The Mandalorian Season 2

Episode 2: The Passenger

A few mild spoilers for this episode are ahead! Proceed with caution!

Picking up directly after the first episode of the second season, The Passenger finds our beloved Mandalorian on his way back to his ship, only to be attacked by marauders and having his speeder bike destroyed in the fight. Once he returns to his ally, Peli Motto, he is asked to transport a passenger to Trask in return for information on more Mandalorians. The rest of the episode sees the Mandalorian, his frog lady passenger and her eggs, and the child face off against X-Wings and ice spiders.

Although most of the episode takes place on an ice planet and focuses on the Mandalorian, the child, and the frog lady, there are quite a few other characters and creatures crammed into the episode as well. We see Dr. Mandible, Q9-0, two X-Wing pilots, three marauders, and tons of ice spiders.

Fans of other Star Wars productions might recognize a few things in this episode. The aforementioned ice spiders are a callback to Star Wars Rebels. I’m not sure if they are the same species as the Krykna in Rebels, but they are very similar. Also, the way that the eggs of the spiders hatched look a lot like and hatch like the eggs in the Alien franchise. We also get to see a number of droids from other productions and even from prior episodes in The Mandalorian.

We also get the return of Trapper Wolf, a New Republic pilot who appeared in an episode from the first season of The Mandalorian. Hardcore Star Wars fans definitely recognize him as being portrayed by Dave Filoni, who is essentially the rightful heir to the George Lucas empire. Fans of Kim’s Convenience, a Canadian sitcom that is also available on Netflix at the moment, will also recognize Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Carson Teva, the second X-Wing pilot in this episode. Being a massive fan of Kim’s Convenience and especially Mr. Kim (Lee), I was extremely happy to see him in the episode. On top of that, Lee happens to be a huge fan of Star Wars and is a member of the 501st Star Wars costumers group.

The episode is loaded with action and has more of a horror-styled theme to it, but overall it isn’t as good as the first episode of the season. If you love action and horror, you’ll probably be just fine with the episode. However, if you’re seeking more character development, you won’t find much of that here.

Still, the episode is enjoyable and the many callbacks (I didn’t mention all of them) and Easter eggs are fun to catch while watching. The child’s cute factor plays heavily into parts of the episode as well, and I’m sure that fans of that character will melt and/or cringe during certain moments featuring the kid.

I liked the episode well enough and loved seeing X-Wings, Mr. Kim, and an exciting spacecraft chase sequence in the episode. Thanks for checking out my post. I’ll have another one next week!