The Mandalorian Spoiler Recap: Chapter 20: The Foundling
It was always going to be tough to top last week for me. Putting aside the fact that my favorite minor character took center stage, the sheer shock of having so much of the episode move away from Mando and on to someone else, and for an episode centered around the politics of the New Republic, no less? While the series is still fun overall, last week was a needed break that felt like it moved the plot forward. For the first time all season, I felt like I could actually speculate on what the direction of the season would be.
While you’ll never hear me call anything “filler” — and I certainly don’t think “Chapter 20: The Foundling” was filler — what did wind up happening this week was the series went from barreling forward in a general, trackable direction, to once again slowing down to a snails pace. I’m sure this is all going somewhere, but with no clear destination for Mando and Grogu at the midpoint of the season, I cannot help but wonder “are we there yet?”
Alright, confusing metaphors aside, lets dive in. The episode begins on the planet where the Mandalorians have taken refuge. They are all training on the beach, with some firing their blasters directly into the water. You know, in case anyone was wondering why a giant alligator from the depths might want to burst out of the water to try and kill them all. The alligator, it turns out, is not the only thing on the planet out to get them, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Din decides its time for Grogu to begin training with the other foundlings. He puts Grogu up against, Ragnar, the young Mandalorian who got his helmet in the season premiere, and the two fight using practice darts. With a little encouragement, Grogu mixes the use of the weapon with his Jedi skills and wins the bout. Things go from bad to worse for poor Ragnar, who was nearly eaten by an alligator several weeks ago, has just lost a sparring bout with a baby, and has now been carried off by a raptor, a giant pterodactyl-type dinosaur. Maybe Ragnar should consider making a life for himself literally anywhere else. I hear Mustafar is lovely this time of year.
The Mandalorians give chase, but run out of fuel before they can see where the raptor is going. Paz Vizla says they run out of fuel every time, which really begs the question why they thought this time would be different. Fortunately, Bo-Katan is the only one around with a brain cell, and gives chase in her ship instead. She comes back with a report of where exactly the raptor took the child, and leads a party to go get him back.
While Bo leads Din, Paz and a host of other Mandalorians on the rescue mission, Grogu stays behind with the Armorer, too small to be of much use. She takes him to the forge, and he watches her work for a while, but the sights and the sounds prove to be too much for him, and Grogu begins to relive some of his worst memories.
Namely Order 66.
We knew the flashback was coming, having seen a shot of it in the trailer. What the episode reveals, however, is who exactly got Grogu out of the Jedi temple that night. In what was easily the best part of the episode, Grogu is sent down in an elevator to be retrieved by “Kelleran,” a name I couldn’t place as being familiar until the doors opened to reveal none other than Ahmed Best as Jedi Master Kelleran Beq, a role he first played in the children’s game show “Jedi Temple Challenge.” While Jar Jar Binks was (and is) still beloved by those of us who grew up with the prequels, the target demographic for the character, seeing him take on a new role in the story, one that actually allows him to show his face, was gratifying to see.
This scene also unintentionally highlights one of my issues with the episode as a whole. Save a brief moment where Bo removes her helmet while alone to eat, this is the only time in the episode we actually see a human face. I understand the episode wanting to take the time to situate us within the Mandalorian cult, but in a limited 30 minute runtime, the majority of which is taken up with fights, chases, and a dinosaur battle, it’s hard not to feel like I’m watching someone play with their nameless action figures.
The episode actually made me think a lot of the film 65, which features Star Wars alum Adam Driver as a man stranded on prehistoric Earth trying to find a way home for himself and the only other survivor of the crash that brought them there. The dialogue in the film is fairly minimal, and like “The Foundling” they spend most of the film fighting dinosaurs. The difference, however, is we can see Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt’s faces. Their expression speaks volumes where words cannot.
But because we can’t see any of the Mandalorians faces, we’re left with voice-modulated statements of the obvious, often repeated to the exact same listeners for reasons I cannot comprehend. It’s frustrating to be at the midpoint in the season and still finding myself struggling to connect with anyone (apart from Bo-Katan) because of how expressionless they appear at any given time. What does Din feel about Grogu’s first foray into foundling training? I can assume he feels pride, because the voice hints at it. But the worry, the encouragement, all these things that he can and should be feeling? I’m reasonably intelligent with degrees in media analysis. I can intuit that that’s probably what’s happening, but that assumption is a guess on my part. It’s supported by earlier assertions, but nothing in the text presented to me either furthers the notion or changes it.
The episode ends with Bo receiving a Mythosaur pauldron from the Armorer, while she lightly brings up the notion of having seen a real one. The Armorer is seemingly dismissive, which might be genuine disbelief, but perhaps more likely is her trying to gaslight Bo-Katan. It almost makes me wonder if she knew it was there, and that’s why she tried to dissuade Din from going in the first place.
I finished this episode genuinely worried about Bo. I had assumed that her quiet acceptance of being drawn into the cult was her realizing she needs a place to lie low and strategize. Now? Now I worry she’s being drawn further into it. Which would make a fascinating arc if she hadn’t already been pulled into an extremist group in her youth. If she hadn’t already decried the Children of the Watch as a “cult of religious zelots.” With everything going on in the background this season, particularly the Moff Gideon side of things, I wonder if the show will have enough time to resolve whatever is going on in Bo’s head. Or really, to set some sort of direction for Din beyon indoctrinating his son into a cult. I had hoped that returning would make him see it for its flaws, but now I feel like he’s getting more entrenched than ever.
These are all interesting ideas. They are ideas that absolutely can and should propel the story forward. It’s harder to notice in other episodes where maskless characters compensate for Din’s lack of a face, but if you’re so dead set on none of the main characters showing their faces, and modulating their voices so it dilutes vocal expression, then the writing needs to be at a level that makes up for it. And this week, it just wasn’t. Lots of repeated statements of fact, without any suggestion of what this might mean for the characters. We learn Ragnar is Pax’s son because he says so, but we learn it so late in the game that the chance for any real sense of urgency had long passed. Grogu is having a small crisis in the forge, but because we can’t see the Armorer’s face, I’m not sure she even noticed before she started spouting cult-speak exposition at him.
I know I get awfully hung up on the direction of the season, and where is this all going. Maybe that’s not the healthiest for a show that functions best as a “sit back and enjoy the drive” type deal. But by this point in the ride, I would like to know that we are in fact heading somewhere, beyond the vague promise of some kind of something or other on the horizon.
What do you think? Is Bo-Katan drinking the Kool-Aid? Will we see more than one human face next week? Did you let out a happy gasp when you saw Kellaren Beq? Let us know on Twitter!
The Mandalorian airs new episodes every Wednesday.