‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Episode Six Recap: “Guns for Hire”

*Warning: the following article contains spoilers for episode six of The Mandalorian – Season 3*

The Mandalorian goes with another cameo-heavy episode instead of drawing interesting sidequests in Guns for Hire. At least it’s able to reunite Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) with Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides) and Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado) by the time the episode ends. The episode ends with a thrilling duel, in which she reclaims not only the lightsaber but the full leadership of Clan Kryze after directly confronting Woves.

The duel starts rather simply, as any “Western” standoffs would, but immediately goes to 100 once Bo-Katan launches her jetpack as Woves fires a missile (!!!) at her. Director Bryce Dallas Howard has impressively helmed several of The Mandalorian‘s best action sequences, and the duel between Bo-Katan and Woves is no exception. It’s just a shame how late it happens into the episode, which fills its time with an aimless side-quest featuring fun (but unnecessary) cameos from Jack Black, Lizzo, and Christopher Lloyd.

Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Bo-Katan go to Plazir-15, hoping to get an audience with Axe Woves. However, they are quickly greeted by Captain Bombardier (Black) and the Duchess (Lizzo), who want them to complete a favor before they can speak to Axe Woves and the other Mandalorians on the planet. Bombardier has discovered that some droids from The Clone Wars, who were once battle droids, have been malfunctioning and returning to their faulty program. With the help of Commissioner Helgait (Lloyd), they investigate the source of the malfunction, which seems to be deeper than they think.

Predictably, it seems that Helgait put something in the droids’ mixture that reverted back to their old programming. Helgait was once a separatist who followed the leadership of Count Dooku and still believes in its ideologies. Bombardier was also a part of the Empire. However, as part of its rehabilitation program, he was able to rule Plazir-15 without incident. This seems like a good idea for a decent episode, but The Mandalorian‘s tone is too busy swerving from goofy to deadly serious in mere seconds. Black is an inherently goofy actor. That’s not bad; Jack Black is a legend and one of the funniest men alive, but it doesn’t work here.

Its tone feels at odds with what the show has consistently presented and swerves in too many directions for me to have fully been gripped into the sidequest. Once the droids go AWOL, they make for some interesting action sequences. However, since those scenes come out of nowhere and distort the episode’s multiple tones, it’s not as effective as one would’ve hoped. Still, the episode does develop an interesting banter between Djarin and Bo-Katan. They were once enemies and are now uniting their fronts to build a better Mandalore.

Now I’m only wondering what the hell happened to Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). It was teased in the last episode, and I’m absolutely assuming that Axe Woves has him detained somewhere. But what a waste of Giancarlo Esposito’s talents. He is supposed to be the series’ main villain (!!!), and he has been barely in it so far. We know he’s evil, and he wants Grogu for his own. We don’t need to “tease” him consistently because he has already appeared multiple times in the show unless Jon Favreau is keeping him for the last two episodes because there was a shift in his character arc. Whatever the justification is, it better be worth it.

I’m looking at many comments on social media about The Mandalorian’s current season being directionless as if the other two seasons weren’t. It’s one of the most directionless Star Wars shows, but at least it isn’t as directionless as Star Wars: The Bad Batch and remains mostly entertaining throughout.

The sixth episode of The Mandalorian – Season 3 is available to stream on Disney+.