Chapter 21: The Pirate

This episode starts off in the office of High Magistrate of Nevarro 7, Greef Karga’s, office. He is working on a city layout plan with a few engineers when the massive pirate ship of the green mossy alien thing from episode 1 appears in the sky. This green alien’s name is Gorian Shard, the pirate captain of the massive ship. Shard hails Karga over a hologram and they have a tense conversation. Karga tells his assistants in his office to tell the citizens of the city to flee and to get everyone out safely to the flats. Shard insults Karga, saying that he has become soft amongst the riches of being a high magistrate, and that he is only a fraction of the man he used to be. He gets upset with Karga for killing four of his men (which happened in the Mexican standoff in episode 1 of this season) and that he will fire upon the city. Karga warns him that Nevarro 7 is now a part of the New Republic, when Shard calls his bluff and says that Nevarro is not on the logs of New Republic systems, and that Moff Gideon is not here anymore to protect them either. Shard opens fire on the city and Karga records a message for his droid to send to the New Republic, specifically Captain Carson Teva, since they have spoken about being allies before. The townspeople, along with Karga, flee to the lava flats outside the city. We cut to a New Republic outpost where there are officers and fighter pilots sharing drinks at a bar, playing space pool, and overall just chilling out with each other when we see Carson Teva, who has received the message from Karga. While he plays the message, fan favorite character from Star Wars Rebels, Garazeb Orrelios, commonly known as Zeb, appears and has a brief conversation with Captain Teva (Zeb was the large purple alien creature from Rebels, part of the Ghost crew with Ezra Bridger, Kannan Jarras, Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren, and Chopper. This is his official live-action debut). Captain Teva brings this hologram of Karga to the New Republic headquarters on Coruscant in search of aid for Nevarro 7, and he is denied approval since Nevarro is not officially a New Republic system. Elia (G68, A.K.A. Moff Gideon’s assistant) walks in and gives her input on the situation (in a pretty imperial manner) when Teva mentions the rumor of Gideon escaping his prison transport. Elia seems pretty uncomfortable by this and Teva leaves the headquarters after giving ominous words of warning about Gideon’s possible return.

Captain Teva departs for the Mandalorian covert. He is able to find it from intel from R5, who is still with Mando. He tells the Mandalorians, especially Din Djarin, that Greef Karga needs help and plays the hologram for them. Teva leaves them with a call to action and vows to never reveal the location of the covert. The covert has a large meeting using the Armorer’s tool as a talking stick to discuss their course of action on this when Mando defends Greef Karga and reveals that land was offered to him where the Mandalorians can live. Pas Vizsla takes the tool and shares his point of view. Of course we all think that he will disagree with Din, but he actually backs him up with a ‘this is the way’ hype speech. It seems as if Vizsla and Djarin have totally squashed their beef and now have each others’ backs. The Mandalorians arrive at Nevarro 7 in the Gauntlet and the N1 starfighter with a plan to take down the pirate forces. Mando distracts the fighter ships with his N1 fighter and takes out many on the air forces while Bo is able to drop off a lot of Mandalorians from the Gauntlet to fight on the ground. Mando destroys the pirates in the air in yet another really cool dogfight and Bo joins in to take out the large ship. On the ground, the Mandalorians decimate the pirates in the streets and the Armorer gets a scene similar to season 1 where she schools some pirates using just her tools. This was an amazing scene between the fight in the air and the ground assault. It is always great to see Mandalorians going to battle with each other. At the end of the fight when all is lost for the pirates, Vane escapes on his own (maybe to find more pirates such as fan-favorite Hondo Ohnaka) and Captain Shard goes down with his ship in a fiery demise. Greef Karga honors the Mandalorians by giving them a large amount of land to live on and by saying that the whole planet is forever indebted to them. I believe that the Mandalorian covert will now set up shop on the surface of Nevarro and will no longer have to hide in the shadows or in the sewers since their numbers have grown and will continue to grow.

Pas Vizsla tells Bo Katan that the Armorer wishes to see her, so Bo goes down into the underground forge from season 1. The Armorer explains how the Mandalorians used to have many Armorers working in the great forge on Mandalore, and how it is sad that now there is just one. She orders Bo to take her helmet off. After a little questioning, Bo does remove her helmet. The Armorer explains that the Mandalorians are too divided and they need to unite, and that Bo is the one to unite them. She has walked many ways throughout her time as a Mandalorian, and if anyone can appeal to all groups of Mandalorians, it is the one who has seen a mythosaur. Bo walks out with her helmet off in front of all the other Mandalorians, who are met with confusion and shock. The Armorer states that she accepts Bo Katan as walking both ways, and that she can take off her helmet as she tries to recruit more Mandalorians to join their covert so the numbers grow even more and become respectable as a culture again. We cut to Captain Carson Teva in his X-wing exploring the wreckage of a shuttle. There are cold bodies floating around and a massive hole torn out of the ship. Teva states to a New Republic officer that this shuttle’s registration matches the one carrying Moff Gideon, and that Gideon’s body is the only one missing from the wreckage. Teva sends a probe to examine a shiny fragment in the wall, and it is beskar. Wow. End of episode.

This action-packed episode was also packed with a lot of juicy information and potential foreshadowing. I really really liked this episode. A few things of importance – Zeb’s live-action appearance could mean more than just seeing a fan-favorite on screen. He could be foreshadowing the appearance of other Rebels characters such as Thrawn or Sabine. Sabine could be one of the Mandalorians who broke Moff Gideon out, and if she did, it would probably be to get information about the whereabouts of Grand Admiral Thrawn. She would do this to find information about Ezra, since he and Thrawn went missing together in the Rebels finale. Or maybe the imperial remnants planted beskar on the crash site to frame Mandalorians. I believe that Gideon hired a group of Mandalorian mercenaries, maybe death watch, to break him out. He would be able to pay them with his seemingly endless supply of beskar, which we got a taste of in season 1. I am happy that the story seems to really be picking up (finally). I am hopeful for the final three episodes and am very intrigued to see what is going down with Moff Gideon.

I would give this episode a 9/10.