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Five Thoughts on The Mandalorian‘s “Chapter 19: The Convert”

By | March 16th, 2023
Posted in Television | % Comments

In what is both the longest and, perhaps, strangest episode of The Mandalorian, we get a surprising realignment of characters, as well as a story about a nearly forgotten character. Let’s get into it.

1. Bo-Katan will lead them all

After Bo-Katan had such a chilly reception to Din in the season premiere, in “The Convert,” she becomes a somewhat unwilling partner to Din. In addition to helping him out of the ‘living waters,’ they wind up being attacked by the pirates that Din angered in the premiere, who destroy her palace and leaves her, already without her people, now without her home. She accompanies Din to his cohort where, surprisingly, she is welcomed as part of their tribe.

This is not going to be her final place within the Mandalorian people, but it is an important step towards what I believe is actually her destiny: the wield the Darksaber and lead them all. This is how she gets in with this sect and, while she will never fully commit to their way of life, she will gain their trust. She already has a claim to the Darksaber, and has the political cache to unite the various factions in a way that eliminates the ‘apostate’ vs ‘believer’ conversation.

Perhaps most importantly, she has seen the mythosaur in the living waters. That is the avatar of the Mandalore; she is being set up as exactly that. Din has no desire to hold that title. It is hers for the taking. This may not happen this season, but Bo-Katan seems poised to lead.

2. And now, for the rest of the episode

Aside from the Bo-Katan/Din first and last ten minutes, the bulk of this nearly hour-long episode had to do with Dr. Pershing, the scientist who worked alongside Moff Gideon and Werner Hertzog (I refuse to learn his character’s name; he’s always Werner Hertzog to me) and was working on cloning Grogu. It is a strange character to return to, but it allows a story to be teased out for the future without revealing too much of the bigger picture. The Moff Gideon story seemed to come to an end with his capture in the season two finale, but clearly Gideon, or at least the people who he was answering to, is still pulling strings.

While it is easy to forget because of how the show has changed, Gideon is sort of the driver of the whole series. His crew is who hired Din to find Grogu, and he is the one who had the Darksaber. If not for his inquiry into Grogu, Din would still be a (very effective) bounty hunter and a not a faux-dad. To see that the show hasn’t forgotten this piece amid all the Jedi/Clone Wars/Rebels connections is a very good thing for the show.

Pershing in particular is an interesting character to focus on, because in his limited appearances, he has seemed to be an Imperial second and a scientist first. He is the perfect example of someone who was a somewhat benign member of an evil system, if such systems can even have benign pieces. He wasn’t bent on conquest or evil, but on science and helping people. Star Wars occasionally likes to humanize their space Nazis, and this is one of the more obvious versions of that story.

3.

When we meet Pershing, he’s part of the New Republic’s Amnesty program, which takes former Imperials and gives them new roles through rehabilitation. I found it very interesting that the New Republic is giving its new charges identification numbers and refers to them almost exclusively by those numbers. It is an interesting decision that Star Wars made in the intervening time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens to portray the New Republic as somewhat of a failure. We see that they are ineffectual and, eventually, destroyed by the First Order, but here, we get a glimpse at their failures almost immediately after establishing themselves.

This is also the first time we’ve seen Coruscant in the New Republic era. It was sort of shocking to see how similar in almost every way it appears to the Coruscant of Andor. There’s some commentary there: the wealthy and powerful have lives that aren’t really affected by anything. Empire, Republic, it’s all the same (as a line of terribly on the nose dialogue stated in the episode). This episode also looked, perhaps, the cheapest of any episode we’ve seen thus far. Some of the Coruscant CGI was really bad, including those weird ice pops they ate.

Continued below

4. The subway

You know that Jon Favreau lived in New York City by the way he essentially created the subway system so perfectly, from the orange seats to the between train hoppers to the closing doors chime. He even went a step further by including almost the exact system that some NJ Transit/Metronorth/LIRR stations use with the glass doors at the ticketing kiosks. It’s a small touch that made Coruscant’s lower levels feel authentically like a big city.

5. So…why?

The question of ‘why’ is pointed both at the character of Elia Kane and the producers themselves. Let’s take them in that order.

Elia very astutely manipulates Pershing into leaving his relatively happy, stable new life to take chances and to pursue his ‘dreams,’ while at the same time setting him up for failure and, eventually, a mind-wipe or possibly death at the hands of the machine that Mel Brooks tries to use on Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie. While the term ‘Electronic Celebrectomy’ is never said aloud, we all know it.

She is doing this either to get the brilliant mind without the morals attached or to punish him for not being loyal to Gideon and the Empire. But the bigger question here is why the producers felt that this story was necessary?

Now, on one hand, it is a nice reminder of the fact that the Empire is out there. It also sort of dovetails nicely with what is happening on The Bad Batch, with exploring the plans to clone Palpatine starting as far back as the post-Prequels era. But to spent 40-ish minutes on this story seems excessive, and is another reminder that the pacing of this series – especially considering the weird Book of Boba Fett interlude – has been off since almost the beginning.

I’m not questioning the validity of this story, but how it is being told. If this was intercut throughout the season, I think it would have worked far better than just one long chunk. I think that would have also allowed viewers to have more time developing affinity for Pershing, and so making his ending even more poignant.


//TAGS | The Mandalorian

Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

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