Mando teams up with a novice gunslinger to track down a deadly mercenary, and pay for repairs to his damaged ship.

Written and directed by Dave Filoni – creator of Clone Wars, Rebels and Resistance – this question begs the question of whether you can have too many Star Wars references in one 30-minute episode. The answer for this fanboy is ‘no’, and the half-hour flies by as you revel in everything from Tatooine to Mos Eisley to Tusken Raiders and Dewbacks.

Of course, all of this is just set dressing to the main story, but what set dressing, and what a statement by Filoni that this is real Star Wars. One can only imagine how the director grinned as he set up the shot with would-be bounty hunter Toro Calican (Jake Cannavale) in Han’s booth in the Mos Eisley cantina, feet up and apparently ready to shoot Greedo (first).

The story itself is a little light, the episode’s title referring not to our eponymous hero but an unseen protagonist who turns up in the closing moments, boot spurs jangling. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Ming Na-Wen plays the enigmatic Fennec Shand, who initially appears to have been despatched far too early, but I sense she’ll be back. Fans of Baby Yoda might feel short changed this week, with the little critter spending most of the time being babysat, but younger viewers will enjoy the return of comedy Pit Droids.

Verdict: A galaxy of Star Wars references should hit the nostalgia buttons for most die-hard fans, but on a story level there’s little to take us forwards. 7/10

Nick Joy

Mando finds himself in familiar environs and looking for work to get by, and ends up taking on a job which may prove too much for even his prodigious talents.

The Mandalorian is a difficult show to really quantify in many ways. Star Wars is always a tricky licence to get into – shove too much new stuff in and you’ll annoy the old guard of the fan base (just ask George Lucas). Play it too safe and you’ll get accused of just plagiarising what went before (a la The Force Awakens). Most new Star Wars media tries to tread a fine line on this. The Mandalorian however, seems mostly content to milk the nostalgia ducts of the fanbase while making a western, throwing in a cute baby alien for maximum appeal.

Nowhere is this naked fan service more evident than in this week’s instalment, in which our hero ends up on a very familiar planet to fans, and goes on a whistle stop tour of various locations and encounters that will leave long-term franchise aficionados feeling misty-eyed with nostalgia without really doing anything.

Per usual by now, the show has a dirt simple premise – Mando is short on cash and on the run from the Guild, and needs to make a quick buck to fix his ship and be on his way. He takes on a task which sounds like it’s going to be a super challenge, bringing in someone who is hyped by him and the show as being very dangerous. Unfortunately, it fails to really ever deliver on that promise, which feels doubly ill-advised given who they’ve specifically cast in the role.

Meanwhile, Baby Yoda is busy capturing the heart of yet another female character who doesn’t get much else to do, which is similarly inexplicable given the casting, and all in all it just starts to feel like an episode that’s almost deliberately refusing to do anything while insouciantly poking its tongue out at you.

And it’s triply infuriating given how good it all looks. The setting, the action, the FX (barring some oddly out of place dodgy droid SFX) all look top notch, and give you the feel of Star Wars but the actual narrative just feels like the definition of phoned-in – a wheel-spinning exercise that would be annoying in a twenty episode show and feels even ruder in an 8 episode limited series.

Verdict: The title promises much but delivers almost nothing. This feels like the most oddly truncated episode yet, narratively speaking, and I hope it’s an exception rather than the norm from now on. 6/10

Greg D. Smith