The Mandalorian - Season 2 Ep 1: The Marshal
disney+Less than a year after first debuting on Disney+, The Mandalorian is already back in its second season with Jon Favreau stepping out of the writer's room and into the director's chair for the first time in the series history so far. Chapter 9: The Marshal immediately follows up from the season 1 finale with Mando (Pedro Pascal) trying to get any leads on where he can find more from The Child's race, which leads him down a rabbit hole which ends with him teaming up with a village to fight off a massive krayt dragon.
The Season 2 premiere might be a completely competent episode of The Mandalorian but also starts to show some of the flaws the show will eventually have to contend with. The largest of these flaws is the show's failure to evolve. This is evident in multiple places, but perhaps the most obvious is in the character of Mando himself. Coming out of the Season 1 finale, this is a character who went through an incredibly major series of events that the show, for the entire first 8-episodes, built up to be enough to fundamentally change the core of this character. When the Season 1 finale failed to deliver on not even this change but even nearly any form of consequence for these actions, it felt disappointing; to simply return to the same thematic space with this character feels like a complete missed opportunity. The Mandalorian has constantly teased immense moments of moral questions and consequence but has so far failed to deliver and, ultimately, this lack of stakes is going to catch up with the show.
The other major area where the show fails to evolve is in style. Whilst it led to the season overall feeling tonally mismatched, one of the highlights of the first season was the unique directors who traded the reigns, causing each episode to feel distinct and unique compared to most other things in the Star Wars universe. The idea of Jon Favreau coming in as the director for this first new episode says all that needs to be said about the intentions of this first episode back. Rather than standing out as tonally unique or bold, this episode continues Jon Favreau's tradition of directing competent blockbusters that ultimately lack a distinct voice to help elevate the material. For the entire 55-minute runtime, the episode focuses on celebrating its Star Wars roots rather than evolving past them. From the desert planet to the iconic Star Wars iconography sprinkled throughout the episode, it is clearly meant to get audiences back into the Star Wars universe in an easily digestible and recognisable matter.
Though this idea is passable for the first episode back, it would be a huge mistake for the show to play it safe and reduce the unique voices featured behind the camera, as that is one of the largest things missing from Star Wars overall. Eventually, everything starts to blend together and feel so similar that it ultimately all becomes forgettable. Even in this episode, there are clear areas specifically towards the end where the show easily could have transitioned into an almost horror style but refuses to make a bold choice and embrace this unique identity. With that said, it is in this third act where the episode does pick up. After a rather slow and uninteresting start, the large action set piece featured in the third act is legitimately spectacular, with the show continuing to have better visual effects and production quality than plenty of feature films. The action was engaging and, though it is far from revolutionary, it was the bright spot of the episode with a nice twist at the end.
The Mandalorian Season 2 premiere ultimately is a perfectly fine 55-minutes Star Wars adventure that hopefully doesn't speak for the style the season overall will be taking. Much more than the first season, this felt very paint by numbers at times, which is scary to see from a show that worked so well because of its uniqueness. If this is just an easy reintroduction and the show picks up on the unique style, even if doesn't raise the stakes overall, the show can easily become engaging and exciting to tune into every week. If it continues to play it safe, it could become boring quickly.
