THE MANDALORIAN Episode 4 Discussion Thread

This is a discussion thread for The Mandalorian episode four. In other words, there will be spoilers.

Even after an episode that, more than any other yet, reveals this show’s seams, I still love Friday mornings waking up to watch The Mandalorian. This week, our beloved Mandalorian steps out of one Western into another as he and guest star Gina Carano team up to protect a group of Star Trek villagers from a band of raiders and their AT-ST.

It all happens much as you’d expect. The dumb villagers get trained to stand up for themselves, they easily succeed, the Mandalorian almost falls in love with the pretty widow, and he is very late to realize that he and Little Yoda can’t just settle down in a backwoods shithole when the bounty on them is so high. So off into the sunset they go. Writer Jon Favreau and director Bryce Dallas Howard are not trying to re-invent the wheel here.

We’ve seen it a million times, but never with a cute Yoda thing and an AT-ST. I like the story all the other times I’ve seen it, so why not one more? This sounds like I’m illustrating a weakness, but I’m not. In an era where it seems every episode of big-budget television aims to be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, I remain very thankful for the smallness of The Mandalorian, including its willingness to further bend Star Wars to typical Western tropes rather than the other way around. (Also, as a podcast fan, I was surprised to see Dumbbells podcast co-host Eugene Cordero show up as one of the villagers.)

What did you think? Did part of you hope ol’ Mando might put away his helmet and settle down for good, halfway through the series’ first season? Did you think it was nuts he even considered leaving baby Yoda on that planet of wimps all by himself? Were you surprised a successful bounty hunter fell for Gina Carano’s “disappearing footprints” ruse? Sound off in the comments below!