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| MND "The Marshal" |
Last season's fifth chapter, "The Gunslinger", gets a veritable sequel in "The Marshal". Amy Sedaris' Peli returns, and the small but impactful scene of Din Djarin communicating with the Tuskens on their terms essentially gets an episode-length expansion. And as a small spot of krayt dragon infestation comes to an explosive head, Jon Favreau (series co-creator directing for the show for the first time) presents a setpiece without peer even in his garlanded cinematic filmography.
It feels redundant to say it, but "The Marshal" leans hard into tropes of the western genre. A ramshackle town, defended by a lone marshal, must come together with their Tusken Raider territorial rivals to take down a massive krayt dragon that threatens both camps. Indeed, Favreau himself has been here before - see Cowboys & Aliens, where white townsfolk and Apaches must come together to battle aliens.
What that high-concept, relatively low-payoff film doesn't feature, is its sheriff counterpart (Harrison Ford, for your Star Wars connection) wearing Boba Fett's salvaged armor. The Tatooinian town's marshal is Cobb Vanth, played by Timothy Olyphant. As an actor, Olyphant is so associated with westerns that he voiced "the Spirit of the West" in Rango. And here he plays... a Star Wars novel character making the pioneering jump to live-action! Introduced in the Aftermath trilogy, Vanth uses Boba's arsenal to defend the town from miscellaneous threats, but Din's Mandalorian Creed looks down on cultural appropriation.
In exchange for the armor, Vanth needs Din's help to kill the huge krayt dragon threatening the town. The dragon resembles an Arrakeen sandworm from Dune, which is appropriate given how much Dune influenced George Lucas in creating Star Wars. It's here that it becomes clear that in Season 2, the scale of the show has become bigger: the scale of the dragon, the longer episode runtime, and the expansion to an IMAX aspect ratio for the climax.
Still, the show remains the same deeply nerdy artifact it was in Season 1. The much-talked about womp rats appear, Vanth's speeder bike is customized from a podracer engine, we find out what Boba Fett's helmet antenna is for, and we basically see the townsfolk watching Return of the Jedi on the holo net. Also, regarding Peli's pit droid comedy routine, it shows a lot of confidence to include such a blatantly prequel-y bit of humor.
At the end of Season 1's premiere, we were all blindsided by the Child. The reveal at the end of this premiere is not nearly as unexpected, but it's still a big deal: Boba Fett's story did not come to a sarlacc-shaped end in the Great Pit of Carkoon. "The Marshal" is an assured self-contained story featuring maybe the most impressive setpiece Jon Favreau has ever directed, and with a sting in the tail. 7/10.
Stray observations:
- The pulse rifle is back?! After disappearing halfway through last season, all of a sudden it returns when it could have come in handy in multiple situations during the interim. During George Lucas' set visit in Season 1, as captured for all eternity in the Disney Gallery docuseries, Favreau brags about including the pulse rifle that Lucas created, at which point Lucas shoots him down and says he didn't! Of course, that's because the pulse rifle is a relic of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which Lucas has violently disavowed.
- A few words about Temuera Morrison's long road to this moment bringing Boba Fett to life. First Morrison played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones, which established that Boba (played by Daniel Logan) was a clone of "father" Jango. So logically, Boba would grow up to look like Morrison, who went on to overdub Jeremy Bulloch's Boba line readings on the 2004 DVD release of the original trilogy. But it's not until now that Morrison has truly brought Boba Fett to live-action.
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