'The Mandalorian', "Chapter 22 - Guns For Hire" Recap

Last week’s episode of The Mandalorian ended with that tantalizing glimpse of clues to Moff Gideon’s reappearance with the wrecked Lambda-class shuttle. Will we see more of the villain this week? Is Bo-Katan Kryze ready to unite the Mandalorians across the stars? And who are the two people you might least expect to show up in this show? Let’s find out in this Mandalorian recap of “Chapter 22 – Guns For Hire”…

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We open on a Quarren ship, where a female captain is swimming in a tank at the helm. She leaves the water when an Imperial ship. She says they are an innocent Quarren transport unaware of any Imperial presence. But they aren’t Imperial. It is Axe Woves (Simon Mario Kassianides) the ex-Nite Owl, who is behind the ship.

He’s been hired to bring back a Mon Calamari prince who has absconded with Captain Shuggoth, the Quarren leader. The pair make an emotional goodbye and Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado) boards to take him away. She says they are honorable — for the price of a few credits.

Bo-Katan and Din Djarin (Katee Sackhoff and Pedro Pascal) have come to an independent planet, Plazir-15, to convince Woves and the others to join them, bringing their assembled fleet of repurposed Imperial starships. A pair of Imperial droids greet them as they board a high-speed rail. They ask to go to the assembled Mandalorian fleet but are instead taken to meet the planetary democracy.

Inside is a lush banquet, with an ex-Imperial planning officer, Captain Bombardier, played by Jack Black, and seated beside planetary royalty, a Duchess, played by Lizzo. They’ve hired the Mandalorians to protect them due to the charter preventing ex-Imperials from having a military.

As they ask them to see the view, they discreetly tell them that there has been an issue with reprogrammed battle droids, who are sutly rebelling. They want them to eliminate the droid problem. In return, they’ll move to recognise Mandalore as a sovereign system once more and petition the New Republic to make it so.

At a command centre, an overseer (played by Christopher Lloyd), runs Bo-Katan and Djarin through a series of examples of droids malfunctioning. He has a cut off button but the citizens are reliant on them: they live in a society where they no longer work and rely on them for everything. He directs them to visit the Ugnaughts in the lower levels, to get a list of the droids still causing issues for them to destroy.

The Ugnaughts tell them the droids are not malfunctioning, but Djarin uses his previous experience with Queel to get them to admit to the issue and provide the location of the droids they seek.

At the loading docks, there are battle droids everywhere. Speaking to a droid foreman, the droid insists the entire line of loaders have been through safety checks. Djarin hits a series of Super Battle Droids, to check their resilience, until one retaliates and goes on the run.

After a fraught chase through the city district, our heroes manage to eliminate the runner. On the droid, Bo-Katan finds a spark pad for a droid bar called The Resistor. They enter and the bar falls silent. The bartender droid is being interrogated by Bo-Katan but Djarin steps in to take a more brutal stance. The bartender says they want to help, as Plazir represents a safe space for reprogrammed Separatist droids to continue to live in peace, where in Republic worlds they’d be scrapped.

The bartender says they exclusively serve Nepenthe, a substance which patches their programming as the mainframe commands change. All the malfunctioning droids were imbibed from the same batch. At a droid morgue, they isolate the programming sub-particles within. It sends a medical droid rogue and Djarin has to take it down with the Darksaber. They’re still active.

It turns out the sub-particles are nano droids, and have a chain droid. Apparently their origins are Techno-Union, and brought to Plazir by an individual, the head of security, Commissioner Helgait (Christopher Lloyd).

They return to confront him. He threatens to hit a failsafe button which would revert all the battle droids back to their original settings. As he begins a rant about his love of Dooku’s separatist ideals, Bo-Katan incapacitates him.

The Commissioner is brought before the Duchess and the Captain. She exiles him to a moon for his crimes, committed because he disagrees with the Captain’s changes to Plazir. For their services to the planet, the Duchess gives them both the key to Plazir and an audience with Axe Woves. She also knights Grogu, who has been helping her win her parlor games with his Force abilities.

At the Mandalorian base, Bo-Katan greets Woves. She challenges him for leadership, resulting in a fight between the two where Bo-Katan gets to show off her combat skills. It’s bitterly fought — Woves clearly doesn’t want to cede his position easily. As she grapples him into submission, he tells her she will never be the true leader, as she refuses even to take the Darksaber from Djarin.

As Woves tries to discount Djarin’s Mandalorian status, Djarin steps in. He explains how Bo-Katan defeated the enemy that defeated him, on Mandalore. He describes a chain of succession due to her rescue which would place the Darksaber back into Bo-Katan’s hands, without her having to defeat him.

She takes the saber and ignites it.

This Is The Way (We See It) in Our Recap of Chapter 22 – Guns For Hire

In true The Mandalorian style, naturally this episode side-stepped the Moff Gideon question, and gave us Lizzo, Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd instead. This was an unusual episode with the feel of a holiday special and the guest stars to match. But it ended with an important moment, with Bo-Katan back with the Darksaber in hand.

It seems they’ve dodged any direct conflict between Djarin and Kryze and have opted for a diplomatic solution of explaining a line of succession over direct combat for her to take the blade. Why he couldn’t have done that immediately post-Mandalore — especially when she is so clearly skilled with the sword — isn’t entirely clear, but perhaps it needed to be done in sight and seconded by fellow Mandalorians to have it make the desired impact. It has to be said that the final setting of a field didn’t really add much to the overall gravitas of the development.

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Overall, it was a playful 40 minutes or so, with some fun appearances from battle droids, prequels references and a brave commitment to play out a brief Romeo and Juliet romance between a Mon Calamari and a Quarren in the opening five minutes. A notable moment that may or may not be worthy of acknowledgment: is this the first time we’ve seen a female Quarren in live action? I found her transition from floating pod to sitting in the captain’s chair very satisfying to watch.