The Mandalorian season 3, episode 6 review: Guns for Hire

“I haven’t seen battle droids since The Clone Wars.” Spoilers for The Mandalorian season 3, episode 6 follow.

The Mandalorian is not alone in being a bounty hunter as Bo-Katan’s former crewmates are now privateers, hunting bounties in an Imperial Star Destroyer.

So, Din and Bo-Katan head to where they’re based as a standing army now.

The Mandalorian season 3 episode 6 review

Privateers

After getting her new mission from The Armorer, Din and Bo-Katan head out on their first mission, which is to find her former compatriots on an opulent world. Turns out, their now privateers and have been hired as a standing army for this world, while also handling any dirty work that they get hired out to do. Turns out, Din rubbed off onto them.

So, once Din and Bo-Katan land on this, they’re summoned by Jack Black and Lizzo, I mean Captain Bombardier and The Duchess, who are the elected monarchs of the planet. Both don’t give the best performance, but luckily, they’re barely in the episode and all they do is hire Bo-Katan and Din to solve their droid malfunction problem, which is pretty important on this world as droids are basically used as slave labor before they’re allowed to see the Mandalorian fleet.

Once they finish with that mission and finally arrive at the fleet, Bo-Katan almost immediately challenges Axe to combat to regain her fleet. Unsurprisingly, it’s a pretty brutal fight. They are Mandalorians after all. But, obviously, Bo-Katan wins cause she’s just a better fighter than basically every other Mandalorian on this show. But they still don’t immediately take to her, due to her association with Din.

However, she immediately comes to his defense and he promptly defends her right back and, finally, bestows her the Darksaber, which she earned through combat earlier in the season, when she defeated his captor. It’s a great callback to earlier in the season that provides more weight to the great fight in the second episode and provides an immensely satisfying end to the episode. Bo-Katan triumphantly ignites the Darksaber.

Battle droids

Back to the majority of the episode, which is about the planet’s biggest issue, their droid problem. Specifically, a droid-malfunctioning problem. This is a pretty important problem as well as the entire planet relies on droids to do menial labor, or at least, it seems like that. There’s at least one other form of worker on the planet.

The droids are being recreated down below the city by a group of Ugnauts, who seem completely separate from the rest of the population of the planet. As it turns out as well, Din is able to form a quick camaraderie due to his prior dealings with Kuiil. This scene is over quite quickly, which feels wrong. There’s definitely a feeling that more could be said with them being the only non-droid workers on this planet, but the episode kind of just glazes over that.

But then we get into the real part of their investigation, and Din immediately provokes the super battle droids, which is great because he can’t keep his underlying anger in check and they can’t keep up the disguise for very long. Plus this then leads to a great chase scene of Din and Bo-Katan running down the B2 droid, which feels akin to something out of Blade Runner, as does much of the episode, which is never a bad thing.

As it turns out though, these droids aren’t acting out just because of their old programming returning though, they were reprogrammed once again by the Head Security Officer, Commissioner Hellgait, who turned out to be a former CIS member. It’s not the most inventive twist in the world, but hey, it’s not really the most important part of the episode.

With a relatively fun premise, with some flaws in execution, and an excellent finale, The Mandalorian heads into its final act of the season on a very solid note.

The Mandalorian streaming now on Disney Plusseason 3 is !