The Mandalorian The Mandalorian 2.02 - Chapter 10 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

So, we didn’t see more of Boba Fett this week, but this was still a really fun, mostly standalone adventure. Even moreso than the first episode of the season.

Video Review


Loved the scene where Mando jettisoned off the bounty hunter. Death by Happy Landing.

But I have to wonder – how did the bounty hunters who raided Mando make it out into the desert? Mando’s bike was destroyed, but was their plan to get away on foot?

It was really cool to see Mando enter the Mos Eisley Cantina from A New Hope. I like the assortment of aliens chosen. They evoke the same general feeling as Episode IV without using the same exact group of aliens. To that end, I’m glad they didn’t use the Cantina band music – there’s a fine line when it comes to nostalgia and they managed not to cross it.

Dr. Mandible would have felt right at home in the original trilogy. He looked animatronic, which is also really cool. And perhaps being a giant sentient ant is an homage to the episode’s director Peyton Reed also directed both Ant-Man and Ant-Man and The Wasp.

Transporting Frog Lady’s eggs for some reason necessitates sublight travel. Which, we know sublight travel is possible in the Star Wars Galaxy. Han, Leia, 3PO, and Chewie make it from Hoth to Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back without a hyperdrive. The Resistance travel from…wherever there base was to Crait.

This isn’t a criticism – but I have to wonder about the mechanics of sublight travel in Star Wars. The distance between the sun and alpha centauri, the closest star to our own is about 4.2 light years. So even traveling at the speed of light, it would take a ship 4.2 years to reach the nearest star.

They’re very specifically traveling at sub light speed which makes me wonder if the distance between celestial objects is lesser in Star Wars or if the speed of light relative to these distances is somehow greater. Then again, it’s supposed to be our universe, just a galaxy far, far away, a long time ago. Ultimately Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction, so the answer doesn’t really matter. It’s just something I always found curious in The Empire Strikes Back, so it was interesting to see it become a major plot point in this episode.

The Child is immediately captivated by Frog lady’s unhatched spawn. I think the score here was perfect – the music evokes a sense of wonder which, which sets expectation that, through the Force, the Child is forming some sort of bond or attachment with these yet to be born creatures.

In the ship, we see Yoda pull the eggs closer to him using the Force. And … the expectations are pretty immediately subverted. It’s funny, when I saw the scene unfolding, in the back of my mind I thought, he’s gonna eat one of these isn’t he. But he didn’t. He ate four!

Lots of dark humor in this episode – Frog lady says these are the last of her line and Baby Yoda ate a not insubstantial proportion of them. I kept wondering if she was aware of the missing eggs, but I guess not. They were unfertilized, so it’s not quite the same as eating a baby… I guess.

Still, I think what I really like is how alien this all makes the world of Star Wars feel, which is a big part of what was missing in the sequel trilogy.

It was really nice to see Dave Filoni return in live action. The story is set 5 years after Return of the Jedi and it seems the New Republic is slowly building influence throughout the Galaxy. I really like that we’re seeing some world building in the Mandalorian, which, again, something I felt was lacking during the sequel era.

Interestingly, Mando says, “May the Force be with you” to the two pilots, but in the first episode seemed unaware of its power. Because of the perspective from which the story is told, it’s easy to forget that force users are exceedingly rare in the Star Wars Galaxy. So the myth of the Fore is likely far more familiar to the average person than its practical application.

The chase sequence through frozen canyons reminds me a LOT of a very similar scene in an episode of Firefly. And I guess I never realized before how much the design of the Razor Crest reminds me of Serenity.

The scene where the Child rips open the spider egg reminded me a lot of the scene from Alien where the Xenomorph eggs are first discovered.

I thought the chase scene through the ice caves was really well executed. The walls of this cave are semi-transparent, so as Mando, Frog lady, and the child make their escape, with the smaller spiders crawling along the floors and walls, the shadow of the massive mother spider looms above them.

I also appreciate the fact that Frog lady hops instead of runs.

Also, the New Republic pilots saved Mando, but also kinda left him to freeze to death. It didn’t really look like the Razor Crest was capable of flight, so their prospect of survival was pretty grim. I guess they’re still rebels who haven’t really coalesced into an actual military / government body yet.

Overall, there wasn’t much in the way of forward movement in terms of the storyline this episode. It was a mostly standalone adventure, but it was still a lot of fun with cool nods to Star Wars stories past.

The spiders appear to be very similar to the species which inhabited Chopper Base on the Bendu’s planet in Star Wars: Rebels. Another cool fact, they are based on an original concept painting by Ralph McQuarrie.

Both the practical effects and CG continue to impress. Frog lady, the spiders, and Baby Yoda’s carnivorous habbits all make the world of Star Wars feel more strange and alien than the series most recent entries.

The show is doing a great job of slowly and subtly building the post-Empire world.

Really interested to see where things go in the next episode. I get the distinct feeling this season is structured in a very similar way to the first. The first episode of both season 1 and season 2 put Mando on a mostly standalone mission, culminating in a major revelation of a familiar character – The Child in season 1 and Boba Fett in season 2. The second episode of the first season was a mostly standalone adventure where Mando needed to retrieve the parts of his broken ship from Jawa junk traders. In the second, he again needs to repair his ship while stranded on a desolate ice world. Both episodes put Mando in touch with the weirder side of the Galaxy’s wildlife.

The third episode of the first season was action oriented, heavily focused on the Child and Mando’s culvert. If Frog lady’s info pans out, Mando could be in touch with another culvert of Mandalorians, perhaps in the next episode.

Dave Filoni is also set to again write and direct the fifth episode of the season.

So perhaps we’ll see the introduction of another familiar character like Bo Katan or Sabine Wren in the next episode if they happen to head the culvert Mando hopes to soon find.

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the attention there was that they were a pack of desert scavengers, not bounty hunters.

 

Perhaps the jawa bounty hunter and his buddies were going to call their ride once they had secured baby Yoda and taken out/captured Mando.

As far as saying "may the Force be with you" is like how we say bless you when someone sneezes or how we use jesus christ, goddammit, etc when angry. They have religious origins but are used without a religious connotation.

 

it had those canisters with the black stuff in it which was the precursor to the eggs!

 

The only words they uttered were 'Get the Child'.

 

Why didn’t George just make another A New Hope for the first sequel? Why did he bring in Kershner and do what he did with the story? STAKES. If there aren’t stakes it’s just pornography, basically. It’s time for the plot, and the stakes to take front and center. I’m not saying that isn’t going to happen but the low scores make it apparent that people are ready for the story to go up a few notches, or ten.

 

Typing the word “stakes” in all caps doesn’t make the argument more convincing. I like the lower stakes. The “stakes arms race” is actually responsible for some of the silliest elements of Star Wars, IMO, such as the SKB and return of Palestine. The stakes just keeps growing until it becomes almost meaningless gigantism. Plus, Mando and BY almost dying is high enough on the stakes scale for me...

 

Hasbro's Mando Mondays following Mando Fridays is a stroke of marketing genius (following the stroke of TV genius).

 

Why do people assume the stakes didn't go up this episode though?

Baby Yoda is exhibiting some concerning behavior. His eating those eggs isn't merely a gag. It suggests something about him could be problematic. Not to mention his curiosity and willingness to hide that he's doing something wrong. This is all going to lead to trouble.

Mando also continues to show he really doesn't know how to father Baby Yoda. This is going to lead to the kid being taken at some point, or worse, the kid going bad.

Mando and BY were almost killed in a surprise attack this week, and that implies that their luck is going to run out at some point.

The New Republic knows who the Mando is now and has their eye on him. We can expect another encounter with them too.

 

Regarding the stakes, there's also the difference between a set of films and a TV show; things have to progress much more quickly in the former. If you burn through plot too fast in a show, either it ends up a short series or you end up drifting aimlessly. The upshot of the medium is you can go deeper with the story and you get a lot of time spent with the characters. Imagine if Rex and Ahsoka only appeared in TCW movie.

Star Wars is particularly great for TV because its world is so rich and varied, and worth being further explored. Take the trooper scene in Chapter 8 as one example. In the midst of major plot points, we get a few minutes of essentially two regular guys doing a job. It's refreshing and humorous, and the kind of thing that's usually relegated to the background.

 

OMG. Baby Yoda is going to go full Kylo Ren.

Din is going to walk on Baby Yoda devouring an Ewok, and he'll pull his blaster only to get Force Blasted away.... and there's the origin story of the villain of the Fourth Trilogy.

 

I’ve watched the episode again and I definitely enjoyed it a bit more without the week long excitement and build up.

I would still say it’s one of my least favourites though. I appreciate that the formula of season 1 worked really well, but ultimately I want to see things progress a bit more. I’ve got every faith they’ll do that, but two episodes of fighting big monsters back to back is plenty enough for me.

Also in two minds about the whole egg eating with baby yoda. On the one hand it wouldn’t surprise me if it meant something deeper and darker about the character, but if you look at it at face value it’s literally just a kid being mischievous. He probably doesn’t know what they are, kids are already trying to eat random stuff

 

I'm not sure he'd ever actually go bad, but I do expect the possibility will be presented, especially if he falls into the hands of Moff Gideon.

There's a reason most Jedi need to be trained by someone who knows what they're doing: Force users are dangerous.

 

While I posted it as a joke, Star Wars has a long history of Innocents falling into the Dark.
Young Phantom Menace Anakin was supposed to be lovable and kid friendly, for example.

That would be a powerful grand arc of a story to do that. Even if it's the third time they've done that story.

 

not as good as the opening but still very good. parts of it felt PT/ rebels esque while baby yoda and eggs reminded me of Chewie and the porgs.. like some New Republic x wing patrol too

 

I've thought that an interesting end point for Baby Yoda is to end up a kind of grey Force user, a kind of blend of Jedi and Mando values.

 

8/10 for me

This was a good standalone just fun episode. I found myself saying when he saved Baby Yoda from the bounty hunter...toast him. It doesn't add any to Canon but who said it had to. I was on the edge of my seat when the spiders were chasing them...I just was lol. I also thought it was funny when one of them was on the Child's head & he's trying to bat it off Mando just blasts it off.

 

first of all Yoda is a frog like creature living on a jungle planet you don't think he ate eggs, lizards and what not he sure as heck ate Beef Stew with Luke? why not The Child plus The Child is a baby not as refined as Yoda. my mom said Baby Yoda is like our kitten we just got Homer always getting into trouble! Homer is now about 4 months old about Baby Yoda's Age,

 

I loved this episode Instantly recognised the spiders/eggs from the old ESB McQuarrie paintings which I'm happy that are still getting influenced by. The tension in those scenes was well created. I enjoyed it more than Chapter 9.

 

When I saw the spiders I thought that I knew them from something. Wasn't until someone posted that McQuarrie picture that I understood. I loved how they kept coming, even when they got back to the ship.

 

Now we're talking! GOT, Deadwood and Twin Peaks are my 3 favorite shows of all time... I'll wait for The Mandalorian to wrap and work out where it slots

@Bor Mullet You always manage to echo my thoughts better than I care to write them!

 

I am being facetious but It looked like beef stew in the movies they never said what it was I am sure there were native meats in the Stew like I said Yoda is a frog like creature he eats meat...