Thoughts on ‘The Passenger’

Welcome back to my breakdown of The Mandalorian Season 2 episodes, this time Chapter 10 ‘The Passenger’. Overall, this was by far my least favorite episode of the series, and after a single rewatch to collect some more notes for this post, I can pretty confidently say that I won’t be casually watching it again. (My favorite episode, I think, has so far been S01E04 ‘Sanctuary’, which seems to be many folks’ least favorite.)
The episode opens with Titular Mando trucking along on a swoop toting Fett’s armor, when he is ambushed by some frontier trash/space pirates/bounty hunter types. I really liked that they use ye olde cable trap to knock him off the bike (see this old post where I apply some real-world maths and see just how much time you’d need to get such a trap set properly).

Among the ambushers is a guy whose face we never see, wearing a Rebel-pattern arm patch. This style first appeared on Hoth in Episode V, although it has since shown up on troops in ‘Rouge One’. I find it hard to believe that this guy was in the uniformed Alliance military, so it’s likely a case of double-dipping by the costume department I mentioned last episode. Similarly, the bald pirate wears a puffy R1 trooper vest.

According to Alinger’s SWCOT (p77), the three columns of the Echo Base insignia are meant to represent the soldier’s division, brigade, and regiment, and Luke’s was one of the few with three red marks in the division column.

I noticed that Mando’s helmet still has dried green dragon guts on it–which is some great authenticity; it also underscores the importance of letting one’s gear be able to visually tell a story. Star Wars has always been a used or lived-in universe, so if your kit is spotless, pressed, and polished, you’re not doing right by the setting.

The Mitrinomon Z-6 jetpack is supposed to weigh about 30 kilograms (EGWT, p188), or around 66 pounds – but our hero takes it off like it weighs nothing (if that’s an accurate weight, then Titular Mando is FIT. Or maybe the pack itself is pretty lightweight and the fuel is heavy, and it’s running low after the whole dragon adventure?). I see this pretty frequently, and once you know the in-universe mass of things it becomes hard to take what you see onscreen seriously – did you know a Pit droid weighs 77 pounds? Since props are usually made from fiberglass or cast resin, they rarely have right weight on screen…I’d love to see a Mandalorian costumer set up a display of accurately-weighted gear and watch people struggle to pick things up.

Once he is free of the scavengers (with a nice bit of physical humor), I was pleased to see the Jawas outside the bar have yellow eyes again. Consistency!

With the first half of this episode I am realizing that I really dislike humans being able to understand–and especially speak–languages produced by species with non-humanoid mouthparts. Han Solo understanding Shryyywook is kind of accepted and grandfathered in at this point, but at least Chewbacca has a human-ish mouth and vocal cords. Amy Sedaris being able to understand bug-chatter and speak gecko burbling (neither of which are common species) I find an incredible stretch to believe.
Also, the fan community seems to have taken to calling The Passenger ‘Frog Lady’ when she’s clearly based on a gecko. Are Star Wars fans unable to tell the difference?

Sedaris says, “Don’t overcook it…I’m not some Rodian for cryin’ out loud!” What does the temperature of one’s steak have to do with Rodians…and why do I keep thinking that they’re insectovores anyway?

I was very unclear about the transportation arrangement, and if the place they are traveling is in Tatooine’s sector (Arkanis) or the next sector over? I don’t think the writers realize that sectors are big, and traveling to a neighboring sector on sublight drives would take a looooong time…even in Empire, Han and crew only travel from Hoth to Bespin (a hairsbreadth away in the same sector but a distance of ~450 light-years), even possibly using a backup (slower) hyperdrive, and it still takes them…a week? A few weeks? A month? (The timeline of Episode V and however long Luke spends training on Dagobah has always been fuzzy)

It’s good to see Mando actually lays down to take a rest in his bunk, though I’m not sure about sleeping in his beskar. Even though doing good Living History usually just looks like camping, I think one of the things preventing its embrace as even a possibility by the fan/Costumed Arts community is the prevalence of armor making comfortable outdoor sleep difficult. However, that’s not a problem if you’re ‘keeping it common’ and are pursuing an un- or minimally-armored persona! 😉

It is GREAT to see the X-wing pilots wearing proper Classic Trilogy flightsuits, and not the hideous velvet-looking, shiny nylon ones from R1 and S01E06:

It’s also nice that the New Republic seal (starbird + 12 stars) has been retained from the EU (we saw it last on the prison ship also in S01E06) but I wish they kept the blue starbird. As the Mando tries to escape the pilots, I had to wonder about the wisdom of dropping blind through the clouds…I would assume he’s running some kind of radar system, but it seems too easy to run smack-dab into a mountain!

I love that the texture of the ‘frog eggs’ seems exactly like slurping a hunk of Jello.

I’m not sure how I feel about the knobby white spiders being on an ice planet…but I don’t think I like it. The original concept from them is from Dagobah, which is a warm swampy planet. I can kind of see it working if they stay in the hotspring area, but once the crew goes out into the freezing outdoors the spiders should stay behind?
Why would they all hatch when one does? I’m not someone who is scared of spiders–I quite like them actually–but the idea of an inifinite horde of them is like a bad dream. And considering the way Mando keeps blazing away at them, I feel like we Really would’ve benefited from a shot of him pausing to reload his blaster somewhere in there. We’ve yet to see anyone actually reload a weapon in any SW setting…from what I’ve gathered, the recent EA!BF2 doesn’t even have a reloading mechanic for blasters, they just have a *cooldown* period, which is laaaaame.

At the end, of the episode, Titular Mando tells the passenger ‘if you need to use the privy…’ S01E01 called it a ‘vactube’, now it’s a ‘privy’…why must this show continue to make up words for a simple REFRESHER? Even cast members at Galaxy’s Edge know this one, so they can’t pretend that the term is not ‘DisneyCanon’. If anything, that would be some good cross-platform synergistic recognition for folks who have been to the park.

Anyway, like I said, this was far from my favorite chapter, mostly because of the oppressive, tense, almost Kafkaesque tone of the latter half. It seemed pretty clear that the ship wasn’t flightworthy, yet suddenly it was working again. I’d love to hear your comments and reactions to The Passenger in the comments below. Until next week!

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