The Mandalorian tried to do an Andor
The Mandalorian season 3, episode 3 resurrects two recognizable faces from seasons past: Dr. Pershing, the Empire-affiliated clone scientist played by Omid Abtahi, and Elia Kane, a Moff Gideon crony. Their reappearances come fully loaded; âChapter 19: The Convertâ is The Mandalorianâs most political hour, and one of its messiest. Star Wars has never been more âIâm just asking questions!â than in Pershingâs peculiar redemption arc and Eliaâs return, which seems poised to connect the Disney Plus show to the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for all of The Mandalorian through âThe Convert.â]
Last yearâs Andor took Star Wars to its darkest corners, interrogating the morality of so-called heroes during a time of war and revealing the Empireâs most violent, authoritarian tactics. Between rebel terrorism and state-sponsored labor prisons, the galaxy far, far away looked grimmer than ever â and echoed the worst of our real world. âThe Convertâ finds The Mandalorian playing in a similar key, albeit one with a bit more tinfoil-hat energy than Andor creator Tony Gilroyâs trenchant commentary. Itâs easy to imagine why Jon Favreauâs Star Wars series is trending this direction, knowing what we know about the sequel trilogy, but sandwiched between Din Djarin and Bo-Katanâs return to the Children of the Watch, we get the reframing of a wartime eugenicist as a heroic underdog and the New Republic as an overextended government prone to the same fascist impulses as the Empire. InterestingâŠ
Star Wars is no longer as simple as âgood versus evil.â It was, even if George Lucas spent years saying it was a deeper metaphor for the Vietnam War, but not anymore. Not after Lucasâ prequel trilogy, the Lucasfilm sequel trilogy, the many Star Wars cartoons, and a bevy of Disney Plus Star Wars series poking around the BBY/ABY timeline. Telling more and more stories in the universe demanded complexity and gray areas. Gilroy and his Andor season 1 collaborators seized the opportunity, taking the most unflinching look at âwartimeâ in Star Wars.
In that regard, I donât blame Favreau and his co-writer Noah Kloor for wanting to do the same in The Mandalorian, even if the promise of the first two seasons was pulpier. As Din Djarin and Bo-Katan inch toward reclaiming Mandalore, there are bound to be some bursts of true terror as those in the orbit of the Great Purge reckon with the past. But âThe Convertâ feels lost in the fog of giving Star Wars greater meaning, and âexplainingâ how we got to the ridiculous arc of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker.
After an action-packed opening with Din and Bo-Katan, âThe Convertâ reintroduces Dr. Pershing, last seen aiding Moff Gideon build a Dark Trooper fleet and holding Grogu hostage in The Mandalorian season 2 finale. In the season 3 timeline, Pershingâs on Coruscant, having defected to the New Republic in the name of science.
âI believe the pursuit of knowledge is the most noble thing a person can do,â he tells an audience of Coruscant elite. âSadly, my research was twisted into something cruel and inhuman at the behest of a desperate individual intent on using cloning technology to secure more power for himself. But despite the shameful work of my past, I hope to help my New Republic in any way I can.â
The New Republic, it turns out, is carrying out a more mundane version of Operation Paperclip, the covert U.S. program that enlisted Nazi scientists to work on the Saturn space rockets. Itâs unclear what the New Republic wants from Pershing, tossing him in a tech-adjacent data entry job, but the doctor still has his own eugenics dreams. As he outright tells a crowd during his TED Talk, his DNA-splicing experiments have the potential to save lives â if only the New Republic would reinvest. They wonât, but he discovers he has one major fan who will: Elia Kane, Moff Gideonâs reformed comms officer. Though sheâs been rehabilitated, Elia still is still a Badass Rule-Breaker, and encourages Pershing to crack into an old Imperial dump to find a miniature lab in which to continue his work.
The story is thrilling in a vacuum â Favreau and Kloor whisk us back to yet another version of Coruscant, where one-percenters wear fake smiles like nothing happened and the Andor-style work pods are still in use â and with distance, Pershingâs quest in the name of science is sympathetic. But boy, he sure was a Nazi, wasnât he? He was. He was a Nazi. He worked for âThe Clientâ and then Moff Gideon even after the Empire had fallen. He stole and injected the Midichlorian-enriched blood of a baby into soldiers. Not great. Thereâs a reason the global population wasnât happy when they eventually caught wind of the U.S. government working with so-called reformed Nazis. (It was because they were Nazis.)
The end of Pershingâs journey is quite shocking, literally. Though he and Elia successfully break into the Imperial junkyard, New Republic po-pos nail him in the act. Turns out Elia is actually more allegiant than she let on, and her entrapment plot was a test. Pershing failed. And the punishment for harboring dreams of science is a round in the New Republicâs rebranded mind flayer. The message is clear: Conform or die, doctor.
Lot going on here. Though the New Republic has been illustrated as a wobbly but effective replacement government in the aftermath of the Empire, the episode recasts it as a shady, message-controlling establishment. Realistic if you live in any country on planet Earth, but thematically icky when the little guy being squashed by the system is the Nazi who helped build an army of Force-wielding Wehrmacht.
âThe Convertâ creates the sensation of tumbling down into 4chan. The Nazi is good now? The noble authorities are villains? And there might be a Deep State lurking beneath the surface? If thereâs a reason Favreau and Kloor have walked The Mandalorian into the minefield of grounded political gray zones, it seems to be in service of tying the Disney Plus show into the larger tapestry of Star Wars storytelling. While little is explicit in the end of the episode, the reemergence of cloning technology, combined with Eliaâs sinister dead stare as she overflays Pershing, suggests that the drama could eventually explain how the First Order took shape on the Outer Rim, infiltrated the New Republic, and upended the universe.
Approximately 11 people were happy with how J.J. Abramsâ The Rise of Skywalker established the late-game reemergence of Emperor Palpatine as the product of Snoke-cloning and the Sith rituals of Exegol, but themâs the rules now. Though Pershing may be out of the picture, Elia seems well positioned to grab his research and run to the Outer Rim. The lore-tightening ends may justify the morality-tale-jargon means in Star Wars storytelling of late, but this departure from The Mandalorianâs entertainment MO feels startlingly out of whack.
Thereâs merit in wondering if the New Republic was the perfect fit for the galaxy. Thereâs intrigue in following Pershingâs path to assimilation, and the nuance of his goals. But collided together, itâs a weird exhortation on the individual versus the bureaucracy thatâs antithetical to a lot of what Star Wars is all about. Itâs not quite Randian, but itâs getting there.
Luckily, Dinâs mission is simple. By the end of the hour, everyone can clap for Bo-Katan joining a death cult.