Baby Yoda (not Grogu, never Grogu) has been through a lot this season. He nearly had his throat slashed by a knife, he was almost eaten by a giant sea monster (karmic retribution), and he has a dumb name. But in “Chapter 14” of The Mandalorian, it’s the audience who goes through a lot. Did anyone else reflexively shudder when they saw the episode title, “The Tragedy”? I was immediately nervous, for Mando and for Baby Yoda, and that tension never went away. But “The Tragedy” is misleading, because there wasn’t just one tragedy, there were two. Three, if you consider the nomadic life that Boba Fett has lived since falling into the Sarlacc pit. But let’s focus on the main two.
1. The Razor Crest, as essential to The Mandalorian as the Millennium Falcon is to Star Wars, is no more. It was blown up by an Imperial Cruiser captained by a darksaber-wielding Moff Gideon. That “piece of junk” had been in a constant state of repair and disrepair all season — all series, really — so maybe it’s a good thing that it was destroyed. It was a money pit for Mando, who honestly didn’t seem all that broken up about losing his ship (I’ll never forget you, space toilet). He’s probably happy that he won’t have to deal with pit droids again. Or maybe he was focused on the other tragedy.
2. As Mando, Fennec Shand, and Boba Fett (“Boba Fett? Where?”) are distracted by cannon fodder Stormtroopers, Moff Gideon sends four Dark Troopers, as predicted, to snatch Baby Yoda and return him to the Empire’s ship. They blast off into lightspeed, leaving Mando a sad dad. Baby Yoda can take care of himself, but only to a certain point: he wrecks two Stormtroopers with his Force abilities, but is quickly worn out by the effort. By the end of the episode, he’s been stunned and handcuffed, and I cried.
LOOK AT HIS LITTLE HANDCUFFS.
Now it’s on Mando, along with Fennec, Boba Fett, and Migs Mayfeld, the space-Boston character played by Bill Burr from season one, to track down the Imperial cruiser and rescue Baby Yoda before Dr. Pershing can do unspeakably terrible things to him. I hope they all blow Moff Gideon’s face off.
