The Mandalorian Review: The Believer (Season 2 Episode 7)
The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 7, “The Believer,” goes on a heist and hits on the very thing that Star Wars has always been about.
Yes, this saga is a fun serial adventure with spaceships and glowing swords, but we’ve always understood it to be so much more than that. Those things are the driving force (no pun intended) of the franchise and everyone gets a kick out of dogfights in space or blowing up doomsday weapons, but there’s been something greater at the surface of it.
Star Wars was conceived in a time where America was reeling from the Vietnam War and works as a pointed commentary of the politics and policies of the time. That’s what all of these movies are about: highlighting and combating the imperialist nature that came out in stark contrast at the time, making it all the more relevant as the years have passed.
“The Believer” works to bring that back to the forefront with its firm depiction of the Empire and those that have been in its employ. It does this by centering the episode around Mayfeld, former Imperial sharpshooter that Mando springs from prison labor.
The episode takes him and drops him in this world that is a stark tapestry of the fascism that the Empire is so embroiled in. You have a planet of indigenous people that an authoritarian force has entirely co-opted for its own gains and forces the protagonists to fight against them.
It’s an uncomfortable conflict and it doesn’t shy away from that. It shines a light up to the main character’s face, as well as the audience’s, and makes it plainly clear that regardless of intentions or sides you find yourself on, you are an invader. Full stop. As Mayfeld points out, it doesn’t matter to the native population if you’re Imperial or New Republic. The score is the same.
The way that this all crescendos into what the lengths you’re willing to go to compromise versus how well you’re able to sleep after feels really well-considered. It’s the kind of thing that another show would dip into nihilism with but here there’s still a lot of optimism.
It becomes a matter of what is important to you and what are your limits. For Mando, that means taking off his helmet to be able to get Baby Yoda back and for Mayfeld, his breaking point is Operation Cinder, which is implied to be where he left the Empire.
For those that don’t know, Operation Cinder is a plot point from the video game Battlefront 2 where, after the second Death Star blew up, the Empire put into action a plan to indiscriminately bomb planets as an ultimate fear tactic. That’s another case of the series digging into the new lore to use something for great dramatic effect.
There might be an impulse by some to refer to this as a filler episode but that would be unfair, mainly because that’s not what that term means. Filler implies that it has nothing of substantial value to it, that the season would be the same if it didn’t exist, which isn’t true.
First, if this episode is that, then so is most of the first season. Moreso, there’s a lot of really effective worldbuilding throughout this episode that would go sorely missing if it were to be excised from the canon.
What did you think of this episode of The Mandalorian ? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Mandalorian airs Fridays on Disney+.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.