The Mandalorian – Season 2, Episode 2 Recap, “Chapter 10: The Passenger”

Season openers are hard. Second episodes are harder. How do you live up to the high bar of that first episode? How do you keep the audience invested? In fact, writing a good season of television is a lot like Rob Gordon’s rules for making a mixtape: “You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” So how did The Mandalorian fare this week?

Pretty damn well!

I for one love how Favreau and co. are excitedly experimenting with Star Wars and seeing how the universe works within new genres. This week we got our selves something of a creature feature. It was a little bit Alien and a little bit Pitch Black. And I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The episode opens with a Lawrence of Arabia style long shot. We’re still on Tatooine, and we see, in the distance, Mando heading towards us on his speeder bike. We’re pretty much exactly where we left things in Episode 1.

The scene then cuts to a group of sneaky looking nogoodniks who appear to be setting a trap. Using the oldest trick in the book, by stringing up a rope between two rocks, they ambush Mando and dismount him. Baby Yoda is thrown from his satchel and the speeder bike goes crashing into the sand and explodes.

The three bounty hunters are there to kidnap Baby Yoda. They don’t.

Following an incredibly fun and slapstick showdown (this episode was directed by Peyton Reed after all), Mando hitches his gear up over his shoulders, Mulan style, and heads back into Mos Eisley. Back at the cantina (yes, it’s the cantina), Mando once again runs into Amy Sedaris’ Peli Motto who is in the midst of a sabacc game with the very ant-like Dr. Mandible (this episode was directed by Peyton Reed after all).

Dr. Mandible tells Mando to head to Peli Motto’s hangar and meet a contact who will furnish him with information on where to find more of his people. The contact, who the subtitles describe simply as “FROG LADY,” will lead him to a “Mandalorian covert” who are nearby. They might even be some of the same ones who left Nevarro back in “Chapter 3: The Sin.”

“One small skank in the scud pie.”

Peli Motto

The catch, however, is that Mando will have to provide transport for the Frog Lady and her offspring, to the estuary moon of Trask, in the system of the gas giant Kol Iben. She needs to get there, to her husband, in order to fertilise her eggs or her line will end. The other catch, is that they can’t travel through hyperspace because to do so would prove fatal for her eggs.

Mando begrudgingly agrees to the terms, knowing that sublight travel would likely open him up to all kinds nasty business.

And it does.

It isn’t long before their leisurely journey gets interrupted by an X-Wing patrol that’s piloted by Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and his wingman Trapper Wolf (Executive Producer Dave Filoni). Suspicious that the he might be an Imperial holdout, they ask Mando to send them a “ping.” He is, of course, hesitant, as doing so would allow them to check up on the Razor Crest’s unsavoury past. Remember back in “Chapter 6: The Prisoner” when the Razor Crest was involved in that prison break on the New Republic ship Bothan-Five? (There is good reason why clips from that episode were included in the “previously on” segment.)

Trapped, Mando kicks the Razor Crest into gear and dives into a nearby ice planet. Swooshing through the clouds and pulling off some awesome acrobatics, Mando manages to evade the X-Wings for long enough to find a hiding spot in an ice canyon. That is until the ground gives way and the Razor Crest crashes through to the caves below. The ship is seriously damaged, the temperature is dropping, and an exasperated Mando calls off the deal with the Frog Lady, and goes to sleep.

The Frog Lady, however, doesn’t take “no” for an answer. Spotting the remains of Q9-0 (Richard Ayoade, also from “Chapter 6: The Prisoner”), she reappropriates his vocabulator in an attempt to communicate with Mando. Speaking through Zero, Frog Lady reminds Mando of his code and guilts him back into helping her. He has to do it or it will be the end of her family line. A fact that no one told Baby Yoda, because he’s spent most of the episode feasting on these eggs. The monster! Up until this point of the episode, the biggest threat to Frog Lady’s species is Baby Yoda.

At least until the giant spider. But we’ll get to that.

As Mando gets to work on the Razor Crest, Baby Yoda alerts him to the fact that Frog Lady has wandered off. The both of them set out to look for her. They eventually find her lounging with her eggs in a hot spring deep within the cave system. Mando tells her its not safe as he collects the eggs and places them back into the incubator.

Meanwhile, Baby Yoda, as fearless as ever, decides to wander off into a nearby cluster of ovomorphs, digs into them, and starts eating whatever he finds inside. (Seriously buddy, you have to stop putting things into your mouth!) Now anyone who has seen any Alien movie knows that messing around with eggs never ends well. And it’s no different this time. As Baby Yoda’s little refrigerator raid somehow causes ALL of the spiders to wake up. Hundreds of them start crawling out of every nook and cranny. Big ones. Little ones. Some the size of your head.

Did we mention a giant spider? Because there’s a giant spider! This massive Shelob-like thing climbs out of one of the caves and starts chasing them through the caves and back to the Razor Crest. They try their best to hold them off but the spiders are everywhere. Mando tries to get his ship airborne, but before he can, the giant spider crashes through the ice ceiling, pierces the cockpit, and sends them crashing back down.

And then, just when all hope seems lost, the flash of red blasters light up the sky, killing the queen spider and saving our squad. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s Carson and Trapper, the two X-Wing pilots from before. As a perplexed Mando (yes, his mask acting is so good I can tell when he’s baffled) looks on, Captain Carson explains that even though they had discovered the Mando’s involvement in the prison break, they also know that he risked his life to save Lieutenant Davan (Matt Lanter). Calling it even, the two pilots let Mando go (because of “trying times”), and fly off into the sunset.

Mando then sets out to repair the ship, before finally taking off for Trask with one engine working. Meanwhile, Baby Yoda gulps down another frog egg.

Next week, out of gas and drifting in space, Mando slips into a delirious state of flashbacks about how he came to own the Razor Crest. No. Wait. That was an episode of Firefly.

Now, you could see this episode of The Mandalorian as being somewhat frivolous. (More so given that there are only eight episodes a season.) But I’d disrespectfully disagree and tell you that you were wrong. There is just so much going on here.

The tense back and forth between Mando and the X-Wings was a great example of underwritten world building. It’s only been about five years since the fall of the Empire, and you can immediately tell from their terse exchange how skittish the New Republic still is. Even the parallels between the Frog Lady, whose only purpose is to protect her eggs, and Mando, whose only purpose is to protect Baby Yoda, provided some soft, subtle, yet important character development.

This is also what The Mandalorian is. This isn’t a series that’s just racing from plot point to plot point in search of resolution. This is an ambling slow burn into all of these never before seen recesses of the Star Wars universe. I’ll be damned if there wasn’t something spiritual about it.

Calamari Flans

• WAS THAT APPA FROM KIM’S CONVENIENCE PILOTING AN X-WING? YES. YES, IT WAS!
• What is up with Baby Yoda putting everything he comes across into his mouth? Does Mando not feed him enough? I mean, come on, he’s a growing child.
• What is Dr. Mandible a doctor of?
• Pod racer engines are so versatile. In this episode, they make for a great tool by which to cook Krayt Dragon meat.
• Rodians apparently like their dragon meat well done. The philistines!
• I’ve always thought that the Mandalorian code was something invoked to settle disputes via one-on-one combat. (In the Star Wars Rebels episode “The Protector of Concord Dawn”, Sabine Wren used the code to challenge Fenn Rau to a duel after the Protector had injured Hera Syndulla in battle.) Who knew you could use it to guilt trip Mandalorians into doing your bidding too?
• I’m not sure if the spiders featured in this episode were Wyyyschokks, or Kryknas, or some new creature. Wyyyschokks are native to Kashyyyk (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order) and Kryknas are native to Atollon (Star Wars Rebels), and as far as I could tell, this episode’s ice planet was neither of those.
• I love that Mando and Baby Yoda are roomies. Just when you thought their relationship couldn’t get any cuter.
• I also loved that Frog Lady starts leap-frogging when running away from those attacking spiders. When things get rough, frogs gotta frog. It was a nice touch.
• I’ve always wondered if the Razor Crest was inspired by Firefly’s Serenity. They both kinda look like space horses.

The Mandalorian, Season 2, is now streaming on Disney+.