The second episode of The Mandalorian’s second season took its central bounty hunter and his infant space gremlin son from the deserts of Tatooine to a dangerous new locale as part of a mission to help save a family. But within its larger, horror-driven plot, “The Passenger” ended up drawing attention to something about Baby Yoda himself that, frankly, was stomach-turning.
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The Mandalorian’s first season established that, physically vulnerable as the creature sometimes is because of his age and stature, the Child is not completely helpless in the right situations. In addition to having an uncommonly powerful connection to the Force that he’s used to attack enemies and lift animals exponentially larger than he is, the Child’s also proven himself to be something of a capable predator, chasing down living Sorgan frogs and eating them whole.
[referenced id=”1527235″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/11/the-mandalorian-went-full-horror-but-with-tons-of-adorable-baby-yoda/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/07/jxpajiehw2giw3x1ba4e-e1604869516911-300×158.jpg” title=”The Mandalorian Went Full Horror, But With Tons of Adorable Baby Yoda” excerpt=”Can’t the Mandalorian and the Child get a few moments of peace and quiet? It seems like the instant one adventure ends, such as defeating a huge Krayt dragon, another one starts right up again. If you thought the dragon was big, bad, and scary, The Mandalorian just said “Hold…”]
“The Passenger” expands on this element of the Child’s burgeoning personality, but it does so in a way that raises some rather serious questions about the baby’s sense of morality…and Mando’s parenting skills.
When Pelli Motto tasks Mando to transport a frog-like woman to the distant moon Trask to reunite with her husband, he’s none-too-jazzed to learn that the mission has to be completed without the use of hyperspace travel. This must be done in order to protect the woman’s fragile, unfertilized eggs, which she’s transporting in a temperature-controlled canister full of a neon blue liquid. Because of the Frog Lady and her husband’s unique biology, Trask is essentially the only place where their spawn could safely grow to maturity. But what truly moves Mando and convinces him to play escort is Pelli’s translated explanation that the Frog Lady’s genetic line will end should her eggs go unfertilized.
As a newly minted father himself, there’s part of Mando that understands the Frog Lady’s plight and why she would risk her life in order to protect her children. The story follows as the bounty hunter gains an even deeper understanding of the power of the bond between parents and their children. While Mando and the Frog Lady’s feelings about parenting take centre stage, the episode also takes a number of moments to focus on the Child, who stays mostly away from the episode’s action-packed moments as he wanders off in search of snacks.
At multiple points throughout the episode, Mando finds the Child posted up next to the Frog Lady’s opened canister with one of her orange, boba-like eggs clutched in his tiny hand, ready to pop it into his mouth (or already having done so). The Mandalorian plays these moments for laughs, and Mando’s never quite quick enough to stop his son, but each time the baby gobbles one of the eggs down and Mando softly chastises him, the story never pauses to really make you sit with the significance of what’s happening.
Important as these eggs are meant to be to the Frog Lady, at no point throughout the episode does she ever seem to be all that concerned with keeping the canister right by her side in the same way that Mando has the baby sleep on the Razor Crest’s lower level with him, as he knows the baby’s prone to wander off and get into trouble. For all the importance “The Passenger” puts onto the Frog Lady’s eggs at the top, as you make your way through the episode, each of the Child’s scenes where he’s stolen one and gulped it down sort of undercuts the story, as you’d imagine that the woman would know precisely how many eggs she was transporting. The Frog Lady’s not just shuttling a rare and valuable cargo to another planet in order to make a profit the way Mando’s accustomed to. She’s carrying her bloodline’s past, present, and future, and the show makes light of it all in service of the Child, who, in this particular scenario, is a voracious monster.
[referenced id=”1526580″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/11/the-best-easter-egg-in-the-latest-mandalorian-was-right-on-target/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05/tq4s8wizryfbqr02zi1v-300×169.jpg” title=”The Best Easter Egg in the Latest Mandalorian Was Right on Target” excerpt=”Who could imagine a simple rocket firing could mean so much? But in the season two premiere of The Mandalorian, director Jon Favreau gave knowing fans a huge smile by arming Cobb Vanth with a rocket jetpack that was deployed in a very specific way. We wrote about this in…”]
Late into the episode, after Mando and the Frog Lady are stranded on a frozen planet where she happens to find exactly the kind of hot spring her species prefers to bathe in, the Child is the first person to realise that the area isn’t as devoid of life the way it initially seems. When the Child stumbles upon a clutch of eggs of a different sort, he gleefully cracks one open to devour its slimy green contents, only to realise that it’s one of seemingly thousands of eggs belonging to a gargantuan Krykna mother — the spider-like creatures last seen in Star Wars Rebels — that immediately set out to attack the intruders.
“The Passenger” frames the swarm that descends upon the Razor Crest as a terrifying event that embodies the kinds of situations Mando prefers to avoid — and were it not for the Frog Lady wandering off the bathe in the hot springs, it’s possible that their landing party might have gone completely unnoticed. But at the same time, there’s an argument to be made that the spider was merely trying to protect its own progeny from a potential threat, and that the creatures had every right to attack Mando and company — just as we feel when Mando and the Child are threatened in the episode’s opening, or, as we feel when the Child wolfs down another of Frog Lady’s eggs for laughs.
What’s most unsettling about the whole egg-eating thing is that, by the end of “The Passenger,” Mando still doesn’t seem all that concerned with making sure the Child doesn’t eat any more of the Frog Lady’s eggs, and she doesn’t even seem completely unaware that he’s consumed at least three of them. Mando’s still getting the hang of fatherhood, but not eating other people’s children is the sort of lesson he should want to impress upon his young charge, as it’s deeply messed up. More than that, it’s likely to get them both in even more trouble if that behaviour keeps up.
[referenced id=”1526850″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/11/what-if-that-new-mandalorian-character-isnt-who-you-think/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/06/bv4k64hvr4jcmgznvgyl-300×169.png” title=”What If That New Mandalorian Character Isn’t Who You Think?” excerpt=”The premiere of The Mandalorian’s second season brought with it a lot of familiarities — the return of our heroes, locales we know well, and some very famous armour. But in its final moment, it teased something major coming to Din Djarin’s quest to find the remnants of his people….”]