Countdown to ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3: Revisiting Chapter 11 “The Heiress”
As we start to gear up for the release of The Mandalorian season 3 on March 1, 2023, we’re taking a look back at each episode of the show so far through the lens of concept art. This will be a weekly series of reviews until the premiere of season 3 next year. You may find our previous entries in this series here.
While we will be revisiting all of the artwork displayed in the episode’s credits, bear in mind that this is not a fully conceptualized review of the episode. We still have those from when each episode came out, and we’ll link to them at the end.
Chapter 11 was the proof I needed to know that Bryce Dallas Howard was not messing around with her passion to direct. Her season 1 episode was cute, but I never fully connected with it besides the shtick of being a Seven Samurai knock-off. With The Heiress, she delivered one of my three favorite episodes from the second season, and she did it through the use of marvelous directing skills and a more than confident eye.
We start off the episode with a troubled descent on the planet of Trask, where Frog Lady is to reunite with her husband. After a disguised cameo from Star Wars Battlefront II veteran Janina Gavankar as a Mon Calamari on the dock, Din is redirected to a bar where he’s been told that he will be able to find other Mandalorians.
It is hard to reorder the concept art from the episode in chronological order, but the picture above is probably inspired by the events right after the Razor Crest comically sinks into the sea.
Grogu is then finally able to fill his tiny stomach with eyebrow-raising food. Also, Din is tricked by a Quarren boatman who is just looking for his Beskar into boarding their ship.
After they try to feed a mamacore with Grogu, Din jumps right after him, and the Quarren boatsmen trap him. Not so fast, though.
Three unknown Mandalorians come to the rescue. After they get rid of the Quarren people quite easily and rescue Grogu, they remove their helmets, something that triggers several alerts inside Din’s mind. Bo-Katan, Koska Reeves, and Axe Woves quickly identify Din as a Children of the Watch, a religious cult that is looking to re-establish the Ancient Way.
The brother of the Quarren leader, along with a few henchmen, ambush Din as he is walking back with Grogu later that night. Not so fast again, as Bo-Katan and her two sidekicks appear from the sky and save them without sweating it. They teach Din something new about the Mandalorian culture, and promise to give him the name and whereabouts of a Jedi in exchange for his help to seize a weapons cargo from the Empire.
All four Mandalorians plan their attack. This scene is mostly remarkable for one thing — finally, one character in Star Wars acknowledges that stormtroopers “couldn’t hit the side of a bantha.”
After leaving Grogu with the Frog people, so begins one of the best action setpieces of the entire second season, with the exception of Boba Fett’s episode and the finale. The sequence, though, is vastly enhanced by Ludwig Göransson’s epic score, which is one of the most unique pieces of music I’ve heard on television. It is called Ship o hoj, Mandalorians! — you can listen to it here.
They reach the cargo pretty easily, and we learn a few things along the way. Bo-Katan is looking for Moff Gideon, and more specifically, the Darksaber. Gideon also makes a cameo in hologram form to reveal that the Empire’s cruel tactics continue to be in place. After the mission goes terribly wrong for them, they are left with only one option: no survivors.
Din is able to save the day, and after deciding to leave his fellow Mandalorians behind, Bo-Katan gives him the information he was craving — he must look for Ahsoka Tano in Corvus. While most of us knew at that point that Ahsoka was going to be a part of the series, I wonder how many Clone Wars fans that don’t tune into the news very often had their jaw hit the floor when that name was mentioned (as I imagined it was Dave Filoni’s intention).
Din goes back to get Grogu and finds that the Frog people have had a baby, which Grogu is (unsurprisingly) just hungry for. Not today though. They both leave and find the Razor Crest about to crumble. I guess we’ll have to make a quick stop at the station before visiting Lady Tano.
That’s our setup for the next episode, which brings back Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga and the planet of Nevarro. Meanwhile, you can check out our original review of Chapter 11 from November 2020 through this link.
Our “Countdown to The Mandalorian Season 3” series will continue next week, when we’ll be revisiting Chapter 12. Stay tuned!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
