Warning: the following article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season three, episode one, “The Apostate.”
Apart from Pedro Pascal starring in The Mandalorian and The Last of Us, the two shows seem worlds apart, and yet they might not be so different after all.
The Mandalorian season three just premiered and Mando and Grogu’s adventure continues as they fly across the galaxy from planet to planet. After his stint on The Book of Boba Fett, Mando is on a mission to descend into the mines of Mandalore and bathe in the living waters to redeem himself as a true Mandalorian, but to do so is more complicated than it seems.
Mandalore is poisoned. After years of war, the planet’s surface has been left inhospitable, and prior to the Night of a Thousand Tears, those on Mandalore lived inside of dome-cities for protection. In “The Apostate,” Mando shows the Armorer a special artifact he was given by Jawas, who in turn obtained it from an unidentified traveler, and Mando believes that it’s proof that fusion rays have crystallized Mandalore. He tells the Armorer that when he goes there, he’ll find out whether Mandalore is truly uninhabitable.
Mando and Grogu travel to the new and improved Nevarro, where they see a statue of the heroic droid IG-11 who sacrificed itself to spare Grogu in season one. They meet up with Greef Karga, the High Magistrate. Karga invites Mando to settle down in Nevarro, but Mando declines. After a battle with space pirates, Mando reveals he needs a droid he can trust to help explore Mandalore. Karga explains that IG-11 was mostly destroyed, but Mando wants to use the droid’s recovered parts to go through with it anyway.
Karga concedes to the request and Mando rebuilds the droid. After he’s finished with his upper body, he powers him up and IG-11 slowly comes to life. Then suddenly, his default protocol initiates and IG-11 goes after Grogu like an undead droid, firing at him and pulling himself across the floor to get at Grogu like one of the mindlessly-aggressive infected from The Last of Us. Mando tries shooting back, but IG-11 won’t stop. Karga’s droid finally pushes a gold bust of the High Magistrate onto IG-11’s head, smashing it open and killing it, just as one would a zombie.
Now, it looks like The Mandalorian and The Last of Us have at least two things in common.
The Mandalorian is streaming on Disney Plus.