*Major spoilers for The Mandalorian episode 1 to follow.* Be sure to check out our episode recap here.
After waiting for almost a year with nothing but brief glimpses and scant teases to hold us over, the first-ever live-action Star Wars series has arrived in all its bounty-huntin', bucket-headed glory. And folks, it was worth every second of waiting, because thanks to The Mandalorian, thanks to Jon Favreau, thanks to Disney, and thanks to all the wonderful people involved with bringing this streaming service to life, we finally know, without a shadow of a doubt, after all these years, conclusively, that at some point in time Yoda totally banged.
At least, that's the implication of the ending to "Chapter 1", written by Favreau and directed by Dave Filoni, which saw the title intergalactic gunslinger (Pedro Pascal) and the bounty hunter droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi) arriving at the target of one of the last valuable hit jobs in the galaxy only to find a cradle containing a 50-year-old baby who looks a whole lot like ol' master Yoda. It's the capper on what was a highly intriguing entry into an unexplored corner of that galaxy far, far away, more a western than a space-fantasy, in which we were given the absolute gift of hearing Werner Herzog say the word "parsec", a line delivery it will take me days, if not weeks to recover from. Pawerseck.
I certainly have a couple of questions. You probably have a few questions. And while I'm definitely most bamboozled by the Baby Yoda of it all, I think it's important that we start with just a bit of table-setting...
When Are We, and What Shape Is the Galaxy In?
The Mandalorian picks up, in Star Wars time, just around 9 ABY. That's nine years after Luke Skywalker blew up like ten thousand janitors inside the first Death Star, and roughly five years since the Rebellion snuffed out the Empire for good when it did the same to the Death Star 2.0 above Endor. Imagine living in a world where a fringe group of freedom fighters successfully overthrew the government with the help of small but violent woodland creatures, and the final coup de grâce came when a wizard in his early-20s and his robot dad tossed an all-powerful dictator down a ventilation shaft. This is the exact scenario The Mandalorian sets itself in, and as you can see the galaxy is in the middle of quite the strange transition. Imperial credits are still technically a currency, but a bounty hunter would want something a little less obsolete. There are still Stormtroopers milling about, but they're shabby and operating in the underground.
These are lawless times, basically, a Wild West in an empty vacuum of space that doesn't really even have a sense of direction. The Empire has fallen, but the First Order is still years away from ingeniously building a much bigger Death Star with the exact same design flaw. Ben Solo is but a glint in Han Solo's eye, and Luke Skywalker has, presumably just started to grow that Last Jedi facial hair. If it's one thing I loved about The Mandalorian premiere, it's how obvious it was that this ain't the Skywalker Saga. But that just raises the question:
Who Is The Mandalorian?
Well, it's impossible to say exactly, considering my dude barely says a word in the first half of the episode and, in direct violation of all the rules that come with casting Pedro Pascal in anything, never reveals his face. But there's a lot to take away just from the fact that he carries on the legacy of two similarly outfitted bounty hunters, Jango and Boba Fett, one of which lent his DNA to create an entire army before getting decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson, and the other you know as the notorious disintegrator who jet-packed his way into 1,000 years of slow digestion in a Sarlacc pit. The Fett Way, you see, is to have everyone around you talk up your legendary skills before going out like an absolute freaking doofus.
The jury's still out if this show's title Mandalorian is a Fett, but he is A) Kind've an absolute freaking doofus, despite being "the best in the parsec." I mean, my dude was on that desert planet for like three minutes before gettin owned by a Blurg, which is basically a slightly larger version of Krumm from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, and B) Also, like the Fett family, The Mandalorian is a native of the planet Mandalore.
An Outer Rim planet that birthed a warrior race of armored badasses, Mandalore eventually fell victim to years of in-fighting, invasions, and civil war after civil war. A quick, violent flashback seems to suggest that The Mandalorian lived through at least one of these skirmishes as a child. Given the general timeline, it could've been the "Siege of Mandalore", one of the very last battles of The Clone Wars—the name of both a very good animated series and objectively the worst Star Wars movie, please @ me all you wish—which saw Commander Ahsoka Tano and a battalion of clones attempt to take back the planet from ex-Sith Lord Darth Maul. You remember Darth Maul. Double-sided lightsaber. Horns. Obi-Wan Kenobi chopped him in half but he eventually came back with robot spider legs. Star Wars canon is wild, y'all.
In any case, Ahsoka Tano's forces were right on the eve of victory when Emperor Palpatine executed Order-66, the command for all clone troops to turn against the Jedi, ushering in Imperial rule. The whole Order 66 incident eventually became known as the Great Jedi Purge, which brings us right back to The Mandalorian. The unnamed Womandalorian in which our main character gets his armor—she's credited only as "Armorer" and is played by Emily Swallow—notes that the "beskar" he brings was "gathered in the Great Purge. It is good it is back with the tribe”
What Is Beskar?
Beskar is the legendary metal from the planet Mandalore; basically, think the Star Wars version of Vibranium, which is also something to keep in mind for when the Disney+ singularity finally happens and these franchises collapse into each other. Beskar is what the warriors of Mandalore use to craft their notoriously blaster-proof armor. Compared to your average Stormtrooper or everyday flyboy, Mandalorians are Batman standing next to those dudes wearing hockey pads.
Someone, as you can see above, has been using Beskar to craft what looks like the galaxy's sturdiest iPhone cases. We don't even get the real name of Werner Herzog's character outside of "The Client", but the man allegedly has a whole stockpile of the metal laying around, making him an extremely powerful presence in the less law-abiding sections of the galaxy. Now, what would someone with that much influence want with a Baby Yoda, dead or alive?
Okay, Yeah, Let's Talk About This Baby Yoda?
George Lucas was prickly about a whole lot of stuff, but one thing that especially grinded George's gears was revealing too much about Yoda's race and where he came from. We know he's ancient—he was the oldest Star Wars character until Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o) came along—we know he does that weird backward sentence thing, and we know his lightsaber style could accurately be described as "an Olympic gymnast on crack cocaine". Beyond that, old master Yoda is a super powerful enigma.
The baby at the end of "Chapter 1" doesn't have to be his; other Yoda-like characters have appeared throughout Star Wars, like the Jedi Masters Yaddle and Vandar Tokare. But let's, for now, assume Yoda is involved, because this is Star Wars and if there's no blood-relation element to the storyline the pact George Lucas signed with the devil in1977 will go unfulfilled. This "baby" is 50 years old, which would place its birthday somewhere around 41 BBY. You know who else was born around 41 BBY? A little tyke named Anakin Skywalker, who would grow up to do great things, then some not great things, then some things that got all his limbs removed in a lava fight, then he was pretty much a mass murderer until he reunited with his son.
So what does that mean for the Yoda baby? Maybe nothing! This is as much a mystery to you as it is to me. But it is interesting to note that Anakin Skywalker didn't even have a father. Those dang midi-chlorians Forced so hard that Shmi Skywalker conceived a child all her own. I'll leave on that note as a safety blanket for anyone out there who prefers not to picture Yoda just like, going to freaking town to conceive a child. Definitely do not picture that. Oh my god, stop.