Narrative Tension: Character Motivations, Emotional Stakes, and Physical Stakes
Part 3
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“The Passenger” is an episode that feels a little out of sync with the rest of the season because it only briefly digs into anything significant on a character level, making it feel almost entirely like a “side-quest”; something Mando has to do in order to gain information pertaining to the greater plot, but not really affecting him as a person or connecting to the themes of the show. The episode doesn’t feel like it has any significant emotional stakes. The most new information we get about the world, characters, or plot in the episode is that he (we assume) will complete his side of the deal, his ship is significantly damaged and they establish a connection to Carson Teva, who will become a recurring character.
We almost got something when the Frog Lady challenges his honor and the wider opinion people in-universe appear to have of knowing Mandalorians to be people who keep their word, but we never get a resolution between them regarding that setup. Sure, the Frog Lady shoots the spider that was going to get the kid, but the spiders were after all of them, Mando was busy so she would have had to shoot some at some point, and Mando fixing the ship was inevitable too, whether he did it on her timeline or his. The episode missed the chance for the characters to resolve the theme of parents setting an example for their child (Will Mando keep his word to get the Frog Lady and the eggs to safety, or will his son see him as somebody who doesn’t keep his word when what’s at stake is not personal to him? What will Grogu learn as a result of his actions?), and it didn’t have any character acknowledgment of what should have been the second primary theme (“What lengths are parents willing to go to for their children, and by extension the continuation of their people, culture, and legacy?”)
The latter is easier to address because it’s been the running theme of the show, and the Frog Lady’s objective hinges on her and the eggs making it out of the misadventure alive. Mando spends the entire episode from the very beginning facing hardship after hardship in an effort to 1. Keep his kid safe and 2. Get closer to completing his goal of giving the kid to a Jedi who will be able to teach the kid how to keep himself safe.
The episode starts off with a close call with the bandits and a grueling trek across the desert. I would have liked to see a moment between Mando and the kid as he’s packing up the necessities that reinforces why it was so important for him to get the armor back from the marshal. We know Mando is willing to go through whatever it takes to get the kid safely back to Mos Eisley, but the kid could have seen how difficult the trek was with everything the Mandalorian was carrying, and he could have touched the extra armor as if to suggest Mando leave it behind in order to make the trip easier.
Mando, inferring the question or simply choosing to talk to the kid, tells him something along the lines of “This armor belonged to somebody who… No longer walks with us. If we can’t return it to their family, we bring it to the tribe so others like us can be fitted for protection. It deserves respect, no matter where it came from; they won’t be forgotten if they’re carried with us.”
That moment conveys how Mandalorians care for the armor as if it’s one of their own fallen people, that it’s important to treat it with respect either by finding the proper owner or by reclaiming the metal to be used as armor to protect others like them down the road. Mandalorian armor can come from a number of sources— The style makes it Mandalorian, not the material (paralleling the idea that Mandalorians as people can come from any origin or species, they don’t have to be from the homeworld of Mandalore). The emphasis is put on legacy and culture, people’s choice to be a Mandalorian being what defines them (not their origin), protecting/providing for those who come after us and passing on what’s culturally important to the next generation so the previous one is honored in remembrance and the future generation can continue with knowledge of the past.
Any of that more technical explanation of the themes can be relayed in “The Marshal” during the scene suggested in the previous post, exposition given in the form of teaching others to inform them of Mando’s reason for helping. Here, Mando’s just summarizing and reinforcing those ideas for the kid to give enough character acknowledgment of the subject in this episode before it segues into helping the Frog Lady travel to Trask in order to continue her family line.
The eggs set up the stakes of the episode, the promise of contact with Mandalorians on Trask contingent on their survival. The whole reason Mando is doing any of this is in order to find somebody who will be able to help keep his own child safe, therefore I think there needed to be more emphasis on him keeping the kid from eating the eggs.
Have the kid go after the eggs, but have it so Mando is able to intervene or stop him and force him to spit them out. He doesn’t say much beyond telling the kid to knock it off and not do it again. We still establish that the kid is a threat to the eggs, maintaining/upping the risks in the story, and we also have the humorous reality of Mando handling what every caretaker of toddlers has had to deal with: them putting things in their mouths they’re not supposed to and forcing them spit it out.
After the crash they take stock of their situation like in canon, and Mando gradually gets more and more sullen, their prospects looking grim before he finally tells the Frog Lady that he can’t do anything about the hull until the sun comes back up, prompting the Frog Lady to access Zero’s vocabulator after Mando and the kid bed down for the night. She, in using Zero, emphasizes that their situation cannot wait until morning and tells him “My husband has risked his life to carve out an existence for us on the only planet that is habitable for our species. We have worked too hard and suffered too much to resign ourselves to the extinction of our family line.”
It’s a hard hitting line and it forces Mando to get up and move, his child watching him the entire time. Mando has the Frog Lady helping inside with the finer mechanical and electrical work while he works on patching the fuel leak, fixing the engines, and reinforcing the cockpit outside. The kid is outside with him holding a flashlight for him while he works before Din goes up to work on reinforcing the cockpit. We can see the Frog Lady working inside beneath the canopy, and when Din goes back to get his tools and get the kid, the kid is gone.
Seeing the kid’s tracks going back into the Crest, Mando realizes what he must be going for and dashes back inside, calling for him. He sees him at the other end of the hold and runs down to stop him before the kid puts an egg in his mouth and tries to run away.
Mando chases after the kid, grabs him, and holds his hand in front of the kid’s mouth saying “Spit it out. Spit it out.” When the kid doesn’t, it’s with an aggravated huff that Mando yanks off his glove and sticks his finger in the kid’s mouth and fishes around for the egg until it pops back out, but not before the kid bites him. There’s a lot more force behind the kid's jaws than there appears, and Din grunts at the pain. He catches the egg with the other hand and is luckily able to put it back in the case, but his finger begins to bleed the second he pulls it out.
The kid is distressed and tries to grab his hand, but Mando’s already pulling on his glove and reprimanding him, and in the process of trying to get his point across to the kid he slips and says “Look. These are important to her the same way you are important to me. We need her to help us, and she’s not going to do that if you continue to bother them. Do not touch them again.”
The boy looks genuinely ashamed and caught off guard by his tone. Mando closes the tank, and his silence makes the kid’s ears droop, the audience feeling the guilt alongside him as Mando says “Nap time,” and puts him back in the bunk by himself.
The audience sees at the same time Grogu does the severity of Mando’s concern and the surprise accidental confession of his care for the kid. We know Din hasn’t wanted to admit his depth of care for the kid (because admitting so would mean facing the inevitable heartbreak if and when they are separated), but having it actually spoken in dialogue would have been good to further their relationship, especially given the end goal for this season, and it would have given the episode itself more grounding and emotional significance. It’s important for us to get Mando’s inner thoughts, and those only come out when he’s pushed by outside events or characters.
Later during a quiet moment where Mando is working on the ship and the kid is hovering nearby watching him, Mando irritably makes that remark that the kid make himself useful if he’s going to be out there; what happens instead is that the kid comes over and puts his hand on Din’s glove and closes his eyes.
Instantly, Mando feels his finger heal. He sighs at the apology, thanks the kid, and either takes him back inside to warm up or gives him his cloak out there, or he has him hold a flashlight and gently explains what he’s doing for the kid’s benefit. Scene finishes with Mando trailing off into maintenance and mechanic knowledge. It’s a moment that also helps Mando get back into problem-solving mode, the one-sided conversation a way to help him talk out his thoughts and admit to himself that even though the situation looks bleak, he is obligated to do everything in his power to get the ship back up and running (if not for the information he needs, then for the fact all of their lives are on the line)
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Interestingly enough, incorporating Zero how they did could have been a great opportunity to further/parallel another theme in the show that we didn’t get to continue exploring with Mando, which is the idea of him not trusting droids. I bring it up because it can dovetail into what they talk about during the Frog Lady’s conversation when she holds Mando accountable.
Mando’s opinion at the end of Season 1 was changed because Kuiil, with IG-11, shows him that droids are not inherently untrustworthy, but he says in this episode that the droid the Frog Lady is utilizing is a killer, despite the fact Zero is broken down to his component parts and isn’t actually sentient at the time. Though Mando shows in the first episode with Peli’s pit droids this season that he is starting to warm up to them, change is not a linear path and it’s clear he still holds some animosity towards one that was a problem before.
I point it out because Kuiil tells him in “Reckoning” in Season 1 that he recovered IG-11’s parts and rebuilt him, programming and training him to be a nurse droid. Some of Kuiil’s exact words are:
“… Reconstruction was quite difficult, but not impossible. It had to learn everything from scratch. This is something that cannot be taught with a twist of a spanner. It requires patience and repetition. I spent day after day, reinforcing its development with patience and affirmation. It developed a personality as its experiences grew. […] Droids are not good or bad. They are neutral reflections of those who imprint them.”
All of which can be applied to the idea of raising children.
Children have to be taught how to walk, how to navigate their surroundings, how to develop fine motor skills, how to learn from their mistakes, and how to be compassionate and caring and attentive and connect with those around them (all things we see IG go through in the above sequence Kuiil speaks over). It cannot be forced or programmed into them— Teaching skills and correcting behaviors takes patience, repetition, practice, reinforcement, and encouragement, and it’s done through connecting with them as individuals. Children are reflections of their upbringings, and their environment and influences are what will shape and mold them as they grow into independent people who we hope will make the right decisions.
All of those qualities could have been seen in an allegory for the droids. Droids themselves are neutral, and even those that were created for a certain purpose can be reprogrammed to do something that, according to Mando in “Reckoning,” “goes against its nature.” The idea of nature vs. nurture blends into a larger theme we see in a lot of Star Wars media that is especially relevant in this show: “Are we defined by our origin, or is it our choices that make us who we are? Is there anybody who isn’t capable of change?”
The simplest way to include this without having to spell it all out for the audience is by giving the Frog Lady just a little more dialogue. When Mando says it’s a killer, she looks at it briefly before looking back at him. “The droid is in pieces; it does what I’ve programmed it [taught] to do.”
In summary, “The Passenger” had a lot of potential, and while I know episodes can only go so long, I still think there were ways to address or at least set up these themes to be explored later.
Give us a brief scene in the beginning of quiet reflection on legacy between Mando and the kid. Give us some of Mando’s own thoughts on the importance of armor and what it means to Mandalorians after they’ve died, and give the desert trek a moment that focuses on the kid being the reason he goes through the lengths he does.
Give the Frog Lady’s eggs the weight and importance they deserve, considering their survival is what the stakes of Din’s objective are hinged upon, and show Din stopping the kid from eating them (still giving us an obstacle and bonding moments between Mando and his kid) but include the dialogue where he verbally admits his inner thoughts
When the Frog Lady accesses Zero’s vocabulator, her objective is to hold Mando accountable to the terms of their deal and to get him to do everything in his power to get them to safety. Her pointed remark that she thought Mandalorians were people known for keeping their word, “but I guess those are just stories meant for children,” puts added accountability on him not just as a Mandalorian but as a father of a child watching everything he does. When Mando tells the Frog Lady not to mess with the droid because it’s a killer, the conversation briefly diverts to her echoing what Kuiil says in Season 1, which in turn parallels the concept of raising kids
The rest of the episode can take place as it does, but it would have been good to get one more moment between him and the Frog Lady, resolving their interpersonal tensions and coming to an understanding based on gratitude for each other’s help, and maybe it ends with Mando taking his glove off for the kid to play with his hand as they settle in for the long ride ahead (showing how the kid is already able to get under that protective outer shell because Mando is opening up to him too).
The resolution focuses on Din showing again that not only is he an honorable man, but that honorable Mandalorians are people who keep their word. It’ll set him up in contrast to Bo-Katan and her crew in the following episode of “The Heiress” specifically because she and her crew deceive him (while also mocking the way he personally adheres to what he knows the rules of being a Mandalorian to be). All of that is just there to better thread these story elements together.
Most of these small scenes don’t have to be dialogue heavy. Mando carries a lot of weight in his gaze and movements, and it’s easy for us to see what he’s thinking when the camera lingers on what he focuses on and considers most important. It would have been a good episode to get more of the parenting, father-and-son bonding aspects of their stories since the following three episodes have them separated for the majority of the physical plots, and after that the focus becomes giving the child away, or the child being forcibly taken from him.
The Final Straw: this is a pic of the last time the kids wanted me to tag along trick or treating. I was Frog Lady. The Amazon frog head was stupid and smelly but I airbrushed it and made the best of it. I made a Dot Matrix head in Blender, 3D printed, glued on a wig, stuck a little speaker inside and channeled my inner Joan Rivers. I was entirely too annoying😂😂😂👍👍
@wings-and-beskargam my first big print and the one and only time I airbrushed with liquid latex.
