The Mandalorian (Season 2)

Essential, and the strongest run of live-action Star Wars television. It keeps the first season's format and widens it: the same planet-of-the-week structure, now with a destination, and each stop bringing in somebody from the wider galaxy.

That widening is also the trade-off. The first season worked partly because its protagonist had nothing to do with the Skywalker story; this one connects him to it steadily, bringing in characters from the animated series and ending on a cameo that generated more conversation than anything else that year. For some viewers that is the season paying off a decade of groundwork. For others it is the show giving up its independence.

The individual episodes are the best the franchise has made for television. The one directed as a straight monster film in a krayt dragon's lair, the one that is a prison-break horror story, and the siege on a lava world are each complete and satisfying in under an hour. Bryce Dallas Howard's episodes are consistently among the best.

Watch The Clone Wars and Rebels before the back half if you can, because two significant arrivals in the last three episodes carry years of animated history with them. The season works without that and is much richer with it.