Warning: This recap has spoilers about today’s Disney+ drop of The Mandalorian Chapter 11: The Heiress, directed by Bryce Dallas Howard
Finally, three episodes in on season two of The Mandalorian, we return to some serious Star Wars mythology following two standalone adventures for Mando. We finally get to meet –in the flesh, as opposed to her animated self– Clone Wars’ Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff), and she brought along some friends, fellow Mandalorians Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado) and Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides). Mando was looking for “others who look like” him and, well, they found him. He needed to find them as they could provide guidance to a Jedi where the Child (Baby Yoda for those not in the know) should be delivered to.
After being double crossed on a sail barge run by the Quarren (Squid Head people) Mando is saved by the Clone Wars trio. Bo-Katan (who keeps taking her helmet off unlike our Mando who refuses to do so per his creed) gives a lesson in Mandalore to our warrior (who exclaims that his newfound friends aren’t Mandalorians) explaining that she’s part of Clan Kryze, while Mando is a Child of the Watch, a religious zealot sect of the Mandalorians who broke away from their people and seek to re-establish ancient ways.
“This armor has been in my family for three generations,” Bo-Katan tells Mando, “I was born on Mandalore and fought in the Purge. I’m the last of my line.”
“There’s only one way, the way of the Mandalore,” Mando tells Bo-Katan. He files away after the trio save his hide, and heads back to the Mon Calmari sea port. He meets more Quarren back there, who want to kill Baby Yoda, as Mando killed one of their brothers. But Mando is saved by the Mandalorian trio again.
Getting a drink, Bo-Katan unveils more to Mando, “Our enemies want to keep us apart.” Before she connects Mando to a Jedi, he has to help her with a mission. She wants him to assist in a raid of an Imperial Gozanti, loaded with weapons. Bo-Katan wants to steal them, and take them back to Mandalore where she wants to restore the planet (and we can see now where we are headed for season 3, or at least into season 4 or beyond).
The trio and Mando kick Imperial butt in a cinch, and it’s a freighter under the watch of one Imperial dude played by Bosch‘s Titus Welliver. Turns out, he’s in contact with big bad baddie Imperial guy Moff Gideon (Mandalorian‘s Emmy nominated Giancarlo Esposito). Eventually as the troupe takes over the cockpit, we find out the real reason why Bo-Katan was looking to seize the Gozanti: She was looking for the darksaber and she knows (and we know) that Moff has it. “You’ll take me to him” she demands of Welliver’s Imperial boss before he offs himself.
The darksaber is important to the Mandalorians, originally forged by Tarre Vizsla, a Mando who trained as a Jedi and took control of Mandalore and ruled it. The darksaber is seen as a symbol of power to the Mandalorians. The darksaber fell into the hands of Darth Maul eventually, and then the Mandalore Sabine Wren on the animated series Rebels. Sabine offers the darksaber to Bo-Katan, seeing her worthy of the title to lead Mandalore. Though Bo-Katan rejects the weapon, she eventually takes control of it, and leadership of the Mandalore, being the ideal person to unite all of its clans and strike back against the Empire (that’s the short version of the darksaber’s history).
With Mando having fulfilled his obligation to Bo-Katan, she finally tells him where he can find the Jedi he’s looking for: on Caloden on the forest planet of Corvus, and her name is….drumroll…Ahsoka Tano, the fan fave Jedi from Clone Wars who we know is being played by Rosario Dawson this season.
And Mandalorian season 2 just got really interesting.