The Pterosaur Plot In The Mandalorian S3 Episode 4 Makes No Sense
Contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian" Season 3, Episode 4
The best way to tell that the Children of the Watch are down on their luck is the real estate they occupy. In "The Mandalorian" Season 3, Din Djarin's (Pedro Pascal) faction has set up shop on a planet that seems determined to destroy every single armored biped sullying its soil. Not that The Armorer's (Emily Swallow) people care. In the very first scene of the season, they're only saved from dinosaur turtle-themed doom by a conveniently timed visit from Din and Grogu. They learn precisely nothing from this, because in "Chapter 20: The Foundling," they're still merrily practicing on that very same beach, shooting the water as if to taunt fate.
Fate promptly responds with an aerial assault, courtesy of a raptor beast that looks like a massive version of a pterosaur. Because some people just can't catch a break, the person the creature chooses to snag is Ragnar (Wesley Kimmel) — the same kid who was being inducted in the aforementioned sea monster scene, and who just lost a practice duel to the tiny Grogu.
The rest of the episode revolves around a heroic rescue mission, which is a perfectly acceptable plotline for a "Star Wars" show. Unfortunately, the Tribe approaches this quest with the same amount of common sense they apply to house hunting. As such, they approach the situation with a complete lack of urgency or tactics that's enough to make you wonder how anyone has ever been afraid of these people.
The Tribe is afraid to attack the monster eating Ragnar for fear that it would ... eat Ragnar?
Immediately after the attack, Din and Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher, voiced by Jon Favreau) kick off the first event in the All-Mandalorian Common Sense Olympics by attempting to chase the monster with their jetpacks. This ends in a disqualification as the former takes flight with a pack that's running on fumes, and promptly runs out of gas mid-chase. That's all right, though, because Paz then reveals that it's actually impossible to chase this particular creature with a jetpack.
For the next event, we find out that the big problem with rescuing Ragnar is that the pterosaur creature will immediately kill its victim if it detects people approaching its nest. Based on how chill the Tribe initially is about the whole thing, this almost seems to imply that the monster won't kill Ragnar if they leave it alone, leaving the viewer to wonder why it abducted him in the first place. Maybe it just wanted to practice holochess with someone?
We eventually discover that the creature is actually planning to feed Ragnar to its offspring, and keeps the kid tucked away in its belly until feeding time. Still, that doesn't explain the fact that everyone in the tribe is strangely passive, and some of them even outright try to snipe down potential rescue plans. This is especially strange since Paz Vizsla is the worst detractor of them all, and Ragnar turns out to be his son.
So many Mandalorians, so little sense
Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) eventually manages to point out that the mountain the nest is on is climbable, which somehow hasn't ever occurred to anyone else. A Mandalorian party manages to reach the nest just as the pterosaur turns up to regurgitate Ragnar — who's miraculously still alive after what must be close to a full day in the beast's stomach. Did the Tribe know about this aspect of the beast's habits? Is that why Paz was all, "Why, yes, I do have time for dinner and a night's sleep. The kid talked back at me the other day, he can do with a night in the giant flying monster's gullet"? Speaking of Paz, why did he haul that unwieldy minigun thing of his atop the mountain? So many questions.
Sure, the payoff of the whole ordeal is that awesome battle sequence, and the Tribe adopts the three orphaned hatchlings, which'll no doubt provide hilarious moments in the future. Still, the whole thing comes across as little more than an incredibly contrived way to make one Mandalorian (Bo-Katan) look good, at the expense of ... well, the rest of the Mandalorians. How many kids has the Tribe lost to the planet's hostile fauna before Bo-Katan turned up to draft the world's most obvious plan? How many times have they dealt with these situations by sitting on their hands, muttering something about the Way while carefully avoiding visor contact with each other?
All in all, the episode might aspire to show how effective Mandalorians can be as a team, but ends up painting the majority of them as huge klutzes. Still, at least they're staying on brand, considering how easily Boba Fett managed to fall in the Sarlacc pit back in the day.