Anna Daniels
The Mandalorian season 1 episode 5 recap
Another Friday brings another highly-anticipated episode of Disney+’s hit new Star Wars series The Mandalorian and things are getting tense for Pedro Pascal’s titular bounty hunter as he continues to search for a peaceful home for The Child and a way for him to return back to his normal life. The latest episode sees Mando head to a familiar planet for the franchise, Tatooine, in search of ship repairs and a new bounty to help pay for them.
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That’s My Line
The episode opens with Mando soaring through space as he’s pursued by an unnamed bounty hunter in another ship, who is firing upon Mando’s ship. As it takes numerous hits and seemingly unable to shake them, with the other hunter offering to bring him in “warm or cold,” Mando tries one final maneuver of slamming on the brakes. Mando gets him in his sights and shoots him down, retorting, “That’s my line.”
No Droids
With his ship leaking fuel, Mando must head to the nearest planet, Tatooine, to look for repairs in the city of Mos Eisley. Upon landing, he meets mechanic Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris, BoJack Horseman), who typically uses droids to repair her customer’s ships. Mando requests she does the repairs herself, but unfortunately his 500 Imperial credits is only enough for her to stow his ship, so he sets off in hopes of finding a job to help pay for the repairs, with The Child stashed away in his ship.
The Gunslinger
Mando heads to a local cantina and tries to find work with the droid bartender, who says it can’t help him as The Guild don’t operate on Tatooine and that there’s no other jobs for him to take on the planet. Their conversation is interrupted by Toro Calican (Jake Cannavale), a fresh bounty hunter from The Guild who is on the planet in search of the elite mercenary Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen, Agents of SHIELD), who is hiding out in the Dune Sea and has a reputation for killing for top crime syndicates, including the Hutts. Mando offers to help in exchange for all the money for the job, as Toro simply wants to turn in the bounty to become a full member of The Guild.
Desert Voyage
Mando returns to Peli’s shop to find The Child isn’t in the space he left it, but rather is in the arms of Peli, who was disturbed earlier by it when it woke up and walked out to the exit ramp. She offers to watch over The Child while Mando heads out on the job with Toro, who has arrived with two speeder bikes for the two to make the voyage across the desert to Shand’s location. They are stopped along the way by a group of Tusken raiders, with who Mando uses sign language to negotiate passage through their land, exchanging Toro’s new binoculars to venture through the area.
Pinned Down
The two stop their journeys again after coming across a camel-like creature called a dewback dragging along the body of another fallen bounty hunter, which turns out to be a decoy for Shand to fire upon Mando from a distance with a sniper-modified blaster rifle. Thanks to his Beskar armor, no damage was done to Mando, and the two take cover behind a dune until sundown, with plans to try and make a move during the night to attack. The two then jump on their speeders and make their way across the desert, popping up flash charges to blind her usage of the thermal scope on her rifle for seconds at a time. But when Toro takes a hill too fast and the charge doesn’t work, Shand successfully shoots Mando’s speeder down, leaving Toro to take the charge and prevent her from killing Mando. However as he engages in a hand-to-hand fight, he’s nearly killed before Mando arrives and gets her to handcuff herself.
The Betrayal
With one speeder destroyed, Mando heads out to find the dewback they saw before to carry her back. While he’s gone, she tries to convince Toro to let her go and to kill Mando, as acquiring his armor would make his name legendary in the bounty hunter world and telling him about The Child, which Toro saw before they set off on the job. As he seemingly moves to let her go, Toro shoots Fennec instead and heads out to acquire The Child to turn over for a larger bounty. When Mando returns, he finds Fennec seemingly dead and heads back to Peli’s shop to find her being held hostage alongside The Child, but Mando uses a flare charge to blind Toro for a moment, long enough for Mando to get the drop on him and kill him. Mando uses the money he got off the dead body and Toro to pay Peli for the repairs and takes off looking for the next job or home. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure approaches Fennec’s seemingly dead body before the credits begin to roll.
Written by: CS
