“Stop touching things.”
This was the command of The Mandalorian as Episode 4 of the Star Wars series began — with our masked hero on the run with Baby Yoda, who keeps fiddling with things in the cockpit. Mando does his best W.C. Fields, but it’s clear he is just as charmed by the little green chicken nugget as the rest of the known universe.
When they land on the agrarian planet of Sorgan — the equivalent of a rural farm world in the “one planet, one ecosystem” style that Star Wars does so well — Mando even reveals his nickname for the little guy, “Womp Rat,” and leaves him aboard the starship while he takes in the lay of the land. “Don’t touch anything,” Mando orders. “Stay right here. Don’t move.”
Of course, the tiny green fellow waddles after him. Nobody puts Baby Yoda in the corner.
As they enter a woodsy diner for some bone broth, Baby Yoda comes face-to-face with our first major Easter egg of the episode — a snarling Loth-cat, familiar to fans of the animated Rebels series.
Otherwise, the episode directed by Bryce Dallas Howard—titled “Sanctuary”—is fairly light on Star Wars shoutouts. When Mando has a knock-down, drag-out brawl with Cara Dune (Gina Carano), a deserting Rebel shock trooper who is also on Sorgan to lay low, Baby Yoda’s soup-slurping stuns both her and Mando with its unbearable cuteness, ceasing hostilities.
These two know each other, which is why she thought he was there to collect her, too. As a fellow fugitive, Mando is now a friend. Cara then provided the next reference that would make longtime Star Wars fans perk up, detailing her work as a soldier since he last saw her. “I saw most of my action mopping up after Endor,” she said. After that clash seen at the end of Return of the Jedi, she says she was dispatched to protect delegates of the New Republic and suppress riots. Neither were her cup of bone broth.
Mando agrees to take Baby Yoda and leave Sorgan, since the three of them would likely draw too much attention. But before departing, some townies from a nearby shrimp farming village approach Mando seeking help — and offering payment.
From here, the episode takes on a very A-Team feel, with Dune and Mando — two people on the run — agree to use their brawn and strategic training to help these locals fend off a group of dog-faced Klaatooinian raiders, who have taken control of an Imperial AT-ST walker to wreak havoc on the helpless humans. Mando and Dune, who is definitely the B.A. Baracus of this team, join forces to repel them.
As Mando gets to know the people he’s protecting, particularly the lovely widow Omera (played by Twilight’s Julia Jones) and her daughter Winta (Isla Farris), we also come to learn a little more about him. He tells Omera that he has been a Mandalorian ascetic since he was about her child’s age.
“You haven’t shown your face to anyone since you were a kid?” she asks.
“No,” he answers. “My parents were killed. The Mandalorians took care of me.” This is the way.
Later, he reveals the penalty for removing his mask before others: That would be breaking tradition, and he could not return to his tribe.
But we do see him take it off when no one is looking. He has to eat, after all. Mando rests his mask on the ledge, but we don’t see him. No one does.
Mando and Dune teach the locals some hand-to-hand combat, then give them some rifle training. Omera is a particularly good shot. This training montage really needs the A-Team theme song. (Please get on that, Internet.) This segment also mirrors a similar sequence from Episode 17, Season 2 of The Clone Wars, in which another small farming village has to repel raiders after Anakin Skywalker trains them to wield their tools as weapons.