The Mandalorian: Season 2 Episode 4 Review

By Chelsea “This is the Way” House, GGR Senior Contributor

Last episode left us with our shiny hero and his green adopted baby gallantly lifting off into space in their strapped together ship. Mando announces that they won’t be able to make it to their destination the way they are and asks Baby Yoda if he’d like to make a stop at Nevarro so they can revisit some friends. We also get a nice glimpse of what kind of a father Mando is with a scene that perfectly describes what giving directions to a toddler is like. This is why learning colors is important! I mean, in Baby Yoda’s defense, we don’t even know if he knows his colors yet! This scene was so freaking cute.

“In my defense Mando, I lied on my resumè. I’ve never reconfigured a power transfer conduit. I have been totally adorable and caused a firestorm on social media because of my eating habits though…so there is that.”

Back on Nevarro, we are reintroduced to possibly a character that is slowly creeping into my top 10, Cara Dune (Gina Carano) (I’ll go into it further.). She’s doing what she does best, which is kicking butt and taking names, as she cleans up a gang of Ballchinians… wait, wrong series. ^Ahem^ She cleans up a gang of Aqualish. I have to admit I was a little confused as to why… until we learn at the reintroduction of our trio squad, Dune, Din Djarin, and The Dancing Destroyer, CRAP wrong series again! I mean Greef Karga (Carl Weathers)! He announces that Cara is now Marshal and puts his best mechanics on fixing the Razor Crest to look brand new. Which, yet again makes us wonder at Mando’s discernment because that one alien guy looks super sketch as he stares intently after the trio walking away. I’m sure that won’t bite them in the butt later. 

As Greef, Cara, and Mando walk towards the Cantina where everything started and ended last season, you can see that both of them have worked hard cleaning up the place. When Mando makes a comment that he’s surprised the Cantina is still standing, Cara says “Wait ‘til you see the inside.” Here we’re transported to a classroom filled with children and their own personal android. The adults have business to discuss, and Baby can’t go, so of course, the school is the perfect place to leave him. This is where every parent cringes at the thought of a 2 year old equivalent being left with a robot and a bunch of 10-13 year olds. Like… of course nothing can go wrong. It is supes cute when the whole class starts whispering about how adorable our green bud is, except that punk who won’t share his cookies! Good thing for the Force. 

“If willing you won’t share, take your cookies ‘by Force’ I will. Heh.”

Now to the adults talking business things. Karga and Dune lead Mando into Karga’s office, where apparently that blue guy from season 1, the Mythrol who we will affectionately name, Mythrol (Horatio Sanz) is working off his debt to Karga as a personal secretary. I guess there are worse ways. Cara and Greef explain to Mando that there’s an imperial base built on top of a reactor that needs to be destroyed. They explain that there’s only a skeleton crew manning it and for some reason they won’t just vacate. Mando resists when he thinks Greef is just wanting to sell all of the weapons on the black market, to which he is quickly corrected -  all of that stuff will be gone when they cause the reactor to explode. They also remind him that it’s to make the planet completely safe and possibly a good trade port. 

Mando accepts and off they go towards the fort. This begins a rather fast paced sequence of our heroes making it to the reactor where Mythrol manages to get the sparks going, and we’re told they have maybe ten minutes to get out. This brings our squad to a room where two imperial soldiers are hovering over a command board. When they see Mando and team, one yells “destroy it”, and they begin both shooting the team and the command board. Of course Team Mando comes out unscathed and when the dust settles we are suddenly drawn to the real reason that this base was never abandoned. We see hazy figures floating in blue liquid and only pause at a grotesquely twisted body. This was a lab.

Cara demands that Mythrol recover any data and we’re given a hologram from Dr.Pershing (Omid Abtahi).  The Doc talks about failed attempts to infuse the M-cell blood with various specimens. He states in so many words that it is the blood from Baby Yoda and that they need to obtain him again to succeed in their mission, which he won’t fail Moff Gideon in again. 

This is the first time Mando realizes that Moff is still alive. And suddenly you visually see his stomach sink as he rushes off to obtain his child. The rest of the crew manage to escape as the base goes up in glorious smoke and flame. The only problem is that they’re being followed by storm troopers. There’s some wild driving from Cara as Greef manages to shoot them down (which gives us some pretty great flashbacks to Luke shooting in the Falcon for the first time). This reveals a new problem as we see and hear the familiar scream of the TIE fighters.

Our trio struggles to keep them off until they are rescued by Mando in the air with a very happy Baby Yoda and a very shiny fixed ship (That was fast!). 

The fight scene ends with Mando doing some spinning moves to destroy the final two and Baby Yoda spitting up on his cloak. Mando explains to Cara and Greef that he is going to keep heading towards Corvus. Our episode ends with Greev avoiding questions from Teva, the New Republic Officer and Cara declined his offer for her to join them stating she’s not a “joiner”. Teva explains the importance of sharing this information, but it doesn’t seem to budge either one of them. Again… This definitely won’t bite them in the butt later, right? 

Thoughts on the episode: 

1: The fight scenes in this episode were very well choreographed and perfectly timed. I honestly can’t stand long drawn out scenes for the sake of special effects or whatever the reason may be. They were to the point and gave you another great look at Mando’s teamwork skills as well as giving Greef some action scenes. 

2: The Mythrol: I may get some flack on this. But he seemed so weirdly placed to me? Like I’m not really sure what his purpose was other than to be a filler, or just a reminder that Mando used to actually bounty hunt, not babysit and engage in group quests. His comedic relief was a little clumsy and somewhat forced to me. Especially in the base I got the feeling of the Cowardly Lion a little bit. It’s fine. There can be judgement. 

3: Cara Dune: First off… I am in NO way going to talk about Gina Carano as I am fully aware of the crap storm swirling around that girl. I am STRICTLY talking about her character.  Second off, I am also fully aware that Gina is not a great actress. She’s just not. So again… just hear me out. Cara Dune’s character is one of my top 10 because her back story is still intriguing to me. There’s just so many questions swirling around her : What are the tattoos? Why exactly did she leave the rebellion? What is a shock trooper? And a lot more. We just still know little to nothing about her. I also really appreciate her presence as a strong female who also looks strong. What I mean by that, is that it’s nice to have a person who’s physique can back what they’re saying. So, unless she turns out to be a terrible character, she’s still one of my top 10 female heroes. 

4: The lab: Like whoa. The lab… Okay so we did kind of go down that thought pipeline of the Imperials trying to use Baby Yoda’s blood for some weird experiments. Were they trying to create jedi? Were they trying to clone him? Were they just trying to create super humans? We weren’t sure. A lot of that is cleared now. Dr. Pershing was super insistent that he wouldn’t fail Moff if they got “the specimen” back again. So this opens more questions - Did Baby Yoda’s blood create Snoke? Does that mean they get  a hold of him again? If they do, does he survive? Oh that’s too many dark twists for me to handle. Also, even though the lab exploded, we see Moff at the end of the episode looking at some very Darth Vader-ish armor lined in rows. So we definitely know that he’s not giving up on this venture quite yet, and because of Snoke’s existence in the future, we do know that they succeed in some way, shape, or form. 

I guess until next time!