‘The Mandalorian’ Chapter 12 Recap: The Baby Yoda-Sitters Club

Who else saw this coming? I know that just two weeks ago I praised The Mandalorian for its spontaneity, how the lack of weekly teasers keeps every episode a complete mystery until you’re watching it. This week, not so much! I just knew that when last week’s episode ended with the first-ever live-action hint at the arrival Ahsoka Tano, that there was no way we’d actually get to see Rosario Dawson in a full Togruta makeup this week. I could also feel that—2020 being 2020—we’d get the return of Cara Dune immediately following actor Gina Carano’s proud endorsement of a social media site essentially designed to cater to the alt-right. So… here we go. Here’s “Chapter 12: The Siege,” an episode with no Ahsoka Tano and [sighs in Star Wars] too much Gina Carano.

Honestly, this episode’s cold open was totally predictable too: the Razor Crest is deep in space, sputtering to a stop because—surprise!—the solution to major structural damage isn’t to just throw a bunch of fish nets at it. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Baby Yoda (tiny rascal) try to repair the ship as best they can—which involves shoving Baby Yoda into a tiny compartment and having him Mission: Impossible his way through a bunch of wires. I gotta tell ya: watching Baby Yoda get electrocuted is slapstick that feels dangerously close to “not the momma!” territory—and I’m here for it.

When that doesn’t work, Mando tells the Child that they should probably head to Nevarro and get repairs from people he trusts. Also, they show Baby Yoda drinking broth so that we know the tyke is eating. Good job, show!

Meanwhile on Nevarro, everyone’s fave race of butt-mouthed aliens are having their Friday night party session (count your loot, eat some critter meat, it’s a blast!) crashed by the town’s new marshal: Cara Dune (Carano). So… here’s the deal: I love(d) Cara Dune in Season 1, or I loved what the character represented. Her origin was cool, the space she occupied on the show was rad, etc. In Season 2, though, after the aforementioned dog-whistling to white nationalists as well as some transphobic actions and her willful denial of the basic science surrounding the spread of COVID-19, I’m personally not feeling as charitable towards the character. This is real “your mileage may vary,” but for me, I’m not into having someone who espouses some real Imperial-ish views playing a Rebel hero. But even if you can separate the actor from the part, which even that is honestly a case by case basis thing and never cut-and-dried, Gina Carano is not a good actor. And that’s all I’m going to say about Gina Carano. Moving on.

The Razor Crest arrives on Nevarro to a welcome party consisting of Dune and Baby Yoda’s proud grandpa Greef Karga (Carl Weathers, who also directed this episode).

Karga puts his best mechanics on the job of fixing the Razor Crest, which you know is going to go real well when the camera lingers on one of those techs for just a bit too long. Surely that mechanic’s going to do a great job and definitely not sell out Mando to the Empire!

Greef and Cara give their visitors a tour of the new Nevarro, which includes a nice open-air shopping center. And the cantina that they holed up in during the Season 1 finale? It’s now a school, complete with a protocol droid professor! That makes it the perfect place for Baby Yoda to chill while the adults go do some sieging. I do love that the instant the Child is plonked in an open desk, every kid around him starts whispering to each other. Baby Yoda’s cuteness is all-powerful—except when it comes to the dumb dumb kid next to him who won’t share his delicious blue macarons! Whatever, kid. Baby Yoda’s got the Force, and he’ll use the Force to snatch snacks (even if he won’t use it against murder spiders or killer squids). This scene was a delight and if there’s going to be any spinoff, it needs to be The Baby Yoda-Sitters Club.

As for the adults, they’ve got work to do back at Karga’s office. That schlubby Mythrol (Horatio Sanz) is there, thawed out from his carbon freeze and working off his debt to Karga with some desk work. We then get the mission: there’s an old Imperial base still on Nevarro operating with a skeleton crew. Making matters worse: it’s still stuffed with Imperial weaponry and vehicles that make the site a target for black market scum. Greef Karga wants all that nonsense off his planet so that Nevarro can become the trade hub it was destined to be. So, Mando figures this is no problem! They just gotta blow up one barely guarded Imperial base!

Okay, Din, when are you going to learn that the phrases “unguarded” and “five guards, max” and “skeleton crew” mean “full blown battalion ready to blast your ass”? This keeps happening to you, dude! Fortunately for our gunslinging hero, he’s always prepared—and this time he has two equally capable pals… and one nervous AF fish man.

The fantastic four take out a bunch of guards and make their way into the base, spying rows of parked speeder bikes. That’s when this episode hits Peak Mandalorian: this is nothing but a kid (Jon Favreau) playing with all his Star Wars toys in a plot that’s basically A New Hope, because the kid has seen that movie a bajillion times. That’s how we all played with Star Wars toys, and truly, I love seeing this play out on screen powered by cutting edge technology and millions of dollars.

But seriously, this episode is A New Hope. Our heroes break into an Imperial base, evade stormtroopers, and shut down a power system by tiptoeing around a totally impractical console a million feet in the air (the Mythrol is no Obi-Wan, but he does the job!).

Even the stormtrooper chatter is incredibly similar to the stray lines the troopers shout in A New Hope. This episode is meant to bring back all those adventure feels, and it really delivers.

Of course this sequence has something we didn’t see in A New Hope: a creepy lab filled with tubes of grotesque bodies pulled right out of Alien: Resurrection! After turning off the coolant and allowing the lava to start overtaking the base, our gang’s swift escape is interrupted by a detour through said lab. They take out the lab techs right after they hastily shred some evidence. Still, Mando and pals see these giant test tubes and, more tellingly, they watch a recent message from Season 1’s Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi) to Moff Gideon explaining that their tests are failing. He says they won’t be able to find a donor with a higher “M-count” (midi-chlorians are never going away, y’all), and that they need more blood from Baby Yoda if they want to make this work.

So… what are they doing? It’s easy to think this has something to do with Emperor Palpatine’s eventual return 30 years later in The Rise of Skywalker, but that movie already told us how he got his clone on. But then again, the score at that moment feels very similar to John Williams’ Emperor tune, with the low choral droning. So… I got no clue!

Upon learning that Moff Gideon isn’t dead, Djarin blasts off back to Baby Yoda. The kid is in danger if Gideon is out there! That leaves Dune, Karga, and the Mythrol to fend for themselves and bust out of the base before it goes kaboom. They run, shoot, steal, dive, crash, and speed away, causing a lot of property damage (Mythrol’s crushed speeder) but escaping intact. And then the speeder bikes give chase!

Y’all—this is why The Mandalorian is so cool. I’ve never ever seen a show that so completely captures exactly what you saw in your head when you played with your Kenner figures! It is pure adrenaline-charged nostalgia, to a degree that I’ve never seen captured onscreen. It’s a new kind of pop-art achievement, and I think this is why The Mandalorian resonates so strongly with fans. It’s activating parts of our brains that have lied dormant for years. It makes us feel young again.

The speeder bikes, while just looking hella cool, don’t succeed. Just as the base blows up real good, a squad of TIE fighters take flight and close in on our heroes’ stolen Imperial Marauder tank. And just when all hope looks lost—pew pew pew, enter: the Razor Crest! Just like Han Solo’s last minute save in A New Hope, Din Djarin comes through and blasts the TIEs to bits in his fully repaired spacecraft. Also his dive bombing upset Baby Yoda’s tummy, causing him to spit up a little of that blue cookie. Knowing that he definitely has to get moving, he thanks his pals for their help and exits Nevarro’s orbit.

We dissolve to the aftermath, with our old pal Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, from Chapter 10) on the Mando beat. He knows all these events have to be connected, but he gets no help from Greef Karga. He also doesn’t get answers from Cara Dune, who he clocks as an ex-Rebel and (after pulling up her file) a survivor of Alderaan. He shares a moment with her, apologizing for her loss, and then leaves a… Rebel hood ornament with her? Maybe it’s a communicator? An unwieldy business card? Anyway—all we know is that it looks like Cara Dune’s career as a Rebel may not be over yet.

And in the final scene of the episode, we find out what we knew all along: that mechanic totally sold out Din Djarin! He placed a tracking device on the Razor Crest! And Moff Gideon now knows where they are and where they’re going! And he’s got a whole hangar filled with what appear to be Dark Troopers ready to hunt him down! It’s hard to tell because the shot is so, well, dark.

We’re halfway through The Mandalorian Season 2 and tensions are rising! But if you think this show is going to give us Ahsoka Tano before the season finale, you should maybe think again.

Stream The Mandalorian on Disney+