Season 3 of The Mandalorian has a substantially different vibe from the previous two seasons and The Book of Boba Fett. This time around the series has been spending less time bombarding us with empty references to other Star Wars things and more time trying to be a real TV show. The apparent change in approach benefits "Chapter 18"hugely--it's much easier to enjoy this particularly personal chapter of this series when we're not being distracted by endless references. Warning: This gallery contains major spoilers for Chapter 18 of The Mandalorian.
Star Wars fans will still find that their knowledge of the franchise is well rewarded by this episode, since it deals with very personal and intimate narratives for both the Mandalorian Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and the former Mandalore Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) as they make a fateful journey to the planet Mandalore. Almost as awesome is the way the episode pulls an obscure droid out of Star Wars's distant past and makes it a proper player in the franchise for the very first time.
All in all, Chapter 18 is a high-quality and meaty episode of The Mandalorian that gives both hardcore and casual Star Wars fans plenty to enjoy and chew on, but trust us when we say that it gets even better when you understand the full context. So without further ado, let's dive into it.
1. The Boonta Eve holiday
When Mando and Grogu arrive on Tatooine to visit Peli Motto's garage, the locals are in the midst of celebrating Boonta Eve, the holiday that was first mentioned back in The Phantom Menace. The podrace that Anakin raced in during that film was the Boonta Eve Classic, meaning this episode begins on the anniversary of that race. It's at least the 41st anniversary of Anakin's win, but it could be the 42nd or 43rd depending on how much time has actually passed across these three seasons of The Mandalorian.
In the current canon, Boonta Eve simply celebrates the ascension of the ancient Boonta the Hutt to godhood, without any context. But before Disney took over, Boonta was one of three Hutts who led Hutt forces against Xim the Despot way back before the formation of the Galactic Republic, and it was that effort that earned him his godhood and very own holiday. But since Xim the Despot is from an old Expanded Universe novel, those specific details are no longer canon.
2. The Rodian's speeder
That damaged landspeeder that Peli Motto is haggling with a Rodian over as the episode begins isn't really special--it's just there as setup for a joke about auto mechanics pulling fast ones on their customers. But we've seen it (or rather the same model) before only one single time, in a previous episode of The Mandalorian: "Chapter 12, The Siege." In that episode, Mando, Cara Dune, Greef Karga and that annoying green alien guy use an identical speeder to infiltrate an Imperial base on Nevarro. Later, when the group is breaking back out of the base in a much larger vehicle, they run over the blue speeder, destroying it.
3. R5-D4
Quite possibly the most famous original trilogy Star Wars droid who wasn't named on screen, R5-D4 is well known among Star Wars fans as the droid that Uncle Owen tried to buy from the Jawas at the beginning of A New Hope instead of R2--only for R5 to break down while trying to roll over to him. A recent short story, however, revealed that R5 sabotaged himself to help R2, making him a secret hero of the Rebellion.
Despite having so little screen time, R5 was apparently memorable enough to have action figures back in the day--I had one!--and now on The Mandalorian he finally gets to have his time in the sun.
4. Bo-Katan and the Purge of Mandalore
While this episode and previous ones have discussed Bo-Katan's past as Mandaloriane and the destruction of Mandalore itself by the Empire enough that you get the point, now that we actually have seen the surface of Mandalore and the ruins of its capital city Sundari on The Mandalorian, it bears looking a little deeper at what kind of baggage Bo-Katan is carrying here.
During the Clone Wars, Mandalore was ruled by Darth Maul. But he was defeated, the Republic won the Clone Wars, and Bo-Katan became the new leader of the Mandalorians, aka Mandalore. But there was no lasting peace to be found. As soon as Chancellor Palpatine became Emperor Palpatine and founded the Galactic Empire, he ordered the occupation of Mandalore, which he put under the rule of a Mandalorian servant of the Empire named Gar Saxon.
Bo-Katan didn't take all that lightly, but many Mandalorians were content to live under Saxon and the Empire. But a little over a decade prior to the events of The Mandalorian, one of those Mandalorian clans, Clan Wren, had enough and started an uprising against the Empire and their loyalist Mandalorians. Clan Wren recruited Bo-Katan to the cause, gifting her the Darksaber and propping her up once more as Mandalore during this new Mandalorian Civil War.
But the war didn't last long. The Empire realized it couldn't hold Mandalore, so they bombed it into oblivion. The Mandalorians have been scattered ever since, with survivors believing the surface of Mandalore to be too tainted to visit. But as we saw in this episode, the surface was actually quite livable, and in fact some people have been living there. For example...
5. That very creepy droid creature who captured Mando
Deep in the ruins of Mandalore is this horrifying disembodied head thing that drives a little crab tank and walks around in the creepiest robot body. If you can believe it, this guy is completely new--we've never seen him or his like before. That said, he certainly reminds us of General Grievous, both because of his weird and gross cyberpunk thing and because they re-used some of Grievous's sound effects for this guy. That detail is probably not a coincidence--hopefully we'll learn more about this guy as Mando and Bo-Katan spend more time on Mandalore.
6. The living Mythosaur
Until this episode, we had never seen nor even heard of a Mythosaur actually being alive in the present in any Star Wars narrative. They've always been creatures of legend native to Mandalore that were conquered by the original Mandalorians, both in the Disney canon and in the old Expanded Universe. As Bo-Katan says in this episode, the Mandalorian logo is based on its skull. And now it turns out these Mythosaurs aren't so mythical after all.
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