This week on The Mandalorian, we’ve got both droids and Mandalorian insurgents, cameo galore, and the most jarring mishmash of tones this series has ever attempted. Again, the show tested the boundaries of what The Mandalorian show can be: Can it be a Doctor Who-style alien-of-the-week mission? Can it be a detective noir? Can it be a political saga? Can all of it fit under the same 44 minutes? Writer Jon Favreau and director Bryce Dallas Howard apparently thought so.
Following Bo Katan’s christening as The Mandalorians’ unifier last week, the Lady and her knight in Beskar armor are on their way to meet with her old followers. They are apparently mercenaries for hire now, doing the bidding of whichever system is willing to pay. Their latest endeavor is on Plazir-15, a small but rich independent system – so naturally, that’s where our heroes are heading. However, upon their arrival, the planet’s leaders – cameos by Jack Black and Lizzo of all people – want Bo and Mando to first investigate an ongoing droid insurrection problem before granting them access to meet the rogue Mandalorians.
Guns for Hire is full of the unexpected. Frankly, it’s been the running theme of the third season. Expectations were subverted, tones were mushed together, plotlines went in strange directions. The overall effect is akin to a whiplash, a mild confusion, and a little bit of curious excitement. It’s confusing because there’s still barely any cohesiveness toward the endgame of the season (we’re down to our last two episodes now); it’s also exciting because the creators’ wholehearted commitment to weirdness has so far produced really amusing episodes, clarity be damned.
The highlight of the episode was no doubt the mission-within-a-mission that Bo and Mando were forced to undertake. The side quest had them playing detectives for a large portion of the episode. Like a good noir of old, they went from place to place to interview suspects, gather evidence and shade each other’s methods like buddy cops would. Ugnaughts also made a return to The Mandalorian, albeit not the Kuiil we knew and loved. Rather, it was his kins, a group of droid mechanics employed on Plazir-15, that our investigative duo visited for information. Pleased to know that they were as surly as ever, only responding to queries when Mando mentioned Kuiil’s name and the iconic phrase: “I have spoken.”
The rest of the episode felt like a blur. We’ve got a succession of squeal-inducing cameos, from the aforementioned pairing of Black and Lizzo to the appearance of THE Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd as a security supervisor on Plazir-15. Then the episode zapped through the sleuthing business while Grogu adorably mucked about with Lizzo’s Duchess of Plazir in her palace, before ending in a showdown between Bo and the leader of her former subordinates, Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides). Did I mention that Grogu ended up getting knighted for using his little Jedi trick to make the Duchess look good as hell in a game? This episode was a lot!
