The Mandalorian, season 2, episode 3, ‘The Heiress’, review: A tight maritime caper nods to the bigger picture

Does The Mandalorian belong on a streaming service? In many ways, no: its retrograde, caper-of-the-week storytelling style feels more at home on traditional TV than alongside Netflix’s meandering “10-hour movies”, and its glossy special effects seem to cry out for the immersion of a cinema screen. But The Mandalorian also plays to the strengths of its chosen medium. The lack of a rigid broadcast time slot has led to over-indulgence, not creativity, in most streaming series; everything from sitcoms to true crime documentaries habitually run long, and grow tedious. The Mandalorian, however, uses its time-keeping prerogative to shed every ounce of fat. In the case of this week’s episode, that means that we are treated to a lean 35-minute instalment that rockets through action scenes with keen efficiency.

“Chapter 11: The Heiress” picks up immediately after last week’s episode, with the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Baby Yoda reuniting their goofy-looking passenger with her husband. The planet they land on is bleak and watery, and has a sizable population of Mon Calamari, the fish-like alien species made famous by the original trilogy’s Admiral Ackbar. The episode wisely doesn’t drag out Mando’s search for others of his creed, and after a great little maritime sequence, he encounters a group of them. These Mandalorians, led by Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan, drop a few home truths on him and recruit him for an all-action piracy mission, attacking an old Empire ship. Mando agrees, on the promises that they will lead him to the Jedi. Meanwhile, Baby Yoda is left in the care of the reptile-headed couple, gazing at their now-fertilised eggs like a hungry recidivist.

Much of The Mandalorian has always been a balancing act: tonally, mixing humour with drama in the way that Star Wars has since A New Hope, and structurally, in the need to twine Din Djarin’s linear, small-scale story into a grander franchise narrative. “The Heiress” skews to the bigger side of things, and gives us a passing look at the ongoing state of affairs in the Star Wars universe. Giancarlo Esposito’s villainous Moff Gideon reappears here, in hologram form, and there is a passing reference to the “Darksaber”, the snazzy lightsaber-like weapon we saw him wield at the end of the season one finale.

Many of the show’s references will whiff a little over the heads of those who haven’t seen the animated Star Wars spin-off The Clone Wars. Sackhoff, best known for her role as Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, previously voiced Bo-Katan in several Clone Wars episodes; there is also a reference made to Ahsoka Tano, the Jedi who served as Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice in the series. Ahsoka’s involvement in the series has been long known to anyone acquainted with the Mandalorian rumour mill, but – like Darth Maul’s cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story – the series needs to be wary of alienating the casual Star Wars viewer. For now, though, it’s all enjoyable bluster, and “The Heiress” promises big things to come.