Episode 4 of the Disney+ live-action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian, transported the show’s protagonists, the lone bounty hunter “Mando” and his newly-acquired sidekick, “Baby Yoda” (as the internet calls him) to a whole new planet, far, far away from the Client and his presumably dastardly plans; yet, even on this quiet, sparsely-populated world, the duo are located by a hostile bounty hunter using a tracking fob. This begs the question: how do The Mandalorian‘s tracking fobs even work?
The Mandalorian’s tracking fobs are handheld devices that alert the user of the target’s proximity. The target, in this case, is Baby Yoda. The show has not divulged how the trackers are able to detect the target, especially over such a long distance. Does the fob identify its target using genetics? Or is there a tracking device on Baby Yoda himself?
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The tracking fobs were introduced in the first episode. The Mandalorian receives one from Greef Karga, played by Carl Weathers. The exchange between the characters suggested the job was unusual; typically, bounty hunters are given a “puck” containing the target’s information. The fobs are something new. Partway through the episode, Mando discovered something else unusual about this particular assignment: he was not the only bounty hunter with a tracking fob.
There are a few possible explanations for how The Mandalorian‘s fobs work. One is that they are scanners that connect to a tracking device on Baby Yoda. This is the simplest explanation, but it is also very unlikely. If the tracking device was on the floating cradle, that cradle was left in the dumpster in episode 3. If the device was implanted in Baby Yoda, Mando would certainly have thought to look for it.
The second possibility is that the fobs are genetic scanners tracking Baby Yoda’s species — a rare, possibly near-extinction, unnamed species in the Star Wars universe. In fact, if not for Yaddle on the Jedi Council in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, Yoda would be our only other example.
The last possibility is the one that fans will be the most unhappy with: midichlorians. There have been some hints about midichlorians already in the series, which some fans speculating that the Empire wants to harvest midichlorians from Baby Yoda. It is possible the tracking fobs are set to register high concentrations of the microscopic life-form connected to the force. The 50-year-old child is unusually attuned to the force; he lifted a giant charging Mudhurn off the ground in episode 2, (outclassing Luke Skywalker summoning his lightsaber from the snow in The Empire Strikes Back).
If midichlorians have returned to Star Wars lore, fans will certainly be divided. Perhaps like most things in the Star Wars universe, the less The Mandalorian gets bogged-down trying to explain how the tracking fobs work, the better; in the meantime, audiences can take the technology on faith.
