The Mandalorian – Season 3 Episode 5 Recap & Review

The Pirate

Episode 5 of The Mandalorian Season 3 begins with trouble brewing for Greef Karga on Nevarro. Pirates touch down and want revenge off the back of Mando’s tough justice in episode 1. Gorian Shard is the one in charge here, and he promises to shoot first in retaliation for what transpired earlier. There’s no way to negotiate with him either, and as a result, the pirate bombs the city.

Karga refuses to leave his people to their fate, flat out refusing an escape pod off the planet, and scooping up the residents and high-tailing it out into the wilderness on foot. Greef Karga sends out a message to Carson Teva requesting a patrol of New Republic fighters to fly out and help destroy the raiders.

In turn, Teva speaks to those on Coruscant to push this plan forward and gain help. The thing is, Nevarro isn’t a “member planet”, so the officials decide to let them suffer until they fall in line. Teva isn’t happy and even makes the connection that it’s linked to Moff Gideon as well, but it’s waved away.

Teva decides to seek help from Mando, finding their base through the use of R5’s tracker on the planet. Teva shows off the holo message, and encourages Mando and his people to get involved. He promises not to reveal their location but leaves all the same.

Mando brings the other Mandalorians on board, as a big fight breaks out on Nevarro. The fight happens on two fronts – in the air and on the ground. The latter sees a whole bunch of hunters trying to gain the advantage, led by Paz Viszla, taking out the foot soldiers one by one. Mando keeps them busy in the air, eventually leading to the pirates surrendering. Well, some of them do anyway. Vane hightails it off the planet completely, while Gorian goes up in flames, in his ship, just above the city.

While Greef Karga welcomes the Mandalorians onto the planet as their new home, The Armorer requests Bo-Katan’s presence below. The Armorer tells her to remove her helmet, which she does, so they can talk together. She goes on to decide they should all walk the Way together. She also mentions the Mythosaur too, and claims that this is a sign that she’s the one to unite them all.

As the episode closes out, we cut back to Teva who uncovers an abandoned ship. It would appear that Moff Gideon may have been taken by Mandalorians.

The Episode Review

The Mandalorian season 3 has felt completely directionless this year and even worse, it’s another switch and bait as Mando isn’t even the main character in his own show. Instead, we’ve had several filler episodes in a row and now we learn that it’s Bo-Katan, not Mando, that’s the most important Mandalorian whom we’re going to be following going forward. Just to reinforce this feeling, it takes 12 minutes before we even get to see Mando, and then he takes a backseat in favour of the other Mandalorians fighting.

The narrative through all of this just hasn’t been good either, and the poor writing extends to the sheer lack of logic and incredulous scenarios during the action. The fight in Nevarro is a good example of this. The fact that Greef Karga hasn’t even though about bringing in defenses, even after his chat with Mando, seems like a massive oversight. I know he mentioned it in episode 1, but given it’s a free city, couldn’t be have hired security detail to help out?

But then even beyond that, we get the fight with the Mandalorians themselves, who once again show their lack of competency while fighting. All the Mandalorians have jetpacks but none decide to take the high ground or fight on rooftops, instead sticking to the ground and hiding behind walls. To be fair we get one half-scene where a fighter heads up but in a completely different area, rather than in the tight alleyways.

Ultimately, The Mandalorian season 3 is a mess. It’s a rudderless boat in desperate need of direction, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s goin to materialize any time soon.