Truly hope everyone enjoyed The Mandalorian episode 4, "Sanctuary", alternatively titled "Disney! Does! Sexual! Tension!". Of all the answers given in this episode, the biggest one was this: If you need a character to have simmering chemistry with a widow named Omera (Julia Jones) from a farming planet without ever taking off his helmet, that is why you cast Pedro Pascal.

But I digress: "Sanctuary"—directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, written by Jon Favreau—was another chapter of The Mandalorian that offered big, loud, crash-bang Star Wars-themed set-pieces without offering a ton of substance other than Baby Yoda sippin' on his bone-broth like the tiny boss he is. We've pretty much settled into the groove of what Season 1 of this show will be: Mando and BY arrive, do some gnarly-ass Mando'ing, a bounty hunter with a tracker shows up to snipe a dang child in the face, B.Y. is saved and it's on to the next planet. Here, that place is Sorgan, a forested planet on which a group of innocent farmers faces raids from a crew of dog-faced baddies rocking a serious piece of Empirical tech. In the Star Wars galaxy, nobody has a better track record against the AT-ST than "woodland hermits brandishing sticks", but the Mandalorian agrees to help out anyway, gaining back-up from a fellow fugitive and former Rebel shock trooper, Cara Dune (Gina Carano). Dune is an intriguing figure from a mysterious corner of Star Wars history who has zero (0) issues soundly whipping The Mandalorian's ass, so it's a bummer to see her eff off to another part of the galaxy once the kerfuffle on Sorgan played out. Already halfway through Season 1, here's to hoping that's not the last we've seen of Cara Dune.

Lotta' lore gets thrown around here, so you probably have questions. I certainly have a few questions. Let's get into it...

Wait, Since *When* Can't Mandalorians Show Their Faces to Anyone?

"Sanctuary" answered perhaps the most pressing question weighing on fans' minds—how the heck do Mandalorians eat if they can never take off their helmets?—and it was...kind of underwhelming! At least, for anyone out there who was hoping for an elaborate system of bendy straws and/or a little coffee hole à la Dark Helmet. As it turns out, Mandalorians can take off their masks, but only in absolute privacy. If another person catches a glimpse of a helmet-less Mandalorian, said Mandalorian is ousted from their tribe. As our main Mando explains to Omera, he hasn't shown his face to another person since he was a small child, right around the time of those flashbacks we've seen of his parents getting vaporized.

But this definitely hasn't always been the rule, and we for sure know Mandalorian co-executive producer Dave Filoni knows this. His two animated series, Clone Wars and Rebels—which, unlike those older Star Wars novels, weren't wiped out from the canon—are filled with Mandalorians showing their faces all willy-nilly across the galaxy. Sabine Wren is a hairstyle icon. Gar Saxon—in addition to serving as "commander of the Mandalorian super commandos in Darth Maul's Shadow Collective", a title the government still claims I can't put on my passport—is a straight-up grey fox. Or, heck, look to George Lucas' Attack of the Clones, where Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) couldn't even be bothered to wear a helmet to a ritualistic coliseum murder. (You can see it in the photo below, which I swear is taken from the movie Attack of the Clones and not the premiere screening of Attack of the Clones.)

One of the more subtle stories this show has been telling is the fact that some serious ish happened to the Mandalorians between sometime before the Original Trilogy and the Fall of the Empire. From what we can gather from throwaway lines and purposely shady exposition, the main point of contention was between the Mandos who sided with the Empire, disintegrating fools on behalf of Darth Vader and whatnot, and the Mandos who did not. Given the fact that there's one side who live underground in sketchy armory hovels and never, ever show their faces to another living soul, you can kind've guess which side lost.

What Exactly Is a Rebel Shocktrooper, and Why Did Cara Dune Leave That Life Behind?

Before a simple farmboy with a laser sword and a heaping dose of father issues came along, the Rebel Alliance needed actual troops to try and restore the Republic once and for all. Shock troopers were essentially soldiers of the rebellion, not to be confused with Imperial shock troopers, who were soldiers that ensured you had to buy another action figure with a slightly bigger gun. "Saw most of my action mopping up after Endor. Mostly ex-Imperial warlords," Cara says. Now, assuming she wasn't literally sweeping up the charred bits of the people aboard Death Star 2.0, this means Cara spent her days post-Original Trilogy hunting down the remaining heads of the Empire. That sounds...dope as hell, honestly, and Disney needs to start pre-production on "Operation Finale but set in the Star Wars galaxy" like last week.

But if it's another thing The Mandalorian makes clear, it's that everybody kind of had no idea what to do with themselves once the Empire fell. Without the need to point a blaster toward the next big target, the former Rebel Alliance had no idea what to do with its hands. As such, its fleet of badass Shock troopers became glorified bodyguards and crowd control patsies. Cara Dune, a woman who could very easily throw me through a brick wall, was not about that life, and essentially went A.W.O.L. on the New Republic.

Who the Hell Are These Guys?

These pug-faced baddies are Klatooinians, hailing from the planet Klatooine and usually known for being henchman and heavies for the Hutt crime family. As you'd expect from the type of people who are like, underlings for a giant slug-beast who feeds people to his pet monster in the monster, Klatooinians aren't typically the nicest peeps in the galaxy. (See also: Slaughtering a bunch of shrimp farmers in The Mandalorian for basically no reason.) In canon, there have been a few Klatooinians on the side of good, including a few Jedi Klatooinian, but the most well-known Klatooine native is probably Barada. Why? Because Barada was aboard Jabba the Hutt's floating palace in Return of the Jedi, which means he watched Boba Fett die, so the last words out of Barada's mouth before Luke Skywalker lightsabered him to death were almost assuredly: "Wow that is so embarrassing for him."

How Did a Random Crew of Klatooinian Raiders Nab an AT-ST?

The most interesting story The Mandalorian is telling is the one on the fringes that it's not really telling at all. What the hell did the galaxy look like after the Empire was destroyed and an entire galaxy had to piece itself back together? There are pockets of info littered all over The Mandalorian, including the fact that a skeezy bit of woodland marauders got their grubby paws on a freaking AT-ST, one of the Empire's most feared pieces of weaponry. (Unless you had, like, at least a dozen rocks and some twine lying around.)

The New Republic is quite obviously a whole-ass joke. Each time they're brought up on The Mandalorian, every character in that scene basically makes a wanking-off motion. Because here on the Outer Rims, Empire weirdos are still hiring bounty hunters to track down Force-sensitive babies and murderous marauders are riding around in walking tanks. Which all is to say that The Mandalorian might help to explain one of the biggest plot-whoopsies in Star Wars history: How did the First Order manage to get so freaking massive? By the time we get to The Force Awakens, 27 years later in the official Star Wars timeline, a "fringe" extremist group has managed to construct a weapon the size of an entire planet. Without anyone noticing, apparently. Imagine if, unbeknownst to the U.S. government, Neo-Nazis managed to convert the entire state of Arkansas into a bomb. It's an absurd proposition that makes just a little more sense when you realize the New Republic had absolutely no clue what it was doing.

Or, as posited last week, if Baby Yoda is in fact Supreme Leader Snoke. A lot can happen in 27 years. Oh, you're mad that Rian Johnson didn't give us any of Snoke's backstory? Be careful what you wish for, ya monsters. I will now continue to believe wholeheartedly this until it's disproven, something that "Sanctuary" explicitly did not do.