Tv Review: The Mandalorian s2 - Episode 2
“The Passenger” makes up for the seasons increasingly familiar tone with Exhilarating action, spellbinding effects, and an even cuter Baby Yoda.
75/100 “sweet”
By Quinn Marcus
“The Passenger” throws us back into the world of our favorite Mandalorian and his adorable package. We kick off episode two with Mando and Baby Yoda completing their unsuccessful Tatooine search, and are henceforth moved to another path to find other Mandalorians. However, as they travel to their next planet, they are accompanied by a frog lady who just may be able to help their quest. It’s one thing to start things off really well in your sophomore season, but it’s another to lower the bar in the subsequent episode. While I didn’t find episode two to be necessarily bad, just a little step down in terms of quality. Why is that? You may be wondering. Well, it has a lot to do with the story, but before we jump into the negatives, let’s start us off with some positives. The visuals are still truly magnificent, from the high speed X-Wing chase, to the giant, ugly, disgusting, horrifying spider creatures. Yup, they brought spiders into this, and man did they look amazing and terrifying at the same time. The production is truly something to behold, improving upon the previous season while setting a new standard for special effects in television…and then you have the spiders. The cast is as brilliant as ever, Pedro Pascal gets more and more awesome and likable with each episode which is pretty hard to do for an actor who’s face is concealed 99.9% of the time. I’m a person who tends to like looking into the eyes of the character, but Pascal somehow pulls off the whole no taking off your helmet thing really well. Director Peyton Reed, director of both Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp took the helm this time around, and it’s pretty clear that there was a directorial change. I for one noticed an increase in humor, making things serious seem kind of funny; which for most of the time seemed to work. I chuckled many times during this episode which I quite enjoyed, it really did feel more like a lighthearted episode than the others. Görannsen’s musical score is as fascinating and unique as ever, and that’s about all I liked from “The Passenger.” The plot was probably my biggest issue with this episode, not only is it still very familiar (another monster battle), but there just wasn’t anything memorable about it. The first episode will have me remembering that Krayt Dragon scene for a long time, but there wasn’t anything special about this episode; it was simply fun, fluffy entertainment served on a silver platter. Seriously, stop with the giant monster fights and continue the damn story, nothing happened in the 41 minutes of the second episode. To be fair, we are still well into setup mode, but once again, the setup feels so similar to the first season that if it continues down this path, I may lose hope. So what do you think? Will The Mandalorian season two pursue this path of familiarity? Or will it come to its senses post setup? Come back and read my next review to find out. Seriously though, if you don’t come back for more, I’m going to send some big ass space spiders over to your house; have a good day!
