Chapter 20: The Foundling

This episode starts off on the shores of the Mandalorian covert with many Mandalorians sparring and practicing their fighting moves against each other. Bo Katan, the newest member of the Children of the Watch, walks around and observes the various foundlings fighting. We see Grogu playing around with crabs near the water when Mando takes him and puts him up against the foundling who we later find out is Pas Vizsla’s son. The foundling asks why Grogu doesn’t wear a helmet, and we find out that he cannot take the creed until he can speak. The two duel off in a paintball practice fight. The Vizsla foundling wins the first two and Grogu doesn’t really know what to do, until Mando tells him to “do what he knows.” In the third round, Grogu uses his Jedi powers to do a flip over the other foundling and backflips back, shooting him three times in the chest, winning the match. The Vizsla foundling walks away after losing the match when he is snatched up by a large dragon bird thing (it looked a lot like a space pterodactyl). A few Mandalorians follow the bird until their jetpacks run out of fuel. Bo Katan follows the bird in the Gauntlet all the way to its nest. When she returns to the covert, she shows the other Mandalorians where the bird lives and how to infiltrate its nest (showing how much of a leader she is). Bo and Mando take a group of Mandalorians to help them on their excursion to rescue the foundling and they depart in the Gauntlet.

We see the Armorer and Grogu in the forge. The armorer uses some of the excess beskar to make Grogu a new piece of armor. Every hit and clang of the hammer on the armor triggers Grogu’s memory until we are transported back to the night of Order 66 (finally we get to see what happened to Grogu and how he survived Order 66). The 501st clones burst through the doors and start shooting down the Jedi who are protecting young Grogu. A few of the Jedi briefly escape and are able to get him to the elevator just before they meet their demise, with one falling into the elevator with Grogu. As the elevator doors open again, we are met with the face of Jedi master Kelleran Beq (Beq is played by Ahmed Best, who also played Jar Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy). Beq picks up the lightsaber of the fallen Jedi laying on the elevator floor and wields both that saber and his own to defeat the clones who pursue him and the child. They are able to escape to a speeder but are still pursued by 501st clones, this time in LAAT gunships. The two barely make it to the landing pad to find a Nubian starship (very similar to Padme’s ship from the Phantom Menace) with various guards to defend it. A few of the guards get taken out, but Beq and Grogu make it out alive and fly into hyperspace, ending the flashback (throughout the flashback, we can see how high profile Grogu is since he has personal Jedi bodyguards ensuring his safety. We already knew that Grogu was important, but there may be something else we don’t know yet). The Armorer finishes Grogu’s new armor and puts it on him. It is a beskar chestplate with a mudhorn signet, the same signet that Mando rocks on his shoulder plate.

We cut back to the Mandalorian crew who is going to rescue the foundling. They decide to scale the mountain at daylight the next day and make camp for the night. They all sit around the campfire until it is time to eat, and they disperse so they can take their helmets off. Pas Vizsla informs Bo Katan that since she is the leader of the excursion, she can stay by the campfire and remove her helmet to eat while the others find somewhere else (surprisingly, Vizsla accepts Bo’s role as a leader). The next morning, they scale the mountain without their jetpacks so they don’t alert the dragon creature that they are coming. When they reach the top, Mando uses his thermal vision in his helmet to see the life form in the nest. Without hesitation, Pas Vizsla enters the nest and reveals that his son was the foundling that was captured. The life form ended up being one of the baby birds, which alerted the mother bird of the intruders. The mom bird spits up the Vizsla foundling and snatches Pas Vizsla, flying away with him. The other Mandalorians follow and fight the bird to free both Pas and his son, and are successful in doing so. Mando finishes off the bird, dropping it into the mouth of one of the space gators that we saw in episode 1 of this season (I think that this was a nod to the Qui Gon Jinn quote from the Phantom Menace “there’s always a bigger fish”). Mando and Pas seem to have squashed their beef, and they all return safely to the covert.

When everyone arrives back to the covert, Bo Katan gives the tribe three new ‘foundlings’ in the forms of the three baby dragon birds, since their mother is now dead (maybe some of the Mandalorians will tame these birds and ride them like dragons). Bo lost a shoulder plate in the process of fighting the bird, so the Armorer takes her into the forge to create a new one for her. The Armorer tells Bo that she has done the best thing that she possibly could for the tribe, which is rescuing a foundling. After making the shoulder plate, the Armorer asks Bo what signet she would like to be on it, and she says the mythosaur. She reveals to the Armorer that she has seen a mythosaur, but the Armorer just assumes that it is in a vision (all Mandalorians believe that the mythosaur has been extinct for a long time). Bo Katan says that she saw one with her own eyes in the depths of the living waters on Mandalore, but the Armorer treats her like she is a little delusional, not fully believing her. End of episode.

Even though this was a shorter episode, I really enjoyed it. Every time we see Order 66 scenes, it is always great to get that Revenge of the Sith nostalgia. There are a couple of questions that are yet to be answered in this episode. Is Bo Katan really joining the Children of the Watch, or is she playing the long game so to speak in order to gain the trust of the other Mandalorians? Is this season of Mando really about Din Djarin? I feel like we are transitioning away from the singular story of Din and are now exploring the possibility of bigger ideas for the show. Especially after finally getting the Order 66 flashback, Grogu seems to become an increasingly important character, even more important than he was before. Will Bo Katan’s role in the show continue to grow? She seems to be written as a major player in the grand scheme of things. All in all, I really enjoyed this episode and am very excited for the second half of season 3.

I would give this episode an 8.4/10.