A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 104: Through Imperial Eyes, Secret Cargo, and Double Agent Droid (Rebels 54 - 56)

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

After finally giving us some solid Sabine time, Rebels is now zooming back out to get a broader view of the ongoing conflict--and, of course, a one off comedy episode about a droid. And hey, good news, not only do these episodes manage to deliver some great character beats, not only do they bring us a dramatic look inside of our favorite slowly radicalizing senator, Mon Mothma, not only do they provide one of the most magical (and musical?) moments of Star Wars... they're also really good!  Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next Time: Rebels 57-59 (Twin Suns and Zero Hour Pt. 1 & 2 - The end of Rebels Season 3) 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'm Rob Zakhani, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners via patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes, plus our special edition on Skeleton Crew, aka the Neal Appreciation Podcast. podcast. This week, we are putting the rebellion back in rebels as the show ties itself into Rogue One, which of course means we are also starting to see connective tissue forming between it and Andor, which will be relevant to us very soon. There's more spy stuff, more military

action, a lot more Star Destroyers, all of a sudden, though maybe not for long. We'll get to that in a little bit. Our first episode is through Imperial Eyes, which for a few minutes seems like it might be a high-concept first-person episode literally told through Agent Callis's eyes as he goes about his day as a secret rebel agent working inside the ISB. The patrol ship he's with, captain by the hapless Imperial Lieutenant List, who Leia ran circles around in Princess Anlothal, has just arrested Ezra and the droids. When they're left alone in an interrogation chamber, Ezra tells Callis he's there to exfiltrate Callis because the empire's onto him.

But they are out of time because Thron and our old friend, Admiral Eulerin, now Colonel Eulerin of the ISB, have arrived to investigate the rebel spy in their midst. Callis and Ezra have to sneak around under the Imperial's noses to arrange their escape and delete the intelligence Thrawn has assembled on the rebel base. Well, actually, they've basically got to change something in a spreadsheet. And there's like very bad version control. And so if they literally just say, oh yeah, this planet in this field is actually this other point. planet. This could foil the entire imperial operation. It's another fascinating detail of how computing, data storage, all that works in Star Wars. Calus pins the entire adventure on Lieutenant List rather than escaping with Ezra, and he stays undercover with Thrawn thinking he's

proven his loyalty. But as the episode ends, Thrawn reveals to you, Lauren, that he is certain Calus is the spy, but that he will be more useful to the empire as fulcrum. than as loyal ISB agent Calus ever was. It would ever been more happy that we read the Thrawn trilogy. Like required reading for that for all. Literally, I was like, I was pointing. Yeah. I was pointing at the screen.

I was like, I know that, I know that one. Yep. That one's for me. He did the big artwork breakdown at the end. Yes. He had Salamiri statues. Oh my God, these Salamiri statues. Yeah.

We'll get to that. But I will say like, Maybe the highest compliment that I'd pay to Who's the actor who plays Thrawn? I forget what I thought right head. I have it right here. I have it right here. Thrawn is a character I've had in my head

for like most of my life, right? I've never imagined him this way the performance is new and novel to me but completely. It works. Like in line with the character on the page. It's a large... Which is like when an actor does that

it feels like a magic trick, right? Where it's like it's not the... It's not the interpretation you ever would have had of the character, but it also feels like, oh, they, they found the character. Yeah, it's Lars Mickelson. It's, it's Madd's, Mickelson's older brother, uh, is playing. Yeah, which is fun. I'm screaming internally. Yeah. Just, like, I don't know. Watch Hannibal one day. I just think we should do that. Anyway, you just watch that show. Does Lars pop up on it? No, but that doesn't say relevant now, does it? Well, Galen Urso is mad. You don't just want to be amongst the

Mickelsons. Amongst the Mickels. Amongst the Mickels. On Deo Kojima, wishpec. Oh, yeah. I mean, yes, 100%. Good episode. Wild.

We're back. I was like, okay. We've got tension. I'm engaged. I'm here for the ride. I'm invested. I'm in, I was really pleased to be, to be watching this first episode here. Allie, who are you going to say?

I was going to ask about Buff Thrawn, but we can get there. No, okay. We have to have a whole dedicated. We will get to that. That's a segment. That's a segment. No, I'm with you, though. Like, I think this really, two of these episodes really drove home for me.

Oh, yeah. That there is a version that, like, half of Rebels is like all the shit I love in Star Wars. There's, like, my favorite Star Wars shit ever in this show. Mm-hmm. And then there's parts of it that are like the kids adventure of the week cartoon show that I find spins its wheels a lot and really drags and sometimes it almost bifurcates along when is the show about the adult characters and when is the show about the children and doing like children's heroes journey thing because this one I could you feel the energy is different

from the first like the first person opening is very stylish I understand why they didn't stick with it they have a commentary track for this really they they they they're plan we're sorry Did you say there is a commentary track? There is a commentary track on the DVD. Okay. And, yeah, so they explained awesome. I think you were going with, this is where you're going with this.

The original concept was that they were going to do the first person perspective episode through the entire thing. And there would only be like, you know, the sort of hidden cuts at various points, the commercial breaks. But a couple things got in the way of it. One, you know, perspective tracking shots always sound like a good idea. until you realize just how much editing makes your life easier.

But also, they do not have the assets to carry something like this fully off. Notably. In particular, you sort of hit the limits. They bring up something that really bothered all of them, which is that there is no callous model where he's not wearing his uniform. He wakes up in a nap in the beginning in his armor already. And he's washing. They point, I didn't notice it, but the director of the episode was like,

when he's going washing his hands to like get ready to throw like water on his face he's wearing gloves yeah he's washing his gloves yeah so have a pajamas model they they in the rebels recon they talked about how like you know we were able to do this in clone war sometimes you're like we have a ducu pajamas model that we had to make special for that time ducu got jumped in his own mansion or whatever but we don't have that for callus because like this would be the only time that was probably the only time we ever saw ducu pajamas too but they just didn't have that in the budget to do it on top of the adjud budgetary need of, like, storyboarding from the first person.

It's just a different thing. I will also say, I've never watched a full feature in first person that's worked. Maybe a single episode of, oh, it's probably not sure. I think peep show is kind of based around that and that works. Strange days? Strange days isn't first person a whole time. They use it extensively, but they don't. Yeah.

Importantly, that is not a whole movie in first person, you know. That's true. No, Natalie, I think you're, I think the squid sequences where they're like reliving memories, looms so large, but they're only like a quarter of the movie. Yeah, they're not as much as you would think. No hardcore Henry fans here? Not a hardcore Henry fan, not a Lady in the Lake fan, which I think is like a really great conceptual noir, but like it doesn't work.

Has anyone seen Nickel Boys yet? I've not seen Nickel Boys yet. No, does that do the first person thing? There's some good POV cinematography in that. I don't know if it's the full thing. I need to watch it. I would love there have to have been more from. From Callis' perspective, maybe.

And I would, of course, love for them to take the swing at it. They had to budget in the time and go for it. But you know what would have really sucked? A version of when they tried to do it, that was bad. It would have been, you know what I mean? Even if it was bad, I would have, like, respected it for the swing. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think because of where it lands contextually in the sense that this is the first time,

not the first time, but it's a significant moment that we're really spending with callous making decisions spinning his wheels uh what is his place and sort of the like politics and dynamic of uh his like contingent and everything i think i could have made the case for the full thing being maybe not the full thing but introducing some more elements throughout the yeah throughout the episode but i i understand why they didn't um Also, we got a good episode, and so it's like, I was supposed to try that on, put that, we have a third episode here. That should have been all POV AP5. Agreed.

I would have loved that. That would have been sick, especially the bit at the end. He's out in Spain. Anyway, we'll get there. We'll get there. And you don't have to worry about outfits. And you don't have to worry about outfits that's just a droid. They should put AP5 in little outfits sometimes, though, I think, personally.

Yeah, you would like it. I think so. That's what we've learned. You definitely, you know, 100% love it. Yeah. No, but I do think the first person thing does. It sets a tone. And part of what it does is you're watching a different kind of episode.

We're going to go for more like a cinema verite style. And so even when they do cut, the musical, the score for the episode is very subdued. And I think that adds to the menace. Like the opening of this episode is very quiet. It's like all sounds of the starship. It's voices in the halls. It is people speaking at a meeting. And I feel like it gets you in that position that callous is in a little bit where like

you're hyper attuned to your environment because he is he is now an undercover agent oh yeah uh and like every day begins the deception uh and so you know when he when he walks out and he walks into the middle of you know an alarm aboard the ship uh he's got to sort of put his mask on and get ready for whatever is coming and in this case what's coming is kind of his worst nightmare which is that they have intercepted a rebel shuttle and yes of course it is Ezra bridger who gets off of it, uh, dressed as, uh, everyone's favorite bounty hunter. Is he, is he, is he, is he, I guess he does kind of an embo thing. Is that the, that's what the hat is, huh? He's, that is, uh, that comes up very quickly in the commentary. Okay.

Is that we just love making references to Embbo. Uh, everyone makes Boba Fett references, but we wanted to refer to, to one of our guys. Like, sure, Faloni loves Embo so much. And, and, And so he puts Ezra in his little Embo hat. And yeah, it's just a little shout out to Embo. Speaking of other various shoutouts and stuff, did the commentary get into the various things collected by Admiral Thrawn in his hallway and then in his office, including the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones? And maybe more importantly and actually more legibly for Star Wars, the clone helmet with the green market. Do you talk about that? So there's only one person in Star Wars who we have seen who has the particular clone

helmet with the green markings on it. And that is the chief, it's Gre, who is the clone commander who works with Yoda throughout the Clone Wars and throughout the movies and who Yoda decapitates in Revenge of the Sith. the idea that Thron has the decapitated head slash helmet of Yoda's personal bodyguard is so good it's so good I can't believe that that is wild you know he looks at it and it's like that's not going to happen to me I'm not it's not different or like I'm the Yoda is what he's thinking but listen we read those books he is not the Yoda he does get got by his personal bodyguard whose name also shows up in this episode

my god i was losing it so lots of little shoutouts that's that's that's like a like a kind of like a like a like a the reason why he chose that was to like lock in i do think so i don't think it's like he does all his art shit or he's like oh this is what the art means do that i think that's completely like a lock in like jalen hurts the NFL the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles that just came up in the last couple of weeks after he won it was revealed that his lock screen image was standing under the Kansas City Chief's confetti when they beat him in the Super Bowl two years ago and it's been

that for two years he's been in lock in mode for two years it's like deeply corny but extremely good and I think that that's what it is for thronged you know that's what I was imagining exactly that yeah it's like he looks at it while he puts on his like hype up mix when he goes to the gym

yeah they literally talk about when they get to when And, you know, so, like, Ezra's brought in and tells, he tells, you know, he tells, he tells Calus, hey, your last transmissions is fulcrum. We detected that the empire was detecting them. And so we're here to get you out. But before they can do that, Thron and Colonel Eularen are here. And it's established that Eularen trained callus. And this, Calus is one of his best students at the ISB Academy.

me, but they're having this meeting where they're discussing this issue with the leaks coming out of Thrawn's fleet and who the likely, who the likely sources. And you have Calus trying to sort of hedge his bets there about who it might be. But in the background, you have all this Thron art. And yes, in the background are two stylized Isalamiri. And so in the commentary they this, what they are around in the center, they're around this orb, it is the planet Mirker Oh interesting

And so their take on it Is that in this timeline Thrawn is still obsessed with the idea Of finding this legendary creature The Asalamiri But he can't find it And it might not even exist In Star Wars

But now the Islamiri and the planet Merker The planet where You know the force ceases to function correctly For Jedi That is like one of his white whales, that he keeps in his office contemplating, like, how he can ever, you know, find the anti-Jedi, anti-Jedi, El Dorado. I want Thrawn to find Mortis so bad.

I don't know what would happen there, but I want him to learn about Mortis so bad. He'd weaponize Mortis somehow. He would love it there. What if he, yeah, what if he, like, achieved enlightenment? What if he, like, met the evil guy? like both him and you know who else should go there

AP5 both Ron and AP5 should go to Mortis and link and build there what kind of visions would he have it's so important

that AP5 never gets to meet Theron AB5 would betray the rebels instantly if he could see the clear organizational

the chemist true would be in too intense off the charts you thought you thought it was like weird

uncomfortable when Lando was like I just want to go with a droid but Like, the way AP5 would react to Thron. Who!

Speaking of chemistry, I love the choice of Yalarin here as our sort of Pelion analog, you know, suddenly playing. Not the number two is Price is very clearly the actual Pelion understudy for us. You know, the replacement is she's the one who's been with him since his arrival. We didn't really know that. We didn't have that direct comparison on the show until now. But he's such a good stand-in. to bounce ideas off of Thrawn. And for us, this is like, you know, to steal the phrase from just king things, you know,

like the methodology works, you know, the method pays off. We have spent so much time with Wolf Yilarin in Clone Wars that he's been a source of just like, oh yeah, that's, that's Obi-Wan and Anakin's guy. Right, well, Yelaren. Yelaren is always there. And Yelaren is the voice actor Tom Kane, does the Yelaren voice as the narrator for the Clone Wars intros, that kind of big, old-timey newsreel guy. And like, there's a little bit of that in Yalarin. And so to have him show up and be like, oh, yeah, I'm, like, the head of the CIA

FBI for the Empire. And I'm here to tell you that Callis is my guy. And here's my perspective on this. And I'm, like, completely bought in. You know, the last time I think we saw Yularan, I guess I don't, I don't remember exactly when it was, but it would have been on some operation with Anakin or Obi-Wan or Soka, right? Like, Yelarine was our dude for the Clone Wars and paying him off like this is so much better than dropping a new character in with Tide of Callas, you know, just a big fan. Yeah. And a character for a lot of Clone Wars who does sort of seem to embody at least the

apolitical military officer. 100%. That he never seems to have any beliefs or opinions outside of those that are relevant to the mission. And so to have him pop up in this new environment where he is now like the head of, yes, the CIA, FBI, and KVD, whatever, is an interesting twist. And we're still left wondering,

because he still seems kind of like the avuncular career officer that we remember. He's not there. He's not the cold fish that the ISB director is in Andor. This guy, you know, this guy seems consistent with who we remember, but is now the head of this, like, evil intelligence org. the one thing they say in the commentary track they don't get too much into it

I don't know how much they knew at this point about whether they or whether they will build connective tissue between him and the character you know obviously ULaren from the jump was conceived as he's one of the characters sitting around the conference table on the original Death Star in the original film and so

every one of those characters gets a backstory filled in to some extent and ULaren's one of them and so they put him in Clone Wars to sort of give him a backstory and connect him to to a new hope but you know in the conversation among the writers and producers the thing the the one thing they they sort of cite as something that bridges where we left you learn to now is that in the midst of all the the chaos that's around the end of the the Jedi order all of that the one the one consistent thing we do know about you, Lauren, is that this big rule follower, that he is someone who, like,

thrives on order, structure, you know, following, following chain of command. And so that, at least to them at that, when they were recording that commentary, seemed to at least somewhat gesture at the answer to what is this guy doing here. It is, at least, in keeping with him, for him to sort of help co-found an organization that will be internally, like, policing the empire's military. Yeah. The last episode that we saw him in, he shows up in a couple of season seven episodes. Those aren't out at the time of this episode's release.

So the last time viewers would have seen him in would have been the unknown, which is the first episode of season six, which begins the arc about the chips, about the control chips. He is there in the episode where the Tup kills the One Jedi Master and then Fives, you know, has to start, you know, trying to investigate what's going on in Camino. Poor Fives. Fives the homie, for real. So, yeah, Yilarian last pops up there. I don't even know that he does anything. He's just in that episode, you know. I think maybe he's like running the ship when they go to get on the, when Anakin and him, Fives go on the ship or whatever.

or so. But yeah, that's an interesting little, you know, yeah, from there, from showing up in the episode where we start to learn about the clones being mind-controlled to ISB officer, senior ISB officer, because he's above a lot of these other people, obviously, so. Season 7's going to go crazy. I'm excited for season 7. I'm really excited for it. I'm very hyped to get there. Also interesting is just like, you know, Thron seems to trust him, right? And maybe that's because Thron has identified that the mole can't be as high up in the ISB. or Yelaren specifically has not had the opportunity to be the traitor in the way these other people have.

But that relationship is fun. I'm excited to see if Ylaran continues to show up in these episodes. I wonder, does Callis detect the degree to which he's already in the trap? Because it's an odd group of people that he's meeting with. It's Thron, it's Ularin, but Lieutenant List is there. Who endearingly says,

I am going to endeavor to find the traitor And Thrawn is like, that is very kind of you to offer, Lieutenant. But I think we're going to have to go about this a different way. But like, I don't know. List shouldn't be in this meeting. And then Price's absence becomes critical to the story, but her absence is also, you know, telling. Also, there's a bunch of other rant. There's like a number of people in the hallways.

Oh, that's the guy with the hair. That's, oh, that's that other person over here. Like the whole crew of folks who have. gotten done by the rebels by by Phoenix Squadron or by the ghost crew are like on the ship for this meeting effectively like it was really fun to see a lot of those visual designs come back people who were like we saw their ships blow up they must have escaped you know or they we saw them get just like completely done over by the rebels um really fun to see them here and see like oh right a callus lives with these people or these people are like around they're

in his like five o'clock standoff you know what I mean like every day um um uh And that was really good. To your question, though, I don't think Callas can know how cooked he is. Because otherwise, he would have fucking left at the end of this episode. Yeah. I think Thron, I think Thron already had an inkling upon assembling this group together. And I think he was, like, I think list being there is fodder for the finding, the finding out. like he is just a bait essentially he's bait for sure he's bait um but yeah i think calis seems

pretty smart um outside of not being able to recognize that everything is kind of already closing in on him um i think if he did have that realization at the beginning like austin's saying he would have left. Like, the fact that he's willing to kind of inch further in to the plot is, I think, very telling. He's, it's like, you know the, like, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You just to be faster than the second. It's like some weird inverse of that. Like, it doesn't matter if you're faster than the second fastest bear.

If the fastest bear is faster than you, you're fucked. And the fastest bear is thrown. he's here, right? Like, Callas is clearly head and shoulders above everybody else on this ship. Yeah. This whole episode is about him manipulating the situation to get the information changed, to put, to set up list, et cetera, all the stuff you already covered Rob. And he's able to do all of that. And anybody other than Thron, who doesn't take notes about what the hundred planets of the rebels might live on, anybody else who for some reason doesn't have backups, would have been screwed by that.

but Thrawn is able to break it down. And I think one of our, one of the clearest, like, oh, yeah, that, that connection makes sense. He's made, he has not made the Sherlockian impossible leap here. He makes a pretty good argument. And it's like, yeah, Calais didn't do everything perfectly, but he did everything pretty good up until that point. I think his, his, it's, it's almost as if he needs to get up from the poker table. Like, he's played, he's, he's been here, getting. gambling with his position and access for this long.

He knows he's compromised. Thron's here looking for the guy. You got to leave with your winnings. You can't go in for... You have to go all in, and he should have killed Admiral Throne. Yeah. There's a moment there where I think he could have gotten him, and they don't take the opportunity.

Yeah, that would have been sick. Um, other small thing early on that I like is when he goes to get Ezra, like, as they're on his arriving, Ezra has done the hide above the door frame, trying to jump down and get him trick that he's done every time he's been in the jail. And Calus is like, dude, you fucking stop it. It's really funny. Now that I bracket away all of our callous complaints, uh, which are still true, they still, they still did try to do the pivot on him that's like very hard to do.

But I can bracket that and like, you know, compartmentalize those complaints. I can be like, yo, sick of callous, callous rule. Shout out, shout us to callous. Cal is a real one. You know, I would get to this place with the character. I wish they'd set it up more effectively. Exactly. Yeah.

So, yeah, he ends up, you know, he tells you, Lauren, they sort of shares his own suspicions about how this might be working. And then he immediately figures who his, who is, who is patsy is going to be. As he enlist leave the meeting, he drapes an arm. around, Governor Price compliments list on capturing that rebel. And list is very flattered, but immediately callous is like, we got our eye on her. We think she might be the trainer. As he does that, he swapsed. So all the imperial officers, we've talked about this before, they have their little rank badge with the little colored squares. But then they also have

what look like pens with various colored tips, the rank cylinders. There's are jammed into these little like pocket sleeves on the front of their double-breasted uniforms. And as he's talking to lieutenant list, he snags the lieutenant's rank cylinder and substitutes his own. Now, it's very funny watching the commentary because when he does that, everyone in the commentary starts cheering because the hardest thing in computer animation. Of course. Is making objects interact with fabric and having characters manipulate.

objects. Sure. And so, you know, we talked about they had to, they had to scupper the idea of an entirely first person episode. But from hearing them tell it, like when you have something like this pop up in the script, character does such and such. This is the sort of moment where everyone's like, okay, do we really have to, do we really have to have them do this? But they carry it off. Yeah, do we have to see it explicitly? We just show that. that it's turned from blue to red, which is what partly does happen. And I wonder if that's part of a way of, like, making certain other parts of this smoother, where it's like, okay, all of the show is it's the red one, and then it's the

blue one. We can cut, we can cover, we can do some sort of trickery to prevent that from needing to be shot the same way where it's such a hassle, you know. It's also funny for these things to be, like, importantly, you know, like plot relevant. The code cylinders are such a funny fashion element. of the imperial uniform. They do just look like pens. They've always just looked like pens.

I know that they're code cylinders. But we don't ever see people we use them, basically. And then this episode shows up and like, oh, yeah, you just like plug it into the wall, like, where R2D2 would like hack something. You just put one of these cylinders in and it, like, does all that work, you know, already, you know, just by itself or whatever. It's very funny. I am glad to finally have the explanation of, like, why they have the two ranked devices

that they carry with them and having one of them is like the USB pass key right too now does this seem like good security system no I wouldn't wear it perfectly tailored to cool shit happening aboard your starships watch like the droid sockets that are everywhere it is quite

it is wild that a essentially a USB tag does not also have like some sort of biometrics you know I'm okay with it I'm okay with it Like, let's not, I don't, I don't want the empire tracking my biometrics. I had a fucking Ubi key right here from some contract work I did as writing for a game

when they sent me a big computer and I had to use this key to log into the computer every time so I could write for the game because they were really high security like that because there's a contractor. It's wild. But they don't, they don't, Star Wars, they can't authenticate sessions. That's right. They cannot, they can, they can, they cannot carry like visual data on a little, chip card very easily so yeah those those USB those those little like those little like secure pen caps that they're carrying around it's basically just a a colored badge system is what it

appears to be yeah it's like a key fob it's real get the red key to open the door like yeah quite literally so he goes so callus goes and now that he's got the now that he's got List's key. He tells List, keep an eye on price. The ISB will. Thank you for your service. If you sort of pay attention to what she's doing, don't let her see you. He goes and gets Ezra and they do a wardrobe change.

Ezra, like dresses up as an imperial and then they go to the Grand Admiral's office to delete his database, to alter his database of planets where the rebel base is likely located. Now, should lieutenant lists key open a Grand Admiral's court? Probably not, but whatever. So they get in there and we get a little survey of the various art that surrounds them. They start altering the database. I'm sorry, kind of important one here.

The Ezraus notices the, what is it called the Calcaree? Is that right? is that what's that what's called and it's like oh that's harris we should take that and callus is like dude no we're trying to not get detected i think he should have grabbed it at the end when they get caught it's like oh you got to grab the fucking thing very clear you can't do it because there needs to be another future episode about harry getting it back but there's a real you know like bonus objective thing right here they could have just spent one more turn grabbing the damn thing it's right there it's right there

you didn't get through double XP you be from double XP yeah the least hideable thing I've ever seen Oh yeah It would be like trying to smuggle A menorah made of string Out like under your shirt or something At the point of that which they're fleeing this place

And it's like all hands on deck Code Red like come on grab the damn thing Just jam it down your pants man Yeah Just Yeah so there So AP5 radio's in lets them know that Thron is on the way back.

Ezra hides behind the giant concrete slab that Thrawn has extracted so he can stare at Sabine's artwork. And Callis runs into Thrawn's shirtless gymnasium. Sorry, we passed over. We sure did.

It was very video game cutscene at that moment. As he comes in, you see a major character. It's like seeing G-Man in Half-Life. Where you see him doing one thing and a minute later is going to reappear in a different mode. It's going to tip

you off that, like, this guy has moves you do not see normally. And Callis walks in and sees Thrawn doing a stripped down workout with two dark trooper type droids, assassin droids, and he's

engaged in them in hand-to-hand combat. And then he notices he's being observed and sort of slams the door shut and re-emerges later in his grand admiral's uniform. Well, Well, crucially, he summons List and Callas to his office. You're right.

While he is in the middle of the solo training, this two-on-one diversion he's doing. You think he is? You think he's like, listen, you couldn't fucking take me. I don't live behind that desk. I'm out here. I'm really outside. I'm Avriltern. I'm shirt

My shirt is off Override also like Calus is tilted By homoerotic We know this You're right So like Thron doing this Is like yeah

I see you with that chin strap beard What's going on here? Yeah Cali maybe I shouldn't be a double A double traitor Maybe I should stick to the empire At this point

Yeah That Thron has a cutting figure And that mind you Thron isn't making in advance. He just knows the callus is going to just unravel because of this. This is 3-HES. He's like, you'll take

one second longer to betray me and that's all I need, you know? The other thing I really love about this scene is that there's like this really intense organ music and it feels like it's diogenic at first, but then it gets even more sinister. It's like, look how ripped throng is.

It's so scary. Don't gonna fight with him. Do you think that this the type of music Thrawn listens to while training. I think a little bit. Yeah. Thrawn is a Dracula. Throne is a Dracula. He's always in his darkened chambers,

watching at art. You're right. Yeah. I don't think that you're wrong. He does have that sort of like, he positions results to being like superior to other people. Other people are kind of disposable to him in that way. And like there is, obviously, that's a lot of Sherlock stuff.

But there is like also the like, he's, an alien from a different culture, like all the weird foreigner stuff that's caught up in Dracula, there's a little bit of that here. Yeah. I have to issue, I have to issue a correction. He's not actually shirtless when he's fighting.

He's like a black, he's just bare arms. He's just, I just, I, when I saw his chiseled arms, like my it's actually more erotic because he's wearing the tank. Right. It's one more thing he could remove. You know what I mean? exactly. There's like there's the question

if like maybe he'll he'll get too close to one of the droids and his shirt will rip a little bit, I don't know. But also you're spared, you've spared the animation team being like, so what does nipples look like? And that's like weeks of lost production.

They could afford Calus's hands because they had to put in. That's correct. They were like no, no, we need Thrawn to be voted and ripped. what does a chist look like when you get them out of their clothes

and just weeks of production time lost like Pablo pouring over documents like Timothy's on flown out I didn't really like doing a lot of stuff with like I didn't really like to imagine that way well what good are you Tim the rebels recon question to Pablo being like so what sort of research did you do

to know what they're all that is I do like Now that you were just able to mentally chroma key out the black tank top. I literally in my mind, I saw, I know what his nipples look like in my... That's right. Okay, good. Yeah, I've seen them before. Yeah.

So, I don't know. So, so, yeah, so while Callas is in there, he switches the assassin droids from evil to good. And so while Thron is in there. and you know he realizes like it seems like everything is fine but he's sent to someone has been in his office that is that is when Cal six the six the assassin droids on him and for a minute there Thron looks like oh yeah this is where I'm saying this is the moment Cal could have walked in and just put one in his brain you know what I mean that could have been it if Cal has gotten involved there and Ezra is there like Ezra's never

his light same, but he stills the force. He could have just choked him out. We know Ezra like dips into the dark side a little bit. If not right now, then when? Just put the big, like, just lift the big stone with the graffiti on it and crush him with it. Sabine would have been so like thrilled with that too. That would have been such a, like, you're not with the team, but you're still with the team. Yeah. Yeah. You send a card. You say, hey, just want to update you on something I did that. Here's a picture of a chis squash like a bug is like an arm's cartoonishly sticking out. Do the final shot. If, if, as you just, held him in place for a second, the assassin

droids would have done the assassin droid thing and finished the job. You know? Your hands are clean. Doubly. Even your force hands are clean. You didn't choke him. You just held them in place where the assassin droids got him. You don't find the loopholes. You know? They fled instead. That's fine. While they were doing

all this, they got codes for... Hold on. You know why they didn't do it. Why? Because Cal saw Throne. Right. Right. And Cal said like, no, Ezra, we have to go. Right now. Well, maybe Cal's like maybe we could Maybe we could turn him the way I was turned.

Yes, 100%. Maybe I could seduce him the way Zeb was seduced me. Yeah. And this show would have no problem with that. Phony base on an ice planet. Right, exactly. And then there's only one bad. And there's only one bad.

We'll get it. Yeah. So they also needed codes so that Canaan and Rex could land on the, on the Star Destroyer Price is there to meet them and immediately knows that they are despite their codes being valid

she immediately knows these are these guys are part of the exfiltration team she's like take off your helmets huge dub from Price who moves with such speed and purpose that she interrupts the Jedi mind trick like he starts canaan starts to do it and before he can do it

she's like nah pop which is wild yeah just has her stormtrooper shoot him immediately it's like That's what it is. That's what it is. That's what it is. Yes,

he does. It's like the stun blast. Yeah. And then she's in hand-hand combat with, uh, with wrecks. But crucially, Lieutenant List, trying to rehabilitate himself after screwing things up so badly with, with,

uh, Leah and the, the entire debacle on withal sees all this unfolding and stuns price. Because he sees her fighting stormtroopers and therefore thinks, oh, she is the traitor. Yeah. Which is very funny.

There's a master play for Calus, huge win. Honestly, it was working out for a lot of it. Yeah. And then before he can say anything, Callis tackles him to the ground, swaps the cylinders back. So it looks like List was the one accessing all these parts of the ship that rebel stuff was happening in.

And then Ezra and the crew get back aboard the shuttle, about to make their escape. and there's like callus come on and cal says change of plans i'm staying uh callous thinking that he's found a patsy now he's in the clear he'll be able to operate freely and that seems to be what happens they have the whole debriefing and back in thron's office and everyone seems to accept the fact that list is the traitor and uh you know like Callas is feeling pretty confident. He leaves.

But the second, the second Euler in Thron are alone, Eularen tells Thrawn, this is just too neat. I don't really make List out as the source for all this fulcrum stuff. And that's when Thron reveals what he's actually been thinking the entire time, which is, of course, it isn't the list.

It's callous. But we want Callous to feel safe. They have now, they are now, they now know how to feed the rebels bad intel. I have a proposition for Callis. Uh-huh. I would, this is something, this is what I would have done differently in this scenario.

I would have not switched the sticks. Because why would Callis, if he was the mastermind, use his own pen thing, what's it called again? The ring cylinder, yeah, the ring cylinder. Why would Callis use his own rank cylinder to commit all these acts of treason? He should have... I see what you're saying. And then claim that List replaced...

Exactly. Exactly. Right. Right. But at the end of the day, the fundamental problem with this entire plan is that List is not smart enough... To have done any of this. To have done any of this. Or highly placed enough.

Yeah. The fulcrum leaks, there's just no way a first... Lieutenant has access to all the stuff that Vilcum's been been leaking. And then, yeah, like five minutes with the guy, you know, he, he wouldn't, he doesn't have it in him to do this. But I think I do like it, because I'm a sucker for espionage stories and all this. One of the fun things about this kind of thing is counterintelligence narratives are fun because they lend themselves to Hall of Mirror's logic, you know, a double agent,

or an undercover agent wants to stay undercover as long as possible to, to keep. You keep thinking now you're deeper in, you can get better intel, but if someone knows that you're an agent, now you can just be a pipeline to trick other people. Once you're doing double agents to the mix, like the possible combinations of loyalties get hyper complicated. And you see a little bit of this where like Thron rather than sewing this thing up is just going to let this thread play out. But I still maintain, I can't remember it's because it's been so long since we started the Theron Arc on Rebels. But I feel like early on when he first showed up, he was also doing things that kind of felt like he just wants to let him cook a little bit. Yeah, we know, I mean, there was a very specific version of that, which was the one where Harrah shows up on Ryloth and goes to try to recover their stuff. By the end of it, he's like letting his own guys fucking hang.

you know, like he knows the counterattack is coming or whatever, and he lets it go off without a hitch just to kind of like feel out how the ghosts like actually operate. And we've seen other times when it feels mostly like what he's doing is eliminating weak links in the imperial chain by letting them over commit or like try to take something on the thing that he suspects they cannot fucking deal with. So we've seen a lot of that. And I think we saw specifically him begin to doubt callous four or five episodes ago. And so I do think that there has been a pattern of that sort of behavior from him for sure. Maybe not as direct as this, but similar, you know. I also think something interesting here is like, I said this earlier, but I think that the particular way in which he identifies Callis is really good because it's something that, you know, popped in my mind while it was happening, which was like, wait, isn't anybody going to notice that Callis didn't mention who it is that he's captured or who lists captured? which is like, and that's how, that's one of the main ways that Theron was able to put it back on him.

It's like, oh, you know, oh, the, the, it turned out the prisoner was connected to the goat, was connected to the Lothal because the bounty hunter hat has the Loth cat on it. And so like, okay, that must be connected to them. And then from there, you get to its Ezra. And Thorna's like, oh, interesting, Kales didn't tell us that it was Ezra. Well, there you go. Like, that's all of them. Right there.

Signing your work. I know. I know. Well, he recognizes that it's Sabine's style. So it's not even that he signed it. It's that he's had Sabine put the Lothcat on it, which is very funny. Both of you. Both of you children.

Stop citing your work. Stop decorating everything. The other thing here that I think is just interesting is he also has Yalarin backing him up on the read, right? Yelaren is the one who's like, I don't think List could have done that. And not that Thron couldn't have arrived at that more quickly, but I do think the fact that Yelaren is there is like, smart guy has other smart guys say the same thing. And it's like, ah, yeah, okay. Also, he, so the reason he brought you Lauren out there, I think, is because the implication is that maybe not super close. It's not, it's not quite, you know, like, Ularin is not his, you learn's kind of his mentor.

Right. In some ways, maybe not like career guardian, but, but has been a mentor. And so I think Thron is also circumventing if ULaren doesn't come. around to this himself, he'll be defensive of his guy. Yeah. But if he is there on scene and he sees how weird this all unfolded, that's interesting. He will come up to the conclusion that, like, man, the only guy who kind of fits this frame is callous.

Totally. An interesting thing here, this was written by Nicole Dubuque, who also wrote Harris Heroes, the episode where they go to Harris Family Home Base and all that stuff we were just talking about happens. And then also was the writer of the Rebels episode, An Inside Man, which is the one where Thrawn kills that guy in the factory. Remember he, like, turned on the speeder bike? So, like, she is killing the Thron episodes. She's absolutely, like, has him, like, locked down. And then also, Henry Gilroy co-wrote that episode. Henry Gilroy, of course, at this point, he's executive producer on Rebels and was, like, a lead writer throughout Clone War.

And then directed by Saul Ruiz, who directed a handful of Clone Wars episodes, including Gone Without a Trace and Dangerous Dead. Maybe we've even hit these. I think these are both, these are both season seven episodes. So this person will write some season seven episodes that we haven't read yet or haven't gotten to yet, but did also do Rebel's episodes that we've seen, like Brothers of the Broken Horn, which is the one where Hondo and Ezra do his schemes together, the end. Tilly's extraction where Sabine goes undercover and like Iron Squadron and Legends of Lassad and The Future of the Force has done like a bunch of stuff that we've seen before that's been like okay. I think this is pretty strongly the best episode that Reeves has directed yet. And we'll continue to direct stuff throughout this and season seven. And so I'm excited about that. And bad batch,

I think too. So you hit a good episode and like, ooh, you know, what's the, I'll be watching your career with great interest line you know there it is i'm i'm watching you saw i want to see i want to see more uh so we stay on the theme of rising stakes with secret cargo which is i think a bad name for a pretty spectacular episode tipping its pitch out of the gate the episode opens on zeb as rachap and harrow waiting for a rendezvous to refuel a rebel convoy and watching a news broadcast about when Mothmas, speaking openly against the emperor in the Senate for his role in the Gorn Massacre. Our creepy imperial cannibal droid shows up in a droid crewed probe vehicle and broadcast the ghost location before they can destroy it. The rebel convoy shows up with a flight

of X-wings in tow and there are immediately tensions between the regular army vibe of Gold Squadron, the Y-wing pilots and the buccaneering characters that Zab, Ezra, and Chop like to play. The Imperals arrive and immediately disabled. the rebel transport forcing its high-value cargo to be transferred to the ghost. And it turns out to be, of course, none other than Monmothma herself without Perrin or Lita in evidence. No, I made that no multiple times in this episode. It is worth saying, I guess, briefly, that this is voiced by Genevieve-O'Reilly.

This is R. Monmothma. She had just played Ron Mothema in Rogue One. It isn't. it isn't like I think the writing case hasn't been found yes the performance is but she feels so different from the mama but this is not arman mothema yet armamothma isn't here yet the gorman massacre hasn't happened in andor yet andor's only four years bb y she's still the the careful senator um who's like nervous like i don't i'm curious we will get to this mon mothma in andor season two which this is to b b b y some big shit has happened she's clearly as you're about to get

to change her position on some stuff. She's also just, like, not a cartoon character. Like, it's very funny to be like, I'm Zeb. And it's like, I'm mom, ma'amma. I'm just delivering a line, like a regular person would. I'm a bat. Exactly. It's a very funny combo.

Anyway. I so badly wish Harry was like, so do you have any family? Yeah, I know. There's a little conversation with every coffee in the cockpit. There's that conversation. or where Ma'amah doesn't look like sometimes I envy pilots like you traveling through the stars you can always leave your problems far behind you and it's like I don't know I don't see your weird ass husband or your trad cat daughter around you did do that's exactly what you're

doing with mothma she's like I must go serve a higher purpose that's right really she's thelma and losing it it made me have it made me have a brain like a real galaxy brain idea, which is, what if Luton kills Perrin and Lita and makes it look like the empire so that, so that Mon Mothman will finally be like, oh, I have to commit to this. Obviously, we know the reason she commits to it is because of the Gorman Massacre. It comes up in this episode. It's an established thing. Tony's talked about in other podcasts.

This is like part of the deep lorice. This is a terrible massacre. We haven't seen yet. We don't know exactly how it happens. She learns about it. It becomes like her cause. But if her real cause is that her family got killed, she blames the empire for it. But really, it was Luthin doing Luton shit.

That's all I'm saying. Anyway, so one of the gold pilots gets knocked unconscious, Ezra has to take over a fighter as the gang tries to escape through a fiery nebula, pursued by Thrawn's new Tide defender, as seen in the PC gaming classic, Thai fighter. Yeah, crowd goes wild. Its shields are too powerful for their normal blaster cannons. but they can't use their proton torpedoes because the gaseous nebulah might ignite around them if they do that. After a desperate race through the fires of coalescing stars with ample shades of the eye of Aldani, the group is cornered by Admiral Constantine and Governor Price aboard their star destroyers. But just as they're about to reel the ghost aboard using the tractor beam,

Ezra ignites the nebula and the two destroyers are flayed almost to pieces by jets of solar flame. when Madama gets to a rendezvous point where she makes her speech to the inchoate rebel groups, inviting them to join an alliance, and the final shot of the episode is ship after ship joining the new rebel fleet that we recognize from, for me, like some of these ships

pop up and Empire Strikes back, but more specifically, a lot of these ships are seen in action, apparently, in Rogue 1 at the Battle of Scariff. Very directly, Faloni talks about wanting to capture as many of those as possible. There's a little bit of a mismatch, but

But generally speaking, with this being so tied to Rogue One and coming out right after Rogue One, he really wanted to try to capture the sense that, like, oh, this is the rebel fleet. This is what it is at the time that Rogue One takes place. This is the first moment all those ships have been together in the same place. Again, curious if we'll end up seeing this from Andor as we move through the remaining years of the pre-Rogue 1 stuff. I have to imagine that.

I mean, it just seems like it's such a significant moment. Right. Yeah. You know, we can talk more maybe at length about if it works. You know, the thing I want to say is just like, there's a moment like this in Rise of Skywalker that does not land at all when all of the like smugglers and randos from the various planets all show up at the end to help save the day. And it's been a beat that has never worked for me there because there's been no work done to establish positive relationship with those people. And in fact, the rebels of that era, the resistance. apologies of that era has done nothing but like ruin those people's lives. Like they don't show up and help ever. They just show up in the movies. They just show up and like cause problems and then leave. And here it works because oh, hey, like we've seen these relationships being built, at least in part throughout the last three seasons. We understand, we have enough to understand that Mon Mothman's crew has been out there doing this, that Commander Sato's crew has been out there doing this. We get a picture of Ryder Azadi, who we haven't seen in a while,

the Clancy Brown character and like, oh, right, they've been building these relationships for seasons and seasons. If anything, I wish there had been a little bit more of it. But that's only because of what's been there has been really good. And so when that moment hits, I do think, like, oh, damn, yeah, that's the Rebel Alliance. Here it is, you know. I also really. Sorry, I'm just searching it. Maybe, like, maybe, like, the ages. roughly line up. Maybe Ezra and Lita could meet. Oh, my God.

Wouldn't that be a rich vein for fiction? Not since Asoka and and what's his face? Oh my God, what's his name? And and we need another StarCross camp

boyfriend. Yeah, we do. Not Jabo Hood. We all know Jamo. Really fucked up to. Jammah Hood should be at Andrew. No, no, no, no, not Corky. Not Corky. Not Corky is the guy from No, he's the son of the, the, the Patsy senator from, yes, his name is. Oh, my God, from the separatists.

Lux Monterey. I got it. I got it. It's fucking steel cage up here. Kirkies is Obi-1's son, right? Corky's Obi-1's son, obviously. It's the nephew of Sateen, mysterious, who is a teen sibling? We don't know.

It's, that's correct, right? We don't know if she has one sister. Right. But then Corky's mom. Oh, right, right, right, right. That's not, Boketan is not Cotin, is not Corky's right, exactly. So there must be another mysterious who could say, who could say? I do really like that this episode starts with a lot of tension around the miscommunication,

or maybe not miscommunication, but like, stunted communication between mon, Mothma's contingent and the Rebel Cell, like our Phoenix Squadron. I think that's a really good place to start in an episode where we're ending with trying to bring everyone together. And who knows what the material, you know, experience of that is going to be.

Like, who knows what the material processes are going to be for assembling this whole rebel contingent, especially, I'm sure we're going to get Saw coming up soon, especially as we deal with different rebel contingents having different aims or different demands of the empire. Like, I'm very curious about how that will break down. But starting off this episode with this kind of recurring conversation around, well, we didn't have enough information to do this effectively coming from Phoenix Squadron and then from Monmothma's group saying like, well, we can't communicate as much information as we want to

because we, you know, secrecy is of the utmost priority. And there's one particular moment where one of the, where the pilot that gets knocked out later says to Ezra like, oh, or your, your as were Bridger, right, with Phoenix Squadron and, and, like, your Zeb and whatever. And they're like, yeah, yeah, you know us? Like, what's up? And she's like, yeah, you guys, like, knocked out the communications tower on, I forget where. And you did, you know, this other.

Oh, yeah, okay, the Lothal one. I thought so. You knocked out that communications tower, and they were like, yeah, that was us. We, you know, we did that. Love to meet a fan. Yep. Mm-hmm. And she was like, that actually really fucked us over.

That was actually super whack of you. It's, you know, tightened up security on the outer rim to the nth degree. Like things are, that made things so much harder for us. You have no idea. And I just loved that detail. And they were like, well, you know, can't can't do it perfectly every time, you know. Zep is like, we like doing it the hard way. Yeah.

You're not the only one doing stuff out here, Zep. exactly he and Ezra have come so far I know the fact that they're dapping each other up in these episodes uh like chest bumping just the like the degree to which now and this is my garbage nephew and he's like yeah I am his garbage nephew thanks um it's really cute it's really they're very funny and it is it is you know I talked before about mon mothma sounding like she's from a different thing like these guys are also from a different thing uh they're a little more cartoon character coded in their voice acting when I want to say Yuri Lowenthal does the guy with the weird helmet but like they are still from a different world they are not from the world where

you can do swashbuckling adventure they are from the world where like three of them die every week you know like we see two highways get blown out of the sky yeah exactly yeah exactly my favorite early bits in this is at some point at some point off screen I don't know Ezra's become a competent pilot I don't know when that happened you know what though A comedy of storytelling because when that when that girl gets knocked unconscious and he's like, I'll fly. Yeah. And Harris like, yes, you can do that. Remember what I told you. And they totally nail the moment of her watching her baby boy. Yeah. Go out there. Like, is she the best pilot in the squadron? Yes. Does she hope she's passed on enough that with his force sensitivity, he can survive in combat. Yes. But she just has to like watch him be cast into the into the unknown. And we have skipped over the whole like training. Now, do what? I think we do I think good things usually happen from training episodes? Yeah, I think usually you get it a lot.

Like I miss. I have never regretted a hera scene, basically, like getting her to talk about like her whole outlook, like what her lessons are for, you know, how to be in the world. Yeah. I feel like we have a mere episode to the Sabine Canaan episode, but for Ezra and Hera and Ezra learning how to fly. And maybe we'll get that now that we sort of uncork him as pilot. But maybe, like, we'll see them interact a little more on that level. But I do like that, oh, yeah, no, like, through the osmotic process of hanging out with Ace pilot Hera, he'll be fine.

He'll be fine. This could have been a Hara episode also. It would have been fine. But, I mean, it is kind of. I'm kind of okay with not seeing, which I realize makes me, like, slightly a hypocrite because so much of my Sabine criticisms are not seeing her. doing the things that she, like, claims to have experience. But we don't get to see her do anything is the problem.

We get to see Ezra do everything. That is a problem. That is a problem. But with this part of Ezra, like, this part of Ezra being competent at piloting, I'm like, I can fill in the gaps here that there have been off-screen missions where maybe, like, Harrah's had to, like, go and fix something. And she's like, take the, you know, whatever. Take the reins and hands.

I think we've seen him pilot the phantom, the little ship on the back of the ghost or whatever it is now. Yeah. And the gap isn't, I built the atom bomb during my gap here, right? Like the gap isn't, I built the atom bomb. And then on summer break, I joined the mob and swore and then swore up. Like, I became a maid, I became a maid woman in the mob. But then my buddy and I quit. And by the way, my buddy's like 50.

So again, like the caps are, the caps are different. Like, they're a better footing where it's like, Ezra. Remember what I told you about flying Ywing? You know, like, that totally makes sense that like she'd be able to like give him the rudiments of this. And then it's like, now it's, it's been a few months since we've seen you, Sabine. But the last we heard from you, you were, you were building, building nuclear weapons from whole cloth. Oh, okay. I think that the word is going with this originally is a thing I do love, though, to Natalie,

your point about the lack of communication and, like, the larger conversation with them being in different kind of parts of the war. I do love that he's never seen an ion cannon before. They, the, the, uh, why do we like takes out the one of the ship's shields with the ion cannon. He's like, whoa, what, huh? Like, okay, you're just not, you're not playing, you're not playing tie fighter. You're playing a respawn action game where there is no.

not moving shields and engine power around. You don't need the ion cannon. You just need the proton torpedoes that blow things up. That's fine. That's cool with me. But he sees it. He's like, whoa, that's cool. And it's like, yeah, the rebels don't have, the rebels are not on the message boards together. You know what I mean? They are not like, oh, we have this cool new weapon. They, you just find it out when you stumble into it. And I really like that that's the first time that that gets framed. And obviously it's being framed for the audience to be like, oh, I see. Like, it's a special sort of cannon that takes out shields or whatever. But very, to have it deployed where like Ezra has to learn about it.

And they're getting it a little of this. And I'm curious if it's a thing we see explore through more Star Wars stuff effectively. But, you know, the ghosts are just the side of pirates. Yeah. But they're also resistance fighters. But fundamentally they're regulars. They're not regular military at all. They don't have military values.

Hera can like tow the line from time to time because like as a pilot, she like lives in a world of rules and procedures, but fundamentally, uh, this is, this is a group people who their modus operandi is, I don't know, we just bare face our way in an imperial,

uh, strongholds and then kick their asses. Good stuff. Which is kind of where Cassian begins too, right? Where it's where it's like, I don't know, you just walk in and then you kind of mess their shit up. But you see,

but the two things are happening here. One is that as you coalesce these groups, they're going to be less insulated from one group getting compromised. Like more eggs are being put in one basket, right? Like the rebel fleet coalescing and in the one hand like, ah, the rebel lines is taking shape,

but also this is the thing that Throne wants to happen. He wants a big bag full of rebels that he can snare. And so they're taking that kind of chance, but also you're having these different groups coalesce who have completely different Completely different views about, like, how to fight the empire. I'm curious that that also translates to what are we fighting for when it comes to fighting the empire.

I mean, you know, you know, there's a moment here later where Mon Mothma delivers a big, another big speech. It's no nemic speech, of course, but there's rebels. And again, we get, we see Commander Sato, we see Ryder Azadi, we see, there's somebody else, I think that's there. General Dadaana and bail. Right, of course. We don't see Saw Guerrera there. We don't see Champsendula there. Are kind of like radical?

Purged out. They've been, are they not part of this? Are they getting, are they getting Garmbell Iblis? Or Bell Garmin? What is Garm? Garm Bell Iblis. Out by Monmouthma? What's happening here?

Right? And are those are the people who are going to see, I say, in a leading question that I already have the answer to tensions between. Are we going to get some on Mathema, Saw Garera stuff sometime in the future? because they seem to appoint themselves differently towards the war and its many facets. Manbamba, why will you not accept my mind squid? That's what, you know, we might.

Wow, I didn't know you had a public for Whitaker. Yeah, uh-huh. Good. Oh, I'm excited. Oh, yeah. I really, really, really, really want to get more into the weeds of rebel cell conflict intention like that just that's food for me it's so good I I I think the Phoenix squadron have the opportunity to present themselves as a really interesting

intermediary because they you know we're flying solo for a bit and because they're sort of been so concentrated around Lothal, like I, I just, I, I, I imagine that they will be used as sort of a mitigation tool between, um, different content, different rebel cells and likely a mediator. Uh, but yeah, I don't know. It's, it's going to be, it's going to be good stuff. I'm, I'm hoping I'm not wishing into a non-magical well that this will. Yeah. this will come true. Well, and also, like, is rebels the kind of show that can get into that stuff super effectively?

Because, like, I always felt in Rogue One, there's sort of a, I'm curious what we see in Andor, uh, season two, but I always sort of felt like in the backdrop of Andor, you know, he talks about being burned out of the horrible shit he's had to do, uh, as sort of a clandestine operative for the, for the rebellion. I've always sort of felt like between the lines, there was also an implied, it's not just two imperials he's had to do horrible shit, right?

that like to a degree it's also enforcing some of the order and discipline you know the first thing we see him do is kill a source rather than compromise you know his operation true and so like is he also the person who shows up when there's a rebel crew that is like truly outside the lines of what the alliance is going to tolerate is someone like cast the sort of person who is sent in to just like this this person needs to be removed you know, how that happens is up to you. So, you know, Rebels probably not that kind of show. It'll probably be a lot more like, hey, it's you from this other, this other thing.

But this is our first steps into also a bigger continuity around this period in Star Wars history. So, yeah, I'm super excited for where it goes. As for the arc of the episode, things I love. Coffee Talk with Hera and then Mavma. Yeah Could have watched another five, ten minutes of that Them just hanging out Heron could be in or season two

Like in terms of the Rebels cast Or I wouldn't mind popping up there I can see Hera hanging out Yeah Yeah I would be cool with that Yeah But that's it I wouldn't

Yeah pretty much I can't think of anyone else Chopper was already in the background of Rogue One So But so I guess that's already Chopper might just show up You know what I mean But otherwise

And crucially I think it's that conversation as they sit down and they're just sort of killing time in the cockpit. Part of it is this is where my mouth on kind of talks about I thought I was doing good in the Senate. I thought like I thought the Senate was where I could resist this thing.

And that just became untenable. It turns out. Not, it wasn't working. It turns out didn't, you couldn't do it from there. From the Imperial Senate. Not so much. no good to learn that

but you were doing there for how long for 20 years okay that's cool that's fine I get it you gotta learn things in this life yeah it's but it's a it's a good sequence as she serves reckoning with the fact that like now she is fully outside the law

on the run aboard this pirate ship you know we're working to get this get this rebellion started and also what that means is like you know obviously the conflict has been happening sporadically everywhere but she No, she is on her way to hopefully inaugurate a wider war that is going to be, that is going to look a lot more like a war and a little bit less like a series of heists.

Yeah. If we, if we haven't hit it too hard, there was that radio message that gets played at the beginning or the holographic, like, recording of her, being really a direct, you know, critic of the, of the emperor for the first time. And what's, you know, she straight up calls him or calls the empire, I think she calls him an executioner and a tyrant, right? And so the way that that is effectively understood by the galaxy is like, this is a call to arms, this is a call to action, this is the moment where all of these different groups

go from being little local, you know, they haven't met yet. They haven't done the signing of the declaration of whatever, the Alliance to Restore the Republic or whatever the rebels are actually called. But they have at that point, that moment is kind of like the catalyst for all of the that comes later and I think the episode does an okay job of being like oh wow like no one is saying this shit in public until now and that is enough to start pushing stuff over the edge and go from to go from hey there's a bunch of individual rebel cells and then there's some like you know behind the scenes very quiet organization between them to being the moment where things start

to really pick up pace right and I think that's it's fun to have seen that here in this show which is kind of like what the pitch of the show has been so yeah Well, they've set up well, you know, when we met a phony dissident senator guy. Yes. I forgot about that. But there's this notion that the empire has made this show of tolerating dissent in order to, like, sort of mask its true nature. And a little bit in minimal his defense, she has unwittingly been part of that where, you know,

she is the dissident senator who's allowed to say all these things and be the bleeding heart liberal, but nothing changes. And to an extent, she is like, can't help but lend a little bit of legitimacy to the empire but also the thing that happens here is when she find when she is finding the person saying like the emperor is just a monster he is an executioner uh you know this this this this thing needs to be overthrown that is now a thing that even the empire can't ignore because they have sort of let her occupy this perch where she is uh you know being someone who's speaking from within the senate and saying i don't think we should do this and now they have to deal with the fact that this person

who has remained within the system is now saying i'm removing myself from the system uh and There's no, there's no salvaging this from the inside. It's going to have to be, it's going to have to come from, rescue is going to have to come from the outside. And so to a degree, we also, we also kind of see that she has, like, built a profile where when she says these things,

it's going to command a lot of attention. In way, like, she occupies a different place than, like, Ezra's parents occupied on their planet. On a smaller scale, they were as important. But on a larger scale, she is going to be able to, like, reach, you know, a lot of these groups that have been sort of maturing in their own, at their own rate. But first, she's got to be chased through this nebula, which is just the fun sequence. I love it.

Like, looks fantastic. Some fun music as they enter the nebula. It's a little reminiscent of the score from the, uh, the eye, whatever that was, not the eye. Is the eye al-Dony? Well, not that. The, um, when Zeb, Zeb goes through the, yeah, whatever that was called. Is that legend? of Lassat? That is Lentges of Lassat, which was directed by Saul Ruiz, what I was just talking

about, actually. What is the actual name of that thing? Oh, my God. Lera San is the name of the planet itself. I don't remember. It's fine. But it's some other sort of weird nebula thing. So similar kind of like ethereal take on Star Wars music. And it looks gorgeous also. This, this, like, bright orange nebula with the sun. And the ship's dipping into the fire and, like, the whole plating being stripped apart and tie fighters, like, literally some of this is just straight, straight eye about Donnie. Like, the tie fighters trying to maintain the pursuit, you know, to their, to their death. It is. It really is that. I hadn't made that, that thought. It looks sick. It's great. There's some great shots of just, like, ship's silhouetted,

really interesting shots, and kind of, like, top-down shots with the Y-Wy. wings off center. It's great. And I think maybe worth saying about this episode and the previous episode, we've spent so much time talking about rebels saying, this really needed to be two or three episodes. The pacing just feels so time crunched. Everything feels like it couldn't, it can't breathe. I would have loved a second or third episode of both of these arcs, I bet they could have done a great job with it in the Clone War style. Neither of these episodes felt like, oh, this is a great premise, but it's just too big for 22 minutes of television. these are really tight, well-paced, well-structured episodes that don't bite off more than they can chew.

And that's saying a lot, I think, specifically with the previous episode, because there's kind of a lot in that episode. This is a more straightforward episode. You introduce a character. You introduce some fun stakes. You do a fun space battle. But even this I've seen them struggle with in the single episode thing, especially with the introduction of gold leader and gold two and all the rest of, it would be very easy for them to ask more of those characters, those like additional side characters and the B plot. You know, well, I don't remember what his name is. The pilot, the ace, the ace, the imperial ace who shows up, is the same guy from the episode where Sabine goes undercover at the...

The Antilles extraction. Yeah, the Antilles extraction, exactly. And, like, he just gets to kind of be here. We don't have to have him taking up time trying to, like, you know, talk shit to Ezra or something. Volt Scaris, that's his name. And, like, he used to just kind of be here in the background. And they didn't decide, like, oh, we're going to make this also the episode where Ezra learns to be a pilot. And I think some previous Rebels episodes have fallen into that trap of really thinking they need a stronger B plot.

didn't they have time for in a single episode. And so it was very happy. And there's still a B plot here. The Ywing stuff is still, I mean, the Ywing stuff maybe is even the A plot, you know, if you think about where the most the screen time and the effects budget went. But really it's Man Mothma's story B and her conversation with Hara be the kind of core of the episode. And then let Ezra just kind of have the adventure, you know, pilot ace stuff happening

as the big spectacle of the episode without that also needing to have. a deeper emotional core that they didn't have the time for in the single episode format happy with it yeah and then it looks sick they shoot the missiles into the damn sun or the nebula and it scorches

the two Star Destroyers Star Destroyers take Imperial ships in general have taken so many Ls this season they've gotten very good at blowing them up in various ways comes up in the commentary where they sort of admit they sort of had lost count of how many

star destroyers the ghosts have taken down and they realized that like we're kind of making the star destroyers look a little bit like paper tigers they are in in terms of the rate at which they are just like shredding these things yeah but I'm gonna give a pass for the ignited a nebula and the ships are just being like roasted from one side it should it just looks awesome like this is an incredible moment yep just looks really cool and also I believe that that would take down a big ship because it's a fucking giant nebula where multiple

stars are forming. So I feel like yeah, that would take down a ship. And the effect is just gorgeous. The effect is... Yeah, it looks cool. There's like the hot blue and purple, like where it's

impacting the metal of the ship. It's just, it's really... It's really good. Visually, visually... Well done these, these episodes. Yeah. Yeah. And then we get the big speech delivered from.

Is this, it's delivered from the lounge of the of the ghost. Is that right? Well, that's kind of funny. Maybe it's the cockpit. I don't remember. They watch the ships come in from the cockpit.

Right, right. They do. But either way, it is very funny that it's kind of like you're getting on the car phone. Yeah. Yeah. I thought they were going to, like, actually meet up somewhere. I didn't realize that this was just like a virtual, a virtual, like, Zoom call.

It still works out better than Rise of Skywalker's, which in part also fizzles because we've seen, we just seen in The Last Jedi, the same phone call is made. Nobody shows up. And it's kind of like there is no, there's no cavalry coming from over the hill. you're going to have to figure a way to deal with this yourself. And then the set, the last movie is like, oh, yeah, no, the Calvary is everywhere. Where'd they come from? I don't know.

They're just here now. You just kind of believe, Rob, that's all. You got to, you got to trust, you know, and then. That's true. Hope, man. Yeah. I forgot just the revolutionary potential of just hope. Yeah.

I'm with her. Mm-hmm. Ray. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. So having had two episodes that are a bit more focused on advancing the dual storylines of the rebellions rise and thrones pursuit of the ghosts, we come to an adventure of the week's story about AP5, chop at AP5 gone a mission with wedge antilles to steal some codes they need to infiltrate Lothal. But while they are at an ISB base, an imperial listening ship full of guys wearing the cyborg rig spot chopper on the security feeds and realize that they're on the trail. of the rebel's most valuable operative,

their astromack droid. The Zap-Pore chop while he is jacked into a terminal and when AP5 returns after stealing the imperial codes for Lothal, he immediately notices the chopper is not himself as chopper is in fact being piloted by this group of imperial hackers

working at a remote aboard their ship. But nobody believes AP5 as he tries to sound the alarm. But when they eventually get back with Hera, Hara immediately realizes the chopper is not himself, having grown up with this with this droid. But they fumble it, they let Chopper lure them all to the cargo hold

where he locks them in and tries to vent them into space. But AP5 is able to spacewalk to an access panel to release the crew. While he's doing that, Chopper knocks him off the ship and sends him tumbling into deep space. Chopper returns to complete his mission of stealing the location of the rebel base. but he gets zapped by Zeb then Harris somehow

creates a feedback mechanism that causes the Imperial listening shift to just completely explode but chopper's fine they got the the speakers just turned up too high we've reversed the frequency

we've all heard of this yeah uh huh yeah they reversed the polarity I love science yeah this is like an early this is like a hacking subplot in an early NCIS season where it's like

Reverse the polarity of the, of the DNS server, and then suddenly someone dies, like, across the globe. I mean, a lot of people die. She does kill the whole ship. It's wild. It's, it's, it's, that guy, spring explodes. Yeah. Uh-huh. And then the ship explodes.

Space fantasy. It's space fantasy. It is space fantasy. I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. It's just funny. It's just funny. It's really funny.

feel the writer's room being like and then we blow up the ship are we going to get this guy back no okay well we're going to blow up the ship now there's not high speed data transmission in star wars otherwise a lot of things would go differently except for right now because it's a special ship built for it and she just turns the volume

knob up to a moment and that's why they don't do high speed data it's like no no no no no no dial up speeds only very dangerous we get an odd coda The ship exploding because it hacked too hard is not the weirdest thing we see. We get an odd code where we see AP5 in a state of oneness with the universe as he prepares for his death. And he begins to sing a song while surrounded by little spacefish who show up to sort of welcome him to his heaven, basically.

His reverie is interrupted by the ghost, scooping him back up and returning him to his life as they put upon rebel secretarial worker. This isn't the second musical bit we get in this episode because there's the anything you can do I can do better bit that they just kind of talk sing that AP5 and Chopper kind of talk out. But it's just that lyrically. I mean, this is the this is what AP5 does to the texture of the show. You're right. Yeah, real transformative. I was going to say, like, what, I need a comp of every time someone has. has saying in Star Wars because...

It's this, it's the Ewogs, it's the Gungans, it's, there's the chanting kind of in Aldani. Who else do we heard? Oh, there's obviously, obviously there's the Jabba the Hut songs. Slice noodles. Slice noodles. Well, and then, of course, we're the Halcyon. This is true.

That counts as visual Star Wars media. You were there, we saw it with their own eyes. Yep, it's canon, actually. There's the... Imagineers live there. Right. Right. But it is rare.

It is rare. It's especially as not a part of like a performance or a collective. Like someone singing to themselves. I found it very odd. But I loved it. I adore it. I am actually fully on board. Of AP5 being out there in the void, I was like, this is, this is everything to me.

Well, because AP5 does have musical theater energy. He is the one character that like at any moment, him bursting into song, usually it would be a pattern number or something like that. But like at a moment such as this, it would be totally fitting for him to start to sing a big showstopper about the fact that he sort of achieved this piece. it's weird it was like kind of a goofy touch but in a weird way not at all discord with the performance that we see from this guy like week in week out you know alickman has done a few musicals and you know when we still had him he would he would crush he would slot perfectly into a lay me's run he would crush i dream to dream put ap5 in more musicals bring him out I think you would do a great job.

Calvin Kennedy, are you listening? We've got good ideas here. It's like glee, but Star Wars. Worth saying, I guess, I don't know what this guy's name is. The lead cyborg of the listening post thing is being performed by Josh Gadd, the American actor and comedian who spent a lot of time on. on Broadway in the Book of Mormon and some other stuff I want to say I think maybe most

famously in the sense of fame he's Olaf from Frozen so he's done some voice right yeah and in this one he's like the boring

these guys are bad these are not they were not sending their best to this episode not the acting this is like so much cooler yeah Evil Dilbert characters.

I guess, you know, this might be redundant at this point. Like, or these are people who have Dilbert cartoon, like, like strips, taped to, like, their workstations. Yeah. Well, they are apparently their entire workstations, their entire aesthetic. Obviously, there's the lobot connection to, like, the cyborg head stuff. But the orange screens, the background. chatter the way that they were directed to deliver dialogue, I think, largely influenced by THX 1138, the Lucas dystopian film that comes before Star Wars. And, you know, that's kind

of like an evil Dilbert crew in a sense, you know, the evil of the American, the emerging American office and pharmaceutical culture or whatever, some of that stuff is a little hard to swallow in a moment where medicine itself is under attack, but, you know, it was a different time. And it's all here. It's all here in this. They're very, very powerful. But here now, they're a lot more evil tech, tech dudes. You're right. That's what we can be slotted in. They're jacked in. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that makes sense. We get a lot of evil chopper, and I do sometimes wonder when I see an episode like this, which is like, they've had that imperial chopper painting or like a paint job that that version of the model for a long time now

do you think they were just like what else could we do with this what if there's one where he's like what do we did an evil one like what do we know where chop gets to actually be cruel and evil like we already have the paint job so very fun it does feel a little bit like this is this is like a let's do a silly one before we get to the season finale I think that's right on the commentary they talk about So this was the 19th episode. Yes. And they mentioned that they've tended to, just for out of a reason, where it crops up in the production cycle, their 19th episodes frequently are about droids having comedy adventures. Uh-huh.

I don't know if that's always the 19th episode they release, but it is like apparently the 19th episode they produce. Interesting. It tends to follow this pattern and that is partly driven by the way the seasons are structured. You're always setting up more intense episodes for the, you know, run to the finale. And so you're kind of your last rest stop Before you're locked in for the remainder of the season And so they tend to do They tend to do silly ones now

In the commentary Faloni also mentions that there's a lot of episodes that The audience just tells them oh that's a filler episode We don't really care about that Can we go to the floaty zone? Yeah Because I want to hear him say this was his own voice and I believe It feels like he has his material prewritten a little bit For his for the

The what do you call it? The commentary because you're going to hit some of these same notes and I want people to hear more people talking about the old our fave AP5 Let me go back to where the right point is Let's go But I'm trying to find the actual cutover point

I guess it's right here All right Three two one go Chopper and AP5's dynamic I sat down with cast and crew to talk about the challenges of working with Chopper Learning a little bit more about the imperial listeners And getting to the bottom of AP5's moment of Zen then check it out.

In Double Agent Droid, we get another fun episode of Chopper in AP5. Is there anything different about your process when you're portraying a droid character? I think it's a little different, especially because when Chopper is your co-star, he's mainly a sound effect. A lot of times, you're just kind of like going

with what's there on the page. In Double Agent Droid, we see an imperial listenership filled with people wearing Lobot-esque headgear. Can you tell us a little bit more about those people? This was continuing a thread that we had left way back in season one with the character of Sebo. The idea that there are a number of imperial agents that give up a degree of autonomy in order to be plugged into the imperial data network the way they are. It's really a sort of growing element in the galaxy.

Because the rebellion is beginning to grow, so the empire is kind of coming back with their own psychological operation. They're intercepting transmissions, they're intercepting data, seeing where there might be uprisings or intel. And then Thron has dedicated this one to, you know, hey, there are these droids and they keep infiltrating. We should really get on that. because the empire usually ignores them, but Thrawn doesn't ignore anything. That's Throne, baby. He's really content when he's floating out in space alone.

And disappointed when he's scooped up by the ghost. Why do you think he would prefer that kind of life? In this particular episode, they're sort of ignoring him. And he's warning him that choppers turn. I forgot what, they're blowing him off. And they're in this terrible trouble because of him. So he's like, you know what? Maybe this isn't so bad.

He tolerates the presence of the rebels. I think he gets, because the empire had no use for him, he was kind of going to be decommissioned that it's better to be with them, but he just suffers under their lack of organization and structure, so in some ways he would like to just float out there and let his battery die. He either wants one of two things. Stuff to organize is going to be left alone.

Come on. He's free floating in the cosmos. He could probably catalog all the stars around him, and that's his happy place. As he's floating, AP 5 sings a great little song. Was this in the script, or was it something that was just created as you were recording? This was in the script. I remember asking Dave Filoni. I said, are we really going to have this droid singing here in Star Wars? are we going to do this? And he said, yeah, why not? And the day that we did that,

everybody else, I think, was finished with what they were doing on the show. And Taylor and Freddie and everyone's like, no, no, we're not going anywhere. We want to, we want to stay in here AP5. At weird moments where I think things are going to be funny. And when we got to this moment with AP5, I just pictured him alone in space. It's so different for him. I thought it'd be funny if he kind of just spun it and doesn't even realize that in this euphoric moment, he starts to sing. And I just think it's funny. I mean, it's this very, bizarre moment, but with these episodes, I think you want to go weird. Half the audience will call him filler. I know that now. I can't be like Dower and Obi-Wan serious every week. You know,

that's yet to come. You've got to admit, it's a very good picture. Oh. Chopper hanging out with Anthony Daniels. Very nice. That's all. That's that's it. The question this week had been, who paints Chopper for covert missions without Sabine around? And the answer. comes from no one chopper chopper answers it because Pablo's on vacation or is missing or something and the answer

is like you know other people can paint things right damn like there's other rebels who just paint stuff all the time yeah like the wall like walls got to get painted other other other paint things happen

it's not just Sabine I think of Sabine L but to your things Robin at this point seems to know people don't like the funny droid episodes fuck them

fuck them I like them I often don't like them and I want to say fuck me who cares make you the shit you are yeah it's your show

do the funny droid episodes do it and you just be like I'm sorry you didn't get a sunny day in the void I guess it's not for everyone it's not for critics right it wasn't

it wasn't for me good I'm glad they made it I just don't want to watch it I see you Faloni And I'm I'm grateful for it I love it I love my little droid episodes

Yeah In the commentary When Zeb hits Chopper with the stun stick Yeah Everyone but Faloni is like You know Zeb's been Want to do that for ages

And everyone's like finally Chopper is made to shut up Can you imagine how Oh blissful silence God, how much does everyone aboard the ghost just love seeing Chopper just shut down? And Philoni's like, no, everyone hates it. People love Chopper. They don't want to, they don't want to hurt.

And so the degree to which they're just openly, like, razzing Faloni for having this cute little droid author insert character being the mascot of the show. And everyone being like, so you know everyone aboard the ghost probably hates Chopper, right? and like kind of wish they could just like turn to scrap here is is very funny. That's great. That's great. It's a good bet. The fact that it wasn't immediately clocked when Chopper apologized and like I guess because like Wedge is the one. Why you'd put wedge on it?

Yeah. That makes sense. You're right because otherwise this episode doesn't work. And also I'm glad Wedge got to show up again. Maybe this is also one of those contractual. I get two episodes this season type things. Because otherwise, there's no reason for Wedge to be here. No.

Not at all. Wedge gets to be kind of a rube. Yeah. And then he gets cornered in the bathroom by AP5. Right. This is important because someone just reminded me that we have actually talked about this episode once before. Does anyone have any guesses? Is this when we looked up the concept of bath refreshers?

Not refreshers, but urine and urination on Wikipedia. The quote on the urine page on Wikipedia is, I don't have time for conspiracy theories right now. I really have to use the refresher, which then has like the little like the M dash to indicate a speaker. And then it says, Wedge Antilles insists that he must urinate. He did do that. God, why is this on a collectible card? Aconic moments. iconic moments that's what it was

this is the first mention by the way of urination in Star Wars you hear his pants on zip it's a little it's a little funny it's a little bunch that's why I love these goofy episodes you can do goofy goofy

they do so and it is a goofy episode yeah they I do feel bad for AP5 AP5 immediately knows the chopper's not himself because he's his best friend And also because Chopper's an iconic little shithead and is always being a dick.

The animation team noted that Chopper, when he's himself, is little anthropomorphized. And so, like, his head will, like, rock off its axis a little bit as he gesticulates. But when he's in hijacked mode, it just does the neat little turret swivel with none of, like, the head bobbing that you associate with Chopper. you can't fully emote as he's as he's under the control so that's that's another sort of giveaway that like he just can't carry himself the way the way chopper does um but yeah they like ap5 can't get anyone to listen until it's too late and then they do the whole stuck in the in the hole he goes and fights him uh and he floats the space and sings the song yeah and honestly this close to the most j Jedi death i've ever seen in star wars like the the most like just

Out there, oneness with the universe. Yeah, I think he would have been happy. Just leave him out there with the cool little space creatures, which are from Clone Wars. I don't remember where in Clone Wars they first showed up. But those are, they're called Kneebra's. I guess they first showed up in the film, in the Clone Wars film. So from the original. Wow.

Yeah. Shoutouts. Little creatures, Star Wars. You know, important Star Wars stuff. Other Clone Wars connections, the like base that they're. that they land on or leave or whatever at the very beginning where they've stolen whatever they've stolen is a listening base that was originally going to be the Rishi outpost from Clone Wars the episode with I think it might be called rookies from season one

where like all of our favorite clone troopers get introduced and they get the oh yeah yeah but they would not survive they're making a different decision there and then finally connections to greater Star Wars stuff, LT319, the main bad guy who's voiced by Josh Gad, was designed to look like. Any guesses? Pablo Hidalgo and Pablo did all of the placeholder dialogue during production. Wow.

That's cute. That's cute. That's cute. Interesting that these three episodes have had Clone Wars callbacks. Or like just like Clown Wars. Star Wars. Yeah. As associations.

Yeah. I wonder if we'll skip more of that soon. I know that when we do our watch list for rebels eventually, like our skip list, I know that I'm going to be advocating for this episode. But I'll say now, I'll say now that you only need to watch AP5 floating out into space. I see. And that's, I'm okay. If you skip this episode, that's fine. Fine, but you have to watch AP5 floating in space.

We've really lost something now that we don't have TV shows structure in a way to do clip shows. Because him floating in space is an iconic clip show moment. It is. Where you'd be like, that episode looks awesome. But of course, the show, you know, it airs, you can't go back and revisit it. You just know the clip show implies something amazing that you never fully said. Was that a whole musical episode, you say to yourself? I will say, I do think you be very annoyed.

annoyed me. I think you'd all be very annoyed, but especially Austin. Phelone when he's talking about the imperial technicians with their cyborg rigs, uh, keeps arguing like, you know, I mean, really,

like, uh, because the show has, the show has a rule that you can't just show people getting killed. Right. Of course. Uh, and so when the ship is ripped apart, the, one of the animators is like, uh, they might have made it off. They might be okay. Uh, but Falonin's like, like, well, you know, I mean, technically, like, are they even still people? Oh, my God.

And it's like, well, clearly, like, and he also talks about, like, they're treated more like imperial property, uh, just the, them wearing these rigs. And it's like, I think that that was true of the little Rhodian dude that they, like, rigged up that way and, like, hijacked his brain. These are people who clearly volunteered. Like, these are true believers in this. But he keeps bringing it up in a way that's like, hey, man, like, are you able to follow the text of this show? The call is coming from inside the house, my man. What commentary, what commentary are you on?

Because the one that everyone else is having here, they're discussing these guys as like imperial operatives, uh, with like, augmentations. And you think they're cyber zombies. Yeah. Well, also the guy who, as far as we can tell, I guess we don't know. We don't know if this was a Lucas thing, but like the clone trooper trips, right? Like, this is a show and a series, uh, that really, believes that you could put some robot parts in someone's brain and make them not a person

who does exactly what you want them to do, which we have advocated for from the jump is so much less interesting than airing in the other direction, you know, and emphasizing the choice and stuff like that. And then this just gets extra complicated with, you know, if you go and listen to, we just talked about skeleton crew. We really love the character of KB, who has similar cyborg part things going on and is actually like a shockingly good character whose story, you know, partly has to do with disability and dealing with, like, her augmentations and what they mean for her social living and what, what, how she sees herself and how she's seen by her best friend and all that stuff.

None of that sort of stuff has ever shown up in Clone Wars or Revels in anything other than, you know, this sort of thing. So I do kind of think, you know, oh, does somebody, somebody treat them like their property? Yeah. No, no shit, Faloni. Like, that's the story you keep taking. telling. So, that's a shame. Yeah, it's, it's just, it's real, it's especially in a way because like these are, do I believe the empire does do that to people? Yeah, I think it actually works

when you see the little Rhodian guy who's like mind has been shattered by involuntary augmentation and just turning him into like a human calculator or a sentient calculator, basically. But evil fashion nerds jacking into the matrix to like, Snoop on Rebels, that's not, you do not need to make it anything more than that. It becomes less interesting if you're like, if you're saying the empire is actually like, oh, actually they're all like cyborgs who have no will of their own. This guy clearly is a mid-level like IT worker who loves the shit. Multiple times we were like, should we call this in?

He's like, no. I don't want to handle it. Everything is so impressed when I bagged the ghosts, Admiral Thorne's going to love it. Oh, well. Anyway, frustrating, frustrating note. Austin, I also think you did Pablo a little dirty, though. What do they do? So the last time we talked, we were talking about Sabine wandering off,

and did she meet Big Rock Man on the mushroom, on the planet of the spiders? What's his name? Bandu, Bindu. Bendu. Bendu. Yeah. So you quoted Pablo.

I'll play it. Did you go and watch the Rebels? I did watch it. And I think, I think his delivery makes me question his conviction. Well, I think he has bad convictions all the time. But he's committed to them because that's his job. I don't know that he believes everything he says, but he's saying them professionally into a microphone.

It's true. But I think the delivery leaves room for interpretation. I rewatched it yesterday and was like, oh, my God, this fucking guy. I'll play it. Give me a second. What's the name of the episode again? so yeah so it is it is the first one of the group we watched today

that's right because I that's why I rewatched it yesterday because I went ahead to try to find these days what I do is because the Pablo segments are delayed by an episode I watch just the Pablo segment of the next episode so that I can find if there's a relevant question and answer is it 317 then through Imperial

eyes. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to screen share it. Let the people hear it. All right, here it is. Hey, Waflow. Nice day, isn't it? Hey, Andy. Uh, I have a question for you. Do you have a minute? Yeah. Okay. Jason asks, did the Bendu communicate with Sabine during the time when she ran off in trials of the Dark Saber? Uh, no. You know, I talked to Dave about it. And if something as important as, that was supposed to happen. We would have seen it on screen, so it didn't happen. Okay.

Thanks, Roblo. Have a nice day. Rob, I think you're confusing the bit of him being a depressed little boy with somehow that not being true. But why is he a depressed little boy? Yeah. Because there's been a whole arc of these all through the season of him going through it. And now he's suddenly gone in the episode. They're like telling a little story about Pablo's emotional journey throughout the season.

It's been going this way. He's going to find Bendu. The one from 318, he's not there, and another guy is there. And they're calling him Pablo. Wait, what is going on? Why is he set? Yeah. We need to find out what's happening.

I'm sorry, it's 319, I think, is the one where he doesn't show up. And there's another guy there instead, maybe 320 because, again, I've been watching ahead. There's too many of them. 318 is him playing with toys. Oh, lovely. That's right. He's got the Armada game, I think. He does.

And so do. And we've seen Ezra. That's right. Ezra and Zab's voice actors. Yes, they're playing the game instead of, and they're playing the game when everybody thinks that the TV is on, that Chopper is watching TV loud. But really, it's just Taylor and Steve Bloom talking really loud in character.

As they play the game. Yeah. They don't actually have the game set up, which is annoying. They're clearly not actually playing it. So that's fake. It's fake. They're not real. That's right.

But we're at the end of the season. I'm just saying Pablo's. Pablo was so, he's just like, I don't care. Did he talk to it? I don't believe it. I think the bit implies they has no conviction what he's saying. This is the guy who said it wasn't, it was definitely not a force ghost. It was just a holographic projection.

They're always closing doors on this show. believe that too. I would love it if he didn't believe that. Maybe he doesn't want it, but I do think that that's the canon, unfortunately. That's like the news he has to deliver, but Right. Yeah, I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Yeah. I don't think he has

control. That is true right up until someone is like I'm going to write a short story about Sabine hanging out with Bendu. You can fill that gap in, listener. You can write the Sabine Bendu story. Please do. Or unfortunately, it's open until we get an

episode where Sabine goes, Bendu, who's that? Damn it. You know? No. I don't think it is. Rituously being like, no one else can be a forced ghost unless they studied under, you know,

Quigon and Obi-Wan. So no, no one else who could have appeared. Those were all holograms. If you ever saw a Dead Jedi appear, that was a hologram. Exactly. Annoying. Bad. And then Grogu begins to cry. and Luke's like, what are you crying about? I hate this.

He should have just said possibilities, Luke. I think this is a real, my vision of this that's the best is a real laugh and say nothing. You know, I just don't even choose that question, you know? Yeah, yeah. Three more episodes this season. Can't wait. Oh, is one of them a double two-part? Yeah.

Twin sons, zero. hour part one zero hour part two that's right uh and i uh there my understanding is twin son they're not directly connected but they are all finale material twin sons is the one that i've been twin sons could be the two-parter twin sons is sadly not the two-parter two sons yeah yeah there sure are in a way twin son twin sons zero hour zero hour We're just going to have to see what dethrones it Yeah, this finale better hit I hope so what was the last finale

What did we get last time? We got Was that Was that the showdown with this It was Assoca Invader and Assoca? That was Assoca and Vader and mall Oh, and Issoca like walking out of the temple Yes, walking out of the temple

We didn't know if she was alive or not Yeah, that fucking hit God, I miss it there I don't want to hype it up too much twin sons has the scene that I've been hyping up for five years or whatever in Rebels. So it's time. We'll see if it hits for you. Maybe it won't.

All right. Well, uh, with that, we have reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Cato Contreras and supported by listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. And yes, next week, since we have had to miss a week because I forgot to tell everyone that I was going back to Chicago

for Patrick's, uh, 40. You get so focused on making sure you're going to be at a place that you forget, literally. And by the way, Austin implicated in this too, because Austin, I had conversations about this. Yeah. I was like, I would be in Chicago. And then Austin was eventually like, hey, wait a second. Yeah. When were you recording. I assumed you were going to bring a mic or like, you'd be, I actually what I really assumed was you'd be back. I didn't realize that you were turning it into a week long trip. So it didn't account. Because when I was thinking about it,

I was like, well, if I'm going to be able to make it to that thing, which I didn't, because I'm recording that day, I'd go there for the Saturday, maybe fly in Friday night, stay for the party on Saturday and then fly back Sunday so we could record on Monday. I had two other podcasts to do in that, you know, that's... I mean, I was driving cross-contrae. You turned it into a whole trip. And I can't, you know, I just did a big cross-country thing. I get it.

The allure of the road. I get it. But literally at no point had it ever occurred to me, like, oh, yeah, no, we're going to have a, we're going to have to put some content out. That's like, shit. Well, this is going to be tricky. So we're going to just put this out next week. going to have to do an episode two weeks in a row on the main feed.

Well, right, yes. You're going to hear us wrapping season three Rebels with twin sons and the two episodes of zero hour. And once that is wrapped, we're going to be doing our Q&A episode on this latter third of season three. So, until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, when someone shows up offering exfiltration because you've been exposed, you should Take them up on that offer.

What if you don't want to move in with your boyfriend yet? Oh, interesting. It's important to time that well. He could have moved in with Monmothma's crew instead. He would have fit in there better anyway. No, he couldn't. Why not? They don't need to know.

We found this guy. He's committed. And then Zeb finds out that. Sabine isn't in her room anymore. I guess that's true. They could. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I mean, that was the plan. I mean, but. Yeah, Zab was like, you gotta go get him. Fine, Zab will go get him.