The Mandalorian had to make a stop somewhere familiar for us, right? This time, we get a chance to enjoy the sights and suns of Luke Skywalker’s home planet. At least the poor guy didn’t wind up in Docking Bay 94…
Summary
The Mandalorian gets tracked by a hunter who damages his ship badly. He manages to blow the guy up, but is forced to make an emergency landing on Tatooine, in Mos Eisley spaceport. There, he meets Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris), who runs Hangar 35 with a crew of pit droids. The Mandalorian won’t allow the droids to work on his ship, but he promises that he’ll be able to pay Motto for her work. He leaves Baby Yoda aboard, but the kid wakes up and exits the ship, leading Motto to care for the kid with the assumption that the Mandalorian will pay her more. The Mandalorian heads to Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina and asks the bartender if there’s any work he can pick up. He’s informed that the Bounty Hunter’s Guild no longer operates on Tatooine, but there’s a kid at the bar named Toro Calican (Jake Cannavale) who has the lead on a job; he’s willing to give the Mandalorian all the money as long as he can take the credit, as the bounty will get him into the Guild.
They head out across the Dune Sea on speeder bikes and encounter Tusken Raiders. The Mandalorian uses a form of sign language to communicate with them, asking for safe passage across their lands in exchange for Toro’s binocs. They encounter a dewback dragging a hunter who tried to nab this bounty—her name is Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), a mercenary who has worked for a lot of very bad people across the galaxy. The Mandalorian and Toro manage to get the drop on her by using flash charges to blind her. They lose one of the speeder bikes, so the dewback mount is needed. Toro insists that the Mandalorian retrieves it, refusing to trust him. While he’s gone, Fennec talks to Toro, and tells him all about the Mandalorian’s little escapade, specifically how he and his bounty are wanted by the Guild. She offers to help him out, and he repays her by murdering her, heading back on the speeder bike.
The Mandalorian returns on the dewback and finds Fennec’s dead body. Guessing what’s gone wrong, he heads back to the hangar and finds Toro holding baby Yoda and Motto hostage. He tells Motto to cuff the Mandalorian, and she realizes that he’s holding a flash charge in his hand. He uses it to briefly blind Toro, then shoots him dead. Baby Yoda makes it out unscathed. The Mandalorian takes credits off of Toro’s body and uses them to pay Motto a hefty sum before leaving Tatooine.
Commentary
I nearly spit out my coffee when the Mandalorian said the words “That’s my line,” after the other hunter said he could “bring them in warm or cold” at the start of the episode. My sweet beskar-encased meeiloorun danish, that is not a cool thing to say or mutter to yourself. You are such a beautiful loser. You wanna be cool, but you only achieve it when you’re not thinking so hard.
Look, you can call an episode “The Gunslinger”, but when it doesn’t have much actual gunslinging in it, that choice feels a tad performative. While this episode has it gems—they all have them—this particular chapter feels a little undercooked in terms of intrigue. I’m guessing that’s because it’s just a stepping stone to the next big thing. Which is a little unfortunate because why would you put Ming-Na Wen in anything only to drop her so quickly, and with so little preamble. I suppose there’s always a slight chance she could come back, but it’s not likely from that wound. Fennec Shand seemed like too good of a character to waste.
We are left with a mystery figure coming across her body. My guess is that it’s Giancarlo Esposito’s character? He’s playing an important figure named Moff Gideon, but we haven’t met him yet, so it’s probably either him or someone connected to him. We’re in the second half of the season, so we’re going to need to come up on the big players pretty soon for the finale.
Okay, what was the deal with that sign language section? Is it particular to the Sand People, or is there a galactic five-fingered-hands basic sign language that people know all over the place? If not, why would our guy know their specific form of sign language? Also, is this how the Sand People communicate with each other, or just with outsiders? Whatever the answers, this whole section was excellent. It was also great to see the Mandalorian recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous peoples—he knows that the Tusken Raiders are either native to Tatooine or settled there ages before anyone else, and respects their rights to their land. We can’t say the same about the majority of moisture farmers on the planet, or the Hutts, or the rest of the local population.
Continuing its penchant for exceptional guest stars, Amy Sedaris’s Peli Motto was another standout in this episode, from her no-nonsense demeanor to her incredible eighties hair. (There’s something especially tickling about Star Wars, which is a franchise built on homage and references and pastiche, choosing to homage the era that it came from by planting design choices like that. I keep thinking of little Cindel Towani, with her curls and legwarmers.) The fact that the Mandalorian keeps running into folx who are just as kind (and gruff) and he is really does make this show something special.
Our lovely Mando is clearly feeling fatherhood wear on him more and more with all the trouble they keep running into. (But also don’t leave your baby in a locked compartment on your ship, especially not when it has the Force.) Poor sleep-starved space dad, taking a nap wherever he can get it. I’m actually very curious about when Mando woke up while Toro was mouthing off at his ostensibly sleeping form. He could have been awake well before, but it’s also possible that the HUD is programmed to wake him when someone gets close, or a blaster is pulled in range. The latter option is my preference because the idea of him waking up without moving a muscle for the purpose of freaking Toro out is priceless. That’s my kind of petty.
You know that Calican is going to be a problem from the outset, but it’s easy to underestimate just how much of a pain he could turn into. There’s something fun about watching a cocky jerk like Toro get what’s coming to him, but I do wish we knew a little more about him. He’s extremely young and all alone, and has a little bit of the typical Star Wars rogue setup about him. Sort of like an inverse Han—someone who actually means it when he says he’s out for himself. But the character overall does feel like a means to an end, which dampens his effectiveness a little.
We’ve now seen the Mandalorian’s distaste for droids come up twice, as he explicitly states he won’t let them near his ship or his cargo or his bounties. It’s a particular form of prejudice that the Star Wars universe loves to trot out because it seems more harmless than other forms of xenophobia—because droids often come off as funny and less than sentient. The problem is that we as an audience know that’s not true, so that particular prejudice never sits well with me. Hopefully that’s something our Mando will wise up on over time. Don’t shoot at pit droids, they don’t deserve your ire for doing their damned jobs. Plus they’re Motto’s only buddies.
Things and asides:
- We finally find out that the planet this whole circus started out on is called Navarro. It’s not a planet that’s ever been named before in the Star Wars universe to my knowledge, but it’s likely on the Outer Rim considering the other planets we’ve been seeing on the show.
- There are a lot of little easter eggs and name drops in the episode, including the Dune Sea, Beggar’s Canyon, and the pit droids who were first shown in Episode I as pit crews for podracers. It’s also the second time we’ve heard someone call another character a womp rat. (The first time was the previous episode, when the Mandalorian called Baby Yoda that due to his button-pushing.)
- The speeder bikes used by Toro and the Mandalorian are a very stripped down swoop model that we see all over the Star Wars galaxy. They’re lacking all the fun bells and whistles as they were clearly pretty darn cheap.
- The Mos Eisley cantina—Chalmun’s to the locals—used to have a strict “no-droid” policy, but now droids are the bartenders. Maybe the cantina has changed hands? New owner, new rules? The models of the bartenders are the same as EV-9D9, the droid who assigned droids to work at Jabba’s palace (and also tortured them). Her Legends canon story was… deeply disturbing.
- The stormtrooper helmets on spikes are a nice bit of visual set dressing in Mos Eisley that speaks to the ending of Return of the Jedi as shown in the Special Edition that came out in 1997 and continued into the later edits. In them, we see the populations around the galaxy happily revolting against Imperial forces once word of Palpatine’s demise has spread. In a few of those sequences, we see stormtroopers being lifted into the air by crowds. It seems joyful, but it likely leads to the sight we see here.
It’s safe to bet that next week is going to bring some heavy plot movement, so take a deep breath and gear up for Chapter 6…
Emmet Asher-Perrin has a lot of feelings about how much Tatooine has clearly changed in the absence of the Empire and Jabba the Hutt. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
This article is filled with typos. Too many to really list.
Two mediocre episodes in a row. I hope the show knows what it is doing. I’m not even sure what the overarching plot of this series is.
Why does the series need an over arching plot?
Way to put a spoiler right there in the title of the damn article…
This series is simply overrated…
@2 – To hold viewers’ attention? Every story needs a plot.
Pretty sure that Mando hates droids because he got orphaned by them,re: flashback scenes last ep? Not really rational to hate all droids because of that, but childhood trauma will do that…
I’m having fun inferring from the EV units tending bar that, thanks to the their line’s infamy (epitomized by Ms. 9D9), they can be bought at bargain-basement prices and thus find their way into all kinds of roles on the fringes
I agree about the overarching plot, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t just a slow burn, which I’m OK with. This has an old-school TV feel to it with the, well, “episodic” nature more akin to the old Westerns on TV or really just about any pre-Hill Street Blues show (with exceptions). As such I thought this episode worked much more successfully within that format than last week’s, which tried to stuff too much unearned emotionality/bonding into a too-brief time period. Here, no attempt was made to create any bond between the “partners” (“I can’t believe he betrayed our hero!”) or the “mechanic/babysitter” (say, by having her all choked up over saying goodbye to Baby Yoda). I’m a bit more optimistic that this isn’t the last we see of Fennec, pinning my hopes on the old “stomach shot” + sci-fi tech equation. A guy can dream . . .
I’m hoping Fennic Shand was only mostly dead, as the mysterious person visiting what looked like her body at the end seemed to hint her story is not over. Otherwise we didn’t see nearly enough of Ming-Na Wen. It was great to visit Tatooine again. Is it my imagination, or is Baby Yoda becoming more vocal?
I loved seeing Tatooine again – it’s great that we’re getting plenty of other new worlds, but it’s always fun to take a trip back to the old familiar haunts to make it feel even more connected. That said, I’d love to know more. What’s gone on on with Tatooine now that Jabba and the Empire are gone? Does it have a certain amount of fame and tourism due to being Luke Skywalker’s home planet? Are there tours out to the old moisture farm or Tosche Station or what have you?
I did notice the cantina has a MUCH different ambience now. No music, either :)
The set dressing was really quite fantastic – my husband and I both noticed that the hangar bays had the same numbering as 94 did in the original. I rolled my eyes a bit at the pit droids, but my prequel loving self appreciated the homage (and to the high groound ;) ). Mando also said ‘she’s no good to us dead’ which made me chuckle a bit.
Yes, I do agree that I’d like to get more of a feel for where this is all going (and I’m not totally sure Fennec is gone) but I’m also enjoying the episodes as they come. One thing I did notice was that there was a distinctive jingling sound effect (like spurs) when the mysterious figure approached Shand…which used to be the effect used for Boba Fett. I don’t think it is him, per se, but they’ve been pretty intentional about other samples from the Ben Burtt library of sounds/dialouge (to the point where it sometimes distracts me).
Have to admit, I was hoping to see a live krayt dragon.
The link for the cannon of EV-9D9 leads to a Tor story about Mos Eisley.
Agree that the last 2 episodes have been mediocre. If not for the great bouts of nostalgia, I would stop watching.
Yeah, I agree with @6, I think Mando’s dislike of droids is ‘cause the Super Battle Droid killed his family.
Actually, doesn’t it make sense that bad memories of the Clone Wars are why so many are droid-ist?
I have been resolutely turning my eyes away from all things Star Wars for a while, for assorted reasons. But my husband and daughter have been watching this, and I’ve been loving it. The pacing and spare storytelling are such a balm. Not everything has to go at lightspeed or at the tempo of a Jedi battle. And the impression of the GFFA as a place, in which life goes on even when the audience isn’t looking, has never been more clear.
If Mando had been shooting at the pit droids, they’d be dead. I’ve been assuming the anti-droid attitude was a general Mandalorian thing, not specific to our guy. Like, maybe the Empire used some droid variant of General Order 66 to have them kill Mandalorians. I mean, one problem with droids is that they are *designed* to be programmed.
@3: Exactly. Ruined what could have been a nice surprise for me when this article was up hours before most people will sit down to watch the episode.
I’m starting to really wonder how these tracking devices work. They seem to broadcast some unknown–but apparently far–amount for the hunters to still be honing in on Mando & kid–and they started beeping the *minute* M. took the kid out of the client’s base. At the same time, if they were *that* powerful, why would bounty hunters even be needed?
Dear Tor.com,
For future articles could you post a simple logo and title that reads something like “Review: Mandalorian, Episode 5.” Because you did spoil the surprise for those of us who hadn’t seen the episode yet. Spoilers are fine within the article itself, but putting it in the title of the article where any visitor can see it as they scroll down is bad form.
Droids are looked down upon because the Separatist army was made up of droids in the clone wars. Keep in mind that to the galaxy at large the Separatists lost the war as few know that it was Palpatine behind it all. It’s not surprising that a generation later many would have undone opinions of droids after growing up during the clone wars
Do we know that all droids are sentient? I would think that only applies to some advanced droids. In any case, since a droid can be programmed with secret instructions, any droid that you didn’t personally program is a security risk, and it is perfectly rational for the Mandalorian to not trust other people’s droids. The fact that droids can be programmed means that you can only imperfectly map contemporary Earth racial or cultural prejudices back onto the droids.
It was okay. It’s interesting seeing Tusken Raiders depicted as anything other than berserk monsters. Even stories that give them an interior life tend to make them innately alien and hostile to everyone else.
This show though, man. It gives us wonders like Carl Weathers, and Werner Herzog, and Amy Sedaris in STAR WARS, and then it shuffles them offstage after a few good scenes, hanging the show instead on a taciturn guy with no face and a baby that doesn’t talk. I feel like every character we have seen other than The Mandalorian probably has a more interesting story to tell than he does, even Toro or Krill-boi.
-20-
That’s where the western part of “space western” comes into play. The taciturn loner is a staple of those movies, particularly the Italian westerns of the Sixties.
I love the show and I’m actually super happy that they’re bringing in B- and C-list actors for one-off appearances like this. This isn’t an ensemble show; it’s called THE Mandalorian for a reason.
Also, it’s called “The Gunslinger” because the idiot kept twirling his blaster around his finger. It was kinda one of his defining quirks.
Also, also, this: “If not, why would our guy know their specific form of sign language?” – because he’s a successful bounty hunter who travels the galaxy and is extremely knowledgable about the important planets. Tatooine may be a backwater, but it’s still a hub for crime and Mando would have spent time there over the years. He was on his way there to begin with – unless we’re expected to believe he was traveling to some other place and happened to get shot up within visual range of Tatooine. We can infer a few things.
If Ming-Na Weh comes back, it won’t be in the first season. IMDB shows her for one episode.
Adding my voice to the chorus of “please don’t spoil a show in the headline within hours of the release.”
Mando’s problem with droids is pretty explicitly clone wars era trauma.
Ming Na Wen deserves so much more and better than this one episode gave her.
Praying they weren’t lying about Boba Fett absolutely not being in this show. Let him stay dead forever.
@23: IMDB doesn’t have complete insider knowledge on films, and can be edited by folks with no knowledge whatsoever. It isn’t a guarantee of an actor’s appearance or nonappearance.
Will also add for posterity that I was a little disappointed to be spoiled by the title – yes, it happens within about a minute of the episode, but it would have been more fun to genuinely surprised.
@5 Austin for the 30 minutes you are watching an episode, sure (and even then vignettes and slice-of-life can be very interesting to watch).
But why the insistence on an *over-arching* plot?
I grew up watching a lot of Japanese and British television, so I saw many shows that were a single story told over a season of around twelve to twenty-ish episodes. I preferred that to the then current American style of meandering, never-ending story telling.
But not every show needs a “big bad”, or to have A and B plots where one serves the episode and one serves the longer plot and so on. Isn’t it stifling to always have a single style of story telling?
I find it refreshing to return to a format where I don’t have to care about missing an episode here or there, and the protagonist can just do “cool” things on screen instead of worry about character development and arcs.
I’ll add my voice to the “I’m enjoying this show” chorus. I like that it’s on the short side, and I find it refreshing to have a show that’s pretty episodic after so many serialized shows recently. Not to say I don’t like serialized shows, but I like having both. Why limit ourselves?
The Mandalorian is a fun foray into the Star Wars universe with smaller stakes and scope, and I think they’re doing a great job with it. I look forward to watching every weekend.
My one complaint is that the night scenes are so visually DARK on my tv at home. We’ve had to up the brightness on our tv for this show, and it was hard to see anything in the Ming-Na Wen fight scene (which is a crying shame as she’s amazing; I hope she’s only “mostly dead”).
The problem is that we as an audience know that’s not true, so that particular prejudice never sits well with me.
But it is true. Droids are shown to have gone for a long time with no memory wipe to demonstrate true sentience, and those droids are few and far between. In this show, droids have also been shown to be disloyal, and primary concerned with their own safety over others, changing sides at the end of a blaster. Not all droids are Artoo, Threepio and BB8. The droids we know are exceptions to the behavior for the vast majority of droids, and that’s necessary for storytelling. You can’t make compelling characters out of robots unless they demonstrate human characteristics for us to empathize with.
It’s an interesting discussion in regards to the SW universe, and OH BOY would I love some content about it, but it’s not going to come from this show. Mandalorians have an understandable distrust of droids, who by and large can not comprehend the Way they live by, and are therefore suspect, and it’s not changing anytime soon.
The cantina scene cracked me up. Either L3-37’s droid revolution came to Tatooine, or they “took ur jobs” and the bigot proprietor was right to be concerned. Either way, I LOVED it.
@9AlanBrown, He is, and it’s one of the details that makes me love this show so much. I was bothered a bit at first that he wasn’t vocal, but the more I considered it, it makes sense. His development has got to be all messed up, with his first 50 years having been isolated from the social contact necessary to development. So it made sense he didn’t make much noise, who had ever spoken to him? But after spending several weeks with other children, he’s now becoming vocal. I’m sure we will hear his first words before the season is over at this point.
@20, I also loved the part with the Tusken Raiders. I like humanizing them, showing that they can be negotiated with. I think the only SW content that’s considered that was KOTOR, and even then, if you do negotiate you miss out on a ton of loot over it, so it feels like the game saying you shouldn’t.
A deaf actor portrayed the signing Tusken, FYI.
The observation that Toro is an “inverse” of Han is interesting. He was sitting in Han’s booth seat when he’s first shown. The visuals inside the cantina were amazing. I loved the absence of the droid detector at the entrance that was your first hint that the rules had changed.
We saw a fair amount of droid behaviour in The Clone Wars. They are sapient, friendly, helpful, and can develop sophisticated personalities –and will absolutely commit war crimes if they are programmed to do so (and physically capable).
“This is a lot easier when they don’t shoot back.”
“I still can’t seem to hit anything.”
@27, yes the darkness of the show has been a real problem for my mom who is now watching it on her laptop. She missed so many cool visual references and Baby Yoda moments in the first three episodes.
@31 – hah, my husband and I both pointed out the missing droid detector and then he was like, ‘hey, get out of Han’s seat!’.
I LOLd at the idea that L3’s revolution spread that far.
I also thought getting to see some additional Tusken culture (outside of their hazing ritual) was kinda neat; and it doesn’t surprse me that the Mandalorian would have some prior experience there.
@27, lots of people leave their TV at the factory default settings, and these often need to be tweaked for your particular environment. If you’re seeing a lot of pixelization in the dark scenes, adjust the contrast and brightness till they vanish, or close enough while still looking decent. Computers, tablets, and cell phones frequently don’t have good tools for adjusting these settings, so they very well may be too dark and there’s not much you can do about it on those devices.
@26 – I get it, but for me, an episodic show is not appointment TV. I’m watching for character development and to see what will happen with Baby Yoda. These last two episodes feel more like a live action Samurai Jack show.
We’ve now seen the Mandalorian’s distaste for droids come up twice, as he explicitly states he won’t let them near his ship or his cargo or his bounties. It’s a particular form of prejudice that the Star Wars universe loves to trot out because it seems more harmless than other forms of xenophobia—because droids often come off as funny and less than sentient. The problem is that we as an audience know that’s not true, so that particular prejudice never sits well with me.
I don’t know that the show is presenting this as an admirable trait in him; while he’s ending up being something of a hero, there’s no indication that he’s meant to be seen as flawless (far otherwise!). I’d really like to know, though, whether this is a Mandalorian thing or a trait of our Mandalorian in particular, and whether or not there is a historical background for it.
@37, droids look to have wiped out his family/people as seen in his flashbacks, so I think this is just personal. He seems willing to work with them if there’s no other choice, as he teamed up with an IG unit in the first episode, so it looks like if he can avoid them, he will.
I haven’t finished reading the Aftermath series, but could the boots in the end belong to Cobb Vanth? I’m assuming the Aftermath books and Mando timelines are concurrent.
Yeah, this was fun, but it’s the weakest episode of the show so far. Ming-Na Wen is wasted on this… unless she comes back.
@Emily: The planet is Nevarro, not Navarro. I agree that the article title should have avoided the spoiler.
@22 – danielmclark: They appeared to market the show as an ensemble cast with the Mandalorian putting together a crew with Kuuil, Carga, and Dune.
@30 – Aeryl: I definitely appreciated the take on the Sand People, and that it also was a deaf actor.
@39 – Kevbot: Doubtful.
The Hunter who attacked the Mandalorian at the strat of the episode seemed to be using a Naboo fighter. Did anyone else notice this?
Also, I was a bit disappointed by the quality of the visual effects in the explosion – very low-budget 80s sci-fi, not something I would have expected from Star Wars.
I just read that Pascal is not always playing the Mandalorian. Episode 4, for instance, was performed by someone else. Not sure how I feel about that…
@41. Yeah, Star Wars was never less than mid-budget 80s sci-fi. ;)
@41 – Sam: Yeah, it had some similarities, yes.
@42 – Austin: I don’t think that’s true. It might be true for some long shots or additional takes, but not for an entire episode.