The Mandalorian 2×2: Chapter Ten – The Passenger

You want Baby Yoda fluff, a fun side adventure, AND plot? ‘The Passenger’ has you covered on all fronts.

Apparently, my ever so slight ‘complaint’ about the lack of Baby Yoda moments in last week’s episode (which honestly was a pretty minor grumble) was heard and I have thusly been rewarded with a ton of cute baby in ‘The Passenger’. Thank you, Disney Gods. This is what I needed to soothe the stress of this bizarre and never-ending week. Seriously! It’s been stressful and this was a lovely tension release.

His cute behavior had a somewhat dark overtone, however, as much of his fluffy fun moments consisted of him eating the eggs that are apparently the last of their lineage. That’s dark, man. But he’s somehow still cute? Help. I’m so conflicted. Mando needs to get the baby some quality snacky snacks so he doesn’t eat a species to extinction on accident. Get the baby some chicky nuggies.

Our Mando is tasked with bringing a passenger to the nearby planet Trask, where she can reunite with her husband and have her eggs fertilized. What I absolutely love about the frog lady is that, despite being a non-humanoid alien with a clear language barrier with our protagonist, she’s still hella smart and has a strong personality. This is one of the things that the Star Wars franchise tends to do best when given the chance, but more often than not they lean towards humanoid creatures that speak the same language for convenience. I appreciate these moments when we get them, though. It helps make this vast galaxy feel more realistic.

Things go sideways for our Mando and Baby Yoda crew before they can reach their destination. They crash land on an ice planet after attempting to evade rebel forces and find themselves with an incredibly broken ship and not much of a game plan. Of course, this ice planet gives us more of a chance to see adorable Baby Yoda being adorable, so not all is lost. We get to see the child wandering around in the frigid cold, shivering and waddling through the snow, and once again looking for food (please get him chicky nuggies). This search for food makes things go even more sideways as it awakens a cave full of monsters. Because of course, things can’t be easy for our Mando and Baby Yoda team. Trouble seems to find them.

As an arachnophobe, however, I’ve gotta say ‘The Passenger’ isn’t an episode I will be able to watch more than once. The major conflict of the episode features spider-like creatures that made me twitch and physically recoil from the screen. There are a lot of episodes from a lot of shows that I just can’t go back to because of this severe phobia of mine, so I’m used to it, but it still sucks.

Thankfully, most of the actual plot we got is taken care of at the beginning of the episode so if I need to look back at something to jog my memory on a plot detail, I can probably avoid subjecting myself to those multi-legged nightmare monsters. That is, unless those two rebel pilots that shot off all those terrors and that brief scene holds some significance that I’ll have to flip back to later… in which case I’m screwed. Let’s hope that’s not the case, aye?

We may be inching ever closer to the ongoing plot making some major progress, however. The passenger’s husband apparently has some information on where they can find some more Mandalorians, which should then lead to the ultimate goal of returning the child to his own people. As this passenger hasn’t yet been delivered to her final destination, this story will continue. I feel we’ll have less of a chance that this will be a fake-out like Cobb Vanth and actually lead to a real Mandalorian fairly soon. 

Of course, we’ve now left Tatooine, where we know one Mandalorian is currently living, but he’s not the only one. I won’t speculate on who else could be out there, but if you’ve been paying attention to casting rumors, you know where my mind is going right now. These tidbits of information can be tricky to discuss because it’s technically a spoiler, but it’s so widespread that it almost doesn’t feel like it anymore. But, to put it simply and quote non-baby Yoda, “there is another!”

I do hope we return to Tatooine at some point, though. I very much loved Cobb Vanth as a character, and you can’t tease the continued survival of Boba Fett and then ignore it for the rest of the season. Surely we head back there at some point for the latter plot point, if not both? If we use the first season as a model, we might have a lot of side adventures between here and there before everything ties back together. I’m not sure if this show will follow the formula they set in the first season, though, so anything goes, really. The Mandalorian defies expectations, so I’m hesitant to attempt to make a road map of what could lie ahead.

I’m also hoping we revisit some of the major bombshells from last season. We aren’t too far into the season so I don’t feel too terribly teased, but I’m curious as to the significance of introducing the Dark Saber into the plot at the end of last season. If you add that on top of the aforementioned casting rumors, there’s a lot of different directions we can go. I’m fine with them rolling out these details at their leisure, however. They haven’t led us astray with how they’ve chosen to plot things and I trust them to deliver.

I’m very much looking forward to next week to find out if we’re really getting another Mandalorian, or if we’re just heading towards a big fake out again. But, more importantly, I’m looking forward to more opportunities for cute Baby Yoda. I need to live up to my title as the Official Baby Yoda Correspondent of The Geekiary, after all. Please keep that content flowing!

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They’ve also written for Friends of Comic Con and is a 2019 Hugo Award winner for contributing fanfic on AO3. They identify as queer.

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