Original Air Date: November 6, 2020
Writer: Jon Favreau
Director: Peyton Reed
“If you put one mark on him there is no place you will be able to hide from me…”
Still on Tatooine, following the events of the previous episode, Mando attempts to travel from the remote town of Mos Pelgo through the desert but he crashes his speeder bike and gets into a fight with some desert bandits (a reminder that bounty hunters are still hunting down Baby Yoda). The loss of his speeder bike forces him to trudge the remainder of the way across the dune sea until he returns to the original Cantina at Mos Eisley where he is reunited with Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris). He is still searching for fellow Mandalorians to help with Baby Yoda, and he learns that a Mandalorian has been spotted on the distant estuary moon of Trask in a system of the gas giant Kol Iben. He agrees to transport a Frog lady to Trask so her husband may fertilize her eggs she carries (it is a bit of an odd premise), however the Razor Crest is soon intercepted by a pair of New Republic X-Wing pilots who are skeptical of Mando.
He quickly leads them on a dangerous chase down to a nearby planet’s surface before crashing the Razor Crest into an ice cave. Mando plans to wait until morning to assess the situation, but the Frog lady and the severed head of “Zero” the Q9-0 droid suggests he should quickly repair the ship and vacate the planet. As he begins repairing the ship, and Baby Yoda wanders off while the Frog lady bathes in a shallow pool with her eggs –but suddenly they are all surrounded by thousands of hatching spiders followed by a mammoth spider as they race back to the ship. The Razor Crest is only saved by arrival of the two X-Wing pilots who decide not to arrest Mando after all because he helped imprison certain criminals in the first season (“Chapter 6: The Prisoner”) and also saved Lt. Davin’s life in the New Republic prison.
While this episode contains echoes of Ridley Scott’s Alien, this was not my favorite Mandalorian episode in the series. It is not at all a poor episode, and the first half or so sets up a compelling premise, however I could have done without the CGI cave spiders.
The Mandalorian Trivia:
- The episode title “The Passenger” is a reference to the Frog lady alien creature.
- The same person (Misty Rosas) plays the Frog lady as played Kuiil in the first season.
- The scene wherein Mando gazes out over a ridge above Mos Eisley is a reference to Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope showing Luke Mos Eisley –“you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
- Mando visits the Cantina in Mos Eisley where the bartender is still the EB-99 droid from A New Hope.
- The spiders are a species called Krykna and are based on original conceptual art by Ralph McQuarrie. They were originally designed to appear in the swamps of the planet Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back.
- The two X-Wing fighters in this episode are played by Dave Filoni returning as Trapper Wolf, and Star Wars super-fan Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Captain Carson Teva.
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