2x04 Chapter 12: The Siege

[7.3/10] This is the first episode of season 2 that genuinely felt like filler to me. It’s not like the episode is bad or anything. What we get is perfectly entertaining, if not exactly as engrossing as some other episodes. It’s also not like we don’t get some hints and contributions to the broader arc.

Most notably, we learn that Moff Gideon is directing the Imperial Scientist we met last season, trying to transfuse blood from Baby Yoda into various troopers and other guinea pigs. It’s not going well, with the reports that recipients degrade quickly and that the relevant m-numbers (midichlorians, presumably?) are not hitting the expected targets. Presumably, Gideon is trying to create his own force-users to be able to combat Luke, or to simply have a means to amass his own power. What’s more, Djarin not only learns that Gideon is still alive, but that the Empire is still after The Child. That’s all significant stuff.

But most of it is learned in a grand total of five minutes during a 37-minute episode. There’s other cute material as Mando returns to Nevarro. In particular, seeing a Threepio-type droid teaching students on a reformed settlement, while Baby Yoda steals food from other kids using his force powers, is pretty darn cute. The same goes for Mando trying to coach his little tyke on how to repair the ship’s wiring, with predictably disastrous but adorable results.

The problem is that most of the episode plays like a lot of “Hey! Remember these characters from season 1!” Theoretically there’s a goal and motivation here. Greef Karga needs Mando’s help because he wants Nevarro to be free, and that can’t happen while there’s still an Imperial outpost on the planet. Mando wants to help, not only as recompense for Greef helping to fix the Razor Crest, but because there’s trust and friendship between them now. There’s a point to the mission, even if it’s basic.

And yet, it feels like the episode and the season would be almost as good regardless of their journey to blow up the Empire’s lab on the planet. The scenes of Mando and company taking out stormtroopers, ramming their way out of a tight spot, and go toe-to-toe with some troopers on speeder bikes are all capably directed by Carl Weathers himself. But they lack the verve, excitement, and stakes of the similar siege we saw last last week with Mando and Bo-Katan.

Part of that’s the side characters. The episode hints at Cara Dune (played by conspiracy-peddling anti-masker Gina Carano) balancing between her new role as the marshal of Nevarro and her old loyalties to the Republic, but there’s not much there, and she doesn’t do much beyond smash stormtroopers and feed a little ferret creature. Likewise, we get the return of Horatio Sanz’s blue alien guy from the first scene of the series, and while he’s not bad as a fumbling volun-told ally, there’s not much about him joining the old milieu that’s truly necessary.

We do get some cool dogfights between the Razor Crest and the tie fighters, which is good, and I suppose there’s nothing wrong with checking in with the major characters from last season. But that’s all “The Siege” really is outside of a handful of arc-relevant moments. “See, they’re still here, and have vaguely new roles!” The adventure itself that The Mandalorian puts them on isn’t as engaging as it needs to be to add more to the episode than a familiar drop-in.

(Oh, and I do like that Giancarlo Esposito is up to his old tricks, having a character place a tracker on a person of interest. It's a good setup at least.)

Overall, the production and base-level of quality of this show still prevails, but it’s the first one I felt like could have been edited down into something more succinct without losing much in terms of plot, character, or atmosphere.

Another action-packed episode with some funny scenes in between. Mando's ex-boss and the warrior woman Cara are back, it turns out that she became the marshal of the city and introduced order there, we see her killing some brutal creatures who are about to eat a small critter(which becomes Cara's pet of sorts). These creatures are shown plundering the former Mandalorian base so it looks like the Mandalorian lady smith is dead? It's a pity since she was quite an interesting character. There is some humour involving baby Yoda as when he "helps" Mando to repair the ship but actually destroys something (good that he wasn't hurt in the process) and later on at school. Cara established a school in the former cantina and Mando leaves the baby there when he joins his friends to participate in a new adventure. I guess the baby is still to young to learn at school since he doesn't speak any understandable language yet (I wonder how old he is in human years?), but we get a glimpse of the school where the kids are taught by a robot. However, they still seem to be enjoying French macarons, which the baby steals from one of the boys using the Force (I don't think it made him very popular among other pupils). Meanwhile Mando and his friends are headed to destroy which is supposed to be an almost abandoned empire base, except it isn't so abandoned. Action sequences with lots of fighting, shooting and running away ensue. The most important thing during the quest is that the characters learn that the Moff guy is alive, so Mando goes to fetch the baby (I thought that there would be more problems saving the baby and that the school was probably besieged by the Stormtroopers by the time he got there but apparently he took him back to the ship with no problems) while the rest of the good guys continues to fight, with Mando coming to their succour later on. Congratulations to the repair guys for their speed, as it seems the ship was being repaired not longer than a day and it works really great. At the end Cara gets visited by some guy who takes down the witness accounts of the battle with the imperials (I guess it is obvious for Star Wars fans what his function is but it is all green to me), and then we get back to the principal bad guy who is told by some officer woman (for a moment I though that maybe this is the Mandalorian lady who wants to destroy the Moff guy and his army from the inside) tells him she planted a tracker on Mando's ship, so I guess there is a lot of trouble in store for Mando and the baby. Apparently the Moff guy needed the baby's blood for some experiments and wants to retrieve him.

The direction here slips a little. One of the trickiest things to pull off is rising action. You have to nail the perfect level of intensity escalation to get the audience to feel the stakes and tension rising. And the sequence when Greef and Cara are escaping the base is a bit dry. The reliance on wipes to transition back and forth between Mando and Greef/Cara are a bit heavy and it kills the pacing. I understand the impulse, but a straight cut keeps things flowing so much better.

The use of wipes in this franchise has always been a staple and a stylistic decision, but the biggest difference is how sparingly the films use them. It's for clean scene transitions at the end of a mini arc. But the series has used them far more frequently and it feels more like they're using them as a stylistic signifier than anything else. That's your nit-pick from an editor for the day.

On the whole this episode flows pretty well, even if it feels a bit like filler. The kernel of importance for this episode of course is the understanding the empire is still looking for the kid and they need him for some sort of experiment. Vital information, absolutely. And even further, the way that kernel is written into the episode as a whole is honestly pretty remarkable considering the opening half is interesting for world building (how the planet has been cleaned up post-season one) and the last act is incredibly solid from an action standpoint. Weathers has been doing TV for a few years and it's clear he's got some chops, even if the second act struggles slightly with pacing.