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S02E53: Rapidly Rewatching Mando S1E8
31 Plays18 days ago
It's Mando and friends against the nefarious Moff Gideon... Who will emerge victorious? Join us as we wrap up the first season of The Mandalorian!
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Transcript
Wrapping up Season 1 of The Mandalorian
00:00:00
Speaker
We're wrapping up Mando season one and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper and a momentous day today. We are wrapping up the stellar first season of The Mandalorian in our Mandalorian watch slash rewatch with Phil and Ben. Today, it is Chapter 8, Redemption, directed, of all people, by Taika Waititi and written by Jon Favreau. Here is the summary, courtesy of ChatGPT.
00:00:41
Speaker
I'm sorry, that's a lie. It's courtesy of Gemini AI. So give Google... to do.
Action-packed finale with major character moments
00:00:47
Speaker
um Pinned down by Moff Gideon's forces, the group is saved by a reprogrammed IG-11.
00:00:53
Speaker
As they flee through the sewers, they find the remains of the Mandalorian Covert, where the armorer tasks Mando with returning the child to its own kind, officially declaring them a clan of two.
00:01:05
Speaker
In a desperate final stand, IG-11 sacrifices itself to clear a path, and Mando uses his newly acquired jetpack to bring down Gideon's TIE fighter. The season concludes with Amanda and the child heading into the stars while Gideon emerges from the wreckage, wielding the legendary Darksaber.
00:01:24
Speaker
Amazing. Ben, we're going to start with you today. What was your reaction upon rewatching chapter eight? It is so action packed. it let's It leaves all of that stuff out there for you to see. It's not you know one of these things where they have some clever dodge and then oh, I guess we're gonna have to wait for some other season or some future date or they're just not gonna address that plot thing. No, you know what?
00:01:50
Speaker
We're gonna have Cara Dune, we're gonna have IG-88, we're gonna have all these different characters. They're all gonna mix it up. We're all gonna see, can he get out of this death trap he's in? And, ah you know, there's a lot of really great character moments. There's a lot of really fun, ah you know, action. And of course, the the duel with, ah you know, the duel with Moff Gideon in his TIE Fighter and the Mandalorian finally gets the jetpack that we all have been waiting for him to see. uh i think it's great so you know there's so much to love here ah friends i think we have a feast before us today let's talk about it we do phil how about you what was your reaction 100 agree i loved this finale i thought it was maybe my favorite episode of the wow season i mean it's up there for sure you know you know definitely top two top three um
00:02:40
Speaker
Really action packed, exciting, high stakes ending to what has been a very good season one, I must say, you know, we've talked a little bit about kind of the ups and downs of it, um especially in comparison to our previous, you know, string of conversations about Andor, but it was great.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I did a little bit of difference in my note-taking because it was late last night. I was watching this, and I was like, I'm going to do it sort of during the ad break. So my my strategy for taking notes was things I really liked. I put a lot of exclamation points next to it so I wouldn't forget about it. ah Examples include, wow, Pedro's face.
00:03:22
Speaker
Wow, armor, very cool. Her destroying the stormtroopers, so sick. A couple quotes as well. You are a clan of two. You are protected. i wrote R2D2 with legs.
00:03:35
Speaker
yeah um The Darksaber? What? Question mark, exclamation point, because I'd never seen one before. um That's just a little bit of an example of how I was feeling during the episode, if that gives you any idea. I really enjoyed this one.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. it's fantastic fantastic I loved it too. And true confessions, friends, I got really emotional watching this again. i think for, for two reasons is number one, it was just, it it was such good star Wars. It was such a good star Wars moment. And, um, you know, i love the resolution of the storyline um,
00:04:14
Speaker
all sorts of things that we're going to get to in a little bit, but also it was just so much fun remembering back to those days when, when the Mandalorian first hit and everybody was so excited about it.
Emotional impact and personal connections
00:04:27
Speaker
ah You know, my entire family was really excited about this and this last episode dropped during the holiday break. So everybody was home and we at this time, Phil,
00:04:40
Speaker
ah the episodes of The Mandalorian would drop at midnight Pacific time. So my routine was to get up and watch it early in the morning. And so for this episode, the whole family got up with me. I made like a Star Wars breakfast. I made Star Wars breakfast food that looked like it would have come right out of the ah the docking bay seven at Star Wars Galaxy's Edge.
00:05:10
Speaker
And with tattooing sunrises. Did you make the blue drink? that No, I didn't. I didn't because the Spacha. No, I had tattooing sunrises, which were suspiciously like tequila sunrises. And we watched it together and we just loved it. So it was great.
00:05:28
Speaker
It was great going back to that memory. But yeah, it was it was such a great end to the season. um Absolutely loved it. I'll just drop one thing in there that was really impactful for me at the end that I noticed differently this time was um watching them in such quick succession this time, all of the episodes.
00:05:51
Speaker
I hadn't made the connection between the shot of Mando flying away, holding the baby was exactly parallel to the shot from the flashback of him being carried away by the Mandalorian um when he was a child. And just that transposition and seeing how um artistically they're conveying the relationship between the child and Mando is equivalent to Djarin's relationship with the entire Mandalorian order. You see so much more of why he is part of this group, why it means so much to him and why he's kind of absorbed into this almost cult-like experience. I thought that that was fascinating.
00:06:37
Speaker
100% agree. I really loved also the, we've gotten some of this the snippets of it, but kind of the full flashback of his origin story and his relationship and him coming under the wing of the Mandalorians, him flying away.
00:06:52
Speaker
You know, that was, that was really, obviously really horrific and emotional, but also sort of the end of him flying away with the, with the Mando was, I thought a really nice kind of bookend to that flashback that we've seen throughout this season.
00:07:04
Speaker
yeah can we Can we take a minute, though? And I want to just appreciate how they built up the villains because there is no faster way to establish a villain as evil and who is going to get his absolute comeuppance than to watch him punch a baby.
00:07:18
Speaker
Oh, my goodness. should we yeah So i I was waiting for this, Ben. um I don't think this – I don't know in any of our Star Wars conversations. I've had something that I've both really – liked as a sequence and really hated as a sequence at the same time.
00:07:35
Speaker
i was I was very much like, this is the finale. What are we doing spending seven minutes with these random stormtroopers? What is this banter? Who are these guys? They sound so familiar. I did look up afterwards who it was. ah Jason Snakes and Adam Pally, for those who yeah don't know. um don't punch Baby Yoda.
00:07:55
Speaker
I wrote some expletives, I'm not gonna say, because this is a family show. um But I was like, what is this? And then when IG-11 came in and saved the child, that was great.
00:08:07
Speaker
So good. Yes. Awesome. I think the other thing that I love actually, Bob, let me give you a chance to comment on that. But I have like one other thing that I really appreciated about the way they built up the villains in this
Direction style and villain development
00:08:17
Speaker
episode. So go ahead.
00:08:18
Speaker
I was just going to point out the very Taika Waititi and wink, wink scene of the, ah the scout troopers taking the target practice at the can and missing on every shot.
00:08:32
Speaker
You know, I mean, just to jump completely in on that Star Wars trope of the stormtroopers always miss, I thought that that was that was funny. And, you know, again, with Tyka's direction for this, it did have a lot of the same feel as I have felt in the other things that he has directed less Jojo Rabbit so much because that's really more drama the whole way through. Well, you know, you've got the Hitler scenes that are funny. He he he is a...
00:09:00
Speaker
I know. And take it out of context. If you haven't seen that movie. Yeah. I think, I think, I think Bob, I think you just canceled yourself on your own podcast. because It's because star Wars fandom is going to clip this now.
00:09:12
Speaker
And then, and then the series is over scenes are funny, right? Yeah. End of a career. Sorry about that. But um that is what Taika does is he, he is really able to blend humor and drama and heartfelt emotion. And I love that about him. can can Speaking of,
00:09:28
Speaker
taika if i may and ben ah ah i can give it to you after but just a quick mention uh i'm sure you guys knew this but i didn't i only found this out afterwards in addition to her directing voicing ig11 exactly yep which is great and ig11 the star of this what and you know i had written down i had written down the line and now i can't remember exactly what it was but it was um where he said, I am a nurse, I'm perceiving it in your face or something like this. When he saw the Mando, I just thought that was a very heartfelt moment. um
00:10:03
Speaker
I love that, but. Well, and I think that also is something that's happening right at the moment when we learned that the Mandalorian is really in a vulnerable state to a villain who we then learn was responsible for terrible things that the empire did to the Mandalorians. And so I think one of the great things that they did here was they made Moff Gideon, not just an Imperial villain, but an Imperial villain with a connection to the Mandalorians. So it makes it gives it an extra kind of dimension, extra layer for our hero, because man, that guy now needs to really get got, not just because he's an Imperial, but because, you know, we've got some old scores to settle.
00:10:47
Speaker
And there there is a really nice tie back if we go to the sort of the end. Actually, I'll say one more thing about IG-11. Awesome way to go out, I have to say. with the Both with sort of the ending sequence, you know, with Mando. You know, he says something Bob also did when they're in the boat where he says, he's like, I'm not sad, Mando says. And he's like, I can hear it in your voice. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
And you do hear kind of the little quiver in like in ah Mando's voice as he's like, no, like, don't do this, something to that effect. Right. And then he sacrifices himself ah to, you know, destroy all the stormtroopers who are in their path. I thought that was so great. It's, you know, obviously a really explosive, explosive, literally and figuratively ending. But I thought it paid off emotionally really well, too.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. And one thing i really picked up on this watch through was IG-11 at this point, IG-11 chapter eight, really at the end of the day, i mean, he's Quill.
00:11:47
Speaker
Quill has really embedded so much of his own personality into IG-11. And I feel like that very long training montage where we saw Quill training IG-11,
00:11:59
Speaker
You can see how he kind of built his personality in there. So it almost gave Quill another opportunity to make an impact and maybe even better go out on his own terms ah by having IG-11 make his sacrifice like that.
00:12:14
Speaker
I love that aspect. Interesting to mention. I hadn't thought about that. going to have to think about that for a while longer. Yeah. Yeah. So last week, remember I said i wasn't quite sure I bought ah Grief Karga's turn so quickly.
00:12:30
Speaker
The one that I am not quite sure about today, because I think we'll we'll see again as we watch season two and season three, I might have missed it. But I think after this episode, the whole um Mando does not like droids line, that storyline kind of gets dropped.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so I felt like is the idea that IG-11 making the sacrifice all of a sudden made Mando okay with droids? To me, that felt like a little bit too much of an abrupt turn.
00:13:03
Speaker
but Interesting. you know Yeah. Maybe it's more a pulpy thing, like Ben said, of like that's just the way it happens. Maybe it's just something like, you know, in the writer's room between season one and season two, they're like, you know, let's not go down that storyline. and People will forget. I don't know.
00:13:16
Speaker
it This, I will say, feels more impactful to me as far as interaction than the Grief Karga stuff, I think. So it feels like that's more earned, his sort of turn on them, I think. The other one didn't feel as much that that he just suddenly had a change of heart and decided not to betray Mando. This one, I think in terms of his attitudes towards George, you know, he really sees that they can be good, they can be a protector. It's you know, it's, there's no bad droids, just bad programmers, you know? right yeah So um I do, I think that's more well-earned. I feel like.
Mando's growth and listener invitation
00:13:51
Speaker
Okay. That's it. We're out of time. So thanks again, Phil and Ben for doing this with me. It's been a lot of fun and we have two seasons left to go. i do want you guys to consider on May 22nd coming out to l LA and going to see this movie on opening day at the Chinese theater, which is just a magical experience. That would be really fun. So, and of course, if any of our listeners want to come join us, we could make a big party out of it.
00:14:19
Speaker
That would be super cool. So for all eight of you out there, no, I know there's more than that. Um, Thanks again. Next week, we'll jump right in. Season two, episode one. I do know right off the bat, an amazing cameo guest star appearance from the very beginning of season two, episode one. But we'll leave that for you as a surprise. Can't wait. in the meantime, thanks, Ben. Thanks, Phil. Thanks, listeners. May the force be with you. we'll see you later.
00:14:47
Speaker
Bye-bye. Mindless chores to do. Podcasts, hope you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite unit. Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short?
00:14:58
Speaker
Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for scorn trooper? Aren't you a little short for a sliver?