Baby Yoda Goes To School In ‘The Siege’

Chapter 12 of The Mandalorian should largely be viewed as a setup to this coming week’s episode. We know that Mando and the Child are headed to to the city of Calodan on the forest planet Corvus to find Ahsoka Tano, the former Padawan to none other than Anakin Skywalker himself—and someone who knew Yoda personally back in the day.

As Paul Tassi points out, Friday’s episode is written by Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels creator (and Mandalorian producer) Dave Filoni. It seems all but certain that this will be the episode Mando finally finds the Jedi and meets up with Ahsoka, who will be the first person on this show (other than the bad guys) who will have an inkling of what Baby Yoda means to the universe.

Chapter 13 is reportedly titled ‘The Jedi’ which makes sense if, indeed, we finally get a live-action version of Ahsoka Tano who is reportedly being played by Rosario Dawson and who, in turn, could get their own Disney Plus live-action spinoff series.

That’s a big deal, obviously. We shall see.

In any case, “The Siege” is all buildup to next week’s episode. My dad summed it up as “Cute and Shoot” which is fairly accurate (and really a pretty accurate TL;DR of The Mandalorian broadly speaking).

We get lots and lots of Baby Yoda cuteness—he’s placed in a little school that’s been created out of the ashes of the destroyed cantina; he uses the Force to steal macarons from a fellow student; he gets all excited flying around in the Razor Crest with Mando taking down Tie-Fighters. He even giggles. And then spits up blue macaron vomit.

Oh my gosh he’s just too much.

Most of the rest is the “Shoot” part of this equation, though there’s a bit more to it than that.

Mando and Baby Yoda left the moon of Trask last week after an encounter with Bo-Katan and the Mandalorians—Mandalorians who, we learn, are quite different from our ever-helmeted protagonist.

When he leaves his ship is still in pretty bad shape—too beat up and broken to make it all the way to Corvus. So they make a pit stop, heading back to Navarro where all of this began.

There, he leaves the Razor Crest with a shady looking mechanic and heads off with Greef Karga and Cara Dune (now Marshal Dune, which has a nice ring to it). They want his help taking down an Imperial base that may or may not be abandoned. It isn’t.

In fact, it’s anything but, and turns out to be much more important than anyone realized.

Oh, and the Mythrol that Mando captured in the very first episode of the show is back, now working off his debt to Karga (for the next 300 years, apparently).

Mando and crew head to the base, take down an endless tide of Stormtroopers—I swear to God, if the Empire had simply designed Stormtrooper helmets better the Imps would have never lost—and find out that Moff Gideon is alive after all, and has been using the Child’s blood to conduct nefarious experiments. Dr. Pershing has run out of blood and needs more if the research is to continue, and so we learn at least one piece of the Moff Gideon puzzle.

Moff Gideon himself has been up to no good. At the end of the episode we see the shady mechanic report back to an Imperial Comms Officer. He’s placed a tracking beacon on the Razor Crest and told the Imps that Mando has “the asset” in hand. The officer reports all this to Moff Gideon. Looks like a major dustup is brewing.

The chase scene following the base raid was one of the best parts of the episode. Karga, Dune and the Mythrol are all on a ground vessel being pursued by Scout Troopers on speeder bikes and low-flying Tie-Fighters. After some exhilarating maneuvers, all seems lost. The Tie-Fighters are simply too formidable for our grounded heroes.

That’s when Mando returns, Baby Yoda in the passenger seat of the newly-repaired (and bugged) Razor Crest. He takes down the Tie-Fighters in a blaze of blaster fire and giggling baby.

Mando declines an invite to stay and socialize after the dust settles. More important matters to attend to. Back on Navarro, the New Republic X-Wing pilot from two episodes back—Captain Carson Teva—is asking questions. Karga declines to give any straight answers. When Teva asks Dune to join back up with the New Republic and do some good for the Galaxy she says she’s “not a joiner” but she looks tempted. This could signal a change for Dune, and perhaps a departure from the show. Gina Carano has been a somewhat divisive figure lately. Everything is divisive these days.

Everything, that is, except The Mandalorian which everybody knows is Star Wars at its very best. This was another great episode. I’d say it was half stand-alone adventure and half driving the overarching plot. The raid on the base was a bit of a side mission, but it turned up clues about the bigger picture and Moff Gideon’s wicked plot. And what is he plotting, anyways? Is he trying to create Force users vis-a-vis the Child’s blood? Does he want to craft new dark Jedi or perhaps inject himself with power once the formula is safe? Curiouser and curiouser.

What did you think of ‘The Siege?’ Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Here are my previous reviews of The Mandalorian Season 2:

Thanks for reading!