Two episodes into The Mandalorian, it’s not yet clear whether it will end up being compelling as a character piece about its central figure. But it’s certainly not going to skimp on adventure!
WARNING: This recap will include spoilers for Chapter 1, but not Chapter 2.
After the place-setting events of Chapter 1 (our review), Chapter 2’s “The Child” commits to spending nearly all of its time on action sequences. Having recovered his bounty—the 50-year-old “infant” of the same race as Yoda—The Mandalorian faces the seemingly simple task of returning it to his client. Apparently, however, every other bounty hunter in the galaxy didn’t get the memo that the job is complete, which means The Mandalorian getting ambushed by a pair of Trandoshans who think they can steal the job. And in case that wasn’t enough to put The Mandalorian in a bad mood, he’s about to find that a crew of Jawas has stripped his ship for parts.
His attempt to recover those parts while single-handedly attacking a Sandcrawler makes a great climax for the episode, as director Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) emphasizes both high-tech and low-tech threats to our protagonist. That energetic pacing continues with still a third confrontation—this one with a rhinoceros-horned beast, understandably annoyed at what The Mandalorian is trying to take from it—in a breathlessly-paced episode that clearly wants to give viewers plenty of reason to stay engaged.
Naturally, viewers are most likely to be engaged if they’re already Star Wars devotees, and The Mandalorian is showing that it will keep giving those fans what they came for. While the overall tone of the show remains a mix of spaghetti Western and samurai story—Famuyiwa provides plenty of shots of The Mandalorian and the child’s levitating “stroller” moving across wide, forbidding landscapes—creators Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni bathe that sensibility in Star Wars details, and hint at mysteries still to be revealed. If recognizable elements like Jawas aren’t enough to fan the flames of fan fascination, they’ll want to know exactly how the child—and its unique … abilities … are connected to Yoda.
All that action doesn’t leave much room for The Mandalorian to get chatty, and if you thought our hero was sparing with his words in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 makes the previous episode look like a gab-fest. There’s more dialogue given to The Mandalorian’s helpful Ugnaught companion (Nick Nolte) than to the show’s star, which means we’re going to have to keep waiting to find out more about who he is and what he’s about, beyond the forward-momentum plot machinations of any given episode. At least for the moment, though, that’s more than enough momentum to make it worth coming back for Chapter 3.
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Have you been watching The Mandalorian? Is it living up to your expectations? How has your Disney+ experience been so far? Anything you’d like to see us cover here?
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