Din Djarin’s quest to find other members of his creed pays off this week on The Mandalorian, but not exactly in the way that he had hoped.
“Chapter 11 – The Heiress” picks up exactly where we left off in the last episode, with the Razor Crest limping through space to the moon of Trask, where Mando (Pedro Pascal) is due to deliver the Frog Lady (Misty Rosas) and her eggs to her husband. The ship just barely makes it to the docks after plummeting at too-fast speeds through the atmosphere and then tumbling into the water below.
A helpful Mon Calamari offers to repair the vessel as best he can, and the frog-people point Mando in the direction of a local inn, where The Child gets to eat some living sludge and a Quarren sea captain makes a deal to bring our protagonists to the other Mandalorians in the area. Of course, during the journey the boat’s crew attacks Mando and Baby Yoda, attempting to feed them to a fearsome aquatic creature called the Mamacore. And just when all hope seems lost, three jet-packed Mandalorians drop down out of the sky like the Avengers and take out the boatsmen with ease, rescuing our heroes. We’re then re-introduced to Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff, reprising her role from the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels), who dumps a lot of information on Mando about “The Way” and the current fate of the planet Mandalore.
After Mando initially rejects these newcomers because they don’t follow the same rules he does, there’s another Quarren ambush back at the docks and they come to his rescue yet again. Djarin agrees to a sit-down at the inn, where Kryze enlists him for a heist on an Imperial remnant transport in exchange for the whereabouts of a Jedi she knows. What follows is a big, exciting action sequence (returning director Bryce Dallas Howard does a good job in staging the fights and blocking) featuring LOST and Deadwood star Titus Welliver as an Imperial officer who is all too ready to sacrifice himself for the good of the remnant. A series of obstacles later, Mando finds out he’s in for more than he bargained for, we see the return of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) in hologram form, and Bo-Katan declares her intentions to retrieve the Darksaber from the Nevarro warlord. She also drops another big reveal in pointing Mando toward a forest planet where her buddy Ahsoka Tano happens to be hiding out.
I liked this episode and I’m glad we got so many new details about the Mandalorians and their sects, but I’m starting to agree with the growing sentiment that the average installment of The Mandalorian is too short. I knew as soon as Mando got the info he was looking for, he’d take off and we’d cut to credits, forced to wait another tantalizing week for more. I did enjoy the character development in The Child here, who learns that the eggs he so readily devoured last week contain life that he can bond with. I was really worried that the frog-people’s babysitting gig wasn’t going to go very well, but a wave of relief washed over me when Mando returned to pick him up. It was also great to see Sackhoff playing her cult-favorite Star Wars role in live-action, and I can only hope and imagine we’ll be seeing more of her as the season and series go on, with the paths between Din Djarin, Moff Gideon, and Bo-Katan Kryze certain to cross once more.
New episodes of The Mandalorian are released Fridays on Disney+.