Let's Talk About THE MANDALORIAN Chapter 9: "The Marshall" - An Epic Sized Adventure Story
Mando is back in action as he continues his journey across the galaxy with The Child in The Mandalorian Season 2 Chapter 9 titled “The Marshall”! The long-awaited return of the series landed on Disney+ this past Friday, and now that many of you have had the opportunity to watch it, let’s talk about it! But just in case you haven’t seen it yet, you may not want to read on.
The second season picks up where the first season leaves off as Mando sets out on a journey to return The Child to his own kind… The Jedi.
The episode opens with Mando on an unknown gritty planet where it looks like a lot of underground criminal activity goes down. He ends up in a fight club of sorts to talk to a crime boss named Gor Koresh (John Leguizamo). He walks in to find two Gamorreans brutally fighting each other with Vibro blades. Mando sits next to Gor for information on where to find other Mandalorians that could help him on his journey.
The meeting doesn’t go well as Gor turns on Mando with his team of thugs and threatens to kill him for his Beskar armor. Mando isn’t having any of it, though, and takes them all down in a cool little fight sequence involving some hand to hand combat. He ends up chasing Gor down and hanging him from his feet on a street lamp, which is when Mando is able to get some real information out of him.
It’s here he learns that there’s a Mandalorian on Tatooine in the city of Mos Pelgo so he heads out and leaves Gor hanging upside down to be devoured by a horde of creatures that have been lingering in the dark.
Mando ends up returning to Mos Eisley where he reconnects to with Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) to have The Crest worked on while he embarks on his journey to find Mos Pelgo, which is an old mining settlement that was ravaged by bandits after the fall of the Empire. There’s a fun little flashback scene that offers a look at what it was like for the people of Tatooine when the second Death Star was destroyed.
Anyway, Mando jumps on an old speeder bike and heads out to Mos Pelgo. Once there, he walks into a bar to ask some questions about the Mandalorian that lives in the town and that’s when Mando meets The Marshall, a.k.a. Cobb Vanth, who is wearing Boba Fett’s old armor. The Marshall invites Mando to sit for a drink, but when Vanth removes the Mandalorian helmet to show his face, Mando is thrown off. Vanth goes on to state that he’s never met a real Mandalorian before. He’s only heard stories and the Boba Fett armor he’s wearing he ended up buying off some Jawas who helped save him at one point.
Of course, Mando is upset and demands Vanth to remove the armor and give it to him so that he can return it to the relatives on the Mandalorian who previously wore it. Before they can get into a fight, the town starts to shake and people are frantically running through the streets and getting to shelter as a giant worm type creature called a Krayt Dragon comes plowing through to eat a Bantha.
This Krayt Dragon has been a terror on the town for some time now and he asks Mando to help kill it in exchange for the armor and Mando agrees. As Vanth and Mando ride off through the Tatooine desert to find the home of the beast, Vanth, who is riding one of the engines from Anakin Skywalker’s podracer from The Phantom Menace repurposed as a vehicle, shares a little history of his town and how he came to be their Marshall.
This actually isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a Krayt Dragon in the Star Wars universe. It has a long history in Star Wars lore. The first time we saw one was in the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope. There was the skeleton of one in the sand dunes of Tatooine. It’s a smaller version, but that is a Krayt Dragon.
He explains that after the destruction of the second Death Star, with the Empire pulling out of Tatooine, a local group known as The Mining Collective moved in on the town and turned it into a slave camp. Vanth escaped but returned later wearing Boba Fett’s armor and used its weapons to destroy the Mining Collective and take the town back. Vanth is actually a good guy, looking to do good things. But, he’s still a little rough around the edges.
As Mando and Vanth enter a canyon they are met by wolf-like creatures who belong to a group of local Tusken Raiders. Mando is able to communicate with the Tusken Raider with a combination of Tusken and sign language. As they are talking a Mando learns that the Raiders are also out to kill the Krayt Dragon, so they agree to team up to take it on.
Vanth isn’t happy with the arrangement as the Tusken Raiders have not been very neighborly. But, Mando does his best to establish peace between the Raiders and Vanth. He explains that if they continue to fight each other the giant creature will kill them all. So they come together.
As they hunt the beast, they find that it’s living in an abandoned Sarlacc pit. The Mando states that the only things that can live in an abandoned Sarlacc pit are something that eats one. They end up baiting the Krayt Dragon to see what exactly they are dealing with and the bait, which included a Bantha and Raider which were eaten. It’s at this point they realize they are going to need an army to destroy this thing.
They come up with a plan that would bring the people of the town of Mos Pelgo together with the Raiders to fight the Krayt Dragon, In return, the Raiders will get the meat of the beast and they agree to never attack members of the town again. The townspeople need some convincing, but in the end, they agree to join the fight.
So, the army shows up to the pit while the Krayt Dragon is sleeping and they get to work! The plan is to bury a shit-ton of explosives from the town’s mining operation in front of the cave so that when the creature comes out they can blow it to smithereens. You see, the belly is the weakest spot on the creature.
Once it’s all set up they wake the creature up and lure it out where they start firing massive arrows at it from giant crossbow weapons. They are able to get the beast out far enough to detonate the explosives, but unfortunately on the first try, it doesn’t work! The beast pops back up spewing acid vomit on some of the Tuskan Raiders killing them. The beast also goes back below the ground and then come exploding out the top of a mountain! It’s quite an awesomely epic sequence!
So, the beast lives, and Mando and Vanth form a new plan, and race into action with the jet packs. Vanth ends up using the rocket launcher on his jet pack to draw the creature’s attention. Mando then allows himself to be eaten by the Kryat Dragon with a Bantha that is carrying dozens of extra explosive charges and he’s holding the detonator. This allows Mando to blow the beast up from the inside and it works!
After the madness, Vanth gives the armor to Mando and he rides off on the speeder bike across the desert back to his ship. As he does so, he is being watched by a cloaked figure from the top of a hill. This mysterious character turns around to reveal the face of actor Temuera Morrison, who is playing Boba Fett! That’s right, Boba Fett is indeed alive and he’s obviously gone through some tough times since escaping the Sarlac after being swallowed up by it in Return of the Jedi.
This is super exciting and I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here and how Fett will be utilized as the series continues.
“The Marshall” was a truly epic first episode! I would have loved to see this on the big screen! I couldn’t be happier with how the first episode of Season 2 turned out and I’ll be watching it a few more times before Chapter 10 drops on Friday!
What did you think of The Mandalorian: Chapter 9 - “The Marshall’?