The Mandalorian: Chapter 14: The Tragedy – Review
The following article contains spoilers for Chapter 14: The Tragedy.
The second season of The Mandalorian kicked off with an exciting and adventurous bang with the episode “The Marshal”, introducing us to some brand new faces and showcasing some familiar ones as well such as Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and The Child.
But after that, the season kind of took a depressing turn for the worse, with many episodes feeling like mindless filler instead of a meaningful and riveting continuation of the series. Don’t get me wrong – we still got some truly phenomenal episodes so far this season such as “The Heiress” and “The Jedi”, which just may be the greatest episode in the entire series. Other than that though, season two of The Mandalorian has felt like a bit of a disappointment in many regards.
Thankfully, it seems as though we are finally getting on the right track again. With last week’s aforementioned “The Jedi” and now “The Tragedy”, season two of the Star Wars spinoff series is shaping up to be truly incredible in its final few episodes. “The Tragedy” is one of the shortest episodes in the whole show which is something I was fearful about before watching, but about five minutes in, all my fears were put to rest.
Courtesy of Disney+
It’s one of the most simplistic yet off-the-wall crazy episodes of any television show I have seen in a long time. We follow the titular Mandalorian and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda, or the Child) up in some luscious cliffside area in the galaxy. Grogu begins to demonstrate the true power and intensity of his force powers, but it doesn’t take long for the Mandalorian to find out that they are not alone. Who ends up being there with them? None other than Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison).
He made a brief appearance in the first episode of this season but hasn’t been seen since. Until now. Although he was most certainly an exciting and fun character to watch in the original Star Wars trilogy, I think that he is the most envigorating in “The Tragedy”. We finally get to see his fighting skills and how deadly he can really be if you get on his bad side. Once he dons his iconic Mandalorian armor again toward the end of the episode, I got goosebumps immediately.
The action sequences throughout this episode (there are a lot) are filmed so impressively and none of it looks fake. Although there are plenty of blaster/gunfight scenes here, there are a surprising number of hand-to-hand combat scenes which truly blew me away. Watching Boba Fett go toe-to-toe with Stormtroopers and literally breaking their armor off made my jaw drop.
Just when I thought “The Tragedy” couldn’t possibly get any more pulse-pounding and shocking, at the very end, Grogu gets captured by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), who observes the child as he further demonstrates his force abilities. Obviously, the Mandalorian is going to get him free of Gideon’s captivity soon enough, but nonetheless, “The Tragedy” is a mind-bogglingly intense and insane episode, and one of the best of the whole series.
Series Information
Certificate: TV-14
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Temuera Morrison, Ming-Na Wen, Giancarlo Esposito, Gina Carano
Series: The Mandalorian
Network: Disney+
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez