[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Mandalorian And Grogu.]
Depending on your tolerance for middling action scenes with very few stakes, The Mandalorian And Grogu is kind of exhausting. Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian shoots bad guys, blows up ships, brawls in a bar, brawls again in a gladiator ring, pulls off several high-speed chases, and battles a giant sea serpent—and that’s just the first half of the movie. For a while, it seems like the big-screen continuation of Jon Favreau’s Mandalorian series has little interest in being anything other than the cheapest fast food. Then the story takes an unexpected swerve at the top of its third act. Favreau boldly sidelines the human characters and slows down the pace for a Jim Henson-inspired hero’s journey for Mando’s pint-sized apprentice Grogu. It’s a testament to the power of Baby Yoda that a shoot-’em-up summer blockbuster can stop dead in its tracks to become a puppet-led silent film, and it ends up being the best part of the movie.
It helps that Grogu’s big adventure is the one place where the story actually has some genuine emotional stakes. With Mando’s reluctant fatherhood arc resolved on the show, the biggest ongoing tension in the Mandalorian saga is the question of how much 50-something Grogu is still just a baby versus a burgeoning apprentice capable of handling things himself. His main role tends to be as a sidekick—slotting into missions as a helpful Force user but rarely serving as the brains of the operations. (Unless it’s about where to get his next snack.) When Mando is kidnapped by Jabba The Hutt’s equally bulbous cousins, The Twins, Grogu suits up in his tiny Mandalorian armor but relies on some (notably smaller) adults to lead the rescue mission.
While Grogu is useful to his Anzellan pals as they navigate tunnels and spring Mando from his watery prison, he’s still largely following someone else’s ideas. When Mando realizes he’s too big to fit into their petite rescue vehicle, he once again defaults to telling his small green son what to do: sending Grogu off to safety and lying that he’ll be right behind them. Ludwig Göransson’s swelling score does its best to make us believe we’re watching Mando’s last stand as the helmeted hero whispers a final “goodbye kid” to the departing Anzellan ship and collapses on the forest floor to become (literal) worm food. Then Grogu swoops in at the last second to bite back at the bugs and step up as his injured dad’s protector. For once, he’s made his own choice.
What follows amounts to a riff on every sequence where an old gunslinger is tended to by their ally, only with more comedy about Grogu smashing his dad’s head into things. Ostensibly, Mando is slowly succumbing to poison, although there’s never any real risk that he’s actually going to die. (It’s not that kind of movie). Still, there are compelling emotional stakes to watching Grogu navigate a life-or-death situation all on his own. This is essentially the first time he’s claiming real agency and the movie reflects that by shrinking itself down to his perspective.
After the non-stop chase sequences that came before, it’s a pleasant change of pace to slow things way, way down to luxuriate in the tiny details of Grogu’s tiny problem-solving. Though he doesn’t speak beyond his signature coos and gurgles, the beautifully emotive $5 million puppet makes Grogu’s thought process perfectly clear. He heals Mando’s wound, discovers that’s not enough to wake him from his poison-induced coma, hides him under some leaves, fashions himself a small walking stick, and ventures out for water before constructing a more permanent mud hut to protect them both. He eventually gets hungry enough that he sneaks off to steal some fish from a river-dwelling alien who would look right at home in The Dark Crystal.
The sequence works because it’s not built around the idea of making Grogu as cute as possible. (Although, of course, he’s still impossibly cute.) Instead, there’s real character work to his little solo saga. Putting us in Grogu’s perspective makes it clear just how massive the world seems from his tiny POV; it’s no wonder he’s constantly getting distracted by little things. Yet, here, he perseveres with a seriousness worthy of the situation. Instead of being the one to nag his dad for snacks, he’s now the one to gently lift Mando’s helmet to pour some water down his throat. It’s the best puppet work this side of Project Hail Mary.
In fact, ironically, the whole sequence feels decidedly more human than any of the scenes that feature human (voice) actors. The script by Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor has Mando and Jabba’s swole son Rotta The Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) speak the themes of their arcs out loud multiple times. But having Grogu’s story unfold silently through action is so much more impactful. For a little guy who can’t be trusted in a cockpit full of buttons, he proves awfully good in a crisis. He learns to trust the river dweller. He learns to trust himself. He gets a tense Jurassic Park kitchen moment as a bounty hunter’s wolf-dog comes sniffing around. He accepts that death is a part of life, snuggling up with his dad for what could be the last time if the antidote he’s acquired doesn’t work.
It’s all so compelling that it’s almost disappointing when Mando wakes up and they revert back to their traditional mentor/apprentice dynamic. While The Mandalorian And Grogu isn’t the sort of movie that’s trying to reinvent the wheel, the forest sequences prove that it’s possible for Star Wars to pull off age-old storytelling tropes in a way that still feels fresh. It’s a lesson too little of the rest of the film takes to heart. Though Mando claims it’s the way of the world that “the old protect the young and then the young protect the old,” none of the big moves Grogu makes in the action climax are nearly as impactful as his small-scale adventure in the woods. Still, if The Mandalorian And Grogu is a Happy Meal of a movie, at least the toy at the center is high-quality.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.