It's a strange choice, with only eight episodes, to spend an entire one segregated from the larger narrative to go on a fetch quest. And with the episodes so surprisingly short, I can only imagine that this first season of The Mandalorian was outline much more like a long feature film instead of a series. As such, it follows more rules of a big blockbuster than an episodic story, such as action beats arriving like clockwork every ten minutes or so, regardless of their relevance. Following an immediate fight to keep his target safe from some Trandoshan hunters, Mando has a long-range shootout and daring chase sequence with some Jawas and their sandcrawler, and then later he fights a big beastie in order to steal its egg. This is less Sergio Leone western and more John Ford western, with more scope and emphasis on the environments and less on the hardnosed coolness of the lead characters.

But character development does happen. The Child, or "baby Yoda," as the Internet ha…