A father and his very irresponsible son.
Written by Jon Favreau
Directed by Peyton Reed
Release date: November 6, 2020
The Mandalorian gets a lead on a Mandalorian covert, but to get the information he has to ferry someone to the location at sublight speeds.
Tropes:
- Aerial Canyon Chase: Mando flies into a canyon to lose the X-Wings, diving into a small cave so they'll shoot by him.
- An Aesop:
- Mando is seen by the Child as a father figure, and that means he needs to set a good example by following through on his promises. Taking care of the Child is far more than just keeping him safe from danger.
- Mando learns another valuable lesson in this episode: feed your kids, or they're gonna feed themselves. Having a hungry Child in proximity of his favorite food is a recipe for disaster.
- The Child also learns a valuable lesson: you eat random things you find, bad things might happen to you. The spiders try to get their revenge on the group for his snacking on one of their offspring. The Child seems to realize his mistake, since at the end of the episode, he goes back to eating the Frog Lady's eggs.
- Ascended Meme: For years, Christian fans have joked that they automatically answer "May the Force be with you" with "And also with you." Here, it actually happens.
- Big Damn Heroes: Wolf and Carson, the two New Republic X-Wing pilots that Mando attempts to flee from early on, show up to save him from the swarm of attacking ice spiders.
- Black Comedy:
- The Child constantly eating the eggs, which despite them not being fertilized is still essentially him eating other children while their mother is present.
- The situation is very serious as the ice spiders are overrunning the Razor Crest, but the Child being attacked by a hatchling and being unable to get it off because of his stubby arms is good for a laugh.
- Call-Back: The events of "The Prisoner" come back to haunt (and save) Mando.
- The New Republic recognizes his ship from the prison break when he pings their X-Wings.
- Zero's scrapped corpse is still in his hold. The frog lady uses the vocalizer in his head as a translator for her and Mando to communicate.
- The pilots note that he turned in three criminals in exchange for the one he freed, and tried to save Lieutenant Davan's life.
- Censored Child Death: Played with. While the Child does eat some eggs of the "Frog lady", it should be stressed that they are unfertilized and not technically "children" yet. (This is specifically why the "Frog lady" is desperate to reach her husband within a certain time frame; so she still has a chance to fertilize them into offspring.)
- Chekhov's Gunman: Wolf and Carson, last seen trying to find Mando in the canyons, turn up at the climax and help against the ice spiders, having tracked Mando down just in time.
- Continuity Nod: In the opener, the Mandalorian's armor is still covered in Krayt dragon goop from the previous chapter.
- Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: The New Republic pilots do this to the mother ice spider just as it's about to penetrate the hull of the Razor Crest cockpit.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Pretty much the entire plot of crashing the ship and dealing with the ice spiders could have been avoided if the Mandolorian had just complied with the X-Wing pilots instead of running, as we find out later while he is wanted, he isn't exactly top priority or anything and the pilots ultimately let him go with a warning. They even imply he might be able to expunge his warrant if he plays his cards right, thanks to his heroic actions during the heist that got him in trouble.
- Creator Cameo: Dave Filoni returns as Trapper Wolf.
- Don't Make Me Destroy You: The only reason Mando is able to land at all is because the X-Wings really don't want to shoot him down if they can help it, even warning him to that effect as he tries to evade them.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: The X-wings perform a starship variant once they recognize Razor Crest as the ship involved in the prison transport hijack. After cutting over to a private channel, the S-foils pop open and Mando (and the audience) know that shit is about to get real.
- Dramatic Irony: Mando awkwardly says "May the Force be with you" to the New Republic pilots. He is clearly aware of its use as a greeting in the New Republic, but at the same time is ignorant of what the Force itself actually is or that it's the source of the Child's powers.
- Finger Wag: When Mando and the Child find Frog Lady bathing in a hot spring, the Child begins hungrily going after some of her eggs floating near him in the water. Mando does this to shoo him away from the eggs, telling him no.
- Funny Background Event: When Mando and Peli are discussing whether or not she can vouch for "Frog Lady", said-lady can be seen boarding the Razor Crest in the background... with the Child scuttling up the ramp behind her in pursuit of her eggs.
- Gallows Humor: In the end, after finally getting the ship to the bare minimum requirements to fly in space and with only the cockpit airtight, the Mando tells the frog lady to wake him if anything happens... or if the cockpit door gets ripped off by the vacuum of space. When the lady starts freaking out, he says he was kidding, because if the door got ripped off they would all be dead thus negating the need to wake him. And on that comforting note, he reclines in his seat and tells her "Sweet dreams."
- Giant Spider: Mando and the Child are attacked by ice spiders, which as the name suggest, is an alien species of giant spiders, though some of them are not-quite-giant-yet youngsters and many of them are just small hatchlings. The matriarch is, of course, enormous.
- Gunship Rescue: Just as the matriarch ice spider attacks the Razor Crest, the New Republic X-Wings arrive and shoot it dead.
- Hero Antagonist: The New Republic pilots are just trying to keep the peace, and understandably pursue Mando when they realize his ship was involved in a prison break. At multiple points they could have killed Mando, but choose not to because they're just trying to enforce the law.
- Hidden Depths: The Frog Lady for the most part is just someone looking to meet with her husband and have her eggs fertilized to continue her family legacy. Then she hot-wires Zero's vocabulator to translate her speech to the Mandalorian and gives him an earful for putting her future children at risk, invoking the Mandalorian code ("always keep your word") as she does so. She also carries a small holdout blaster, and is a crack shot at getting even the smallest of targets.
- Hope Spot: Mando is on the verge of lifting off when the giant ice spider crashes down on top of the Razor Crest, slamming it down again.
- Immediate Sequel: The episode begins as Mando and the Child are returning to Mos Eisley, a few minutes or hours after the events of the previous episode.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The New Republic pilots are ridiculously precise with their blasters.
- Insectoid Aliens: After returning to Mos Eisley, Mando finds Peli playing cards with an insect alien she calls "Dr. Mandible".
- I Surrender, Suckers: Mando trades his jetpack to the Jawa bounty hunter in exchange for the Child's life. As soon as he has the Child back, Mando remotely activates the jetpack and sends the bounty hunter on a fatal flight.
- Karmic Jackpot: The Mandalorian's actions in "The Prisoner" do come back to haunt him in that the X-Wing pilots realize he was on the job and there's a warrant out for his arrest. However, at the same time, him capturing three other criminals and attempting to save the life of the prison transport pilot balances things out in the minds of the two pilots, and they let him go.
- Kill It with Fire: The Mandalorian's most effective weapon against the spiders is his wrist-mounted flamethrower since it spreads quickly among the swarm given their proximity to each other.
- Language Barrier: Mando can't speak "frog", and the "frog lady" can't speak anything else even though she understands what Mando is saying, so communication is non-existent until she modifies Zero's head to act as a translator.
- Last of Her Kind: Played With. While the "Frog Lady" isn't the last of her species, she is the last of her specific family lineage. She hopes to avoid ending her family line by taking her eggs (which is her last cycle of creating them) to her husband in order to have her final batch of eggs fertilized into children.
- Leitmotif: The music that plays at the end of the episode when the X-wing pilots leave Mando is a slow trap arrangement of John Williams' "March of the Resistance", which first appeared in The Force Awakens.
- Makes Us Even: The New Republic pilots are willing to let Mando off the hook for giving them the run-around, on account of delivering three criminals into their custody even if he had a hand in freeing one. The fact he tried to save Lieutenant Davan also helps.
- Mama Bear: The Frog Lady gives Mando an earful for putting her future children at risk.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: When the matriarch ice spider presses her mouth against the Razor Crest cockpit, we see several concentric rings of teeth inside.
- Mundane Utility: Peli cooks Mando's chunk of krayt meat using the heat of a running jet engine.
- Mythology Gag:
- Peli's Treadwell droid cooking a chunk of meat with a podracer engine is a smaller-scale version of the ronto haunch being cooked at the Ronto Roasters restaurant in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.
- A Treadwell droid was first seen being offered for sale by the Jawas in A New Hope.
- The giant spiders are styled after the krykna, previously introduced in Star Wars Rebels, that are themselves pretty much exactly the same species as the Dagobah-native Knobby White Spider from the now Legends book The Wildlife of Star Wars. The ice spiders are actually depicted as much closer to their appearance in said book, itself based on old Ralph McQuarrie concept art.
- No, Except Yes: Peli does this twice in rapid succession, telling Din that the information is free except for a finder's fee, and that there is good news but no bad news; however, there is some bad news after all.
- Oh, Crap!: Mando has a silent one when he pings the X-Wings, they switch channels, and after a moment lock their S-foils in attack position.
- Papa Wolf: In the opening scene, a criminal holds the Child at knifepoint and demands Mando's jetpack in trade. Mando replies that if he hurts the Child, "there is no place you will be able to hide from me." Sure enough, once the Child is safely in Mando's arms, he activates the jetpack and uses it to send the criminal on a fatal flight.
- Projectile Webbing: The ice spiders can shoot silk-like strands; the big one uses a web to cut Mando's escape, and a smaller one glues his blaster to the ship's wall. After shortly invading the Razor Crest, the spider swarm leaves web everywhere.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The X-Wing pilots acknowledge that there's an arrest warrant against Din Djarin, but since he tried to save a Lieutenant and captured the criminals that killed him, they agree to let him go with a warning to fix the Razor Crest's transponder. Though, seemingly as a form of petty revenge for the trouble he gave them, they refuse to help Mando fix his ship. They also are understanding during the traffic stop in space, being entirely reasonable about him not having a beacon for his ship and only becoming hostile when he runs. Even then, he's given multiple warnings before they might shoot.
- Refuge in Audacity: When the X-Wing pilots indicate that they're willing to let Din go because he tried to save a lieutenant and helped capture three wanted criminals, he says "How about I forego those three bounties and you help seal my hull". They just snort, tell him to get his transponder fixed, and leave, indicating he's lucky he's not being arrested and asking for help on top of that is just too much.
- Running Gag: The Child eating the frog lady's eggs. And eating things in general, really, since he also eats an ice spider hatchling, pissing off the rest. By the end of the episode, it looks like the whole incident has taught him not to eat random people's eggs... and then he sneaks down another of the Frog Lady's.
- Running on All Fours: The "Frog Lady" usually keeps a humanoid stance, but being short-legged she drops to all fours and start using awkward frog leaps to run away faster from the ice spiders.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The heroes travel from one sector to another at explicitly sublight speeds. All sources besides this show indicate that a "sector" comprises multiple star systems, so even at 99.9999% the speed of light it'd take them years to get from one sector to another.
- Self-Referential Humor: The giant ant-like alien Peli Motto plays sabacc against is an in-joke from the episode's director Peyton Reed, who directed Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, in which there's a giant domesticated ant at Scott Lang's house.
- Sensing You Are Outmatched: Mando doesn't consider for a moment trying to fight the New Republic's X-Wings. The Razor Crest is a gunship as old as (if not older than) Mando himself and the X-Wings are military-grade space fighters that not only outgun his ship individually but likely have equal if not superior shielding.
- Shout-Out: The spider eggs open similarly to Xenomorph eggs.
- Starfish Aliens: The "ice spiders" appear to have radially-symmetric bodies, which would make them more like jellyfish or starfish than arachnids.
- The Swarm: The giant matriarch ice spider is threatening, but the swarm of its offspring is just as dangerous, being too numerous for a single blaster or even a flamethrower to dispatch. For Mando and Frog Lady, their only chance is to reach the cockpit and barricade themselves inside.
- Translator Microbes: Frog Lady talks into Zero's vocabulator and English/Galactic Basic comes out of his head for Mando to understand.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: After an episode that's generally goofier and more lighthearted than usual, things take a turn for the scary when the Child ends up waking up a gigantic nest of alien spiders.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The "Frog Lady" lets the Mandalorian have it for refusing to try and get the ship ready faster despite the fact that they'll freeze, especially after he gave his word that he would get her and her eggs to their destination. This, along with her mocking him for not following the Mandalorian Code, makes him get up and start fixing the ship.Frog Lady: [speaking through Q9-0] I thought honoring one's word was part of the Mandalorian Code? I guess those are just stories for children...
- Zerg Rush: Most of the ice spiders are hatchlings, but there's so damn many of them that fighting them is a losing proposition, and that's not counting the big one Mando can't kill.
