In the second episode of season 2 of The Mandalorian, we get a first time director, a Rebels reference, and a new kind of danger for Mando and the Child. Let’s dig in.
1. Danger Din Djarin!
While it would be foolish to say that no episode of The Mandalorian felt as dangerous as this one, this episode featured an entirely different form of danger than the others we’ve seen so far. In the first season, it most of the danger that Mando and the Child found themselves in was due to Mando’s choice to decamp with the Child and screw over the Client. People were after the Child because the Client was sending them. Now, we can presume that people are still after the Child, now due to Moff Gideon directly hiring people, but this episode we saw danger from external sources for the first time.
In this episode, both the New Republic and the inhospitable terrain and fauna of a planet caused one of the most precarious situations that our heroes found themselves in yet. This is a classic Star Wars move, with nearly every film or television series having a moment where the location is as dangerous as the foes. In that way, this felt like one of the most classic Star Wars episodes yet.
2. New Kid in Town
Peyton Reed has had a wild career thus far, going from Bring It On to Ant-Man in 15 years. He is the first new director of this batch of episodes, and he does a fine job. While there is nothing in the episode that screams out “Ah, this was clearly Reed’s influence,” the episode was one of the most tense ones thus far, and was a nice mixture of horror and classic Star Wars.
It is a little funny to me that he is responsible for an episode which had as close to a literal ant-man as you’ll ever see in Star Wars, as well as see insect-like creatures play a major role. I’m also now sure exactly how much freedom these directors have with each episode, but Reed managed to fit the tone nicely established by the prior nine episodes.
3. Loose Ends
This episode is very clearly a follow up to “The Prisoner” from last season in a number of ways. From a tonal point of view, that was the most stylized ‘horror’ episode thus far, but this one has clearly surpassed that now. But this also had numerous plot connections, from that episode’s droid’s body being used as a translator to the events of the episode leading to the New Republic’s interest in the Razorcrest.
It is interesting to see how this series chooses to connect the various episodes and seasons. Before this episode, I would have guessed we would never see Bill Burr and co. again, but they were explicitly mentioned here, and so I suppose that we may see them at some point again, though I’d still bet against it. By having the events of that episode ‘known’ to the New Republic, however, establishes a number of really interesting places for the series to go. We don’t know if his ‘arrest record’ or whatever got erased, or whether or not those X-wing pilots just chose to let him go, but either way it establishes an interesting status quo for Mando’s relationship to the galaxy at large.
The Krykna, aka the giant ice spiders, are officially the scariest creatures of this series by a large margin, and Reed did a wonderful job expressing their danger on screen. Their nonstop assault on the Razorcrest felt claustrophobic and, at times, hopeless. The viewer must know, on some level, that this won’t be the end for these characters, but this felt more like a potential end than any episode of the series to date.
The design and effects work on the Krykna were incredibly impressive. Their movements and design translated really well from their appearance in Rebels over to live-action, and the Hoth-like setting connected, as this show so often does, multiple different eras of Star Wars. The Krykna, I believe, were originally designed for The Empire Strikes Back, and so the Hoth-like setting was absolutely intentional. We’ve seen enough desert planets in the galaxy thus far, it’s nice to see another Ice one.
Continued below5. New Republic, who dis?
This is the first taste we’ve really seen of the New Republic, outside of the one character from “The Prisoner” that Mando tried to save. It was that action that allowed the X-wing pilots to take pity on him, though their pity did not extend to helping him get off the planet alive. How the rest of the series will deal with the New Republic is anyone’s guess, but since we’ve already seen Cobb Vanth, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a little bit of the status quo set up in Aftermath to seep over into the series.
Not that I necessarily think we’ll get more characters from those novels, nor do I think we’ll get anything close to the political angles of that series, but in those books, the New Republic is going through some serious growing pains. That’s been evident, though not discussed, in the first ten episodes of this series, where we’ve seen everything a little more lawless and disorganized than we got in any of the film trilogies, when there is at least some semblance of authority in the galaxy. Here, it seems like everyone is still figuring out just how to live under this new regime.
Bonus connection to “The Passenger” is that we get the second appearance of Trapper Wolf, aka Dave Filoni’s X-wing pilot character. Welcome back, Trapper!
