Doing another live watch at work. Ate first so there's no distractions at all.
Welp... Here we go.
1. Wow. We just go right into it huh? Tano's style in live action is... interesting. Not too flowery but with some sizzle, but the hits and combat is, while fantasy based, pretty strong and "gritty". I have to say some of the "digital seams" are showing but that feels purely a budget thing. Otherwise this feels ambitous if a bit hemmed in by the budget. Dawson looks great. So, lone hero trying to save civilians on some outer rim backwater? Got it.
2. Mando has gotten really comfortable with his charge. He was never a bad guy to the kid but his voice has much more emotion around him. Makes it obvious that his connection to the kid will be a tension in the show. Will he WANT to give the child away? Will the child want to leave Mando?
3. Like I stated before... This is ambitous and it's not that anything looks horrible but the "movie on a TV budget" aspect is noticable a bit. Not overwhelmingly so, no, but... It's there at the edges so to speak. I will say, and this is a bit of a complaint about a lot of our current and in the recent past sci fi shows etc., is why there seems to be so much sameness is how they present places that aren't the big sci fi futuristic cites (Which on ANOTHER note, at this point in this show would be a real nice change of pace, just saying.) in so much of post 2000's stuff? It's all psuedo-western frontier towns of one stripe or another. Change the color palette and the big signifieres of the environment (Swampy, forest, desert etc.) and BOOM! different planet, right? It's a bit old, and that's not just Mando or SW, it is way too common in my view.
4. Okay... Mando Martell with a Beskar spear? (They REALLY did write this one just for our own
@Roose Bolton ) Filoni... You had me at spear. I think I know who'll be walking away with that thing. I hope it's not a signal of Mando attempting to go one on one with Tano... I don't give him much of a chance against her myself. This actess playing the villain seems familiar too, but I can't place her.
5. I just stopped watching and called a friend cuz... HOLY **** THAT'S MICHAEL BEIHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For real... At first I was like "Is that Clark Gregg?" Then I was, no, someone else. But **** it's Cpl. Hick's of the Colonial Marines himself! I had no idea he was showing up or if I did I completely forgot. NICE.
6. Okay... Time to do some speculating... The baby was at the Temple. Order 66 happens. Anakin/Vader slaughtered the ones old enough to pick up a saber. Somehow the baby was taken and hidden. That's the bullet points so far, no? Okay...
Total speculation but...
"There is still good in you..."
Tano alludes to Vader.
Could Vader have been the one to hide BabyYo? I know... But it's a hell of a twist. Vader could kill those ones old enough to wield a weapon but he couldn't murder that baby. He thinks he can render it harmless to allow it to live it's life and wipes it's mind of it's training and time with the Jedi. Or... Not. Still... Now there's more details to the questions this all brings up. Who had the child after the fall of the Jedi? How did Gideon's faction seize or find him, how did it get out of their hands and who was it that had taken the child from Gideon and whom Mando liberated him from?
7. Yeah... I don't think Tano is being set up to train the child. Interesting that Tano was one who broke free of Jedi tenets but doesn't see how she could do the same for the baby and train him in ways that do not fall into the issues that allowed Anakin to fall to the darkside of the force. At least I would think she wants to protect the baby, unless she's invovled with something dangerous already. What is Tano doing here? What information does that woman have? And who is she? The actress. It's killing me. I KNOW her.
8. Well, someone is a fan of KILL BILL. Makes me think about how Ming Na was that assassin last season. Maybe they wanted Lucy Liu for this part and couldn't get her for whatever reason? This really does look like a Star Wars take on The Bride Vs. O-Ren. This actress is pretty good with a staff. In fact I kinda feel like maybe she's a stunt woman that doubled for Dawson. That lady KNOWS how to handle that staff. Fight coordination is again in this scene really good. The double handed thing is something that take a lot of effort to pull off, and I say this as someone that's fought in matches with weapons.
9. Is there anything else to say but... THRAWN!!!!!! Holy ****, holy ****, holy ****!!!! I was thinking that the woman's master would be connected to Maul and his criminal empire but Ben did away with him when Luke was a boy as we now know... Thraw though? Well... Where is this going? Are Filoni and crew gonna try and make lemons out of lemonade with RISE OF SKYWALKER's out of nowhere Palps return? Will they attempt to tie this all together? Heady stuff, and a pleasant but truly out of left field choice.
10. So the two are still bound together. Oddly... Anticlimatic but still a good end. Tano is obviously in play as a supporting character of some kind and the "quest" is still a thing as it's the whole hook of the show.
This was... Really, really, really good. Not mind blowing but solid all over. Great guest stars, moved the plot forward, revealed tons and delivered on being the live action intro to a fan fave character.
PS the villain was it turns out... Diana Lee Inosanto. Whom... I've met a couple of times. I KNEW I saw that face and heard her before. Seeing her name in the cast list at the end was as big an "oh ****" as Thrawn's reveal. She's the wife of Guro Dan Insanto, one of two people Bruce Lee gave the right to teach his Jeet Kune Do concept of martial arts as well as being an incredible Filipino Marital Arts master in his own right as well as being holder of multiple black belts and titles. And Diana is his wife who trained under Dan for decades now, and it shows in how she did that fight at the end. Makes me think more and more that she might have been stunt doubling for Dawson at some points. A great way to wrap up this episode.
