Chris

You’re really missing the heart of this story. What this is all about is Mando’s deepening relationship with the Child (the holomessage at the end was meant to really lay it out in ten foot high capital letters just in case you had somehow not got it).

Getting Grogu back is now more important to Mando than his Mandalorian oath. That’s how much it matters. Plus, this season they have surrounded him with genuine Mandalorians rather than what Bo-Katan called religious zealots. So it’s possible that Mando’s love for the child is causing him to reassess who he is and in fact deepening his understanding of what the Mandalorian Way actually is.

And the ending - it was Marshall Dune’s decision to let him go, though Mando agreed with it. And that, again, was entirely consistent with the episode’s overall theme which was to muse about justice, mercy and what cause people choose to believe in - there was a pretty significant monologue on this exact topic in the cockpit of the rhydonium tanker.

Also, literally in flashing capital letters, was the episode title, THE BELIEVER, which is deliberately just vague enough that you could apply it to any or several of the characters who featured this week.

It was a superb piece of storytelling that drove the character development forwards in a very satisfying way.