For all my harping about wanting to see a more complex and serialized story on The Mandalorian, I appreciated this week’s frenetic stand-alone episode. Sure, there are now two major dangling plots in the series (between Moff Gideon still hunting Mando and The Child via a network of bounty hunters – some of whom got close to nabbing them this week – and the potential for Boba Fett to re-emerge into the story – although the distinct lack of Boba Fett in the “Previously” section of the pre-show leaves me wondering if he will appear again on the series), but this was a genuinely fun romp of an episode.*
*A fun note for all you Marvel fans out there: This episode was directed by Edgar Wright, director of the first two Ant-Man films, and it certainly showed in the directorial style and the episode leaning into the physical comedy beats with The Child.
It is, however, hard to review an episode where the main thrust of the story was “let’s do a lot of comedy and have very little in the way of actual character or plot.” Did I laugh at some of The Child’s antics? Absolutely. Was I less annoyed by Mando’s mostly monotone line delivery? Yes – I also liked that there was a touch of variation in how Pedro Pascal spoke this time; the sarcasm was more apparent in key points, adding just a hint of playfulness to an often far too dull character. And was I amused that the Frog Lady managed to hotwire the droid to communicate? Definitely. I could have done with something other than ice spiders as the creepy crawly critters, but I can’t complain.
Sure, I knew they would get out of the scrape by the end of the episode – The Mandalorian continues to lack any real stakes at this stage in the game. I mean, they can’t kill The Child, as that’s the show’s greatest draw. And they can’t kill Mando, because The Child isn’t developed enough as a character (or a cunning linguist) to carry a series on its own. So, any scrape they find themselves in will be solved with both of them alive and mostly well. But when it’s an episode like “The Passenger,” it’s fun to forget all of that and just enjoy the hijinks and laugh a bit. After the week most of us here in the US have had, I think we’ve earned a bit of frivolous fun to start off our weekend.
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