Admittedly I had waited for Episode 4 with full anticipation since I knew the much hyped Cara Dune was gonna make an appearance in the episode. And she did make an entrance to the show with a bang. Once a character pounce on a Mandalorian bounty hunter (and actually floored him!) you just know that the character is gonna be something. I love the fact that they made Cara as a tough guy...err...gal, going against the normal cliche female lead/supporting characters thoughout the Star Wars film universe thus far.
The thing about the series is that Jon Favreau only wrote the episodes but the directorial duty went to different directors for each of the episodes. To my surprise this episode was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard's daughter. You might know her as Claire from the Jurassic World franchise or Gwen Stacy from Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3 film. With that in mind I kinda expected something explosive from the episode even before I watched it. You know, with her being Ron Howard's daughter and all. Maybe that's just me.
Honestly, to me this episode has that Magnificient Seven feel through and through. If not for baby Yoda's presence I would have definitely hummed the 'Seven theme song throughout the battle sequence. What's not to love about a couple of mercenaries being hired to protect a bunch of helpless villagers on a random planet with the promise of only the minimum of payment, right?
The episode still has plenty of baby Yoda although we'll only learn about how the infant is still being tracked on the random planet somewhere past the mid-point of the episode. I still feel weird on calling him 'baby Yoda' but at this point we've still yet to know about the species and what to call them, so I guess it makes sense to call him (or her?) just that. It's either baby Yoda or 'baby Yaddle', because those were the only two being from the species we've seen so far in the Star Wars films.
The episode really got into the Magnificient Seven mood when our Mando and Ms Dune trained the villagers on how to use weapons to defend themselves against the band of Klatoonian land pirates.
And.....this particular scene when Cara taught them to use the wooden staff just screamed Men in Tights to me.
I guess I was really at the edge of my seat when I saw the Klatoonian baddies unleashing their AT-ST onto the hapless villagers. Of course this didn't last long when the villagers' own version of Yul Bryner's Chris Adams in Magnificient Seven defeated the baddies and Cara brought the walker down to claim victory for the villagers.
I personally thought that the episode was pretty short and maybe it could've worked better if it was allowed to run more than 40 minutes. But overall it was a unique episode and stood out against the first 3 episodes altogether. Let's see what next week brings us. Let us remind ourselves that we've already reached the mid-way point of the 8-episode series at this point already, so let's savor every moment we get from The Mandalorian.
Before I end my rant for this episode, let me share a piece of art which appeared during the credit roll at the very end of the episode. These McQuarrie-esque art should be compiled into a book for their sheer awesomeness. I like this particular one though. It shows our Mando holding up his weapon while baby Yoda slowly makes his way down from the ramp of the Razorcrest.
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