Python Pandas merge only certain columns
You want to use TWO brackets, so if you are doing a VLOOKUP sort of action:
df = pd.merge(df,df2[['Key_Column','Target_Column']],on='Key_Column', how='left')
This will give you everything in the original df + add that one corresponding column in df2 that you want to join.
You could merge the sub-DataFrame (with just those columns):
df2[list('xab')] # df2 but only with columns x, a, and b
df1.merge(df2[list('xab')])