The Mandalorian’s third season has been especially prone to focusing on stand-alone stories. Which is fine, sometimes! We love a good galactic adventure, especially with our boys Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu, née Baby Yoda.
But in order to convince us that this good galactic adventure is worth the time, it has to be more than just fun. It also has to not be totally jarring and out-of-step from the rest of the series—something that’s becoming increasingly difficult for Disney’s expensive, increasingly star-powered Star Wars projects.
Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz voiced BB-8 in the sequel trilogy? Okay, sounds fake, but it’s not distractingly obvious anyway. Jason Sudeikis and Adam Pally playing troopers in Mandalorian’s first season? Fine too, since they were mostly quiet and totally in costume. (Although we won’t forgive Sudeikis’ trooper for punching Baby Yoda.) And Zach Braff as a special guest star in Obi-Wan Kenobi? I mean … weird, but at least it was just a voice role.
Sadly, The Mandalorian’s success at plucking celebrity guest stars from creator Jon Favreau’s massive rolodex without causing chaos has come to an end. In the show’s mostly stand-alone sixth episode, which premiered on Disney+ today, there’s not one, but three celeb cameos. One of them is legitimately fun for us sci-fi lovers, so we’ll give it a pass. But the other two? Truly, there is something in the water over on that show’s set, because they are absurd.
Let’s cut to the chase here: Christopher Lloyd, a.k.a. the great Doc Brown, appears as Commissioner Helgait in Episode 6. This is great! We love Doc, and his role is actually meatier than just a nod to Back to the Future lovers (that is, everyone alive). Helgait turns out to be the villain that Mando and Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) are looking for, who’s been reprogramming nonviolent droids into killing machines ravaging Plazir-15. It’s only right that a venerated actor like Lloyd show up and do something meaningful, even if his appearance elicits illusion-breaking giddy cheers and finger pointing.
But the illusion has already been broken by the time he shows up. Mando, Bo, and Baby must go meet with Helgait on the orders of Plazir-15’s royals: Bombardier and Duchess. The actors portraying them are, respectively, Jack Black and Lizzo.
There is no way you can make me look at a hardly costumed Jack Black and Lizzo and expect me to not recognize them solely as themselves. They’re in a single scene, which makes their stunt casting even more obvious, and their characters don’t even have full names. Sorry, Favreau: You cannot argue that these two are here for any reason beyond asking you to put them in an episode.
I’m sure Lizzo specifically asked to cuddle with Baby Yoda, as the Duchess does in her literal one scene. (They also briefly play some version of space basketball together.) I truly can’t blame her for that, even if I could hardly pay attention to what the heck was going on in the episode because she was there Lizzo-ing. Jack Black, too, can never convincingly be anyone but Jack Black, especially not here. I wish it were easier to pretend he was at least being School of Rock’s Dewey Finn-in-space, but nope: This is just Jack Black, inexplicably married to Lizzo and talking to the Mandalorian.
These cameos are so distracting that it’s hard to enjoy Christopher Lloyd making his Star Wars debut. Worse, it’s hard to enjoy anything that The Mandalorian is putting down in the episode—or perhaps even the series going forward. Season 3 has already been a bit of a slow-paced wash, spinning its wheels as it goes back and forth between exposition and one-off experiences. But with Jack Black and Lizzo having successfully snuck into the franchise’s canon for no meaningful reason, it may be time to admit it: The Mandalorian has jumped the galactic-equivalent of a shark.
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