Hmm. Working on the Corruption on Mandalore arc now, and it’s not very good. There’s no heart to it, just a few moving pieces. It’s important to have more Mandalore about now in the overall plot because it helps anchor the audience on the idea of Mandalore as one of our throughlines, and to show some internal politics is fine - it’s just not a very fun episode.
I realised that I could get the best Ahsoka/Padmé scene from Assassin into this episode if I have them both travel to Mandalore together. And if I could find the right line (Padmé saying something to indicate she happens to have a Jedi available) then I could get a bit more value out of Assassin’s scenes too. But without that, I think the strongest thing is to have the plot be that Ahsoka is going there to SECRETLY help train the academy kids in corruption, and Padmé’s tagged along as an OFFICIAL opportunity to increase diplomatic ties with Mandalore.
So Padmé will wave at the crowd then have a nice friendly chat with Satine, while Ahsoka inspires some kids to investigate the black market. They discover something shady (offscreen, I think) and report it to Satine, who out of wanting them to be safe discourages them. The kids, discouraged but concerned, decide to call Prime Minister Almec (but don’t call him yet). That night, Satine takes Padmé together to investigate, where they discover black market stuff. They report it to Almec, saying “It wasn’t Death Watch, but we have a huge black market”, to which he says “good, it’s not Death Watch, that shuts things down”, to which Satine replies “a black market is still a problem”, bringing them into conflict. The kids later call Almec, saying they’ve learned of the market, and spotting the risk to himself he decides to act, drawing the kids into a trap whilst also leveraging it as evidence with which to convict Satine. We then play out the rest of that plotline, with Ahsoka and the kids rescuing Satine and sending Almec to prison. Anakin comes to pick up Ahsoka in his ship, and Padmé says goodbye to Satine in her own ship.
Doing it this way you’d have to kind of accept that Padmé was essentially unaware of all of the later drama with Ahsoka and the kids and Satine being imprisoned, but it did all happen in the one night so it’s kind of OK.
I think this is probably the strongest feasible version.