Chapter 22: Guns for Hire

This episode starts off onboard a Quarren vessel traveling through space when they are hailed by Moff Gideon’s Cruiser, which was taken by the former Night Owls after Gideon’s capture. Axe Woves, Mandalorian and former Bo Katan loyalist, is the one commanding the ship with a pretty large crew of Mandalorian mercenaries, some of which we have seen in season 2. Woves reveals that he was hired by Mon Calamari to bring back their prince, who is on this Quarren ship. The Quarren captain doesn’t want to give up her boyfriend, but she realizes that she must do so for her and her crew’s safety (it seems to be a Romeo and Juliet deal because the Quarren and Mon Calamari don’t like each other). While being escorted off the ship, the Mon Calamari prince says that he thought Mandalorians were honorable to which he gets the reply from Koska Reeves, “We are, kid, all it takes is a few credits.” These Mandalorians are the ‘guns for hire’ alluded to in this episode’s title.

We see Mando, Grogu, and Bo Katan heading towards Plazir 15, the planet that Axe Woves and his fleet are stationed on. Once they get into the atmosphere, their ship’s controls get overridden by the planet’s technology and they get flown to a landing pad. They are led by two former imperial droids to a tram that will take them into the city. The PA announcer of the tram states that the planet’s leaders would like an audience with Mando and Bo, and they realize that they really have no choice since the tram is taking them there anyways. Once they arrive, they enter a large feast with Jack Black and Lizzo sitting at the head of the table (plot twist). These two are the planet’s royalty, and they tell Bo and Mando that they need help investigating the source of malfunctioning droids that are popping up all across the city. The two leave Grogu with Lizzo and Jack Black to feast and play space croquet. They are escorted to the department of security and they meet Christopher Lloyd (Commissioner Helgait), the head of security. He shows them clips of the malfunctioning droids, and Bo asks why he can’t just shut them all down with the red button. Helgait explains that the citizens can’t live without the droids and they have the droids do almost everything for them (basically they are very lazy). Helgait sends Bo and Mando down to the lower levels to have a word with the Ugnaughts.

On the way down to the lower levels, while in the elevator, Bo asks why Din is taking this endeavor so personally. As we know from season 1, Mando has never been fond of droids (we know from the season 1 flashbacks that he was actually saved by the Mandalorians from a droid attack during the Clone Wars, the same attack that killed his parents). When they reach the Ugnaughts, Bo has a very hard time reaching them. They all go about their day until Mando, the man of few words, says that he was a friend of Kuiil (the Ugnaught from season 1 who sacrificed himself and programmed IG-11 that saved Grogu and Mando). This instantly earns their respect, showing how widely known and famous Kuiil is. The Ugnaughts tell Bo and Mando where to go to find a location of malfunctioning droids, so they head over to that spot. We arrive at what looks to be an unloading station for cargo ships or something when Bo starts questioning the B1 battle droid (the classic battle droids from the prequel era) while Mando starts messing with the super battle droids by waving his hand in front of them and kicking them over. Most of the droids are unfazed until one super battle droid gets up off the ground and cleans Mando’s clock with a very strong backhand punch to the head, knocking Mando to the ground. The droid sprints away while Bo and Mando follow, causing havoc in the streets of the city. It rips poles and large objects out of the ground and hurls them at the two. Bo follows close behind while Mando takes an alternative route, and this ultimately pays off when he dives headfirst out of a restaurant window to take the super battle droid down (I must say, this was quite the impressive form tackle). They disarm the droid and rip a spark pad out of its head, which gives the address of a droid bar, called the Resistor. Upon entering the droid bar, the music stops and the droids all look funny at Din and Bo (which was really similar to the scene in the Mos Eisley Cantina in a New Hope when the bartender said ‘we don’t serve your kind here’ to C-3PO and R2-D2). They show the droid bartender the sparkpad, and he traces it to a particular batch. All of the malfunctioning droids had sparkpads from the same batch, meaning that there was something wrong with it. Bo and Din take the bad batch of sparkpads to the city’s scientists in the dead droid’s cemetery to do some molecular digging when the assistant floating droid goes nuts and starts attacking Mando, Bo, and the science lady. After Mando slices through it with the darksaber, they ultimately find a chain code and nanobots in the sparkpad that originate from the Techno Union (the Techno Union was a separatist group from the prequel era that was led by Wat Tambor, the green alien thing who wore a draped blue outfit that was also killed by Anakin Skywalker at the end of Revenge of the Sith). They do some more digging and find that the one who placed this order was Plazir-15’s head of security, Commissioner Helgait.

Bo and Mando burst into the security office and tell Helgait that they know what he did, and that he is done terrorizing the city. Helgait opens the big red button’s case and threatens to hit it, turning all the city’s droids against the citizens. He reveals himself as a separatist and Count Dooku loyalist, calling him a visionary. Before he can finish his sentence, though, Bo Katan stuns him with an electric shock and he falls to the floor. Mando and Bo bring in Helgait to the party room and he confesses that it was indeed him who orchestrated the droid attacks. He insults Jack Black’s character and blames him for his course of actions, and he apologizes to Lizzo’s character. Helgait is taken away to prison and the Lord and Lady of Plazir-15 present Mando and Bo with the key to the city. Lizzo knights Grogu, and Lizzo grants them permission to speak with Axe Woves and his fleet.

While in the shuttle on the way over to the fleet, Bo is nervous. Mando asks why she is, and she says that she doesn’t think that they will be loyal to her anymore. They approach the fleet and Bo confronts Woves. Bo challenges him in a duel, and after a great fight sequence, Bo beats Woves to reclaim her fleet. He insults Mando for being a Child of the Watch without having any Mandalorian blood, and he sees him as a primitive. He tells Bo that she should be fighting Mando for the dark saber, not him for his fleet. This is when Mando steps in and reveals that Bo rightfully lays claim to the dark saber, according to Mandalorian rules and traditions, after defeating his captor way back in episode two when he was exploring Mandalore. They Mandalorians agree with Din’s reasoning and he grants the saber to Bo rightfully, and she lights it up. End of episode.

I was very disappointed in this episode for a few reasons. The beginning was just a little cringey and I’m sure they could’ve portrayed the Mandalorians as ‘guns for hire’ in a more epic way instead of just breaking up a little fling between two fish aliens. Also, seeing Jack Black, Christopher Lloyd, and Lizzo really took me out of the show. There is a reason that George Lucas didn’t use big time celebrities in his movies, since he didn’t want your attention to be diverted away from the actual story. I am glad that these Star Wars debuts didn’t have big roles, though, and I thought Lloyd did a great job of keeping you in the Star Wars universe and not becoming overwhelmed by his fame (this is probably because he had a more serious role than Lizzo and Jack Black). I will say that it is a little funny to see Kung Fu Panda in the Star Wars universe. Another reason that this episode didn’t do the job for me was how long it took for Mando to give Bo the dark saber. Bo technically won the dark saber in episode 2. It is now episode 6. It should not have taken this long for her to claim rightful ownership of it, even though it makes sense how it is hers. The main reason that I didn’t fully enjoy this episode, though, is because it should’ve happened in the first half of the season as opposed to one of the final episodes. It would’ve been better to see this episode early on because of all the fun parts, but it really didn’t progress the storyline at all, other than the final five minutes. Especially after last episode’s ending, we thought we were going to get a very epic Moff Gideon story, but instead we got Lizzo. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of the episode that I did enjoy, especially seeing the Clone Wars battle droids and the form tackle by Mando while diving out the window. But unfortunately, this episode was the most disappointing of the whole season for me because of when it aired in regards to the season’s timeline and the story itself not progressing the overarching storyline.

I would give this episode a 6/10.