The Mandalorian declared its intention to hit its audience with twists and turns aplenty
with its first episode alone, and episode 2 titled "The Child" effectively doubled down
on that notion.
Its final act had our jaws on the floor, and we're champing at the bit to unpack all of
its implications.
Before we do, however and just in case you somehow missed the title of this video please
be advised that spoilers for episode 2 of The Mandalorian follow.
"Be careful."
"You too."
The episode has our hero at last escaping Arvala-7 with his would-be target, but everything
has changed; with the revelation that said target is an infant and a member of the same
mysterious race of the Jedi Master Yoda, the Mandalorian's life has grown infinitely more
complicated.
After lulling the audience into a false sense of security with fifteen solid minutes of
a seemingly-unrelated fetch quest for the Mandalorian's ship parts, the episode answers
the question we were naturally led to ask after the pilot in shocking fashion: is the
baby Force-sensitive, like Yoda?
If you listened closely during the climactic scene, you could hear The Mandalorian's creator
Jon Favreau laughing his face off, because of course the Yoda baby is Force-sensitive.
The show chose to reveal that fact in the most sweeping, epic moment in an otherwise
very small and quiet episode.
During an attempt to secure an egg from a ferocious horned beast with which he hopes
to barter with the Jawas for his ship parts, the baby uses the Force to save the Mandalorian
as he grimly stares down death at the hooves of said beast with naught but a knife; this
completely shifts the narrative's paradigm, and it's quite unclear if the Mandalorian
himself understands what has just happened.
There's a particularly sneaky bit of exposition in the dialogue between the Mandalorian and
Kuiil just before the final ship repair montage: when Kuiil asks if the baby was injured, the
Mandalorian replies no, at least not physically.
Kuiil then asks the Mandalorian to explain what happened again, that he doesn't understand,
and the Mandalorian tellingly replies that he doesn't know, either.
The two never explicitly state it, but the Mandalorian has apparently told Kuiil how
he retrieved the egg with the last-minute miracle the baby provided by suddenly displaying
its Force abilities.
We the audience, of course, know exactly what happened and what it means, but if the Mandalorian
is telling Kuiil the truth, then the bounty hunter doesn't know what the Force is, and
he has no idea what the baby is capable of and why.
That's a pretty big deal, and it could have a massive impact on the bounty hunter's actions
going forward.
It's more reasonable than it seems at first blush that the Mandalorian would be ignorant
of the Force.
Consider: it's twenty-five years before the ultimate fall of the Jedi Knights and the
rise of the First Order, we're following a man living in the Outer Rim, and we know for
a fact that he is an orphan.
Even fellow Outer Rim dweller Luke Skywalker was completely ignorant of anything related
to the Force until Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi came along, so there's no reason to think that
the Mandalorian would be any more knowledgeable on the matter.
The Mandalorian is also... well, Mandalorian, so he probably has very little formal education
beyond his tactical and combat training.
If you were saved by an indescribable feat of supernatural power that can only be described
as miraculous, you'd probably be a little shook, and you may even reassess your priorities.
It's the classic bounty hunter conflict trope: the Mandalorian has now learned a little too
much about his target, and it looks like he'll be faced with a serious moral quandary as
a result.
We also shouldn't forget that there is practically an entire phalanx of bounty hunters looking
for the little Force-sensitive tyke.
The Mandalorian has successfully completed the most difficult part of the task removing
the target from its secured bunker and it has suddenly become much, much easier for
these scoundrels to take the baby for themselves.
The only thing now standing between the infant and its many pursuers is the Mandalorian,
who should probably get used to having a giant target on his back.
None of his options at this point are particularly attractive.
Is the lure of Beskar steel too much for the Mandalorian, versus the obvious moral issue
presented by handing the baby over to an emissary of the Empire?
Is his life worth going rogue and protecting the Yoda baby at all costs?
We can see that the Mandalorian operates according to a code of honor and respect.
That Beskar steel, though, represents not cash, but a piece of his religion; a sacred
item that not only provides him with personal enrichment, but the opportunity to help his
people in a profound way.
For that matter, it’s worth noting it remains suspiciously convenient that the Client presented
the Mandalorian with exactly this form of payment at a time that the bounty hunter was
shown to be particularly desperate for work.
Heading into the third episode, the Mandalorian is certainly between a rock and a hard place
and it's being painfully illustrated for him that, as the Client stated when he took the
job, bounty hunting is indeed a complicated profession.
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