Jon Favreau’s Star Wars streaming series The Mandalorian is often criticized for dragging out its storylines with side quests and adventure-of-the-week storytelling. But the show’s episodic format is one of its greatest strengths, evoking George Lucas’ early influences and offering a handful of strong standalone installments that can be enjoyed on their own outside the larger context of the series.

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The constant side quests might mean that The Mandalorian takes longer than the average series to get from its setups to its payoffs, but its first two seasons have proven that those payoffs are always worth it.

Chapter 3: The Sin

The Mandalorian saves Grogu from the Client

After delivering Grogu to the Client in “Chapter 3: The Sin,” Mando returns to the Razor Crest, and the absence of the gearshift knob the kid was playing with prompts him to go back. Deborah Chow’s visual storytelling is impeccable – with one simplistic motif, Chow tells the audience exactly how Mando feels without having to remove his helmet.

The first two episodes set up Mando and Grogu’s curious dynamic, but “The Sin” stepped things up as Mando betrayed the code to save the kid and went on the run with the entire bounty hunter guild on his trail. This was the episode that turned The Mandalorian from an intriguing new Star Wars show into must-see television.

Chapter 7: The Reckoning

The Mandalorian Moff Gideon traps Din and the heroes in Season 1 Episode 7

Mando’s first act of heroism in the pilot episode of The Mandalorian is destroying IG-11 to save The Child’s life. In the penultimate episode of season 1, “Chapter 7: The Reckoning,” IG-11 is redeemed as a reprogrammed nanny droid. But that’s not the episode’s biggest payoff – that would be the introduction of Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon as the show’s main villain.

In the shocking cliffhanger ending, Kuiil is killed by a pair of Scout Troopers who manage to capture Grogu, setting up an explosive finale episode.

Chapter 8: Redemption

The Mandalorian on the wing of a TIE fighter

As the season 1 finale, it’s hardly surprising that “Chapter 8: Redemption” pays off a bunch of setups. IG-11 makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Mando and co. from a band of Stormtroopers. The Mandalorian takes off his helmet, revealing his face for the first (but definitely not last) time.

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Plus, Mando finally gets a jetpack – after seeing a Mandalorian with a jetpack way back in the third episode and saying, “I gotta get one of those” – and uses it to singlehandedly take down Moff Gideon’s TIE fighter. And then the final stinger brought yet another exciting moment: not only did Gideon survive the crash; he’s got the Darksaber.

Chapter 9: The Marshal

Mando kills the krayt dragon in The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian’s second season premiere didn’t pay off a setup from one of its own previous episodes. Rather, it paid off the background appearance of a krayt dragon skeleton behind C-3PO on Tatooine’s Dune Sea in the original 1977 Star Wars movie.

The “slay the dragon” narrative is as old as the fantasy genre itself. Since the beginning of The Mandalorian, Favreau has maintained Lucas’ intention to retell age-old traditional stories within the context of a galaxy far, far away.

Chapter 12: The Siege

Cloning Facilities at an Imperial factory in The Mandalorian

The biggest payoffs were still a while away in season 2’s fourth installment “Chapter 12: The Siege,” but the episode did confirm that the Imperial Remnants want to capture Grogu so they can extract his blood and clone him, which played into the back end of the season.

Plus, it revealed to Mando that Moff Gideon is still alive. Throughout the first half of the season, he had no idea the big bad was out there looking for him. Making Mando aware of the threat he faced raised the stakes from the “ignorance is bliss” stance of the early episodes.

Chapter 13: The Jedi

Ahsoka Tano holding her lightsabers in the woods in The Mandalorian

“Chapter 13: The Jedi” introduced Rosario Dawson’s live-action incarnation of Ahsoka Tano in a series of gorgeously realized action scenes with Kurosawa-influenced visuals. This episode was essentially a backdoor pilot for her spin-off series, which was announced by Lucasfilm a few weeks later.

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This episode also revealed Grand Admiral Thrawn to be the big bad of the Imperial Remnants and, presumably, the entire Mandalorian-verse being spearheaded by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.

Chapter 14: The Tragedy

Boba Fett in The Mandalorian

Grogu sat in an ancient Jedi temple and tapped into the Force while Mando desperately tried to fend off legions of Stormtroopers in “Chapter 14: The Tragedy.” If he was fighting alone, Mando would’ve surely died. Thankfully, he wasn’t fighting alone – he had none other than Boba Fett as backup.

Fett’s long-awaited return to action after reacquiring his armor (and, with it, his full arsenal of weapons and gadgets) certainly didn’t disappoint. After the excitement of Fett’s spectacular comeback, Grogu’s abduction arrived as a bombshell cliffhanger that set up the rest of the season to be a nonstop thrill ride.

Chapter 16: The Rescue

Mando says goodbye to Grogu in The Mandalorian

Star Wars fans around the world felt like a little kid again when Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fighter pulled into Moff Gideon’s command ship in The Mandalorian’s season 2 finale. When Luke joined Mando and the rest of his rescue team on the bridge, the show topped itself with an even more emotionally charged moment: Mando’s farewell to Grogu.

Having finally reuniting Grogu with his people, Mando has to let him go. He lets the kid see his face for the first time before handing him off to be trained as a Jedi. “The Rescue” could’ve been a satisfying series finale if the Darksaber conflict didn’t leave so many doors open for season 3.

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