‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2, Episode 4… After action report….

Season 2, Episode 4: ‘The Siege’

The latest chapter of “The Mandalorian” is practically a greatest hits of “Star Wars” visual motifs. Do you like high-speed chases through canyons? Big guns fired from rotating turrets? Characters creeping along narrow ledges, perched above steep drops? Long shots of Imperial Star Destroyers flying overhead? Then this week’s episode, “The Siege,” was made for you.

More important, though, this episode features something essential to the success of this franchise, which George Lucas encoded into its DNA from the beginning: task oriented plotting.

The “Star Wars” saga can seem sprawling and chaotic, encompassing dozens of planets, multiple warring factions, and the intricate histories of hundreds of alien races. The movies involve crucial missions, broken up into different components and carried out simultaneously. The complex stories are then usually delivered to the audience through another of Lucas’s staple storytelling tricks: crosscutting between the many subplots and keeping them unresolved for as long as possible, holding audiences in a state of high tension.

Yet, if you look at each of the individual pieces within the massive “Star Wars” mosaic, they’re actually pretty simple. In this week’s episode of “The Mandalorian,” Mando makes an emergency stop back in his old stamping grounds on the planet Nevarro He needs to get his ship, the Razor Crest, properly repaired, and it’s a chance to catch up with his colleagues Cara Dune (Gina Carano) and Greef Karga (Carl Weathers, who also directed this episode).

These two have been bringing order and civilization to what used to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But they’re concerned about a nearby Imperial base, possibly containing weapons that could upset the planet’s peaceful balance if the wrong people swiped them….

More…

image….Remember the scout troopers? They weren’t the only familiar element of this week’s episode of “The Mandalorian.”Credit…Lucasfilm Ltd.