The Mandalorian is back – and in style. The show has always had Western vibes, but “Chapter 9: The Marshal” cranked those to the max, presenting us with a dusty frontier town, a Marshal trying to keep the peace, frosty relations between indigenous people and settlers, and Mando himself as ‘the man with no name.’ Within this, we also got some very cool nods to the history of Star Wars.
Most obvious was Timothy Olyphant’s Cobb Vanth wearing Boba Fett’s armor, which emerged from the Sarlacc pit and was discovered by Jawas. Also of note was Vance using one of Anakin Skywalker’s podracer engines from The Phantom Menace as his ride and the reappearance of the goofy Pit Droids. Then there’s Fett as played by Temuera Morrison, glimpsed in the closing moments of the episode. But there’s one subtle cameo that most viewers missed: R5-D4, “a red and white R5 astromech droid.”
As ScreenRant explains:
The [season premiere] sees Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and The Child aka Baby Yoda go back to Tatooine in search of a fellow Mandalorian. Din decides to park the Razor Crest in one of Peli Motto’s (Amy Sedaris) hangars at Mos Eisley. After helping Din in season 1, he is comfortable asking her for help to find Mos Pelgo. In order to send Din on his way, Peli has to show him a map of Tatooine and calls over an R5 unit to help. The red and white droid is confirmed to be R5-D4, as there is damage on the top from his bad motivator.
If you’ll recall, during the droid auction scene near the beginning of A New Hope, R5-D4 is the red and white droid whose motivator explosively malfunctions, causing Luke to instead choose R2-D2 and C-3PO. If that motivator hadn’t blown, Mark Hamill’s hero wouldn’t have seen Princess Leia’s transmission, would never have contacted Obi-Wan and the galaxy could still be under Imperial rule. All that makes this hunk of junk unusually important.
Right now, The Mandalorian‘s second season looks set to match the quality of the first. Here’s hoping the next episode sheds some more light on what Boba Fett has been up to and what’s going on with Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon and the Darksaber.
Tell us, though, did you enjoy the premiere? And what are you looking forward to seeing across the rest of the season? As always, let us know down below.