Desperate to find more of his own kind, the Mandalorian agrees to take on a passenger. The problem is, the passenger is a frog lady (and, yes, that’s what they call her) who is carrying a jar full of eggs, can’t speak any language that Mando is familar with, and cannot travel at hyperspace, meaning that it’s going to be a long journey. Of course, things only get worse when the Razor’s Crest runs into Republic patrols and is forced to crash land on an icy hell planet.
Folks… I didn’t like this one and I’m not sorry to say it. While the chase scene with the X-Wings was awfully cool, I will admit, the rest of the episode committed three cardinal sins: It was overly silly, it made the Mandalorian look incompetent, and it made me hate Baby Yoda.
First of all, I didn’t like the frog passenger. The makeup and effects looked too cartoony and the gag of making her a literal frog lady never landed. The fact that she kept wandering off was more infuriating than it was a tension builder.
Mando, on the other hand, took on the role as an incompetent airline hostess, constantly running after the frog lady and Baby Yoda whining, “Please stop. Don’t do that. Come on!” It was so lame and so frustrating.
I understand that Baby Yoda eating the frog lady’s eggs was supposed to be funny, but to be honest, I was more horrified than anything else. Seriously, Baby Yoda, the wonderful bundle of cuteness that took the world by storm… was committing baby genocide.
Is it weird, also, that Baby Yoda seemed a lot, lot, lot more Muppet like in this episode as well? While The Mandalorian has taken great pains to make Baby Yoda seem like a living, breathing entity, this episode had him walking awkwardly, jerking his movements… he was a puppet in my eyes for the first time and I didn’t care for that at all.
The spiders? Yeah, they were kind of cool, but the tension of the scenes always seemed to be broken by ill-placed gags (haha! Frog lady jumps like frog!). Let’s face it, the Lost in Space movie had a neat sequence where characters ran from spiders as well and that movie was just… awful. The spiders didn’t save it.
Up until the crash landing, the episode was solid, but a lot like Mando’s ship, it completely falls apart once it crashes on the planet. I’m honestly shocked that a series that has held such a consistently high bar nerfed it so badly with this episode.
Jason Gaston 