapter 18, there is this incredible showcase with Bo and the fabled Blade. And the Darksaber has been so central to Bo's story across the

the animated verse across Mandalorian so far. And so this was obviously just a real thrill, but a very thematically rich one as well. You know, Din winning the Darksaber from Gideon was this huge step back in Bo's mind for her quest to retake Mandalore to win the allegiance of her people. And when we meet her at the top of the new season, like you said, there's this, this,

aura of defeat and hopelessness after seeing again the proof of how difficult it is to rally the loyalty without it. So she wouldn't take the blade from Din at the end of season two when he offered it. And she had seen already that hard reality of Moff Gideon's words, the truth of that. And so here's our question. This is something we've been talking about a lot in our preview coverage.

does the idea that the story has the power have to be true? She picked it up and wielded it in episode two. It was like a fucking natural just to complete a total pro with it, way more in sync with it than we've ever seen Dinby. Is Bo standing in her own way here? And is there a path that,

to Bo and Din both breaking free of the rigidity that could actually, if they adhere to it and let it guide them, cause another one of these catastrophic fractures in the society. Like, he helps her let go of the weight of the story surrounding the saber. She helps him take off his helmet, get some fresh air, let Kroku touch his cheek every so often. Everyone wins. Is there a cap to that? Let us look at Pedro, you know, like whatever it is.

Y'all just want to see Pedro's face. Who doesn't? Who's among us, you know? I mean, I don't disagree. I'm enjoying last month. You can see his little face. So are we. Yeah. Look, I think that the power and the belief that is put into the Darksaber is probably more powerful than the Darksaber. But at the same time, that's the way that that works, you know? Yeah.

Um, I, I think that, that the, the sword of into of itself is incredibly powerful. You've seen the difference with, with the way that, that Din, that, that Din is overpowered by the saber. I mean, it's, it's very clear when watching him fight with it, that it weighs a ton.

Um, you know, and like you said, you see someone pick it up and, and it's, it's like she's fencing. So, um, you know, I think that there is a little bit of potentially of her standing in her own way, you know, but she firmly believes that she needs that dark saber to rule because I don't believe that even though Bo has one of the biggest egos of anyone, I do not believe that she thinks she's capable. Yeah.

And the only way to do it is with the dark saber. It's like a, it's her mask. If you were innocent, if you will, in a sense that, you know, she has the dark saber, she doesn't have to be a good leader. She just has to lead. You know what I mean? Magical blade. Yeah, of course. So, yeah, I wanted to ask you, I love that idea of, you know, the, the metaphorical mask along with the helmets that are so central to bow. And this idea of,

We see her lounging. We see her posturing. We see her brushing him off, wanting to get rid of him. But when there's danger, she is immediately in heroic rescue mode. She runs to his rescue. She rescues him again and again. She does not hesitate for a second to dive into the waters after him. And this is a question that Mallory and I had coming off of season two was, you know, will Bowen just be at odds?

with each other constantly, the resentment that he wound up with a blade and she didn't, et cetera. What is it inherent to Bo that that doesn't matter when there's danger, that this is her instinctual response? I think that at her core, she's a warrior. And I think that when the going gets tough, she's always going to be in the front. That's who she is.

Um, but I also believe that at her core, like who, who she is, how she was raised, everything she's ever done from the very beginning of the moment that we meet her, she's always done what she thought was right for the Mandalorian people as misguided as she may have been. Um, and so I think that she values life. Um,

But, you know, and I also think that she values Din's life. You know, I think that she sees him as, you know, I don't know. I think that she sees him as a warrior as well. I think she respects the warrior in him. And I also think that there's a part of her that like, you know,

You got to love the kid, right? He pulls up, he literally shows up and you see those face go from like this hardened, angry, get the heck out of your face to, oh no, child is alone. Why is this kid by himself? What happened to him? And then she, you know, almost feels guilty because she, she set him off on this path that she knew was dangerous and was like, have fun.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I also think that we have to, we also have to acknowledge where Bo has come from. Bo says as much in, in episode two, where she talks about how she she's known many Jedi. We saw her with Obi-Wan. We know that she knows that I, we know that she knows that Grogu is a Jedi and,

I think that she understands the importance of him. I want to ask you a little bit about that, about Bo's past, this idea of her legacy. There's so much we do know from watching her in the animated series. There's so much you know inhabiting her for so long. But then in episode two, we get some little details, like a little bit more info about her dad. What does it mean to you every time a new piece of the house crew's legacy comes across your way? How is it informing and shaping your...

your take on this character. I love it. You know, I mean, I think that, that, um, like you said, every time a new piece comes up, it, it is like imprinted in, in my mind as a piece of her, but at the same time, Dave Filoni is like my encyclopedia. And I spend every second that I'm with Dave listening and talking to him about both.

And, um, you know, I mean, not every second, I mean, obviously we've been friends and we talk about other things, but, but we will send, we will spend days just texting back and forth backstory of, of, of both things that people may not ever see about her childhood and, and how she felt around her father and, and what's the team represented to her and, and,

And, um, all of these things I already know. Um, and so it, it all went into this season, um, everything that we've been talking about for years. Um, so it's a, it's a really interesting season. So we're going to get a lot, a lot more of this, the shape of this house cruise story. Is that what you're saying?

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that you... Based on what we see in episode two, you can tell that she is pained and that there's something more going on inside of her. And I think she likes not being alone. She likes when she's with Din and Grogu because everyone else has left her. And so...

This is a character that is very broken. And, you know, if you know the Clone Wars and Rebels story, I think it makes even more sense why she's so broken. Yeah, that was something we wanted to ask about, maybe how that history is manifesting in it. And actually a really interesting particular way in the first couple episodes here, you know, we hear both stance on...

on magic. And this was really fascinating to us. Bo tells Din, there's nothing magic about the minds of Mandalore. They supplied Beskar Ward to our ancestors and the rest is superstition. But Star Wars is so often about

showing us and telling us the stories about characters on some kind of journey of faith to borrow my, my cohost's perfect phrasing. So, you know, do you believe in the force? That can be one version of that. Do you believe in the rebellion? Do you believe in the dark saber having this mighty heft as a symbol? Um,

Et cetera, et cetera. So is Bo's stance on magic specifically and notably Mandalorian magic the product of that shaken faith in herself, in her people, in her ability to forge a better future? And will that really...

Amazing and spine-tingling encounter with the mystical Mythasaur in the Living Waters at the end of episode two potentially reignites something there and change something fundamental about how she considers possibility and what magic represents in this universe. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. LAUGHTER

I'm so glad you gave the coy short answer to that because it means we have time for one more question and it's the most important question on my agenda. Something that I am constantly tracking in anything I watch are wigs. I love talking about wigs. You get a brand new, beautiful, sleek wig this season. How do you feel about the new wig, Katie Sackhoff? Well, she obviously has a hairdresser somewhere around.

Um, so, you know, and I've said this before, uh, season two was really, I don't think anyone thought that Bo would have, maybe they did. They didn't tell me, but, um, I don't think that they anticipated her, um, uh, being such a big part of the show. Like I said, maybe they did. I think that the fan reaction to having Bo in this world was, um, really universally, uh, interesting, um,

I'm not going to say loved, but people she fit in the world. And I think that that for whatever reason. So in season two, we really wanted to just like pay homage to the character in Clone Wars like that. And that was my that was my goal. My goal was to to have her be instantaneously recognizable to people who knew her, but also not jarring and take people out of the story.

And I thought that we really accomplished that in season two. I know that a lot of people had a problem with the wig. I personally didn't. I actually liked the wig. You know, it was like a helmet. It was like, that's what it looks like when you take your Mandalorian helmet off. I don't understand what that is. That is fair. That's what it looks like. Yeah. But no, so this season, what it was about was that I wanted to take more ownership and I wanted to...

to acknowledge that she existed in animation before live action, but to fully take ownership of the character and make her my own. And that meant, and John was the one that spearheaded this as well, but we wanted her to look different this season. You know, I mean, I... The costume's a little different too, right? Yeah.

The costume's not different. No, the costume's not different. But her wig is different. The scar is potentially a little bit more prominent this season, as are the freckles. Because I just... I wanted her to look the way I wanted her to look in live action. And last season, I wanted her to look

the way that people expected her to look. If that makes any sense. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. She's looking great, looking great.

All right. Well, that does it for us. It's been a very tumultuous, rocky journey down into the depths of this podcast episode. Mallory is hanging on by a thread. I have had to move locations several times. My luggage is still lost, FYI. But we did it. We wanted to talk about this episode of television. It was an incredible episode. We loved it. We're so happy to be here to talk to you. So thanks to Katie Sackhoff, obviously, right? Thanks to Ben Lindbergh, obviously. Stay

Stay tuned to the feed for the Midnight Boys Pew Pew and their instant reaction to next week's episode, which we are so excited to watch.

Hop on over to Prestige, where Mal and I will be covering the Last of Us finale. So will Ben and Charles, by the way. You know, the gang's all there over on the Prestige feed. Go do that. Thanks to our general, Raman Kapal, for his production work on this. And thanks to the heroic editing job that I know Steve Allman is about to do on like nine different files that he has to wrangle. So thank you to our very own myth author, Steve Allman. And we will be back next week. Bye! Bye!

Pause. Let me find this quote. Hold on. I have it somewhere. Pause. I'll just resume and summarize. Resuming, Steve. Steve, please keep all of that and put it at the end. Keep none of it. Cut it all. You can keep the sound effect, but none of the other stuff. Resuming.

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