 What's up guys and welcome to One Take, I'm Gil and today we're talking about Star Wars the Mandalorian Episode 3. This will be a full recap and review so it's going to be full of spoilers. And by the way if you're listening to this then you're going to want to subscribe to this channel so you get notifications whenever we go live so you can join the stream be a part of the conversation. We're also doing the One Take podcast where we're doing deeper dives on the Mandalorian and other topics. So check out the link in the show notes and with that let's dive into Episode 3 titled The Sin. This episode opens up with the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda where we last left them which is in the Mandalorian's ship. We see Baby Yoda is awake, Mandalorian gets a message from Grief Karga the character played by Carl Weathers telling the Mandalorian to bring the asset back directly to Warner Herzog whose character is simply named The Client. I should also note that at this point Baby Yoda grabs a little ball a little piece of the ship which looks like sort of the ship's stick shift and plays with it a little bit. From there the Mandalorian is back on planet he's walking through town with Baby Yoda floating beside him and he's very cavalier about this. He doesn't seem at all worried about the attention he'll attract walking with this baby but the thing to remember is that no one knew what he was going after. We all know it's a mysterious asset I don't think anyone was expecting it to be a kid. It also seems like people aren't familiar with this species so it's not like people are going to look at it and have the same reaction that we as viewers have which is wow it's a baby version of Yoda. From there he goes to Warner Herzog's hideout a couple stormtroopers grab the Baby Yoda from him. He learned in his conversation with The Client, Warner Herzog here, that he's given out many fobs and you can tell the Mandalorian has some concern about this. Many many other bounty hunters basically all of them working for Carl Weather's character were after the same thing. You can tell the Mandalorian is also concerned about the plans they have for Baby Yoda because he asks Warner Herzog what are your plans for it? And The Client replies, how uncharacteristic of one of your reputation. You have taken both commission and payment. Is it not the code of the guild that these events are now forgotten? And as he speaks some stormtroopers sort of menacingly walk in from behind so he's basically telling him don't ask any questions just leave the Baby Yoda to us and don't worry. He also makes a remark that finding a Mandalorian in these trying times is more difficult than finding Best Car Steel. So a couple of times this episode they try to remind us that Mandalorians are supposed to be scarce and they even specifically say later on that only one of them leaves their hideout at a time which is helping to set up a scene that hits us later on. From there the Mandalorian goes back to his hideout meets up with the Armourer, the spiky helmet lady Mandalorian. He informs her that his armor is pretty damaged and he may need to begin again which kind of hints at just the idea of all these different Mandalorians slowly build up their armor piece by piece almost like upgrades in a video game. They're doing a great job of emphasizing how important the armor is to the Mandalorian's culture. She tells him with all the steel that he got from turning into Baby Yoda she's going to be able to build him a new Curus which is basically a piece of armor that has a breastplate and a backplate that are laced together. As they talk other Mandalorians in their hideout start to sort of creep in and you can tell they're kind of eyeing all that steel all that Best Car that the Mandalorian brought back. All the other Mandalorians are kind of eyeing it suspiciously. One of them in particular this heavy infantry Mandalorian scoffs and says these were cast an Imperial Smelter. These are the spoils of the Great Purge basically calling that money out as blood money. It was taken by the Empire and now the Mandalorians been able to bring it back into Mandalorian hands. A couple of things I have to say about this scene. Number one they once again emphasize how scarce the Mandalorians are. The heavy infantry Mandalorian makes a comment, we live in the shadows and only come above ground one at a time. Like I mentioned before I kind of wish they would do a better job though of emphasizing how hidden their hideout is. Every time we see the Mandalorian return to it maybe we see him go behind a curtain we see him walk down some stairs but it doesn't seem like they're being all that careful and I kind of wish we'd see a little bit more detail about this hideout because then it would be more impactful at the end of the episode where all of the Mandalorians show up. It's supposed to be this big deal because they're so rare but I'm not sure how well the show emphasized that to make that a great payoff. Good scene but kind of wish it was harder impact when they all show up at the end. The Mandalorian and the heavy infantry Mandalorian get into a bit of a fist fight, they end up drawing blades and then the armor breaks them up. She makes reference to the way of the Mandalore which is a line that they come back to several times this episode. The armor asks our main Mandalorian have you ever removed your helmet? The Mandalorian replies no. Has it ever been removed by others? Never. This is the way and then as a group they all say this is the way then the heavy infantry Mandalorian says this is the way and the fight is broken up. So I have a few questions about this. Number one, I took it pretty literally when she asks have you ever removed your helmet? It sounds like the Mandalorians literally never removed their helmet which raises so many questions. How do they bathe? How do they keep their scalp clean? And I'm sure they can kind of give us a hand wavy technological sci-fi explanation that these helmets were designed in a way that it protects you not just from collisions but also internally somehow keeps things nice and clean in there. I will also point out that this somewhat contradicts what we've seen in Star Wars Rebels a show that takes place between episode 3 and 4 where we've seen Mandalorians remove their helmets but that may not actually be a contradiction since that show like I said took place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. This show the Mandalorian takes place about 5 years after Return of the Jedi so it is possible that the Mandalorian culture has evolved since then to the point where they do never remove their helmets. They also make many references to the Purge so it's also possible that the need for the Mandalorians to maintain their secrecy has only gotten stronger so they're more careful now and maybe like I said their culture has evolved to the point where they no longer literally ever remove their helmets. The Mandalorian explains that his armor was damaged by a mudhorn the creature the monster we saw in the last episode so the armorer says that's gonna be your signet. Mandalorian says no it was not a noble kill he was helped by an enemy. The armorer asks why and the Mandalorian explains that the enemy didn't know that he was his enemy and he's talking about Baby Yoda there and I'm sure like all of you that broke my heart to hear Baby Yoda called an enemy. So instead of giving him a signet she decides to make him some whistling birds a weapon that is powerful against many enemies at once and this is basically Chekov's whistling birds because we know it's going to come into play later this episode. Once again as she starts to forge his armor and the whistling birds every time she hits the armor the Mandalorian starts to get flashbacks and we see a little bit more of him as a child during what was presumably the purge that they've mentioned a few times. During that flashback we see that droids were heavily involved in the attack we see that when the Mandalorian as a child was thrown into his little hideout it was immediately blown open ripped open by a droid and then that's where the flashback cuts off. So we were wondering watching this show why the Mandalorian had some sort of bias against droids and I think here we started to see why. I suspect that the purge was primarily executed by droids. Also when that hideout got ripped open and the droid found the child presumably that child is the Mandalorian and he survived the attack so I'm assuming that when we see more of this flashback we'll see that someone saved him. The question is who saved him and if I were trying to theorize on who that was I would try to look at characters who are in the show that have some sort of a fatherly or mentor type of relationship with the Mandalorian but I don't think we've seen anybody like that yet definitely wouldn't think it was Carl Weathers or Werner Herzog so I suspect that whoever saved him is someone we haven't met yet. One other theory I have here is that in that flashback you'll see nobody was wearing best car steel none of them were wearing helmets so is it possible that this child was not of the Mandalorian culture by birth but maybe he was being attacked he was saved by a Mandalorian and sort of adopted into their culture. It would give some extra meaning to the title of this show. There are many Mandalorians but this show is called The Mandalorian and maybe part of the reason for that is that he's special in the sense that he's from another culture he was adopted and he took on their difficult and disciplined ways. Just a theory but we'll see if that plays out in the next few episodes. From there the Mandalorian goes to see Grief Carga the character played by Carl Weathers as he walks into the bar you can see everyone eyeing him sort of suspiciously. They know that he scored a big heap of best car they know that they were all trying to go after the asset but he's the one who got it and as Grief Carga says he's become legendary. He asks the Mandalorian what are you going to do now what do you want to do next that you've got this big store how can I show my gratitude the Mandalorian badass that he is says I want my next job. The Carl Weathers character says hey man take some time off he offers to take him to the Twilec Healing Baths and by the way if that name the Twilec or Twilec sounded familiar to you it's because you've met this species before they first appeared in Return of the Jedi. I'm going to ask my tech guy alone to put a picture of that up on the screen. Those are the aliens that have that sort of appendage that hangs off their off their head. You saw one of them as a slave dancer for Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi. You also actually see a couple of them hanging out as the Mandalorian walks through town. So from there the Mandalorian gets his next job from Carl Weathers he gives him his puck and but Mandalorian doesn't want to leave well enough alone with baby Yoda. He asks Carl Weathers what they're going to do with the kid. Carl Weathers tells him I didn't ask it's against the guild code. The Mandalorian though is concerned he explains that Werner Herzog the client surrounded by stormtroopers he's working for the Empire so he assumes they have some nefarious deeds they're up to but Carl Weathers grief cargo basically tells him don't worry about it mind your own business. If you really want to do something why don't you report it to the New Republic. The New Republic by the way is the name of the government that took over once the rebellion was successful in overthrowing the Empire. So they're doing a good job here I think of establishing that the Mandalorian clearly has a soft spot for the kid baby Yoda. His emotions are so subtle though even in his voice when we've talked a few times about the fact that he's behind a helmet so Pedro Pascal can't use facial expressions to emote but I think he even with his voice he keeps things very subdued I think that's just part of his character he's trying to be this cold calculated warrior but it does make me wonder if we're ever going to see him truly get rattled even if it's just through body language even if it's just through more from his voice I'm also curious if we're ever going to see him without a helmet my it's my expectation at this point is that will literally never see him without a helmet or it's going to be extremely rare because they've emphasized that so much as part of their culture. So Mandalorian tries to leave well enough alone he goes back to his ship but before he can take off he picks up that little piece of the ship that baby Yoda was playing with the camera slowly zooms in the music works to tell us what the Mandalorian is feeling and that's he can't leave he's got to go back for baby Yoda. So he goes back to the client Werner Herzog's hideout and just outside the hideout he sees baby Yoda's pod in a dumpster which is kind of characteristically unsubtle of this show something we'll talk about later from a distance the Mandalorian takes out his rifle and we see it's got a pretty cool feature it does a sort of heat scan where we can see the client and the doctor talking to each other and he can even pick up what they're saying we get a little snippet of the conversation Werner Herzog tells the doctor I order you to extract the necessary material and be done with it Dr. Pershing says he has explicitly ordered us to bring it back alive so a couple questions here number one the power dynamic is very unclear between the client and Dr. Pershing in the last episode I would have assumed that Werner Herzog was the guy in charge but here it seems like the doctors been able to directly contradict Werner Herzog's orders by keeping the baby Yoda alive so they also make reference to he has explicitly ordered us to bring it back alive who is he it sounds like there's somebody above the client and above the doctor which makes me suspect that the doctor and Werner Herzog are maybe even in terms of the power scale in terms of the power dynamic there but maybe Werner Herzog's able to take charge a little bit purely because he's a more intimidating character so he kind of is able to keep the doctor in his place to a certain extent also what material is Werner Herzog talking about when he says extract the necessary material from baby Yoda my first thought when I hear that is midichlorians we know that baby Yoda is force sensitive we saw him use it we know from episode one the Phantom Menace that there is a biological explanation for the force the midichlorians that streamed through people's blood that's where my mind first went but because of the major fan backlash I assume will have if the midichlorians come back as an important plot point I'm assuming there's something else they're referencing there but we'll see so Mandalorian goes in guns blazing he blows up a piece of the wall is able to get in he stabs people shoots people he burns people to death he's brutal here and as we've been pointing out in the last couple of episodes this show has no qualms with killing people left and right often as we see in this episode in brutal fashion there's an awesome move where he uses his grappling hook to grab a stormtrooper a stormtrooper and pull him close so he can kill him we also see him get shot at one point on his shoulder and we can see how good the best car steal does against the laser blaster it does some damage it kind of knocks him back but he's able to survive he finally reaches through the stormtroopers gets to dr. Pershing who is afraid that the Mandalorian is there to actually kill baby Yoda the doctor says please don't hurt him it's just a child and we can see that he has baby Yoda strapped into some kind of machine it looks like he's being scanned we don't know exactly what he's doing there the Mandalorian asks what did you do to it and that's where you can start to hear the emotion in his voice I loved where you could really hear that he was concerned angry what did you do to this kid the doctor says I protected him he'd be dead if not for me so again very questionable what the power dynamics are there does Werner Herzog work for the Empire is he up to no good is the doctor somehow involved but doesn't want to be involved maybe he's there to protect the kid and he's just getting roped into some evil things that are going on curious to see more about what's happening there the Mandalorian takes the kid takes baby Yoda with him continues to shoot his way out but at one point gets surrounded by a bunch of stormtroopers how's he gonna get out of this one good thing the armor gave him the whistling birds he crouches down in a bunch of little missiles shoot out and it seems like they have some kind of heat seeking ability they find all their targets and take out all the surrounding stormtroopers it felt very Iron Man which is appropriate considering John Favreau runs this show I also mentioned earlier when we see baby Yoda's pod sitting in a dumpster outside I kind of gave the show a little bit of a knock saying it was characteristically unsubtle I think this is another example of that why it felt a little cheesy that in the very episode where the Mandalorians given the whistling birds and he's told these are very hard to make you make sure to only use it when absolutely necessary cut to 15 minutes later he's using the whistling bird feels kind of like someone had that idea for a weapon and thought okay we've got to write a scenario where it's convenient and necessary for him to use it so kind of unsubtle like I said but I think that's just a characteristic of the show you have to accept and it doesn't diminish my enjoyment of it too much but occasionally when it goes a little too far takes me out of it a little bit from there the Mandalorians all good right he's got baby Yoda he killed all the stormtroopers time to leave town but not so fast as he walks out of the building we've been reminded a couple times in this episode he asked Werner Herzog how many of those fives did you give out and we see a few cuts where a lot of those fives that people still have are going off they realize that baby Yoda is back on the market so as the Mandalorian is walking back to his ship all of the other Mandalorian or all the other bounty hunters walk out of their various bars and buildings and it's a very Western like scene where he's walking through town surrounded by enemies he's then stopped by Carl Weathers before he can get to his ship grief tells him put the baby in the speeder maybe you can leave Mandalorian goes over to the speeder but instead of putting baby Yoda in there he jumps into the speeder himself tells the droid to drive when it refuses he pulls his gun and says drive is the Mandalorian will not be messed with especially not when it comes to droids the speeder drives away and as that happens the Mandalorian he tries shooting his way out he's able to take out plenty of enemies he uses his flamethrower to great effect eventually Carl Weathers grief is able to take out the speeder and now the Mandalorian is stuck the Mandalorian is stuck he's trapped and in a moment he looks down at baby Yoda and it's sort of to me it felt like he kind of gave up because he realizes he's trapped he can't do anything it felt a lot like the previous episode where he was being attacked by that large elephant type of monster and it got all woozy took out his knife and was kind of ready to give up but before he is able to be killed all of the rest of the Mandalorians show up with their jet packs and save him so he's able to get to his ship so like I said it felt a little bit like he gave up and part of me was bothered by that because the Mandalorians is great strong character but now two episodes in a row we've seen him stuck only to be saved at the last second first by baby Yoda then by the other Mandalorians but on further thought it didn't bother me all that much because capturing baby Yoda from the clutches of Werner Herzog leaving town feels like a very difficult task so it is the part of the journey where the Mandalorians gonna need help now that he's out of this situation I expect he's gonna be a little bit more of a lone wolf having to fend for himself I'm sure he'll still have allies here and there but I think we just saw one of the more difficult parts of his journey and like I said this is really just the beginning of his journey when the Mandalorians all show up one of them is the heavy infantry guy so you can see that he's friends again with the Mandalorian in fact he tells the Mandalorian get out of here we'll hold them off the Mandalorian feels bad that he is responsible for making all the other Mandalorians come out of hiding he tells the heavy infantry guy you're going to have to relocate the covert heavy infantry says this is the way the Mandalorian responds this is the way which I take I love that line it's again one of the places where Star Wars is so strong is that every time you encounter an alien or some person on another planet you can tell that they belong to a whole culture that you're only seeing little bits and pieces of it and I love every little bit of information we get about the Mandalorian culture and here we have this phrase this is the way they are a group of people who have been downtrodden there is this purge that we haven't learned a whole lot about yet so they have the saying this is the way things are as they are things are difficult but we do what we must overall I thought the scene was pretty cool I really enjoyed the action in this episode overall I wasn't that big a fan of the action in the last couple of episodes but I thought they did a good job here primarily I think because they did avoid the close hand-to-hand combat and relied more heavily on where the show is strong and that's with the blaster action it's with the shootouts I thought they worked really well here like I said earlier I do wish they did a better job of establishing how rare it is to see a Mandalorian so it would have been a little more impactful when they all show up there are a few lines here and there where they tell us only one leaves the hideout at a time etc but I never really got the feeling maybe it's just because we spend so much time with the Mandalorian we've seen her hideout so many times so as viewers when we see a bunch of them come out of hiding it's just not gonna have that big of an impact on us the Mandalorian gets back to his ship but Carl Weathers character grief is waiting for him and he holds the Mandalorian at gunpoint telling him he wants the asset back the Mandalorian stands there and as always he's got a trick up his sleeve he senses grappling hook into a little part of the ship which sends steam or smoke out into the ship so grief Carl Weathers can't see what's going on so the Mandalorian shoots him and we can see that grief was saved by a piece of best car currency that he has in his pocket as established earlier best cars strong enough to withstand a laser blast but I suspect that Mandalorian was going for the kill I don't think we've seen anything in the relationship that would tell us the relationship is personal at all it seems like it's purely business so I don't think we've seen anything from the relationship that would tell us it's anything more than just business so you've got to think that the Mandalorian just made an enemy there and I don't think it's any mistake that the show showed us that griefs character is still alive so I presume he's gonna come back later in the series and he's not gonna be too happy with the Mandalorian as the Mandalorian flies away we see the heavy infantry Mandalorian with his jetpack fly along the ship he gives him a salute and then the Mandalorian says to himself I gotta get one of those and the episode's over and one question there why doesn't the Mandalorian have a jetpack why does everyone else get to have a jetpack and I suspect it's because every time the Mandalorian brings his best car back to the hideout he gets something made for himself and he always gives the excess to the foundlings what if the other Mandalorians don't do the same thing maybe when they bring the loot back they keep more or all of it for themselves so they're able to get more upgrades like a jetpack maybe the Mandalorian has a soft spot and we know that he was a foundling once himself so he wants to give more of his stuff to the foundlings and isn't taking as many upgrades for himself but just a theory maybe we'll see more of that as this develops and we see more of their culture so that was the end of the episode like I said overall I thought it was a really solid episode I'm really enjoying the whole western vibe of the show and just watching the Mandalorian character be awesome like I said I'd love for the show to be a little bit more subtle and nuanced but I've accepted the show as it is and overall like I said I'm enjoying it and understand that it's trying to appeal to a pretty wide audience which includes children so I get why sometimes it'll be a little bit unsubtle but that really doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the show all that much I'd also note this episode was directed by Deborah Chow and if you were a fan of this episode that should make you really happy because she is also going to be running and directing the Obi-Wan series that's coming to Disney Plus so great news for the direction the Star Wars franchise is going in the future anyway I think that covers it for today so if you enjoyed this video make sure to hit the like button subscribe to this channel and hit the little bell icon to make sure you get notifications whenever we make more videos like this one also make sure to subscribe to the one take podcast if you want to hear voices besides my own if you want to hear me have deeper discussions on the Mandalorian we'll be doing an even more detailed recap and analysis of the episode I'll be doing that with my friend Jeremy who's a big Star Wars fan so make sure to subscribe to the podcast we'll put a link in the description and have a listen anyway thanks for watching