Vrinda Bachchan
‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 Episode 4 is titled ‘The Siege’ and it sees Mando and Baby Yoda head back to where they started and meet some old friends. So far in Season 2, we have seen Mando, or Din Djarin (to use his given name), planet-hopping with The Child in order to find any information that would lead him to the elusive Jedi Order. His main mission is to safely deliver The Child to the Jedi’s care, who wield the Force just like the kid. The last couple of episodes have not been kind to Mando’s ship, the Razor Crest. It’s pretty beat up but Mando finally knows where he is taking the baby (to former Jedi Ahsoka Tano on planet Corvus). Only, they might have to make a stop someplace familiar to get proper repairs done. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 4 Recap
Mando and Baby Yoda fly the Razor Crest back to Nevarro, seeing as how their ship is badly in need of major repairs. Their old friends Greef Karga and Cara Dune greet them as they land and Karga tells Mando that he has been steeped in clerical work as the magistrate while Cara has been cleaning up the city as the new marshall. They drop Baby Yoda off at a bar-turned-school where a protocol droid is taking classes (and where Baby Yoda gets himself a snack by stealing another kid’s cookies). Karga and Cara enlist Mando’s help in blowing up an abandoned Imperial base which contains hordes of weapons, in order to wipe Nevarro clean of the Empire Remnants. Since the Razor Crest’s repairs will take some time, Mando agrees to this side mission.
Serving as their driver is Mythrol, the very first perp that Din Djarin brought in, back in Season 1 Episode 1. Mythrol is working off his debt to Karga in lieu of imprisonment. The group’s plan is to go into the Empire base, blow up the reactor which powers the station, and get out before the lava hits the surface. Upon reaching the place, they find that it’s not abandoned but teeming with stormtroopers. They successfully manage to blow up the reactor and have only ten minutes to get out of there. On the way out, the group discovers creepy bodies in test tubes and a 3-day-old holographic message from Dr. Pershing telling Moff Gideon that the test subject’s body had rejected the blood, failing the experiment. It’s clear that the base is not a military station for the Empire but a lab of some sort. It’s also clear from Pershing’s message that Moff Gideon is alive and that means the baby is not safe. Mando immediately jets off on his own to reach the kid as soon as possible while the rest of the group take an Empire cruiser to get back. An amazing sequence with stormtroopers on speeder bikes and TIE Fighters giving chase ensues until Mando arrives to save the day, displaying some seriously impressive bit of flying with the newly-repaired Razor Crest.
The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 4 Ending
Mando doesn’t even bother to land and leaves Nevarro with just a quick radio goodbye to his friends. Baby Yoda vomits out the cookies as a result of Mando’s awesome flying. Later, we see Greef Karga spinning some tale to the New Republic officer who is writing a report on the incident. Karga lies to the New Republic officer about Mando’s involvement, saying that the Razor Crest never even came to Nevarro. The officer tells Cara Dune that the New Republic could really use a soldier like her, also hinting that trouble is brewing in the Outer Rim. The episode ends with an officer aboard an Empire ship telling Moff Gideon that a tracking beacon has been successfully planted on the Razor Crest by one of the mechanics. Moff Gideon snickers with glee as he looks at a bunch of Darktrooper suits.
The end of the episode, specifically the New Republic officer’s hint about the situation in the Outer Rim, connects ‘The Mandalorian’ to the greater world it has created since Season 1. Clearly, with the planets on the Inner Rim securely under the New Republic’s control, the Outer Rim is where the Empire Remnants most pose a threat. It could be here, in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, that the Empire rises again as The First Order and gains enough power to take over everywhere again. The only question is, will Mando’s story end with him entrusting The Child to the Jedi, or is he going to play a bigger role in the greater Star Wars history?
Baby Yoda’s Midi-chlorians
The holographic message from Pershing states that the possibility of them finding another donor with a higher M-count than The Child is very low. The M-count that he is talking about is apparently midi-chlorians found in the blood that they harvested from The Child in the first season. Midi-chlorians, first introduced in ‘The Phantom Menace’, are microscopic life forms present in the cells of all living beings. An individual’s midi-chlorian count determines how connected they are with the Force and how effectively they can use it. So when anyone from the Star Wars Universe says, “The Force is strong with this one” (usually referring to Anakin, Luke, or Rey), they mean that particular person has a high midi-chlorian count.
Basically, Moff Gideon has been after The Child because he wants to create Force-wielding warriors using the baby’s blood. We already know that Emperor Palpatine was trying to create Force-strong clones for his consciousness to live in, so this whole business could be connected to that, with Moff Gideon working on Palpatine’s orders. Are we witnessing the early experiments that will eventually lead to the creation of Supreme Leader Snoke, The First Order’s head and Palpatine’s Force-friendly surrogate? Guess we will have to wait and see where ‘The Mandalorian’ fits in the larger Star Wars lore.
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