New Characters & Character Development

If someone told me “Chapter 10” would be about Mando and a big frog running from big spiders, I would give it a hard pass. However, Frog Lady (aka “The Passenger”) is a welcome addition to the crew.

First off, if closed captioning is canon, the gal speaks native Frog, which is amazing. Secondly, she begins the episode as a mild mannered backpacker but goes full bad bitch by act two.

After the Razor Crest crashes, Mando recommends rests to conserve energy. Frog Lady, in a hurry to reach her destination, rewires the remains of Q9-0 (a decommissioned droid from “Chapter 6”), accessing its “vocabulator” so she can speak through it in Galactic Basic (English) to Mando.

Frog Lady makes an emotional plea for Mando to fix the ship immediately. She explains that her eggs (more on them later) are the “last brood” of her life cycle, and their survival is more important than anything.

She then throws him the ultimate shade: “I thought honoring one’s word was a part of the Mandalorian code. I guess those are just stories for children.”

So Mando goes out into the snow to work on the ship. Meanwhile, in a serious power move, Frog Lady takes off for a spa day in a hot spring!

That’s a new level of IDGAF.

But while Frog Lady might think she’s in charge, she has no idea that Baby Yoda is a savage and has been eating the last of her bloodline all day. Which brings us neatly to our next topic:

Best Baby Yoda Moments

For anyone like myself who felt like Baby Yoda was lacking in “Chapter 9,” this episode more than compensates.

As we’ve been claiming since “Chapter 7” when Baby Yoda force choked Cara Dune over some questionable decisions she made on twitter, Baby Yoda is a savage and doesn’t care what you think. From the beginning we see Baby Yoda has some strange attraction to Frog Lady’s eggs.

A new, whimsical music cue swells whenever his big dark eyes catch a sight of them. Later, aboard the ship, Baby Yoda looks to make sure nobody is watching just before using the force to draw them near.

Surely he must have some mystical connection with the spawn, right? Nope, he’s just eating them.

This is a great callback to Season 1, when we learn Baby Yoda likes to eat frogs.

His fierce appetite in general is actually a callback to The Empire Strikes Back (1980), when Luke Skywalker meets OG Yoda, who proceeds to rummage through his food.

Fittingly, the episode ends on a shot of Baby Yoda chowing down on one last egg with zero regards for the implications.

World-building

Throughout the series we learn in small doses how life in the Star Wars galaxy was impacted by the fall of the Empire. In the season premiere we saw how small villages on Tatooine were immediately overrun by militant gangs looking to fill the power vacuum.

In “Chapter 10,” Mando warns Frog Lady: “Traveling sublight is a bit dicey these days. Whether it’s pirates or warlords, someone either ends up with a nice chunk of change or your ship”

Given Mando’s age, one can presume he is implying that traveling was actually safer during the Empire’s reign. This echoes the sentiment shared by Werner Herzog’s character in Season 1: “Judge by any metric: safety, prosperity, trade opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.”

Learning that the Empire maybe wasn’t all that bad paints the events of the original Star Wars trilogy in a new light.

Maybe Luke, Han and Leia were actually domestic terrorists, radicalized by old kooks uncle Owen warned about. Maybe Emperor Palpatine was being sincere when he claimed the formation of the Empire would bring peace.

Obviously Luke and the rebellion were more concerned with blowing things up than actually governing. The two officers of the New Republic in this episode are even proven corrupt. They know Mando is a criminal who resisted arrest, but they decide to let it slide because he killed some mutual enemies in “Chapter 6.”

Many have criticized The Force Awakens (2015) for introducing The First Order (AKA the new Empire) seemingly out of nowhere. But now it appears they were doing the galaxy a service!

So that’s “Chapter 10,” S2:E2 of The Mandalorian: super fun episode with a lot of small details making it worth the rewatch!

Overall solid episode: 9.8/10

Oh, and there’s a cameo by WALL-E at the 7:40 mark!