'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 6: "Guns For Hire" Recap and Review
Another pit stop along the mission brings a new mystery and several star studded cameos
WARNING: Contains Spoilers
This episode is a bit of an odd duck. There is nothing particularly wrong with the individual parts of this episode. The overall story progresses meaningfully, the side story is an interesting mystery, the setting is different and new, and we are even given a few interesting cameos to spice things up. but when all the parts are combined there is somthing not quite right. The progression of the overall story is pushed to the end and is almost held hostage by the side story while the setting felt out of place in the universe making the cameos feel gratuitous. While this not to say the episode bad, it is simply… odd.
The episode begins on a ship piloted by a Quarren crew. Their captain (Christine Adams) gets hailed by what she assumes is an imperial ship. Turns out, it is Led Bo-Katan’s old associate Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides) with Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado) by his side. They are there to bring a Mon Calamari Nobleman (Harry Holland) back to his family and will resort to violence if needed. To avoid conflict, the Quarren Captain surrenders her love and the Mandalorian crew leaves. Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) and Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) manage to track her old Mandalorian fleet to an independent planet, Plazir-15, but before they can approach, the planet’s defenses take control of the ship and forces them to land in the city. As soon as they land they are taken to the leadership on the planet. The seem to be interrupting a dinner party but are called over by Captain Bombardier (Jack Black) and his wife, The Duchess (Lizzo). They take the Mandalorians aside and explain to them that they need them to clear out and solve the problem of some violently malfunctioning Droids before they can be allowed to to address the Mandalorians there being used as private security. They start by meeting Commissioner Helgait (Christopher Lloyd) who further explains the problem. He suggests the problem may lay in the repairs led by the Ugnaughts on the planet. They go to the Ugnaughts, Bo-Katan tries to talk to them but they are unresponsive, luckily Din Djarin knows how to speak to them. After a quick sit down, The Ugnaughts suggest that an incident could be immanent on the docks so they head there. At the docks, they are stopped by a battle droid who denies any issues. Din Djarin begins provoking the droids, trying to get one to respond, which it does violently. The droid runs off into the city and Din and Bo-Katan give chase, eventually shutting it down with blaster fire. After searching the droid they find a card for a local droid bar and head that way to investigate. As soon as they enter the bar the room stops. The droids are hesitant to cooperate at first but decide to help out of fear that the malfunctioning droids will make the others look bad and be decommissioned. The bartender points them to a bad batch of programming refreshing fluid. They go and investigate the remains of the malfunctioning battle droid from earlier and find that the fluid was tainted with nano-bots. Those lead them to the person who ordered them Commissioner Helgait. They confront the Commissioner and he admits his actions as a way to honor the wishes of Count Dooku. They return to the Dutchess and Captain and give them the Commissioner. They are finally allowed to approach the Mandalorian fleet. Bo-Katan and Din approach the fleet with caution. When Axe sees Bo-Katan he is not happy. She pleads with them to join her but he refuses so she challenges him to a duel for leadership. He accepts and they both attack each other. After a knockdown dragout fight, Bo-Katan is victorious but Axe still does not want to join her, citing her reluctance to claim the Darksaber from Din Djarin. Din once again tries to give the Darksaber to Bo-Katan but she refuses. However, he explains that it is already hers, he cites when he was attacked while exploring Mandalore and lost the Darksaber. Bo-Katan saved Din and defeated his attacker, meaning the Darksaber is now hers. Once again he holds out the Darksaber to her and this time she claims it.
There is just somthing not quite right about this world and it can mostly be attributed to the design languages. Seeing Jack Black, Lizzo, and the legendary Christopher Lloyd in this universe is somthing that under normal circumstances would be more than welcome but the over the top characters they play coupled with the garish setting feel like it is more of a parody of sci-fi than just another world in the Star Wars universe. Similar settings in the larger Star Wars collective have seen similar problems. The Casino scene in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was panned by the audience as well as the colorful biker kids in the Book Of Boba Fett series. This bled into the side story as well. The mystery was interesting and the Christopher Lloyd villain swerve was a welcomed surprise. But the whole adventure seemed beneath the seasoned Mandalorians and was difficult to take seriously. In other words, our characters treated it like a burden and it influenced how the audience will receive it. The ending of the episode was what the audience was truly waiting for. The Mandalorian fleet had been taken over by the returning Axe Woves and they are all resistant to Bo-Katan’s leadership without the Darksaber. Even after winning a duel with Woves, they still resisted Bo-Katan’s leadership until Din used logic and the events of a previous episode to grant ownership of the Darksaber to Bo-Katan without her needing to kill him for it. Bo-Katan now has a fleet and a small army to further her mission to retake her home planet of Mandalore.
This is another one of those “Side-Quest” episodes, to use video game terms. The story does continue in a meaningful way but is delayed by the needing to complete another quest first. This was an odd story choice to begin with. The friction between Bo-Katan and her previous team as well as the fact that they abandoned her could have been explored more and filled out an entire episode on it’s own. The need for an entire Side-Quest episode didn’t seem warranted and almost detracts from overall story. It would be a total loss if the story itself was decent enough and, to put it frankly, Jack Black makes everything better.