The first episode of the new season of The Mandalorian, like the first episode of the show overall, left us with some pretty big questions that may take the rest of the season, or perhaps the rest of the series, to fully answer. With the second episode of the new season, titled "The Passenger," it seems clear that this new season will continue to follow the structure of Season 1, with new episodes sending Mando and The Child on new adventures which are attached to the show's larger plot, but not necessarily directly related from beginning to end.
That doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of questions raised, both big and small, about where the show is going and what The Mandalorian has in store for our heroes. The new episode saw Mando hired for a "simple" escort mission in exchange for information about other Mandalorians. Of course, as one might have guessed, things didn't go quite according to plan.
How Will Mando And Boba Fett Cross Paths?
The first episode of the new season ended with a shot of a mysterious stranger, who we're all basically in agreement now is the former bounty hunter Boba Fett. The Mandalorian walked away from that episode with Fett's armor, but he doesn't realize that Fett is even out there, and while the new episode picked up immediately thereafter, Mando left Tatooine seemingly none the wiser to the fact that Boba Fett lives. So, assuming that Boba Fett is going to appear more in this season and this whole thing wasn't just a really elaborate cameo, how will these two cross paths? Will we be returning the desert planet once again, or will Fett finally make his way off of Tatooine?
Why Do People Get In Fist Fights With Mando?
This is probably a question we could have asked all throughout the first season, but it really struck me when watching the Season 2 premiere, and it happened again in the opening of "The Passenger." Mando gets jumped by what appear to be bounty hunters trying to take The Child, and after knocking him off the speeder, they attempt to subdue him by, among other things, punching the guy in the helmet right in the head. That...doesn't seem like the best idea. Doesn't it hurt the guy doing the punching more than the guy being hit? Grappling with Mando to take him down makes sense. Shooting him until the armor buckles makes sense. Uppercuts and left hooks do not.
How Many Languages Does Mando Speak?
The Star Wars universe is an interesting one when it comes to language. Most creatures speak "basic" which is just English to us, but they also speak their native language, which we either get subtitled or simply translated by somebody in the room. But that doesn't really work functionally for galaxy-trotting bounty hunters, who need to be able to communicate with as many people and creatures as possible. While Mando clearly doesn't know every language of every species, he at least speaks Huttese. And we knew he had learned how to communicate with Sandpeople. How many other languages does he speak?
Did The Frog Lady Know The Child Was Eating Her Eggs?
The Child has eaten some pretty sketchy looking stuff over the 10 episodes of the show we've seen so far, but the little guy found something he really liked in the eggs of the creature that's literally referred to in the show's subtitles as "Frog Lady." We see The Child eat several of the eggs over the course of the episode, and I'm just wondering, did the woman realize her spawn were being straight up eaten? Because if so (or even if not), that may be the most morbid thing this show has done so far. She speaks about how these eggs are the only thing standing between her bloodline and extinction, and then The Child just starts swallowing them. She did count how many there were, right?
Where Are Greef And Cara?
The way The Mandalorian handles its supporting cast is strange. With Season 1, we were told about all the great actors that would be part of the series, and then, many of them only showed up for one random episode. Giancarlo Esposito didn't show up until the end of Season 1. Season 2 made a point to promote that the likes of Carl Weathers and Gina Carano would be back, but at this point, who knows when that will happen. When they do arrive, are they just going to show up for single episodes again? And what does this mean for the new supporting players that have been promoted for this season that fans are so excited about? How big will their roles actually be?
Why Didn't Baby Yoda Do...Anything?
We're two episodes in and we have yet to see the magic hand thing and I'm sad. It's not just that Baby Yoda using the Force is awesome, it's that we've seen The Child in jeopardy a couple of times in the first two episodes, moments when you would think he could have used the Force to save himself, and he did not. He could have mind-tricked the bounty hunter holding a knife to his throat, and he could have easily flung that ice spider off his head, so why didn't he do that?
How Long Will The Razor Crest Survive?
Episode 10 saw Mando's ship, the Razor Crest, take some serious damage. By the end, while the ship was apparently repaired enough to get off the planet, it still needed some major work done. While I would fully expect those repairs will happen, the ship wasn't exactly new when the series started, and while damage can be fixed, at a certain point a ship that has begun to fall apart is going to continue to do so until it just can't really be fixed any further, just like a car. I'm beginning to wonder just how long Mando's ship will survive. Will it limp along for the duration of the series, or are we getting ready to see it go down in a blaze of glory, allowing Mando to fly off in something new?
What's next for The Mandalorian? Assuming the information he got was good, he should finally find some more Mandalorians in the next episode. But will they be friendly to him and will they have the information he's truly seeking, information on The Child and his race? That's the really big question that we'll have to wait for the next episode to have answered.
The Mandalorian Season 2 episodes hit Disney+ every Friday morning at 3:01 a.m. ET. In the meantime, our Fall TV premiere schedule will clue you in on all the other big shows coming to the small screen soon.
