The Mandalorian Review: Chapter 11: The Heiress (Season 2 Episode 3)
The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 3, “Chapter 11: The Heiress,” introduces a legacy character shines a light on some of the larger mythology at work.
That’s the big part of this episode: the unraveling of the show’s inner workings. That’s ultimately what makes it matter as an installment of this show because it addresses one simple but all-encompassing question: what is happening with the Mandalorians, as a people, now?
There’s a lot of ways that spills out into separate questions and answers but that is ultimately what it comes down to. It is one of the show’s most pressing questions and it has been an ever-present specter hanging over it for the audience. We’ve wanted to know so much about the state of the Mandalorian people now, especially as it relates to Mando.
We’ve been fascinated with why none of the Mandalorians on this show haven’t been able to remove their helmets when that’s a restriction that other members of that species have not held themselves to. On The Clone Wars and Rebels, they were able to have their helmets off, and no one balks at that. The Mandalorian, however, has put such an emphasis on it.
The answer that the episode provides us with is enlightening, although something that we probably could have guessed for ourselves. Mando, and others in his convent like The Armorer, are members of a zealous religious sect that goes back to ancient Mandalorian ways which obviously has stricter rules on how their kind is meant to conduct themselves.
It serves as an intriguing development for Mando himself. After learning that this isn’t the way that all Mandalorians act — it’s just some with a very specific creed who indoctrinated him as a child — it opens the stage up for him to ask himself hard questions.
Is this truly The Way, worthy of the importance that so many of his kind that he’s known have drilled into him? What this does is give him options for himself, which he didn’t have before. He behaved in this way because he thought he had to or should, rather than particularly wanting to.
The introduction of Bo Katan Kryze, a character that many Star Wars fans will recognize from The Clone Wars and Rebels, is an excellent shot of adrenaline into the series, one it didn’t necessarily need but is felt all the same. Her presence brings up so many pertinent things that relate to Mandalore, none more so than her connection to the Dark Saber.
We last saw The Dark Saber with Moff Gideon at the end of the last season and that is a weapon with big associations to Bo Katan, but also the culture at large. Without getting into the nitty-gritty here, the Dark Saber is essentially Excalibur to Mandalore and it was last known to have been with Bo Katan, giving her the right to rule.
We don’t need to tell anyone here that the casting of Katee Sackhoff to play Bo Katan is a great one but we’ll do it anyway. Sackhoff has all of the necessary energy and bravado to play that character and she pulls it off to a plum. There’s an odd excitement to seeing her bring this character to life.
A big part of that is the very excellent hairstyling that Bo Katan has, which is such a simple mainstay of the character. It does a lot of work with just a glance at her that Sackhoff is then able to just run with.
This is the episode that, if you’re familiar with the larger Star Wars universe, is a must-watch episode.
What did you think of this episode of The Mandalorian ? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Mandalorian airs Fridays on Disney+.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.