Hello! The Mandalorian is back, so I’m back with your Season 2 recaps. With no new Star Wars movies coming out, TV is the only visual medium we have to look forward to, and I’m really hoping Season 2 will give us some sweet fun and escapism we all need.

Chapter 9, “The Marshal,” lives up to that expectation so far! Quick reminder that I will be referring to the character Pedro Pascal plays as The Mando or Mando or Mandalorian, and baby Yoda will still be Yoddle.

What I Loved

The Mandalorian has done such a remarkable and wonderful job with the Sand People/Tusken Raiders. Until The Mandalorian, the Sand People were always made out to be enemies, aggressors, and inhuman. Throughout this episode, the people of Mos Pelgo repeatedly call them monsters. It’s purposefully paralleling the way white colonizers have treated Indigenous populations, and Mando points out that the Tuskens have been in the desert for thousands of years but are treated like they’re the invaders.

Our Mando bridges the gap between them because he’s put in the effort to learn their language and their culture, and he helps them recognize that the humans/settlers aren’t innocent or righteous in this situation.

Although there is a common goal for the Tuskens and the people of Mos Pelgo, it doesn’t feel like the “we’re not so different” tropes that usually accompany these types of stories. They continue to be very separate communities and populations, which is what they should be. Assimilation and similarity shouldn’t be the goal. The point is that they need to respect each other’s cultures to see that there is a wrong way to treat any beings – and to recognize that your way of doing things isn’t the only way. 

The Best Surprises

Did I think that Pelli Motto (played by Amy Sedaris) was going to be the first callback character we were going to see from Season 1? Absolutely not. Am I so happy that she was? Absolutely yes! One of my favorite small things is Pelli saying she’ll pay for an offspring if Yoddle buds or duplicates. I love how non-human centric her word choice is. The way humans reproduce is probably not the case for the majority the beings she’s come into contact with, and that is super rad.

The Legacy of IG-11

Pelli Motto stops her pit droids as they immediately start running toward the Razor Crest because they all know he doesn’t like droids. Then we see Mando have some growth – he allows the pit droids to check out his ship! IG-11 earned his trust at the end of Season 1 and showed him that droids aren’t inherently bad or evil. Thank you, IG-11. Please come back soon.

You All Really Need to Read

The short story compilation From a Certain Point of View, which has some great stories in it. Particularly relevant to this episode are the stories of R5-D4 and the Tusken Raider point-of-view story. The R5-D4 story explains why I was so hyped to see that he ended up with Pelli Motto, and the Tusken story gives more context to what life is like for them… and also involves Krayt dragons.  

I Don’t Understand, and I Don’t Think I Will

So much of my twitter list was/is yelling about the attractiveness of Cobb Vanth, played by Timothy Olyphant. But I think he’s very ordinary. He looked super dorky in the Boba Fett armor because it didn’t properly fit him. 

We Still Need to Talk About Diversity

I did notice that there were numerous people of color in the background of this episode, which is great. What isn’t great is how they were used and where they were found. The majority of human PoC were in the fight club. Though that isn’t inherently bad, it was very reminiscent of how in Rogue One, most of the Rebels on the Yavin IV base were white, but Saw Gerrera’s Partisans were majority PoC. It reinforces the notion that “troublemakers” and people who may use shady/violent/non-mainstream methods of activism are PoC, while white people are more “above board” and working with the system. 

There are also two aliens in particular that need to be addressed, partially in how they are different from each other. The twi’lek and the weequay. The twi’lek guard for the fight club has dark brown skin (when all other twi’leks in the show have not had “natural” skin tones) and has facial features and speaking patterns that align with Black people. The weequay bartender has a lighter skin tone (for a species that actually all has brown skin), has no obvious facial features that align to a particular real-world race, and talks with a white midwestern accent. The former is associated with criminal/underground activity, and the latter is a helpful bartender who is good friends with a law enforcement officer. 

I don’t think these oversights are intentional at all, but it does reinforce why there needs to be a diverse production and writing team. Shot callers, especially when their identities aren’t ones that are oppressed or marginalized, need to be checked by others because they simply don’t think about things like this, especially the more nuanced issues.