‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3: Katee Sackhoff On Bo-Katan & Whether She Wants The Darksaber

SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains details about The Mandalorian Season 3 episode 2, “The Mines of Mandalore”

EXCLUSIVE: If there was something bigger on today’s episode of The Mandalorian than droid R5-D4 finally getting the speaking part he finally deserved 46 years after appearing in Star Wars, it was Katee Sackhoff‘s Mandalorian Bo-Katan finally laying her hand on the darksaber she was so yearning to reclaim from Moff Gideon in Season 2.

However, that which she’s always wanted, she opts not to vie for. Rather, she lets Pedro Pascal’s Din re-holster the weapon.

Catching up with Sackhoff today, we got into what’s going through Bo-Katan’s mind.

Bo-Katan once wielded the darksaber, and know that the person who holds it rules Mandalore; once a glamorous planet, it’s now a wasteland full of lurking caveman monsters and spider droids and looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb, no thanks to the Empire.

Din makes his way to Mandalore in this episode as he’s looking to bathe in the living waters under the mines in an effort to redeem himself to his clan, the Children of the Watch; he previously broke the golden rule that he’s never supposed to remove his helmet. After Din becomes imprisoned by a spider droid in the gallows of Mandalore, it’s Grogu who flies back to Kalbala to get Bo-Katan’s help. She flies into Mandalore and ultimately slices a massive spider droid and some caveman beasts, aka Alamites (“who used to live in the surface wastelands … if they survived, I wonder what else may have too,” says Bo-Katan), thus saving Din’s life and setting him free. Bo-Katan then allows Din to take the darksaber. What the &%^ is going on? The episode ends with Din drowning in the living waters under the mines before Bo-Katan plunges in to rescue him.

Here’s our convo with Sackhoff:

DEADLINE: Going back to the first episode of this season — why isn’t she fighting for the darksaber? When we first saw her introduced in Season 2, she wants that sword, and she begins this season in this cynicism.

KATEE SACKHOFF: We have to go back to see why she’s doing what she’s doing. This is a person who has fought, fought against her own people. She’s fought forever and she realizes that doesn’t work. You can’t continue to fight amongst yourselves. I think with Din — I don’t know if I’ll go as far as to say that she respects and trusts him — but she doesn’t not. He’s done nothing. If didn’t have the darksaber, he’s done nothing that would make him her enemy. I think that is her problem is that she realizes that she’s not going to fight her people anymore. She’s not going to fight someone who she doesn’t have a reason to fight. Every single possibility, every place that she’s at right now, every direction she’s done before didn’t work before. That’s what she’s trying to figure out.

DEADLINE: Between the second season and where we see her in episode 1 of Season 3 on the throne, when did her shift in attitude occur? Off screen?

SACKHOFF: If you go by the timeline that Jon [Favreau] and Dave [Filoni] are acting on, in that it’s been a few years. She has had time to lose all her people. They’re not following her anymore, which means she’s not a leader without the darksaber, but she doesn’t know how to go about getting the darksaber in such a way that’s going to result in her not losing her people. That means she’s not going to — we have six episodes left. It’s just that at this impasse right here that we’re at in this first episode. She cannot see a path that she hasn’t taken already that hasn’t failed her.

DEADLINE: What happened to Bo-Katan’s posse, the Nite Owls?

SACKHOFF: She says that they abandoned as soon as she returned without the darksaber. I think these are people who thought Bo would do anything to lead, that Bo would fight anyone to lead, and that’s what she wanted and that’s why they were following her. And when they saw something in her that they didn’t respect, they left. She lost her people, her home, she lost her family, she lost everything.

She’s says that they’re making their way across the galaxy as bounty hunters, as mercenaries. They’re off making money, doing what Mandalorians stereotypically do.

DEADLINE: But she was in that same situation back when we met her in Season 2…

SACKHOFF: She was and she wasn’t. At that point, she was trying to get the darksaber from an enemy. It’s easier to fight an enemy for something than it is to fight somebody you actually have respect for or has done nothing to upset you. That’s where she’s at. We have to go back to the responsibility and the guilt that she feels for the death of Satine [Bo-Katan’s sister]. That is weighing on her as well. There is a part of Bo in a way trying to right the wrong, atone for that guilt.

DEADLINE: She has a profound amount of respect for Din.

SACKHOFF: She does and she also respects what the darksaber stands for. She doesn’t necessarily think he’s old school as much as she thinks he’s a religious fanatic.

DEADLINE: This is a guy who if he had a choice between taking care of Grogu for the rest of his life or having the darksaber, he’d choose Grogu in a second.

SACKHOFF: He’s trying to get rid of it at the beginning of the season; he’s trying to give it away for sure.

DEADLINE: We don’t know her opinion about that?

SACKHOFF: No.

DEADLINE: Is Bo-Katan going to be in Ahsoka?

SACKHOFF: (Laughs) I can’t reveal anything. But, no, as of right now I’m not in Ahsoka.