‘The Mandalorian’ Chapter Seven Review: “Tie It Up in a Big Bow and Wait”

The following review will contain spoilers for The Mandalorian Chapter Seven: “The Reckoning”. If you haven’t read our review of the sixth episode, you can read it here.

While the previous six episodes of The Mandalorian provide a lot of fun, one could argue that much of it is strictly filler. At the very least, some would say it leaves a rather small stamp in the Star Wars franchise. As a result, it generated heat in a galaxy not so far away called the Twitterverse once Chapter Seven arrived. Fortunately, Chapter Seven – titled “The Reckoning” – beautifully ties the previous episodes together for an intense conclusion. It also serves as the introduction for a controversial force power in The Rise of Skywalker, trying to take the brunt of the questions from most fans before that film.

This episode brings all of its established characters together to defend the one that truly matters: Baby Yoda. Best of all, this shows how the previous episodes were actually setting up a bigger picture at play. In a nice change of pace, director Deborah Chow returns with an action-filled episode that is also a great character piece. Furthermore, it reinforces a theme in the series I hadn’t yet considered: nurture. In several key scenes, it argues that everything can grow up with the right morals so long as you raise them right. This is most evident with Kuill’s rebuilding of the IG-11 droid. However, this is far from the only moment with this much emotional resonance.

The introduction of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) works surprisingly well. Seeing him coming down on that TIE fighter was impressive, though I do wonder how he got down so quickly. There are several stormtroopers in this episode, and on doing some research for this episode, I found Jon Favreau actually invited the 501st Legion to cameo in the episode because the production group didn’t have enough stormtrooper suits. Bringing in fans to this first live-action effort for Star Wars just makes everything grand.

Overall, this is a great episode that truly represents Chow’s voice as a storyteller. If nothing else, her work is a good exercise for helming the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series for Disney+. My only qualm is that they should have shown Karga’s message to the Mandalorian at the end of Chapter Six. Now, we saw a bit of it in the episode, but it would have flowed better in the previous episode. – Katie Gilstrap

Rating: 8/10

What did you think of this cliffhanger for The Mandalorian Chapter Seven?