It’s another week, and you know what that means, a new episode of The Mandalorian is here. After its triumphant return last week, Chapter 18, “The Mines of Mandalore,” keeps the momentum going. This episode has the long-awaited return of Mandalore, Grogu, and Bo-Katan being badasses and even some myths that may not be myths anymore. There are also a lot of weird-looking creatures this week, and if you have thalassophobia, you might want to just read about the last 5 minutes.
Chapter 18 begins back on everyone’s favorite overused dirt rock Tatooine. After seeing Peli Motto (the woman who helps Din out with his ship) swindle someone out of their money, Din and Grogu arrive and ask for help. Remember how Din needed a replacement part for IG-11? Well. he believed the Jawas could help. Unfortunately for Din, the Jawas didn’t have it, and you could hear Din getting upset. It wasn’t all bad because their old friend Peli offered Din and Grogu a random astromech droid she had lying around. Even if it’s afraid of everything, beggars can’t be choosers, so Din gets a new astromech (which means Grogu no longer has his seat on the ship), and they head out to Mandalore. This part of the episode happens during a festival, with speeders and fireworks galore. I would be willing to bet $100 that the only reason Din decided to head to Tatooine to find parts was that the director of this episode really wanted a cool scene of Din’s ship flying through fireworks at night. To be fair, it did look very pretty.
After the hassle of getting a droid to help with his exploration of Mandalore, Din, Grogu, and their new droid friend R5-D4 arrive on the abandoned planet (fun fact, R5-D4 is the droid that Uncle Owen was going to buy in A New Hope before R2 interfered). Mandalore is certainly looking a lot greener since we last saw it, but not in the beautiful nature way, more like the toxic waste way. After landing, R5 goes to check if the air is breathable. Instead, he’s almost immediately attacked by some creatures called the Alamites. Din saves the cowardly droid and finds out the air isn’t poisonous.
Din and Grogu then go spelunking through the ruins of Mandalore, only for Din to get a little too curious about abandoned armor, and he gets trapped. Din’s captor is some sort of hybrid between a robot and an alien that just doesn’t look right. Din’s capture does give us a look at Grogu’s improved force skills that he picked up from Luke Skywalker. This lil green guy is pulling off all sorts of crazy flips and force maneuvers to escape from the robot alien’s lair. Hopefully, Grogu can pull out these flips again this season. Grogu gets back to the ship, where he returns to Bo-Katan and asks for her help.
Being the upstanding Mandalorian she is, Bo-Katan immediately heads to Mandalore to rescue Din. She gets there in a Mandalorian starfighter, which we’re seeing for the first time in live-action (I think). They return to Mandalore, and after Grogu gives Bo the guided tour of the destroyed city, they eventually reach Din. After Bo also nearly gets taken out, she grabs the darksaber. We finally get a fight scene with the darksaber that isn’t someone just flailing around. Bo makes quick work of the alien robot and rescues Din. After he comes to, Bo offers to take him back to her ship, but Din still wants to take his special bath. Surprisingly, Bo agrees to lead him there (not without some snark).
After more exploring, they reach the special mine water, where Din goes for a dip. However, Din forgot that metal sinks in water/or is possibly pulled under. He plummets to the bottom like a sack of bricks (it was pretty funny). Bo leaps in to save him, but on the way back up, a gigantic creature living in the water notices her and freaks both her and the people with thalassophobia out (don’t say I didn’t warn you when you see it). The creature is the Mythosaur that Bo had said was extinct earlier in the episode. She probably feels a little stupid now.
“The Mines of Mandalore” is a fun spelunking adventure through Mandalore. I didn’t think we’d be seeing Mandalore this early into the season, which means we’ll get even bigger surprises later on (Rebels cameo plz). With the giant Mythosaur in play and Din having already completed his main goal, I’m curious where the rest of the season will go, but we’ll just have to wait for the next episode to find out.
Have you seen the latest episode of The Mandalorian? What did you think about it? Did you like seeing Grogu doing all those flips? Let us know in the comments below where we can talk about how Din is most definitely going to be riding the Mythosaur by the end of the season.
