How Deep Are the Living Waters in The Mandalorian?

Image: Disney+/Lucasfilm. The Mandalorian Season 3.

I’m here to answer the questions that you didn’t even know about. In this case, it’s an estimation of the depth of water in Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 2: The Mines of Mandalore. SPOILERS AHEAD. But seriously, if you are even here I’m sure you’ve already watched this episode.

OK, let’s get to it. How deep did Din sink at the end of epsisode 2? It sure seemed like it was REALLY DEEP. Oh, and everyone says that the Mythosaur pulled him down — but I thought he just slipped and his heavy armor made him sink. Whatever. That doesn’t matter. I’m still going to get an estimate.

After Din sinks, Bo-Katan jumps in after him using her jet pack to propel herself underwater. I’m assuming that she has an air supply through her helmet somehow. But how deep did she go? Here’s where video analysis comes into play. If I can estimate how fast she is moving in the water, then I can use the total time to get an approximate distance traveled (it looks mostly downward, but we can deal with that later).

In order to get some reasonable data from the video, you need to know the following:

• Video scale. How big is stuff in the video? This means you need some known size object in the frame. It’s not the best option (because you can’t see too well) but I’m going with the approximate length of Bo-Katan (she should be about 1.67 meters tall — since the height of Katee Sackhoff).
• Time scale. How much time in between frames? This one is easy. If the scene plays in “real time” then I can just use the frame rate of the video (which is 25 fps).
• Motion of camera. Since the camera can pan and zoom, we need to account for this motion. The idea is to mark some object in the stationary background and use that as our reference point. This seems easy, but in fact much of the stuff we see in this scene is very dark (you know, it’s underwater and everything).

Now I just need to drop the video into my favorite video analysis program — Tracker Video Analysis. It’s free and it should be your favorite program too. I’m going to use the part where Bo-Katan swims past the Mythosaur since you can sort of see the wall on the side (to set the coordinate system). Also, you can see her full body to estimate the size.