IMO it's just an exaggeration. No way did a
barely 30 min episode of the Mandalorian cost nearly 20 Mill to make. GOT was expensive to make because it had great costumes, fantastic sets, a huge cast and really good CGI, plus each episode was nearly an hour long. I've been hearing this 15 - 20mill spend per episode a lot lately. Apparently every episode of the Morning Show and See, both Apple TV specials cost 15 mill per episode. I've seen 5 episodes of both and if no idea what they spend that money on. At least Tge Morning Show has a great cast, See has very little to CGI, the entire thing is based In a forest so no expensive sets and other than Jason Momoa, no big names. Similarly the Mandalorian, it has good CGI but other than that, there's nothing to suggest that an episode costs 20 Mill to make. IMO it's just a way to generate hype. I mean, if an episode cost 15 mill to make, it must be good right, at least visually. Also, it a way of telling people that they are serious about their streaming service and so are investing heavily
The second episode had like two lines of plot and a sizeable portion of the episode was just the guy walking around. I feel that's the problem with this weekly realese. There will be a lot of filler episodes or episodes in which barely anything happens to make the customers extend the subscription for another month.