As was expected from an episode that featured Bryce Dallas Howard’s always-anticipated return to the director’s chair, “Chapter 22” of The Mandalorian saw things heat up for Din Djarin and co. in a big way. Indeed, after a slow and steady first half of season three, the final two chapters seem all but ready to deliver something a little more electrifying to audiences in the coming weeks.
And at the center of this particular conflict doesn’t look to be Din, but instead Bo-Katan Kryze. After being charged with uniting all Mandalorians by the Armorer, the last episode saw Bo-Katan go face to face with Axe Woves, who has taken command of her former army following her original abandonment of such a cause. After challenging Woves to combat and winning back her leadership, Din compounds her reclamation by equating Bo-Katan’s defeat of his captor in the mines of Mandalore with besting him in combat, placing the Darksaber in her hands and officially crowning her a Mandalorian leader.
In an interview with Movie Web, Simon Kassianides, who portrays Axe Woves in the show, divulged how the logistics of his character’s appearance represent a significant turning point for this particular batch of Mandalorian stories, which sounds like it will culminate in the galaxy’s Mandalorians joining together on one united front:
“We reintroduce Axe, and it helps explain where he was at the end of season two, and why he fell out with both Mando and Bo-Katan. When Bo-Katan comes, basically we were done with her. There’s a moment where we meet, and after we fight, there’s hope that we’re on the same team following the same ideas.”
He would go on to point out how Axe represents Bo-Katan’s relationship to her ideological phoenix moment that has held her arc together this season, with Bo-Katan having once been hellbent on uniting Mandalore, then abandoning such an ideal by the start of the third season, only to have that fire reignited in later episodes.
“My character, and those that are with me, haven’t had the opportunity to go on this journey of self-doubt that she went on in the first part of the season. And her arc, in terms of coming back to, ‘You know what? Mandalore is okay. What I had in mind is still achievable, and it’s something that we should actually be going for.’ That’s a great way to kind of face that question with my character coming back into it and representing those elements.”
Indeed, it looks like The Mandalorian will be kicking its stakes and drama into high gear over the course of the next two weeks, and while Grogu will continue to be the uncontested scene-stealer, it seems like we can count on Bo-Katan to be the real lynchpin of season three.
The Mandalorian is available to stream on Disney Plus, with new episodes of the third season releasing every Wednesday until the season finale on April 19.