‘The Mandalorian’ Episode 6: No Questions Asked (RECAP)
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This Is the Way
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[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 1 Episode 6, “The Prisoner.”]
Man, Mando’s allies keep getting worse and worse, huh?
He started out the series with friendly companions, but last episode saw him getting betrayed by an ally, and this installment doesn’t see an improvement. This time, at the behest of an “old friend,” he joins a band of mercenaries on a deadly mission that goes against his values… and, unbeknownst to him, his co-workers are plotting to catch him in a trap.
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Old Friend, New Mission
At the start of the episode, Mando goes to see an old friend who gives him a job: He’ll be joining a group of mercenaries. He’s introduced to the group, none of whom seem to like him very much — especially the former Imperial sharpshooter named Maxwell, and Shi’on, a Twi’lek woman who’s frighteningly good at throwing knives. Their mission is to break into a New Republic prison barge piloted solely by droids and break out one of the group’s operatives.
Mando and squad head out into hyperspace with a droid piloting Mando’s ship, which, of course, doesn’t make him happy. Nonetheless, he goes to join the others and finds them rifling through his stuff. At first, they don’t find Baby Yoda… until one of them tries to take off Mando’s helmet, and in shoving him away, the mercenary’s hand presses a button. A door opens, and Baby Yoda is revealed. None of them know how important the child is, but Maxwell, arrogant and obnoxious as ever, asks Mando if the child is “a pet” and then tells him he might take Baby Yoda for himself. This guy really is the worst, huh?
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Control Room Chaos
Thankfully, this awfulness is paused when the ship suddenly arrives at its destination. Mando gets Baby Yoda back to safety, and the mission is a go. At first, everything proceeds as planned, but they run into a group of droids on the way. The rest of the team is pinned by gunfire, but Mando manages to sneak up behind them and take them all out.
Then they head to the control room, where they find — surprise! — a human operator… with a New Republic homing beacon. If he presses it, the Republic will arrive and blow the whole ship to pieces. Maxwell wants to kill the operator right away, but Mando tries to reason with him, and the whole group ends up drawing their weapons on each other. The conflict ends when the Twi’lek woman kills the man, but they find out he’s already pressed the beacon. They now have 20 minutes to finish the job. “We only need five,” she says.
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Double-Crossed
When they get to the cell and open it, they find another Twi’lek named Quinn: He’s Shi’on’s brother. It appears the job is done, but then, before Mando can leave, the group locks him in the cell. “You deserve this!” the woman yells, probably because Quinn says Mando “left him behind.”
For any other character, that would probably be curtains. But Mando’s resourceful, and he manages to use one of the droids’ unlocking mechanisms from its dismembered arm to escape the cell. He then heads to the control room, where he puts the ship on lockdown and jams the comms from the droid in his ship: The rest of the group knows he’s escaped, but they don’t know where he is.
Use the Force, Baby Yoda!
One by one, Mando takes out the members of the squad and leaves them behind on the ship (this results in some really cool sequences, including a brutal fight between Mando and one of the mercenaries in the control room, and another where Mando sneaks up on Maxwell in a corridor with flickering lights). Finally, Mando makes it to his ship, where he finds Quinn. He bargains for his life by saying he’ll make sure Mando gets his money, and adds, “you were hired to do a job, so do it. Isn’t that your code?”
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Meanwhile, while Mando’s been taking down the mercenaries and escaping cells, the droid on his ship found Baby Yoda. The droid is ready to shoot the little guy, and Baby Yoda appears to draw on the power of the Force, when — what a relief! — Mando shows up and kills the machine before it can pull the trigger.
Following the Code
Mando does, in the end, adhere to his code. He takes Quinn back to his pal and gets his payment, and when the guy asks what happened to the rest of the group, he reminds him of his own policy: “No questions asked.” It looks like all is well again, but when Mando takes off in his ship, the man gives the order to kill him. Another gunship rises from underneath the floor and gets ready to take off…
But then Quinn realizes something important; Mando put the New Republic tracking beacon on him! As Mando soars away, X-Wings hone in on the mercenary base and start to blast it, presumably killing everyone inside. Well done, Mando!
Quinn was wrong about one thing, though. Mando didn’t kill all the other members of the mercenary band. In the last moments of the episode they’re seen in a cell on the barge, seething with rage.
The Mandalorian, Fridays, Disney+
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