Recap / The Mandalorian S1E8 "Chapter 8: Redemption"

IG-11 enacts his basic protocol: To Nurse and Protect.

Written by Jon Favreau

Directed by Taika Waititi

Release date: December 27, 2019

"You are a clan of two."

— The Armorer

"Chapter 8: Redemption" is the eighth episode of The Mandalorian Season 1 and the final episode of the season. It is directed by Taika Waititi and written by Jon Favreau, and released on December 27, 2019.

Pinned down by Moff Gideon's Stormtroopers, the Mandalorian, Cara, and Greef have to find a way out of their predicament.

---

Tropes:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Din is given a jetpack by the Armorer, which he puts to good use to bring down Moff Gideon's TIE fighter.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: As per usual they are extensive, maze-like, clean, and a denizen of secret organisations that wish to avoid the authorities.
• Action Girl: The Armorer proves that she's a capable warrior by taking out five Stormtroopers single-handed while armed with a hammer and a pair of forging tongs.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: IG-11, Cara, and Greef all rub the Child's ears as they say goodbye to him.
• Afraid to Hold the Baby: Cara is reluctant to hold the Child since she doesn't "do the whole baby thing."
• Air Vent Escape: It's actually a sewer vent. However unlike other examples it's not easy to get through the grill, even when Cara tries to shoot her way through. Fortunately IG-11 has a cutting tool, though even he almost takes too long.
• Alas, Poor Yorick: Din cradles one of the pile of helmets he finds of his dead colleagues from the Covert.
• Alliterative Name: Din Djarin (although the second "D" is silent.)
• Anti-Climactic Unmasking: When the Mandalorian's face is finally revealed to the audience, the stoic bounty hunter is shown to be an ordinary human who looks as vulnerable and afraid as anyone else would be on the verge of death. In a more meta sense, the person under the helmet is, of course, Pedro Pascal, the well-known actor the audience already knew was playing the Mandalorian, shooting down previous speculation that the helmet would hide some other, more twist-y identity.
• Asshole Victim: The Scout Troopers are callous jerks who hit a baby because it annoys them. They get little audience sympathy when IG-11 brutally beats them to death.
• Badass and Baby: It's IG-11 and the Child instead of Mando and the Child this time around, specially when IG bursts into town driving a speeder bike and shooting at every stormtrooper in sight with deadly accuracy while protecting the little green wonder with his armored torso.
• Bad Boss: Moff Gideon's willingness to kill his own troops is played for laughs in a very Black Comedy way in the beginning, with the two Scout Troopers with the baby being more exasperated than shocked when their dispatcher tells them about it.
  AP-1982: Did he just say that Gideon killed his own men?
  JS-1975: Oh, who knows. These guys like to lay down the law when they first arrive into town.
• Bathos: In the opening, the general inanity of the two scout troopers as they await permission to return to town and wonder about the baby that they've kidnapped is contrasted against the large and small evils of the Empire, as the wait is increased by Moff Gideon killing one of his own men, and the scout troopers themselves punch the Baby multiple times for fussing. And those two killed Kuiil moments before.
  JS-1975: Any update yet?
  Dispatcher: That's a negative. Still waiting for confirmation. He just killed an officer for interrupting him, so this might take a while.
  JS-1975: Understood. Standing by still. [sotto] Unbelievable...
• Battle Trophy:
  • The ending reveals Gideon is in possession of the Darksaber, which means its previous owner, Bo-Katan, lost it to him somehow, or lost it to someone else and it changed hands.
  • Subverted when Din is shocked to find a pile of Mandalorian helmets from the Covert. Turns out they've actually been retrieved by the Armorer who is melting them down for their valuable beskar.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Cara has no intention of surrendering to be put in an Imperial Mind Flayer. Greef insists that's just war propaganda, but she has no intention of finding out the hard way.
• BFG: Another E-Web shows up, this one mounted on a tripod instead of a hover platform. It's apparently the most advanced current model.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • IG-11 rides into town on a speeder bike and throws the small army besieging the bar into disarray. IG-11 blindsiding the entire Imperial garrison gives the Mandalorian, Cara, and Greef a fighting chance.
  • In the flashback, a Mandalorian shoots a droid just as it's about to kill Din as a child, hauls him out of his hideout and carries him to safety with his jetpack while the rest of his unit fights off the droids.
• Big "NO!": Moff Gideon has a short but loud one when his readouts indicate that Mando tagged his TIE fighter with two Sticky Bombs.
• Bittersweet Ending: Din, Cara, Greef and the Child are able to escape Moff Gideon's forces, killing the Imperials and liberating Nevarro. Although he doesn't resume his job as a bounty hunter, Din's issues with the Bondsmen's Guild are cleared, and the guild won't accept any contracts from the Imperials for the Child anymore. Cara now has a job as an enforcer for Greef, who will also handle issues with her technically being a Republic Army deserter. However, Kuiil and most of the Mandalorians on Nevarro were killed by the Imperials, while IG-11 sacrificed itself to eliminate a platoon of stormtroopers. The Armorer remains to recover the armor of the fallen Mandalorians, and declares that the Child is a foundling, and Din must either reunite it with its own kind, or train it as a Super-Commando when it comes of age. Unknown to Din, Gideon survived the crash of his TIE Fighter, and is in possession of the Darksaber.
• Break Them by Talking: Gideon tries to psych out the holdouts by intermeshing talking about the destructive power of the E-Web Heavy Repeater his troops had set up with showing off his intel knowledge on the three of them.
• Bullet Proof Human Shield: Justified when IG-11 reverses his body to protect the Child with his armor.
• But Now I Must Go: Greef suggests they all just stay on Nevarro now they've cleared out the Imperials, but Mando now has a duty to find the Child's home.
• The Cameo: "Bike Scout Trooper #1" is played by Jason Sudeikis and "Bike Scout Trooper #2" is played by Adam Pally.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Gideon gives everyone until nightfall to surrender, despite having the firepower to raze the building. They realize he would only be doing this if the Child was no longer in his custody, so he needs them alive for interrogation.
• Canon Immigrant: A flamethrower-wielding Incinerator Stormtrooper from the Legends video game The Force Unleashed makes his canon debut by being brought in to burn down the cantina that Din and his allies are hiding in.
• Captain Obvious:
  • Upon reaching the definitely unmissable and unmistakable lava river, Greef Karga points out: "This is the lava river."
  • Moments later, when they all go to get on the ferry, IG-11 feels it necessary to warn them, "Watch your feet. It is molten lava."
• Character Development: When IG determines that he must sacrifice himself, Mando begs him not to, saying that they need him.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Gideon's stormtroopers set up an E-Web repeating blaster to destroy the bar. Din ends up turning it against them.
  • IG-11's self-destruct mechanism.
  • Midway through the episode, the Armorer gives Din a jetpack. In the climax, he uses it to bring down Moff Gideon's TIE.
  • At the cantina, Mando can't blow up the grate because he's out of bombs. Upon returning to the Covert, Armorer tells him to restock his munitions. When he fights against Gideon's TIE, he slaps some of his restocked bombs onto it.
  • Mando finally gets that Jet Pack that he wanted, as well as the Mudhorn sigil that he rejected earlier. As he and the Child are now a Mandalorian clan of two, he has no problem using that sigil for a kill that they shared.
  • There's an IKEA Weaponry scene of the E-Web cannon being placed on its tripod and connected to the power generator. Mando later takes the E-Web off its tripod to turn against Moff Gideon, who then shoots the power generator to blow it up and Cut the Juice.
• Clean Up the Town: Our heroes end up killing all the Imperials (or so they think), so Cara decides to stay as Greef's enforcer given that he promises to sort out the bounty on her own head.
• Comically Missing the Point: When a TIE fighter is about to blow them to bits, Greef suggests that the Child "do the magic hand thing." The Child thinks Greef is just waving at him and cheerfully responds in kind.
• Continuity Nod: The Siege of Mandalore is mentioned in this episode. It was one of the final battles of the Clone Wars, where Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kryze led the Clone army and the Mandalorian Resistance against Darth Maul and the Death Watch.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The main characters seem to be perfectly cool and comfortable sailing on a lava river. Egregiously, the lava's heat doesn't completely swamp Din's infrared helmet.
• Cool Sword: Moff Gideon has the Darksaber. He uses it to cut his way out of his crashed TIE.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Of the stormtroopers who attack the Armorer, one of them gets knocked head-first into the furnace used for melting beskar.
• Cryptic Background Reference: During the Siege of Mandalore, a massacre of Mandalorian recruits known as the Night of a Thousand Tears occurred, which Din was witness to.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • IG-11 delivers one to the Scout Troopers in the opening. At first they're alarmed because they (correctly) think it's a hunter droid, but then they let their guard down when it identifies itself as a nanny droid. Then it brutally beats them both down and takes the Child.
  • The battle droids were pathetic jokes in the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars cartoon, but here we see them massacring an unarmed civilian population.
• Cutting the Knot: Rather than using a handgun to take on an armored Mandalorian with an E-Web, Gideon just shoots the E-Web's power generator, causing it to blow up in Mando's face.
• Dead Hat Shot: The dozens of Mandalorian helmets in the sewers, indicating Mando's tribe has been wiped out.
• Didn't See That Coming: Gideon's stormtroopers and Death Troopers are already fully prepared to gun down the trio should they ever come out of their hiding, but they're completely taken by surprise when IG-11 suddenly enters the vicinity and scatters their formation with his surprise entry. He was nowhere to be seen by the Imperials in the previous episode so they didn't expect his arrival.
• Dissonant Serenity: The Child is giggling while riding along during IG-11's Gangland Drive-By.
• Dramatic Irony: Din is exasperated when he learns from the Armorer (who is only slightly less clueless than him about this) that the Child is from an obscure race of Evil Sorcerers, both unaware that the Jedi haven't cared about their feud with the Mandalorians in decades and in fact have had amiable relations in recent years, nor that the Child is probably just a Force-sensitive member of its species and that Jedi aren't a species.
• Due to the Dead: The Mandalorian builds a burial mound out of stones for Kuiil in the ending.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • IG-11 blindsides the stormtrooper legion pinning the other heroes down in the cantina (after doing drive-by shootings on every trooper on the way in) by jumping off his speeder, sending it careening into a squad of stormtroopers, and proceeding to gunning down bucketheads left and right.
  • Mando gets his own when IG-11's blindside starts faltering. He enters the fray by immediately gunning down the trooper to the door's side and goes on his onslaught to the E-Web heavy repeater from there, with Cara laying down suppressing fire with her own repeating blaster and Greef covering his advance with Guns Akimbo.
• Easily Forgiven: Din saving the Child in violation of Guild rules has led to the destruction of the Covert, but the Armorer doesn't hold this against him, reasoning that their own decision to aid him is the direct cause of this consequence. She even provides him with an Equipment Upgrade and his sigil. Greef too is willing to let him back in the Guild because he helped to Clean Up the Town (though it's also because he's just witnessed first-hand how good Din is at his job, not that he needs reminding).
• Elite Mooks: Downplayed, but the Death Troopers are still the only Imperials that give Mando and the gang any serious trouble.
• The End... Or Is It?: Moff Gideon survives the crash of his TIE and cuts himself out of the wreck with a lightsaber. And not just any lightsaber, the Darksaber.
• Equipment Upgrade: This time a jetpack and a sigil.
• Exact Words: When Din says that he can't remove his helmet because it would violate his creed for any living thing to see his face, IG-11, being a droid, reminds him that it is technically not "a living thing."
• Facepalm Of Doom: IG-11 grabs one of the Child's scout trooper captors by the faceplate and lifts before brutally slamming said scout trooper's head into one of the speeder bikes to kill him.
• Family of Choice: The Armorer says that Din and the Child are now a clan of two. So Din accepts the Mudhorn sigil he rejected earlier (because the Child helped him with that kill), and lets the Child keep the Mandalorian sigil necklace.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: An Incinerator Stormtrooper nearly burns our heroes alive. Fortunately the Child turns his flame back on him, and the explosion blocks the entrance so there's no immediate pursuit.
• Firing One-Handed: Being a droid, IG-11 inherently has the arm strength to fire blaster rifles with just one hand, and the coordination to do it Guns Akimbo too.
• Flashback: We see the remainder of the Mandalorian's flashback, wherein a platoon of Mandalorians save him from the Separatist droid army.
• Foreshadowing: The mind flayer is believed by the heroes to be wartime propaganda. Come season 3, we find out that not only is it very much real, but it's still being used by the New Republic.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Mandalorians who rescue young Din in his flashback have the Clan Vizsla symbol on their armor pauldrons.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: When Moff Gideon tells Mando, Greef, and Cara to surrender themselves, he uses their full names and describes their personal histories in detail. The fact that he even knows Mando's birth name, and details about the Fall of Mandalore, lets Mando figure out who the man really is.
• Gangland Drive-By: IG-11's Roaring Rampage of Rescue, driving into town on a speeder bike and shooting at every stormstooper in sight and protecting the Child doing so.
• Given Name Reveal: Mando’s real name is revealed to be Din Djarin.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The Armorer delivers a coup de grace to the head of the last stormtrooper she hammers to death just off the bottom of the screen frame with such force that shattered chunks of the helmet fly upwards back into the frame.
• Guns Akimbo: IG-11 and Greef both wield a blaster in each hand. In IG's case, he uses two blaster rifles.
• Headgear Headstone: After Din gives Kuiil a proper burial, he rests the Ugnaught's goggle cap on top of the grave.
• Hell Is That Noise: Am Imperial TIE fighter makes an appearance, with its characteristic shriek.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • IG-11 determines that the only way for the Child to remain safe is if he uses his Self-Destruct Mechanism to kill the Stormtroopers blocking the exit of the lava river.
  • The fight between the Armorer and the pursuing stormtroopers appears to be set up this way, with the Armorer sacrificing herself to slow the pursuers down. She instead kills every last trooper in a Curb-Stomp Battle and survives.
• High-Speed Hijack: Din uses his jetpack and grappling chord to hook onto Gideon's TIE, and it's difficult enough to just attach a bomb to one of the struts.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Moff Gideon is such a Bad Boss that his subordinates refuse to interrupt him even to tell him that his target has been acquired, he has won and can kill the heroes at his leisure. They delay long enough that IG-11 comes in as The Cavalry and turns things around.
  • The incinerator trooper that Moff Gideon brought in may look Badass, but when he tries use a flamethrower to barbecue the heroes, the Child redirects the flames from his weapon back at him and he is the one barbecued.
  • Moff Gideon orders that a E-Web cannon be brought in for More Dakka. Mando ends up grabbing the gun, kills a lot of stormtroopers with it, and almost gets Gideon himself.
• Hollywood Healing: Din suffers a head injury so serious he has to be left behind, yet a bacta spray from IG-11 soon has him back on his feet. Justified and Downplayed; bacta is an extremely potent healing agent, and Din is still recovering from the near-fatal injury for the rest if the episode, though it doesn't slow him down much.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Din receives a serious head wound, but which can be easily healed if his helmet is removed. He absolutely refuses. IG-11 finds a loophole in that he is not a "living thing", and so by a strict interpretation of the Code it's fine for him to remove the helmet after their companions have gone ahead.
  • Din has a You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! reaction to being told he has to return the Child to its kind, a species of unknown origin who are connected with Evil Sorcerers who once fought the Mandalorians. The Armorer's response? "This is the way."
• Hypocritical Humor: One of the scout troopers insists that he'd better check on the Child, as his partner punched the kid earlier. Then the Child bites his finger and the "concerned" trooper immediately punches him, too.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Played for Laughs when the two scouts in the opening scene kill time by shooting at a small object a few feet away from their speeder bikes. Neither of them hits it and all of their shots go wide. One of them even checks the sights on his pistol in disbelief before shrugging and putting it away.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Greef reaches for a flagon of spotchka when Mando informs him and Cara that the Imperial officer who has them cornered is Moff Gideon, who was supposedly executed as a war criminal. By the time Mando gets to Moff Gideon's involvement in the Great Purge on Mandalore, Greef has already downed two shots.
• Infrared Xray Camera: Din uses his helmet to see the Imperials waiting outside the tunnel despite it being solid rock, with plenty of heat from the lava to interfere with the thermal image.
• Insistent Terminology: Despite retaining his precision-shooting abilities, IG-11 insists that he is a nurse droid, not a hunter.
• Interspecies Adoption: The Armorer charges the Mandalorian with being the Child's father, either until he can train him as a foundling or return him to his people.
• Irony:
  • An explosion knocks Cara behind cover, saving her life.
  • Shortly after Cara and Djarin explain to Greef that "Mandalorian" refers to a creed instead of a race, the Armorer refers to the Jedi as a race of sorcerers, apparently unaware that the aforementioned description of Mandalorians would also apply to Jedi.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: The Armorer issues Mando the Jet Pack, but cautions him that he must recover from his injury and train with it first as he hasn't used one since he was a foundling trainee. Circumstances force him to use it a lot sooner.
• It's Personal:
  • Gideon was an ISB Officer during the Great Purge on Mandalore, making Mando's opposition to him personal.
  • It's revealed that Cara's home planet was Alderaan. Emphasis on was. It's little wonder she loathes Imperials and jumped at the chance to take down the Client.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Mando is badly hurt from an explosion set off by Gideon and is bleeding from the head. When Cara tries to insist he escape with them, he tells her to take the Child and leave without him, taking his Mandalorian symbol with them to the Mandalorian Covert. IG-11 stays with him and manages to heal him enough for him to walk on his own.
• Jet Pack: The Armorer grants Din one but cautions him that he'll need to drill with it before he can use it safely, and has IG-11 hold onto it until his head wound heals. Naturally he has to use it in combat before the end of the episode.
• Kick the Dog: The two Scout Troopers hit baby Yoda. Let's just say that doesn't endear them to the audience.
• Killed Offscreen: The Imperials killed a good number of the Covert after the Mandalorian left. Some escaped, and only the Armorer remains to salvage what she can.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • Gideon calls in a stormtrooper packing a flamethrower to burn the trio out of hiding. The Child uses the Force to turn his flame back on him.
  • The Armorer throws one of the Stormtroopers into the open forge, where he is consumed by the flames.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Sidestepped by the barge, which hovers on the lava. Then played straight when IG-11 steps into the lava and wades through it. He is, at least, visibly deteriorating by the time he reaches the outlet.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The two Scout Troopers who killed Kuiil, kidnapped the Child, then hit him for acting up are brutally beaten to death by IG-11 when he comes to rescue the baby.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: Summing up the next major plot arc, with a healthy dose of You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  Din Djarin: You expect me to search the galaxy for the home of this creature and deliver it to a race of enemy sorcerers?
  Armorer: This is the Way.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • By Creed, no living thing can see the face of a Mandalorian. While Din initially refuses IG-11's medical care under these grounds, he relents once IG-11 reminds him that a droid is not a living thing.
  • IG-11 is able to perform his Heroic Sacrifice by re-enabling his factory default directive to self destruct when facing capture. Normally his programming to protect the Child would overrule it, but by entrusting the little one to Din and the others, he's able to complete his primary function and deliberately put himself in harm's way by walking right into the middle of a platoon of stormtroopers.
• Maternally Challenged: Cara is a bit flustered when nurse droid IG-11 passes the Child onto her so he can go fight some stormtroopers.
  Cara: Hang on! I don't do the baby thing.
• Mr. Exposition: Gideon fulfills this role when he first shows up and reveals just how much he knows about everyone, including the Mandalorian and Cara's full names (Din Djarin and Carasynthia Dune, respectively), as well as revealing that Greef was an Imperial magistrate before becoming an agent for the Guild.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Din's backstory of being rescued and adopted by a Mandalorian after his family was killed is reminiscent of Jango's backstory from the Legends comic Jango Fett: Open Seasons.
  • Greef points out that Navarro is a very fine planet, especially now that the "scum and villainy" have been taken care of.
• Named After Their Planet: Averted; Greef is surprised that Din isn't actually from the Mandalorian homeworld, but is an adopted war refugee, as the Mandalorians aren't all from the same species.
• The Nameless: Not any more. We now know that Mando's real name is Din Djarin.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When the two scout troopers refuse to return the Child to IG-11 he proceeds to disable them quite brutally, snapping the first one's wrist, then grabbing the second by his helmet and smashing him into his parked speeder bike with enough force to crush it.
  IG-11: [to the Child] That was unpleasant. I'm sorry you had to see that.
• No Man of Woman Born: When Din's helmet is removed by IG-11 to treat his injuries, he gets concerned he broke his tribe's creed since it's forbidden for any living thing to see their faces. IG-11 assures him that he is "not a living thing," therefore Din didn't break their code.
• Noodle Incident: Given that we last saw Sabine handing off the Darksaber to Bo-Katan as a symbol of her leadership of Mandalore's rebel cell, something must have gone very wrong if Gideon is the current owner.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Gideon's TIE Fighter. Normally cannon fodder in aerospace dogfights due to being a barebones fighter craft that relies on sheer numbers, Gideon in his TIE fighter provides the final nigh-insurmountable threat that the on-foot heroes need to dispatch. It shrugs off the group's small arms fire, while it's packing anti-vehicle laser cannons and dominates the air. Mando needs to strap on his jetpack that he's not quite proficient with and use his grapple line in a harebrained attempt to defeat Gideon and his TIE fighter using sticky bombs.
• Not Quite Dead: In Moff Gideon's Back Story, as he was supposedly executed for war crimes. It's no surprise when he survives his crash here as well.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Separatists' droid army was always kind of a joke in the films and in The Clone Wars. Here we see them in a flashback to Din's childhood from the perspective of unarmed civilians and they're an unstoppable terror, at least until Death Watch shows up.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Whatever IG-11 did about the stormtroopers closing in on the covert. There's blaster fire, followed by a thud, then IG reappears and declares, "You are protected."
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The trio when Gideon's men set up an E-Web repeater. Cara especially, as Gideon notes how she once watched one vaporize some of her fellow Shocktroopers.
    Greef: It's over.
  • Cara has another when Din realizes just who they're fighting.
  • Din starts hyperventilating after IG-11 removes his helmet, horrified that the droid which almost killed the Child would now expose him to a physically vulnerable condition. The docuseries makes Din's fear more evident by showing his unmasking from an alternate angle, with IG-11's puppeteers and Pedro Pascal's pulsating chestplate in view.
  • Gideon when Mando slaps a pair of bombs on the wing of his TIE.
• Once More, with Clarity: We get an extended view of Din's tragic childhood, which we've only seen in bits and pieces before, showing his Doomed Hometown being destroyed by Separatist droids and his own rescue at the hands of the Deathwatch.
• Outside Ride: With Gideon's armored TIE fighter lining up for an attack run, Din uses his newly acquired Jet Pack plus his grapple to leap up onto it and attach a Sticky Bomb.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Kuiil reprogrammed IG-11 to "nurse and protect," and he takes guarding the Child very seriously.
    IG-11: [to Greef] If you go near this child, I will have no choice but to kill you.
  • Din's no slouch either. When he sees that IG-11 and the baby are pinned down and taking fire from the stormtroopers in the town square, he grabs the Imperials' own E-Web and starts mowing them down.
• Parental Substitute: The Armorer says that by Mandalorian law, Din is the Child's father until he takes it back to its own people.
• Patience Plot: The two Stormtroopers who kidnapped the Child find themselves sitting around waiting for Moff Gideon to stop killing his own men before they can deliver the Child.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Din decides (albeit reluctantly) that droids don't count under his creed of, "No living being can see my face," allowing for a Dramatic Unmask in front of IG-11.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  • Din calls up IG-11 just as he's about to roll into town.
    IG-11: I am fulfilling my base function.
    Din: Which is?
    IG-11: To nurse and protect.
  • Likewise:
    IG-11: Manufacturer's protocol dictates I cannot be captured. [primes thermal detonator] I must be destroyed. [explodes]
• The Reveal:
  • The Mandalorian's real name is Din Djarin. And we finally see his face for the first time.
  • Din was rescued and adopted by the Death Watch, a group of Mandalorians, and adopted into the Fighting Corps.
  • Carasynthia was from Alderaan.
  • Greef used to be an Imperial magistrate, disgraced for unknown reasons.
• Revenge Before Reason: When he sees how many of his fellow Mandalorians were killed by the Imperials after he escaped Nevarro, Din is ready to march back out to the streets and kill Gideon immediately. Thankfully, the Armorer and his friends remind him that saving the Child is more important.
• Riding into the Sunset: As befits a Space Western, the Razor Crest flies off into the sunset... and then the camera pans over to the wreckage of the TIE fighter from which Moff Gideon emerges brandishing his Darksaber before the sunset.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: IG-11 fighting the Imperials who killed Kuiil and kidnapped the Child has more to with the latter than the former. When Mando asks him what happened to Kuiil, he bluntly answers that he's dead and doesn't appear troubled by it, despite Kuiil being his surrogate creator.
• Secret Underground Passage: The Covert use the sewers as this, and fortunately there's an entrance in the room Din and his companions are trapped in. In a subversion, getting through that entrance is not easy in itself.
• Sequel Hook: Din Djarin has to take the Child to his people, setting up a second season. Meanwhile, Moff Gideon is still alive, and is revealed to own the Darksaber, last seen in the hands of Bo-Katan Kryze.
• Shrouded in Myth: Din, Cara, and Greef have never even heard of the Jedi, and the Armorer only knows them as a group of sorcerers who fought the Mandalorians in the distant past.
• Sickening "Crunch!": IG-11 twists one of the trooper's arms with an audible breaking sound.
• Something Only They Would Say: Moff Gideon addresses the Mandalorian by his birth name. This helps Mando realize who the Imperial is since his name was recorded only in Mandalore's archives, which were looted by the Empire after the Great Purge.
• Tempting Fate: Greef thinks they're home free on seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Then Din informs him that his Infrared Xray Camera can see an Imperial platoon waiting in ambush outside.
• Visual Pun: "Hammer and tongs" is an expression that means "with great force, vigor, or violence," which is exactly how the Armorer fights the stormtroopers who are stupid enough to attack her in her forge.
• Weapons of Their Trade: The Armorer puts her blacksmith's hammer to work as an improvised weapon against some Stormtroopers to great effect. Even managing to crack a Stormtrooper's Helmet with a particularly strong strike.
• Wham Line: The Armorer explains that the Child's people once fought against the Mandalorians, prompting Din to ask if the baby is an enemy. She replies in the negative.
  The Armorer: It is a Foundling.
• Wham Shot:
  • A Mandalorian rescuing Din from a super battle droid.
  • A pile of Mandalorian armor in the Covert.
  • Gideon cutting his way out of his TIE... with the Darksaber.
• Would Hurt a Child: The two Scout Troopers each hit the Child, one because the Child was making noise, and the other because the Child bit him. Both troopers are brutally killed by IG-11 soon after.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go: Averted; Moff Gideon makes it perfectly clear that he would have no hesitation in breaking any promised deal, as Greef and Din have already violated their previous "business arrangement". It just happens that it's in Gideon's self-interest not to kill them at this time.

---