A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 101: The Last Command Pt. 3 (Ch. 19 - 29)

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Here we are with our final episode of the Thrawn trilogy! Secrets: revealed! Clones: showing up! Devious plans: thwarted!!  Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next Time: We FINALLY return to Rebels! And a heads up next for patreons--we'll be skipping Q&A this month for holidays! But next month we'll do a Q&A AND an episode on Skeleton Crew! Send your questions about Thrawn on over to amorecivilizedage at gmail dot com :)  Follow us on Bluesky   Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Ricardo Contreras (@a_cado_appears) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I think this might be the last one of the year. It's certainly our last one on the Last Command on the Thrawn trilogy. I'm Rob Zakini, joined by Alia Kampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you are listeners by patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our team. Q&A episodes. And I think coming up soon,

we're also going to be doing a Patreon exclusive on Skeleton Crew, which, has anyone else started watching? Has anyone started checking out Star Wars Goonies? No.

I've not. I'm scared. I'm going to be kind of, I might be kind of skeleton crew held. Okay. Ooh. I love this for you. Okay.

Yeah. You like the suburbs? I think they, they're actually doing interesting things with the, like, there's some interesting stuff about like modern childhood and the trappings of like nostalgic childhood. I think there's actually a lot of cool

stuff happening with their suburban setting for this. I am not even watched a trailer since we're over there first, like not even, I've watched nothing from that show this year. So I am, I will be going in fresh. I will be going in

with an open heart. I like Jude Law, a whole bunch. So we'll see. I don't like children. So that might be a fly in the ointment. So I feel like by and large the kids are okay. Okay. They did some decent job, but.

But they are children. You're not wild about like gangs of plucky, like repscalions. I think there might be a high barrier to entry for a skeleton crew. Gotcha, gotcha. Gotcha, I see. That's good to know.

Anyway, this week, as we wrap up the last command, intrusive thoughts, Mara, is facing her past and her greatest fears at Mount Tantis on Wayland, where she is leading Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Land of Carl Rizian and Chubaca on a mission to wipe out Thron's secret cloning facility. Meanwhile, Admiral Thrawn appears to have gotten really into Coke because he is having some of the most incredible, like, cocaine brain. ideas like man things seem to be going pretty bad with master sabayov you know to fix this what if we cloned master savi off and had like a bunch of master sabayoths huh huh pelion what do you think so thron thron is just out there ideating he's just he's just flying free thinking about how he can sort of have the 2.0 version of his let's run this all through a Jedi

master plan. But in the meantime, he has also figured out that the New Republic is putting all its chips, all its remaining warships, it's gambling them on a desperate attack against the Imperial shipyard at Bill Bringey,

which you might remember is the place the smugglers already blew up that Star Destroyer. So Thrawn has and has figured out that the rebels are doing a clever a clever ruse. The smugglers have not figured out that the rebels are doing a clever ruse and go to the Bringie to conduct a daring sabotage raid yet again and to steal a vile piece of hardware that will let them detect, they hope, the cloaked asteroids currently laying siege to

Corrassant. So they can sell that piece of equipment to Corrassant and the New Republic. That's their goal. They're not there to just help. They have a buyer lined up for a nice piece of hardware. They think somebody probably should tell them that the card kind of showed up and told the Republic they don't need the hardware. I'm a little, I'm a little lost on where that communication fizzled out because, yeah, I don't think the buyer is going to be interested by the end of this. we'll get there.

Now they can charge like a different type of fee for everything that happened, right? Maybe. So what they're trying to steal is a crystal grafieltrap. It seems like a good piece of kit. Maybe they'll find a different fence.

Probably it's still worth something. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You're just not going to get yesterday's price will not be today's price in this situation. Meanwhile, Master Sabeoff

has also figured out that things are pretty much quits with him. with him and Thron. And so he just starts rewriting people's brains in a scene that is short but deeply disturbing

when we get an idea of like how he plans on taking over the empire which is to Marionette people and basically rewrite their brains. So they, it's not just obey his will but also become broken hollow little shells, the faintest impression of his own psyche

with no interior life or anima to themselves. themselves anymore. And that is how he's going to spring himself out of the house arrest that Thron confines him to at Mount Tantis. And so all things are converging at Mount Tantis as the raid unfolds. The no-gris have sort of joined in on the strike mission. Leah figures out she's got to get there too because it looks like everyone's walking into

a trap. She needs to get hitch a ride with card. Card's like, I can't leave my dogs. And so the Vornskurs are coming to Mount Tantis too. And of course, Sabayov is waiting for Luke and Mara when they show up there looking for the self-destruct button that, of course, the emperor put a self-destruct button in Mount Tantis. But he's got a little surprise. The identity of the special clone that Sabayath ordered from the emperor's prize sample is revealed. Hey, somebody help me out of pronunciation here.

Luke. Luke. Luke. Luke. That's right. Luke Skywalker. Luke is here. When I saw Luke Skywalker on my screen, I dropped my phone and put my hand in my hands.

I was like, I can't do this. I have to take a minute. my jaw dropped and I audibly went no and I have a thought

that's terrible finish your thoughts was anybody listening to the audio of it because I'm very no I don't think I'm going to know

I'll look it up I'll look it up I'll look it up I'll find it I think I still have that audio book downloaded I had a terrible sorry Natalie

were you going to say something else too here before I I just was so I, because I've heard tales of Luke. I think we've described this thing happening on this podcast before, but this is not, you didn't see the movie. I'm not, I'm not dragging anybody for not remembering Rob, giving us these details on like a Patreon episode three years ago. But like, I've been worried the whole time that you both remembered Luke.

And I'm so glad you didn't. No, because I, I remember. Was it last episode, it's been so long since we've recorded, but was it last episode where I think I was talking about having a speculation as to who I thought it might be, but I don't think I was thinking it was Luke. I thought it was going to be Mara. Yeah, a good guess. Because I was like, but then once it's revealed that it's Luke,

it all makes it just like everything clicks into place it's one of those here we go get ready are we ready to hear this coming through a speaker yeah okay this will be the whole paragraph so it's going fast one second wait wait let's make it make it regular speed it happens sometimes at reading speed so that if i'm like dozing off while reading the voice will help me keep reading okay Take two. Luke felt himself moving back from the steps. His mind frozen with shock and the buzzing pressure growing against it.

Yes, Jedi Skywalker. Sapphire said quietly from behind him. He is you. Luke, Skywalker. Let me jump ahead and you left behind in the cloud city on best. we jump ahead and see if there's another Luke but I want to hear the narrator say it and not just Sabayath.

Luke I got to hear the I got to hear right. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Okay. Here's another take at it. Uh, let's go from regular Luke here. Luke jumped to the side, whipping his own weapon up to block the attack. The blades came together with an impact that threw him off balance and nearly tore the lightsaber for From his grip, the clone, the ook, jumped after him. The ook. I like that. I like that.

Le ook. It's a little better. How come, my thing is, how come we haven't been saying, Jor-R-R-R-U-S? Well, because I've been saying, hmm, what have I been saying, Jor-R-R-R-S, yeah. I would say Jor-R-R-S, yeah. J-R-R-S, if I mean, if I'm trying to draw attention to it, listeners might be able to tell us if we've said. And see, the thing is, Joris to Jeroos kind of makes sense. Yeah.

Problem is Luke is already... It's already along you. It's not luck. Yeah. That should have been Luck Skywalker, which would have been... They should have been... They should have been the horror of, like, Luck Skywalker. Yeah. And obviously, it's the least lucky thing that could happen.

They should have... What they should have done is given them all names where there's... You add a character or a letter, I don't know, maybe an X, and then scramble the name. So it's like a different name. You know what I mean? I think that would be a coin. His name could be like Kexel. There we go.

That's it. You nailed it. Yeah. And you should wear black robes and there should be 13. Yeah, because you have to know that there's not, it's not him. So it's got to be the black robe and like maybe like a silver chain. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Could be useful. Not him. You mean like he's nobody. In other words. It's not, you know.

Yeah, like nobody Luke, for instance. Yeah. Yeah. Go listen to lore reasons. If you listen to this, you haven't listened to lore reasons, you should go listen to lore reasons. That's what I'll say. You might like it. You might really, really like it.

Yeah. Anyway, I was flabbergasted by Luke appearing. I just really, really. He does. We'll dig into his vibe. He doesn't talk. don't like it let's talk about him we'll talk about him when we get there yeah we'll just talk the whole showdown's cool and then uh you know thron finds some just desserts we'll get to that

when we get to it but we might as well start digging into it sure uh here uh so last we're last we left off uh niles farrier had been dealt with and uh card was getting everyone to get to a smuggler's dinner uh and then you know we we checked we checked we check back in on the the attack party on Wayland and there's evidence that there's evidence that they're being pursued. Who could be? Shadowed.

Strange. But if they were being shouted by someone who wanted to hurt them, they would be hurt by now. It's like they're being shouted by a force that only wants the best for them. A benevolent ghost. None of this had been and it was Niles Ferrier's DeFell

finally come to make good. I thought it was going to be Niles for some reason. I was like, maybe this is him, like, making, this is his redemption arc. Like, he's going to make good on being a piece of shit. Yeah, I don't know. But I liked what it was instead. Yeah. Yeah, Niles is too smelly.

Oh, true. He wouldn't pull the song. He would be like, I smell that walking ashtray. Where are I sees, he's around us somewhere. That's right. Very true. In the meantime, Luke is training Mara in some rudimentary Jedi stuff. I cannot believe that I'd forgotten that this stuff happens because this is like the most,

oh, of course this is where this all goes. Not plot-wise, not of course Luke had to become a teacher, blah, blah, blah. Also, I just remember the thing I was going to say before, which I'll wrap back to in a second. But like, these have always been the stakes. The emperor didn't do this for her. It's what Jerusalem wanted to do with Leia's kids, which was trained them. And it's what Luke has been struggling with since the beginning of the first book, which is that his teacher vanished.

So, of course, the sort of synthesis of all of these conflicts has to be, or a really good synthesis of them is Luke learns how to be a good teacher by teaching Mara his, you know, rival and would be assassin who was never gifted a good teacher, right? And like he gets to try to take another run at what this is in a new way. And so, like, those scenes pretty much all work for me. Pause. The thing I was going to say before was I had a terrible flash of another world, a world where brow beaten by shitheads on the internet who disliked Last Jedi Luke so badly that what

Disney decides to do is retcon it so that that wasn't Luke at all. Oh, my God. That was Luke. and then they can say, well, that wasn't Luke. That wasn't Luke. Real Luke would never have done that stuff. And that's on the table. That's a potential world. I would bet money that someone suggested that once in a meeting after all of the anti-Last Jedi stuff happened. I would bet money someone suggested it. My hope is, was shot down immediately. And they were like, no, fuck that. That's a stupid idea. Ryan Johnson's Luke is totally fine. We're going to keep it and move forward. But they could. have. He could have been a Jerusalem all along. Anyway. I was, I, I want the version where the Luke that we have in the Mandalorian slash Book of Boba-Fat is Lou. Me too. And he's, and that one, yes, that one make him luke. Yeah. And, um, and then let's kill him. Yeah. And then Luke has to duel him and is forced to kill him. And that begins the path that puts, it puts him on the path

that makes him, again, sort of like, oh, no, like, my nephew could be corrupted. If I could be corrupted like that, you know, et cetera. Totally. Anyway. It's so bad that they, like, and also they rope Asoka into it, too. Two characters who should, like, actually be connecting over, like, so we're not doing it like they did it back in the day, right? If anything, like, the two characters should be like. Maybe they'll get there.

Maybe that happens in the Asoka show, Rob, we. haven't watched it. Yeah, maybe that could happen. Maybe it happened that way. Maybe right after, maybe after Baby Grogu left, they were like, okay.

We kind of mishandled that. Back to the drawing board. Yeah. That one didn't work. Obviously, like that one, we could afford to burn that one. You know, like that was,

you know, we'll get another run. It's going to be a baby for our whole lifetime. You know, we always bring it back after he gets some Mandalorian training.

It'll do another run in 20 years, it'll be fine. Yeah, no, but the, yeah, the, the way that Mara becomes the first student. Yes. That Luke, and kind of against his well, without him, the thought of starting, trying to start the Jedi Order and, like, get this whole thing going again, was, like, paralyzing to him in the first book. And here he's able to start to get over it just by, like, leaning into the fact that, Well, we are headed for a showdown. And so what are the things that, you know, are most valuable to teach right now? But also it is, it is highlighting his insecurities.

And, you know, it's a side of, it's a side of the infallible Jedi that Mark Jay has never seen before. There's just something about the way he's like, I have some anxiety around teaching my niece and nephew. And she's like, he's so complicated. There's, there's more going on here than I thought. and I'm like is there though is there she thought there was nothing going on

that's true you know that's the key is that she saw a simple farm boy and saw a murderer which is like just wrong you know um uh her idea was so off

that even our fairly straightforward Luke Skywalker was was she misread him completely so and you know who among us hasn't actually drastically overrated somebody who exceeded our low initial expectations and then we're like what a delightful person fascinating yeah and then like three months later you're like oh i made a mistake yeah yeah no no no guys like i know how they seem but yeah you should

have been there at the start it was all great anyway Yeah, the training stuff is also running headlong into the fact that as they get closer to the mountain, she is increasingly being sort of tortured by the voice. And we'll skip it. Skip ahead of a scene. The second time we check in on them on Wayland, finally, they realize that there's multiple groups now of like aliens surrounding their little strike team. and Hans like enough is enough we need to get to the bottom of this let's turn around let's confront

whoever's coming through here and just see what's going to see what's going down we have to fight right now or not and what burst through the undergrowth is the aliens from that are sort of native to Wayland who we met in the first book

the Pseidans and the Minarechi and sort of hurting them and it's sort of warning them off the group this entire time have of course been the no gree and 3PO has his

moment of glory here because nobody can really understand anyone and 3PO comes out and is sort of the lead negotiator for this as they go through and I do you know what I kind of dig here the little bit of

like 3PO is good at this there's a couple moments where and Han keeps trying to cut them off brusquely. But 3PO's trying to make a point of like, yeah, I can tell them that, Captain Solo. But what I'm saying is they don't trust the intentions of humans showing up on this planet because historically that hasn't gone well. Right. Unfortunately, nobody else in the scene covers themselves in glory because Mara is like, primitives. What are you going to do? And Han's like, oh, yeah, like these people had it so tough under the empire. Fuck them. Did they lose a planet? Do they get occupied?

Now, Han now adopting wholesale other people, he's going to Chewy, like, do you believe the shit? Yeah. Wild. Wild. But it is Chewy who rakes the log jam

by showing that they trust him with a big fuck off gun. Yeah. Which you should. That's Chewy. Chewy's good at that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I trust Chewy with basically anything at this point, you know? Yeah.

So. Yeah. He's proven himself time and time again. He's great. I mean, he's. Now, will he get sideline in the end of this book to go do a little side quest with Lando? Yeah. Oh, yes.

He doesn't get to be in the room. You know? No, that's okay. That room gets real crowded. That room is so crowded by the end. Like they keep saying it like, and then this happened on the cat. walk. And at what point is it still, is it no longer a catwalk? Yeah. Uh-huh. At what point is it a load-bearing bridge of some sort? Like, yeah, well, we'll get to that. But I also did

the mutual admiration society. Chewy's got going with the no-gree. They come, they show up and he's like, hey! And the no-grie are also like, hey, big guy, what's up? Yeah. And you can remember they're little guys. So it's a big guy and a bunch of little guys. Oh, that's true. Makes it so much more yeah it's so cute it's so much more delightful uh but anyway so the way it shakes out is like the uh alien species are kind of taking the attack that we're not going to help you we're not going to hurt you or or dime you out uh and the no green out sort of formally joined the party uh and while they are there um mara ends up chatting to one of them about what what the plan is and First of all, the Nogri are like, yeah, we decided it's time for our big uprising.

So that is just, that's what's next on the, on the agenda for us. Anyway, so, Mara gets to talking to one of the Nogri during the night. She's just doing her thing, standing guard over his sleeping Luke Skywalker, as one does. But the Nogre are like, it's time for our uprising. and we're here to help the son of Vader overthrow Thron and she's like wow seems like a big project is what she says

who's this son of Vader damn I didn't know about all that who's that and the nobody's like the son of Vader's already with you you serve him as do we

and you've got to imagine right now She's like just like a Catholic thing like we all serve this out of Vader what's and then she's like oh shit you mean Skywalker and they just straight up say like does she know she doesn't she does not know this because this conversation begins with her being like oh man the pornogre these these guys have been a joke for years because like we basically tricked them into worship worshiping the empire being our death commandos. What a bunch of dumb asses I mean I shouldn't laugh But like they're probably offended by that But anyway like what a bunch of schmocks And then for the tables to whip right around

And be like You know that's Darth Vader's kid Over there How do you not know that? Can't you smell him? I love that people continue to not tell Mara anything Like I just love that she Has no information

and is obsessed with Luke. Yep. Obsessed. Constantly thinking about him, doesn't know Jack's shit about him, but is just entirely consumed with thoughts of Luke Skywalker, a man she does not know. Because now it's revealed to us also

that that means she didn't know who Darth Vader really was. And it means that the emperor was never like, listen, Vader and his kid tried to overthrow me. That's, you know, like, he could have leveraged that. He could have tried to be like, well, Vader and this guy, Luke, that's actually, they're actually a father-son duo. They're trying to take over the galaxy for me together, a whole family dynasty type thing. You got to like a LeBron and Brani type maneuver. You got to take that, you got to take him out right away.

I can't make, well, we can't make Luke Brony. Why? Brony, listen, Sam, I just heard, 500,000 Bronny jerseys got sold this year. 500,000. 100 bucks a hundred bucks a jersey you know yeah once he get paid eight million dollars shit worth every penny if you're the lakers it's a lot of jerseys you moved anyway regrettly yes luke skywalker luke is the brawny and you move a lot of luke skywalker merch you know you do move a lot of luke sidewalks merch yeah in general no no no neither does i mean brawny does because he's lebron's son

but his contract isn't that high compared to what he's bringing in for. And I'm saying that Luke in the Vader-Luke take over the galaxy thing would have been a kind of brawny figure, you know? You gotta think about it. Who put the ball in the hoop at the end of the day? That was Darth Vader.

In this scenario, the ball is the emperor's body and the hoop is that big energy shaft that he got dunked into his true. He should have hoot. We all know this. He should have hooped. He grew up as an athlete. He grew up as an elite race driver. Let him hoop.

Anyway. I think it is very fitting that Palpatine would not give any information. Like, I feel like I could see Mara just being like, uh, grandpa or, you know, Palpatine. Could you tell me the story about, you know, about Darth Vader, how you guys met and And he's just like, man, I don't know. Go be a dancer in the canteena now. Or whatever. Like, I just think he withhold held a lot of information from her in general.

And it adds up. It adds up that she... But the thing that for me is that she hasn't heard... Malay-Rush. None of this stuff. Yeah, Myler-Rooch. Like, all the... We're not...

Hans not, like, making jokes. about oh yeah my mullah roosh is back at home waiting for me or whatever like how is that not coming up there's two things right one she only really talks to luke in this group yeah true like that she but also too she's gotten brought into the friend group way too fast and so like she's now inner circle that's kind of what lea was like appointing her as right where she's like i don't think you really want to kill my brother and honestly like if you want to if you want to ever talk about like what you've been through

like my doors open but the thing that happens when you're sort of promoted in your circle that fast is there's all that like unspoken knowledge of like we all just know that like Luke and Layer's kids all this stuff so nobody's talking nobody just talks about it

and so she's just like now in the group but nobody talks about like pretty wild that like Luke and Leah were twins and didn't know it for years and we're like Vader's kids that just that just doesn't come up and Luke I don't, I think just assumes that most people, it probably assumes that she would know it

because she was like part of the, part of the imperial court. She is so quick to point out. But I do think, Natalie, I think you're right. Like, the thing that emerges here a little bit is that his whole deal with Mara is he's beloved grandpa Palpatine. That he's just a wise, benevolent emperor. And everything's bad in the empire. She's got to go fix it because like he wouldn't want bad things to be happening in the empire. But then copying to the fact that your golem over there is Anakin Skywalker and you're hunting the galaxy to like kill his kid. Like it sort of gives the game away, right?

It starts to make like it's one of those things where it's like it's hard to sort of own up to that if you're Palpatine and maintain the facade. This isn't bonkers Sith. shit that's happening, right? Like, as long as it's like, I just need to enforce loyalty and make sure, like, imperial policy is carried out correctly around the galaxy. The second, you're like, okay, listen, my most loyal henchman, the Ants Anakin Skywalker. And I really want to fuck with him.

Like, you can't, you can't, unfortunately, Mar is one of the few people that you can't actually tell that, too, because then you're not Grampi Palpatine. And this is what breaks her from him to, or begins that, because she's like, she's be berated again with the you will kill Luke Skywalker at this point and understanding that this piece of information was held from her is what makes her go like you know if if I'm gonna kill Luke it's gonna be because I decide to kill Luke not because I have this voice in my head telling me to kill Luke

and and you know the voice doesn't go away or anything but she realizes it's spite too like she's always interpreted it as this like pathetic cry for help and she wasn't able to get to her master to help him. And now it sort of locks in because this is the Palpatine we know from the movies, right? He's just a mean old bastard. And him being like as he's as he's being put as he's being jammed down the down the down the hoop, he is just trying to get one last shot off. Like you know what? I'm to steal your win. I've got like probably won't work. It's just Mara. But maybe maybe he's just

get lucky and uh kill luke and and won't that stick it to stick it to vader and sort of you know we as we sort of heard from her story that this has been a when the voice comes it's like months long episodes of just like deteriorating mental health and just like nightmarish existence and now that's all kind of revealed to be well this sucks I hate this that's that's kind of that's kind of what the voice is and and how it's responding to uh to to luke and luke saving bader and of course at this point they can also feel sabayov being uh close nearby and uh that is that i guess at this point that's confusing for them i'm trying to remember where we are in the timeline so there this overlaps that cuts from this to the scene with coval on the transport remember

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Sabayov was like, Thron, I'm leaving before the attack on Corrassan. I'm going to Wayland. Right. And Thrawn is like, that's cool. I'll send General Covel there to sort of take over the garrison and babysit you. And we'll send you on the transport together. And we get the scene of them together.

And Covel, who we meet in the first in the opening chapter of Dark Force Rising, and he's a pretty effective, efficient little officer. here he's just it's like Sabayov is his drug and he cannot get enough like he's he's already in sort of a withdrawal spiral every time Sabiof even thinks about something else

Covel is just desperate for for his attention and Sabiof gets into this whole monologue about like this is what this is what Thron doesn't get and I actually I really like this portrayal it's like there's a lot of different ways you can imagine evil like Jedi and I think it's I think one of the less effective things is in a lot of Star Wars media the Sith are kind

of boring dark Jedi are just kind of like I'm going to do evil for evil's sake but I think here if you go with the notion that like Sabayov's evil no doubt but he's also a deeply lonely man and also a narcissistic one. And those traits combined. So what does he use his power for? What is his dream? Covel is kind of it, which is to create these like little sock puppets who just bask in your presence and then reflect your own preferences and ideas and will back to you. And you all just like sit there in this great circle of like the radiant warmth of Sabayoth's own like mind. And it's really pretty chilling the way that like Covel is a fragment of himself and the,

and the effect it has. And the fact that this is what Sabiaf, he's like, I finally figured out what power is. And it's this. This is what, this is what the goal is. Anything less than this, what Thrawn's pursuing like geopolitical power, all that doesn't matter. It is the ability to warp people to become this. it's it's an effective little scene i think it's interesting because we know how sabayath was on

wayland when we first got here and he wasn't doing this he was a sort of petty tyrant you know he lived in the whatever the the the weird um like not ruins but the sort of weird tomb or whatever where the other Jedi the original kind of guardian was here i guess we don't know that they or Jedi of that guardian of Wayland was and like exerted his control via threats to the people of Wayland. And then we saw him on the other planet, which name

I don't remember, Joe Mark. Jomar. He again is like descending from on high to decide you know, petty disputes, you know, between two farmers or whatever. And he's reading their minds

and he's torturing them and all that. But he hasn't quite gotten to, I'll just turn them into a little puppet yet. In fact, many of his early conversations seem to be him explaining to Thron what he thinks power is or him explaining to Luke what power is. And in both cases, it is about extending influence over others, but he thinks, he, he situates it inside of other sorts of kind of paradigms or dynamics where he's like, oh, power is to, teaching someone so that they can be like you. Or power is cutting through

the bullshit and giving people what they need, even if they don't know that that's what they need. You read their minds and then decide for them what they need. That's power. But now we're all the way to and I think part of this is because he's come against Luke and Mara and Thrawn, people who will not

bend to that, unlike the people on Wayland and on Jomar who were easily, you know, shapeable without using those weapons you know um there's a little bit of the the classic old nerddom uh batman conversation of like well you know when batman it comes to gotham the villains have to escalate right first you have the which predates dark night by the this is like a classic lunchroom comics conversation right it was like oh well batman's villains get weirder and weirder because batman kind of forces

them to be weirder and weirder in order to get past batman and there's a little bit of that happening with through, or with Jerusalem, which is like, against Thrawn, you know, Thron runs a tight ship. You know,

you're not, the people who work for Throne aren't going to just listen to the powerful Jedi on board because he's a powerful Jedi. And they might not even be susceptible, you know, once he starts placing

Salami around, there might not even be susceptible to traditional regular Jedi mind tricks. You might got to get them alone and whisper something in their ear that they won't even remember was whispered in their ear and do long-term mind control. And eventually, that goes to Cavell becoming effectively someone who's been programmed to do a thing that will get him out of his sort of Salamiri prison here on Wayland.

Because that's the other part of this that I think I had not expected or I had missed somehow. We get a number of how many Salamiri thrown? 6,000. 6,000. to create a bubble big enough to sort of contain Jerusalem here on Wayland, basically, and to kind of protect this whole place from Jedi, from Luke, too, I guess, theoretically. And it's like, oh, okay, well, as long as those are there, we're good.

But those aren't there eternally, it turns out. Well, so the 6,000 Salamary thing is how Leia figures out, like what's going on, Which is a leap I don't totally think the book sells. She keeps having this vision of like Mara says something and then Luke does something. She can't figure out what it means. Yes. And what's actually, what's coming there is less of vision. And it's more two, two things that were related to her from Mara.

One is that Mara, yeah, she says like 6,000 Salamiri were taken by Thron. But then Leah's like, but then why didn't, why weren't there Salamiri all over Thrawn's flagship? Like, why was the jail break for cards so easy? Which is a good question, because it was kind of easy. Like, why was Luke fully, like, empowered aboard the chimera? And it's because the 6,000 salemary weren't sent there. That Thron is really husbanding those resources. He's not, he's just keeping them basically for him with the fleet.

And then all the others are, yes. They are for, therefore, the Mount Tantis operation. Because, and this is the leaf, Leah makes that I just don't think is is totally sold, which is that basically the force, the cloning process and the force are kind of at odds with each other. And the faster you go with the cloning process, the more intense, the strange connection between the clone and the original mind becomes. And what causes clones to snap is during the development process, that's sort of like force radiation soaks in and, like, damages their

brain in ways that will manifest later. Which is why you take a long time. You have to take a long time because you try to jam more juice in their brain quickly, they will, it advances the force corruption or whatever we want to call this, right? It's not force corruption, but, you know, the sort of whatever the side effect is from, the force doesn't like cloning, right? The force resists that, and there is a sort of chaotic and tropic effect on the mind of whoever gets cloned because of that.

And what Leia realizes is that Thron is breaking the speed limit, the 20 days staff that she quotes to tomorrow where everyone's like that is, that is a bonker speed to be cranking out full clones of like stormtroopers and Thai pilots is because, yes, having them surrounded by the Salimiri, they don't have that effect exerted on them. And so you get a, theoretically, like trouble-free clone rolling off the assembly line because they didn't have any of that like force interference during the development process. But all this Salamari create a problem for Sabayoff being imprisoned on Wayland, which he intends to take over. So, you know, the last we see of Covel is when they enter the Salamiri bubble, he's like wildly disoriented and like barely

able to stay standing. And Sabia is just like, I'll be right here with you, buddy. And I'm just going to say things and you're repeat them. And we get this great follow-up when Thrawn like gets this emergency come from Wayland the next morning. Like General Covel's dead. And he has to ask the guy who was like the guy being relieved by Covel. Like, so what the hell happened? And he describes, he's like, well, honestly, Calveld didn't seem right. And there was a lot of weird shit happening that night. It's a great sequence.

I like it in part because I think it gets it like what's scary about dark Jedi, but from a perspective of non-force users, right? It's not this, this isn't like Jedi dealing with other Jedi. This is like what happens when you're just a normal person. and one of these guys just goes completely rogue and unleashes their powers like what can happen at that point and it is the degree to which like

who knows now who knows who is still under their own volition like if he can do this how do you know that person is acting like they could all be sleeper agents at that point that's what Thron concludes is General Kovall's entire that entire like guard attachment he brought to

to Wayland you guys can't let them back in the base are compromised Yep And so he sort of locks down the facility But this is the first of like his his bets blowing up in his face Like he's lost control of Wayland However this however it shakes out from here

He has lost control of Wayland The guys he sent to secure the base Might be turned by Sabayoth And as we discover you know Fairly soon after this He's already figured out how to get rid of the Salomiri And so like Lynchpin 1 of thrones like bringing the empire back strategy

the cloning facility at mountantus has been as come undone because lynchpin two his evil insane Jedi master has predictably gone rogue as we've been seeing coming for you know three books

have we not been saying this all of us everyone in the us in the book everyone is talking about this guy well and this is the moment where Thron's Pelion's like Pelion has this moment of like

I fucking told him like he's angry that like Thron just kept blowing him off about this and Thron is like okay yeah we might have to break up with Sabayoff but we could clone him and I could like

I could be Aristotle to like these half dozen Sabaos that we that we roll out. Do you think this is where Boba Fett slowly aging clone of Jango Fet comes from? Because that's the same thing, right? He's like, he says like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm going to clone them until they're kids. And then I'm going to raise them. Like, they're going to age slowly. And that's, that's what Jango Fett gets for, for exchange for his, his, uh, clone juice or whatever, um, his, his genetic materials, uh, is he gets Boba Fett.

And I'm like, ooh, ooh, his, was Lucas secretly reading these books and was like, ooh, let me just, let's put that one away for later, you know, could be. That's what I'm saying. There are moments. But yeah, so it's like, at this moment when, when he hits the, field he's he loses track of coval because like he can't stop monologue yeah and he's like yeah it's great coval you sit over there and stroke out uh i'm gonna think about how good it's gonna be when i get marry jane luke skywalker to become my little underlings and so in the middle of her attack

where she's realizing the emperor's played her and she's having the you will kill luke skywalker thing mara basically hears him go and then it's going to be so good when like we're all just basking in each other's presences and it's going to be it's going to be super good marjade you're going to love it uh like bowing at my feet and come back to that for sure it's an important phrase it turns out uh the other thing in the middle of all of this is um when and this is like it the timing is weird because this is before thron is like i want my little clones but i think it's after sabayov has been imprisoned, maybe also before Sabayyath has, yeah, it's before, it's before the Coval stuff has cashed out.

Uh, we get a great call from Sabayath to Thron while he's locked in the emperor's, like, sweet. And he's big. He's big mode. He's using, he's using the, the emperor's, like, Snapchat filter. Yes. He's big. He, like, the literal thing that Theron says is like, ah, I see you found.

the emperor's private hologram setting, which makes him bigger than everybody else, which is such a funny thing to be real? It's so funny. I can't believe they, like, included this in this book. This might be the most sheave-coded thing that's happened in these books. Like, in terms of, like,

our understanding of sheave is a little gremlin, you know? It is, it is. It's so sheave. And also the effect that it has is, like, they're able to kind of see, like, see Doros, like, very clearly in the sense that as he kind of moves between feeling very confident in, in kind of his commands and demands, and then to, like, kind of moving into, like, insecurity and retreat, they can see all these facial expressions super clearly on his face because he's, ginormous. Yep. Then it like magnifies your towels.

Yes. It's so funny. Which is like the opposite of how you imagine it works with the emperor because his whole thing is like being, he has the hood up. You can't really read his face. But maybe all this time he's actually just been like, I need something to, I need something to show off that I'm pissed at you without me saying it. You have to look and see my, my, the little wriggles on my.

face as you disappoint me. Well, I love, I love him. The emperor always has his, his hood on. Yeah. So I feel like that also helps hide any, any tells that he might give. He needed to put the hood on, I think. You needed to put the, again. He should have gone to.

Black, long jacket with hood. That's right. He should have gone to the emperor's closet if he was up in the hotel or, you know, up in the room. You know what I mean? Like, you tell me he didn't have a bonus. That's the first thing I would do if I was in the emperor's. room is go into the emperor's

closet. Maybe not put his cloak on. I don't know. I don't know if the emperor's telling. I bet he's got some cool shit. You know what I mean? But he's got cool shit. You tell me what's the liquor cabinet like? What are we talking about? What are we got? Maybe I find his diary. Okay, that's right. I often do find myself wondering to what degree, like

this is, Zon doesn't know this because the prequel trilogy hadn't come out, but like to what degree is the cultured urban palpatine a complete put on versus like once all the Sith shit out of the way does he go back to being that guy who's like I want to watch the little water opera

there's certainly hints of it like Andor seems to think so right like the the sense of the empire as a decadent like a decadent heavily aestheticized body

feels like it would flow from Palpatine now the question is still is that is that still just a put on that like the you know if he's if he's concealing the degree to which he's become a frog man because of the Sith stuff does he still have to be like pay no attention to my face but I would love to discuss the latest the latest uh like operas or ballets they're coming through town I'm so of two minds about this and it really is if I were hired to write a Star Wars thing that she was in the question would be, is it in original trilogy mode or is it in Andor mode?

Because in Andor mode, I'm really interested in Sheave having aesthetic taste and being like, oh, I know what the good opera is. And the good opera is the one that, you know, hits a certain sort of aesthetic values that he thinks are good, right? This is the Sheave who is a human supremacist. This is the sheave who has a deep knowledge of history and probably still has taste. influenced by growing up as a senator or spending time as a senator from Nabu, you know, all that stuff. I'm really interested in the materialist version of she that is like, who is he, what's his taste in the way that Nazis have taste, right? Not to say, I agree with their taste, but they have things that they like, right? And think about like trad culture, think about all of, you know,

think about the Nazis destroying art because they thought it was too transgressive and, et cetera, right? Or any political movement having its own sort of aesthetic taste. But I also think of I'm in the original trilogy mode, which is this kind of archetypal, big, traditional epic ring cycle style, you know, transcendental, metaphysical saga. It's like, no, he lost that. That's what he traded. He traded away the ability to engage with art and culture because he's so consumed by rage and hate and his desire for revenge against the Jedi. And I think it's a more boring story, but I do think that it, or a version of this, but I do think that there's something haunting and compelling in a sort of, in that sort of metaphysical, magical storytelling way, the sort of storybook way. We're like, oh, the evil, the evil king was so evil that he used, and importantly, even in that version, he did used to like the opera. And when he and Anakin go to the opera, I think at that point, even in my version of that story, he still liked the opera then genuinely. And in everything that's happened, he's lost it. He's traded it away bit by bit until he's just power, right? But I could go either way.

I really could. So I'm curious if we do get, if there's a, if there's an episode of Andrew where he shows up and all we get is like glimpsom in an opera box, that would be so good to me. Oh my God. It would be so good. With like a single tear rolling down his cheek. Well, that's he actually moved. We're doing the untouchables now. Yeah. But I think I do think I like the notion, yeah, the single tier and that's all you can feel will be good. I think the synthesis might also be that like it's all still

there but it's not hooked up to any any real joy. Right. That it's all just, and I think Thrawn edges up on this. Like he loves art but like there is this, he can't he can't help it instrumentalize it. You don't get the sense anymore that like he can appreciate art

but you just don't get the sense that like there's any emotional component for him there. it is all just how does this help me dominate um and so the the exercise becomes kind of like joyless uh-huh i saw a um uh god oh boy why am my dude's name um the bernard steagler who was a um a french uh philosopher who died a few years ago um i saw him give a talk in 2010 about art and love. And specifically, like, the heart of that argument, the argument that he was making was about the sort of like the contemporary society has made

people who have gone to college and who have gone through various forms of like intellectual training become Philistines about culture that they have. In his particular vision of that, Philistine not as in, fuck that culture shit, fuck art, I don't care about it, but as in I'm above it and I can only engage with it intellectually. I can't love a thing. I don't, I never see a thing go, oh, that's so sick. I love it. I only go, that's very interesting to me. Ah, yes, you can see the influence of such and such, but there's no emotional libidinal attachment to it. And I think that's Thrawn. Thrawn, a hundred percent lives in the realm of like historicization and sociology

and trying to understand why a thing is a certain way but we never get an image of him being like moved from something as far as I recall right we seem impressed. I think the closest is that art from that society he destroyed. Oh right. Because he couldn't like the mission went bad and so before he could figure out a different solution

he killed their entire world. That's right. And so like to a degree like the one time we see him sort of moved by art it is sort of a symbolic it's symbolic of his failure and a moment in which he was wasteful right because he couldn't crack the code and so they all had to die because in the end he brute forced it yeah yeah totally interesting anyway much to consider much much uh I do like this is the sort of I think this is the last moment that Thron is in full like Thron at

max speed figuring things out at lightning speed he still isn't he still does not realize the depth of the danger on on wayland but i do love the moment where he's like he gets savi off on the on the on the on the on the com and is like what are you general coval and sabias like well uh the servants the empire or mine to do with what i will and thron's like great that That's all I need to know. So, Colonel so-and-so, that man is now your prisoner. Do not let him just the immediate dismissal. Like, we are done here.

Let's take steps to secure the facility. But it also is a moment where the thing at this point is Thrawn has figured out that the rebels are going to strike of Blabringy. He immediately deduces their entire plan, which is we're going to make it look like we're hitting the tang green base. But actually, we know they're coming to Bill Bringey. He's totally got the, he's figured out the entire plan. and so he's like really excited to go like basically fight his what he thinks is going to be his trafalgar which i guess in a way it is just you know the other way around but he's convinced he's going to have his big battle where he's going to break the break the new republic and in one big

showdown but man wayland is the whole ball game and this is one of those things where it's like this is probably a drop everything type moment and he just can't once again it's that inflexibility right like there's that we're not going to delay do such and such a mission because everything has to unfold by my timetable. This is the schedule by which we're going to defeat the New Republic. And he won't deviate from it, even though this is like, this is it. Wayland is the whole, like, you, the ability to turn out troops is the thing that's going to let him, even more than the Katana fleet.

It's the clones. And he's just like, it'll keep. It's interesting because I, Thron doesn't take Sabayoth seriously in the sense that he does to the extent that he wants him, like, his influence contained, almost like a virus. like oh okay we we we want to keep you know uh sabayoth like quarantined on whalen um but the fact that he sees what happens to covel and then he locks sabayoth in the clone house and and and is so committed to his like his his his master plan of figure out that the rebels are not actually attacking, what's it called? Tengreen, yeah.

Tengreen, yeah, and that they're actually going to Balingi. I don't remember what it's called, but Bilingi works. It's like he's, he's, I think a big part of it is the fact that he sees the force as a tool to be like wielded at his at his choice basically like when he wants to use the force he's going to use it for his cloaking device scheme or whatever like it's very utilitarian the way that he thinks about the force which is shocking When he's, you know, he pits himself as such a sort of intellectual and such a, a, an understander of, of, like, people's motivations and based on their art and like he can figure people out. And so he has this, like, ability to analyze people's intention.

but how it's just it's interesting that this was thron's fatal flaw but it doesn't really have anything i don't know i just think that the like his whole art i know this is kind of a ramble at this point but for a long time we've been saying how is thron what is thron's foil going to be like what is because he can't just be like super good at analyzing art to the extent that he's able to figure out figure everyone out like he has to get it wrong somehow and for he never actually gets it wrong he just makes he just pays a he's paying attention to the wrong fight I guess if that makes sense I think that that's right though right because it's like it turns out the message might the message isn't oh, he wasn't as smart as we thought he was. Because, you know, importantly, the other thing Pallion is saying during all of this is like, bro, are you sure they're going to attack real ringy? Are you certain?

Because I don't think they are. I think they're going to go attack the other place. They're massing up. And Pallion's wrong. He knows where he does know. He does set the trap right. He has, but that's not the only thing that you have to account for. You can't do it all yourself.

You're under man. We talked about this before that like the, the, the, uh, Grand Admiral Theron is the only remaining grand admiral. The empire used to be built in the back of a bunch of grand admirals who were all fairly, you know, successful, you know, fairly competent, if not geniuses like him. And so, for instance, he is trying to manage Sabaya, the New Republic, the Nogri, and the smuggler stuff. And it's like, well, he really only has time to deal with the New Republic. He drops the ball on all three of the other ones and does.

doesn't spend the time, he doesn't make the right reads on them. And I mean, partly, I guess the smugglers don't make art. That's the other way you can beat them. But like, he, he doesn't, he can't do all of that for everything. And he does not delegate except to sobbing out. So I, and I think if I have to take another swing, the other thing I would say is, I think, ironically, the critique you're making of Thron, and I say this with a great deal of humility, could also be made of us, and our perspective that we often have about the force and the Jedi. I think that for me as a critic, certainly,

one of the bells that we ring a lot is like, the Jedi are an institution, there are material power, yes, we can talk about the spiritual element of what they believe, but fundamentally they're space cops who have special abilities, right? They have the telekinesis gun,

they have the mind-reading gun, they're able to use those things the way that traditional forces use, you know, batons and guns and handcuffs. And we talk about them in that way. And I think that that's how Thrawn sees them. Thrawn is like, whatever spiritual mumbo-jumbo they have,

whatever bullshit they believe in, fundamentally they were an extension of the old republic. They were a group of militant police. And now there's a handful of them that believe bullshit. They've been, their institution is destroyed. The most powerful ones that exist, there's only two or three of them.

And the problem was that we invested too much power in them to begin with, specifically the emperor, then we should have been better about keeping them lower on the sort of hierarchy so that they, they, we can't put all our eggs in one basket in that way. And I think that there is a real, um, soft critique through Thron of a sort of vulgar secularism, a sort of like, there is, uh, the whole world can be reduced to, to atoms and sociology, you know? So this is, vulgar secularism is part of it, but I think, so Thron, I think, also represents this idea. So far as associate with like, to a degree like the rise of the neoliberal order, which is that to replace a lot of like the toxic, like ethnocentric beliefs of the like late 19th century, early 20th to move beyond Orientalism and race science and all that.

we get to this place of like all men are created equal okay now what does that mean yeah well it means we're all market actors responding to rational stimuli and the differences actually don't matter that much we're gonna we're gonna correct away from uh you know sort of the the beliefs about cultural differences and people like having like having distinctly different values and cultures are moved towards universalism that's going to sound very progressive but it's going to have this like rational, deeply microeconomic brain vision of like what motivates people, what matters to them. And I think that is, that is partly what Thron is getting at as well. It's like once you can just reduce people down to their motivations, like what's their, what's their whole deal?

You know, it's how do you crack the code on their culture to reduce down like how are they going to behave according to this programming? But it's all going to response to rational. Stimulai this is this like what are they going to do in this situation whether you do in that situation And a thing that he consistently disregards is that like It's weird he can pick up like when people's pride will be stung or like stuff's gonna sit with but finally he just doesn't care about people's feelings It's palpable most palpable with the no-grie that I can just I can just bring the boot down on you and you can't do anything maybe you'll resent it, but like, who gives a shit?

I can just bring the boot down on you, and I do not have to, like, deal with anything from you. And that's not going to have ramifications because it's still going to be rational for you to play along, that you're going to, that you're going to sort of stay in your lane and adhere to this sort of packing order we've described. And it happens with the smugglers, too, that, like, he's going to relentlessly try to fuck with them

and turn them against each other. And when that plan kind of fizzles, it's not clear to what degree he realizes the failure has failed the spectacularly. The pace of the story is picking up. The last hundred or so pages is all in the space like six hours. Yeah.

But he consistently is, starting with Sabayoff. Like Pallion immediately is like, you need to stop needling this guy. Like you need to stop engaging in clashes of wills with a guy. whose entire deal is my will is the strongest and I have to be like supreme in every confrontation and Thron just can't the thing that he loses track of he does see Jedi is like

it's like wizards are real what magic isn't is kind of the right his take yeah and the thing that he doesn't or that magic is magic but it's just it's systematizable it's You're never going to do something unpredictable. You know what I mean? It's video game magic. It's not the magic of legend. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I think he believes in a fireball does 66 damage.

I don't think he believes in the, the incalculable openness of raw, real magic, you know. And this Luke is real get coded in a lot of ways, which is just like the thing about this Luke, because he's not really a space cop. Nope. This whole series, he's just like, man, I don't know what to do. I'm going to open myself to the universe and I'm going to let it move me. And everywhere he moves, things profoundly change. Like, Card is like, I don't want to get into this war. We're just going to stay in the middle of this. We're going to profit. End of the first book.

Card's troops are like ambushing Thron's troops and like Tron and Carr are going to be enemies for life, right? Just every turn, like where this guy, where this guy is gone, the rules that the universe that Thron understands the universe to be operating to kind of break down. And he, but that is just because, like, Luke is also an expression of, like, how what's the way to put?

Like, extreme humanity. Yeah. Decency. Uh, and that's kind of the thing that is, uh, kryptonite to Thron. that like, and it's ultimately kryptonite to Halpatine as well, that like someone who is like really decent and kind

showing up and being like, you can still come back from this. There's still a seat for you at the table can be the most profound thing in the world. It's like way more motivating and powerful than all the threats. And so like, yeah, Thron just can't understand the way that like the things he does, which for him are like,

I electrocute the rat to punish it. It won't hit that lever again. And we should be good, right? The notion that like, yeah, but as we get from Andor, you know, the tree remembers. Yeah. And that is kind of the thing that Thrawn just consistently is missing. And the denom out of this book is all the enmities he built up just coming back on him one after the other and all them avoidable, except that he couldn't really stop

and be like, I need to do some handholding here, which even Pelion, you know, Pelion who's like, man, I can't wait to execute rook. I hate, I hate these fucking aliens. Even Pelion is someone who has all those moments where it's like, I don't think you can talk that way in front of the Nogre. Yeah. I just don't think you, I don't think it's a good idea. Get away with that, man. like, I know we act like they're invisible, but they're not. They're people. And, like, that's all it would have taken, but Thron just can't, can't see it that way. Oh, yeah. Yeah, fundamental. I mean, that's, that's the other half of this, right? It's just like, going back to the, like, you can't juggle it all. Like, there's a, there is a, there is a world where Thron, what should Thon

have done here? And the answer is, I think, what, you know, y'all have kind of gestured out, which is like, you should bounce from Bill, Bill, Brill-Bing-I-Bringy, is it two R? Bringy, yeah. Yeah, Brill-Bringy, and go to Wayland to try to stop the loss of these clones. You have a huge force. Yeah, you don't deal a death blow to the New Republic here. Maybe you even lose the shipyard. But you don't lose the war.

You still have a huge clone army. You've proven that you can shut down, you know, the Republic through one-on-one or, like, through fairly even, you know, battles. And maybe you live as an equal power that controls a bunch of planets for some time. And you slowly build up your resources, you know, and maybe on a long enough timeline that still costs you something, but you get another chance at it. And he's so obsessed with this, with like the play working. You know, he's called the play. Everything is lined up. He's Sherlock Holmes and he knows who did it. You know, he has the right read on the situation. he's going to, and it's like,

you have a world. Borgaine not is hell with this dude. Huh? Oh, Borgian night is hell with it. Can you just take your fucking turn? No, hang on. So if I do this, my first action. Yes.

And then I use that to get a second three. And then three turns later, it's like a four player game. And like the fourth player who's the first time they've ever played it does something stupid. And do, wait, why would you do that? Wait, why did you go back to base? And you're like, oh, because I want, oh, because I wanted to go change my character's equipment.

I said, no, no, no, but that was to your turn. That's not efficient play. And the other player is like, yeah, but I wanted to get a bigger sword from the base, so I went back and got that. It's, I'll just catch up with the rest of the, it's fine, I'll make a good choice next time. He's like, no, but I made all of my plans based on the fact that you would try to play optimally, and you didn't try to play optimally. Why did you try to play optimally? And that's like, it falls apart at that point. Like, when you imagine everyone is going to constantly be making the rational action, you're going to drop the ball eventually, especially if you can't, you don't have the time to do your special super.

research on every single person like you're not gonna he could have you know i think a lot about the fact that he could have he could have done what leah is trying to do for the no gree he could have inherited the no gree and been like my god you've been lied to let me try to actually help you and then secured their loyalty forever instead he was like this this scheme seems like it worked pretty well this is just a thing i get to have now you know i got the no green upgrade, you know, he could have stayed with the smugglers a little tighter, you know, or killed, for instance, simply killed Niles Farrier and be like, all right, I don't know what the smugglers are up to, but I have to count on not knowing what the smugglers are up to.

Let me just back off from them for a second. I'll have to think about them as a free radical on the system. Maybe I can't count on them doing what I think. But he has to think he's figured it out, and that's what's going to blow it up in his face. And again, fundamentally what blows it up in the, in the, in his face in the end is the no-gry thing. Like, I think what's fun is, like, in the end, it's the smugglers, it's the, it's stuff happening on Wayland. And then it's the guy next to him. It's the guy he thought he could trust the whole time. And yes, any one of those loses him the war, but it's the no-gris

that loses him his life. I know we're jumping ahead a little bit here, right? Yeah. It's so good. It's good. It's good. He fucks up. Part of me kept thinking, like, wait, he doesn't get God in this book, right? It's not, he doesn't live on to be a thorn in the side, right? They closed the, they do close the, and I was very glad that is, that is true. I was, I had this brief moment where I was like, oh, wait, am I misremembering how these books go? And, yeah. He's not going to come back with a big scar. You know, maybe I guess, you know, who knows? I don't spoil it either. Yeah. I mean, I do think like everything that you're, you're pointing to here is just the like,

lack of palatine in him. And like, I think where he fucks up is thinking that he's a supreme ruler like he's trying to fill the emperor hole with sabayoth but also with himself in terms of just thinking like well my plans are going to work and he even tells pelion like even if we don't get them here we're going to get them so stop you know needling me about this and it's like well if you believe that then why aren't you willing to like you know do a pause on some of this stuff like i it's very it's very funny i i love to see him fail he needed a hand he did he needed a hand

he needed to know how to delegate really he was never delegating this is well and like if there's not a throng to a T moment it's when Pellion's like are you sure you should just betray Mara Jade and he's like she doesn't know yet but she's never coming back to the empire empire

and it's like that's because you're doing this like this is someone who's desperate to believe that like the thing she served is still good like if he had been like Like, if he had been willing, if he'd been willing to stoop a little bit in the, my last duchess sense, if he had just been willing to play to Mara's pride and her yearning to feel like she's part of something greater, it, a lot of things would have been fine. But it is that need to be like, you think you're important, you dumb fucking kid. Like, don't, like, get out of here with that. and that's kind of him

is like who should she will submit to our will once she realizes that she's crushed and like she has no other options and doesn't fully calculate all the other options that people will see when their back is against the wall

but yeah that is that is just how how he approaches these things and so like yeah the the Sabayoff is sort of out of out of pocket off-piece back on Wayland

is sort of the first domino domino falling for Thrawn meanwhile so yeah Leah is figured out she's got to get

to Wayland and right around that time card shows up and he so badly wants to talk to Mara he gives away

like he gives away the store talk about a man who's holding great the greatest like the greatest hand he knows how many asteroids they had yeah gives her way we can't lay down here until we we know we can let the shield down and he just wants to get down there to talk to mara and make sure she's okay in jail which she isn't because she's gone she's not fucking there it's so funny we have the money right like it's fine that's

true they do they did catch him there's that there's that providental council meeting where They're like, yeah, there's huge payments going out through this line of credit, Luke set up. And they're like, we need to turn that off. And I love, this is maybe my mother's biggest W in the book where they're like, you need to shut that line of credit off. And she's like, absolutely not. Do not keep that money flowing. Well, and I think that this is, here we go again.

What's the thing Mara cares about the most? Loyalty. And his little thing here where he's like. I have responsibilities for my people, I can't possibly, like, but he can't leave Mara behind and like, ah, like, I just, oh, I, um, and it's like, this is why she connected with him to begin with. It's like, he is fundamentally someone who is driven by a sense of loyalty to his people, you know? That's a talent card. Talent card may be rookie of the year, you know, maybe, like, best new character. I, you know, Thrawn, obviously, gets all the headlines. I get it, but

You get a lot of what's cool about Thrawn with card Yeah But without a lot of the ick Talent card underrepresented I don't see a lot of talent card cosplay You know I'll see a lot of town card fan art People know they couldn't carry They couldn't bring off what somebody Zahn did

In that in that card art that he Card Card art of talent card Yeah I suppose Is that photo shoot the hair extensions Yes Where's the military guys saying that they'd follow a talent card into battle though like that's what i'm saying

which i guess to be fair he does not show up to this battle which ends up being a little shaky his people do have to be like i he's probably really busy right now he's probably super busy right now i promise he has a good reason for this yeah it's be other good reasons so like cards really driving a hard bargain about like taking Leia to Wayland and she's like I just don't know if we like we got to go like right now but I don't know

if I pay you for this and he's like well somebody's got to pay me and then Borskfalia falls out of a closet basically and is like you guys really need to blow that base up for reasons how much do you want for it? Just go

just make sure this base blows up I swear to God nothing can survive because and then he says something interesting the the boffins understood Palpatine

may be better than any of the other subject species what's that mean what's going on it's concerning like to what do that is like

is that a really nice way to spin collaboration uh huh there's just gonna be like there's a big sign in the emperor's room that's like, it's like a

Basque sent him, like an edible arrangement or something that was like, thank you. Thank you so much for helping us out, you know, all that time ago. You're the best. Love you, Bestie. We're super proud of we're able to help you set up that

cool ambush on Endor. Let us know if we can ever help again. It was so awesome. Anyways, bye. And I feel like Bosca is just like, it's just, it's, it's incredible. I, I, I, I, but we don't actually find out what it is that is tying the Bothans, like, what is this Bothan? We don't, do we?

He's just like, there's stuff there that would be real bad news for the Boffins and for the Galaxy if it never got out. They're all clones. The Bothans are clones. I have no idea I don't know Rob do you remember if this does get answered

at some point It comes back up I think the thing that he is specifically worried about is the thing that drives the final pair of books that Zahn writes

in this universe Ah okay Because I Basically like Some some dirt the boffins Were involved in Comes to light But

In an incomplete fashion and so basically like a nasty little secret about what they did during Palpatine's rise kind of sort of implicates all of them in maybe helping Palpatine get established but also leaves enough doubt that it sows a lot of other it throws suspicion on a lot of the other like races that are part of the new republic and so it's it turns into the Something they've alluded to almost in various places, which is like, the New Republic has not done like a truth and reconciliation committee type thing to like sort of confront. There's just a whole lot of, woo, we beat the empire. And now we're going to found a new government.

And we do not need to in the very real way that like, hey, why didn't you guys clean out the Imperial Palace a little more and see what's going on there? There's a similar sort of lack of, hey, let's see what happened here in the, in the, in the, 20, 30 years that Palpatine was in power. Yeah, don't worry about it. We'll get to it. It'll be fine. People can volunteer if they have anything to say, but otherwise we'll be over here working.

And so everyone's just, everyone's just flooring it for, for Wayland. Lay gets there right away, like right in time. Poor, poor Han and everyone just like, Han aging before our eyes, uh, is back.

hurts, lifting Art 2 out of tree roots. Um, he is, he is just kind of over going on these like forest missions with, with droids. Uh, he's just, he, he hurts, uh, doing this. He had to march through these woods for days. Lay in card basically like pull the wild card right up to the front door and, uh, hop out. But they get there, not quite fast enough to catch the start of, of the encounter where Sabayath ambushes, Luke and Marin does the chair spin around thing.

He does the chair spin around thing. The timing on this is weird because it's important for us to know that the Salamiri have prevented Luke from knowing where and how Sabayath could get him. right? But then what happens because it turns out Sabriath is not

it turns out it's not just like they get up there and they don't have their powers and so it's an MMA fight and they just break an old man's neck which is what would have happened if they'd gotten up there without with all the Salamiri still still working

Logan Paul just killed Mike Tyson yes Sabayath has to get the cool reveal. Uh-huh. And then he has some sort of kill trigger for all the Salamiri.

All 6,000 of them? So they kind of set this up. I was so lost by this. This is the order that was given to Caval's troops, presumably. Right?

They ransacked a munitions storage, and then they fanned out familiarizing themselves of the facility. And the thing Thron can't figure out is had they all already fallen under Sabayath's

mental influence or were they just tricked but it doesn't matter. They appear to have spent the night they were on the loose in the facility. You gotta assume you have big piles of Salamiri like all into one place because I don't think Yeah, you know they were attaching little

execution saw collars to 6,000 Ysalamiri? Well yeah, because there's no description of like a great thump or like an explosion or something. It's just the forces back on. I probably wouldn't have had them all in big a salemiric pile.

Yeah, that's your first problem right there, right? It'd been like the biggest Christmas garland of a salemar you've ever seen, just like winding all through the facility. But like I wouldn't have had them all just like, I don't know, just throw them in a big stack. Don't they have to be like They gotta be in their little branches To a tree limb, yeah

So they can't be on a big pile They have to at least be On a big tree limb Oh maybe there's a tree inside Like that one restaurant that you kept talking That one restaurant I love Shoutouts Shoutouts to the

Natalie did we go that we went there that time Little Oh my god I love that Yes with the tree Yeah that's gone now That's they there's They moved to Berlin during COVID.

Good for them. Yeah. But I miss it. Anyway. It used to be a great little restaurant in Brooklyn. Anyway. So yummy.

So yummy. Allie's had to edit 30 podcasts of me being like, oh, this is just like this restaurant I used to love in Brooklyn. It was Japanese breakfast.

It was so good. It was so good. We love a train. Not the band. No. Anyway. But either way. Yeah,

what is the actual they go they confront him and he when do they know that they that the force is reactivated is it before luke does he lightning them first yeah no because he feels right from the so when he meets luke uh he can feel the pressure in his mind so the force has to be down must already be back by then yeah there we go uh okay so um so basically Basically, Mara and Luke are just kind of like, look, to your point, Austin, you're an old man. Right. Hanging out in a chair.

Yeah. We're not playing these games with you. We're not going to engage in a battle of wits or like we're just going to, we're here to hit the kill switch on this place. And we're going to, we're going to bounce. And so, you know, Mara says, you know, Asabayas sort of making, sort of revealing his master plan. about how he hasn't granted them permission, and he's ready for all this. She says, we'll take your word for it.

And Sabayat says, you won't have to, and he hits his detonator, and Luke feels the force come flooding in. Yeah, in the back of Luke's mind, something distant and very alien seemed to shriek in agony. Which is interesting, because that means that when they die,

the clone is instantly broken? Well, the, sorry. Oh, no, no, no. I think the alien, oh, interesting. The alien streak in my mind was the death of the Asalamiri, which is like, he's feeling the Asalamiri died despite their force bubbles. So it's like the force bubble collapses inward and he can feel the mass death, you know? Anyway, bad news.

Now Sabriath can do lightning blast. And he sure does it over and over again. I will say a thing I like about... He's so good at lightning blast. Oh, yeah, big time. I think I like about this whole zone is it's very it's very Empire Strikes Back

Final Fight area it's very Phantom Menace coated like all of the like they're always like jumping from a catwalk or a bridge or a power converter down below like I get I don't understand why it's all up here like this but they're doing all that stuff

and it's kind of fun so and I think that's actually you know it's the whole place has that vibe because when I wrote that note actually it was when Luke and Han were first going in and it was like the big cloning facility and the bridge, the central

thing that hold the central pillar that holds it all up. Like there's a real Star Wars space facility about this place. That Zahn does manage to capture. I can imagine it in exactly the way that I can imagine that there's places in the movies.

And then Luke being here really screws things up because it squares up with squares up with Luke. Yeah. And then he realizes he's being forced to break his word tomorrow, which is that she's alone with Sabayov.

And we skipped over this, but like right before they go into the facility, like they have this moment where she like grabs him and is like, hey, you need to kill me rather than let me join Sabayoff. And he's like, uh, You won't have to face him alone.

And she's like, no, you promise. I'm not going to join him. I'm not doing it. Which she's come fully around on like, yeah. She can't go back. Like she realizes now this was her life. It was she basically already served Sabia off. She just didn't know it.

But now she's fully gone, come around to like I would rather die than go back to who I used to be. Whereas like who she used to be was like her brass ring. She wanted that back. She knew she couldn't have it. But that was the loss of that status was her sort of guiding light. and now she's she's fully come around to it was nothing i was i was basically as much as slave as the no gree in in a lot of ways um and but the but luke is just like i can't quite not going to make you this promise and

she she's not going to be like okay don't worry i'll kill you she's so she's so dramatic her being like you you have to kill you Kill me. You have to kill me if we go in there. And he's like, we're just going to go in. I literally want to unfollow her. I have to unfollow Mara on private Twitter. She's going to do a lot right now.

But every other post is some wild ideation. I can't deal with it. I can't. We're not that tight. It's not like we're that tight. We're just, we're mutuals. And then she DM me, it was like, oh, do you want to follow my private? And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, fine.

Like, you're cool. And it's like way more than I. was signing up for you know i like i sent like i replied with some like sad faces for a little bit but then i was like man i don't know you like this yeah but anyways yeah i don't know what's wrong with y'all what's mar is oompy to me wow you're a real one alie's alie's just mute her for a little bit yeah you know what that's right that's true alie's the one who uh isn't that that classic TikTok video of like you on the phone with your best friend who is saying the stupidest shit you never heard and you're just like yeah no totally I just think that like if you considered

it no totally no totally yeah if you thought no I yeah no bearer they yeah yeah absolutely he didn't promise to kill you he didn't you seriously you seriously asked him and he said no he said What did he say? What did he say? Well, he said I wouldn't have to face him alone. But, like, he didn't say he stopped me from, like, going to serve him. So he said he'd be with you. He said he'd be with you, though.

He said he'd be with you? Okay, but then, okay, okay. But then I was like, what if you're already dead? I told him I wanted to kill him again. Okay. Well, I couldn't put him in a different place. But I feel like you had to say that. You had to say, you had to say that.

to say your truth when that is what you're feeling you need to speak your feelings why should a woman be silent why would we ever advocate for that we wouldn't so and he's an ally so he's going to let you speak it's not I want to kill him I just want to kill him sometimes no yeah yeah yeah yeah no we all we've all been there we all been there in different times in our lives so but he he was just like no you you want to face it face him alone that's that's that's That's all I'm going to give you. And you need to understand. She says, you know, this was all happening in a perfect replica of the emperor's throne room.

You know, like, it had all like the lights that he liked when he wanted to meditate. It was fucking me up. Being in that space again is going to bring up feelings for you. Like being in the emperors, being amongst that energy, you need to actually protect your energy while in that energy. is actually what we should be talking about here. The fact that she says that it blows my mind where she doesn't say it, but she remembers it. She's like, the muted lights and the darkness, he found it so conducive to meditation and thought. I was like, is that why his, all right, Zahn, I know you're trying to do a lot of work to, like, justify why things are a certain way.

You could have left this one. You didn't need to tell me why the Emperor's Throne Room was like that. No, no, actually, I like it. Okay, hear me out. Hear me out. And you have to account for the giant Stolaris map he has, too. No, I'm there. I'm there.

So this is an interesting example of, like, Zahn anticipating the prequel trilogy. Because what he's describing is an antithesis of the Jedi Council Chamber. You're right. It's true. It is, like, they're above the world looking out on the world. And it is all like, it is. all like outward looking and like connecting with the force and considering like what does the Jedi council divine for the galaxy. And the emperor has the solitary inward looking space like blacked

out. There's no windows. There's just like the darkness of the mountain. And it is a place just for just for the self. And so I actually kind of like that this space, that the emperor's spaces are all inversions of what what Luke ends up imagining. Like, the most elevated Jedi spaces are. God. The Star-R-S map down to, it has different color highlights for the various faction regions, is so funny to me. It's so good. Allie, did you have any, do you any friends at the table flashbacks while they were describing the big galaxy map on the wall that I, unfortunately, unknowingly stole from here?

If I pre-saged it Stolen the big galaxy map Although it hits It hits It hits it simply hits If you're gonna be an evil emperor You gotta know what's going on Yeah

There's an evil emperor in one of the One of the present table seasons Who just has this map That's so funny Yeah Anyway Yeah The fight is fine

The fight is fine It's so busy Sorry go ahead Yeah I kind of clocked out of the fight I was just like, between this and the space battle going on, I just like, I didn't really, I was like done with the action. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was here for the ideological battle, not the physical.

Not lightning and laser bolts. Bara had been practicing rocks all the way here. And then it was rock fight. Like, I was just like, okay, I don't. Cool ability being space rocks is kind of boring. It's fine. It's fine. It was really cool the first time we did it.

It was sick the first time he did it. But now that I know it's his level three ultimate, I kind of can't. You know what I mean? Yeah, he's no. I feel the same. He's no gallon star killer. Let's just put it back. I saw a YouTube short yesterday that was like, why is StarKiller not canon?

And then it was just like, look at how badass he is. And it was like all the shit he did. And it's like, yeah, because this, this is why he's like, what do you mean? The answer is in the evidence. That's the other thing. I, hmm, people, you're, I keep seeing. I think I've been seeing a lot in Star Wars spaces. for some fucking reason, is I've seen people talk about this EU as if it were, I think

this was, what was this in response to, God, where did I, I probably saw on Twitter, which I still view even though I don't post there. I'm a fool. Maybe it was certain, maybe it was somewhere else. But someone was basically making the case that like, uh, something in the new, oh, it was, it was, it was YouTube comment for a scene from something, I don't know what it was. It was like going through it. I was like, what is this?

And it was like showing off a new Thai defender. It was a scene about the Thai defender, which is a like advanced tie fighter, which a new character in the current contemporary, it's like a cartoon episode. It might have been Bad Batch. I don't know what it was. Someone knew designs it. Someone who was not Thron or the person that worked with Thorn to design it. But apparently Theron designs the Thai defender in the old thing, the old EU, or someone who worked with him did. because multiple people in the comments

in this fucking video were like Disney just couldn't like respect the true canon and it's like oh I'm out here talking about how I want them to like remake some of this stuff I gotta be careful because I don't want to wind up in the pit with these people who are treating it like it was the good old days

because a woman didn't design the Tide Defender sorry I left that part out of the story because I couldn't even conceptualize being like and you need to understand in the video a woman made the design the new Tide Defender, you know, like truly women drone pilots are here and people are like, nah, uh, men piloted those drones. Like, that is where the discourse is.

Anyway, when I say I want them to revisit this stuff, that is not why. So to be clear. But anyway, yeah, the fight is the fight. We already have Thron developing the Thai Defender in rebels? Like, we just had that. I don't. Or are they now, like, he cribbed the design from so and so. I do not know.

we will let's find out you know let's keep watching our stuff i don't know it's a mark two type situation maybe it's a mark two type situation this is possible certainly anyway point is yeah the fight is kind of busy um yeah there's so much happening and a lot of characters kind to end up sidelined in it you're talking about like chewy and lando don't even make it up there no chui and lando are busy putting bombs on all of the yeah the sparty cylinder Yeah, so they are basically, they are basically in the middle of the final battle of Cotor, like for me, like running in circles, like throwing grenades. Doing grenades and mines. Yeah, at cloning cylinders.

But meanwhile, everyone else is upstairs. And Luke just can't beat Luke because like the whole brain situation, you just can't get a handle on this guy because it's like giving him a migraine. um and then lay in cards show up in the middle and that briefly like we're reenacting empire strikes back luke's like lea and like just goes you know ham and starts to win but not really uh he sort of actually he does beat the clone and then sabayath cheats he intervenes and rearms the clone luke disarms him yeah and sabi i's like no no i'm not going to allow the fight to end that way it's just bullshit right Like, this is why you got to go. One among many reasons.

Like, you gotta, you gotta just take that out, man. It's phase two. It's phase two. Yeah, you thought you beat me. My health bar defeated it all the way, but then Sabaiaf puts me back up with the lightsaber. It turns out, it's actually a really good thing. It's a good thing. There's a Luke.

A spare Luke lying or not. Well, oh, we shouldn't say the thing, which is it's, it's Luke comes from the genetic, material retained from Luke Skywalker's hand that got cut off in Cloud City in Bestbin. And he's wielding Anakin's lightsaber. That part's cool. Which

Come on, you went and got the guy's hand. What are we doing? What's the ground? Where's the ground on Bestbin? Where do you go fish it out? I I thought it was funny. It's funny. It is funny. You can have that. Sure.

Maybe it doesn't land. It does. Let's go flying in that scene. Yeah, I mean, it had to go through all those tubes or whatever, right? Luke got snagged on something. No reason to say the stump of his hand couldn't have. Right, so true. Maybe, maybe the emperor was watching the whole time. And then he got to play like a little pipe dream style mini game to redirect where the hand was falling.

Do you know what I mean? Like, all right, quick, move pipe 17 right. And like it goes to like, it's actually like one of those mobile games with the, where you pull the, the middle rod out. You know what I mean? You have to pull the right rod out to make Luke's hand and lightsaber fall into the

Oh no, you did it wrong. Luke's hand tumbled into the Tabana gas chamber. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited to get these fucking movies. Star Wars is good.

Anyway. Star Wars is so good. And then once they recovered the hand and the saber, everyone started dancing to I'm solo, hon solo. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Banger. So the other thing is in the middle of this, like Luke offers the worst bargain of all time and because Leia shows up everyone's there and he's like all right

if you let everyone go I'll stay and Mara's like he's just the greatest man can you believe just look at the goodness of this man even me who threatened to kill him Luke will lay his lay his life down for everyone here.

And Sabayov, quite rationally. Are you nuts? I've got, there's like so many Jedi in this room. You really think you're worth that? And you know, you know Luke's not going to actually like serve under him.

So I'll stay. And I'll treat you like shit. Will you join me, Luke? No. You'll be at my feet. I keep saying this, by the way. Not until you're at my feet. You got to be at my feet.

Very clear image. my mind uh-huh uh but but in all this uh sort of luke and marr work together he sort of like bates the droid in the droid the clone into slicing a piece of electrocon to it just getting a blast of a blast of electricity and that's where mara runs up on him and kills him and you know from a certain point of view ah there it is she has killed luke skywalker killed luke skywalk I cannot believe she placebos yeah her compulsion hell yeah shit that motherfucker he didn't know about he didn't know about no Luke clone this is the diet Luke yeah I it's just I'm sorry to skip to the very end of this book

but it's just so stupid how much it like actually works like the next time we see like wind blowing through her hair and she's just chilling and she's like yeah I did the thing I did the thing I got rid of the thing in my yeah duh I had a people thought

in my head and I got rid of it had to be like yeah no the brain parasite in her brain is actually it's gone now because she

killed Louook but that's not enough this look Natalie you've been like I'm sick of these common Mara owls when are we're going to start

seeing Mara's dubs Yeah And Zahn's like We're gonna empty the clip right here We are gonna All right so she So she got Luke

Dealt with the Emperor's Compulsion And then just when you think like Well surely someone else is gonna wrap this thing up Uh uh nope She's gonna she's gonna solo solo sound Okay no they all have to work together There's a team

That's true Uh huh But Including the Vortnsker Who are here by the way We have not been clear It's a sack How many beings are in this scene?

Juris, Luke, that's the bad guy side. That's on one, like, if they came out to the wrestling, it would be them together, you know. And then Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade, Han Solo, Leia, that's at six, Talancard, and Sturm and Drong, the Vornscar. Is that it? Nine?

Is that it? Nine. And the Emperor's, voice is in marjays i'm not going to nine bodies in the in the room it's too many it's too many it's too many it's a cluster fuck it's it's it's it's like it's why are we why are we all why are we all here right now too many see the thing is somebody needed to be at bill bringing i think is the issue like the like somebody needed a role to go be pivotal at bill bringing but everyone's got to be here for the big for the big finale yeah and

And they'll bring anything is not like, it's, there's a reason it was good to have Lando up there flying around fighting in the space battle indoor while everyone else is out on the ground. Agreed. Gives you a character that, like, you know, and you like and you care about up in the space battle. And then you get all this shit happening on the ground. And then Luke is off with Vader and Emperor. So, like, you have three, like, you're cross-cutting between them.

Zon's solution here is like, we're going to put, I just can't, I can't have any of these people miss the big moment. I gotta just put them all in there. And then Bill Bringey, like Thron's last battle, is, I don't know, it's like him, Mazic. Yeah, Wedge is there. Yeah. But like, we don't have a main character there. Aves. Yeah, it's just not, yeah.

That's like Thron and, yeah, Thrawn and Pellion, basically, right? Yeah. Here's the thing that I was surprised by. So, Luke frees the Vornsker from their leashes, allowing them to charge. I'd be so mad if someone did that to my dogs. Oh, yeah, for sure. He, of course, is able to, like, force push them away or lightning them away or whatever. They shoot some of the lightning.

He does. But Mara is like, ah, ha, ha, that's all I needed, and then gets in the hit and stabs him with her lightsaber. And then a thing happens that I did not expect, because it's not how I understood the original thing to have happened. Quote, and as it had with the emperor aboard the Death Star, the dark side energy within him burst out in a violent explosion of blue fire. I guess I had never really put together that was a violent explosion of dark side energy in the Death Star, too, when the Emperor gets tossed in the tube. But apparently it was.

Yeah, that was a surprising, yeah, I didn't realize that that was what was going on. I thought it was just... I guess it is like yeah I did think it was just like bad I think he hit like a power generator is what I think I thought he hit like the fuel canister I need to look at him falling yeah but I think I think it's actually a pretty good

read from his on because like he's falling into like the death start like that's a huge like it's just a dude falling into a power core you're right that is like a drop of water in an ocean right like there's just not going to be anything well he has the lightning going I thought maybe the lightning did something. No, it's his dark side.

He's a lightning guy. Yeah. Well, and it turns out he had so much lightning left in him, and that's kind of killed later. It's kind of boiling out, and he's caught in the blast, and that's kind of pushes him, him over the edge. Yeah, it's. Okay. Let me get the fuck out of there. Yeah, you're watching this.

I'm watching this. I'm watching this. Let's all take a look at this for a second, because if this is, what is happening to Sabae Haute. Yeah, this happens to him without being tossed into a big tube.

A fucking battery reactor or whatever? Hold on. I'm sharing this. I guess we simply have to accept that the dark side is powerful and scary. Oh, you already shared it. I'm bad. I did. I did share it. Yeah.

I guess so. I guess we just have to accept that. But the thing is for me, that Palpatine was already, like, sparky as he was flying down, as he's falling down, rather. And then it goes, it goes up, the blue goes up, and then the blue also goes back down. So to me, that's giving... That does have, like, discharge vibes almost, yeah. Right?

But, of course, we know watching this, he survives this, obviously. He didn't die from this, like, clearly. I mean, yeah, duh. Of course not. Maybe I'm wrong. People are going to write it. No, Austin. He already had the cloning tube set up, idiot.

So maybe he didn't survive this. Maybe that's not what the canon is at this point. I don't know exactly. I don't, yeah. We'll get there eventually. But there's definitely, there's a reaction of some sort. Yeah, that's what I think.

Because he hits the, the, the, the, the, blue, there's two different blue lights after there. That's right. There's already a blue light down there. Uh-huh. And then there's a lightning blue light. And then there's the third combination of those to produce a back down. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I guess Sabayath is doing lightning stuff at the same time, too. So maybe that's the situation here. It's like, don't be doing lightning stuff when you get killed. Well, and like, also, like, there's things that just, I don't think it was cool as like maybe Zon hopes they are.

The rock fall. Mara does a sort of food processor type move with the lightsaber to cut holes in the grating so the rocks sift through while everyone else is just buried in rocks up to their hips, but like not otherwise harmed. But she figures out how to drain the rocks out so she can like charge Sabayoff. The Varnskir is distracted. him she's charging forward uh and he starts zapping her uh he starts like throwing all these like rocks at her right like just a hail storm of the tiny pebbles that's lying around and then is it

lea who's like i'll guide you in like i'll be your eyes because she can't see now because like they're it's like whipping at her eyes and so i think is it lea who's like yeah yeah use use my eyes and I'll guide the blade. And then Luke helps somehow in all this, or is he just yanker away when she? He frees the Vorinsker. That's the, he throws the lightsaber to free the Vorinsker to do this.

Okay. That's his little addition. So, you know. And at some point, Han gets like lightly pistol whipped or something with, he's, like, knocked the fuck out at some point, isn't he? Or he's, like, He's pretty roughed up. Yeah.

But yeah, and then Mar is like, you will deal with me now. And yeah, she charges through all the shit and kills him. Is this a fun place to note the thing that I read about the original idea for Jerusalem and what he was? Did we already talk about this? What Zahn's original idea was? He was going to be a color of Obi-Wan originally. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wasn't sure.

It'd be so good. It would have been interesting. Because we'd be so resonant if like, the whole Joe Mark thing, we can't kill him. Resonate so differently where Mar is like, some people can't be saved. And with Jaroos, you can sort of see that like,

yeah, Luke would try to save everyone kind of makes sense, but like you can also see these guys pretty far gone. But if it's Obi-Wan lying there. Yeah. I'd be freaking out. That would be great. Well, then I think we'd probably like narratively put Luke and Mar on a slightly more even.

footing because it's like, hey, we're both, like, we both got our delusions here. Like, you're clinging to this, this isn't your, this isn't your dad. This isn't your space, like, this isn't your mental. Either of you, both of them. Yeah. It's good. Well, and like, because the, the story opens with like, Obi-Wan being lost to him now once and forever and to immediately have, like, a clone show up and be like, you don't have, you know what? Who says, who says loss has to be real? Which, again, would be. unintentionally very resonant with the prequel trilogy which is the thing that pulls Anakin down is like

I can't even contemplate the possibility of losing someone I love and to dangle that temptation in front of Luke would have been awesome yeah too bad they didn't do that and then too bad they eventually have Luke dangling a piece of child a child armor onesie and a lightsaber phone of a child so that's that's the direction we do go But Zabayov gets got donezo. Thrawn at Bill Bringey.

His whole plan works, but he doesn't anticipate that the smugglers will all be there ready to tear shit up. And so they start attacking from inside his defense cordon while he's in battle with their public. And so now he's fighting on both sides and it all starts to go real bad, real fast. And he's like, this isn't going well. But don't worry about Pelinidad.

We can bring this back. And then Rook is like, oh, the radio message comes in from Wayland that the facility is under attack from a group of commandos, the aliens on the planet, and a group of Nogri. And Palliotto, Thron, I'm like, wait, what? And that is when Rook strikes. Yeah, and never, and never, sorry, he never got to read anymore of the report. abruptly a gray-skinned hand slashed out of nowhere catching him across the throat he gagged falling limply in his chair his whole body instantly paralyzed for the treachery of the empire against the no-grie people rooog's voice said quietly from beside him i'm sorry can you meow a little more on that one the thing i went to was what's the little what's the little thundercat motherfucker you know like the snarf or the the treachery of the empire I reckon the no great people, meow, you know, like that.

Rook's voice said quietly from beside him as he gasped for breath, We were betrayed, we have been revenged, meow. There was a whisper of movement, and he was gone. Still gasping, struggling against the inertia of his stunned muscles, Pellion fought to get a hand up to his command board. With one final effort, he made it, trying twice before he was able to hit the emergency alert. and as the wailing of the alarm cut through the noise of the Star Destroyer at battle, he finally managed to turn his head. Thron was sitting upright in his chair, his face strangely calm.

In the middle of his chest, a dark red stain was spreading across the spotless white of his Grand Admiral uniform. Glittering in the center of the stain was the tip of Rook's assassin knife. Thrawn caught his eye, and to Pelion's astonishment, the Grand Admiral, smiled, but he whispered, it was so artistically done. Loser. Loser. Oh, bass rooque,

bass rooos. Completely ugh. It was so artist. First of all, artfully done. Artfully done. Not artistically done. That's nothing. His brain's running out of blood.

Okay, his brain is running out of blood. it's all draining to his chest. No. That doesn't excuse him. It's so fun. And at the very end, you'd appreciate art again. You're right. Finally.

Connects, he connects with it on a human level. Wow. You're right. It gives a meaning to his death that otherwise wouldn't have in his purely material conception of the universe. And Pellion lives through this, right? Despite getting his throat cut.

It's Pellion. So you just kind of cut his throat. Rook plays with Pellion. Oh, it is, that's true. It is a cat and mouse type. It's a Tom and Jerry vibe. He doesn't have any friends. Pelion's like, I hate Rook, but also like Throne Treats Rook like shit, and that makes

me uncomfortable. And Rook is like, look at this guy. I just sneak up on him and he goes, oh, Rook. So Rook does him a solid. He throat punches him. You're right. But he doesn't like break him. but also because he understands

the propaganda of the deed right right the let him know yeah like Pellion's got to see it and bear witness to what what happens to people

who do the Nogre like that and and Rook knows that Pelion will be a completely and like Pellion is not the successor to to Grand Admiral Throb like even if he is

technically seemingly Thron's number two he does not nearly have the capability to carry on the imperial like he he he doesn't have it Thron

was washed in the end but Pelion absolutely does not have any percentage of Thron's juice even even after all this time he has his own juice

but it's not his own juice is just like so standard juice it is standard juice it's right hand man juice he's slim charles he is slim charles this is true and and thron is stringer right

and this is the thing about when people are like man like thron's like the best commander you this is the guy who should be that's my inspiration for my miller like dude this is stringer bell like this is is like he's not as good as you think he is. He thinks he's great. But like the text doesn't.

There's always a sort of apologist, right? There's always a sort of like, yeah, but I wouldn't blank or he was, I think a lot of people who love Thrawn probably think of it as like, well, Theron was betrayed in the end. I simply wouldn't be betrayed in the end. Those treacherous no gray. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is funny. I do think there's a bit of had Thron delegated more to Pelion, like probably like

Peleon is the quintessential. This guy's outgrown being your second in command. Now, we need him there as a point of view character to like sort of bear witness to the genius. But there is a bit of Thron being like, Pelion, can you go sort out what's happening on Wayland like Pronto? There's at least some chance that you get that situation back, like you put a lid on that fire before it burns off.

of control um but instead it's like i'll just deal you know what nobody do anything i'll deal with that as soon as i deal with these five other things yeah and pelion is in a bunch of other stuff right like pelion does stick around is he really a bunch of shit i believe so he pops up in some other places uh he gets caught up in so in the in the EU like the the thrones sort of the last of the people who can get the empire all point in one direction. After that, it's all like warring warlords. And Pallion pops up in one of those. But eventually he does become like the head of the imperial fleet.

And, but he's also the guy who's like, you know, we got to, you got to know when you're beat. So that's, that's, that's, that's Pellion's. Which I guess to Natalie's point, Pellion also knows his limits. Right. He's like, I don't, right. I don't have it like that. Yeah, he's like all the time talking. about how obsessed he is with Thron and like how goaded Thrawn is and like wow

Thron really thought of that I would never think of that thron glazing that's too much he's constantly glazing him up that's not a that's a Grand Admiral does not glaze that's true I mean in his final moments he's glazing right he's like he's giving that final order he's like I know I can't do this as good as Thron can do it. You're right. I'm bleeding out. It must be hard to be, you know, truck Pellion, fuck Thron.

But Pellion was there the whole time being like, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, are you sure? Are you sure? And, yeah. And so that's it. It's all, they all have happily ever after. That's the end of Star Wars E.U, right? Well. Except that Mara is like just a low-key,

politician now question mark so we get the rooftops in and yes it is it is glow up mara jade on the roof the wind billowing through her through her red hair she watches the sun setting over a chorusant reflecting on uh you know all the lives all the people seeing the universe really for the first time uh also her inner monologue completely changed uh like oh yeah skywalker no no she calls him skywalker to his face in her monologue mara is now it is luke good catch great catch and luke uh has a very he has two things he wants to get out of mara at this point he'd like it if she sticks around to work at and this just seems like a bad idea on its face throne's gone but

they're like, you don't be good as if we kept this smuggler organization around that Card has put together, that he, with an unlimited credit line from the new Republic and the enemy breathing down their necks, could barely keep together. And they're like, Mara, you should run the smuggler's alliance. This'll be good. This will be a fun gig. And she's like, I don't think it will be. And I think she's right. I think this is a, like, this is just isn't going to work. And he's like, he touches her hand and says, you can do it, Mara. I know you can.

Here's the weird thing is that I didn't know, I didn't realize she was running it. I thought she was being the liaison between the New Republic and whatever the smuggler thing is. And if that's the case, what is Han doing? That's such a new dad. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm sorry. Please. His wife is the.

Is the breadwinner, obviously. He has to be a stay-at-home dad. He is a male wife. It's right. It's just so sad that he kept that entire first book going, like, you know, I think my job for the Republic is going to be like some sort of like smuggler alliance with the new republic. And at the end of the day, Mara Jade is running it.

Yeah. She has the rap. She's been doing it for recently, more recently. I think there's sins. I think it's one of the first. fun things here is like Han had the Han from beginning people are like you're just not in this life anymore like you don't you don't go here anymore that's so true and over the course this book he kind of comes around on that like remember when uh the his description of the

abrogato ray spaceship where they run into reverend and everything is like wow they've really cleaned this place up it's a way better spaceport than it used to be mar goes there and it's basically like okay so this is a police state and they like this is basically now like the Dubai program of like it's going to be glossy and like you know it'll be it'll be shopper oriented but in the meantime there's still like you know people being executed in the street and Mars like this place is fucked and Luke and Han when he's there is like can you believe they have a blue bottle coffee in this place around Han's the type of smuggler you could imagine in a target you know So many products

So many skews The other bit that I actually love In the end here Is when When Luke comes up to her And is like Quite a view, isn't it? Must bring back memories for you.

And she's like Whoa, the Riz King just rolled I thought this fruit She literally is, you know Skywalker Just between us, you're pretty pathetic like when you try to be devious. Oh, they're great. They're good.

They're going to go forever. They're, these are superstars. This is good. Love to have Luke Sky. If I were you, I just give it up and stick with that straight out farm boy honesty. He's like, sorry.

I get too much time to spend around hot, I guess. And then she's like, and me, wink and high five. Yeah. Yeah. She had high fived us because finally another Mara though. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

She's out of here Laf snorting with him Like they're they're tight They're buds at the end of this They are He keeps touching your hand In a way that like you have to remember He's

This is the first time he's touched anyone's hand Except lay up Okay Wow There's a bit of like this guy Who's big crush His big defining crush He's big defining crush early on

Like turned out to be your sister So like Luke is starting from it is I think he's worried you think he's like Mara by the way I ran a record search we're not related

just just wanted to let you know in case in case you were worried about like a Lone Star type situation we don't need to worry about that

but he gives her his old lightsaber it's so cute it's cute talk about a gesture that changes after the prequel trilogy you sure yeah uh-huh wow true like there's a meme years ago i remember that was very funny it's like

it was ben handing luke the lightsaber the first movie here's i give you your father's lightsaber he killed a hundred kids with it yeah it's like okay so this is no law in this universe this is not like hey here's the here's the child massacre weapon right yeah uh-huh uh uh you know it reminds me, they remind me a lot of James and Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks. James is so soft-hearted. He's such a good boy. He just wants to ride his motorcycle around and write music and like make, you know, big eyes at the girls he has crushes on. And he, and he comes from a difficult home where, you know, his mother is always getting into trouble and stuff. And here's this, this girl who's so mysterious. She has so much going on. She has a dark quality to her, but he's so captivated.

You know? Wow. Yeah. I can't believe this is, this is James. This is he is. Luke Skywalker in the leather jacket. Oh, wow. And I love, but you know, they're both in a sense because he gives her the lightsaber. Gives her the lightsaber. Now imagine, in the A lightsaber is a Jedi's life moment from Clone Wars but he gives the

lightsaber and she's like what does it mean it's like the last connection with his past but like he's giving it to me

it's probably a message in that I just don't know what it is I'll have to think about it in the future but anyway it actually does

kind of work though because also like if you are obviously this is by this point everyone who's like is there a little something here that's cute it's sweet if you want to see that here in the story like here it is there's been enough here at this point you can run with it and much is made out of those few moments of like connection that you get particularly across this book but also the thing that if you're if you're stepping away from like the the shippiness of it all yeah we're going back to the crisis at the start is ben's like well you got to restart the

order. And you're gonna find, you gotta find more Jedi and the, you know, you're, you're gonna have to do this. And Luke's like, I don't know how to do it alone. Like, I don't know what I'm, I don't know where to begin. And here at the end, the place it begins and the he sort of gives her the weapon started him on his journey. But it is sort of a circle closing moment of like she ended up being taken advantage up by the emperor and sort of set off in a horrible direction. same way Vader was and this is a you know becomes a like this weapon you can come back to the light and you know at the at the end you have them sort of not quite like equal fun but she's she is like the first the first student after after lea right and in a lot of ways like it's very clear leah's put this thing on ice like she's she's focusing on like i've gone as far as i'm really interested in in being a j Jedi i think over the course this book, it's also proven that more Jedi stuff is, is coming through for her than she thought. It's just, it comes out in different ways than it comes out for Luke. But, you know, by the end there,

it's, it's, it's coming together that Leia's is, is on a journey sort of increasingly independent of Luke, but then also Mara is, is the first student and so far a really successful one. And the, the journey continues by presenting her with that weapon. Uh, it's, it's the same rooftop as the opening, yeah, the opening Luke stuff in, in, in, air to the empire, right? Like, so it's a, there's a fun thing there. And then, you know, the very final thing is like, Luke is like, I'll let you hang out up here and, like, you know, vibe out until you're ready to come down and say, and say yes to this position or whatever, you know, and, and, and he starts to walk away. And then she's like, hang on. I'll come with you.

Which is like, that's good. It works. It's simple. It's a simple thing. It's not too loaded. It's too, you know, it just simply works. Yeah. And that's it. For all those who help make these books possible, especially Anazahn, Betsy Mitchell, Lucy Autry Wilson, and of course, the man whose vision started it all, George Lucas. George freaking Lucas. He's that guy.

He's that guy. He did that. And the current version of this book then moves right into. an excerpt of the High Republic Light of the Jedi which is very funny to me because I still print this book My edition

Least Street has an excerpt from Truce at Bacura Of course, right Which is We've talked about If one I think one of the better ones

Out there It is a Set immediately after Endor But it is fun Because They're called the way like it's the first time the new the rebellion is being asked to like go

do now you have to do some of the shit the empire is called on to do which is like a system is under threat from like a really dangerous like alien invasion force and they got to go deal with it and you know they're fresh off endor but the other fun thing is

what if Luke goes to a place and like he meets a he meets a like an evangelical Christian girl basically who's like really not about his vibe at all she's like I'm sorry like I just think you're evil I think Jedi but and that is the thing the the thing that she's a religious extremist about is I think kind of resonant with us which is basically she's

part of a faith that's like right you know if someone gains power more than others they're taking that power from someone you may not see it but like Jedi draw on the force and that means they're drawing it from something else that needs it. And so she's like, I'm sorry, I just, you seem like a really nice guy. But we just think Jedi inherently can't help but like take more

from the universe than they give back. And that's just kind of a deal breaker for me. And he's like, no, that can't that's not how it works. But maybe it is. Maybe it is. Wow. Yeah. Wait, which book? This is the next book

in this trilogy? is the next, I mean, not trilogy, but... It is the next book that releases. Yeah. Oh, I see. Cicor is the fourth of the books from this era that, that, uh, era of the empire kicks off. Or, ooh, I, I, I think that that's true. I believe that that's true.

There might be a, the collected Han Solo adventures might come out in there somewhere, too, from the, from the 80s. But yeah, the, yes, I know there was a reprint around that time. It's a reprint. Because they just started racing that, the omnibus. Yes, exactly. But yeah, we basically over the next couple of years, you know. So this releases April 93, Trooper, Trooper, February 1st, 94 Jedi Search, which is another different author, Kevin Anderson, Kevin Jay Anderson, April 94, Court of a Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton, Dark Apprentice by Kevin Jay Anderson is June 94.

And like, we're just off, you know, like, every few months, there is another one of these books. So, I'm not entirely sure on all the chronology, but my understanding part of the reason things get so weird is, I think you've looted this, Austin. Dark Empire overlaps with this. And Dark Empire, the comic series, is also being like, so what happens next after Endor? And their solution is, well, what if the emperor was cloned? We should just, we should read Dark Empire, Rob. But the thing is So like Zahn's like

I've set the table to go The universe is going to go in this direction And Bantam is like yes Absolutely these books are selling Like hotcakes What an awesome place to go And then at high level it's But you have to incorporate this comic series

That none of your editors That Zahn nobody touched And the comic series is like So Hanley had a kid of course And they named him Anakin And so there's a third solo kid In the middle of that And Khorasan gets

leveled and all that it's it's very like again this is this the universe where like the emperor you thought the death star was bad what about the galaxy gun where basically the emperor just gets a big space shotgun that kills god i say it's stuff is so shitty it's six issues we should do it next year this is literally what jj abrams did though he built i know yes the star killer base is the galaxy gun it does the exact same thing yeah i think we should just do this next year It's six issues. We've done six issues on comic before. They're not even extra long issues.

I think they're pretty short issues. I think they're regular length issues. But like, I know it will suffer. I know it will suffer. But there's always been an argument that like, this EU kind of got compromised from the start where like, this is so clearly the point of departure,

the Thron trilogy. A lot of things are set in motion. And then it all has to immediately square with this really, very 90s comic type take on Star Wars and some of the characterizations just never fully come back to normal like you have to square the fact that like

Luke's like I've got an awesome idea whatever become the emperor's apprentice he Admiral Enigmas himself and then like he sets the academy up in the wake of that and the character of Luke Skywalker never feels quite the same as he does in this trilogy

Because he has to be both of these. Yeah. Yeah. So it's super weird. We're going to read it next year. It'll be, it'll be fun. I have never,

I've never read it. I've only, I read it as a kid, for sure. There's also, there's, it's a multi-part thing. There is a follow-up.

I think we can probably get away with just reading the first one and not reading Empire, Dark Empire 2 or, I don't, there's a third thing that's like a, like a capper on it, but I think it's shorter.

But I think, Unless we're wrong, and you can write it and tell us we're wrong, I'm pretty sure. I guess actually I'm curious how they're sold now. If they're sold as like a big omnibus with all thing, all of them in it, then maybe we try to read them all as bonuses next year. But, yeah, we'll have to get, we'll have to get there because let me tell you, weird stuff in there. I'm looking forward to weird. So, we're going back to normal now, though. and I, but how are we feeling about this trilogy

overall? I had a great time. I, yeah, it was a good time. It was a good time. It had some surprisingly really good moments especially when I think back to I say surprisingly really good

mostly because I guess my expectations were low but I don't, you know. But I say that like when I think back to some of the writing describing what it what it what the experience of being forced persuaded is and what is like what the kind of differences are between force persuasion and like force coercion um as well as like even in this in this last reading uh the whole general covel like losing parts of his mind or his mind being taken over and occupied by by sabayyoth like I found all of that that writing really descriptive and evocative of kind of things that we don't get to spend that much time with like what does it mean or what is the experience I mean I think about kind of

and or honestly and specifically what's her name after she's like done with the torture she gets... Yeah, Bix. Yeah, Bix.

Yeah. After the torture stuff and like that is I don't know. I just think like the ramifications and like the real physical and emotional effects

of being influenced by the force are it was really interesting to see here. And I mean, I really liked most of the characters. I think even Mara's stupid

ass, like, she was fun to be with for most of the time. And I'm glad she finally got her Mara dub. And now you can look at all of the sick like, not even fan art, but like the official Mara Jade art and get a sense of

who is, like have you all done a Google image search of Mara Jade? I have. I have. You have. You have. Allie, I just want to, I just want you to click this link and just start looking at the Maris. I just need a live reaction. Yeah, Maras.

Here from, you need to tell me what your favorite. She's so Yossified. Oh, yeah, all the time. Yeah, there's some AI Maras here that I don't appreciate. I love the, like, I've seen this one a lot, the, like, true, like, 80s mom. Real-life photo. Yeah. Yes, I love her.

I love her. It's so funny. It's so funny. I love her You know You got to fail forward And that's what she did To a

You know a mid-manager role Just like she wanted Yeah But yeah I mean I'm with I'm with Natalie here The like the scene of the The

Switch perspective of the force Control is like We had a Q&A question That was like what's a zonism you would most want to see in the show and the like sleep paralysis like you know aspect of that would be so good to see in like a visual media

I think it was like the best scene of these books but like 10 out of 10 characters 10 out of 10 locations 10 out of 10 like respecting the local cast locations is so important I know I ring this bell a lot about the sequels often not having really memorable locations to the degree that because I read done it a bunch. I now remember a lot of the locations and the sequels. But I think the locations

in this are all bangers. Like they're really cool. New people, new alien species also. Banger. Uh-huh. I think it's great. I think that like if I, if there was one thing that I was sort of disappointed by is that I think that the, the third book and especially this like set of chapters that we read for this episode was a lot of like, okay, let's just get people to the places. There's not like a lot of like intrigue going on but besides that I mean bangers bangers all the way through shout out so many so many good new aliens alien something that um and just like funny things going on like the trees that were spying on people like the star wars baby like it was great it's so funny yeah trees are spying on people um the all of the smuggler like back and forth

stuff, all the dinner parties. The Catana Fleet is fun. Like, there's a lot of, Lando being like, now, wait a second. I recognize these, the TVs in here. These are like they're on the... That's incredible. It points in these directions, too,

where I think, and this, I think, is some of the stuff that... Why I kind of missed this approach to the EU, but I think the other thing is, like, Zahn was just really good at this type of shit. Yeah. And a lot of other people who worked on Star Wars didn't. Awesome, you noticed at the first, like, Han is a tricky character to write.

He's iconic, but how do you get to the Han of the doll? And it requires knowing when he busts out his kind of like, I'm just going to be kind of drunk and obnoxious at this moment and getting people's face. And that's like you need no one to deploy that. And Zahn has that knack. His Luke feels very Luke. His Han feels very Han. His Lando feels very Lando.

His Laya feels very Laya. It's hard. And these are characters who feel like they're, simple sketches, but the performances in the original films brought so much to who they are that, like, it's hard to capture Harrison Ford, you know? He does it. But also advancing them in the story where things are just not happening as fast as they are in this movie.

It's not, this is not mythopoetic in the same way that Star Wars is. There's moments it is, but for the most part, getting a little more grounded. This is somewhere between and or. And, uh, yes, and Star Wars, right. Yeah. The, the, the issue that many of us had with Leah in, um, in Obi-Wan Kenobi or the issue we had with, with Han in, but especially Leah in Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Han in Solo, which was like, they have to universally be the character that they are. Leia had to already be Leah. That's not the case here. They're not locked in amber. Like, there's a truth to who these characters are, but they can grow. Han, is not the Han of a new hope or even the Han of Return of the Jedi necessarily, right? He's developed and changed. Luke clearly is the Luke for Return of the Jedi, but by the end of the story, he's the Luke of the Last Command. And I think that that's really hard to do and maintain a sense of continuity with characters who people know in their bones, you know? I mean,

to the point of, I like The Last Jedi. I like Luke in The Last Jedi. Yeah, very much. A lot. I am still a defender of that movie and of that Luke. I, but I also think that there is, you know, there's a little bit of the classic, when someone says they don't like something, you have to trust them, but they might not know why they don't like something, right? It's like a classic game developer or truism where you're playtesting something and someone's like, I hated this. They might not have the right idea for how to fix it, you know, but they might, but they

are reporting that they hate something. Now, do I think a lot of people hated The Last Jedi for fucked up bad reasons? Absolutely. But I think there are probably some people who are responding to feelings they didn't quite know what they were and then found convenient and politically for them aligned reasons to say that was that. But I do think that there might, you know, there may have been a way to get to that loop better for some people than what we got to or how we did it. It's a tight movie. It's hard to get there quickly. It takes a lot of skill.

And this is not me again excusing the people who are shit heels about all that stuff, right? of whom there are many, many, many, inexcusable. But I do think that there is a sort of like, that Luke didn't work for some people for some reason. And that reason might be that there is a better way to get there. And I do think that, like, Zahn gets our Luke to somewhere. It doesn't go to the same place. It's a much tighter closer to the, you know,

the established Luke than Last Jedi Luke. But, like, there is talent in changing a character and making that change feel well believable, especially someone who they know some characters who people feel like they know so well which again is why I think that part of why that reaction happened around the Luke stuff specifically though I do recommend everybody

there's a video on YouTube of I don't recommend the whole thing but I think it's I think it's Stover I think it's Matt Stover talking to like Star Wars theory or something it's one of those people about about Luke and why it makes sense

why Luke's, uh, Luke almost attacking, uh, Ben in, in Last Jedi, totally makes sense for who he is. It's, it's, it's one of those videos that's like, Star Wars author, trashes, you know, podcast host about Luke blows his mind. So I, I don't know the name of the video, but it's a really great read on like, why that character works. So if you're someone who's like skeptical, I think Stover's argument for it is, is pretty good if you can dig that up. I'll try find it and put it in the episode notes it's interesting i think now that now that you're you're saying that all that i think something hits me is um maybe something that so like kind of what i wanted a more star wars is like this was so formative for me it's kind of this right like

give me more places to imagine being in that universe this one thing is this resonated by and or like oh shit they go fucked up bureaucracies here they got like shitty little like evil sadistic prison planets. They've also got like dudes going fishing and hanging out and like we know Niamos. Hell yeah, love all that stuff. We're talking with the like original trilogy. Everything Lucas does is in the mytho-poetic realm. Ryan Johnson, I think,

is he's commenting on Star Wars and the like the nature of the story it tells the way we relate to it, the things we draw from it. And so like, in a weird way, in the middle of a trilogy that is in many ways, like, creatively bankrupt, uh, like Johnson drops this meditation on like,

how we relate to these characters, the story, what power does it have? What are the, and what are some of the things that if you scratch at them are, don't really hold water in that sort of mythic realm, that, that, that story we all, we all drew from. And I think that's, that's really cool. That's, that's great work. But also it does mean that there's difference than, There's a difference between being a great Star Wars story and being a great story about Star Wars. And I think Last Jedi is many ways a great story about Star Wars. And one that especially in light of how badly the sequel trilogy drops the ball,

ends up being a thing that redeems it to some extent by commenting so effectively on like, here's why it's so hard to continue with this. You know, it leans in the fact that Kylo Ren is someone who like uncritically worships this idea. of the past and who gets to be important and who isn't. You're either chosen or you're not. All that stuff works, but it is less a Star Wars story than it is an analysis of Star Wars in the guys of a Star Wars film. This is good Star Wars stories.

And it's like giving us new stuff to imagine. And I think that's, and getting to that place where Han is different, you know, realizing that he's struggling a little bit with like, I'm Han Solo. like smuggler debonair smuggler adventurer guy and over the course of this is like no you're not you're not and i think i think you're dead right like hans gonna go be a stay-at-home dad like by the end that's kind of his that is kind of the lot that's left to him and by the end he's kind of embracing it you know he's really like before he goes on the last command he's like i just want to stay home with my wife and kids he's over it yeah hell yeah his

big dread is that leo will figure out how much danger they're all in right that's his like he's like i hope they haven't figured out that they're trying to kidnap the babies but she probably has because she's really smart like that's sweet that's a good place for for for honda end up that eventually that's sort of that's sort of like smirking detachment he uses throughout the original trilogy for a lot of it all that's gone now all those defenses are gone um and as they should be uh so yeah there's there's so much here that's that's good about where it takes the characters and I think a lot of the following stories in the EU and it comes to follow up it looks easy in the series and then you see I mean you can even look at Lucas it looks easy to do this tell more good

Star Wars story harder than you think sure is yeah you just you've run the it's so easy to just feel like we you're you're looking at the silhouettes of the characters or like the sort of like pantomimes of of them where everything is technically right but they're not necessarily embodied and I think that's a to echo what you've said is a testament to zon's writing that that all of these characters, you know, for the most part, feel extremely embodied in in who we imagine them to be outside of who they were in those three movies, what we got to see, that they fill in the gaps that we kind of imagine for them. We'll continue this next time, but I do want to throw out maybe the most important scene

in Star Wars. the original film, New Hope, it might be all the Imperials around the table having a big conference meeting. If you want to see what separates the real shit from the fake, it is, does a Star Wars story have space to just drop into, let's put these people

in a room and have them bounce off each other. And no one's going to swing a lightsaber, no one's going to pull a gun, it's just going to be talking. And if you can do that in a Star Wars story, you're doing good Star Wars. And if somebody always has to be like fighting or

having a big like emotional crisis that's like just driving plot forward or is being driven by plot but like not emerging character stuff you're off you're off the rails acolyte starts to get good when it's like let's get these Jedi talking to each other let's put a senator who doesn't like the Jedi in the room and it's like give me more of that that's a good shit that's the key and you got you got have space for we make fun a talent card being like let's have a dinner party He's the one guy who understands the assignment. We make fun of him because we love it.

We love it so much. Well, thank you for joining our Star Wars dinner party throughout the year. Yes. That we reached the end of another episode of more civilized age and another year of a more civilized age. Now, you might just say our 100th episode, by the way. We didn't talk about it. We did do that. We did hit that.

We are on page. This is episode 101. What a one. More civilized age 101. That's our show. Now, Rob, you were saying, sorry, I had to interrupt you about this. People might be thinking, hey, don't you owe us another Patreon show? We do.

We do. We do. And we're just not going to give it to you for a minute. Because we all have traveled. It's hard to sneak in another one right now, unfortunately. Yeah, this was like coming in hot as it is for our end of year. So we are like, rather than try to jam a recording into the middle of our holiday travels, what we're going to do is we're going to sort of balance the Patreon episode books

next, next year. So what we are going to do is Patreon listeners will hear us come back on January 8th where we do the Q&A episode on The Last Command and, you know, really the Thron trilogy as a whole and then regular service on the main feed will resume January 15th as we finally figure out what's going on with geonosis in Rebels. We need to

figure it out. Y'all still know. Y'all don't, you don't have no idea. Oh, you're the only one who watched it. I just assumed the Empire fumigated the place. Just

get these bugs out of here. Thank you for that Death Star laser. goodbye. I actually might have watched it, but I absolutely forgot what happened. So I'll be watching that again. And then there will be another Patreon episode, January 22nd. That's going to be us talking about skeleton crew.

And talking about like... We'll be done by then, or are we going to have the first halfs? It will be. Yeah. And so it'll be like, does that rule I just threw out about Good Star Wars? Does it apply if the people in the room were children? Austin. Austin doesn't feel sanguine about that.

Don't, not a big child fan. Yeah. But what if they're real cute little tykes? Like they're little, like almost like little people, right? Like, which I guess kids are. But you know what I mean. Like little actualized adults, but just like shrunk down. Huh?

Right. I see what you're saying. No. I mean, I get the, I, you know, a friend of the table listeners will know that some of our funniest episodes are us playing kids getting up to hijinks. So I get the draw of telling a story about a little tyke. I just, I don't want to be around. Like a tiny lesbian with a hand solo jacket,

but with like Girl Scout patches on it, is that that's a character you're describing from this show? Who can say, you know what? I don't want to spoil it. I'm just throwing hypothetical. Are these teens or these kids? They're kids. They're like on the,

The, it's, it's, yeah, it's like 11, 12 years old. Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's better than that? Andor, but that's fine. But I'm fine with that. Knock wood. Yeah.

January 29th. My heart is open. I'm ready to be, I'm ready to root for these children to. I don't know when this takes place. I don't know anything about this. Well, don't tell me. Don't tell me. Mysteries.

Yeah. You're going to be like, what's going on here? Yeah. Maybe it's, I don't know. I don't know one of this. Maybe it's Old Republic. Maybe. Maybe.

Polo shows up. Anything could happen. Oh, my God. What if the, one of the reveal is like, oh, I can finally tell you my real name. It's Revan. I would lose my fucking. That would be very funny if they just tried to like. Not like this.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would become one of those guys on the forms. I just would. What was Revin's little punk friend that he had? To kill at the end, the other Sith Lord? Oh. Darth is Revan and Malik.

Yeah. Maybe Malik shows us. Who could say? What if they make, yeah, what if like the Goonies kids? It's like Revan and Malik, like, no, Revan, we can't go in this Sith temple. Right. And it's like, it's like, it's like, what if Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, like, built the Death Star, like, you know, to get, like, that'd be fun. Wasn't there a third one just named like Mike or something?

or Daryl or Evan? No, that was Reverend. Oh, fuck, what was that? It was, it was Tim. It was Malik's guy. No, Tim is from Andor. Fuck.

Oh, that's right. No, and Malix dude shows up outside the crate dragon cave. Yeah, that's right. He's like, I'm the biggest badass. I'm the new you. I'm like the apprentice. No, Evan is Revin.

Oh, right. Is the theory. I'm looking. Right. Yeah, Keith had this theory about how all of them had silly names. That's right. Wait, Darth Bandon?

Malick Alec Malik Was it Bandon Was it Bandon He's like Brandon Bandon

Brandon Yeah yeah Yeah Yeah because like Dark Brandon And then Malick's real name Is Alec

That's true Or his His birth name Was Alec Before he became Right Right Right

And was like What if I Like Alec Guinness A little right Oh sorry It's with a K though Rob because it's

Star Wars It's A-L-E-K So Yeah Uh-huh Anyway So that's the plan That's where

we're we'll settle up the Patreon accounts in January. We can't wait to start recording these episodes. But for now, we hope you have a great break. We hope we do too. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by our listeners at patreon.com

slash civilized. Until next year, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, just count all those mara dubs. Just keep them in your heart. Count them up.

Count the ring. Ha ha ha ha.