![[Redacted] comes to save Mando.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QJAbseuNDroE7LJWLVpnC9-1000-80.jpg.webp)
What to Watch Verdict
It would have been better to have this direction earlier, but we're glad to have it now!
Pros
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🐸Plot! We love plot! Please do more of that!
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🐸We finally learn of the state of Mandalore.
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🐸And we meet [redacted].
Cons
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🐸Casual fans just got a lot of information dumped on them at once.
This post contains spoilers for The Mandalorian.
Check out our last review here.
It took a few episodes, but The Mandalorian finally gave us some real direction this week. After Mando (Pedro Pascal) successfully transports Frog Lady to Trask, he is able to meet up with other Mandalorians. Things don’t go exactly the way he’d hoped though.
With Frog Lady and… Frog Husband’s(?) successful (and surprisingly cute) reunion, Mando gets straight to work on his mission to find his people. After accepting help from a pirate he met in a bar, our trusty protagonist quickly finds himself – and his charge – trapped in an underwater cage and in a real spot of danger. Luckily, Trask really is home to several other of his kind who happened to have been watching him since he stepped off his dilapidated ship.
Mando’s thanks to his mysterious rescuers are cut short when they take off their helmets. Those who may not have followed outside of the Skywalker saga may be just as surprised as he is after such a grave ignorance of the Mandalorian code from those donning their armor. After all, we did just meet Cobb Vanth. Thing is, Mando’s getting cranky with someone who knows a lot more about being a Mandalorian than he does.
Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) isn’t just some mercenary who fought in the Galactic Civil War – known on The Mandalorian as The Purge – she’s sister to Duchess Sabine Kryze. An offhanded comment from Bo-Katan confirms her sister’s death in this canon, but that’s not the only interesting tidbit dropped by the Heiress. After their initial spat, Bo-Katan gets Mando to help the other Mandalorians take down an Empire controlled cargo ship. To get him to agree, she tells him that it’s to use the resources they’ve pirated from the Trask to help rebuild a crumbling Mandalore. But it’s not long before we learn that rebuilding their planet isn’t Bo-Katan’s only motivation.
You see, Bo-Katan is one of the several wielders of the Darksaber. The very Darksaber that’s currently in the possession of one Moff Giddeon. Kryze wants it back, and she’ll lie and cheat her way to it if that’s what it takes. The Darksaber holds special meaning to the their civilization, and having it back in her possession could help ease the union between the Old and New Mandalorians. But she’s got to find Giddeon first, and this version of the Empire has skipped right past alluding to Nazism and have gone right into their iteration of cyanide pills. Her one lead is dead, and Moff Giddeon knows she’s coming for him, but they have the ship. Bo-Katan is used to taking small victories where she can get them.
In exchange for his help, Bo-Katan tells Mando where he can find a member of the Jedi Order. That Jedi is one Ahsoka Tano, so we can probably confirm that rumor now. With that, the two factions split ways. Bo-Katan and her sergeants return to Mandalore in hope of rebuilding a better tomorrow for their people while Mando returns to The Frog Family to pick up Baby Yoda so they can skip off to find some Jedi in his still very busted ship.
“The Heiress” is exactly what I’ve been waiting for from the second season of The Mandalorian. We finally caught up with some major players from last season, while still introducing new ones and giving just enough details to make the future of the Mandalorians interesting! The episode also marks our first real acknowledgement of the state of Mandalore, and gave us insight into the war that took place there. Mando is now faced with stakes for his people in addition to his mission to get Baby Yoda home. That’s how you build a series!
This chapter revealed Sasha Banks’ mysterious character, though it didn’t seem that her sergeant was named, and gave us some real hope for a live-action Ahsoka meeting. Her involvement has been expected - with Rosario Dawson likely to play the Togrutan - but now the question has shifted from “if” to “what kind of role can we expect her to play as the series unfolds?” All of this feels like the very beginning of a story and shouldn’t be episode 3/8 material, but we can’t change what we didn’t get earlier! Hopefully we see the series continue to chug along after this point. In the meantime we should have plenty of fun moments of Baby Yoda munchin’ on things he shouldn’t be!
