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Despite a seemingly huge cliffhanger in the season 2 premiere, The Mandalorian maneuvered into its tried-and-true episodic format thanks to series creator-writer Jon Favreau and director Peyton Reed, a new member of the show’s growing stable of talent behind the camera. And even though its main story may have diverted from the course we expected, it still offers a few things to consider about Din Djarin’s (Pedro Pascal) future. Let’s take a look at where the Way took him this week.
The following contains spoilers about The Mandalorian, season 2, episode 2, “Chapter 10: The Confrontation.” Stop here if you have not watched the episode.
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
Tasked with reuniting the Child with his own people, Djarin began a search for other Mandalorian culverts in the galaxy. His assumption: someone in one of the other groups will know more about the mythical order of space wizards the Mandos clashed with thousands of years ago and who Djarin believes to be the Child’s kin. On Tatooine, Djarin worked with Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant) to end a Krayt Dragon threat, winning the Mandalorian armor Vanth was using to mete justice on the edge on the Dune Sea. As he rode back to Mos Eisley, a seemingly familiar bounty hunter watched him from a distance.
Read more: “The Mandalorian Kicks Off Its New Season With a Monster Star Wars Tale — But Questions Remain”
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
The Mandalorian’s ride back to Mos Eisley is interrupted by raiders more interested in his jetpack than anything else; even if they want to abduct the Child at first. Djarin makes quick work of them, but his speeder bike is destroyed. After a slow march back to Mos Eisley, he finds Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) hustling credits out of aliens at the cantina. She hooks him up with someone who claims to have good intel on a nearby Mando culvert.
The contact turns out to be a frog lady (at least, that’s what the captions call her) in desperate need of transport to the moon of Trask. There, her husband awaits to fertilize the last eggs of her life cycle. She also claims Djarin will find a culvert there. The catch: because of her eggs’ fragility, the Razor Crest must travel at sublight speed.
Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and Trapper Wolf (Dave Filoni), two New Republic X-Wing pilots patrolling the Outer Rim, interrupt their progress. When Djarin sends his transponder signal, the pilots realize his ship is the same one that invaded a prisoner transport some months earlier. The ensuing chase leaves the Razor Crest stranded on an ice planet.
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
Oh, also, the Child has been surreptitiously eating the Frog Lady’s eggs.
Djarin and the Child must abandon repairs on the ship when their passenger wanders off to the comfort of a natural hot spring in a nearby cave, where the Child’s appetite awakens some of the planet’s native inhabitants: spider-like creatures reminiscent of the Krykna or, at least, Ralph McQuarrie’s original painting that inspired them. Djarin, the Child, and the Frog Lady flee back to the ship, but a true rescue comes thanks to the New Republic pilots, who ultimately let Djarin go because of his actions during that prison break (“Chapter 6: The Prisoner“).
Still in need of many repairs, the Razor Crest breaks atmosphere and limps its way to Trask.
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
Since Favreau’s applies his use of the Star Wars galaxy with great care, we’re going to assume setting the first episode of the season on a desert planet and the second on an ice world is intentional. It mirrors the course of the Original Trilogy and would lead us to believe Trask is a forest world if not for Motto referring to it as an “estuary moon.” Star Wars planets typically feature one biome, so we imagine Trask will have one big landmass and an almost entirely enclosed ocean within it.
Then again, there could be forests in that landmass…
Let’s talk about Motto for a moment. There are a few corners of the online discourse that find her way too Earth-like to be accepted into the Star Wars reality. We disagree; she brings a delightful energy to Tatooine as one of its grubby citizens, but also as a roguish type happy to eek out as little advantage as she can. The way she got Djarin to back Dr. Mandible’s losing hand (to say nothing of ferrying Frog Lady to Trask) is the sort of unscrupulous whimsy we like to see from time to time — and that’s not just because a Scoundrel was our main on Star Wars: The Old Republic. We will admit Sedaris might be too much if Motto was featured weekly throughout the new season, but we think we’re getting just the right amount of her at the moment.
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
Meanwhile, the glimpses we’re getting of the New Republic remain fascinating. For one thing, it cares about the Outer Rim.
As Shmi Skywalker (Pernilla August) observed in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, the Old Republic didn’t exist on remote worlds like Tatooine. And though there may not be a presence on the ground — indeed, planets are charged with organizing their own defense and police forces — New Republic patrols of the space lanes around these distant planets is an upgrade from the “leave it to the Hutts” stance of the pre-Imperial government.
Then again, even the Empire mostly left Tatooine to the Hutts.
Also, you have to love a return appearance by Star Wars: The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni as Trapper Wolf. We last saw him in the prison break episode, so it is a nice bit of continuity to have him here (see also: Richard Ayoade’s cameo as Zero’s vocoder). Also, we’d like to welcome Lee to the small band of New Republic officials we’ve seen so far; in fact, if the show ever completely abandons its Lone Wolf and Cub format, we’d love to see a season in which Djarin works with the Republic in the core systems — not so much to see any old friends (we’re just as happy to never see a Skywalker on the series), but to see what a functioning Republic looks like. Also, from what we’ve read of former capital world Coruscant in this era, we’d love to see Djarin stop there as well.
(Photo by Lucasfilm/Disney+)
But the Lone Wolf and Cub format also allowed the show to maintain the tension regarding Boba Fett — and that’s assuming the person Temuera Morrison played in last week’s final moment is the famed bounty hunter. If you want to entertain an alternate theory to his identity, let’s assume for a moment he is Captain Rex of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels fame. The character is still around — despite the clones’ accelerated aging process — and may have been on the hunt for the Child even before Djarin took up the contract; of course, that would leave us wondering why Rex hasn’t made contact.
The question mark around Boba Fett made this week’s opening moments all the more thrilling, though. Which, again, is a credit to Favreau’s writing. He set us up to believe the confrontation would be immediate. Even afterward, the close-ups to the helmet and the jetpack remind us that some answer is forthcoming.
(Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic; 20th Century Fox)
The riddle of Boba Fett leads us to ask:
Where is Boba Fett? Assuming that was Boba Fett last week, why didn’t he catch up to Djarin on the long march back to Mos Eisley and reclaim the armor? He seemed to know its location all along, so why didn’t he take it back from Vanth in the first place? Remember, it’s only been four or five years since the bounty hunter fought the Skywalker clan, and he’s not a follower of the Way. He would, presumably, be fit enough to fight and consider taking his identity back as a matter of pride. A similar story played out in the old Expanded Universe, in fact; albeit with his ship instead of the armor. But as we suggested last week, it is possible his encounter with the Sarlaac changed him in a fundamental way.
Is the culvert on Trask? We’re genuinely surprised the episode didn’t end with the Razor Crest making it to Trask. That means the answer to this question could be more complicated than Djarin anticipates. For one thing, he asked Motto upfront if it is the same culvert from Navarro. That band of Mandos is still in play, even if the Imps cost them a good number of warriors. But considering our rumor-watch includes Katee Sackhoff reprising her Clones Wars and Star Wars Rebels role as Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze, she could, conceivably, be part of the culvert on Trask. Although we are presuming a culvert awaits Djarin, it’s possible Frog Lady was lying through her gills.
The Mandalorian season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.
