Season 2 of The Mandalorian is here! This episode, I can’t believe it, is directed and written by Jon Favreau. The creator of the show starts off the new season and he does not disappoint. This is the best episode of The Mandalorian! This is Chapter 9 of the show and this episode is of course superior to Episode 9 of the film series. We have Mando given a quest by The Armorer (Emily Swallow) to find The Child aka Baby Yoda’s people. He left his allies, Cara Dune (Gina Carrano) and Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) for his quest. There is also the threat of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) who wielded a Darksaber in the finale! A Darksaber is the symbol of leadership to all Mandalorians. It was created by Tarre Vizsla, the Mandalorian who became a Jedi. In the Clone Wars it was held by Pre Vizsla, leader of the Death Watch. Maul took the Darksaber. It was found by Sabine Wren in Star Wars: Rebels. She eventually gave it to Bo-Katan.
The episode opens with a recap of season one. The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) is walking with the pod, hover crib?, holding The Child. It is an alien world that is starting into dusk. This image is classic Western with the cowboy walking into town. He walks into a city with walls covered in tagging, stormtroopers and droids, also writing that is not the Aurebesh symbols that is in Galactic Basic. We haven’t seen graffiti in Star Wars, except from graffiti artist Sabine Wren in Star Wars: Rebels. Baby Yoda is curious and looks around him. Mando asks the Ithorian doorman about wanting to see Gor Koresh. He enters the room with a fighting area, it looks like a boxing ring with various flags above the fighters. They are Gamorrean, the green pig-like guards that we saw in Return of the Jedi (1983), using heavy axes, identified as vibro axes in SW lore. Every strike causes blue pulses, shielding, so they are not mortally wounded.
Mando sits next to an alien, Gor Koresh (John Lugizamo), a Cyclops alien with a bulky body and stubby arms. His species is called the Abyssin, one was seen in the cantina scene from Star Wars. Lugizamo was in Chef (2014) also written and directed by Favreau. He is unrecognizable including his voice. Mando is looking for other Mandalorians that he thinks could guide him to find Baby Yoda’s kind. There are various aliens in the audience in including wearing a hat like Zuvio in Force Awakens. Gor asks Mando if he will bet on the fight and wants his Beskar armor. Mando offers to pay him. Gor takes out a blaster and shoots a Gamorrean raising his axe. Then, he turns to cover Mando along with several other blasters held by his men. The crowd runs out of the room. Mando activates his gauntlet, Baby Yoda closes his pod, very funny!, and he activates the Whistling Birds, tiny projectiles that streak from his armor and takes out the gunmen.
He kicks away the pod and takes on more henchmen hand-to-hand. Gor Koresh starts to run away. Mando ties him up with his grappling hook from his gauntlet and pulls him upside down over the street. Gor admits that there is a Mandalorian on Tatooine that surprises Mando. He was there in last season’s “Chapter 5: The Gunslinger“ (2019). Gor also says that he is at Mos Pelgo. Mando walks away and blasts the street light above Gor leaving him to a horrible fate. His ship, the Razor Crest, heads towards Tatooine. He passes over mountains and a Tusken Raider on a Dewback. While the Dewback looks practical, it does like smaller than the elephant-sized creature in the first Star Wars.
The ship lands at the Mos Eisley hangar of Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris). She was in the fifth episode and of course she Deb in Favreau’s Elf (2003) and also was in Chef. The pit droids start to move to repair the ship, but Peli says that Mando doesn’t like droids. She is surprised when he asks for them to check on his ship. Peli is happy to see Baby Yoda carried in a sack by The Mandalorian and exclaims, “Thank the Force!” He explains his quest and wants to get help from other Mandalorians to chart a “path through the network of Coverts.” He brings up Mos Pelgo which she says was wiped out by bandits. She calls over R5-D4(!), the droid that malfunctioned in Star Wars, to project a map of Tatooine. Peli points out the location of the “former mining town” and says that the Razorcrest would easily be seen by the town. He borrows her speeder bike and races across the dunes with Baby Yoda.
At sunset, he speaks with a group of Tusken Raiders, just like contemporary Westerns and characters like John Carter of Mars, Mando can speak with the natives. It is also interesting that the Sand People communicate with their hands. Scurriers which were first seen in the 1997 special edition of Star Wars flee as his speeder floats towards the town. Mos Pelgo which was first mentioned in the computer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of the Eternal Throne (2016). The town looks like a frontier town out of a Western, Favreau directed the sci fi Western, Cowboys & Aliens (2011), this sensibility is a perfect fusion of the two genres like Firefly. The soft guitar music of Ludwig Göransson as he rides into town is perfect.
Also, the rumbling of the speeder bike’s engine, is right out of motorcycles which works since Peli said it was old. Mando leaves Baby Yoda at the speeder bike as he enters a cantina. Theres is a heavy set, Weequay bartender, and Mando asks if he has seen another Mandalorian. He says if he means The Marshal. At the entrance of the cantina is The Marshal in Boba Fett’s armor! He also wears a red shirt and gets a bottle of spotchka, a blue liquid, from the bartender. The Marshal takes off his helmet(!) and says he is Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant). Olyphant of course has some Western experience playing Seth Bullock in Deadwood. He was a character introduced in Chuck Wendig’s novel Aftermath (2015) that took place post-Jedi.
Vanth admits that he bought the armor from Jawas. They are about to draw when there is a rumbling that shakes the town. The townspeople start running, one woman is in a Princess Leia-like dress, a massive creature burrows through the street like a Sandworm from Dune! It raises up to swallow up a bantha! The duo must team up to take out the Krayt Dragon, first time it is seen besides the skeleton in Star Wars, the lore is in line with the expanded material. The best part is the team-up with the townspeople and Tusken Raiders. They are still aggressive, but we understand a little about them as actual people, like fierce Native warriors. It looks there is a macrobinocular watching them, no spoilers!, but this could be mysterious person who may have saved the bounty hunter, Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen)! This episode of The Mandalorian is perfect and hopefully the other episodes follow the tone set by this one!
Five Bars of Beskar Steel out of Five!
#TheMandalorian, #TheMarshall, #JonFavreau, #TimothyOlyphant
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