What The Mandalorian's Nite Owls Actually Ate In The Cantina
The Mandalorian's second season has been full of questionable snacking, mostly on the part of Baby Yoda, who eats precious frog eggs, steals space macarons using the Force, and nearly gets his face sucked off by a porridge octopus. But Sasha Banks' Koska Reeves also joined in the curious eating when she slurped up something wriggling and wormlike, drawing the Child's eye in the process.
On the water planet Trask, Koska Reeves and the other Nite Owls (that's the group of Mandalorians aiming to reclaim their home planet led by Katee Sackhoff's Bo-Katan Kryze) take Mando (Pedro Pascal) out for a drink and a conversation. As the group discusses smuggled weapons and makes a deal, Reeves stares down Mando and the Child — now known as Grogu — while eating, uh, something. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Banks revealed what exactly her character was slurping and what she actually had on set.
Banks' own meal was less wriggly than her character's
Baby Yoda's fraught meal from earlier in the episode, during which an octopus came out of his porridge and latched onto his face, was the clue to Koska's meal. "Koska was slurping an octopus. So delicious," Banks (also known as Mercedes Varnado) told THR. She said she would have been down to eat one on set, as her favorite movie, critically acclaimed South Korean neo-noir film Oldboy, shows its main character similarly slurping up a cephalopod. But instead, she was given a long udon noodle that was edited to look like an octopus tentacle. Octopus certainly makes more sense than a worm, considering they're on a water planet.
Amusingly, the WWE star actually caught The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau's eye while eating something else entirely: chicken wings, on the YouTube show Hot Ones. Her unwavering ability to eat extremely spicy food lent itself perfectly to her stoic scene in the Trask bar.
With all the recent action surrounding Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) and the revelations about Baby Yoda's history, the Nite Owls have perhaps fallen to the back of Mando's mind. But the group of elite Mandalorians seems bound to come back into the show as they continue to seek the Darksaber currently held by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), who is in turn seeking out the Child. If we do see them again, things may be a bit too hectic for a light octopus snack.