Countdown to The Mandalorian Season 3: Revisiting Chapter 2 'The Child'

As we start to gear up for the release of The Mandalorian season 3 in February 2023, we're taking a look back at each episode of the show so far through the lens of concept art. This will be a weekly series of reviews taking place each Thursday until the premiere of season 3 next year.



While we will be revisiting all of the artwork displayed in the episode's credits, bear in mind that this is not a fully conceptualized review of the episode. We still have those from when each episode came out, and will link to them at the end.



Let's begin our recap of Chapter 2 then, titled The Child. This episode feels a bit like a filler as Mando suffers setbacks in his attempts to leave Arvala-7, but there are some notable moments, including Grogu's first attempts to heal his wounds and Mando's memorable fight with the mudhorn, during which he witnesses the Force for the first time. The episode also further solidifies his relationship with Kuiil, leading him to call on the Ugnaught later in the season.







The first piece of concept art illustrates the episode's opening scene, with Mando and Grogu walking through a claustrophobic valley on Arvala-7 on their way back to the Razor Crest. It doesn't allude to the Trandoshan bounty hunters in pursuit, but you can see the intention to create an environment that encourages close-quarter combat. In the actual episode, the valley feels a bit more spacious, so Mando has more room to move when up against the Trandoshans.







When they do make it back to the Razor Crest, Mando is alarmed to see it being stripped for salvage by some opportunistic Jawas, who are loading their haul on to their sandcrawler. The concept art does a great job at revealing the scale of Din Djarin's ship. It might be a deadly starfighter in its own right but it is dwarfed by the size of the sandcrawler. It also helps highlight the Jawas' own determination. These tiny beings are not only stripping a ship that is significantly larger than them, but they also own their own barge that is three times the size of that ship. You can only just make them out in the artwork, but you can see them helping each other out, just like worker ants. Strength in numbers and all that.







Mando starts disintegrating Jawas with his rifle, and they run away in the sandcrawler. Din runs after them, scaling the side of the barge, but when he reaches the top he is blasted by Jawas all at once. All those volts of electricity course through his body, and he falls to the ground. The final footage captures the look of the electric bolts quite well, which must have been designed to imitate the scene in A New Hope when the Jawas captured R2-D2 and volts of electricity ran across his body, or in The Empire Strikes Back when the rebel snowspeeder fails and shows volts of electricity running across the cockpit. It's a very cool effect that I always love to see in Star Wars.







Kuiil then helps Mando mediate with the Jawas, and they agree to give him back his ship's parts, on the condition that he retrieve an egg for them from a cave nearby. The cave entrance is dark and ominous, which of course usually means that something dangerous lurks within it on a sci-fi/fantasy show. Din heads into the darkness in search of the egg, unsure of what else he might find. We hold our breath and wait.







This concept art plays out a little differently to what we see in the finished product, showing Din backed up against a wall and surprised by the mudhorn. What we actually see in the episode is Din shining his flashlight through the cave, with a close-up shot of the mudhorn opening its eye. The next shot retreats to the cave entrance as we hear two blaster shots before Mando is hurled outside. We never actually see the mudhorn get to its feet inside the cave, which would have been a terrifying shot.







With the help of Grogu and the Force, Mando defeats the mudhorn by cleanly stabbing it through the head with a vibro-dagger, and retrieves the egg. This artwork depicts him emerging from the wastes with the egg under his arm. While it's not a shot-for-shot recreation, Mando is carrying both the egg and his broken armor in the same posture as he approaches the Jawas in the episode.



The Jawas gleefully break open the egg and begin eating the yolk inside which seems to revolt Din. This is understandable and acts as a fun metaphor; while Din is keeping Grogu safely protected inside an orb-shaped container (with its own yellow interior), the Jawas have forcibly cracked open this hairy container and are feeding on the contents inside. Din has a higher purpose and greater moral standards than the Jawa scavengers, and it shows.







Once they get back to the Razor Crest, Mando laments to Kuiil that it will take 'days' to repair his ship. Kuiil points out that it will go a lot quicker if they work together. Interestingly, Din's armor seems fully repaired in this artwork. Either this was supposed to take place before the mudhorn confrontation, or Favreau and Filoni hadn't decided just how badly Mando would come out of that fight yet.







The next artwork then shows Din and Kuiil working together to repair the Razor Crest overnight. This wide shot perfectly captures the creators' intentions of showing the repairs being done over a montage. Looking at the image summons The Mandalorian theme tune in your mind as they get to work.







Finally, the last piece of concept art shows Mando carrying Grogu back to his ship before leaving Arvala-7. Grogu's facial features don't seem quite as smoothed out as they do in the final product, but otherwise this image was recreated perfectly in The Mandalorian.



Chapter 2 felt like a bit of a side quest really, but we got a fun fight with the mudhorn and confirmation that Grogu can indeed use the Force. At the time, the filler-nature of it was easy to ignore as we were eager to spend more time with Mando and get to know Grogu better, but now it definitely feels like a more skippable entry of The Mandalorian on rewatch. By the end, Mando is back in space ready to return to Navarro and claim his bounty from The Client.



If you are interested, you can find our original review of Chapter 2 of The Mandalorian, from November 2019, right here.



Our “Countdown to The Mandalorian Season 3” series will continue next week, when we’ll be revisiting Chapter 3. Stay tuned!



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