The Mandalorian returned to Disney+ on Mar. 1 after a year-plus wait. The opening episode was a great mix of thrills, character reintroduction, and the beloved Grogu. The disgraced and apostatized Din Djarin vowed to his superior in the clan of the Mandalore that he would reach the Living Waters on the warrior home world and reenter the order of the Mandalorian.

Along the way, we stopped in on Greef Karga and his new set-up on Nevarro, a crew of irritable pirates, and ultimately Bo-Katan Kryze waving off Djarin’s loyalty to the Mandalorian and its ways. The episode wasn’t a massive spectacle of galactic action but effectively refreshed our memories and love for the flagship Disney+ series. Here’s a recap of Season 3, Episode 2, “The Mines of Mandalore.”
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Dropping in on Tattooine

Disney+

The episode starts with a drag race around several Tattooine blocks with fireworks lighting up the sky. We visit Peli Motto at her ship shop, haggling with an animated Rodian over repairs. She secures cash from the creature only to call out the hiding Jawas, who stripped off the missing parts. She flicks them a few coins to repaint the parts for reattachment to the vehicle just as Din Djarin lands on her lot. Grogu jumps into her arms, a move courtesy of his brief training by Luke Skywalker.

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Mando tells Motto about his droid issue from the previous episode, still seeking out the memory part needed for IG-11. She immediately tries to sell him on her sputtering and filthy R5 unit to assist him on Mandalore. She gives R5 a confident slap on the back as a piece of his shell falls to the ground. She finally secures the sale at half price and throws in a replacement of the droid port on his ship. They take off from Tattooine with Grogu marveling at the fireworks.

Coming Home

Disney+

The trio arrives at Mandalore, a gray and forbidding-looking world with flashes of lightning lighting up its atmosphere. Djarin has never been to Mandalore, as he grew up on an adjacent planet in the system. They descend into a violent, chaotic storm and pass through the clouds to the nearly-dead planet below. The magnetic field created by the fusion bombs dropped on the world disrupts the ship’s instruments. They safely land, and Djarin instructs R5 to go out and take air samples to see if the atmosphere is safe to breathe.

They watch the droid on the scope as its red dot on the screen disappears. Djarin pressurizes his helmet and goes after the unit. He enters a crystalized green cave and observes a mass of ruins of the society that once thrived on the planet. He’s attacked by four-eyed cave creatures with clubs, is disarmed, and fights them off with the Darksaber. He finds R5, who reports that air is in fact breathable. “Mandalore is not cursed,” laments Djarin.

The ruins turn out to be the civic center of the planet. Djarin and Grogu, now almost forming words, descend into the darkness to find the Living Waters. They discover a passage in a wall and enter, where Djarin finds a Mandalorian helmet looking up at him from the dirt. A massive set of mechanized claws suddenly spring out of the sand, engorging Djarin and revealing a monstrous bug-like droid that carries him off. Grogu nervously follows his captured friend.

The droid comes to a stop among heaps of Mandalorian helmets with Djarin trapped in a suffocatingly small cage. We see a grotesque magnified eye through a port in the machine, a catch opens, and a half-droid, half-organic being emerges. The creature is almost General Grievous-like in appearance. Grogu attempts to free Djarin using the Force with no success. Djarin tells him to get Bo-Katan on the nearby planet in the Mandalore system.

Saving Din Djarin

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Grogu takes off in his pram and is accosted at the cave entrance by another of the beings Djarin battled. We see the creature flung through the air by Force push from the Child. He departs in the ship with assistance from R5 and lands on Bo-Katan’s planet. She is alerted to Djarin’s absence and takes off back to Mandalore to find him.

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She recalls the now ruined world as a once beautiful civilization that her family ruled over. Three more cave beings attack once they land, and she quickly dispatches the trio, referring to them as Alamites. Back at the site of Djarin’s capture, the hybrid being injects him with a large needle that begins draining Djarin’s blood. Bo-Katan fights off and seemingly kills the being using the discarded Darksaber, only for the single eye to open and the body’s detached head to crawl back into the larger droid.

Katan quickly dismembers the machine using the Darksaber, systematically lopping off its limbs until the droid collapses. We return to the scene as a weakened Djarin awakens and insists on carrying on with his mission to the Living Waters. Katan agrees to guide him there, and as they move, she recalls the Empire punishing them with the bombing, an attack to which they were susceptible due to constant infighting.

They reach the entrance to the Living Waters as Katan reads a plaque on the wall describing Mandalore the Great dispatching the Mythosaur that was said to have called the waters home. The creature’s skull became the trademark symbol of the planet and its warriors. Djarin sheds his weapons, walks the steps into the waters, recites the Mandalorian vow, and immediately drops into deeper water. Katan dives in to retrieve him and, on the way back up, shines her light on a massive set of eyes revealing the outline of the creature she had just described. The Mythosaur turns around and swims off, leaving the duo unharmed.

Episode 3 of The Mandalorian lands on Disney+ on Mar. 15.