The Mandalorian’s new episode features the show’s biggest cameos yet

The Mandalorian is a show that’s better off without a story than with one. Which is exactly why the third season’s sixth episode was its best and most fun so far. Rather than trying to forward the show’s bigger overall plot, episode 6 sticks to the best Mandalorian Formula: Din Djarin visits a strange little planet and has an adventure. He also hangs out on the island with great guests stars.

[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for season 3 episode 6 of The Mandalorian.]

Mando (and Bo-Katan) travel to Plazir-15 in the third episode. There they encounter a planet that is governed and controlled by some of the most prominent guest stars ever seen on the series. Jack Black and Lizzo play Jack Black, the royal couple that is democratically elected to create this utopia.

Lucasfilm

The pairing works well, not because the two are giving particularly excellent performances or have great characters, but because it’s designed to trade off their fame and likeability. The characters don’t need to be too complicated because they don’t really matter much in the grand scheme of the series, and cameos themselves tell you all you really need to know. In other words, they’re two characters that can’t be played by just any pair of actors; it needed to be Lizzo and Jack Black having fun hanging out with Baby Yoda. And that’s a welcome breath of fresh air in a show that’s recently forgotten how to have fun.

This is even more true of the episode’s villain Commissioner Helgait, played by Christopher Lloyd. Perhaps sci-fi’s most widely recognized “kindly mad scientist,” thanks to his role as Doc Brown in Back to the FutureLloyd makes the perfect surprise villain in this episode. He’s both perfectly believable as a secret political radical with a droid army plot he’s been brewing for years, even if most people’s first instinct is that he’s just a kindly and eccentric old man. Even better, he perfectly fits the “crime series guest star” rule that the culprit is always the person who’s been famous the longest.

Lucasfilm

You will feel right at home with all of these guests stars and the plot structure. Law and Order episode, Mandalorian’s latest episode might be the surest sign yet that the show’s main plot isn’t what makes it interesting. The show’s unique ability to seamlessly switch from one Star Wars world to the next, displaying all of its strange characters and other creatures is what makes them so fascinating. Unfortunately, for season 3’s remaining few episodes, we’re almost certainly stuck hanging out with even more Mandalorians than usual as they try to take their planet back, so this was probably the last bit of consequence-free fun we’re getting this time around.