【Romance Archives】

Maybe because so much of it is Romance Archivescute li'l bb antics and cowboys in space, we can sometimes forget The Mandalorian's sinister premise. This is a show, in part, about the ruthless hunting of a child for some kind of exploitation — and Season 2, episode 4, aka "Chapter 12: The Siege," confirmed that.

Instead of heading straight to Corvus to find Ahsoka Tano (we want it, we need it, we're willing to wait for it), Mando makes the call to fix the disintegrating Razor Crest after Baby GrootThe Child proves to not be the best mechanic. (Might we suggest incentivizing tasks with eggs?) They land on Nevarro, much to the delight of Cara Dune and Greef Karga, who has very much missed his little green friend.

Via Giphy

Our good friend Mando can't go anywhere without someone trying to enlist his skills for a favor, so he ends up joining Greef, Cara, and the pilot episode's Mythrol (hi again, Horatio Sanz!) on a mission to destroy an Imperial base. It's worth nothing that The Mandalorian's adventure-of-the-week structure is tougher to digest this season, perhaps owing to the general elusiveness of time itself but also because we have established characters and quests that we want to explore further. Cara and Greef's presence — even Mythrol and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee's pilot Carson — offsets that loss of momentum.

The episode's action is excellent as usual, but the jaw-dropping moments are all tied to the truth of this Imperial base. A hologram message of Dr. Pershing reveals this and more to our heroes: Firstly, this base isn't military, and its workers answered to Moff Gideon, who is very much alive. Pershing talks about a donor, a recipient, blood samples, and M-count — undoubtedly midi-chlorians, the particles in a person's blood that determine whether or not they are a Force user.

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This isn't a surprising reveal about what Pershing and the client intended to do with the Child, but it still makes the skin crawl to hear it talked about in this way. We — and Mando — loved the Child as soon as we met. It was painful enough to see the baby cry while turned over to Pershing and the client in Season 1. A year later, it's unbearable to think what they did or planned to do with our little friend.

Via Giphy

The base has more secrets to reveal. After determining that it's a lab, Mando and his friends find a body of some sort floating in a tank — inactive, disfigured, and waiting for its next experimental purpose. Even though it's not moving or talking, it bears striking resemblance to the form we'll come to know as Snoke in The Force Awakensand its trilogy. Snoke was artificially bred by Darth Sidious, part of the larger plot to keep the notorious Sith Lord alive, and we may have just found this project in its early stages.

The episode concludes with Gideon, who we haven't seen since the Season 1 finale, and it's clear that he's only doubled down in his hunt of Mando and the Child. He's got a tracker on them now, and just as troubling: He's got a whole lot of clone armor and what seems like a plan to fill it with artificially engineered Force users.

GULP.

The Mandalorian is streaming on Disney+, with new episodes every Friday.

Related Video: Official Baby Yoda toys are finally here!

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