With the season 3 premiere now out of the way after a mediocre start, viewers will be pleased to know that Episode 2 puts things firmly back on track. It was quickly back to classic Mando: action packed, cinematic, suspenseful when needed, paced well, never quite what you'd expect, and just plain all around fun. I'm content to end this review right here to let the reader enjoy it for themselves, but I will elaborate nevertheless.
Before I get into the core of episode itself, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the opening recap finally revisited some of the conversation from "The Book" between Mando and The Armorer on the space station, although this felt too late here as it was very much needed in Episode 1.
"The Mines of Mandalore" was by Mando standards a well thought out and written episode that focuses on the journey and how it unfolds. There were a number of seemingly ordinary events that were actually cleverly opportunistic setups for later on in the episode: Mando ending up buying a discount R5 astromech droid, teaching Baby Yoda about planetary maps and basic spaceship navigation, both of these events ended up being important later when Mando was captured and needed Baby Yoda to fly to Bo-Katan for help. This also showed that Baby Yoda has been understanding Mando's teachings after all and also demonstrated self sufficiency for the first time by directing R5 which planet to fly to, and it wasn't suddenly out of character to conveniently suit the plot. Mando's unexpected capture by a strange alien bugbot was also a critical event that kicked everything into motion. Even "the living waters" ended up showing a deeper meaning in the mines where they first encountered the giant reptile which we presume is the legendary Mythosaur.
The scenes were well done, everything from the wide angles to capture the vastness of the underground networks inside Mandalore's ruins to the first person view inside "the living waters" showcasing the murkiness beneath with all the nuances of Bo-Katan's ascent to the water's surface playing with your imagination until the time was right to reveal the eye of the Mythosaur. Bo-Katan's fight scene with mystery bug-bot was also impressively executed not only with timely camera cuts to set the frenetic pace of the action but also showcased Bo-Katan's masterful prowess with the Darksaber that she previously claimed in the Filoni-verse timeline. BK's rescues reminded the audience of two things, that she is still very much the royal ass-kicker she was in Star Wars Rebels and Clone Wars, and Mando is indeed mortal; the scenes were done in a believable and balanced manner that didn't suddenly diminish Mando's rescue by a woman for the sake of imposing social commentary at the cost of consistency, we saw two characters believably respecting each other. And the amount of screen time that Mando and BK were given further reminded us that this show isn't all about the little green guy.
The visual effects were also excellent. Showing the crystalized landscape and all the subterranean ruins were so detailed and convincingly lit and shadowed that I felt like I was part of their quest. The lighting and shadows when Mando first steps foot on Mandalore was just stunning as were the weather effects as their ships entered the atmosphere.
About my biggest gripe is the dim lighting. Yes they're underground without power but it was still often too dark even when things happened that they wanted the audience to see (or did they?...). And where did Bo-Katan's floating light orb conveniently come from near the end?... Even their helmet lights had no apparent benefit to the characters or the audience. This problem was also apparent in some scenes of Obi-Wan which by now I hope they had learned from but it seems this is some kind of Disney standard that isn't nearly as well done as say HBO's "The Last of Us". Even the two troll fights seemed too dark to me.
While on the topic of gripes, I only have a few minor ones. Why was BK still moping at her throne for a second straight episode? It felt out of place for Mando to tell BK that her father "seemed like an interesting man" when she hadn't said anything interesting about him, editing oversight? Since when did jetpacks work under water? Doesn't BK's helmet pressurize too? How did Mando get dragged down to the bottom of "the living waters" so damn fast? Bug-bot's fight scenes went by too quick, it would've been nice if all the care and time they spent on a one-off adversary was prolonged a little more for no other reason than to show off an impressively designed character that I find myself genuinely curious to learn more about.
I found this episode to be quite entertaining and well executed with only a few minor quibbles about consistencies. Fans looking for the core Mando traits (cinematography, action, details) will get it in this episode.
9.5/10
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