The Mandalorian 2.8 Review - 6 Ups And 3 Downs From Chapter 16

Ups...

6. Seeing All The Mandalorians Together Is Ridiculously Cool

The Mandalorian Chapter 16
Lucasfilm

Although it's a bit weird that Axe Woves is literally... nowhere to be found (as is Greef Karga, weirdly) it was pretty great to see all our favourite Mandalorians on the same screen - even if they didn't get on all that well.

The episode on a whole was pretty light on comedy, but seeing Boba and Din step into this backwater canteen and do the classic Western staredown together was very amusing. We also get to see the Gauntlet again - the iconic Mandalorian starfighters seen in The Clone Wars and Rebels - which is nice, but the main attraction is seeing all the characters interacting with one another.

There's that classic factional tension that has dominated Mandalorian history since... forever, and while it is interesting to see that conflict, I do kind of think Bo-Katan's characterisation in this episode was really off. It's one thing to admonish Boba Fett's conduct as a Mandalorian for willingly collaborating with the Empire, but to mock him for being a clone? That felt weirdly out of step with her previous depictions - especially when she liberated Mandalore for the first time thanks to a battalion of clone troopers.

Either way, it was great to see them all together - even if Boba does exit stage left prematurely shortly afterwards.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.