Let's Talk About THE MANDALORIAN Chapter 12: 'The Siege' an Action-Filled Thrill Ride
This past weekend Star Wars fans were treated to yet another fantastic episode of The Mandalorian. Chapter 12 is titled “The Siege,” and this was the episode directed by Carl Weathers. Now that you’ve all had the weekend to watch it, let’s talk about what this episode gave us!
In this episode, we get to see some familiar faces when The Mando decides to head to the planet of Nevorro to get his ship fixed. There’s just no way it would have made the trip to Corvus, which is where Ahsoka Tano is.
It’s on Nevorro that we learn that Cara Dune (Gina Carano) has become the new Marshall of the town, and the Mando meets up with her and Greef Karga (Weathers), who offers to have his ship fixed up after he helps clear out the town of Empire-occupation.
Navorro has changed a lot since Season 1 and is now a bustling town filled with lots of life and lively personalities. While Cara has been working on cleaning up the town as the Marshall, Karga has been put to work doing administrative stuff, and he also expresses that he’s not a fan of the New Republic’s activity in the Outer Rim, saying that if the Empire couldn’t control anyone out this way, why would the New Republic think they can get away with it.
Mando also runs into the character Mythrol (Horatio Sanz), who you all recognized as The Mando’s bounty from the opening of the first season. And he’s going to play a role in The Mando’s next big adventure. Since it’s going to take a while for the Razor Crest to be fixed, Karga and Dune enlist Mando for a job to help then take out an Imperial base that still located on the planet.
This base is where the troops from their standoff with Moff Gideon were stationed, and the goal is to make sure the weaponry is destroyed so they can make the planet a safe place and establish it as a trade anchor for the system.
The plan is simple. The team needs to sneak into the base, overload the reactor, and get out. Mythrol is brought into the job as their driver in exchange for knocking 100 years off a servitude debt he’s paying off to Karga, which has 350 years remaining on it.
This is where the episode takes an awesome and thrilling turn of events. They blast their way through some Stormtroopers and manage to pull off their plan of overloading the reactor and they have ten minutes to get out. It’s at this point that they come across a lab in which they find Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi) was conducting an experiment involving a blood transfusion from someone with a high midi-chlorian count, and it’s revealed this was supposed to be The Child.
All of this information is revealed in a transmission to Moff Gideon saying that he will not fail him again. The Mando thinks this is an old message because he thinks Gideon is dead, but Mythrol points out that the recording is only three days old, confirming to the group Gideon is very much alive and The Child is in danger.
So, the plan is now to get back to The Child as soon as they can to make sure he’s safe. The Child was left behind at the bar where The Mando had his final confrontation with The Client in Season 1, but it had been converted into a school and he was trying to make friends so he could get some cookies. Anyway, Mando rockets away with his jetpack to get to The Child and Karga, Dune and Mythrol are left to themselves to escap,e and they find themselves in a dicey situation when they run into some Stormtroopers in the cargo bay.
There’s a lot of great action here as the team finds themselves trying to blast their way through. This leads to Dune hijacking a Stormtrooper transport to help them escape. They jump in and Dune ends up driving it off the ledge of the cargo bay smashing Mythrol’s speeder as it drops to the ground. Then the chase is on!
They end up being chased down by a group of Stormtroopers on speeder bikes through some canyons, with Karga hopping on a big ass gun transport where he proceeds to blast one of the Stormtroopers who was on their tail. The others raced ahead out of range of the transport blaster.
Dune ends up smashing one of the two remaining Stormtrooper into the canyon wall while the other jumps on board with a thermal grenade, which he is planning to drop inside, but before he can, Karga blows him away. Then, right before the base blows up, a group of TIE Fighters race into action coming after Dune and the other.
Those TIE Fighters start chasing the group into the canyon. This whole sequence is just full-on Star Wars action bliss. I love these sequences! Karga is having a rough time trying to shoot the TIE Fighters down as the action intensifies, The Mando flies into action with his newly-repaired Razor crest and The Child, and he takes the TIE Fighters out! This was such a cool dogfight sequence. It was also great seeing The Child enjoying the ride.
After their latest adventure, Mando is off to continue his journey to find Ahsoka. Karga is then later questioned by Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) about the base exploding and when asked about the Razor Crest’s appearance on the planet, Karga downplays everything in his answers.
Teva goes on to compliment Cara Dune for her work cleaning up Navorro and offers her a position in the New Republic, and she declines. In their conversation, he also references her homeworld of Alderaan, and shares that he served during that time and proceeds to ask if she lost anyone. She says that she lost everyone. After showing some sympathy for her loss, Teva leaves behind a Republic badge for her just in case she changes her mind.
The series then cut to a scene on a starship in space. An Imperial officer receives word from one of the mechanics on Nevarro that a tracking device has been placed on The Mando’s ship. The Imperial officer brings that intel to Moff Gideon, who is happy to learn the news and says that they’ll be ready for their next run-in with the Bounty Hunter.
We also see in this scene that Gideon is looking over a mysterious army of robot-like soldiers described as "dark troopers" being worked on. I have no idea what is going on here, but I can’t wait to find out! The “dark troopers” originated in the 1995 game Dark Forces, which featured the Empire attempting to create a legion of deadly droid soldiers in the Dark Trooper project.
One other thing I’d like to point out is that there was a mistake spotted in the episode! At the 18:52 in the latest episode, Mando and his crew turn a corner and come in contact with some Stormtroopers. In the background of this scene on the far left side is a crew member from the series standing halfway behind the set with jeans, a green t-shirt! I thought that was pretty amusing. Check out that shot below.