“The Mandalorian” returns with its second episode and decides to let the side characters shine in this story driven addition to the series.
Story
This episode sees Din Djarin and Grogu visiting Peli Motto on Tatooine and buying R5 for their journey to Mandalore. When searching Mandalore for the Living Waters, Mando is captured and tells Grogu to find Bo-Katan. Grogu visits Bo-Katan and she travels to Mandalore with Grogu to save Mando. After saving him, she takes him to the Living Waters and when Mando enters the waters he is sucked down. Bo-Katan jumps after him pulling him out but sees that the legendary creature, the Mythosaur, is still alive. As they fly out of the water, Bo-Katan faces shock as she had called the stories of Mandalore fairytales.
The Good
This episode really took the time to give more development to both Bo-Katan and Grogu.
Bo-Katan was an absolute badass in this episode and even used the Darksaber briefly. Her use of the weapon was far better than Mando’s as he has been struggling for quite some time with it. Seeing Bo-Katan’s reaction at the end of the episode shows she will be sticking around which is great because her character is so interesting.
Grogu also served a great purpose in this episode as well. While most of the time he feels like comic relief, this time he showed his value in helping Mando in a time of crisis demonstrating his character growth and connection to our protagonist.
The story is not being dragged out this season based on how quickly Mando found and bathed in the Living Waters. It does feel like this season is building to something big and the introduction of the Mythosaur definitely encourages this theory.
The Bad
One issue with this episode was the pacing. It felt dragged out at times and just didn’t need to be as long as it was.
Although the point of the episode was to let Bo-Katan and Grogu do their thing, Mando felt a little useless this time. When he tries to use the Darksaber he continues to struggle. There has been no growth in that story at all so far. I hope they take the time this season to help him learn more about how to wield it.
Review
Overall it was a decent episode with some minor flaws, but sets up a major plotline for this season. Episode two is 7/10.