‘The Mandalorian’ on Disney+: 5 Things You May Have Missed in Episode 2

Immediately after securing his bounty, the Mandalorian runs afoul of a couple more bounty hunters. These snarling, ferocious warriors lash out at our Mando hero in their attempt to snatch away his gig and claim the money as their own. The Mandalorian takes them all out fairly easily (he’s the best bounty hunter in the parsec for a reason). If those lizard-like warriors look familiar, it’s because you’ve already seen a member of their species before in The Empire Strikes Back.

Bossk was one of the bounty hunters glimpsed ever so briefly during that legit iconic scene. He snarled at an Imperial officer, meaning he actually did more than most of the others (we can’t even see you, Dengar!).

Bossk and these bounty hunters are all Trandoshans, a race of hunters who often feuded with and warred against Wookiees.

There are so many questions surrounding the Mandalorian’s new pal/bounty. First, are they a baby Yoda? Are they a Yoda clone? What species is Yoda? Those are all still mysteries (ones I’ve tried to unravel). There is one thing we know for sure after watching Episode 2, though: the Force is with this creature.

We get a big display of Baby Yoda’s (which is what I call them since we don’t yet know a name) Force abilities at the end of the episode when Baby Yoda intervenes in the Mandalorian’s battle with a mud-covered beast. Baby Yoda lifts the monster off the ground, pausing it just long enough for Mando to get it together and stab the beast where it hurts. But that’s not the first time we see Baby Yoda trying to use the Force.

Earlier in the episode, when our odd pair are taking a rest at a camp site, we see Baby Yoda crawl out of their pod and reach out towards the Mando. Specifically, it looks like Baby Yoda is trying to touch the Mandalorian’s arm wound, which he suffered during a battle with the Trandoshan bounty hunters. What is Baby Yoda trying to do? It’s possible Baby Yoda is trying to heal the Mandalorian with the Force.

Force healing is an infrequently mentioned Force ability that was more common before Disney reset the canon. It’s popped up in a bunch of video games and old expanded universe novels, and some fan theories claim that Obi-Wan even used it to heal a young Luke Skywalker after he was attacked by Tusken Raiders on Tatooine.

In episode 2, The Mandalorian comes up against a band of aliens during his quest to leave the planet, a band of aliens that will be very familiar to Star Wars fans: the Jawas. The scavengers ransack the Mandalorian’s ship Razor Crest, rendering it incapable of flight, and definitely incapable of space travel.

It’s worth pointing out that these aren’t your typical Jawas, even if they generally look the same and have all the same catch phrases (“Utinni!”). These are, as their new Star Wars Black Series action figure reveals, Offworld Jawas. Why “offworld”? Because Jawas are native inhabitants of Tatooine, and the planet featured in The Mandalorian Episodes 1 and 2 is not Tatooine. It’s Arvala-7 (in true Star Wars fashion, this name was not mentioned in the episode but rather… somewhere else!). So while it’s not Tatooine, it’s definitely a planet that a group of Jawas have claimed as their own to pillage.

The Mandalorian loves Star Wars so much. How much? The show takes stray bits of dialogue from the films and turns them into stunning set pieces. For example: when the Mandalorian starts picking off those pesky Jawas one by one, they seemingly disappear into nothing after getting blasted. A little later when he approaches the sandcrawler with his Ugnaught ally Kuiil, the Mandalorian names what he did to those poor Jawas: he disintegrated them.

That line of dialogue will ring so many bells for Star Wars fans, because it makes good on an implicit promise made back in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. When Darth Vader gives orders to a group of bounty hunters, he specifies that he wants Han and company taken alive. That’s when he pauses in front of Boba Fett and says:

Those two words have stuck with fans ever since. Boba Fett disintegrates people?! How?! What does that look like?! Now we know. It looks awesome.

At the end of the episode, the Mandalorian makes an offer to his new ally Kuiil, saying that he could use a man of his skills on his crew. The wise Kuiil replies, “I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.” With that, he has spoken and he departs.

What’s interesting about this exchange is that Kuill is an Ugnaught, a species that–prior to The Mandalorian–has been defined by one thing: work. The only other time we’ve seen Ugnaughts in live-action was in The Empire Strikes Back, where they were the hard-working labor class on Cloud City.

Those Ugnaughts worked as miners and mechanics in that city, their adopted home. But, as revealed in the 2018 book Star Wars Alien Archive: A Guide to the Species of the Galaxy, an even worse fate befell the Ugnaughts that stayed on their home world. Throughout history, the Ugnaught home world Gentes was raided by slavers who sought laborers, and that didn’t stop during Imperial rule. It’s possible that this is what Kuiil is referring to, a history of labor or even slave labor that he has finally left behind, trading it for peace on a new planet.

Stream The Mandalorian Episode 2 on Disney+