The unevenness of "The Mandalorian" continues.
The show continues to struggle with its identity. Last week's premiere gave us a glimmer of hope to potential storylines that may lead to new, exciting connections to the franchise. Instead, this week's episode gave us another one-off adventure defined by a series of problems to overcome, making the episode feel more akin to a supplemental show that merely takes us on another tour of more Star Wars universe stuff.
Don't get me wrong, that's always fine, and it's cool to see new ideas, creatures, etc. that add to the lore in some way. But with the apparent grand reveal of Boba Fett last week having no consequences whatsoever on this episode, I'm starting to feel like we're getting the Marvel post-credits treatment. We know this character is out there somewhere, but who knows how long we'll have to wait now to get any payoffs of that plot reveal. Oh yeah, and we haven't even seen Moff Gideon, who was last seen with the Darksaber at the end of the Season 1 finale.
I'm worried that this approach will demean Fett's character (still assuming Fett is the character we saw; more on that later). Mando left Tatooine in this week's episode, so how are we going to see Fett again? Because if Fett shows up on some other planet in a future episode, then why the heck was he on Tatooine this whole time, anyway? Did he seriously stay on the planet to simply watch others fetch his armor for him? I wish we had seen Fett tailing Mando at the end of the episode, but that probably wouldn't have made sense. The writers need to be careful with this narrow-slice approach to plot reveals. Sure, I can take some things on faith without explanation (probably better than most Star Wars fans I know, honestly), but just giving us a tiny piece without context has all the trappings of a shoe-horned idea that doesn't really accomplish much. They better come up with a real doozy of an explanation for Fett. And they're already running out of time to do so. We only have six more episodes in the season, and we still have a lot of ground to cover with the story of Mando taking the kid on this adventurous quest to find his kind.
I'm also worried that the Mandalorian may be turning into a springboard for other Star Wars shows. On one hand, more Star Wars shows would be cool. Will Gideon's story tie into a show starring the rumored return of Ashoka Tano? That actually would make more sense since she has connections to the Clone Wars, as does the Darksaber. Is Boba Fett going to appear in his own show rather than get a full storyline in The Mandalorian? I'm probably imagining too much.
On the other hand, though, going through this process of unclarity with The Mandalorian is difficult at this particular moment. The MCU used this formula, but the difference is we already knew the basic premise from the comics, and having multiple movie franchises within the MCU proved to be far-better suited at setting up a grand arc than a little eight-episode binge. Maybe if Mandalorian had a longer season, it'd be okay, but eight episodes isn't enough time to juggle all that while still taking a full episode to just whisk away on a one-off adventure (last season had a couple of those episodes).
Despite his objections, this week's episode finds our protagonist playing taxi service to a weird bi-pedal froggy mother. She's carrying a tank full of fluid and her own eggs (apparently eggs are tasty to Baby Yoda), which means Mando can't fly at hyper speed.
So of course, this leaves him vulnerable as Mando gets tailed by X-Wings, who pry into his business enough to force Mando to improvise. He escapes by flying to an icy planet, which is where we get maybe our strongest nostalgia play of the episode. While in pursuit by the X-Wings (did those pilots look familiar to anyone else?), Mando drops into a trench along the surface, which is shot pretty much the same way all trench runs are shot in Star Wars. It didn't last unbearably long to ruin the moment, at least. We also got to see Mando pull off some cool maneuvers during the chase.
The chase ends badly as he crashes onto the icy planet. His situation gets much worse as his ship falls through the ice to a cavernous sub-level. To his dismay, he discovers an infestation of spiderling creatures (who looks an awful lot like a force-sensitive creature we see in the Rebels animated show). The mother spider charges after Mando, who proves to be a threat to her nest of eggs (mothers protecting their eggs is common in all species, of course). Mando uses several gadgets, including his flamethrower and sticky grenades, to evade the creatures, but not before his ship gets badly shredded. He's barely able to enter space with what's left, but I'm sure the ship will be clean as a whistle soon enough, right?
All in all, it was a fine episode, but the plan the showrunners are executing here shows a bit of tone deafness. Sure, we like watching Baby Yoda do his thing, but that can only go so far. The writers seem content in running a similar playbook as last season instead of pushing the show's limits further. And completely ignoring last week's big moment was a jarring break in the momentum they created for themselves since the last few episodes of Season 1.
Notes:
-The opening action sequence was fun. We got to see the ol' pull-up-a-rope-from-the-ground trick to stop a speeder, but Mando had a cool trick of his own by utilizing tricks with his jetpack.
-We got to see Peli Motto playing a game of Sabacc against a funny-looking giant ant-like creature at a table in a Tatooine bar. Another typical day in Star Wars. Also, this is clearly an Ant-Man reference by Peyton Reed, this episode's director. He, of course, directed both Ant-Man movies in the MCU. I guess that's a cute reference, but honestly, these sorts of moments are continuing to feel too clunky.
-I read some theories this week that we didn't, in fact, see Boba Fett last week, but rather, just some clone. That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. The character's age would be older. And if that were the case, why should we care about Fett's armor so much? It would be a troll job for the ages, so it'd better be Fett.