Yahoo Finance The Mandalorian is back—and it doesn't disappoint
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The internet’s favorite puppet is back.
Season two of the Disney+ phenomenon “The Mandalorian” premiered on Friday, and it’s off to a pretty wild start. Interstellar gunslinger Din Djarin—our titular Mando—has been “quested” to return the Child, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, to its kind. But he’s not looking for a species of green-eared goblins; he seeks a band of sorcerers called the Jedi.
How can you watch The Mandalorian?
In order to watch “The Mandalorian,” you’ll need to subscribe to Disney+, the streaming service that’s home to all things “Star Wars.” You can enjoy the Disney+ catalog on most browsers, phones, streaming devices, smart TVs, tablets and video-game consoles.
A Disney+ subscription costs $6.99 per month—or $69.99 for the full year—though you can save 25% if you sign up for the Disney bundle with ESPN+ and Hulu, which gives you access to all three streamers for just $12.99 a month.
Sign up for Disney+ starting at $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year
What happens in this week’s episode?
At the start of the episode, Mando and the Child stride into a settlement after dusk. Dogs, or something like them, growl in the shadows. Djarin’s here to meet Gor Koresh (John Leguizamo), who might have information on the whereabouts of another Mandalorian. Inside, two Gamorreans battle to the death.
“Do you gamble, Mando?” Koresh asks.
“Not when it can be avoided,” says the bounty hunter.
Koresh has heard tell of another Mando on Tatooine, the birthplace of Anakin Skywalker as well as the planet where Leia Organa once strangled Jabba the Hutt. But he’s not just going to let Djarin walk out of the place; Gor wants Mando’s armor for its precious beskar.
His thugs draw their blasters—which goes about as well as you’d expect.
Having gotten the intel he came for, the Mandalorian strings Koresh up from a lamppost. “Cut me down!” cries the gambler, surrounded by hounds with glowing eyes. But Mando keeps on walking. We cut to a title card as Gor begins to scream.
Back on Tatooine, we’re reunited with Amy Sedaris’s character from season one. She’s thrilled to see the Child again (the “little womp rat,” she calls him). This scene in the docking bay features a cameo from one of my favorite childhood toys, which doesn’t quite sum up the pleasures of “The Mandalorian.”
Mando and the Child take a speeder bike to the forgotten mining town of Mos Pelgo, where a man called the Marshal has been seen wearing Mandalorian armor.
“What brings you here, stranger?” says the Marshal, played by Timothy Olyphant. He invites Mando to join him for a drink in the cantina, then removes his helmet and places it on the table: the red-and-green mask of Boba Fett.
“Never met a real Mandalorian,” he muses with a smile. His name’s Cobb Vanth, and he’s got a whole flashback’s worth of story that we’ll get to in a minute.
In the meantime, Djarin isn’t pleased to find a non-Mandalorian in a suit of beskar. “Take it off. Or I will,” he tells Vanth. Just when they’re about to duel, the ground starts to rumble, and an alarm wails.
Something big rolls into town, hidden just beneath the sand.
The leviathan emerges long enough to swallow a bantha whole and then vanishes back below the surface. This is a mythical krayt dragon—like the massive skeleton glimpsed in the opening half hour of the original “Star Wars.”
Vanth makes Mando a deal: In exchange for help slaying the dragon, he’ll surrender his armor.
Turns out that after the Empire’s defeat, a ruthless mining operation arrived at Mos Pelgo, enslaving the townsfolk and spilling a lot of blood.
Vanth fled for his life, stealing a camtono of valuable crystals and wandering for days in the hellish desert. Discovered by a Jawa sandcrawler, he traded his stolen crystals for armor that had once belonged to the bounty hunter Boba Fett.
Having reached an understanding, Mando and Vanth go hunting for the krayt dragon, accompanied by the Child. When they run into a pack of hyena-like creatures, the Marshal makes ready to shoot them.
The Mandalorian, by contrast, starts speaking in the tongue of the native Tusken Raiders. This calms the animals; he even kneels to pet one. At this point, a group of Tuskens comes out of hiding, and Mando tells them of his intentions.
“They want to kill the krayt dragon, too,” he says.
Sitting around a campfire—having agreed to work together—Djarin, Vanth, and the Tusken Raiders devise a plan to slay the monster. Mando volunteers the townspeople of Mos Pelgo to serve as reinforcements, and the Tuskens offer to repay them with a vow of peace.
Fans of the 2003 video game “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” will more or less recognize what comes next. The small alliance lays a trap for the beast, burying explosive charges in the sand outside the cave where it sleeps.
Sacrificing banthas and warriors alike, the Tuskens lure the krayt dragon from the mouth of the cave, firing several harpoons into its nose. Once it’s near the explosives, its belly exposed, Mando gives the signal. The charges go off, and the monster retreats.
Vanth says, “I don’t think it’s dead.”
The krayt dragon reappears above the cave, spitting a greenish venom onto the hunters below. Using their jetpacks, Mando and the Marshal ascend into the sky, blasting at the creature with their rifles.
Moments later, panicked, Mando arms another set of explosives on the back of a bantha. He holds the mount in place with a rope as the dragon rushes toward them—and allows himself to be swallowed.
Flying from the beast’s mouth, Mando pulls the trigger on his detonator, and the krayt dragon collapses. While Vanth hands his prized armor over to the Mandalorian, the Tusken Raiders work to harvest the dragon’s pearl.
A figure watches from a distance as Djarin rides off into the sun. When he turns, we see the face of actor Temuera Morrison.
He looks like he wants his armor back.
Watch The Mandalorian on Disney+
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This article originally appeared on Reviewed.com: The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 1 Recap
