A Little Help From My (Little) Friend

Even the best bounty hunter in the parsec needs a little help every now and again. Fortunately for Mando, his force sensitive cargo was on hand to lend a hand in the second episode of Disney+ show The Mandalorian.

I’m going to address the elephant in the room right out of the gate. Yes, this is a short episode. At 30 minutes it’s little longer than one of the animated shows, but I’d sooner take a well paced episode than one that feels like it’s unnecessarily padded.

Could Mando have spent an extra five minutes traversing an overly complex cave system in search of the egg of the Mudhorn? Sure. Did he need to? – absolutely not.

The Mandalorian has so far been perfectly paced, with the right amount of action and a surprising amount of character development, given the lack of dialogue and, well, facial expressions.

This episode in particular was sparse on conversation. The first half sees Mando fighting off Trandoshans looking to seize The Child, seemingly commissioned to complete the same bounty as Mando himself. Then when he returns to his ship, he finds it being stripped by Jawas.

The following sequence as Mando probed the walls of the Sandcrawler, climbing up as he searched for a way aboard, was the highlight of the episode for me. I mean, the Jawas are literally lobbing junk at him – pieces of metal clang off the armour. Sound designers must have dropped a couple of saucepans in the making of this brilliantly Takeshi’s Castle-esque set piece.

Crunchy sounds to go alongside the crunchy action – and crunchy fall for Mando when he’s electrocuted and stumbles off the roof of the Jawa’s fortress no sooner than he’d made it to the top.

Later on, in an attempt to retrieve and egg for the Jawas as a trade for the seized parts of his ship, Mando takes another beating, this time at the hands of a Mudhorn.

Now, you could argue that it’s another Boba Fett situation here. ‘Sure, he looks cool with that armour, cape and gadgets, but he’s naff in a fight.’ ‘Getting beaten by a crude Mudhorn – it’s no better than falling into the mouth of the Sarlacc.’

Well, that’s not what I’m taking from this.

Mando might be a great bounty hunter. Resourceful, ruthless and talented at his craft, but I doubt he’s encountered a Mudhorn before. In unfamiliar surroundings against an unfamiliar enemy, and one which clearly possesses enormous brute strength, I’d be concerned for the series if he dealt with it in the same manner that he dispatched the more familiar foes in the shape of the Trandoshans.

Who wants a hero – or maybe anti-hero, who knows – who is simply unbeatable. Mando showing a little vulnerability in combat adds a core ingredient of suspense to action sequences.

Of course, it took the help of The Child to stop the Mudhorn, as our little green friend used the force to lift the beast off it’s feet and allow Mando to land a fatal stab.

The revelation of this force sensitivity was nicely foreshadowed earlier in the episode. You can assume that The Child might be able to force heal, as exhibited by Rey in The Rise of Skywalker, after he kept reaching for Mando’s exposed cut after his scuffle with the Trandoshans.

The Child’s ability might not be the biggest shock to Star Wars fans, but it was delivered in a smart way, earlier in the series than I had expected and a reveal which added a major talking point to an episode that could otherwise have been classed in the “fun but filler” category.