A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 106: Heroes of Mandalore and In the Name of the Rebellion (Rebels 60 - 63)

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

The final season of Rebels starts with a bang: a pair of excellent two-parters, giving us some of the best action and most exciting character dialog we've had in the whole show. And hey: We finally get to learn what the hell the deal is with the damned Beskerator. Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next Time: Rebels 64 - 67 (The Occupation, Flight of the Defender, Kindred, Crawler Commandeers) Show Notes 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 Zakney, joined by Aliaq Kampura, 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. Do we need to care, do we need to tell people like, hey, don't use the, don't subscribe to us through Apple, Patreon. say that out loud. I don't think people have. Like, this does not seem like it as a thing that has been too big a deal.

But if you're not familiar with this, I would love with anybody who is using the Patreon app on app on iOS to tell us just out of, out of curiosity, because I've never heard of anyone using that app for anything. But I'm curious if that's being done. And as Rob you're about to say, yeah, don't use it.

Because Apple takes the view that, um, anything that happens through an Apple app, uh, you get through like, the app store, uh, is like they have a certain, they take a royalty. Uh, they take a hefty percentage of any transaction that goes through that app. And so, uh, while like Patreon always has its cut of any dollar you donate, uh, and there's like, you know, other fees built into that,

uh, on top of that usual, that usual haircut, uh, that creators have to take, if something's going through Apple, is it like 30%? Is it like a 30%? Is it like a 30%? So yeah. So like any dollar, if you we're using the Patreon app through an Apple device, and you're like, all right, cool, I'll support these people. Every dollar you're spending, 30 cents of that is going to Apple. And I will end. I think in Allie, you might know this better than I do, or Natalie, if you were going to say it, they just, the default Patreon setting is we pass that cost onto you, the subscriber,

we just raise the rates by 30% so that subscribers eat that. we would have to like decide to lose that money and go in manually and be like it's okay you can you know what 30% discount for everybody i'll be i'll be frank i'd rather the subscribers eat that sorry folks i would rather than just go to patreon.com i bet if you go to patreon to come on your iphone's web browser and sign up there that just works that's my guess i wonder if it would try to trick you i wonder if it tried to be like it's better through the app no it's not no it is not don't use don't use that app question though for if I'm putting myself in the position of a app user on Apple yeah if you already were subscribed to us and you're using the app this is what I'm curious about you

should be fine it's only if you initiate a subscription through the Patreon app on an Apple device and it pops up like the Apple like do you want to pay for this on this Apple app I think but just avoid it avoid it that yeah don't eat the apple

yeah just you know don't eat the apple damn get them um yeah that's my understanding I think that if you are but the other thing is like whatever we offer what we offer on what we offer on Patreon

is an RSS feed that you could just plug into your pod catcher of choice your podcast player of choice which means you shouldn't even need to like open up the Patreon app to listen to our episodes, our bonus episodes or anything, which, by the way, we do bonus episodes every month. We just did a Q&A about season three of Rebels. You should go listen to it. It seems to me that the only point of the Patreon app is to go to patreon.com slash more civilized and subscribe for us there. Download the app, sign in. Oh, right, okay,

right. Sign in, press the button that says add RSS feed to your podcast app of choice. And then uninstall it And then just listen to us Which again, I bet you could do it through your browser I bet it's there You might have to like tell your browser To give you the desktop page or whatever But yeah

Yeah Anyway, good thought Anyway, just do it on your computer Just do it on your computer Just avoid it Yeah Just don't Or if you're

If you're No don't I was like if you're extremely wealthy You just go ahead and do it in the app, whatever. But no, don't, don't give Apple your money. They're not an important part of this. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like we didn't build our shit around the Apple, the App Store platform.

Yeah, it'd be different if we like built an app to go on the Apple store and then. And then they got there. If there was an AMCA app or this isn't like a Paramount Plus situation where the actual app is dog shit. And actually it's a better experience just like subscribe to it through Apple because that's the only good. Like, that's not, that's not the situation either. Like, the website's working just fine, folks. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good on the website. It's bad on the ass. Unless they seriously fix things, Paramount Plus situation is pretty dire. Just going to be honest with you. That app was not good. Last I checked, that's no way to watch Landman.

I didn't realize that it was on. I didn't know that it was an app. I've been rewatching Twin Peaks, and that I've been doing on Paramountplus.com direct. So, you know. Nice. websites are good apps

meh damn so true so true picture this your young talented mandolorean noble woman who is at the

imperial academy weapons research and design accelerated learning program someone tells you they want to build a machine that vaporizes anything protected by a particular metal say I don't know

Baskar you don't know what they want to do with it Maybe it'd be good for construction. Maybe the Ewarks have started deploying Baskar-tipped tree branches. So you build the weapon. You're kind of an edge lord, so you give it an edge-lordy name, making fun of a traumatic tragedy to befall your people. Then you run away to join the mafia. You're in a motel one night, and Thelma and Louise comes on, followed by Dog the Bounty Hunter.

And your life goes in yet another direction. So now it's years later. you're back trying to spring your dad from lockup your plan kind of sucks but you rescue by the arrival of bo catan she used to be a big deal you have a faded blade don't ask that you're pretty sure isn't faded for you but bo catan crashed out leading mandolour before and she doesn't want that smoke anyway you learn your dad is riding around an armored convoy on his way to being executed so you pull a daring raid to rescue him goes well i mean maybe the middle schooler you're friends with kind to eat shit a bunch, but he does what he needs to do, so it works out.

But the Quisling ruler of Mandelor deploys a weapon that looks like it's from a different universe. Oh, battle tech universe, actually, if you're being honest. Your mom and brother are right near it doing War of the Worlds over Squad Radio. And you realize, Mandelor, Baskar, weird device. Now, wait a second. Mandelor. Baskar. Weird device.

You probably should put it together by now But you've got to ponder a bit more Mandelor Baskar Device And then it hits you Your friends need to get out of there Right now

But it's too late You get to the battlefield And all your friends are dead No Victims of The Beskerator You were so close About what this thing does

You were so close were so close it was so hard to hold it together I can't believe you almost told us the name I did say the name I know you did but you did that whole conversation what was the team's title

what was the team again what was her title she had barreness and then five minutes later we said it I did say it I did yeah someone said it in the last yeah I'm so glad that I have a reason not to like

me now Because I get to be mad about that And a thing that she did Instead of just how she's written Do you want the extra fact about it Or do you want us to save it for what we do Because there's you don't know You don't even know

There's one more thing that's in a book That hasn't the only way When we get to it's more of this Keep it under the tree It's putting it up Oh sorry we're not we'll get to with this episode It's not a future reveal Oh yeah but when we talk about like

the many mistakes that were made. I just needed to know that there is a perfect, perfectly wrapped gift. You couldn't believe. I sometimes, so I have wrapping paper at home that has, in my mom's house for Christmas, that has R2D2 and C3BO on it. I tell you sometimes, because shout us to the homies.

And I would, I've wrapped this gift with that wrapping paper. Oh, beautiful. I put a little bow on it with a little name tag. It says to my friends and co-hosts. I love you wait until 42 minutes into this podcast So that was part one That was part one Of Heroes of Mandelor

Where are those Heroes of Mandelor? Haven't met them yet Maybe part two Let's see how it goes There's that one guy who's an Imperial Who's like, man actually Fuck you, Governor That guy's pretty cool

That guy turned out to be kind of a hero That doesn't, it still doesn't happen till to Oh, you're right. Yeah, you're right. But he doesn't, he didn't, like, turn on him, really. He just bounced. Yeah, well, he gets zapped. He turns on him enough to get zapped, you know, but, yeah, he does bounce.

I wonder if he'll come back. This is not an Austin veiled. I have knowledge. I truly wonder. Anyway. He has, he has, he has, like, I'm a guy. I'm a guy that will come back voice. Yeah.

We're not coming around on the guy in the blue armor whose name. I can he remembers. He rolls. No, no, no. I'm always on team But he's anti-hero Material. If it was anti-heroes

of Mandalor, I would be like Fenrao, baby. There he is. Yeah, I suppose he's not walking into a scene and getting handed the Dark Sabre. Nobody wants that piece of shit. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants this thing. We have so many little mini conversations

that we have to have. We can't have them all in the chaos mode. Can we walk through what happens? here. All right. Well, we covered part one. That basically is it. Yeah. Part two is, so what they deployed was a weapon that's going to vaporize targets wearing Baskar. It's basically, it's to keep the Mandalorians docile. The, sorry, who's the dude? It's not Gar Saxon because they killed him. No, it's shitty. It's the new Saxon. It's, um, trash Saxon. Trash Saxon. Trash Saxon. My note just says new Saxon dropped. It is

Tyber Saxon. That's a good name. Good name. I mean, the Romanesque. Yeah, the Tiber. And it is it is yet again, I believe, a guy who was on Rome voicing him. The TV show Rome. So, you know, they know what

they're doing. It was Tobias Menzies who was someone on Rome. I don't remember who. But he was on Rome. Quiet. Secret. one of those influential shows in TV history. Seemingly. But,

oh, he was Brutus in Rome. Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. Kind of a big deal. Although that Brutus is kind of a punk. They definitely sort of stage him as like, what a patsy. This guy had no idea what's going on.

Well, so was this guy. So, yeah, really. So, and that's what I thought. So he's one, he's doing the Krennick thing. That'll make sense. When we get to Rogue One, you'll have some old Krenic situation. But he's doing the, like, imperial administrator thing. of trying to take credit for this weapon

and also trying to make it like he has invented the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the guy he's trying to sell it to is Thron. And Thron's like, yeah, it's cool, but actually, I don't know if it's a really practical weapon. Like this was, even in this demonstration, the range is pretty short. And then Thron, like, also points out,

is this really going to get us, is this going to achieve anything politically with the Mandalorians? Like, is this a weapon that's capable of turning enemies into allies? Like, what good are Mandalorians if you sort of break them the way this weapon promises to. And Saxon's like, I'll figure that out and I'll make the weapon better.

Don't you worry about it. Meanwhile, back at the, they pull the punch. They sure made it look like Sabine's family got vaporized. They sure did. Turns out they were just out of frame. Yep. Watching someone an identical armor get vaporized. How did they?

It's fine. I'm not going to get mad about that. We'll get there. Yeah. so they all go back to Mandalorian base and everyone's like Sabine what the fuck this is what you built

this is this is you've destroyed the mandolore you've destroyed our entire way of life we're nothing without our with our mandolarian armor Ezra's like I don't know maybe we can build different armor fuck you kid and that was the end of that discussion yeah and so

the other thing that comes up is yes the weapon is named the Duchess and everyone is like that is incredibly poor taste Sabine's very defensive but they decide to throw in with her anyway and they're going to go on this

they're going to go on this raid and take this weapon down they're going to go they're going to knock out this weapon raid's exciting lots of cool Mandalorian versus Mandalorian Storm Trooper you know collaborator battle aboard a Star Destroyer

it's good times But it is also a trap. Tyber Saxon has sort of been setting this thing up and just waiting to turn on the duchess and zap the shit out of Boe Catan. He's got it in, he has it in non-vaparizing mode, which apparently can hold that power setting for a while. So, like, they're just writhing around and he's like, you know, you're going to be forced to work with me and finish this weapon. his little collaborator buddy the guy who has like soon to be major character energy

is like wait this is this weapon's bad news for Mandalorians and Saxon decides to zap him too but Sabine has one last card to play she designed this weapon she switches it from evil to good and it

zaps people wearing stormtrooper armor which Tyber Saxon is because he has lost his way right and he is abandon the ways of his people. And so now all the stormtroopers are getting cooked.

And then Boca Tan's like, wait, hang on. This thing just has to be wearing imperial armor. Maybe we should have a think. And Sabine's like, no, weapon like this shouldn't exist. This is not our way. No, you've got this backwards. I do.

Swap. You literally have it backwards. Oh, shit. Bogotan is the one who's like, we have to fight for hope, not fear. And Sabine is like, no, like, this is the only way we could win this war. I put it on Stormtrooper mode. Right, right, right.

Yeah. And yes. She calls it Asoka. Huh? Which is the, like, she pulls an Asoka, which is that, like, we, no, killing people is bad, actually, except in very, in very specific circumstances. I don't understand. I do not get. Either way, the weapon has to be blown up.

From the, you used to rock with pre-visla, and now you're like, we used to fight for hope. okay it's we'll get there this is again you know what it's in keeping with what used to knock over gas stations found the lord right that's kind that's kind of the phase she's right is is like i found i found mando jesus uh and as we know like revivalist sentiments are going to be pretty big in mandolars future it's gonna be we're gonna refound god they're gonna revive by dome city Hello Big Tent. They're going to revive a whole new law about how the only way you can hand off the Dark Sabres by beating someone in one-on-one combat.

That just doesn't exist yet. That just apparently we've forgotten that that's like not the way you could just gift it to somebody in this one little period of history. In fact, I guess that already exists. But that's why Mandelor is not prospering, Austin. I see. Yeah, right. Not enough gift economy.

More, yeah, uh-huh. To find a middle way between, uh-huh. teens pacifism and pre-visla and death shock. What was their name? The death Death Watch. Death Watch is militarism. Bocauton can lead us.

This just in. Boca Tan has failed to lead us. Boy, it does seem that's been a loop too. Boca Tan fails to complete the mission. Are we going to end up with like the Bo Catan show at some point where it's like the whole. Yeah, Mando 3 was basically that, wasn't it?

But I mean, like, the story of basically what happens from now until we meet Boca, like, how Bogotan loses the Dark Saber and the, I know we, like, they tell us how. No, I see what you're saying. Yeah, maybe, yeah. Mandalorian 2. Let me say what ruling Mandalore. It's a big bowl of shit. That's right. That's what I mean.

Like, what was she doing? I don't know. I bet we find out more, maybe we'll find out more this season. In Mandalorian, yeah. No, or even, maybe, maybe we'll come back to Boketan this season. Oh, in this. Oh, yeah, maybe. Because we got a lot of those season left, you know? I feel like we're handing off

Mandalorians for now. Like, I feel like this episode was like, all right. And the Mandalorians are going to go, and that's what they're doing. That was, that is Faloni's take on these two episodes in his almost unlistenable commentary. So he solos it. But, and here's the thing, Dave, he didn't really do a lot on these episodes. He was working in London and coordinating with the team remotely, but like it was written and kind of led and produced by other people.

So it is a classic commentary debacle of like persons just kind of watching the thing that they don't particularly know. And it's like, yes, this is this is Boca's hand and Satin, Sabine obviously meeting two warrior women. You know, it was so important to tell a story like this. You know, I have a wife and, you know, there's a lot of women on the team and talk about their experiences. And there's a lot that, you know, women deal with that isn't necessarily apparent to me. And so it was important to have like, you know, I learned a lot about writing, you know, women characters and depicting, you know, women supporting women. The woman didn't write this episode. relationships. These episodes were written by Henry Gilroy, Stephen Melching, and Christopher

Yost, directed by Stordley and Saul Ruiz. Women supporting women. That's what that's what Boca Tan and Sabine are doing. And that was, that's one of the things that, you know, Dave and Company kind of learned in the process of making this. Remember when Katie Lucas wrote all those good episodes of Clone Wars? Yeah. Where is she? Where's she during this time? I want to know.

People got a load of her plans for, oh gosh, bald lady. Ventress? Ventress. Yeah. Oh, maybe she was too sexy. Her plan for Ventress and like Chad Jedi, they were just too intense.

And people are like, we can't let her anywhere near this again. Starworth can't be that erotically charged. Apparently not. You know, you didn't think the very, very brief idea that there was some sort of vague tension, not even tension, but like a gesture at are Sabine and Ezra? Like, people, are they kind of maybe going to be a thing? This whole episode was like, we're all here and we're all the people that you remember us.

We are and we are here. And I was, I was, I couldn't stand it. But, yeah, I really, I really did not like that bit about, well, like. I'm not with her with her. I'm just with her as a friend. Oh, yeah, I'm with her. I mean. I will say, though, their comedy chemistry is getting better.

It's getting better. Yeah. She's owning him more. Like, her, like, his whole, like, uh, I know I'm just like a slapstick Jedi at this point. And, like, I really want to do Mandalorian shit, but I have no talent for it whatsoever. And she's increasingly indulging him. Like, she's no longer shooting down his dreams of, like,

doing jetpack shit. Yeah, dude, put it on. Let's see how you do. You know what? It is very much like you started hanging out with skaters And you are not a skater Oh, poor asserah Yeah

What I mean like I think this episode is This The start to the season And it's clear in the next few episodes There's like they've hit a stride Like everyone is kind of in full form As themselves We're fleshed out

Like there's no more Right Who will you become Flushing out, yeah, yeah, yeah, for some people. But, like, yeah, there's no more kind of question about, like, who these people are and how they relate to each other. It feels very defined, and there's a certain aspect of that that I think is charming and that, like, there's, like, a confidence to it

that everyone is just kind of, we are ourselves, we are the people that you've grown to love over the characters that you've grown to love over the past four, three seasons prior and like here we are for our like victory yeah not really victory lap but like it's like senior year vibes i don't know how i'll describe it is your four it is the fourth season they almost walk up to we'll get there in the next set of episodes an opportunity for a rerun of the mall esra stuff and instead they kind of like leave that pair of episodes with ezra kind of be like, okay, here's how I feel about this.

My soul isn't in question, but I am having questions about the way things are going. And, but who I am is not, is not under threat. Simply where I fit into this and who I agree with is an ongoing question. And that's such a different place than the Canaan Ezra Mall triangle that we dealt with in the last couple of seasons. Miss you, Big Red. Miss you, Big Red. Shout us to Big Red. Oh, anyway, so this episode.

ends, and everyone's like, woo, all hail Boatatan, and she gets the dark saber, and everyone's like, kneel before it's sort of a, you know, hail the king in the north type moment. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, and she kind of goes like, and I have the dark saber now, and we're going to unite Mandelor. And that's kind of how that, I don't know how, who directed her to, to deliver it that way, but it's like, I accept the sword for my sister, for my clan, and for all Mandelaar.

And it's like, you got to, okay. You good? Are you good? Yeah. I didn't really want to do it. That's it. That was the delivery. I generally think that, so we get Bocatan Crees here before my Katie Sack off again.

And I, once again, like I felt about Genevievee Riley for Mon Mothema last season. There is like a different type of acting happening with Bocatan. There are some scenes in these episodes where Bocatan is like at a four in terms of intensity or three when everyone else is at a seven or a ten. And I think there's important. Certainly with Mon Mothema and the next set of episodes, she gets it to attend in a very important moment and moves into the high melodrama that Rebels plays in. I don't like Bokentana ever gets up to that in these episodes. And it's very jarring, not because it's bad acting.

It's just a different style of acting that is so much more reserved, you know. You can imagine, like, maybe there's, like, a lot of, like, face acting, like, she's, like, doing a lot with her face in the booth or, like, and as someone that's probably more used to doing embodied, you know, live action physical acting, that you have other tools outside of just your voice to be able to convey your performance. And in the booth, like, the voice is really, it's all you got. So I think it works in one scene really well. There's a scene that's talking to Fenraal that I think is really great where she's like, she's kind of down here and like not, I'm even wrong because she's more naturalistic than I just was.

but then when that big speech comes at the end you know maybe it's a character moment that she's not delivering it at full dramatic intensity but she sure isn't like living up to the moment that the framing and the music and everything else is suggesting it's supposed to be so yeah it's just I think it stands out mostly because we're in a cast of like voice acting with a particular like we've been in a particular cadence for so long of like children's animated animation voice acting projection yep that kind of a thing that's exactly yeah i think so anyway i was excited when she shows up with the fucking dark saber because one of the big notes i had for the last the arc of the last season was like she showed up to like save the day and she didn't even get to have the dark saber

so when she like comes over the trench line at the beginning of this and has the dark saber i was like Hell yeah. Okay. Sabine is here. She then took like three consecutive ls. There isn't a fight in this set of episodes where she doesn't get like shot out of the sky or knocked out of the air or the saber gets lost or whatever. It doesn't actually get lost. But you know what I mean. Yeah. She's a lot of like catching an incoming vehicle shot from a vehicle with her little arm shield and get knocked to the ground, you know. But you know, it's built to her giving the, I'm going to said katana, the dark saber up. so yeah Sabine like sort of leading the charge like this

this moment in which we're on the planet we've we've landed on this like deserted prison planet it seems I This is Mandelor

Is this Mandelor? We're on Mandelor This is Mandelor This is we're on Mandelor It's dust It's dust in nothing except for this really

interestingly I mean it's Is this like what Mandalorian prisons look like was my question. It's not even a prison, right? It's like a watchtower or something is what they described as being, isn't it? Right.

But they think he's at least held there. Yeah, yeah, it's being used as a prison, but it's a, they describe it as, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they do, maybe they do call to prison because it. No, it might have, I think you're right. It might have been a watch tower. But it's built like, it's built like a cement brutalist, if there was a brutalist tree.

It's like a housing project, honestly. Yeah, it's like one tower in the middle, and then each kind of floor is a separated branch coming out in like north, south, east, west spokes. And it was really, it was a cool design for that. and sort of evoked some of what I remember about just in having like unique architectural style, I think that's something that's been very like a Mandalorian thing is like the architecture. It's being kind of on the forefront.

And so I just appreciated that. But it was a really cool moment for Sabine. to be standing, like leading this charge, she raises the Dark Sabre in the air. She then is, like, flying with it on her jetpack and is, like, cutting guys down from this guy. Like, all of this looks cool. It looks cool.

It looks great. When she's flying with it, it looks, like, all of it looks cool. And it's, I just wish that. Now these are the sort of, a sort of, um, sassy shrug. With, like, hands out, you know? Yes. Like, that guy from the last dance when he beats Jordan at the quarter at quarters. And he goes, like, you know?

You know what I'm talking about. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I just, I, you know. You're saying despite looking like a cool badass, or you're still not on team Sabine at this point? Like, here's the question. I just was in the buildup, was Sabine winning you over as a Mandalorian leader until the duchess reveal

and like what the Esquerader does. That was kind of what happened to me. I was like, okay. Like, I'm here with Zabine. Like, this is cool. You're finally getting your moment. You're doing cool stuff. She does something where she throws a, like a paint bomb on,

oh no, this is in the beginning of the next episode. Yeah. No, it's this episode still, but it's the second fight in this episode. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. That is not here. They find out he's being transported to Sundari, which is the main, the capital on Mandelor, capital city on Mandelor. And so they're like, we got to go interrupt this transport.

And that's where she does the thing you're talking about. Yes. She throws a like a paint grenade onto one of the transports, which I loved. It was like, this is a Sabine special. And it's both obscuring. signaling like it is it is drawing attention to and also obscuring the vision of the people driving the transport like I thought it was a really useful her dad recognizes it her dad's like oh it's Sabine because it's paint it paint it's Sabine like I was like cool cool cool I like

this is like finally we're here we're doing things that are fun um it's also this whole set of episodes is also a real big first throw at what ends up being in mandelore in season three which is like, oh, look, there's all of these different clans of Mandelor. They all have different armor types. They all have different helmet types. Like the basic silhouette is similar, but where the visor is placed is different. Or like the particulars of the armor plating are different. And so it was kind of funny to see them do a run on that in the same way that we've seen them do a run on the Vader mask reveal, like the breaking thing.

And then whatever it was in the recent episode, we were like, they got it from here again. You know, like this is, they are prototyping a lot of stuff here or they're delivering on a lot of stuff. not even prototype that I think works in this show that then we see retried in the live action shows. And I don't, like, seeing all the different Mandalorians in, in Mandos, Season 4, Manzo Season 3 did not hit me as well as it did here where you're like, oh, cool, like Fenrow's armor is different than Clan Rens is different than Clan Creezes, which I always thought was Creeze for some reason, but it's apparently it's Creeze. Spell Creeze, I certainly. Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't help that a lot of the Mandalorian armor in the show looks like

shit. Like when he's with the camp of the Mandalorians where they have little kids getting eaten by the sea monster and it's like, go learn to be a Mandalorian. And it's almost patchwork shit. And I know they're supposed to be like kind of the fundamentalist cult Mandalorians and they're a little more like hard scrabble. Yeah. But it's a classic like it once looks like kind of shabby, but also like to again like unworn. Consistent problem across the show where like things just don't feel like they inhabit. a physical place or a world. It kind of looks like

just came out of a costuming department. Yeah. But I too like the prison. I like its little floating like doesn't have a first floor. It's got instead it sort of floats off the ground and like has his little laser cannons. I like Boatatan showing up

and being like you need to be better basically. Like this was a trap. You should have seen it. I want nothing to do with like that dark saber. Um, I, I liked the exchange between, you know, when Sabine's disappointment, the Boca Tan is not going to be like, I will take this mantle and like, you can hand this off to me and I'll lead the Mandalarians. I like how crushing it is for her that Boca Tan is like, nope, not going to, not even get entertained that. And I like the moment she and Ezra have where Ezra's like, so this is like, this is so different from Lothal.

and for sort of explaining like this used to be grassland but endless war that's who we are it's it's kind of bleak and like it's I like in terms of those characters playing off each other

better now it is going better and I think part because there's like less awkward like juvenile flirtation like we saw in earlier seasons and now there's a little bit more them checking in on each other as like friends

and like those moments tend to work. Speaking of checking in, we also get through both of these episodes some Hara and Canaan interesting vibes. Are you picking up on this? Hara is not thrilled about the team doing this Mandelor stuff and specifically is like, all right,

like you said you were going to go rescue Sabine's dad. I argued for you on Timmon Mossma to let you. you go do it. He wasn't at the place. Are you coming home? Like, we need you. You're an asset.

And Canaan is like, oh, so we're assets now. And there's some, there's some energy here. There's some, like, they're talking around something in this hollow conversation. Like, they're not, do people, do you all? Well, I mean, chop says get a room, you too. I mean, yeah. But it seems like there is like a, it's like, have they. But I agree.

Off Mike. Kainan is starting to flirt. Right. Have they off screen been like, okay, we've been hooking up, but now we're dating? Did they get married off screen and we don't know about it? That's what it feels like like they finally did. They finally did something. Yeah.

They finally like over like the gig is up in some in some respect. Yeah. And it's just more. I wonder if it is though. Because doesn't Canaan say something like, well, you know how I feel. This is what I'm talking about. And like so that is that to me says. like hey the ball's in your court right like look I'm sitting here waiting like

talk to me when you're serious yeah he says he says yeah the exact exchange here is our team is an important asset to the rebellion that's that's Harris speaking he's like an asset is that what we are and she says you know what I mean and he says well you know how I feel and she says are we still talking about the mission and he says well it depends and she says on what and he says you know and that's it and then chop gets like and then that's it. Can you imagine anything worse than your family dog

is also the phone you use to have phone sex? I cannot. It's pretty bad. It's not great. But the dog can talk. Like the dogs understand. The dog understands.

The dog speaks English. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I, uh, I've been, uh, I've been trying to watch every Pokemon movie that lines up with the Pokemon TCG Pocket release. And so, so for instance, The Rise of Dark Rye, I watched when the Dark Rye set, where the, the, the, Palkia and Diaga set came out. That movie was pretty fucking good.

There's like a banger line in that. So I was like, I'm going to watch the next one because this new one just dropped. But I was like, oh, there's actually a sequel. There's one in between. I should go back and watch it. And it has this little creature, um, shaman. Are y'all familiar with the Pokemon Shaman? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. The little hedgehog? The little hedgehog. Exactly. What if I told you that that creature speaks with a human voice? Huh? She talks like this. I'm,

I'm shaman. My name is shaman and I think you're being mean to me or whatever. And it's like, I can't watch this movie. I cannot watch this, this little creature just. Is that allowed? I don't know. It was really too much for me. It was very strange.

I couldn't, I can't find a clip quickly, but you should have your own time, go back and watch Shaman talk. Sounds like Pymann from Genshin Impact. Like that is the energy a little bit. It's not, it's not, did not work for me. Anyway, my point being, I would not like a dog that can talk and listen in while I'm on the phone with anybody. Then you have to use to do the whole like, yeah.

So what are we talking about? Uh-huh. How, like, how do you miss me? yeah like no like can't can't can't be like talking in my dog's eyes and having the dog projects my sassy girlfriend being like well I don't know and then like chopper's like this sucks and it's like chopper I'm trying to get some over here and chopper's like we're wrong uh-huh anyway I I was wondering what they were doing with us at the time because I mean it it it seems sort of obvious that they're they're putting the they're trying to put this more on screen than

they have yeah and i don't know if it's like oh it's a season premiere we just want to and it's a season premiere and it's our last season we want to put we want to make everything as text as we can and we know that people like we saw the post her in canaan so we should have the other way we saw the people posting they don't understand that they're dating we have to be more explicit there are people out there being like no they're just They're both the leaders. They're figuratively the mom and dad of the team, not literally. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And he's like, no, she's Jessica to his Roger. That's how it is, folks. The rabbits. Yeah, Jessica Rabbit and Roger Rabbit. Yeah, okay. They're both cartoons, I guess. Yeah.

Anyway. Anyway. They do this great, you know, prison transport heist. They're in these kind of hover trucks. They're attacking these hover trucks. it rules. They're heading towards a cliff. It reminds you of the scene in Book of Boba Fett. That's kind of like that heist, but this

is like 50 times better. Way better old West, like Juncto's stagecoach to stagecoach. It's fun. As you talked about- At the jet pack. Yep. Yep. That's what I was going to say. Fun comedy bits around that. He cuts up through the bottom of one of the transports

revealing he's underneath, but then he slips like by mistake and almost falls off. And the guy looks under where Ezra would have been to shoot him. He's like, well, I guess this kid's not here because as he flew back off to the back of the ship or the back of the transport. There's also like some wild stuff happening. When Canaan and Ezra show up,

they get like a, especially Canning gets this big orchestral swell. To your point earlier, Natalie, the thing of like the characters are here and they're fully formed. Any question about what Canaan's overall mastery of the force and the lightsaber and his confidence and it's all, all those questions are answered. He is a Jedi master. at this point. He's acting the way a Jedi Master acts. He's being framed and scored the way

Jedi Masters and Clone Wars were being scored. I mean, even more heroically here, like more openly, the strings rising as he arrives on the scene in land, center frame, you know, on top of one of these transports. And it's just a, yeah, it's a great action sequence. They've gotten so good at these. I, I, I, there are things about the show that I'm still, I still am frustrated with, though. I will say this, this set of two-parters feels properly paced. They've, you know, the right amount of ideas they're trying to convey in two episodes. They each get two episodes, which is, it seems like, the right amount for a Rebels' arc at this point. So I've been, yeah, I think that the scene is really well, well-paced, and that continues throughout.

I feel like we've all, we also have sort of like a big upgrade in animation quality and, like, posing and lighting and people moving through spaces that really get highlighted. In this episode, especially because you have. so many like forms that are just floating in the air and still seems sort of natural and not like you know uncanny valley or anything about that yeah it's hard to do jetpack choreography and they do it yeah they did a really good job at it they did like a really cool uh moment when canaan like drops down from the the this like command ship uh command ship uh transport ship sunroof like he drops into the ship and he drops into the ship and and is surrounded by stormtroopers,

and then he closes the hatch, and so it's dark inside, and does a bunch of cool fighting in the dark by the glow of his lightsaber. It's really, it's cool shit. It's like cool Jedi shit. It's cool, bandalorian shit. Everyone is, it's like a highlights reel of everyone.

Yeah. This is them kind of at their best, hitting their stride. Yeah. What do we think of Sabine's dad? We like Jimmy Smith so much. We got ourselves another one. That is the energy.

He does have sort of that energy. He's voiced by Kerry Hirouki Tagawa, who I think people in my generation are deeply fond of because of his performance as Shang Song in the Mortal Kombat film, the first one. But he's been in a ton of stuff, like just, you know, a real prolific actor who's been in just a, just a ton of stuff for over the last 30 years, 40 years, so.

What does it mean that he fights with his art? He's a propagandist. He's a, like, I tell you, but don't mean, he's not out there, strap on the Baskar armor. This guy's got nothing to fear from the Bascarator. Yeah. His wife does the Mandalorian fighting. He's more of my love, my beloved.

I have painted this painting that will expand class consciousness across Mandelor and she's like pooh-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poh. Oh, I love it, sweetie. He's like, yes, as soon as as we clear a path to the Capitol

and we hang it in the public square, it'll really expand some consciousnesses. He does have Gomez-Adams energy now that you mentioned it. Yeah, yeah, that is a great point. Do you think he learned about the best curator and was like, well, I'm never wearing Baskar armor, just in case.

I'm going to wear this suit from now on. Not a single piece of Baskar in that. I will not be besqueraded by my, by my kid's weapon. By my kids fucking prop prototype. Babe, what happened to your wedding ring? I refuse to be bound by conventions like that. Our love is written across my heart. I need no Baskar rig.

Yeah. So funny. I keep it in this lead vault just in case. You know. You know, if Mandalorians are supposed to be traditionalists still, somebody's got to be making the stained glass windows. You're right. True.

That is true. The other thing we've seen about the Mandalorians, it's like half like, give me my armor. Let's go fight. And it's half like, so I've sort of deconstructed the traditional portrait and rendered it as a series of geographic shapes. Yeah. He doesn't get on her ass about her style a little bit. He's like, yeah, you've improved, but it's still derivative.

which is wild. This guy owns. I love him to absolute pieces. Like it is such a good punchline that sort of the, the head of the family, the Pater Familius that they've been working to like liberate is not a Mandalorian warlord, but is instead their soft artist. Like it is it is her badass mom's soft artist boyfriend that she will kill for to protect. Love it.

That's what you've got to be. Tremendous. Yeah. It's a shame because today, in today's culture, he'd be a podcaster. He'd be a Brooklyn podcaster boyfriend, and that would be a shame. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to go back.

It is, it is nice to see him here. It is nice to see another picture of this. I think there's a fun mirroring a little bit. We're not going to do anything with this, I bet. But in the same, he's our, he could be our counterthron. You could have two people who understand artwork in this show. I bet we don't, but it would be cool if we did, you know, if he's like... Yeah, I was hoping that because art, like, it has been made a point in for Thron as a, you know, main antagonist.

I really thought the introduction of, like, another art-focused character and also the person that, you know, main antagonist, I really thought the introduction of, like, another art-focused character. and also the person that Sabine is sort of getting her passion for art from. Like it's kind of explicitly said like, oh, you know, when Sabine's mom was like throwing grenades down and blowing shit up, they were like, oh, that's where Sabine gets it. And then here's her dad where she gets her. And then it's explicitly said this is where she gets her creative side. uh whatever i i was hoping for some sort of those two things to come together at one at some point the the idea that thron is an examiner of art and allegedly uh sabine's dad is an artist himself uh-oh um y'all i think i just i think i just got on i got on team i ship ezra and sabine

because i need him to be like i need dinner with the wrens oh my gosh i need an outsider dropped into, I need an entire show about like, well, you're the fish out of the water. You're the fish out of water in the new family. The Wrens. I'm here for it. I'm sorry. Okay. I kind of, it would be a whole like him? Yeah, that's what it would be. It would be him. It would be him. Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, not that they're actually being normal to each other. That actually helps. Yeah. It actually makes me want them to hang out more because we're, we've moved out of this like kind of like older kid, younger kid, you know, uh, your, I look up to you and you just annoy me.

Yeah. Um, or the other thing that we got in last season where he was like, you're really going to let her train with the dark saber. You're not training her right. She isn't really capable of doing this. I'm a Jedi and she, she's just a Mandalorian. Right. Yeah.

Look, Ben being like, hey dude. Uh, you kind of fucked up by coming here. and Jedi stuff, leave that to us, leave that to me, all that stuff. You should go join your rebel cell again and do rebel stuff. And what do you know? The kid just turns into Han Solo immediately, like Han Solo Jr. It's just like, what? Me, Warry, jet packs and new old cliff face.

I do think it's funny. There's a scene, I don't know if it's in this episode or the next or part two where he's like, I don't want to be a Mandalorian. And it felt a little bit like the show. Hard cut, too, dinner with the Reds. But it felt a little bit like the show getting ahead of the idea that, oh, could Ezra's destiny be joining together the Jedi and the Mandalorian ways? It seems like it's, it seems like he's like, no, that's not for me. Almost as if, almost as if, and this is not, this is based on nothing.

But it feels like, oh, were people expecting that that's where this is going to go? And they're like, no, that's not really his future. But you're right also, Rob, in the sense that we talked about the Obi-Wan, the Ben connection, where Ben is like, you're a rebel more than you are a faded Jedi. And so big open question, what is the future for Ezra? Like, we know he does not go on to found a school to try to restart the Jedi Order. I guess we don't know what, we just don't know what happens. I, you know, I'm a little cursed by knowledge because I know that he was cast in Asoka.

I don't know what that role is. Maybe that's flashbacks. I don't know, right? So I guess I don't know for sure that he lives through this. But we do know that, like, he doesn't so far show up in the Mandalorian. He's like, at Luke, it's not like him, Luke and Grogoo at Luke's, you know, new school or whatever. So, so what's he going to do? I don't know.

Interesting, interesting open question. Anyway, the fucking Duchess goes off. The fact that Sabine recognizes it from its sound. Like, her mom and brother are still on the phone. And she just hears the warm-up, the warm-up sound, like the fucking dial-up. And she's like, I know what this. I know what this is. And that's when she, you know, tells them to run.

Sabine, why did you make the Mandalorian Dead device? It's so funny. it's I couldn't have imagined they would use it against my people I mean what are we doing

to our dishes that they have to go to military school and at 13 and make and make the Mandalorian torture device

the way that she says that it's a challenge makes it feel like she was like she was like trying to get extra credit

in class or whatever that is exactly what it sounds like yeah so yeah in the next episode when pushed on this what she said

so again for people haven't seen it. What we see of it, let me like rewind and give the context. What we end up seeing of it is that it is a, do we even see it here? We just hear it. We see a blast of energy in the distance is what we see, right? And when we get there, there is just ashes and then like pieces of the armor left, as if the entire, everything inside of the armor was vaporized. And later when we see it, we see it kind of do like a superheated effect on the armor as like electricity blasts through people. I think it's actually like a really clever get around the sort of ratings board

limits. You're making a show that's TVY7. No one gets shown being burnt alive. The armor just glows. And then it's not, you know, it's not gory, but like then it the person's dead and it's big and it's scary, but it's not just an explosion. It's this other thing that's uniquely scary. And importantly, to get around the ratings limitations, it's not something a kid could try to do, right? It's not a gun that you shoot with a trigger. It's not, you know, someone gets mushed up or something. It is just like the science fiction weapon that's really kind of scary. And seeing the remains are really scary. And so that's the setup we get. And again, Rob, like you said, it really seems like her mom and brother are dead. And of course,

they were just out of range, just off screen, which I love. And then, Allie, the thing you're talking about is in the next episode, someone pushes her to be like, well, why would you do this? And what she says is, I was young. It was a challenge and I was arrogant. But when I realized the empire tested it and actually planned to use it, I sabotaged the prototype and destroyed the plans. I thought that was the end of it. I swear to you. And like you said, that does sound like she got extra credit for it.

It sounds like she was told it was an impossible task. And she was like, well, I'm fucking Goodwill hunting over here. I can solve. the burn all Mandalorian's equation pretty easily actually and I think this is important because it's like

I've seen people jokingly call her Oppenheimer before but the the context are importantly different I am not defending Oppenheimer I don't think Oppenheimer it defends Oppenheimer so much

but however he didn't do it as an after school project this was not extra credit. Yeah. Yeah. It kills people

wearing Mandalorian armor. That's the mandolarian, bro. You are them. You are one of them. And crucially, Oppenheimer and all his homies had left the Third Reich.

Yes. Or made sure they were not, they were near the Third Reich. While they're building this, they're building this weapon. Where she is at, she's at. The Third Reich.

Yeah. School. For gifted youngsters. And she said, well, I could buy, I could hope there's whatever that can be used explicitly against my people. Because it's just so tricky. I just got to figure it out. She doesn't even say, she doesn't, she never said, she says, like, she never even acknowledges the fact that while she was making it, it was clearly for Mandalorians. How?

Well, I'm surprised I didn't say, well, I made it so that it could, you know, work against any type of armor, any type of material. Right. And they've made it. And it's like set to the Baskar setting. Right. And instead, like, well, no, I made it. Because that comes up again. Right.

She's like, oh, like, there's just after this conversation, as she's explaining, like, you know, I, she says, I designed the weapon as a loyal student of the imperial. That's how I feel about my school. Same. I cut out, I cut pep rallies in high school. I'm a, goddam, I'm a wildcat. I'm gonna make the best damn best grader this school is ever to see. We're gonna win that homecoming match. Okay.

She says just after this, you know, uh, somebody asks like, could this weapon be used against the empire? And she's like, I've studied stormtrooper armor. So although it's crossed my mind, that's not the mission. So you're saying that you thought about the particular material. From many angles, you thought about it in its efficacy against this particular material, Baskar, material sacred to Vandalorn people. Armor from 500 years ago is what she's wearing. you've thought about Stormtrooper armor

and its properties and if that would be worth exploring maybe not so yeah if they had if they had framed it like I do you guys want us to like Sabine I really am confused because who among us has not finished

who among us has not dominated the egg drop challenge built the best damn popsicle stick bridge the world's ever seen and then Ben like I just need to make nerve gas that's right yeah okay do you want to know the real

do you want it do you want to unwrap oh is it present time I think it's present time because you don't know the full extent to this thing because what she says what she says is

that when I realized the empire tested it and actually planned to use it I sabotage the prototype and destroyed the plans that might make you think that they tested it on some dummies and then she destroyed the plants and then she destroys it here and that's it.

So we never really got used against anybody. No, but from last episode she said like, I destroyed my people, yada yada. She did say that. She did say that. So maybe she means she was tested against her people in that episode. That's not what I'm talking about, Allie. There's a whole different group of people. I will read to you from chapter 13 of the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire.

which I believe came out... That's the Chris Kemshall book? I believe that that's right. Yes, it is. Which came out last year. Chapter 13. In the outer rim system of Dizon, there's a moon named Dyson Frey. It was inhabited by a sentient species known as the Dysonites.

Full physiological details of the species no longer appear in imperial records, but there are references to them being a semi-amphibious species who existed in the moon's primary sea and spent most of their time in or beneath the water. Again, little is known of their customs or their civilization except for the fact that they communicated through a form of sonar-based singing and that these songs could be heard from even hundreds of kilometers away. Around 800 years before the Battle of Yavin, the Empire, sorry, around eight years before the Battle of Yavin, the Empire planned to place a refueling station on the moon,

possibly to assist with bringing resources from the borderlands for delivery to the Death Star's construction site. according to geological surveys undertaken by imperial scouts, there were significant deposits raw materials in the seabed and along the shoreline that could be converted or synthesized into fuel, making the planned station almost self-sustaining. In preparing to build the station, the empire apparently angered the Dysonites enough that the indigenous species began to actively sabotage imperial construction efforts. The reason for this, beyond the obvious unwillingness to be conquered, is unclear, but

there are references within imperial records to the demolition of structures that may have been temples for the Dysonite religion. So disruptive were the resistance efforts that, eventually, by six B.B.Y, Imperial commanders were given permission to eliminate the species. While much of the Dysonites' lives is now lost to us, the method of their extermination was very well documented. Utilizing a variation of an energy weapon created an Imperial Academy on Mandalore, the Imperials lowered several Pulsarck reactors from beneath Gazante-class cruisers into

the waters of Dizon Frey and activated them. The salted water of Dyeson-Fraise Moon proved to be exceptionally conductive, and the surge-connected currents electrocuted the majority of the Dysonite population. Over what was apparently a number of hours, the species suffered and died. As they passed, they sang in agony with the clearest cries seemingly emanating from the young. These calls were picked up by a variety of imperial recording devices used to document and confirm the success of the genocide. It seems that these recordings could also prove. highly traumatic to listen to and rendered several imperial

communications officers catatonic. As awful as this aspect was, it seems to peak the interest of an interrogation specialist, such as one Dr. Gorsd, within the ISB, who used adapted versions of these sounds as torture devices on those suspected of harboring information

about a wider rebellion. I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out. Okay, I... Small domino, Sabine running lists in the Mandalorian. and Imperial Academy, Big Domino, Bix is tortured by being forced to listen to the genocide of a people. The first 75% of what you were saying, I was like, okay, uh-huh, yeah, so, like, they use it

against someone else and they all died, okay. And the way, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, you know, kind of just mousing around my computer and listening to you talk. I'm like, you know, just looking around. And as soon as you said, they sing in agony with the clearest cry seemingly emanating from the young. Yeah, that part. That part really, um, what are we doing? It called my attention.

Who, why, why put this on Sabine? They, they don't like her. Okay, I'm convinced. So the thing is, I didn't hear anything my best car in there. No, but it's the arc pulse generator. what this thing is actually called. That's what Thrawn calls it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's from the Imperial Academy on Mandelor. Wait, so was it an existing thing and she just figured out the best car? Other way around. She invented the base version of it and then they were like, we can derive other

weapons. This could be a to to launch into a planetary bathtub. That is right. That is the way it is written. Utilizing a variation of an energy weapon created at the Imperial Academy on Mandelor. it's a variation of her weapon right okay sure so but she makes it for best guard then they take it and then they all right so the thing did not exist that is yes and then she was like but it could but it could and we consider electrocuting a lot of people at once yeah i i think the thing that we've not made like very clear for the audience not watching it it's it's like basically a machine that does force lightning? Yeah,

oh, right. Yeah, absolutely. Tesla coil. It is. Yes, it is. It is, it is like a

in the language. It's a fucking Adam bomb. It's fucking Oppenheimer. If Oppenheimer was on 4chan as a, as a teenager. Jesus. Hooh. And devian art.

It's wild. No, not the, no. Sippy, Svee, Genocidal Tumblr teen. I'm so mad.

Like, I'm, I, it's just like, it's doing such a, like, I'm not saying that people can't be, have complex pasts. I can't, I'm not saying that. Yeah. I'm not, but at every point, we, we get like one more opportunity here. One more opportunity where Sabine is standing next to Boketan. I know. And Bocatan, like, it gets called out, or she says something like,

she refers to it as the Duchess, or it's called the Duchess in front of Boketan. And Boketan looks after, after just having said, okay, you know what, y'all? I also was like, I wasn't fucking with Sabine either. She's got to prove her loyalty to Mandelor. She's, you know, she's come back. Everyone is like, fuck you. Guns out. We need to kill you now.

Chill, chill, chill. She's cool. She's working on. This is her last chance. She's like, okay, okay. She's going to work. The plan is we're going to get inside to the base or whatever. Yeah.

The base that it's being held in. And she's going to destroy it once and for all. That's a plan. We're not going to use it as a weapon against the empire. We're going to destroy it. And they're squatted up. The girls are out. The girls are going out.

I heard from Filoti that it's important for women to team up. And she says to Sabine, you named your weapon after my sister, the former ruler of Mandelor. And Sabine's response here, she says, she says, in like the most like like she was just like it was a series of bad decisions okay

who like girl as if she had dated someone shitty it was one date and then crashed the car you know what I mean like yeah

like you know that's the thing that you say yeah when your parents are sitting with you with the principal and you're like it was a series of bad decisions You know, it's not normally what I do. This is, how did you get tricked into naming it the Duchess?

The, the, it's like the, it's like the, like I named this, I call this the Osama. No, it's not. They're going the other way with it, Rob, because the, the Star Wars.com trivia thing for it, uh, says explicitly that it's the equivalent of naming something like the peacemaker. Because, because, because, oh my God. Ceteen is known as someone who is a pacifist. And so naming the weapon, the duchess is like saying it's the peacemaker, which again does suggest that she understood that it would be a weapon so powerful, that it would be a, like

a weapon of, what's the phrase I'm looking for here, like a deterrent more than an actual weapon you use, right? Right, right. Which is not, she didn't say that in these episodes. have it. Exactly. Yes. You need, you need, you needed to give the Mandalorians, the Stormtrooper coded one and the, the Imperials, the Mandalorian coded one, if that was your big, big boss vision, you know, but that's not really what it was. No, her, her was like, how do I get, so can I get more than 100 points before the final? That was, that was it. You know what's wild is this, this episode came out

six months before the TV debut. It came out at Celebration in 2017. Can you imagine having watched these two episodes at Star Wars Celebration and then needing to wait six months before other people who were not there got to see it? That's wild.

And you're just like, it's called the Duchess. They called it the Duchess. They called it the Duchess. They said the word Seteen again. Yeah. We for months have been like, actually they don't even say the word sateen.

Do they? They say my sister. Do they say Seteen? They do, they do, I wrote this down. Yeah, good, good, good, good, good. In, uh, the first episode. Okay. Oh, no, no, no.

Um, Fen Rao introduces Bocah town as Lady Bocahout of House Crees. Her sister Sotin once ruled Mandelor. Bocahont was made regent by the Jedi before the end of the Clone War. She's still seen by many as Mandelor's rightful ruler. Uh, and then, and then after hearing this, Sabine is immediately like, here's the, here you go, you can have it. Here's the dark saber. You seem like the guy who, you seem like the person who should have this.

You can have the dark saber right now. And she's like, I had my chance and I failed. I am not the leader you seek. Sabine calls Bocahontan my lady. She does. Well, she's the sister of the last leader. She's like royalty. Okay.

She doesn't act like royalty. She's a part of the micro gang. No, no, no. But she's an icon to women of Mandelar. So this is her broad city moment. I can't stop thinking about the absence of Satine's perspective. I know we hit this a lot. But in this episode where there is a weapon designed to kill Mandalorians wearing Mandalorian armor,

it seems like a great opportunity to talk about the ideology of the person who said, we as Mandalorians are more than our armor. She didn't literally say that, but that was her ideological perspective. That's the war that she won, the Civil War that the Jedi helped her win, was Mandalorians don't need to be defined as a warrior culture. They don't need to be defined by their armor.

Instead, what we get in this episode is the scene where Ezra is like, well, can't you just wear different armor? And they're all like, no, no, we can't. This armor is important to us. It's almost religious to us, right? It's 500 years. It's passed down. It's da-da-da-da.

This armor carries the blood and the dense of all. Even though I re-forged it, it's all the same Baskar. Da-da-da-da-da. And like, which, by the way, this is the first time Besscar is mentioned in a contemporary post-Disney thing. It showed up, I think, in the Karen Travers' Republic Commando book series. But this is the first time it shows up in visual media in a TV show or a movie. So this is kind of the introduction of it to this new system or this new setting, this new version. And, and, but like, that's a great scene where someone, maybe, you know, maybe Sabine's

father could have said, you know, there's other ways to think about us or there's, you know, some people believe we were more than just our armor, you know. And I, again, it's two episodes. They probably could not have gotten a whole other arc in. Maybe with a third episode, you could have had some internal division about what it means to be a Mandalorian. But instead, we just get to be a Mandalorian is to have Mandalorian armor. And we all agree about this. And the other thing is our leader has the dark saber. And so those are the stakes about what it means to be a Mandalorian. And it's just so much less interesting.

Well, it's almost the clone wars. Like, it's not even like, you're not pulling your punch if you're just like lacking characterization that should be there, right? Like you have, you have Pocatan making this weirdo argument that's like, oh, well, we can't use this weapon because it's actually too efficient. And we're warriors and we have to, you know, fight what a one. Yeah, yeah. Right.

And for her to say, like, we have to have hope instead of, like, any of what you just mentioned that could have been brought up really easily and, like, reinforce that argument beyond just like, you know, we, but we have to be nice about it. You're right. Boketan could have been, like, my sister wanted us to be pacifists pre-visla, or even if we don't want to get into pre-visla, because it's too complex and too much backstory, she could have said the Saxons want us to be. you know, purely, you know, people who would fight for anybody who lets us fight or something. But instead, we have to be honorable warriors. We can't just rush in. She could have knitted those thoughts together. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nope. No. Instead, we need to take the high road. We can't, you know, if we fight like the empire, we'll just be, won't be no better than them. Hey, wait a second. That's the next episode. Oh, man. So, you know, this episode too?

More tapped into, like, the downsides of this weapon. what using it's going to mean is throng. Right. So they're on the conference call with Tyber Saxon. And one, he's like super overselling it, but he's sort of making the pitch. Like, you know, he shows the stormtroopers advancing through the active electrical current. Yeah. But they're fine because the armor's not touching them and their foes are vaporized.

And it is clear that the Saxon is fully in like, I am going to rise to become the ruler of Mandelor. even if that means Mandelor effectively ceases to exist. He's like the scales have fallen from his eyes. Like he wants like the future is people like Palpatine. Not understanding that like there are, there's going to be anyone else like Palpatine. Like at most you're going to be a like a planetary mayor. Sheaves are one-on-one, baby.

There's no other sheaves. Yeah. By design. But also, Thrawn sort of taps into, he's like you miss the true artistry of the weapon, which is that it takes the, an armor legendary for its strength and turns into a crippling weakness. But then he asks, you know, what do you think, do you think that's going to compel

Mandalorians to join the empire? And he says, well, without, without their armor, mandolians are nothing but common soldiers. So the fear will compel them to join the empire. And Thron turns away and he's like, maybe. He's like, you're different than your brother. What do you think he'd think of betraying your heritage like this? And that's like I guess this whole speech, like, he's dead. Doesn't matter what he would have thought. Mandelora must evolve with me. And Thron doesn't, he gives his blessings.

Like, you need to improve the weapon, but he doesn't actually, like, co-signed everything this guy is saying, because he seems to, like, he seems to be picking up the fact that this thing's going to cut in two directions. Right. And Tyber can't see it. This weapon is going to scare the shit out of Mandalorians. but also we'll make an enemy of Tyber like it'll make Tyber the public enemy number one

Right And if this weapon turned Mandalorians and the common soldiers The Empire already has common soldiers Right What good is any of this if This weapon exists And Saxon doesn't quite see that

But I think it's an interesting moment Because Thrawn seems to like Be saying here that one The weapon kind of moots the entire point of like the Mandalorian the Mandalorian being around at all is like a faction you need to care about. Because it's not just the jet packs that make them valuable to you. It's the propaganda value of them. If the, if the Mandalorians join the empire fully and under their own volition, if you can convince them to join, then you have, it's not just, oh, I have super soldiers.

It's that you have people who the galaxy fears because of their being super soldiers. And if you just like force them to do it because you've zapped them all to death, you've kind of like weakened what they are in your own hand, you know? No. The other half of this is what he has. He talks to his commander, he being Tiber, Saxon turns, and the guy, Hark is like, so wait a second, what will prevent the emperor from using this against us? And classic fascist sympathizer response are unyielding loyalty, obviously.

If we, you know, take care of the hand that feeds, if we simply don't bite it, it'll continue to pet us, even though it's killing all the other dogs. Like, truly stupid perspective. I'm glad that this guy ends up blowing up in a fit of peak that rivals, like, the villain in a Phoenix Wright game, you know, like later on in this episode where he's like, I'm going to be the emperor. And like, all right, buddy. Like, they do a special sprite for you for this scene to make you look like an idiot. he's great how is there only one guy in the room that understands that they're from like a culture where the entire thing

was that you kill the other guy to be leader yeah like what do we do it here? I don't know I don't know I don't know well you know it gets dealt with they all fly in I like that the I do like that the evil Mandalorians have a

Star Destroyer that kind of is like painted black which again I think Mandalorian season three maybe uses don't one of the Mandalorians have like a stolen imperial cruiser or something in Mando season three they have like an entire little shipyard of stuff they've stolen it's cool but here it's not stolen obviously here it's just they were given to it it's cool to see sundari again the kind of capital city the big dome in the desert yeah that we that we got from clone wars where where Satin used to rule from I wish we went inside of it I want to see what it's like in

there I want to see what the big city is like under imperial occupation you know especially because we saw that under mall's occupation, I would love a comparison, but... Ooh, yeah, that would be really cool. Yeah. I don't think the Star Star is painted black. I think it's just in shadow. It's just in shadow.

There's a special, there is special concept art for it on the website that I thought was painted black, but maybe that was also just shadowed and they were just doing a lighting test, you know. But yeah. The Duchess is so battle tech coded. I'm just, it's super... It's an A-T or something,

with like a different nose thing. But that different nose with the weapon is solved. Put the shoulder launchers on it. It suddenly is very battle tech. Yeah, it's a light meck that we would use to run around and, you know, draw fire for sure. So yeah, but the rate is fun. The rate's fun. Yeah.

The rate's fun. They get, they get in. I, I thought it was, uh, we got a rare palpatine. mention, I feel like it's not often that, like, Palpatine is directly referred to, but the governor says, you know, when he's justifying the use of this weapon, he says, I am the empire. Palpatine has shown me the way to true power. That was, like, I wonder if that's kind of signaling that Palpatine's going to come back into play somehow, or just, you know, reminding us that

he's out there somewhere but I thought that was quite interesting because we really don't talk about Palpatine very much we talk about the empire a lot we talk about you know obviously Thrawn is a main antagonist

but Palpatine himself has not really been a big character in rebels so I'm curious if this will kind of bring him back in somehow. I wonder about that too because you know he doesn't make a real appearance until

return of the Jedi and I kind of wonder if the decision just like across the universe is like from the time he declares the empire until he shows the battle of Andor he is trying to be as invisible as possible yeah until he's sort of forced to come out to go face Luke but is is the thesis of all the things that happen between

like Revenge of the Sif and Battle of Endor is the thesis that like the entire thing is built on like hiding the truth of what he's become and what he is. Right. Yeah, maybe.

I'm very curious. Which is odd because like Palpatine was, it appears a somewhat beloved figure when he declares the empire. That's why people were willing to follow him. You did not see evidence that he's leveraging that.

Right. Yeah, I'm curious, likewise, do we end up getting him in and or season two, right? Or do we get some other projection of him? Or do we get, you know, because it seems like, so far it seems like you're right, that we're just not, we are not going to get to see him because he is not around in public in that same way. But who knows? We shall see. I like the way the weapon melts down.

It's cool. Yeah, I liked that she decided to hit the reverse button on it. Yeah, it's so funny after that previous scene where it was like, I guess, you know, I did think about that a little bit. And then she's just like, boopo, beep. Now it kills Stormtroopers. It's the guy sets her up to be like, well, turn it on full power now, ma'am, because you know how it works. Yes, he's literally like, a. go ahead and hit that that extremo button

also it's like that was what was limited you didn't know how to get into the preferences of the machine turned it onto full power mode or that it's already programmed to like go like a 12 button press will put it into store jupor mode that easily I mean this was such an L like the this was this was monster of the weak LL taking can I be honest just like he literally hands are the keyboard and is like, oh, my God. Oh, yep, go ahead. Bigger L than she's ever

taken, to be clear. Just absolutely goofery. Just, it's, it's silly. Can I tell you if I were Sabine, what I would have done? Lied. If it was this easy to reprogram it to kill Stormtroopers, I would have told my family, I built the Stormtroop blastered 9,000, and they reprogramed it. Sons of dix. I was building this thing for the empire because there was the word that stormtroopers were going to turn against them, or I was building a weapon for us to get free, and then they turned it against us. Because there's only four button presses to fix it. You don't understand. You don't understand. Sabide is a super genius. And not only did she make this thing, but she held it in her head for all this time. And then she needed to be a bounty hunter. She needed to be a rebel. She needed to be looking at it. Esra's helmets to identify the metals.

So in the moment, she can be like, poop, boop, boop, boop. That's a great beat, though. When it does zap Ezra's a Stormtrooper helmet, and he's pre-painted to be cool, or she's probably repainted it to be cool. And he's like, take this shit off before my head explodes. Yeah, she's like, let me, let me put the helmet setting on low, and then the target chest piece on high. Yeah.

And target legs on on extremo. Oh, does it hit legs big? I don't know. I think it just goes straight to chest, actually. But it's just like, it's like, it's just, do you want us to hate Sabine? I really, I, like, I'm trying to figure out the case for this character at this point. So why would she never rebuild one that melts Stormtroopers in the last decade of her life? you could put it on not extremal mode

She doesn't think that Boketan thinks that But I mean like When she went back to her family And they got zapped Why didn't she say She didn't say it because they were being mean And exiled her and blah blah blah

I understand that When she was with the rebels She was never like I could build the storm trooper blaster 9000 And she was very traumatized From being using it's their people I get it I get it But in this moment she's like

You'll fuck the stormtroopers And Bokatan has to be like That's not hopeful. Hopeful. It's the most hopeful thing we could have. Bokitan, we're killing stormtroopers all the time. All the time. As these five stormtroopers are writhing on the ground is like, it is not our way.

It is their way. She like starts just monologuing about, will the future of Mandelor be one of honor or cowardice? Leave that Tesla alone. or fear the choice is yours meanwhile homie's on the floor getting his brain

zapped out it's oh also did they program it to like not or did the guy leave the room because the one

the one guy the one actual like semi homie yeah no no no no no no he wears

he wears my glory and armor right Because he gets zapped when they get zapped But the other dude who's fully turned on his ways Was like, I'm gonna wear that plastoid crap Yep Right, right, right, right, that's exactly what happens

Yep, that's exactly what happens Yeah, I'm just, I Here's the thing for me Uh huh, Mandalorians use a lot of equipment What is, where's the line between Equipment and honor Dishonorable weapon

Grappling hook Not cheating Smart missiles that fire for your wrist That just track people down And murder them Not cheating Not cheating Not cheating

Not cheating Not cheating Hiring You have to unlock them Remember the Madalorian season Lober you have to unlock the battle I forgot that you had to return to Leonardo da Vinci

And lock your next upgrade For your Mandalorian And that's honorable Because it's XP You're right She didn't have an XP to use the Storm Trooper Blaster 9,000.

Well, I didn't use it for this cutscene and then we're blowing it up. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's it. Oh, here's the thing. That question that Boketan asks, like, will the future of Mandalorians be fear or hope? I got bad news for you, Boketan. I've seen Mandalorian season three.

That's nine ABY. We're in one B-B-B-Y. 11 years in the future is still looking grim. It ain't looking hopeful. It sure looks like you could use a fucking stormtrooper Blaster 9,000. Who that's also. The situation would be different. She says, well, the future is Sabine's choice?

Girl, you're getting the dark saber at the end of the episode. You're about to go be the leader. Which I don't think they sell us on her arc for accepting at this time. Nothing has materially changed between when Sabine first offers it. Hey, you want this? No, I'm not the leader you seek. Two, I know why I was given this Dark Sabre. It was it to present it to you.

I accept in the name of my sister. Nothing has changed. If I could do one thing about Rebels, I would move all of Sabine stuff up a season. So that this was the beginning of season three. And we had a whole season with Bocatan before she accepts the Dark Saber. And we get Boketan, we got six Bocetan episodes the way we got a bunch of mall episodes or something. And then, you know, imagine. Picture this.

No Sabine. Bocatown's in the crew. Boketown. Yeah, the whole time. Just like, like, but out of her armor first. Like mysterious stranger. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah, it'd be cool if there was a Mandalorian wearing mysterious armor and you didn't know who they were. We can't write Sabita. You could have done, you could have had like in season three, a Canaan, you know, kid after this, the whole, the whole galaxy is going to know or something like that. You could have done that in season three where Bocatian. and, like, opens a foot locker. Uh-huh.

And it's, like, gotta go back to the old maid. That would be the coolest way for Bo Katan to get the Darksaber in the first place. The fact that it's just, like, handed to her. And then she's, like... It's handed to her because a kid's having a bad trip. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah.

Hey, I found this. We were tripping balls in a cave. And I found this. Oh. And it's not like... In Big Red's... Camp? It's not like Sabine doesn't know, right?

Because like when we get to Mandalorian, Dingerin is from a weird different sect and there's, you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Sometimes he doesn't know the shit about what the core Mandalarians believe. Sabine knows, you know? Yeah. Sabine's about it. And I don't know.

I just, it just, I just want in this final, in this fine, I don't, I don't think there's going to be anything left for Sabine to piss. us off about going forward. How could you get more? I think this is, I think this is like it for her. And now she'll just like go on to kind of support famous last words. The rest of the crew as they go through what they go through into the, you know, the end of the season.

I think this is like her big character moment and this is kind of where, you know, she's got redemption. So I just want to say this right now. Yeah. I wanted to like Sabine. I did. I want, why wouldn't I? I wanted to like all of these characters.

I want to like characters, even if they're like, you know, bad guys, good guys, ambiguous guys, whatever. Let me tell you about USA Networks programming in the mid-2000s. You like characters. Do you have the TV channel for you? Characters, welcome. Like, we make characters. They were welcome.

You were those characters welcome, as Rob said. Characters welcome. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here is, I need to read to you. It's just, go ahead. It's, it's just to finish this point, I, I cannot, it boggles my mind what the plan was with Sabine all along. Maybe, I think, I have to imagine that. I got it for you.

Because here's what Star Wars.com says. That Sabine had developed weapons for the empire was an idea that stretched back to her original character conception. As her bio in the earliest story Bible describes, quote, Sabine's work was directly responsible for a terrible event perpetrated by the empire. The specific details were left undefined until this story arc where it could be most impactful. If I could leave the call right now, I would have. Like, that's how I feel right now. I just, I'm pissed.

I think that's a perfectly fine thing to have a character, have. Especially if you think back to 30-year-old Sabine character art, concept art. We talk about this every time with her. Yes. I mean, but even still as a kid, like, I can, you could paint the, the, you can paint the picture of the kid who's, like, who is promised, like, a better future for their family. For her family. Right. If they just, if she just does.

That's what we thought it was, wasn't it? She is a super genius kid, and we need a super genius kid to build the super genius kid weapon. Like, you could, you could do it. It's just, like, at every turn, they've done such an, it. Isn't that what they told us happened in a previous episode that she felt like she was compelled to do it to help her family? Yes, yes, and she didn't say that. Why did they say that in this episode? Why did she say, like, you don't understand they had a gun to my mom's head if I didn't walk on the ship with her.

Like, I had to go because like they were going to kill my whole family. And this was not long ago. This was like, her training episode with Tain and was like just a few episodes ago. Yeah. Yeah. And that was like I was taken away from my family and held hostage and like they made me work for them and like it was to keep my family safe. And now in this one it's- I have the quote. I have the quote. The truth is I left to save everyone. My mother, my father, my brother. Everything I did was for family, for Mandelor. I built weapons, terrible weapons. But the empire used them on Mandelor, on friends, on family. people that I knew. They controlled us through fear. Mandelor, fear of weapons I helped create. I helped enslave my people. I wanted to stop it. I had to stop. I spoke out. I spoke out to save them, to save everyone. But when I did, my family didn't stand with me. They chose the empire.

They left me. Gave me no choice. The empire wanted to destroy worlds. And they did. They destroyed mine. None of this is really here Because I guess we've already dealt with it It was a series of bad decisions, okay? I call it the duchess for lulls I support Sabide now that she's just a liar She's just gonna get out of whatever conversation She can by finding an emotional truth

Even if it isn't the real one I love this for her I, you know, women are allowed to suck in me. But it is funny. From that excruciating, like, this is what happened to me. Tears in her eyes. Look, you ever kind of a bad die job? Like, that's kind of the...

I just... Everything I did was for family. Yeah, I really... Maybe we just was understood what this meant at the time. But the time we thought it meant the whole thing. thing was for family, but now we understand it was just leaving for family. Be like,

they're bad because they used the weapon I built against you. Why didn't her dad set her dad is like, yeah, she did that. That's the weapon my daughter built. Yep, that's the one. That's the one she made. Says Sabine all over it. Like, make

the case. Make the case now in front of all these people. They do hug. They do have a cheerful reunion which, Rob, as you've hit before on this story arc that, like, maybe it's okay that sometimes the, like, parent-child split doesn't have to be re-knit because, like, that's the natural state of all family relations and maybe it seems forced sometimes. But here we are. He was like, I didn't know. I didn't believe it when it was that you made it. And I'm glad you're home and gives her a big hug.

And that's about all we get from the family tensions. I don't know. For a show that, like, talks so much about family, I feel like we don't actually talk. We're not actually talking about family a lot of the time. We're talking about, like, these are my friends that I want to defend. These are my friends that I want to protect. Or, like, these are the people I surround myself with in a given moment. but in a circumstance in which your loyalty to your family is being called into question to the utmost extreme

and we have been told that the reason you were even you even found yourself in the situation to make this weapon was in order to protect was in order to protect your family in the first place, why are you framing it now as it was a challenge and I was arrogant? It just, to me, it's so unforgiving.

Like they just cannot, like, that's the thing. This is like, with Callis, they were like, look, him being a genocidal monster undue, undo. He's cool now. But they stuck to it. They had a story. They stuck to it and then moved on. With Sabine, they can't stick.

to a story they can't stick to a like a way they handle like what is her past and so yeah like it's a funny line it was a series of bad decisions okay it is a funny line i like i i enjoy the shit out of these episodes but but from the standpoint of hey just a few episodes ago she's like having her dark night of the soul with canaan talking about this exact incident and now we're finally like completing our picture of what happened here but now the story is shifted the entire like I designed this against my will, my talents were turned against me, against my people against the galaxy, that is now at the window and it's, I'm going to take ownership of this. Yeah, I thought it'd be cool if I did this. It was interesting. It was a

challenge. And you can resolve those two things, but if they're both true, you should have them both be true in this, in this sequence where like, yes, like I was being, I was being held hostage. I thought it was protecting my family. And also in my arrogance, I was fascinated by the challenge they, they, they, set before me. You could do that, but they just, they can never give, they can never give Sabine a consistent through line. And it remains like, it remains a character that they, they, they keep fumbling and can't, can't make, they make it very hard to invest in Sabine because what she's going to be is just dependent on whatever the plot of the week is. And that is just not a recipe

for character you're going to care a lot about because so much of the fun of watching a TV show is like seeing a moment hit and you like know what it's going to mean for that character. Let's it mean you have no idea what any moment is going to mean. You never know what she's going to do or she's going to say because it is entirely like she's going to move in the direction plot requires and that's it. I mean, case in point, quote, earlier drafts of the story had Bo Katan eager to use the weapon against the empire when faced with the choice, however, she ultimately opts to destroy it, proving herself worthy of leadership.

as the story evolved, that conflict was moved to Sabine's fiery temperament with Bokitan becoming the voice of reason. And it's like, oh, right, we could just have, we could have Sabine be the one who wants to kill the stormtroopers, or she could be the one who doesn't want us kill the stormtroopers. Either one kind of fits, because there's just so much blank canvas around who she is and what she believes in that it seems to map just fine. You know, like she, we've actually spent quite some time with her being like, we can't use these weapons. Even in the, this set of episodes and then like push come to shove. She's like, no, we have to use this weapon. And then she gets, she gets pushed back because of Boketan. I think it would have been much stronger

for her earlier to be like, I think we could turn this against the stormtroopers. And Bocatan at that point being like, I guess we could, but that's risky or something. And then doubling down with the opportunity. But instead, she kind of bounces between these perspectives. And I don't know, like you said, what, what Sabine is going to feel or say or act or respond in not the way where I'm like, I want it to not be surprising. But in a way where I'm like, well, what is the core of her character besides the hobby she has, the fact she doesn't like the empire, both of those things are cool, but like, then what?

What's that next step? You know? Yeah. And that's a real step is, how can she make her family accept her nerd Jedi boyfriend? At least if she, if she was the one who initially said that she wanted to use the weapon, at least that would present itself as a through line. with the arrogance of before. It's like, yes, I can take on another challenge.

Like, let me, let me fix the challenge of the past by taking on this new challenge now. At least there's like some. Or the other way, if Bocatan had been the one early on, I'd be like, can, we should use this against the stormtroopers. And she's like, no, we can't do that. I won't have my weapon used again, which is where she ends up. But like, there's a way to thread that through these episodes that would feel more natural and get us to a point where it's like, oh, there's.

This is why she uses paint bombs is because she actually doesn't love to kill people. And she'll do it if she has to. But maybe that's a weaker character. I don't know. I just, it feels, it feels so gormless in so many ways. And so, like, built in the air. Yeah, I don't know. I'm happy we got these episodes.

I think it was great to find out finally for sure what the situation was. And my real hope is it frees Sabine up to be a cool member of the crew who I'm fond of, like Zeb at this point. Because I don't, and I actually truly don't know if we get more Mandalorian episodes or more Sabine-focused episodes. I don't know what comes next for her. Again, I know that she was cast for Asoka. So I know that we'll get some more Sabine-focused storytelling before the time we're done with it all. Hell yeah. But I don't know when that will be.

They'll have years to think about it, though. Yeah. Which Sabine are we going to meet then? And that show takes place in the Mandalorian timeline is my understanding. So, yeah, who knows? Awesome. Love it. I think that that's true.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. All right. We will go through quickly the summer in the name of the rebellion because there's a lot we're going to be digging into from the start. Basically, the ghost crew now heads to Yavin 4. We are in the run-up to the Battle of Yavin. They get there and they are followed shortly after by Gold Squadron, led by Hara, having just gotten absolutely wrecked on a mission.

Their intel was bad. they're not fighting this war against the empire correctly and very quickly saw guerrera reaches out to drive this point home and rhetorically goes one on one with mon mabla saying that she's soft she's fighting the empire she doesn't understand the war she's in she's finding the empire with one hand tied behind everyone's back and she's like you're a war criminal we become like you we debase ourselves and that is sort of where things left are left uh you know You got Ezra kind of thinking, Saw made some good points. They go to shut down a big Imperial Communications relay, and their plan is to sabotage it, rather than just blast the shit out of it and kill everyone there.

That mission goes extremely poorly, and none other than Saw Guerrera has to rescue Sabine and Ezra from this mission gone wrong. But then he doesn't give them back. He's like, I need you for a quick thing, and he steals them. In the second half of the episode, they hop aboard a giant imperial freighter, the sort they rescued AP5 from, kind of, you know, a huge cargo vessel that's got lots of mysterious cargo aboard it. And Saul reveals he is on the trail of something the empire is doing. They're working on something. You can't quite, you can't quite figure it out. but aboard the ship they discovered a bunch of hostages who were all power engineers

who were I forget were they abducted from the from the planet of Jetta no the main one was from Corrasson he was running Corrason's power right so yeah right no it's the big crystal is from Jedda obviously right so they're searching they're searching around the ship there's there's death troopers on their on their tail but also aboard this ship is a giant Khyber crystal And here we run into sort of the, the tension, Ezra and Sabine want to rescue these hostages, and we've done a good job. We've learned key things about the empire. Saw's like, we need to hurt them.

We need to know what's really going on. I'm not actually sure there's a conflict. We'll get to that. Point is, point is they arrive at this transfer point. Saw thinks they're going to arrive like whatever the empire is up to. He basically thinks they're in up the Death Star construction site. He doesn't know it's the Death Star, but he thinks they're going. going there. They end up at a relay point. There's no further intel is going to gain from

this. But there's a starter store waiting for them and they got to get out there. So they overload the khyber crystal or he sort of goes rogue and overloads the khyber crystal. And everyone has to flee the ship. Saw is going to go to Jetta to figure out what's going on there. Keep that in mind for Rogue one. Little Rogue one, uh, aficionados will see the significance of Sa Greer going to Jetta. Meanwhile, the khyber crystal explosion wipes out the Star Destroyer, but not before.

Ezra Sabine and all their friends can make their escape and get picked up by the crew of the ghost. And they are so inspired by the model of rebellion, the respectable rebellion that Sabine and Ezra are a part of that they join. And

the rebellion is stronger for it. Yep. Yep. There we go. Uh, fun to have Mon and Saul dueling. Yes, that was the, that was the highlight of these two episodes for me, for sure. It was nice to see Yavin'Four. It was fun to come into what would become the definitive rebel base through Rogue One and a New Hope. Also, also, also, maybe the most important reveal.

Yep. Whoa. Whoa. Of, of, of, of the season. It's presented in such a nonchalant way. there's no big reveal he's just there he just saunters up

and it's almost like he looked directly at the camera at me and said you miss me I'm here yeah who is it we're talking about for the listener who somehow has not put this together

it's sexy callous sexy callus is here everybody he's growing in the rest of the beard he is like We have to emphasize the last time we saw callus, he was punished callous. This is the next, this is not the same callus. This is the next evolution. It is yassified callus.

He is yassified. He is looking good. He's got the like the, the, the TikTok hair, the middle part side swoop going. He looks great. He looks good. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a callous. I'm not, you know, I'm not. not like a callous girlie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way that I am. A Ciro Carn. Yeah. A Cereo Cone. What is the word? I don't know. Carnivore.

A carnivore. A carnivore. I ate that. Oh. I reject that. Good enough to eat. But he looks great. He has the bomber jacket on.

He uses his haircuts different. Allie. He looks like a justified character. Like he looks. He walks in with that jacket on it. I'm like, who are you? Where did you come from? This is what he always looked like when he didn't have to be in his uniform.

He was on the range. He was, you know, cutting wood. Yeah. What is what I'm doing out there? He has callous tans now. He's going to be in one of those Yellowstone prequels that's coming out. He's going to be in whatever, 1828 or whatever, you know, thing tight. God.

Yeah. Shout us to new callus. We've already talked a lot about callus. cannot believe her in the place where I'm happier to see Callas than I thought I would be I thought for sure I'd be You know

The real key of it is We've been made peace He's there they've moved on Yeah And we're just gonna have to deal with He's here now So he's here now And he's hot

And he's obviously You know he's got his Honor one You know We've of the Of the Lassat So it's all good It is funny

We don't really get any time with him There's no time spent. He comments, he's the one who lets us know that Saul will get information however he needs to, using whatever methods possible. Interesting that Callis would be the one to say that. I would, I just, I don't think Callis, Callis's pass is littered with, at least. I don't read him as being, I don't read him as being, I think he's just saying what's true about the situation more than judging. Do you? I do.

Well, my read on it was more of him being like, well, I mean, notably, here we have a show that seems to suggest that torture works, which is a classic you're writing military fiction thing to do because the whole situation here is, uh, Saw gave them intel, which was discarded and not, and not used, basically, uh, uh, Ma'amah takes, takes, um, offense to the fact that it was gained through torture. What she explicitly says is like, you know, uh, we. treat our prisoners well here, unlike Saul Guerrera. But what Callis is like, well, how did he get it or whatever? Calis says that he has no qualms about how he gets his

information. And then Ezra's like, well, he gets results. So yeah, maybe you're right. But I don't know that he's like, we would never do that. In some ways, it makes me wonder what the other conversations Callis has been in have been. Did he have to get read up on whatever torture protocol was in the alliance to restore the Republic. He shows up up with a palate full of car batteries. And he's like, oh, I'm sorry. I thought. You guys don't do this?

You guys don't do this here. Okay. I thought perhaps that's how you had one leg up on us. My bad, Senator. I'll return these to the motor pool. But this other guy saw, does it? I'm just taking notes on who does what around here.

You know? In this and I, he's like showing. He's got a little squid guy. That's right. He's, like, showing that he's, like, with, with the shits now. Like, he's like, yeah, and he has no qualms about how he accords it. Yeah. Just saying, some people don't have that. That's right.

Yeah. Oh, shout's to Bale, who shows up here. The whole crew is here, kind of. You know, Bail is here, Rex is here, Dadaana is here. Well, yeah, we get, we get them all. So, yeah. And then. And then, Ezra's like, what about Lothal?

Yeah, you forgot about that, didn't you? You forgot, you forgot about out of the mouths of babes. Actually, my first note is, damn, I thought Wedge, I thought Wedg Antilles was Martin Matten, Big L, which is a shame. Wedge, Wedge shows up at the very beginning of this, and Harrah has to beg it wasn't your fault, you did great. Wedge, a dedicated character who just did something really cool just off screen forever. And yeah, yeah, I did forget that, that,

as there is like, well, what about Lothal? Remember, we were going to go save Lothal at the end of last season? Can we go save Lothal? My people, we promised, we promised we were going to go help Lothal. Well, Lieutenant Commander Bridger. Which is wild. I did not realize he was Lieutenant Commander. Me, neither.

When she said that, I was like, all right. Okay, okay, okay. There's an opposite movement here, by the way, in these sets of episodes. There's a character who used to be an admiral who is now just a commander. for the empire, the guy who shows up when he first showed up. What's his name?

Brom. The cast of the interdictor. Brom. Brom. Brom Titus used to be an admiral and now he's just a commander. Oh, that's, I didn't catch that. That's fun.

I do like, though, like I actually like Mon taking the time because she doesn't have to, right? You could pull rank and be like, this is over your head, kid. But I actually do like her stopping. And it's like, okay, here's Lotho, right?

And it's like, desperately need help. They're suffering. I agree. It's horrible. Click second slide. Here's every planet that is currently experiencing the exact same thing. Yeah. Which one do I go help?

So, Ezra's point, I think, is really strong. I think that they do a lot of good point, counterpoint, where both things are points throughout this entire set of episodes. Because Ezra's point is, we promised Ryder our support. Not, he's not saying, hey, I want this thing. He's saying we made a commitment and now we're going back on that commitment to him that registers is different than, of course it would be great to go save Ryloth. Of course it would be good to go help Chandraela. But they're waiting.

They are waiting for, like they are there expecting that support is going to show up any day now and not off a prayer, like off of a promise that was made to them. by this rebel unit, by this, you know, by the Phoenix Squadron. There's a really great visual, actually, at this point, it's not even just Phoenix Squadron because the remnants of Phoenix Squadron have joined, and we are now the Alliance to Restore the Republic, which is the Rebel Alliance at this point, which is wild. But I think there's a really great visual mirroring that happens here, or almost like inversion that happens here.

We have Modmothma who says, who, I mean, in this kind of, conversation says that open hostilities haven't actually started yet, right? And as there's like, some people say we're already in open conflict. And part of the, when she says that she is being kind of lit by the galactic map that you were just talking about, Rob, all of the different occupied planets. And so she is small in front of this large hologram. And then in the next sequence, or like two, you know, the two sequences away, we get big hologram saw Guerrera with no planets around him. It's just his giant face looming over everybody. And it's like, oh, great little, you know, visualization of how the two are, if you're going to read it this, right,

I think this is what the intention is, that both are erring in one way or the other. Mon Mothma is airing towards stasis because she's overwhelmed by the size and scale of the conflict that surrounds her. Saul is rushing into things under-equipped, under-armed, because he sees himself as the center, this big, large figure, who can tell him. tackle it all, right? And who can make those decisions by himself. And I think that that's just like great visual storytelling. Love to play with size and scale and flip them in that way. And we get a great, like, we get a great argument from Saw and a great confrontation between him and Mon that I think we should probably break down in some detail here. I would love to play it for

with that. Yeah, it's going to tape. It opens with, before, before Saul even gets there, Ezra comes out to sit with with Canaan who is meditating. We get a real like, we get a real like in the Garden of Gistemone, like shot of Canaan out alone in the moonlight outside of. Are you still thinking this guy has like doomed? Between this and the. It's giving doomed. It's giving you're not making it out.

Yes. And between that and the conversations we've been talking about with Hera, It feels like we're framing some real long-term stakes for the dude, you know. All right. So they're sitting, they're praying, or they're not praying, they're meditating together. And Canaan realizes that something else is seemingly up. You can sense that there's more going on with Ezra. Something else?

When we were on geonosis with Sa, we didn't always agree with how he did things. But it seems like he's the only one who doesn't care about all the politics. He just fights. Ezra, it's not whether or not we fight. It's how we choose the fight that matters. I know, Canaan. Maybe we're choosing the wrong way. Here are the stakes.

And here comes a little joy. Members of the alliance to restore the republic. Saw. New Saul model. Your losses today stem from your leader's cowardice. cowardice. They're unwillingness to take decisive action against the Empire. All across the galaxy, your people suffer while the leaders of this rebellion refused to act. Should I shut it down? No. I want to speak to him. Madam Senator, I'm honored. What is your business here?

You ignored my warning about the Delindy Relay and paid the price. Now you have confirmation, Yet still, you refuse to destroy it. So long as our allies in the Senate have hope of a peaceful resolution to this conflict, I will not risk... If you continue to allow this war to be fought on the empire's terms, not yours, you are going to lose. I will not be lectured on military strategy by a man who has proven himself a criminal. The empire considers both of us criminals. At least I act like one. You target civilians!

Kill those who surrender, break every rule of engagement. If we degrade ourselves to the empire's level, what will we become? There she is! That's the leader of the rebellion needs. Where is that fire, that passion, when your people need it most? I hope, Senator, after you've lost, and the empire reigned over the galaxy, unopposed, you will find some comfort in the knowledge. that you've fought according to the rules that's enough what are you afraid of senator the truth

return to your duties whew damn damn i'm with saw yeah bro i am not with her i my mouth was stacking ls at this moment Yeah, the argument of as long as our allies in the Senate have hope for a peaceful resolution to this conflict, you had peace already. Peace is what we had when the boot was on our necks. We've decided that that peace was detrimental to good life. We took action. The shooting has started. Right.

You're doing the shooting. I mean, actually, maybe you're not. Because somebody didn't show up to Adelon, and it was you. We were doing the shooting. She's on a journey, maybe, you know? Maybe we'll get to where she needs to get to. But right now, she is not there. And I suspect that, you know, when it's all said and done, what Star Wars is trying to tell us is that there's an inversion and positionality here.

Mon is too reticent, Saul is too rash. And then by the end of it all, Mon gets to where she needs to be. But, whew, this hits so hard, especially, like, right now where his, his critique, like, the only thing that stirs her to passion is defending, like, tying that hand behind your back. Yes. With not going at your, like, clear existential enemy with everything you have. That is the thing that gets her fired up and is like, how dare you? No, we would never, we would never do that. And he started knowledge is...

What will we become is what she says, which is ironically, a line from Saw from Rogue One that didn't make Rogue One, it's only used in the, in the commercials. What will we become is one of the things that he says that doesn't make the final cut of that movie, but people saw in the ads, which is Gary Widow, who wrote this episode, he's like, I'm pulling that one out. It didn't make the final cut. I'm using it. I'm putting in someone, someone's saying it.

Yeah, it's good. It's good. I can't quite put it in Saw's mouth in Rogue One, though. Again, yeah, Squid Torture Monster thing. evil snuffel off, I guess. What will we become? Maybe it's a different, what we'll be come out of their brain.

Maybe it's like once the empire completely conquers us, what we'll become. If we stop fighting, what we'll become, who knows, right? I would love to see the other scripts of Rogue One,

which we know exists, right? Please, feel free to send them our way. I would love to know. But, yeah, I do, I do, I think you're right. You know, the fact that she spends, the thing she gets heated by is the idea that, that,

fighting the way saw fights would make them bad guys. That's the only thing that makes her raise her voice. This is the scene I meant before where I said she can hit that level. Forrest Whitaker can hit that level the whole time. Forrest Whitaker understands what it is to be in a Star Wars cartoon and is delivering on that shit. Yes. Look, this man cut his teeth on blood support. Like, there's not an assignment he does not understand.

That's right. So the French guy is going to do kicks a bunch and like, I'm a federal agent. supposed to take this super seriously. Yeah, you are. All right. I'll do it. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Um, yeah. The, the, the bit of the empire considers both criminals, at least I act like one. Who. He made some points. You know, uh, which is the point, right? He's supposed to be a great rhetorician here

so that later, Ezra can be like, yeah, he was talking facts, but I kind of didn't like seeing him work, right? Which, exactly. Well, but, but he's not wrong. I think this. There's also really good questions, like, which civilians, which people are surrendering? That's right. Like, Calus is like, Saw Guerreras, people killed my squad. Dude, we know the squads you were a part of, like, mowing down, like, Lassat people, like, right and left. Like, I just, I just don't care that much that they were, like, crossing the rest of your guys off after you sort of, like, laid down arms. And we certainly, and we've certainly, like, internalized the.

it is unfortunate that, like, if you blow up the ISB building or something, you're going to get a bunch of ISB agents and a whole bunch of maintenance people and people in the neighborhood, people have nothing to do with it. But the death start contract. The ISB building's got to go. This is the death start contractor conversation from clerks again where the guy shows up and is like, you know, if the mob hires a bunch of people to do their, to build their mansion and they get whacked while doing that, like they knew who was the mob.

They know who they're working for. You've got to take some of that responsibility on you, et cetera. Now, in this next episode, do we see that some people are forced into working with the empire? We do see that that does happen sometimes. But like World War II, you knew prisoners and slaves were being used in factories. You still bombed the factories. You still bomb the factories. And many of those people said, no, I won't do it.

You'll have to kill me. I'm not going to help you build bombs. I'm not going to help you build the Bescirator so that you could use them. my people said a lot of people you know we saw we saw our man do it on on low fall or at least trying sabotage that's right like those people are willing to die for it yep they're trying not to but like they would also understand if a Y wing flew over and blew that flew that with factory up I am truly shocked that they gave us this this is not a monologue but this scene with saw being so compelling after the Geocean egg kicking saw that we got I was

like his new he's he's got the Rogue One hair he was bald in our last set we but like now he's been back at base he's been letting it grow out a little bit picking it out and he still has his very bright green eyes I think that Forrest Whitaker does not have

and so by the time we get to Rogue One those eyes have gotten sallow and dark which means evil but here he still has the optimistic green eyes because that's out by now they could have given him brown eyes here And they didn't.

So like, it's a choice. Wait, is it? I don't think it is. This comes forward, isn't it? That's what I'm saying. He sells the green eyes. No, Rogue one's been out at this point. No, I don't think it has yet.

It has. It came out while we were, remember the last season? We talked about how Rogue one had just come out. It came on 2016. It came out in December of 2016. We're now well into 2017. Yeah, it was in the episodes that he was last in.

Oh, I'm sorry. I looked up Rebel's season date because I looked up this. I wanted to know this exact. question. And it said 2014, which is, I guess, when Revell started. Yes. Right. And I just read it. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. They've kept the character's eyes light. They started with blue when he's that completely different model in Clone Wars, which by the way, that guy, that that voice actor, the original Saw Guerrera voice actor, showed up in the last arc. I forgot to mention this. Um, uh, I believe that that was, um, what's his face? The, or maybe it's a different

guy in this arc. Maybe I'm getting this confused. I should actually check my notes instead of just checking the, uh, the wiki, sorry, the wukypedia. Um, but that original guy who voiced saw Guerrera, uh, did show up in one of these sets of episodes. So shout out to that guy. Shut up. It was Hark. It was the, it was the, it was the Mandalorian guy. It was Captain Hark. Oh, okay, okay. Is, is the, uh, is the guy, uh, Andrew Kishino, who played saw in the original Clone Wars episodes. Hell yeah. Welcome back. Yeah. So then they fucking go to, they decide, you know, at this point,

there's a little, not confusion here, but things are emotionally very clear and broad picture stakes I think are super clear in these episodes. But there is a little bit of stumbling over like, well, what is the particular ask Saul's making here? It seems like he's saying, you should go try to blow up this thing. You're not acting on my Intel, but they already just decided not to go blow it up, but to go sabotage the relay that he's told them about. And so the ghost team goes off to do that, to send Sabine and Ezra to go, what are they, they're disabling it? They're, they're, they're getting, aren't they getting a line in? Like they're patching in to be able to listen in, which that actually does in this, in the

scenario of destroy it or have access to it, it does seem like having access to it would be the more valuable get in this situation. Yeah. Which Hera kind of goes back and forth on after she, you know, you see this, this debate happening between Hera and Canaan later where Herod takes Canaan to the side and is like, you know, I want to be able to fight back. Like I think even she's kind of feeling it from Saw's speech and sees that, you know, there is this resentment. There is this anger.

There is this desire to punch back as hard as you've been punched. And Canaan says to her, you know, if we destroy the relay, the empire will just build another one. And like, I think that's actually such a compelling point. Like the empire just building another one somewhere else that you don't know, that you don't have access to, this, having the access to this relay is such a compelling justification for this mission and for not actually just punching back. Yeah, just destroying it. What it doesn't erase Saul's greater point is maybe they should have done that by now. See, they had that information.

They did a mission knowing it was there. and they got got and they lost people because they didn't preemptively go and tap into where the fleet stuff was, you know? That is such, if they had the intel, why are you not acting on the intel just out of principle that because of how the intel was obtained?

Great question. Or you just, you didn't trust it for that reason. You know that, if you know that Sahl gets results, though, if you know that like, even though, like, I don't think that's, I don't believe that. This is not me. I'm not a believing... Natalie is not pro-torture.

No, I am not, obviously. But if the truth of this show, or what they're trying to sell you on in this show is that we will not stoop to the levels that Saw will, even though the end product is so valuable and is something that we need so much, even that we will not compromise our ethical, you know, how we conduct war

in this situation. So it just seems like why would, why out of principle would you not take on this information? Well, now they're doing it. Now they are doing it.

So. Yeah. So there is, but there is something, okay, like, I think the reason they're doing it, but Mavma is so like like liberalism. text coded. Yes. She interprets military intelligence like an appeals court

would interpret an evidence chain. We can't use this for this military operation because it was obtained that this is a coerced confession. Right. We can't tell the soldiers going into this mission that they're set up and waiting for you because the evidence is tainted. Right. Fruit from the poison tree type shit.

And it's like, that's not, we're a war. war. And we are we are a rag tag revolutionary force that is fighting a guerrilla war because we're not armed. We're not convicting an imperial base on this evidence. We're trying to like send bombers against it. But it's not like if we use this coerced intelligence, we could send an innocent imperial fire based jail. That's just not as works. But if the goal is we're going to we're going to do a covert, you know, reconnaissance and surveillance and, you know, espionage hop against it. Okay, well, you just do that. You got the intel. Yeah, just go check it out. Yeah. And, you know, maybe then Saul does fuck it up because Saul then goes and blows it up by himself after

you've tapped it. And then guess what? You got one on him. You could be like, dude, we were tapping that. We were listening in. We're feeding you intel from that now. And now you fucked up. And then you get one over on him. You got to at least know how to play the game here, Ma. I missed the days when three Jedi could just go into a room Leave like 20 minutes later And yeah, is the guy acting a little hinky After they're done with him?

Sure But it doesn't look like he was tortured It was good enough for the Jedi I thought you were going to go the other way I missed the good old days Where three jihad I could just go into a room And decide to give Saul Guerrera Stinger missiles

That's the other thing that's so Juicy about all of this How did Saul Guerrera get this way Well He was right on to be a republic asset. He's, you know, join the crew.

Bin Laden, Hussein, and just one more guy that the power at the center of the world gave weapons to. And now we don't like him anymore, you know? But it's, it's, I mean, also I should say, we don't have to watch the Faloni zone, but all the song content was about

this stuff, which was like, oh, his life could have gone a different way, but his sister died. everybody, you know, is caught. So what you just poisoned? Basically. Yeah, that, like, oh, he's falling to the darkness. There's, everybody comes across dark and light side.

We can watch it if you want to, but it's kind of, it's just this. And it's just Faloni ending the little segment being like, you know, like everybody has to make choices about whether they're dark, you know, giving it into the dark or, you know, accepting the light. And that changes how we move through the galaxy. And it's like, okay, like I, there is no brain genius, Saul Guerrero was right. position being publicly espoused by Dave Filoni. Dave is very much in the Saul Guerrera's arc as one of falling into darkness because of trauma, right?

What I think is maybe more complex is actually Gary Witt is handling of that framing here in the first episode. And then the second episode is not written by Gary. It's written by, uh, uh, do, do, da, do, uh, make sure I get these right. Um, by Matt Minchavits, uh, who, both of whom have written a bunch of episodes for us before. Sergio Paz, or Pais, and Bosco-Ing did the direction on it again. At this point, they were working people who've done, like, a lot of episodes. Gary, I guess less so, but the rest of this crew has been, has done a bunch of stuff. So, yeah.

And off they go. Time to skydive Mission Impossible style onto a big radar dish from orbit. I need someone to at me on Blue. sky. Somebody that knows how to make a GIF out of a Disney show. I don't know how to do that. Of Chopper

like doing flips in the air. It's like it's like a second and a half long bit. But there's something about chopper against the clear blue sky. You heard about that wide, that wide shot is they're falling? Yeah. The wide shot as like

immediately after he jumps out, he just are, like, tumbling forward in the air, like, slowly. It's, like, it's almost, like, surreal. See? I don't know. It adds such a profound effect on me that this is my humble request. This is sort of gorgeous, all of those shots of the base, you know, amid the clouds and these sort of tall, um, pillar-like mountains that you can find places in China.

This kind of like, these, like, they're like stacked really high mesas, basically, thin, tall mountains. It looks gorgeous. It looks so good. They've gotten really good with vistas and these sorts of landscapes and stuff in the show. It really brings to life what would otherwise be a really straightforward. This is not the Mandalorian, whatever that last arc was called, the Mandalorian, the Heroes of Mandelor, where there's like high, high, you know, high dynamism choreography with jet packs. You have jet packs in here. Really is a pretty straightforward action segment, but the visuals just are really striking because of color and composition. Well, and it's good comedy beats. So they land on the dish and they do just enough to rouse the

suspicions of the incoming fleet. And Ezra's like, Sabine, let me cook. I got this. I wanted to believe he roll. He's going to roll for his deception check. And he actually does an okay job sounding like an imperial officer like you're early for your check-in. And he's like who is this? What's your name? And he's like, ah, Commander Brom and

the captain of the imperial squad of the imperial ship is Brom. And he knows Ezra from before, from that station where they're decommissioning the white wings that Honda left him

to die on. And so now the entire base is alert, and they start wobbling the dish back and forth. And so this entire, like, fight sequence is everyone is just, like, sliding around the inside of this dish. It's a lot of fun. It's good times. Yeah, it was a fun fight. Yeah, I'm a fan. I think that it works pretty well.

And it's fun to see Chopper be in a little goofball again. We haven't, you know, we're in the season now. Even if it's another two-parter, two-parters back-to-back, we still get the sort of high-jinks mode action here after the high-cinema, high-action cinema stuff last time, you know? And it's fun to see this guy get owned. Bron, whoever. Yeah, he gets, he gets severely owned.

He's out. He's out. He's got to be out for the show. The size of those bombs that Saw shows up And he's like the jolly green giant He's just like shoving these things out the size just And you get a small non-nuclear device And you get it's incredible

Yeah also that ship is cool It's a U-wing I guess I think maybe he had it in Rogue One I love the design of this thing Or maybe it was just in- I love seeing the wings move Yeah Yeah, it is a UT60D U-Wing Starfighter. But it's like slash troop transport, I guess, support craft.

It's great. In fact, maybe it was, maybe that's what they're in on the way to Scariff, actually, at the end of Rogue One. That might be what they have. Or maybe it's another. Yeah, no, because they do take a ship from South Fleet, I think, to make their skate. Yeah, really cool design. Free Twitter, free Twitter account. wing McGregor that's free for anyone who wants it great I love that I love that

that's good yeah oh should I get this Lego Star Wars a you wing who's in this who what little mini-fix getting here oh who's piloting the U-wing did you see oh the homie no no no no in the in the show in rebels it's it's the guy from oh tubes two tubes is here yeah Two tubes. From Andor. And I guess from Rogue One, but I don't remember him there. But I do remember him in Andor.

So. Wait. Oh, yeah. The one that Luf-in, the one that saw is like, wait, you have someone inside my organization. Who is betraying me? Tubes. It's true. It's like, what the fuck?

Yeah. But Tubes is a real one. There's no way it was tubes. Wait, was he in Rogue One or did I just like collapse my brain? No, I think he's in. I think he's in all of the, anything that that era of saying. Oh, yeah, he is in Rogue One Starvo. Yeah, I think that's kind of it for him.

Maybe he gets out, maybe he gets away. Who could say? Wait, he has an egg mate. He's a wak, sorry what. He's got a what? His, his, he has, his brother. His brother is, is his eggmate. In, in Tognath culture, I'm on,

On, we'll keep reading. No, I have heard this. In Togneath culture, eggmates were individuals who shared a special bond due to their unhatched eggs grafting together while being nurtured in suspension jelly. It's like having a twin or something. Yeah, it's like being twins, but eggs. This is from Star Wars 2015 number 39, the comic book, written by Kieran Gillen and illustrated by Salvador LaRaca, cool cover featuring two tubes. Wow, that cover is so sick. I love this.

It's been good, man. Once the site of great significance to the Jedi, Jedda was left in ruins when the Death Star annihilated the Holy City there. Now, series writer Kieran Gillen joins artist Salvador La Roca, or LaRaca, to bring Luke Leah Hahn and the rest of the remains of the tragic victim to the remains of the tragic victim of the Empire's fury. Like Luke and Leia go here to be like, hey, what's going on over there?

What happened? And I guess they find out about Two Tubes. Wow. Cool. Wow. Love him. Yeah, Two Tubes is flying the cool ship. And they go to intercept this thing. You know, they're on board and

the ghost shows up to save everybody. But like, they're already on board. Saw's U-wing. after the big satellite dish, the relay blows up along with Brom's cruiser, interdictor, or whatever it is. And Harrah's like, all right, come dock with us so we can get Sabine and Ezra back. And Saul's like, no, I'm going to show them what a cool guy does.

Field trip. You know, blasts away to go bring them to that transport. You mentioned, Rob. Yes And they are going to see what a cool guy They're going to get a lot done on this mission I think the The only thing

And this is the problem They hinge a lot of this on like Saw as an extremist He doesn't understand how military intelligence works It's like no he's basically put like 90% of the pieces Like he's on a train He barely needs Jin Erso to show up with Galen's And he's like he's about to just find the death star

Have they been... I guess at this point she's not with him anymore but remember she was raised by him? Where's the Jin Erso? They banned her a long time ago. Yeah, but where's the Jin Arso and Saw Guerrera

killing Imperial's story? Uh, that would be so... That would be really cool if we got like a moment if Jin was here and Jin's like no, this is this is this... Like somebody that's like around Ezra's age

that's in in Saw's crew that could be like I've been living this life for you know however many years yeah yeah and and like

this is how you get results she's just already gone off to she's left they've already split in the way that however they split in Rogue 1 they talk about I think the implication is he just abandons her because like things get a little too hot and he's like

he's like worried that she can't hang is that what it is no I think it's literally that like the rebel group has to escape And it's just like, got a lever. Right, right. Yeah, not the best. It's, look, it is hard to be like sort of a stepdad, a surrogate parent when you're also leading extremist rebel cell against the, you know, greatest tyranny of the galaxy has ever known.

It's just difficult to balance those, balance those roles. Be a good season of TV, though. It would be. watch that. But yeah, he's on here. There are lots of opportunities for him to be the big extremist. He could have, for instance, said, we should execute these imperial scientists, even though they're civilians. But he doesn't do that. He could say, you know, he eventually, like, kind of doesn't give them a great chance of escaping. But he only gives them as much, a much chance to escape as he gives, as written Sabine, technically. He just kind of says,

all right, you guys go do that. That's not my thing. But I'm not killing them on purpose, you know. They could have done that with him, but they didn't do that with him. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it almost, like, it almost, to me, read as poking a bit of a hole in Monmothma's accusations against Saw of, like, he kills civilians. Well, here he is with a group of civilians. He's not killing them, but he's not, you know, going out of his way. to ensure their safety.

Right. And that's the, it's the, like, the rebels, like, well, the good guys do good deeds. And it's, uh, sometimes it's like, hey, I'm happy a guy you got you guys out of Imperial lockup. Yeah. Godspeed. Good luck on whatever your next adventure is. We're going to continue. We got some stormtroopers to kill.

And if we, you know, if we had a stormtrooper blasting weapon. Yeah. That could be real easy, but it's not because they don't have such weapon. Yeah. I think the thing they're trying to, the thing they're trying to do is he can't see that they could be useful in a non-interrogated, what are you doing here away? You could bring them over to your side. And of course, that's what Ezra and Sabine end up doing.

But, like, he's totally good with them getting on the escape pods and getting the fuck out of there. And that would have been fine, you know? It might not have been fine for them long term. They might have gotten then picked back up by the Imperial Cruiser that shows up. Though that blows up, too, actually. So, no, they would have been fine. He knocks out two big imperial ships in this arc

You know So death results Yeah Though again I think the argument And I'm I should say I am a saw girlie I am all I'm a Saw Guerrera guy

Big time But so I'm trying to I'm trying to talk through What the show seems to be doing More than like Where does my heart lie Because my heart lies a Sa Guerrera But I do think that they're

That they're doing Saw Guerrera As someone who can get win after win after win but never take down the big machine because what he does is blow up the relay instead of listen into it what he does it which well i'll talk about how this is a conflict in the second but uh he he blows up the khyber crystal but they're just going to send another khyber crystal they're just going to dig up another khyber crystal from ilium and ilyum ilium is that mass effect is that mass effect or i always get these confused ilium and illos is illos mass effect speaking of

mass effect speaking of mass effect guess who's here jennifer hale shows up yeah as the Death Trooper or the dark trooper or whatever. Yeah. But he's going to get the little win. But the empire so vast that they're just going to keep doing it. That's what they're kind of playing at. Also, guess who's here? Bastila.

Yeah, that's Jennifer Hale. That's Jennifer Hale, too. Yeah. Bastel Shah's here. I just think it's a sign. Oh, my God. I would love to go to culture, too. who

but I am missing we look to God we get on our knees and we look to God and we say give us a sign and then and then here comes

and then when the boat comes we say not for me and you say who sent the boat I'm conflating do we say give us a sign

or do we say we'd love to be done with rebels before and or that is what we said that is what we said that was a different sign Gander coming out gave us another sign

Getting mixed signals from the universe here It's the summer of Cotor It has a nice ring to it doesn't it? The summer of Cotor I do love summer projects Summer of Cotor too Good for thought Anyway, sorry to distract

Yes So we are on the We are on the ship But we're leaving the civilians behind. And throughout, as soon as Ezra gets on the ship, he hears a strange, chiming, singing, musical sound. Yeah. Which is calling him, he feels drawn towards it. He knows.

And Saw is convinced that there must be something else on the ship. It cannot be that just these civilians. are, you know, what the ship has to offer. It has to be, there has to be something else. There's no reason why there'd be this much security just for a group of civilians, which, even though these are, you know, seemingly highly valuable civilians

who would be great engineers on a Death Star project, um, um, he's convinced there's something else going on. So they, they follow this, this, singing, chiming, sing-song right into Jennifer Hale who is protecting the giant

chiber crystal. It's fun. It's like frozen in a big thing of carbonite, like a big block of carbonite that melts away when it gets caught with a few shots and it was revealed. It looks just like the one we saw on Utapau. And Ezra mentions that they found another one. They stopped the transport of another one of these. And I don't remember when that Was.

Does anybody remember when we saw the big Khyber Crystal, what episode that had been before? Ooh. I think it was like season one, maybe. Because it's been a minute, but he says, like, just like the one, we stopped. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a, I think that was a really early, I think that was pretty early on, but I can't remember. Yeah.

Oh, I found it. funny to me that they just keep getting these things. I know. It really is. Another one to dig up. Yeah. It was the one where Ezra goes undercover into the Academy. Ah, right, right. So somewhere in there is where that big

hypercrystal first showed up. I think that they again used it as a bomb in that episode, maybe. It like blows up at the end. Very funny to think about Ezra's Imperial Academy experience in contrast to the one we've imagined now from Sabine I wasn't designing no bombs

that obviously he couldn't do it he wasn't that super special They were doing American gladiator drove with kids like she was going he was at the dumb ass like Imperial Academy like his

his two like teachers were like clearly the dipshits of the Imperial Occupation course Wow Do you remember the Imperial Dipschits in season one? We had so many. It was like scump and grumb or something like that. Like it was just good.

They were great until, yeah, until they were sort of rift out of, out of a surface. But yeah, no, his, it's like, let's make kids do, like, combat American Gladiator battles and climb out of pits and fight each other. And meanwhile, it's like, I don't know, do you incinerate someone wearing Best Car? Let's figure it out. Also, we've never circled back to, remember you made that little friend in the Imperial Academy? It's like, I didn't know what happened to my sister. Wow, it's been so fucking long. Good luck, man.

I hope you found her. Can anybody even get close potentially to what the name of that character was? Does anybody remember what his little friend was called? It started with an S. It started with an S is what we're hearing. It's close. It's an S, but it's a letter similar to us. Z?

Z. Z. Z. Zeebo? Zer. It's not Zeebo. Zeeb. It's not Zab.

Zer. Zer Leonez. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't really gotten him again, huh? We really thought they were setting them up with his sister and the Inquisitor and all that other stuff. Remember that? it'd be so funny if like well the shoot they recruited for the inquisitor program but then like all the inquisers got killed and they just closed down the program and vader probably just choked her out like just well no more no we don't need inquisitors this isn't really working click so funny is there a comic about him or something um i don't know let's keep watching let's see i think the answer is no i think it's not going to come up Wait, who is this?

When he was in the academy, when he was undercover as a little imperial Hitler youth. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. He met a friend. Remember they had to do like a version of the cube that Obi-Wan-O-O-N-O-B went through, but like children, child size? What was the Leobis? Leonis, L-E-O-N-I-S.

L-E-O-N-I-S. And I remember he's like, well, I have to do this because my sister was taking. taken away by the inquisitors or whatever. And we were like, ooh, is she going to become an inquisitor? Are we going to reveal later that his sister was one of the other is like a different inco? Dara. No. I don't know.

We never see. This is, we're done with Zaire. And I don't, I can't tell you about, about his sister. Yeah, Dara. I think Dara is a person. Is Dara a person? In something. Maybe we should stop looking at this.

No, we shouldn't. There's a junior novel called Servants of the Empire, The Secret Academy, which would have been out way before where we are now. I think it's a middle grade book. That's where we get more Zaire Leonis.

Oh, okay, okay. Okay, I was like, I hope I'm not uncovering, like, the main season four. Jedi secrets revealed. I miss Jedi. Secret Reveal and I miss, what was the one I just sent you all the other day? Powerful pairs.

Who will fall from, from, God, I miss who will fall. We need to know who will fall. We learned who will fall. We learned who fell. There are a bunch of people on here who fell. I know everybody on here is falling. Austin's version of just a picture of Canaan meditating in the garden. And it's just like band dual odds over its head.

Oh, no. Wow, everyone did fall. The four-character parlay about the fates of rebels' characters cursed. If the show was on today, Vegas would take that bet from you. Absolutely. They free the people, the people try to escape, and then it looks like, oh, no, we can't escape. And then Rob a thing you gestured out. The big conflict that comes up here is Saul wants to see where they're taking.

taking the khyber crystal because he's like, I'm smelling a big problem. I'm smelling that he doesn't say smelling. I don't know why I'm introducing smell-based intuition to saw. But he's like, I think there's something bigger going on here. They're not just, they don't just have a big cyber crystal. You said that this could be used as a weapon. We have to see where it's being brought because that could be important intelligence. But it gets brought to the emptiness of space because it's really just being handed off because the empire actually has decent opsec. and a different ship is going to come meet it. And instead, he's like, well, fuck it.

We didn't learn anything. Time to blow the thing up. We should note, in the middle of here, he does stun Sabine and Ezra. He does knock them out with the stun blaster. I think similarly to how Champs and Dula did back on that episode where they're stealing the carrier. So it's not even particularly novel inter-rebellion betrayal, you know?

I really want a saw and cham on screen moment. I want them to talk. And like I kind of don't want, I want them to be like akin in style, but somehow not like each other anyway. You know, I want them to have that sort of relationship. But he's like, all right,

I guess there's nothing here for us. Shit, I'm going to blow this thing up. He uses the lightsaber. He has stolen Ezra's lightsaber and stabs it into the khyber crystal and it starts to glow and it zaps some storm troopers, which we've seen do back on Oudapau, and

they're like, you've got to help let us save these people. And he's like, all right, cool. Fine. Yeah. The conflict with Tear doesn't really work super well, because they like Saul too much, which I also do. So they can't quite super bad guy

mode him, you know? Yeah. And he's like, all right, I'm out of here. And, and, you know, saw in a sort of weird grinning farewell is like I guess I guess what one of them says uh I guess yeah Ezra says you fight your war we'll fight ours and saw says farewell friend I hope we meet again just totally not in the same place and like for Saul it's like it's not that serious you know what we have different ways of doing this that's cool all right and these are kids

These are kids. Yeah. He took the kids on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a weekend trip and was like, and he, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fine. It's, like, mom's going to be here soon. New uncle? New uncle just dropped? Definitely.

Wow. New uncle just dropped because I didn't look until you told me until you said dropping you off at the gas station, which is a huge, weird uncle move to do. why are you mad he was at the gas station they were fine I gave money for the slurpy he yeah we're at the gas station no no no he just he dropped

he dropped us off here well no you can't talk to him he left he's yeah it's cool though we had a really good time he's really cool but yeah when do you think he'll pick us up he gave us each guns and said hold piece

so I guess we're safe yeah you can just come pick us up so you need to go pick up his girlfriend from the club and we couldn't go there so i think some of it is you're just not going to get the oh saw as trouble from a show like rebels is the like we might get it in and or we might see a much clear like this is one of the mom i don't understand why though rob because in the last episode people were getting disintegrated from the best grader and he was kicking that Ginocean egg

seven episodes ago I want to choke you laugh I hate your ass I hope you're the last one and I get to kill you like that's what the saw was we got a more unhinged saw 12 episodes ago or whatever

this one's like And he was bald and now he and he looked good And now he's got, he's, he's like, you know, he's in the more free, like, but, but this is what I mean. Yes. They think that they're making him look more eccentric, but the old one looked like more militarized and more like hard-line. You're right.

Exactly. Yeah. That's what I meant by he was bald. um yeah you're right like because i think the the irredeval thing that sol would do is like if there's a way it's like blow up empire or save hostages these two things are intention and he's like fuck it or right even darker use hostages to blow up empire we could use like i'm putting a bomb on yeah we could use him and saw we gave them right right we let them have the shuttle, but it looks like the empires picked them up anyway. And saws like, yeah,

I thought that might happen. And then like nails the detonator and the entire starship goes up. And then you'd have the like, saw, what did you do? We promised me to help those people. And it's like, but you didn't. We couldn't. We couldn't say. We couldn't do it. And maybe we're going to get that saw episode later this season. Who knows. But right now we got cool. Cause he still got two. His legs are still there. That's right. And he is not using a breathing apparatus. And I thought maybe we were going to get the breathing apparatus thing with the khyber gas, just like through the whole, after he breaches the crystal. I thought we were going to get that. Oh, that would have been interesting if that would give him.

Maybe it, like, scarred the shit out of his lungs or something, but no, it was all good. So the mystery of like how saw it now in the space of like a few weeks is going to go from this guy to evil snuffelophagus guy with a problem. aesthetic leg and the devil CPAT machine how he's going to get into that position

I don't know yeah you're yeah hmm everybody will find out and or season

two yeah maybe we'll see I don't think this is the last of saw for this season maybe we'll find

just like ripping fat clouds that wasn't actually like a respiratory aid it was it was just Saga got in the vaping. Good for him, you know?

It's stressful. Yeah, I will just simply say I would love to see Saga Rara more this season. I think he made a great... Because I think the other thing is they've really... The thing that they've really done here is, like, it's going back to that exchange with with Mammotha, where she's like, as long as there's hope and the Senate and all this stuff. And Ezra has this concern, like, what if we're about to lose a war that the... The rebellion, half the rebellion doesn't believe they're all, the, the, the started.

Yeah. Which is, it turns out the state of play. It is. Like, this actually makes it look like Tarkin is much closer to pulling this thing off because the rebellion hasn't fully figured out, oh, this is a fight to the death. Like, this is, it's go time. Like, we've all got to try and take this thing down. It's killer be killed.

Instead, they're like, maybe if it raised enough ruckus, we can win concessions and, like, sort of break the tyranny the empire and hit a settlement. and like literally just like out of frame they're about to roll out the Death Star and just start knocking off planets that like try to throw off the Imperial Yoke and that's it. That's the, that would be the that would be the end of the rebellion.

And Saw has almost figured it out. Totally. And the mom has no idea. That is kind of where the episode ends, right? Which is that they get the scientists escape, they get onto the ghost, et cetera. And then we get this sort of final confrontation, not confrontation, we get this final conversation between Canaan, Hara, Sabine, and then Ezra enters, where they're like, oh, they have this chiber crystal, what are they doing with it?

This is the second one. This is Canaan says this is the second one that we stop the empire to get their hands on it. Sabine is like, they're probably trying to weaponize it somehow, a thing she would know about. Canaan's like, I don't know. That's pretty big. It seems kind of at that scale, it'd be hard to weaponize wrong. And then Ezra comes out and says, what if Saul's right in the empire? is already on the verge of winning a war most of the Rebel Alliance doesn't believe has already

begun. And everyone just kind of looks at him because they know that's the truth of the situation. And we don't get another, no one rejoins that and says like, that means we got to do a really good job, Ezra. But just gets to hang, which is really fun. And I like that quite a bit. I have a question about Star Wars. No. This episode and the previous arc really zero in all. hope. Now, I'm not saying hope is not a key, important thing from the jump. Obviously, the movie Star Wars gets renamed Episode 4, New Hope, a few years after it comes out. Obviously, the movie effectively starts with the recording of Princess Leia saying, help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope. She says right before the big Death Star Run mission,

or maybe it's after, maybe it's before that, I don't quite remember, maybe it's, while there It's while they're in the Death Star. The R2 unit has the plans for the Death Star, and using them is, it's, are there only hope? That's the amount of hope that shows up in a new hope. But it feels different in character when it shows up here. It feels much more in line with the sort of, what were the phrases we learned on the Galactic Star Cruiser?

The kind of resistance phraseology. Light the spark. Ignite the fire or something. Light the spark. Ignite the fire? Does it not ignite? It might be ignite. I tried to find, I tried to find what this was, and it took away.

It was a website about. Ignite the spark. Is that what it was? Ignite the spark? And what's the second part? Remember there's two things. Yeah. You say, and then you say light the fire.

Light the fire. Okay. And all of the conversation there was like so built around and throughout the secret. is so hope-based in this kind of vague amorphous, not a particular thing, hope. We need hope. The Mandalorians have to rebuild now around hope. The conversation here is about hope, about how the rebels need to have hope. And it's like, I think we are injecting something into Star Wars that we can kind of grasp onto. that is ambiguous but legible is good in a way that the force is ambiguous, but legible is good,

but it's actually not legible. The force is so amorphous and strange and spiritual and exotic and hard to pin down because sometimes the force leads you to Anakin Skywalker, and sometimes it leads you to Luke Skywalker, and sometimes it leads you Anakin back around. But it's not hope, really. Luke doesn't say, I hope I can save my father. He says, I believe I can save my father. And here we have a show in an era of Star Wars, it's 2016, 2017, in the midst of the sequels, that it's turning to this really ambiguous hope, a phrase that I can't, as a millennial died in the fucking rule, associate with anything more than the Barack Obama campaign permanently etched in, which opens a whole new era of Democrat messaging.

and a way that they started talking about political belief and political ideology, which was this amorphous, ambiguous but good idea that what we need right now is hope, hope for the future, not particular policy plans. And that's not what, you know, maybe we have some of those, but that's not the messaging. The messaging is hope. The messaging is change, but not particular change. And I think it's really interesting to see that come up here in the middle of Star Wars reconfiguring itself around that sort of message in the middle of the sequel trilogy.

And then, especially having it in a SAW episode, where SAW is like, no, we're going to blow stuff up. And I think part of the reason Saul resonates so much with me is he is not, he is not, you know, hopes and prayers. He is, we're going to blow up the station. And maybe it would be better to hack into it and get the intel. But it's just that that character does not fall into that sort of kind of, kind of, insipid messaging around what our goals should be. And the thing about it is, is that I don't think Empire, I don't think Star Wars, I don't think Empire,

and I don't think Return of the Jedi ever hits that note as strong as the sequels do. You know, the word hope gets used at those movies. We obviously, again, Leah, it's your, our only hope, it's important. But hope isn't configured as the center of political ideology the way it is in the sequels. And I think that that's an important. important distinction. And obviously that those movies just aren't in, they're not speaking as

openly, politically as something like Andor, you know, but it is something I'm thinking about, especially as we head into Andor season two is like, where does hope fit into this? What are all of these, what are all of the conversations that get had around what the rebels actually believe in, what the worlds they want to build are? It's why I'm excited for more Mon Mothma and Morseller. I really want them, we had that great scene in this episode. I really want, they've stolen a lot from rebels. A lot of rebel stuff has been dipped into. Please give us a Sagar-A-Ramon-Mothmas scene and or season two.

Please. Please, please, please. It'd be so good. Yeah. I was about to go look to see how often does hope get used in the scripts from and or season one. And then I remembered, the scripts aren't available. Did you all see this?

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. They're not going to be releasing them to avoid any possibility of AI being trained on the season two scripts. Yeah. He says in the end it would be about 1,500 pages that came directly off this desk. I mean, terribly sadly, it's just too much of an x-ray and too easily absorbed. Why help the fucking robots any more than you can? So it was an ego thing. It was a vanity that makes you want to do it. And the downside is really. so vanity loses. He wanted to, the vanity being, it would have been nice to release it to begin with.

But, yeah, and obviously people have done transcripts of the, but that's not the same thing as a shooting script. But the guild makes those, people get those out of the Writers Guild,

though. Like, you can, like, I think you file scripts with the guild. He's, they put it together and they've chosen

not to release it. Like, they put together the script package and they were going to release it. So, which is interesting. Does that mean season one is out? They're not releasing season two or?

No, this is about that first season of them. So again, people have done transcripts where you, where you get so much out of, like, I've got copies of, um, the Michael Clayton and the proof of life scripts. Yep.

And I think a couple other Gilroy movies. And, uh, you get a lot out of like what's in the scripts versus, uh, like what ends up on film. Um, yeah,

it's, that sucks. You know, this is the world we live in and where that decision has. to get made based on what, and I'm curious how much of it is his decision versus someone else's, you know, but this is. He certainly sounds like he stands by it.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it sucks because there's a lot of utility that comes from transcripts, accessibility, you know, searchability reference, but also the way that any sort of text record now of anything it can just be sort of hijacked and ripped really sucks. But yeah, no, I think like, Rogue One ends on,

like, I think it ends on hope, right? Sure does. What do we ball a scaeriff? What do we, what do we see? That is it. It's hope. Yep. And it's like, well, no, they're the death star plans.

And I think that's part of it too is, yeah, it gives you hope and what a hopeless situation, but really to an extent, like, especially with their open rebellion, we're past hope. We're past this notion of people just, need to see like the the thing keeping tyranny in place is that people can't can't hope or imagine anything better and that isn't that is not it that is not the that is not the obstacle but it is a

very easy like most radical action you do just make people hope and it's like I don't know I think blowing up a stormtrooper barracks and probably I think that would make people feel good yeah yeah that is the final line of Rogue One is Leah getting the plans in hand as they escape Vader's grip and she looks down and like, you know, what did we get? And she says, hope, which is just so cloying to me. I don't know. Hope to kill one million Imperials aboard their fucking battle station. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. And I will say, Leah is the character who should say that. You know, I think that that is, that's who says it to begin with. I get it. Um, yeah, I don't know. My last thought about

this episode, thinking about Mon Mothma, I'm so curious from this presentation and then thinking about Antar Season 2, how much of, you know, a lot of people say we're not allowed to torture people, and then they torture people, right? Barack Obama absolutely went to, you know, campaigned on closing down Guantanamo Bay and then didn't close down Guantanamo Bay. I'm very curious if we get a Mon Mothma who says, we have to fight, we have to, we have to take the high road with the empire, and then privately knows they are not taking the high road, but has just made a rhetorical decision, a propagandistic decision, to present as we are the moral alliance, we are here to win. And I'm very curious if Gilroy and Co. get into that in

end or season two, or if she does remain this sort of, you know, true believer in fighting the right way, you know. I think that's a really fun character. stake for her. It's good because it's also, I think, very true to, revolutionary movements often need like a semi-politically legitimate front and then a militant front. And the two things need to operate frequently with plausible deniability that they're enmeshed with one another.

But like, it sure helps to have a Sinn Féin and an IRA. That is, you know, that those are sort of, those are tracks that need to be pursued. And, you know, it can wax her way in which one is more important, but that is frequently a strategy that has to be adopted. The other thing that comes up is often one side might end up having to purge out the other when the moment when the moment comes to transition to like that now we hold power and how are we going to sort of stabilize the situation.

And then you see lives come out with, you know, among friends. Right. If the empire didn't blow up, uh, saws base on Jetta, maybe the rebellion would have. Yep. pretty much well with that that cheery thought we reached the end of another episode

of a more civilized age our show is produced by Cato Contreras and supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized and next time we will be I don't look up what our next four episodes episodes 5, 6, 7 and 8 of this season

The Occupation Flight of the Defender Kindred and Crawler Commanders And I gotta tell you There's someone we've met in one of these episodes, at least, from the thumbnails, who I recognize. Someone we've met in a book we've read recently. Recently.

Roller commanders. It's not that one. I don't know who those people are. Actually, I do recognize that one guy from earlier in this show. I'm excited about that guy. Well, I can, crawlers makes me think of walkers, which makes me hope for more old clones doing shit-kicking old clone things. Bring them back. I miss my uncles.

Let's go get Jupas. More uncles. Yeah. Yeah. We just be all, us and all our unks. Just hanging out around the Jupa.

Just roasting big all hunks of it. I'm ready. Swapping Jupa stories. I once called Jupa this big. Sounds good. Yeah. Well, dream of that.

Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, saw innocent, basically, I think is where we're at.