A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 133: Return of the Jedi (4k83) Pt. 2

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

We come at last to the grand finale of the original Star Wars trilogy, and it, too, is haunted by the past. Once again, in space, a one time scoundrel must trust his gut and swoop down to the pits of a cataclysmic, moon-sized weapon to save the day. Once again, aboard that station, a Jedi must come to the realization that striking down his opponent is not the path to real power. And once again, on a small world below, a rag-tag group Rebels from across the galaxy can do nothing but watch and hope as... wait, sorry, I'm taking another look. What are those little furry guys. They didn't have those at Yavin, I'll tell you that much. Seems like a group of difference makers if I've ever met one. Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! NEXT TIME: Marvel Comic's Darth Vader (2015) Issues 1-6 Show Notes The Vader Yule Log   'Weesa Free' Moment   Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Michael Hermes Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakini, joined by Ali Akampora, 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 our Q&A episodes and other special editions. So last time we did this, we didn't quite get through everything we outlined. Let's just pick up where he left off. When last we met, our heroes were heading to Endor, full of foreboding about how this attack could go wrong for them. The bad vibes

intensify immediately as they take their stolen shuttle, immediately run into Darth Vader's flagship, the executor, or the executor. Vader is immediately suspicious and reaches out to the shuttle with the force, making Luke realize how badly his presence has compromised the mission, but perhaps it is also compromised Vader's

as the Sith Lord instructs his admiral to let the vessel land. As we covered last time, the emperor tells him to bring Luke to him, so Vader heads planet's side soon after on the planet at attempt to deal with an Imperial Scout party goes badly, and Luke and Leah end up chasing them down on speeder bikes,

getting separated in the process. Leah is found by a little Ewak, who seems friendly enough, while the rest of the gang walked into a trap and are almost cooked for dinner before Luke makes them think that their newfound deity 3PO is getting angry at them.

In no time, the Ewarks have adopted the gang into the tribe, and the comedy interlude ends as a troubled Luke wanders outside to brood alone in the night. Leah follows him, and he admits to her that she's his twin sister, and that Vader is their father.

She immediately urges him to run away from this fight, but he explains that it is his duty to try and redeem him from the emperor's service. Luke exits stage right, rear, while Han, after witnessing their cheerful goodbye, lashes out in jealousy, before apologizing and holding a sad, scared Leah. Luke is brought before Vader,

who tells him that it is too late for him to be redeemed and that Luke does not know the power of the dark side of the emperor. Luke is brought to the Death Star while a trap is laid for the rebel, at the generator station. Sure enough, things go wrong on every level. Luke has brought to the Emperor's throne room where he learns that the whole thing is a setup, and the emperor is well aware of the pending attack, and the only way he can stop the pending massacre is to give in to his hatred and strike down the Emperor, which honestly feels like it would solve a ton of problems

in one go, no matter what's in Luke's heart when he does it, but hey, that's politics of Star Wars. We're not going to get into it right now. On the planet's surface, the generator appears to fall without trouble, but before Han and the gang can blow it up, they're surrounded by a legion of stormtroopers and ATST Walkers. Landau leads the Royal Fleet into battle, but realizes the shield is still up and the whole rebel force has to abandon the attack. The Emperor uses the super laser to blast the Rebel fleet, instantly destroying a capital ship, and Landau urges Admiral Akbar to commence close action with the Imperial Star Destroyers to buy Han more time. Little does he know, it's the Ewox who have this situation handled.

Well, with the help of the droids, they lure the Imperials away from the shield generator and start wiping them out using home alone tactics. The tables turn against the imperial troops and the rebels are able to blow the generator. Luke is baited into a battle against Vader after verbally sparring with the emperor. He fights defensively until Vader taunts him with his awareness of Leah as someone they can capture and turn of Luke refuses to join them. Orshadowing the climactic encounter in the Mount Tantis throne room in which that fate is dangled before Luke about Marius. Rara Jade. Everything rhymes in Star Wars. Luke, in rage, starts beating the shit out of Vader.

That's really only when you can describe it. He just beats the shit out of Vader with a lightsaber. While some of the sickest music in the trilogy plays in the background, he chops off Vader's hand and seeing the mechanized stump, makes him contemplate his own damaged prosthetic, and he turns off his lightsaber and refuses to kill Vader. Palpatine shoots lightning at Luke while Vader, limited by costuming, does almost

comically exaggerated, full body turns. He looks between his master and his dying son. He grabs the emperor and jams him down the central shaft in the throne room, fatally wounded by the emperor's lightning and waves of dark side energy release, but by the emperor's apparent death prior to his resurrection in a fortnight live event. With the shields down, Lando leads rebel fighters in a descent level to the center of the death star to blow the reactor. Things turned to ship for the Imperial Fleet. The executor is destroyed by a direct hit on their bridge by a

Crashing Rubble Fighter, sending it nosediving into the hull of the Death Star just before it is destroyed. Luke tries to get Vader out of that hangar, as we've seen the hangar we've seen many times before in this film. But Vader explains it's too late. He's dying, but he's already been saved, regardless of whether he dies. He begs Luke to remove his mask and let him look upon his face with his own eyes, then passes as he asks Luke to tell his sister that he was right. But can you imagine how awkward it would be if they brought Vader home and tried to give him a hero's welcome. drummer of the family after everything's happened in this previous movies. Vader recognizing a moment can be made extremely awkward, does the decent thing and just

expires there on the hanger, rather than have a Star Wars, the man who came to dinner situation show up as Vader is held waiting for war crimes. Everyone makes it back to celebrate the Emperor's death with an Ewok festival, while Luke burns Vader's body on a pyre before seeing Anakin, Obi-Wiwob. one Yoda together as forced ghosts before joining his friends for a fun Ewok dance number. That's Star Wars. It was before the special edition robbed us of our Ewok dance number. Wait, is it completely gone?

It's almost completely gone. You have to, like, you have to put your ear like next to the speaker to hear the, to hear like yab, numb, you have to hear it. Because it goes to chorosan instead and shows you all the other world stuff. And now New Age music just plays over the entire scene. The Ewok music becomes faded, diagetic music that isn't really like forward in the mix at all. I see. Total crime.

That sucks because Yubna goes, actually. Now, is it basically just a rewritten Sesame Street theme? It is. Yeah, fine. Do do, do, do. It is. Wow, it is. 100%.

Oh, my God, it is. Yeah. Well, they're not allowed to have Sesame Street music as Star Wars. The Muppets were here. The Muppets were here. here so they also served. Yeah. So we're doing the Sesame Street.

Wait, I got. They also served, like in the military. Yeah. They did. You're right. The Muppets served. They were also serving. They were also serving.

Where did we actually leave off last time? We left off at the shuttle hitting the executor. Okay. Okay. Or not hitting. You get hit later. but arriving.

But arriving. I'll just say this, Vader once again, the smart one. I don't even think he senses Luke's presence. I think initially he's just like that shuttle doesn't seem right. Like let's just run those ideas again.

Hey, run those plates again. What's that up? And then he thinks about it. But he clocks in, yeah. And you know what? I'll bet if Luke wasn't there. Vader would just be like, shoot it down. Better safe than story.

This guy strangles people just because he's like in a mood. So the only reason he lets these guys through is because Luke's there. But maybe he's also not doing that because he's trying to be good for his son who he knows is alive. You know? Maybe he's trying to like, maybe he's like, it's sort of like sobriety, but for choking people out, right? Where it's like I've really, hey, I know I did some things they're tough to forgive, but I've really stopped choking people out like I was doing the last time we met. Say it ain't so, uh, AMV, but Luke and Vader relationship, uh, you know?

I mean, I think there might actually be something here because if Vader was in the habit or in the, if he had started, if when this movie started, if he had choked out the general who wasn't getting the Death Star done on time, Death Star V2 done on time, if he was kind of in his like hyperviolent needlessly cruel mode. would that have, I think the lack of that is what created maybe some distance between him and the emperor to allow him to kind of open up to his son's pleas. Like I think like in kind of moving away from that hyperviolent mode at the beginning of this film, I imagine Vader as. almost like refocused. Like he has this, um, he's not so clouded by the, the,

the, feelings of the dark side, like the, the, the, the stress and the tension and the anger and the rage. Like, I don't feel those invader when he sees Luke for the first time. He's not rageful. He's not like, he's very calm.

he's very measured. He is going to bring his son before, you know, the emperor, but he, but he's in a very measured state of being. And I think a part of that is this lack of needless violence. And it's like, he's almost like kind of detached from from being under the spell of those like hyper intense feelings. That's my read. But he's already like disentangling himself from sort of the.

like sithiest of the things he was doing these sort of like needless cruelty, the sadism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's as if like the seeing red, you know, the red has started to fade from his vision. Like he's, he, it's just, it's like the bull kind of kind of coming down. And that is the opening that Luke has to appeal to his father.

because if he was in that kind of like intense, rageful, vengeful state, I don't know that you get through to him. Like when I think of Anakin, you know, on the floors of Mustafa in that just like immense rage, just that intense rage, there's no, you're blocked. Like there's a wall between you and that person that I think is clouded by the dark side clouded by these intensive feelings. But I don't see that in Darth Vader here.

And I wonder if, I wonder if that's like an intentional abstinence that he's doing, like an intentional, I'm not going to kind of give in to my every cruel whim. Yeah, I think that that's a fair read, you know, whether that is about Luke or something else. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that to some degree, you know, we noted this, right? And I don't know that it's, the thing that's hard to get into the heart of is, I mean, maybe, maybe read the movie naively here, right? Which is like, Luke's thesis is there is good in his heart still. Okay, there is.

And it's pushing through. And it's fighting back. And it's trying to, like, get to a place where he can be a version of himself he likes, you know, that he knows is good. It's just very quiet. But it is absent here. And again, the theory that I put forward last time, I think, is probably still my actual theory, which is like, this is a movie about how Luke needs to redeem Darth Vader. You can't have 90 or 80, you know, I guess 100 minutes of Darth Vader choking people randomly and then have him get redeemed. Like, it's very useful that the movie does not immediately show you him at his most, you know, killer, his most, his most lethal and his most, you know, short-tempered and all of that.

Because you've got to believe Luke. You can't cut from Luke going, no, there's good in him to, like, him choking. Exactly. Exactly. You know. People's bugging out. Yeah. You got to show the good a little.

And there's like a lot of great shots of that too, right? Like, and I think that that's kind of one of the great tricks of the filmmaking here is like, there's a lot of Vader pondering. We'll get a lot of this towards the end with the Vader Emperor Luke stuff. But even in the middle of the movie, he's often looking out. the window at the stars. He's doing Luke looking at the horizon from Tatouine, but, but, you know, from his, from the bridge of his Superstar Destroyer. And he isn't just like the maniacal, you know, general. He is, he is pondering the future and what's about to happen in a very similar way.

And I think that that's, you know, it's good. Those are the stakes. Can he save Vader's heart? first needs to get to endor first we have to get Han doing one last tricky using the secret codes having it blow up in his face yeah oh but sorry

great throwaway line don't get too close but don't look like you're trying not to get too close I don't know fly casual I don't know fly casual but also I really love is it Leah who's like now we'll find out if the codes we got from that guy

from your friend are going to be worth anything, which suggests a nice backstory, you know? I think this is part of why these movies are just so fertile for fan fiction and side stories and role play and everything else is like, oh yeah, it's so easy to imagine

that they like had to go on a little trip to like get these codes or like get in with someone who could get the security codes in some way. It begs the overactive fan like me to try to fill in those blanks. So we also get Han trying to do a may you look a bit with the scout troopers goes horribly.

But if we didn't know Leia was a Jedi yet, I feel like her piling the speeder bike through those trees is one of those. I don't know this is easy to do with these speeds unless you got, like this, because they're overtaking the speeder the scouts. Oh yeah. Like they're catching them. They're going through these trees with the sped up footage that looks just like absurdly fast. It's so fast. No video game can do the see do the scene justice because it's way too

fast for you to do in a video game. Yeah, 100%. We should just say really quick, Scout trooper, all time fit. The cool, like the squared off helmet, the like extra bits of like black undergarment that you can see because they have to be a little more flexible. well and the uh just the sound of the speeder bikes too yeah so fucking good like again Lucas's sensibilities as like a california uh like hot rotter guy like and it continues through when we does pot racing he just samples v12 f1 engines for for those races the guy has an ear for like what's the most awesome like racing sound we can put in these uh the speeder bikes sounds so fucking good. And the way the Doppler effect, as they like zip through the trees,

incredible. All of the bike shit is, I mean, you know, I think years ago, I put up a moderate defense of the pod racing stuff. And I was like, you know, I think I get why this would be exciting, you know, if I were a kid and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. The speed bike stuff here, the speed of bike stuff here just gives its ass so much. It's so much less apologetic for its violence, for instance. It's so scary. And, like, the pod racing stuff is really scary in concept. But, like, fundamentally, our little kid is going to be safe through the pod race. I, you know.

He's a mascot. This is not. Yes. And I know. Leia and Luke are going to be fine also. But there's just such a higher stakes sense of, I don't know. It's all. Well, they're in road rash.

They're in road rash. Yes. Like, they're just beating the shit out of these guys, pulling up next to them, like, bumping air fenders. whatever they are. Yeah, it's like, it's violent, it's intense. And what's funny is they're using the, like, one of the oldest techniques in filmmaking, right? It's just a like reverse projection shot with a blue screen.

It looks sensational, really. You know, for, it's not hiding what it is. You know the shot. You've seen a million different places. But the sound, the performances, the way it's all put together, it just hangs. The shots from the sort of like front nose of the. of the bikes looking forward look great

the stunts of jumping from one to the other look good when they spiral off and crash they look really good all time moment when they get caught by the speed trap by the fucking bike cops off to the side who see them like speed past and then they chase after them

there's just good visual storytelling happening here when Luke hits the airbrake and just rockets behind the new rivals that shit's so sick Dude, it's so sick. Are you kidding me? It also helps like Endor is so different

from the other locations that we've seen. Like it's so dense. We don't see a lot of forest. We haven't really seen a lot of green in Star Wars ever. So like to have, you know, it's so visually appealing both in the vehicle sense

and in the like, this is Star Wars and we are exploring a new space scene. And like, especially in this movie, I kept thinking back to how interested in locations the Thrawn books were. Yeah. Because I think that like, this movie is like, you know, it's taking you into this like pretty society. And then you're seeing the empire stuff. And then like you're finally seeing the rebellion built up in a way that you have it.

And then you get to Endor. And it's like, oh, shit. Like, I've never seen anything like Endor in Star Wars before. So I think that like it's really indulgent in that. way in a way that like is very fun for the the final of a trilogy two things speaking of locations alley this week is recording from the auditorium stage where Linus delivers his monologue in the Charlie Brown Charlie Brown Christmas and the other thing is and don't get used to this we're probably not going to see like this stuff like this very often in

Star Wars because the volume era is going to really favor sparse, empty landscapes, and things that lend themselves to glorified soundstages. We're not going to see a forest again really until the Acolyte. Yeah, the Ackleite has all that forest stuff in the big commier episodes, like the big in the woods. Like they go into a forest in the Force Awakens, but I wouldn't say this big forest section. Like, it's outside the bar. Oh, right. Like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I out nature in the same way. We have to watch those movies at some point because I don't remember that sort of detail. I know the thing you're talking about. That's where the big fight happens. I remember, but like,

what's it look like? What's it look like? What's that bar? What's Maas? Maz. Maz Canada's canata's can'tina look like in contrast to the Tatooine one. You know?

Well, the difference with the sequels is snow, right? Well, I remember the snow. in the, it's no plus forest. Oh, you've combined it. Oh, there's forest there too. Right. Right. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

whatever fucking planet that, that happened. It's like, it's like we just peered inside JJ in from his mind. I know I do this a lot. Like, he's there at the whiteboard, hawth plus endor. I'm saying. Can we, the four of us without looking, name as, how many planets can we name from the sequels, we can name some. I'm not saying we can't name any. But without looking anything up,

who knows one? Batu. Batu. That's not, wait. No, is that a... Jacku. Jacku is the first planet. It's the fake tattooing. It's the sand planet that raised from. Is it Andron the planet the Death Star is built around? It's not Anderon. No. What's the planet slips up?

It is another planet. I don't think it's ever given its name. But we know it. You're not allowed to look it up either. We know what it is. I always get it confused with the Mass Effect planet. It's the, it's the Crystal Planet. It's the, it's the Khyber Crystal Planet. It's Elos or not Utapal.

No. Elos is the Mass Effect one. No, but I think it's also Star-Illum. Illum. Illum. Illum. But they never say that in the movie, but that is Illam. But they didn't invent that. New planets.

Oh, sorry, new trilogy or Force Awakens? New trilogy. All the new trilogy. Oh, what about that? What's the Casablanca planet? Fuck, he's in the game. Canto Blight. Yes.

Canto Bite. Hell yeah. E.I. G. The blight is like, is this Dark Souls? Am I wrong? So, okay, so we got two right now for sure.

Jaku, Kanto, bite. Okay, what's the planet that Luke is on? I know this one. Oh. She's fucked up that I do. Wait, but because it's because it's in something else, isn't it? I don't know. That planet?

I don't know if it's. I think that planets from this or from that. Oh, and door. New planets. Fought, okay. Indoor. Yeah, but Octo is the name of the planet. They go to.

Oh, yeah. We're going to ask. Octo, A-C-H-ty-O, I think. Octo. I was going to say the planet where they go to find evil C-3PO and Poe gets his like, no idea. Disney assigned girlfriend.

Girlfriend. So nobody thinks that he's gay? Yes. Yes. It's a comp head girlfriend. Yeah. I was right. It's H-C-H-H-T-O, but still that's Octo.

Babu-Frick is on that planet, right? That's right. The rainy planet. Oh, yeah. I don't know the name of that planet. Does anybody remember the name of the planet where the big finale is? Oh, yeah. It's, uh...

I just remember. I did just remember it. I do just remember it. So I'm the one who's... It's close. Uh-huh. Hang on. Okay,

nights of Wren go to the one place, but it's not that place. It's not that place. It's not that place. That's where the secret Sith fleet is. I know. I know what's there. I just,

I can't. What does it start with? An E. Do you know why I don't know this? Because the best location in those movies is the force psychosexual zone that Ray is. That's right.

That's right. And I don't need to know the day for that. You don't need to know. You don't need to know anything about it. and all of us. Yeah. Yeah. We can just go there anytime.

Awesome. I'm showing the flag. Ex-a-jol. Ex-A-G-G-G-O-L. E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E. You know, the G-O-L at the end. E-X-E-G-O-L, something like that. Do you remember that tweet where,

oh, shit. You played Frodo. The actor who played Frodo. Elijah Wood. Elijah Wood. Where Star Wars were like, do you know the Empire built the Sith Fleet and Secret at the, at the planet Exigal and Elijah would just reply to the Star Wars account

no how would we know that when was that ever explained um in Fortnite we have to get there we have to get to the end of this we have to get the end of this podcast we're not doing the sequels next I should say I don't think that's what any of us have said you know people hated your movie when people like who are like working that nerd actor circuit yes are just like taking shots

at you at this point being like this sucks Yeah Yeah Okay, let's get back to Put Elijah Wood in Star Wars Elijah, come on the pot We'll chop it up We'll talk about Star Wars

So true Elijah seems cool All right But are the Ewarks cool Because well here's the EWalk's cool Because well here's the thing they are Effective They capture the whole crew

And I know that we could get on Chewy's case For falling for literally The oldest trick in the book The first trick There's cartoons about it There's cartoons about it. There's probably ancient wall like cave drawings about it, about falling for the meat on the stick trick.

But notably, everyone else goes and stands with him in the obvious trap. You know that's true. And they don't even want to eat the raw meat. They don't even want to eat the raw meat. What are they doing? It's dudes hanging out where your buddy has got a little project he's going to work on. Everyone's going to stand there and comment on it. Like, this is exactly how they would get the king of the hill game.

Oh, wait, they put like a fucking empty tank of propane in the middle of the forest. Yep, that's right. Yep. Snap. All up in the net. Oh. Wow. I love the mix of the etiquette conundrum the 3PO isn't immediately.

He is mistaken for a deity. But you have to sense the Ewarks, like there's ranks of deities. this is like the cool forest spirit that you found it's like hey this is neat you don't listen to this guy right right because he says stop doing this and no one listens at first no these are your he barely wants to even say that though maybe his maybe he didn't have enough of his he didn't put enough of himself in it you got to put your chest in it when he was like no I'm not gonna I'm not gonna abuse this position like this is it'd be so impolite it'd be disrespectful um and I just love again Mark Hamill

his Luke just cracking up in the background of all this as like Han is losing his shit trying to get 3PO to play ball it's just again fun seeing like Luke now but again

like at that remove he's no longer in these scenes he is like a third like he is observing it and like enjoying it because it's like good hangout times of those friends

when it comes time for him to save the day he's just going to do it right now he's getting to mostly just enjoy hanging with the gang again and seeing them get on each other's case before he just does the thing that a

Jedi can do in the situation. Yeah. We'll just float C-38b around like a god. A couple things here, but first, I really think about all. Yeah. There's a god, it was many, many such cases. Allie, you said Rob was like, are the, are the, ewalk's cool? And you said readily, yes.

Can you, can you say more? Yeah. I don't know what's wrong. I mean, especially the Wicked Laocene is incredible. So she crashes her bike and is separated from the rest of the crew. And then remind me, Wicked shows up with Lipspeer? Wicked finds her. Okay.

Yeah. Wicked finds her. They have a little interaction. And then another stormtroopers find them. And Wicott helps her, you know, get out of a pickle and then they walk off together. But in that scene is so much cuteness. It's hard to even take. She appeals to Wicott by offering him some of her rations.

True. She, she, you know, takes off her helmet to show that she's not. I think he's scared of right he's scared because of the stormtroopers right because stormtroopers wear helmets and he probably doesn't see stormtroopers without their helmets and so her taking off the helmet was like I'm not I'm not one of them I never put that together at all that's interesting I thought this guy's dumb I think he's a little guy's a scared animal yeah I think the EWock stocks are up in 2020 26. Like I think, you know, as a kid, I remember everyone thought these, this stupid Ewoks are making these movies for kids. But I think they're cute. I'm with you. I'm with, I'm with y'all, I think. They're little teefees. Are they problematic as a direct standing for the Viet Cong? Don't love it. Yeah. But they're on the right side of history.

You know? But it is like, they save the day. I just, it's such a choice to have. have it not be wookies. And instead, it's like cute little roly-poli fellas. Yeah. Well, again, this is the, like Austin said at the beginning of the last episode, this is the first Star Wars movie.

We need the cuteness, the cutest the cutest creature developed in a lab to endear the hearts of fans everywhere and their mothers.

And their mothers. And their mothers and their mothers will go to Walmart and buy the EWalk sheets because look at how cute the EWalk bed sheets are and the EWalk pajamas and the EWalk slippers and everything. Oh. You know what else that couldn't be a plan full of Wookieies? Star Wars Christmas special happened. They were like, I'm sorry, we can't. We cannot do, we cannot do an hour of Wookie's fucking like barking. We can't do it.

Like, we drive this. It's awful. Yeah, it's bad. You know, that's actually a different thing. Like, the sound design on Chewy is really good, but there's only one chewy in any given scene. And as we learn, partly from the holiday special, it's not fun to just hear rookies make noises back and forth between one another. It's kind of fun to hear the Ewox jabber on with each other. They kind of have a good sound design.

They have, like, a bird quality to them while still being Muppety. Like the way that they speak is very interesting And also I have to bear my soul here The like The C3PO is a deity Who doesn't want to help his friends But then Luke makes him

Is my favorite scene in Star Wars Wow Why is it your favorite? Because it's always been your favorite Okay Yeah because it's very funny I like watching it I crack up every time

It is very funny He does not like being floated around. He's not comfortable up there. Here's a funny thing that I took a note about here. Deity is not a word we hear that often in Star Wars. They don't talk about, you know, Han Solo talks about the Jedi as being a hokey old religion, right? Or somebody does, I don't remember. I know we just watched those movies, I know.

But, like, you know, we get that phrase. We don't talk, we don't hear about God. we don't hear about religion in that way. And so like, and we don't really ever after this. But these guys on this planet have gods and have religion. And that's interesting to me in some way, you know. I guess the Knight Sisters sort of feel like religion a little bit, but we don't know what they're, we don't, they don't have, do they have God?

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's different. Not like a, not like a, or an occult mystery. An occult mystery. Yeah.

Mysteries is really the word. Yeah. Yeah. They're studying the mysteries, but they're not, they don't have a pantheon. They don't have a dogma. They don't have a set of beliefs. They don't have practices. They got that where they dunk guys and turn them into Sith gollums.

That's right. Now, these guys have practices. Now, maybe that practice is, like cannibal. Again, it's not cannibalism. They're not eating other Ewox, I guess. You're right. These are literally invasive species. These are invasive species.

Yeah. They got some. good meat on the bones. That's fair. Do you think that they've eaten the storm chuber before? Yes. I do. 100%. I think canonically, yes, at this point. I'm pretty sure this is like a, I'll double check.

Give me a second. Do you think they think the armor is like crab shell? You just go crack that thing open. Maybe, and that's part of why he's so scared with her taking off the helmet. He was like, what the fuck they can take this off? Yeah. they can take it off themselves? Yeah, I guess so.

This seems to be a real question mark that implies that yes. People are like, yeah. Wow. I want to shout out one other moment from this initial EWalk encounter in the Leocene, which is the Ewarks are clearly

very agile creatures in terms of being able to navigate the forest. They've built very elaborate traps throughout the forest. They seem to really be able to climb and clamber and descend with no difficulty whatsoever. However, after the stormtrooper run in, Wicott is left standing on top of a log and Leia picks Wickeet up and gently

sets him down on the ground below her or next to her and they walk hand in hand off to Wicitt's hometown. Like Coop Baron Christopher Robin. Literally yes. Literally yes. And it was the

cutest thing I've ever seen because Wicked could get down. Wicked could get down. Right, right. But the fact that like he allows Leah to to like pick him up and like set him down on the ground and then he's like pulling on her her uh you know on her poncho like a little toddler is like so freaking cute and also is like clearly they just

bonded through this you know storm trooper uh double murder yeah that's what happens i mean yeah that was a bonding moment for them uh it's worth saying that uh that Wicked is played by Warwick Davis, who is a legend. Hmm? There they go, yes. Who was not cast as Wicked? Kenny Baker, who plays R2D2, was supposed to be Wicked,

but he got sick. And apparently, Lucas liked how Warwick Davis carried himself as one of the extra Ewoks and was like, you're in. Come off the bed. Okay, that's an eye for... An eye for talent deserted that man between this movie and, like, to pick Warwick Davis out of a lineup of people in EWalk costumes

and be like, I'd like the cut of that one's jib? Yeah, and it's this guy who has it? Yeah, really remarkable. You know, maybe... That is shocking. Maybe someone else pointed out to Lucas, maybe there was a casting director or something on set or producer who was like,

you should get that. I've been noticing this one, and George said, yeah, sure. Like, who knows? But that's reportedly how it happened. But wasn't Warwick Davis and Willow the same year? When was Willow? I'm looking. Willow was 1988?

No, this is 83. Oh, shit. Wait. This is, this is. Many years later. Many years. Yeah, because he does this, and then he does both of the, um, the Ewox movies in 84 and 85, which we will watch at some point.

Have you not seen those? You don't know about Caravan of Courvon of Courage or the Battle for Endor? Oh, this is, this is juicy. This is stuff I watch as a kid. You don't know about the Ewox fighting like Shilob from Lord of the Rings? No. Okay. They were.

There were two American TV movies that were that were kind of different characters on Endor. I want to say it's a family who gets. stranded there in one of them and there's a witch in the other one. We get like a witch of Endor thing happening. We need to watch these. I watched these as a kid. I watched, I think that's specifically

the second one, the battle for Endor. And you weren't fucking with it. No, I, I fucked with it as a kid. I mean, it wasn't Star Wars. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like, Luke wasn't there, but I still fucked with it. It was really controversial. They made

come and see with Ewox. It was I can't believe they put it on network TV. It's, we should watch it. We should watch it. We should watch it. Oh, yeah, I'd never heard of this. I think they're like way better than, for instance, the Star Wars holiday special.

The real question is, how do they compare to other kids-focused Star Wars media? That's the real question. Anyway. I don't think Lucas directed them, but I'm pretty sure that he wrote the script or wrote the story treatment probably actually. Probably just that. So we get T.O.

telling them the story of Star Wars and they all realize, like, these rebels are all right. We want to be on their side. Can't only imagine what the rebel commandos who were long on this mission, make of all this. Because they kind of get forgotten at this point

because there's a version of this where Han and everyone gets picked up in the net and then the rebel commandos just waste everyone. Just kidding. Like, we just never talk about what happened on the way to the Death Star, like, shield generator. Yeah. But instead, it all goes well. There's a little bit suspense in the scene as one develops the fear that one of these things is about to start humping Han's leg.

I really felt that, Rob. Okay, so it's not just me. Not just me. Like, there's an uncomfortable into Han. Because it gazes up at him, like, not like a friendly dog. gazes up it, like, it just like sags into him and then just embraces that leg

in a way that I find alarming. Hand up on the ass. You know, and Leah looks down as kind of like amused, you know, in the sort of like, oh, look, you got yourself a girlfriend, you know? Or a boyfriend. I don't know what's going on, you know, with this, with Zawak. I don't know if Zawak

has a name. I bet the Zawak has a name. I bet that I'm on whom I, what am we talking about? You know this EOCH has a name. Um, well, is it, uh, is it, is it, uh, is it, uh, is it, is it Poplu? I don't think it's, is it Poplu? I don't know. Is it Poplu? Poplu is the one that... Is it Tebow? It's not Tebow. What?

There's a, there's a, there's a, Tibo. Sorry. All he does is win. All he does is win. Praise the Lord. Pop Blue is the one that is wearing a Like makeshift poncho Um on his On his head This is Pop Blue I don't think this is the one

It's... That's Pop Blue Oh I don't think it's that one The face The eyes right But I think the face is wrong Pop Blue dies

I'm pretty sure Whoa Poplu is one of the ones that dies, right? I lost track of which ones all died. It's devastating no matter, no matter whether you're a named EWalk or not to see, to see the death of one. It's really just one of the worst things I've ever seen is the Ewok getting got in this movie. Well, hang it, the one that was on a blighter died, right? I think so

but it feels like that little glider the little hang glider that's like dropping rocks yeah that EWalk died when it gets shot down I think it gets shot down I don't think we see a body

the deck of EWox the image that that rings in my head is the two EWox I think there was an explosion involved that that's what The one tries to shake the other awake and realizes it's dead.

Yes. Oh my God. It's brutal. That is the worst thing ever. And that should be deleted from the movie in the special edition. I'd rather watch Alderon blow up like at the end of every real. A hundred percent. Blow up another planet.

Don't kill an Ewok on screen. Also, hang. It's fucked up. Did they successfully create anything cute in the movies? after the Ewox? They really tried with porks. Popes.

Porgs are cute. Oh, porks. They really, really try with the quixies. No, I don't think so any cute in the prequels. And porks is interesting because porx is them making lemonade out of lemons, right? Because all right, the puffings. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they just had to like digitally add in some of the puffin-like to substitute in there. They're cute, though. Because Baby Yoda, that's just pandering. That's like you loved Yoda. We made him tiny. But like the Ewok, that's an original creation. BBA8.

Yeah, BBA8. BBA8 is cuteness. BB8 didn't deserve. PB8 deserve better altogether. A lot of the talent in those movies deserve better, to be clear. Including BBA. Port just stand out to me. They stand out to me because there was

such a marketing push for them before that movie came out. Like, porgs were the forefronts of that second movie. Yeah, because they knew that people who were going to be mad at it for being woke wouldn't be mad. You know what I mean? Well, they didn't know that. I think that it was all a fucking, I think no one knew. I think no one knew how bad it was about to be.

There's also the love cat. Well, I was going to say, I feel like the pre- trilogy was for like tweens like it feels very 13 14 year old coded

um in my mind if you're 13 14 15 you're still like on neopets and guy online and stuff like there could have been a creature there could have been a creature that's right there could have been a creature we don't do episode names on this show but if we did it could have been a creature

creature or there could have been a creature might be it. So we gotta have the talk gets out of this before he witnesses and Ewalk start humping. Han's like, Han's like furiously. He's like, I can't be around this. And he goes off to brood. Leah goes off to see what's up.

And we have a sweet, gentle little scene between them. I like the way they both play this where like the way he comes around to it. Rather than just like blindsiding her with it, he just turns and asks her like, what do you remember? about your mother. Great question.

There's a mix of him, why to have somebody who can fill in some of the gaps that, like, he has about this, but also he's got a leader up to this so that, like, it's a, it's not a repeat of what happened to him where it's like here, like,

he wants her to have a very short, like, inductive leap to get at what he's driving at. Now, admittedly, what she says about her mother will be so funny is if they just recondit so she starts accidentally

describing an uba boobo droid oh my god she was like really right white hard shell she sang me a song had glowing eyes

her eyes seemed to glow this is so funny to me she kept saying uba boba it's really all I remember I loved her She seems very sad. I want her back.

She seems sad. Leah, do you remember your mother, your real mother? Just a little bit. She died when I was very young. Like so young. Like so young. What do you remember? Just images, really?

Feelings. Tell me. She was very beautiful, kind, but sad. Why are you asking me this? I have no memory of my mother. I never knew her. I was just going to have to bracket. this whole thing. We just have to

I guess did Luke can we go watch that scene and see if the Uber Buba droid like kept Luke specifically from ever looking in Leah's direction or something? Because she does not have memories of her mother. I mean she does

now in this movie because the prequel doesn't exist yet. Like none of this was decided they make the decision to have Anakin be a teen dad basically and everything suggests that like This almost lays out, again, a more interesting version where, like, her mom ran and had the kids on the run, and then the family was separated. But, like, that there are toddler-level impressions of a parental figure who is then lost to them.

Remember that the script that Natalie and I were talking about last week, where Obi-Wan calls Owen his brother, also says that Leah left with her mother to Alderan. Not just... Not just... Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Went to Auduron to hide, but was sent with her mother there, and then presumably her mother died while she was young. But, like, that's supposed to be what's happening here, is that she literally does have some memory of her mother because her mother didn't die on Mustafa. None of that exists yet.

So, interesting difference. But, Rob, you're right, like this, that kind of, like, slow opening to it is interesting. And then she, of course, goes, like, hey, what's up? You know, what's troubling you? And Luke says, Vader is here now, as here, now on this moon. She says, how do you know? He says, I felt his presence. He's come for me.

He can feel when I'm near. That's why I have to go. As long as I stay, I'm endangering the group and our mission here. I have to face him. Why? He's my father. And then he lets her in on it and says, there's more. It won't be easy for you to hear it, but you must.

If I don't make it back, you're the only hope for you. the alliance. And she's like, you don't say things like that. You have a power I don't understand and could never have. And he says, you're wrong, Leah. You have that power too. In time, you'll learn to use it as I have. The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And my sister has it. yes, it's you, Leah. And she says, I know, somehow I've always known. Which, I didn't know, she'll, I don't say that. Leah, don't say that.

Don't say that. Don't say that. Don't say you always knew. She's saying, like, I'll make it to those going to let him down easy. Like, you know what? Honestly, I always knew. Oh, yeah, totally always knew that. That's why I threw those due back.

clothes you gave me on Hoth for some reason like I just threw him in the trash but that was because like it just didn't do back gloves for my brother I always knew. Yeah I didn't it slipped my mind when we kissed those three times but other than that I always knew for sure

I had a lot of my mind to be fair. I do love that her immediate response to this is run away don't go face him if you face him you will die you know if he can feel your presence

then leave this place I wish I could go with you and he's like no you don't you're strong you don't want to run away actually which is they're good I love them so much it's it's fascinating that she tells Luke

to run but Han Han you better fucking sit your ass down and you better stick around for this rebellion like I think there's something yeah I think she she really does fear losing Luke in a very real way. Whereas with Han, there's kind of, you know, there's like the fantasy of like, oh, nothing could ever happen to Han because I love him too much. Like, nothing could ever happen to this, you know, this, this larger than life, this like person I love

because because how could it? Like it just is unfathomable. But Luke, Luke something bad could happen to. Luke could face Darth Vader and I think Leia knows the reality

that she could lose him forever. There's just something interesting in how seriously she takes Luke's precarity or like his his like you know his vulnerability in the in the face of Darth Vader where she's like fuck

like screw like the rebellion actually doesn't matter in this circumstance like you are you are more valuable than what you would serve the rebellion well that's my question is it that or is it you're too important for the rebellion to go fight Vader face on face to face maybe she doesn't believe that he can win that fight, especially if, because he's so naive here, not naive, but from her perspective, she is saying, hey, you got to get out of here.

And he is saying, I have to go fight. I have to go confront, not even fight. I have to confront Darth Vader, who, by the way, is our dad. He says he's going to turn me over to the emperor, but I don't think he's going to, I can save him. I can turn him back to the good side. And you have to know what her in mind, she's like, he torts. I know he cut off your hand, but he tortured me. Stood there, my planet was exploded right in front of me.

Yeah. And he tortured Han and you're like, I can save him. Can you save everybody? She doesn't say that. She cares about him, but I do think that there's like a worry for him. And I'm curious if there's also a worry for you have a role to play in the, in the galaxy and in the rebellion that you're going to throw away by trying to go save this guy when what we need is Luke Skywalker, the hero with the special power.

I don't know. I always feel it's more that she's reacting to his fatalism about it. And that, like, that he is, you know, again, this is the moment in the myth where the heroes sort of the dark night of the soul, right? And she is here telling him, like, he has a choice. And he could, he could run from this. Yeah. And I don't think she's not suggesting tempting him with like cowardice and a life of ease.

It is that like there is nothing to be gained by you doing this. And there is no shame in retreating from what seems like an obvious suicide mission with no upside. Now the thing she doesn't know is how far he's come. Like really like she's got to, she's seen a bit of it like at the palace, Java's Palace. but that is still really different from, like, him squaring up with Vader at Cloud City. Like, it, it hasn't fully clicked. I don't think that he is this close to being,

like, a fully actualized, like, Jedi. Yeah. And so, like, you know, the same, like, for her, Vader's been this monster that's been unstoppable, like a, like, a pursuit monster, really, right? It's how the show begins or the show, Jesus, the movies. The first thing that happens in the movies is

Darth Vader is trying to capture her and does. Right. Right. He is kind of her Michael Meyer. Yeah. And that is just not, Luke is in a different story inhabiting,

inhabiting a different story with this guy. And it has this, like, belief that there's something different happening here, but is at odds with everything she believes. And for her, it's like, just go, run,

buy yourself time, we will see this out. I think that's right. Yeah, run from this place. So she's just say far away, right? She's like, get out of here. But maybe that's still just like, we'll try to blink back off and figure out something. I don't know.

I think it's really well acted. I love that they get this scene together. You know, I think I keep ringing the bell of like, we don't get a lot of the whole crew together. We also don't get a lot of the characters just talking about stuff because it's an action-adventure movie, right? But like, they're both so good at this. I think their deliveries are just really strong. It could be a really hammy scene, but it's fairly, reserved.

And it's a beautiful set. Yeah. You know, where we got the, you know, I certainly said like Luke exits backstage right, but like it does feel staged in that way. Theatrical. Like, you know, he, that Han emerges, you know, by the footlights of the scene as Luke literally disappears into sort of the haze of the background. It's really beautifully done, beautifully shot.

And just a testament to, again, like, how gorgeous these movies are using a lot of like old-fashioned filmmaking, like craft, right? Yeah. It's lighting. It's set design, decoration, photography. It's fantastic.

Yeah. Also note, he says, I can turn it back to the good side, not the light side. I think this one gets hammered a lot from people who are like, there's no such thing as the light side. And then,

yeah, he leans forward. He says good side again to Vader a minute. Like, good side is clearly, something. Yeah. Yeah. He names forward. He kisses her on the cheek as Han

enters from stage right. And it's like, oh, fuck. What the fuck? I get it. I get out of your hair. What is this is all over. I'll just leave you two to. I think is where I get sold on your read of Han in Empire. Where it's all been a front.

Like, it's all false confidence. It is all just like you wrap the side of it. And it's hollow. because the second, the second that he walks in on an intimate moment with Luke, he's like, oh man, I'm out. There it is. Here we go. Old Han being kicked to the curb. You and me, Chewy, just like with Kira.

Oh, my God. Listen to our Patreon episode. Oh, my God. This is. Chewy. He's like actually This is the solo moment. This is the solo moment. This is it.

Yeah. This is what solo was right around. I'll tell you, Lando, I thought, once in my life, maybe I could be Han duo. Right, no. Solo again. I even thought for a little while, Han Trio, but I guess that's not going to have. either. He does

immediately apologize. He does. I actually live that line written down. Yes. Yes. I have written down here.

Han saying, I'm sorry, is so, so good. Bro, we have all been there. Like, you storm off,

but you don't even get to the door. You're like, oh, oh, I'm a baby. Why am I doing? I'm sorry.

I don't understand what's, you're not going to tell me what's actually going on here, but I shouldn't have centered myself. in this moment, apologies.

It's hard, relationships are hard. Han is putting, he doesn't know. He doesn't know. He has not known it all long. Emotions are high. He was almost just Ewok food.

I'm sure he's feeling very fragile right now, insensitive, and when you see your beautiful the love of your life you know being kissed by this twerpy kid

and you're a bit short-sighted like I guess you know you crash out a little but he does he comes back right away if you crash out and you say sorry right after it's okay and even if he's even if it's over he's going to be there for her in this moment right

Even like his he the other movie it's really he still thinks that like he just walked in on them confessing their feelings and like It's over for old Han here. Yeah. Yeah, but he's still not gonna be a dick in this moment like she's really upset and he's gonna like Like he's he's gonna stand by your side for this moment. Yeah, I forgot you're right it's later when he's like I've been giving it some thought and I'll get out of your hair I'll leave here. Here he's like oh could you tell Luke about what's going on? I forgot that's actually yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's not great Something that has not come into focus for me until now is like how difficult it must be for Han to have woken up and being like, oh, Luke is that guy now. Like, he's actually a threat to me and Leah now because he got the fit on.

He's training. His whole personality is different. Like, they're intimate in a way that they haven't been before. Like, I've been in ice. I don't know what was going on. She was telling me what's going on. Like, they've spent time together that I was not there for. And obviously, in this time, things have changed capital C.

Yeah. It's true. He's low-key jacked now, too. He is. He is. He upgraded that green lightsaber. He's got that green. Okay.

He's suddenly become someone who could pull a princess. That is not true. It didn't even move. No. If only he knew Mara Jade was just off screen, you'd feel a lot more confident, a lot more patient. Damn it! Oh, I could have gotten that lightsaber to be all so different. Oh, I'm just going to think about this guy nonstop for five years. Oh. Oh, it's so funny. I love this next scene. I love this next scene. Luke gets taken into custody, and also, I can take it away.

So, yeah, he gets taken into custody. He gets brought to Vader. He's at, like, the shuttle, like, dock, basically, like the space. port basically that they've set up where the Imperial Shuttle is. And he gets brought to Vader and they just kind of do a walk and talk down this sky bridge from one part of the base to the other. And I love it because it's a kind of no alibi's moment. I love it when a movie is willing to just say, hey, oh, let's put the two characters on screen together and have them talk and have them say their positions out loud and see what happens.

Because Luke shows up to be like, oh, I actually know who you are. I agree that you're my, I accept that you're my father. And I know actually the thing that you don't know, which is like, you're good. You, you, they're still good in you. You're still Anakin Skywalker. And Vader is like, hmm, hmm, I like your cool new lightsaber. Your skills are clearly complete. Are you going to help me kill the emperor or not?

And frankly, if not, it's time to be. bring you to the emperor. I'm actually going to just bring you to the emperor, and you're going to have to deal with that. And look like, no, you're not. You're not going to bring me to the emperor? And he's like, you want to bet? I'm bringing you to the emperor.

In fact, this is also Luke, I said this last time, but I'm now just remembering. Luke, my favorite thing about this is actually, it's a flip. It's not that Vader says, let's go to the emperor. It's that Luke says, come with me, which is the inverse of the last movie where Vader says, we could take over the empire. Here, Luke is the one making the offer. And Vader is like, I can't do that. And like I said, last time, this is where Vader is like, I must obey him in a way that I had never really clocked before.

So when he says all the stuff about like it being too late for him and like he's not, it's not just like I'm not good. It's I can't do anything here. You have to go to the emperor. The emperor will show you the true nature of the force. and I just love that they play it out. A different movie would have kept them separated or in the, you know, under the watchful eyes of someone who would prevent them from having this conversation before the very end. But instead they get to have this conversation, Luke makes the pitch, Vader shoots him down, and it sets the stage for like the big final confrontation. Yeah, I really love Vader's sort of mood here.

I was thinking of the scene so much when Natalie was speaking before about how, like, the sort of red is gone from Vader here, because there's something like, he's so, he doesn't seem defeated. And it's not like a lack of belief. But it is, like you said, like,

I have to obey him. There's such like a, I cannot change the flow of these things. I am not like an actor in this. Me and you together, we could achieve something. Right. But me on my own, I have to go through the motions of this. I have only gone through the motions of this for the last 20 years of my life or whatever. Like there is not, it's either us or me doing this thing. He says, Luke says, I will not turn and you will be forced to kill me. And Vader's response is if that is your destiny. And like, yeah, he's on the wire. You know what I mean? He's like going, there is no, he doesn't have agency. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't. He's.

He doesn't say like, we could do this or I could do this. He's like, I'm on the line of history and it's going towards, if your destiny is for me to strike you down, then I guess I'll strike you down. But then the way he delivers, it's too late for me, son. Oh, he calls him, son. The emperor will show you the true nature of the force. He is your master now. And my father is truly dead.

Oh. It's so good. I come back to what. I think Austin and Rob were saying in the last episode, especially when we were talking about the change in Vader's outfit, like the addition of the chain. And I think you guys reference the scene where it really does feel like Vader is trapped.

Like he is like resigned to this life for him. self. Like there, there, there is no other option for him. Like, the dark side is it being a, you know, the, the line you don't know the power of the dark side, I must obey my master. It's like, it's so, he's not saying, you don't know the power of the dark, like, it's not, he's not saying this. No, it's not a sales pitch at all. It's like, you know, immediately, that he says, Obi-Wan once thought as you do, like,

Obi-Wan once thought that I could be saved, I can't. I'm too far gone. And there's like this self-awareness there that's like, I've doomed myself. There is no redemption from here. Certainly not in this life. Like, I think the key is that, you know,

is that he is, reborn, resurrected as a forced ghost at the end of this movie as a good guy. That's makes it Jesus. But, you know, it is such a sobering moment between Darth and his son.

I think, I mean, one of the most impactful moments this entire scene is is when they see each other for the first time. Yeah. Vader is just walking down the hallway thinking this is like a routine, you know, um, uh, capture. He doesn't know who's been captured. He's walking to the hallway.

And then the doors open and Luke says, uh, you know, hello father. And, um, that, really kills me. I it just there's like there's there's just this like this quietness to it and the impact of it's not some like grand moment where they're clashing you know in the sky or you know on on the ground where they're like colliding together it's a very calm and you know composed the michael man see it is a michael man see down to him showing his back to vator

at that moment, right? While they're talking, Luke turns his back, knowing that Vader has both his own and Luke's lightsabers, and he turns and looks out into the forest, which is why he's like, that's why you won't bring me to the emperor now. And at the end of the scene,

and this is also very Michael Manrop, did you notice, Vader walks over to where Luke had been standing and looking out and, like, takes the same perspective that Luke did looking out into the forest, which is another one of these great shots of him pondering and thinking,

but him literally moves, into the physical space that Luke was in is just so choice. It's so good. And I think something, and I think Star Wars often has fallen into this since this, but like these exchanges are often treated as opera. And here having it underplayed, because we had the opera. The opera was Bestman. The opera was out on the catwalk, you know, them at opposite.

at sides of this, like just unloading each other at a fever pitch, like harsh truths, painful realizations, all at a time. And here, Luke greets him as a man, right? Not a, not a misinformed child, but as a grown man come to offer one last, like, here's a path of redemption. And yeah, I love, that line Natalie highlighted, like, I think it's so great because so often we've heard you don't know the power of the dark side as like a statement of I'm holding something over you. You don't understand like how awesome it is. You don't understand all the things it gives you. This is a, again, actually, if we're taking like the sobriety or almost drug addiction metaphor,

like, no, you don't know what this is. You haven't experienced it. You don't know the compulsions I'm under. Like, there's both rules to the dark side, but then there's also the compulsiveness of it. And we don't know exactly is it like, again, the chain certainly suggests he's more aware of the ways in which he's been enslaved

to another's will. But we also don't know the degree to which it is just like now in a sort of out of control drive inside Vader that forces of it. But in either, case, it's something that Luke can't really conceive of, nor could Obi-Wan. And I think again, it's like going back to things they're disappointing about like the pre-equals. This implies something here where it's like, Obi-Wan couldn't see how someone is lost to the

dark side. He couldn't understand it. And Luke can't understand what it is to have been in its thrall for 20 years. Like these are things that you just can't sympathize, with, that their experiences you either have or you don't. And the prequel's answer to this, like, what is this darkness is he's nervous about prenatal care in the old republic. And he's mad about not getting promotion. But like, what's held out here is much more interesting, right? This notion that, like, there's a certain blind spot that people don't have this thing

that I have. they just can't see it. And because of that, they can never understand it, and they can't stop me from being the danger that I know I am. I wish we'd gotten more in this original trilogy of some of what was hinted at in a new hope, where Obi-Wan talks about his foolish crusade. There's this notion of, like, that Owen didn't want Anakin to adopt Obi-Wan's kind of, like, ideology. There's these throwaway lines in that movie.

Right. Very Reven-coded. Very revincoded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very, I went off to war and brought Anakin with me and convinced him to see things my way. And people like Owen thought that that was like manipulative and bad. And the reason I frame that stuff or the reason I think about that stuff here is like, if they had leaned further into that direction, maybe what we would have gotten was a story about someone who had different concerns. You know, the concerns of Revenge of the Sith specifically, but of all of the prequel trilogy,

are very personal concerns that drive him to the dark side. They are about Padme, they are about his mother. Those things are fine. You know, on paper, I don't think you do, I don't think you should not tell a story that's about that. But this Vader feels like it wasn't personal concerns who drove him to that. It feels like a broader alignment of vision of the world, vision of the self. etc, et cetera. You know, I don't love the dragon, like the ice dragon in Anakin's heart stuff from

the Matthew Stover. Sorry, the Dead Star Dragon. Sorry, apologies. So much. But I think that it's still useful in that it produces it centers it in Anakin, that this thing is with him his whole life. And the movie sort of give us that. And the Cone Wars will touch on it every now and then.

But mostly, he gets sad because, because his mother is killed, and his knowledge of that that was going to happen was dismissed, and then he gets scared that the same thing is going to happen to Padme. And that's what we get. Like, that's the story of Anakin Skywalker. And this Vader feels like maybe there's a different story in the mix, too, and we just don't, that just not what happens. You know, notably, Padmay, the conceptual Padmae of this movie is not killed by him force-choking her

or of a broken heart, quote unquote, seconds after he is turned into Darth Vader or whatever. She leaves. She leaves. And that's a difference. That's a different story. A wife leaves husband takes one of the kids is a different story and a very common one, you know?

And the last thing I'll say here, too, is, and it's funny because the prequels are all about this. I don't think they deliver on it well, where Obi-Wan describes basically what happened with, with Vader, is training gone wrong? That Obi-Wan was not Yoda. That Obi-Wan was himself kind of an arrogant hot shot who was like, I can train the PIP into my Jordan,

basically in some ways, that he is convinced, like, no, I get to be a master now. I get to, this guy's got the talent, he's got the ability, and I can do this. Yeah. And that is an interesting thing, because we see one the type of Jedi that Obi-Wan is, but also it's just like what does Jedi training going wrong look like?

And I don't think the pre, like for all the issues that we have with the Jedi training, that is not the story they end up telling. It is not like training gone amok. It's that he is groomed by like an evil elder who's like always near that kid and then convinced to turn on the order. but they don't really get at the story of like, you can read the implications of it, but the way Obi-Wan describes it is like,

these were my mistakes. I was an insufficient master and I was not ready for this. They don't really end up exploring that, in part because the prequel trilogy for as much as it's about like the Jedi Order and how New Jedi are like created, not really interested in, pedagogy in like the philosophical underpinnings of an order.

What they have is like a Scooby-Doo villain lurking in the background of this, of like, of like, uh, Jedi prep school. Yeah. Yeah. Different vision, you know, um, which is, but you know, a counter argument to this is the first Star Wars, the first Star Wars sequel, uh, the first Star Wars movie or whatever, the, the kind of provocative thing I said last time. We're still not there yet because it has to become the, in some ways, the prequels do it.

In some ways, the EU does it. But, like, as you fill in the gaps, it starts to solidify in different ways. It's very funny. And, of course, one of the-15 years to become the sole, like, owner-operator of this thing. And, like, he is still in a collaborative mode for this movie. Yeah, that's a really good point. Do we just do the space part of stuff? Where do we go from here?

I guess there's three, there's three things. There's three layers. Ground combat endor. There's space combat Death Star. There's, there's Death Star, throne room. Let's kick things off with the Emperor and Luke. And then talk about the battle and wrap up how Emperor and all them concludes. So they get to the Emperor's throne room.

Very spooky, very menacing. The Emperor, first of many mistakes, his absolutely. sick bodyguards, he's like, leave us. I think those two dudes might have been useful. If they're half as good as those cloaks imply, might have been useful to have around. I remember

in the S&ES game, those guys were not, were not jokes. Those force pikes, all that stuff. That was pretty, they're pretty rad, but you're probably right. It's basically cosplay. That's because they were fighting you a child. and not Luke.

No, I was playing as Luke. Oh, okay. They're fighting Luke. I wasn't a child. I was embodying a powerful Jedi. Right, right, of course. But anyway, he dismisses them. And then we see, for our first time, really,

it's funny, this is our first time seeing the emperor do his thing. And it's all here. This is she. This is actually. This is she. Yeah. Like this is a fully, like, Lucas arrived at here's the emperor

by this point. And it is this manipulative, like, gleeful sadist at every turn. And what's, what's kind of breathtaking here is the way this emperor

plays with his own obvious and sincerity. Like, the whole, It helps make the movie work, but like I feel like she, he bounces this whole conversation like a child playing with a balloon in a way, right? He's so confident he takes it so lightly at every turn, just playing around with like, oh, but look, now I can play the cringing,

weak old man, I'm so vulnerable. There's nothing to stop you, powerful Jedi from striking me down. and then turning it on a dime when Luke won't play along when Luke is like your overconfidence and your weakness and this starts to piss sheave off where you snaps back your faith in your friends is yours. Like it's all there and it's just really done well here

where you get a sense of the menace but also the I don't quite call like the madness of Sheave but it's like the there's a dimension that we talked about this before

there's always the dimension of this that he's in it for the love of the game that he's here to have a good time breaking Jedi that is kind of what he lives for more than more than being the emperor what he's here for is to see these people break

and have them fall under spell, even as they know he's weaving it. There's a lot here that, you know, he is really diametrically opposed to the Jedi, in many ways, not least of which is when he's handed Luke's lightsaber, he goes, ah, Jedi weapon, much like your father's, which maybe she should never have had a lightsaber, man.

It's very clear here that he thinks, he looks down on these things. The Jedi, he doesn't just come across as like, he comes across like a Sith and not like an anti-Jedai, not a dark Jedi. He comes across like he's from some other sector system of belief.

And in fact, belief and what is true is really at the heart of a lot of the early conversations with him here. Because he is explicitly like, you don't understand the truth, right? this is where Luke is kind of being like, you're not going to convert me, actually. You're wrong about everything.

He's like, no, actually, you are the one who was wrong about everything. And we don't really ever get that unfolded. But we do, in other words, like, it seems like the emperor has a particular different perspective on the force than what everything Luke has been taught. And we can kind of infer stuff

based on the fact that he's like a weird, dark sorcerer, but we never get it laid out for us. But you can start to imagine, And that's what went in to turning Vader into Vader, is breaking him from the Jedi, not just the Jedi, like, ritual in the Jedi way and et cetera, but explicitly being like, there's another way of engaging with the force.

There's another way of using the force, which is the way that he uses it. We also get him as being a little petty. There's that bit where Luke says, your overconfidence is your weakness. and he like, he like turns quick and snaps back around on him, and he goes, your faith in your friends is yours. And it's like, whoa.

Did you touch a nerve? You know what I mean? Did I touch a nerve? I guess part of it is like this kid just shows up, and he's just identified what is your fatal weakness, right? And it's going to play on him because he's done the most overconfident. Like in some, I like to think of it, on some level in the back of his head, he has pushed all his chips into the middle of a table

and he's holding like trip fives. Yeah. Not a bad hand, but not a good one. Yeah. And he is so convinced that like he's got the winning hand. I'm going to give them a target they can't resist. Me on a space station that they're terrified.

They have to destroy before it's ready. And they've done this before. All beyond that space station. We're just all going to get done this one day. And Luke just calls out that this is, this is not rational. This is like, this is hubris. And it gets, it pisses sheave off because it punctures this like cloud of omnipotence and omniscience that he's weaving. Because it also screws up his next part of the pitch, which is, oh, everything is.

as I've foreseen it, we're just going to sit here and watch all your friends die. We're going to see how long your Jedi composure holds up, watching the Rebel Fleet get blown to pieces, knowing your friends are dying in space and dying on the ground while you sit here doing nothing. And that's his entire windup. And Luke has kind of already let the air out of a little bit. Like that, oh, like, you've, your whole planet is like monologuing on a vast scale. you're going to sit here and be my captive audience to my plan unfolding.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. All of Sheev is here, you know. I do think it is a fun reveal still that the Death Star works. You know, if you've never watched these movies, I think you should watch these movies. But if you've ever watched it a while, you may forget just how unfinished the Death Star looks. Like you've been seeing it as an unfinished movie. skeleton the whole movie.

It's so, it's like ghostly. It feels like, it doesn't, it, it almost feels like the ruins of the death star from a new hope rather than a new, a new formidable thing in construction. Like, you don't really feel like, oh, wow, this thing is coming together because the last time you saw it, it was it was blown apart. Like it feels like this kind of shell, this husk. And to see it power on and not, oh, you know, it's going to take 30 seconds. So we need to do the countdown 30 seconds until fire or whatever. Like, no, it instantly hits. And that I think is, is particularly terrifying in that moment that it's like, I think when I, when I watch this back

again for the first time in a long time, I was, I was kind of expecting it to be like a, all right, you know, three minutes until until the reactor is ready to fire. No, it's, it's ready to fire right now. It's happening right now. That, that was pretty terrifying to me. I do love it. Saying is ghostly, I think, is a really good description. Because, yeah, the way it hangs in space and, like, its silhouette and its outline is really recognizable. The dish is really recognizable. But, like, there's so much negative space in, like,

just the star field behind it and glimpsed through it is, yeah, it feels like a ghost ship more than the fully operational battle station that the emperor, you know, says it is. And, of course, it fires that laser into the midst of the space battle that Lando has kind of seized control of. It's a hell of a thing, honestly. Like Battle Vendor is cool. We got Landau, sort of his decisive best here,

like, you know, realizing that the plan is scrubbed, but also being the gambler who's like, no, we can't, we can't fold on this. Yeah. Trust Han. Han's going to come through. Yeah. Which I love.

Old pal. Old chum. Old chum. Okay. Here's a question. Where's Lobot? I like Niennub, his co-pilot. I like the guy.

Where's Lobot? Lobot's not in this movie. Lobot wasn't hanging in the, like, Monmothma's ship. Lobot isn't on the Millennium. Falcon? Did he just ditch Lobot? Lobot was his dude.

Someone has to run Bespin while, while Landau's gone. Is he still running Baspin? I guess he, I guess. No, they got chased off Bespin, but maybe, doing like high frequency trading for Lando he's just like he just sit

in front of a Bloomberg terminal just like optimising the portfolio maybe maybe I like Nia nubb though the little co-pilot has a great affect just a great vibe rules he's the best more more guys like that

yeah like this is what this is what we're here for also I love the ships the ships are cool i i did remark one of my favorite things about seeing the rebel ships arrive like post hyperspace transit um and kind of landing at the death star is how organic a lot of the ship shapes of the rebel lines are compared to how angular the star destroyers and um you know various spacecrafts of the imperial fleet are. Like the Star Cruiser, the Rebel Star Cruiser is so like... It's a militarized whale.

Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense because, of course, all of the Moncal members of the, like, of the leadership are here. So it's like, yeah, they're like, they revere the whale. They revere the whale. Unlike the lowly corn.

right this is why we have to put them in residential schools apparently if you haven't if you haven't we're putting the Moncal no no

wasn't it the other way wasn't the Moncals were trying to civilize the savage clans I believe we pulled that out of some Wikipedia stuff yes there was a there's a version of the story of the quorum

and the Moncal it's like not great because we were so like we were like these are the good guys the Moncalf That's, if I remember right, from, from, people have to go, if they're, if you ever listen to us talk about the Moncals before, let me tell you, all that stuff. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Unfortunately, you have to hear us talk about three of the worst clone wars episode, I think. They were forced to provide resources from the ocean depth so that the Moncalamari could build starships for off-worlders, amongst other, amongst other. Right. Yeah Very cruel Very cruel Thanks Okay this

Hold on Look at this What now What new war crime What fresh hell Yeah No but look at this Sexy Cor and Minor

Oh no I'm clicking Rockin stone Yeah yeah yeah Yeah I mean Good for him I'm like that

Airbrush and a t-t Look at that insucient Flirty look he's giving to the artist He knows we're looking He's looking through that painting. He's posing. This is a calendar, honestly.

This is like, you turn, it's springtime. You know, you move March out of the way. It's April. Ooh, I didn't know we had Quarin Minor this month. Oh, my God. Yeah, you go to Moncal and you go to the gift shop. And they've got sexy Quorans for every month in, The calendar section and you buy it and this is this is April.

This is April's calendar, but I do love the starships. The B wing is here. It's cool. Yeah, good, good space battle. We got Landau is the one to figure out that you got to bring your ships right alongside the Imperial fleet and again, there's some great stuff like the dogfighting happening at like, as they skim the surface of these halls. it's it's really it's a fantastic

it's fantastic battle a great model work great model work great editing it's tie interceptor on the field here yeah tie interceptor all time spaceship design they're all through this fight all of the all of like the long range looking at this also from the throne room

through the window just looks so sick one day we'll have to watch some Legend of the Galactic heroes because if you like seeing huge spaceship battles watch this one fucking space let me tell you. What's going on in the ground? Well,

the Ewoks are going to hold it down, is what everyone needs to know. Is that the Ewoks are really going to make the ground game make sense. Unfortunately, Han and

Leah and 3PO and Chewy and Artu are going to fall into a bit of a trap here in this ground assault. Well, the 3 people and R2 are out, right? They're the ones who lure the stormtroopers away and the first D.Walk trap.

Yeah, but that was a decoyed trap within a trap. Because remember, they think they've solved it. They're like, we've done the hijinks we need to do. Right. Right, because their initial plan is, yeah, the EWAC leads them away. sneak in, they get the drop on the people in the interior of the shield station, they go inside, they shut it down, and they come out, or they don't shut it down, right? They try to shut it down. They're about to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then... By the way, Austin, you mentioned this. This is the first

time also where some of the sets start feeling more fake in this movie. The generator station doesn't look good. Like, there's a doorway on the edge of the set where through it, you can see the generators, but like it never totally sells you on. like there being actual depth there and a room you walk into. It just feels like there's a animated math painting like in that doorway. Yeah.

Which is sort of one of the first whiffs of like sense of space and like scale in this in the series. For sure. Yeah, then the stormtroopers just walk in. And no, no, I was right though, right? Because that's when now they're trapped, they get taken outside.

And that's what they feel like, uh, excuse me. Oh, I guess. That's when C3PO does it. Yes. Yeah, they have them dead to rights. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And 3PO then is in the forest.

And he's like, oh, dearie me, I seem to have gotten, I seem to have gotten lost. Can any of you help me? And the stormtrovers go, go, go sort that out. And then the Ewox attached. Yeah, attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The initial EWalk thing is one of the EWox stealing a speeder bike and leading the initial defenders away.

Yeah, they just go rogue and just hop on a speeder bike. That's right. Again, by the way, Imperial Occupation of this planet was on a timer because they've seen speeder bikes like once. And like within a day, they're like, I'm pretty sure I know where the throttle. I don't know the rest. Yeah. And they know the paths of these woods way better than any Stormtrooper does. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I want to say that we can't emphasize enough how cool it is that to see. to see speeders, like, speeders and ATATs and this like industrial equipment vehicles, buildings against the backdrop of the Endor forest. Like there's such a stark contrast here, especially seeing the, this, you know, generator base almost kind of coming out of the ground, coming out of the bushes and the trees. It feels so imposed. And the speeders and the AT-A-Ts,

like the kind of the cementy grays of the AT-A-Ts against this lush forest is rules. You're totally right. I hadn't really thought about that, but part of what makes these ATSs like so imposing and so, like, it is that they're in the woods. It just looks so good in the, in this environment,

all of the sort of brutalist design aesthetic of the empire gets different in the depths of the forest. Yeah, I hadn't considered that before. I mean, this goes back to Allie, what you were saying a while ago, which is like, this is the first forest we've seen in Star Wars too.

And having it be, having these big gray walkers move through it helps sell that it's like a real place in a very funny way. the contrast really hits. I'm watching the guy crash. The wing guy, I forgot. You mentioned this earlier, Rob, but he totally dies.

And I think you're right, because I think an ATS steps on him. No. Yeah. Brutal. And I'll be honest. There's no need for that little guy to die. I don't think the little glider dude accomplished anything. No, he just slender on dropping rocks on ATSTs,

and that didn't seem like it was a percentage play at all. No. So he just You know again That's sort of their charge of the light brigade situation Like valor to no purpose But I do like also We see them trying things that have worked in other movies

Like they try the tow cable thing Except this time It's just a bunch of Ewarks being dragged along by the ATST It doesn't like remotely work But that makes extra satisfying When the big log smasher Yeah totally works And just like

Pulps those imperial pilots inside that inside that that giant beer can that gets crushed but the battle really hinges the whole name of this battle is get Chewy inside an ATST

and this battle is over in minutes the whole thing is just setting it up so that one of these things like moves into position for Chewy to jump on it like Hawkeye in Last the Mohicans the book more than the movie

stuff like this in the movie. And just like, you know, claws way in there and take it over. They're your business. Wrecking shop. Also has a gag I love, which is just they're trying to break into the

bunker door. And a second thicker bunker door slides into place. And what's so funny is it doesn't even look there's an affordance for it. Like, you can't tell. It looks like it comes out of fucking nowhere.

And so, suddenly it's just like, well, that was double-locked. Yeah. There's also a moment where, you know, I don't know, there's like four minutes where they're like, we need R2, we need R2 to hack this door. And they, and R2 gets like, he gets blasted him. He can't, he gets separated somehow from them. And Han's like, well, fine, I guess I'll do it.

Han, you could have done it. You were waiting around for R2. You're going to hotwire the damn thing. Get on it. You don't always defer to R2 just because you have a hacker in the party. It doesn't mean you can't. You know, You're right. It's skill atrophy.

He has the computer skills. Yeah, right? I guess he has the... Artu's good at it. Artu does computer things. I think Han has the electronics skill, whereas Artu has the computer skill. You know what I mean? It's like, or what is it in? Han has repair, whereas Artu has slicing or whatever it is in Cotor. Security and computer. It's security.

That's right. Security and computer use. Yes. We also get Leah having her Grito moment, where the Stormtrooper, ambush of them. He's like, put up your hands. And Leah has her smiles slightly at him. She's got the, she's got the blaster already cleared. Han begins to surrender and she blasts him. And then what, what do they say? What's the line? I love you. I know. Yeah. And yet he still thinks he's a cook. He still thinks like, oh, she's just fooling around with me waiting for Luke to come back. Now we're just being buddies. This is what being insecure will do to a guy. like nothing so poisonous

as as insecurity in a young man it's not good and a young person in general but yeah but here Han is dealing with with the galaxy's toxic masculinity post in the imperial era you know the visions of what a man is

is just so bad stifling listen I'm not saying that the empire had good visions of women humanhood either. You know, we've, we've seen that they're very girl bossy about it in the Mandalorian. We've, we've met those women. We know the only good woman is one who can file a report for, I don't know, like executing prisoners or something. We know, but I just think being a dude in this, in this world, you got to, you got to really take the way to the emperor on your back, you know? So true. It's tough. We haven't, you know, we haven't really thought of the violence done the Han Solo in this world, but we should be something more on that.

Yeah, that's right. Slave land, don't worry about it so much. That's what we're saying. So we get one last Han hijinks. They still can't get into the bunker. We got to convince these guys to let us in. And you know what? I never realized that's just Han wearing a little imperial costume.

Yeah. He has such a different affect when he's like, calling in that wasn't until this time where it's like, oh no, that's not our two, like, sending a fake transmission with like captured officer footage. Like, that's just Han in Imperial Head Gear and being like, come on, guys, let's get them. Yeah. It's so good. It's such an easy to miss detail that I really love.

Because, I mean, we've seen Han unsuccessfully impersonate Storm Troopers. especially in a new hope when he's true like in the trash compact or not the trash compactor in the detention area you know uh check in i don't know yeah you're right so it's it's cute to see like a little payoff on that i love the little magnet charges the magnet detonators they have that are the magnetizers ones they like put them up on the ceiling and they stick it's really cool Oh, you mean like slap charges The way Luthan was was using in Andor Right, of course, yes

Like come from here, Rob They're from, you mean Han Solo's magnet charges And then they blast the shit out of the huge shield generator dish And the shields down And the space battle Crescendos with now the rebel starfighters Can close in on the Death Star We get some great re-like

It's sort of look what we can do. We're redoing some of the Starfighter battle from a new hope. But we can do even more. We've gotten even bigger set to play around with the under construction Death Star looks awesome.

You got turbo laser towers with like scaffolding still around them. And you get like memorable like dog fights and the one rebel pilot getting shot out of control and spiraling into the I love the way it's set up too. They managed to destroy the shield generator

and the executor. And then a second later, bad luck. This guy just comes spiraling toward the bridge and the imperial officers realized too late that there's no amount of forward firepower that they can that they can intensify to get rid of this guy. A moment immortalized

untested when I want to say Norman Chan took one of his colleagues Lego executor and picked it up and began doing the scene I've always wondered if this is fully a bit or was it like actually someone having the truce of thought in the video scene

where he picks up a completed Lego executor starts doing the bit and then spikes it like a football on the table in front of his colleague. Oh, that's brutal. I've not seen this clip. If it was not a bit, if it was a bit, it was certainly sold

as like you watching like just the light leaves someone's eyes. They watched that thing. Because, you know, like, building a Lego model, not that hard. Rebuilding one that was chaotically destroyed, impossible. Terrifying notion. Yeah. Yeah, this space battle is really cool.

The whole thing is, like, so nicely haunted by the first two movies, you know, the shield generator being an echo of the Hoth shield generator, the needing to go into the Death Star being, and, you know, an escalation of shooting into the Death Star all of that stuff is very cool all of the ships are great the A wing is an all-timer the B-wing is really cool

the executor is also one of the coolest ship designs we already talked about that in the last movie but yeah it rocks I like how sad Admiral Akbar gets throughout this fight where like whenever anyone sacrifices themselves and he's just like damn shit I wish I didn't have to

I wish it wasn't me, you know. RIP to that guy. You know, what was that guy's deal? I'm sure there's a short story about it. Yeah. And again, launching 100 video games with the Oh, yeah.

Like, rocking around the interior, that's interior that star, like you're running through hallways in a spaceship and it's like, yeah, it's, we revisit this a lot over course of a lot of different games, but it looks, it's awesome, it's scary. Again, it's like claustrophobic, too, right?

The scale it feels mind-boggling where we know how big the falcon is. And it is like zipping around inside this interior. Then they have to outrun the explosion. It looks awesome. It does. And yeah, while this is happening, things are coming to a boil in the Emperor's throne room. Because he is continuing to needle luke and he's doing the, you want your lightsaber, don't you? It's good.

kid. I'm just a little guy. I can do anything. You just kill me right now. You're so strong. Yeah. It looks like your friends are going to need you to kill me because they're not going to win. And he does take it. And he was like, I was totally centered.

I feel great. Running clean. Well, he does try it, right? He tries to, but Vader blocks it. But I don't think he's, but he gives a little like angry cry, a battle cry that indicates that he is starting to lose his composure. You don't think he really went for it? No, because if he really, because like,

I think the version of this, like, where he does it, like when he stays with the light, is he, yo, homie, is that my briefcase? I see. He does that with the anger. It's a collateral. I see. Yeah.

Yeah, too, too, done. That's it. Not a big deal. Yeah. Instead, he cries out in anger. And that's when Vader in an eye blink. is there protecting his master and she's just cackling just loving it you know no matter who wins as far as he can tell he does you know uh of course of course and then we get the fight and i think

this this saber fight is just really cool it's just they're moving so much quicker than they were last time which of course is even a step up from the original and we get luke playing really passively at first trying to do the like oh a july uses the force always for defense never to attack And the way Vader's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're going to have to fight. Like, it's fun. Luke is trying to, like, sort of put what he's been taught into practice here in a combat scenario. This is sort of a book Jedi versus, like, actual, like, real world Jedi situation where, like,

no, he's just going to keep coming at you with the sword. You're going to have to put it up. And he keeps trying to disengage. And once that is denied him, he moves the fight down the stairs under the throne. room into the pillars and he starts trying to hide. Now he's being evasive. And that's where Vader starts trying to fish

him out by playing as his securities, his fears, and eventually alights on your sister. Your sister. You like to play Castlevania. He's kind of doing a

what the hell is that character's name? Psycho Mantis to him, you know. I want to shout out the silence of this fight, this like initial half of the fight where you just hear the, they went all in on a lightsaber SFX. Like let's get those crackles turned way the fuck up. And it's so good. It's so sad. It's like you.

Again, this is another circumstance where, like, the audience isn't really given a guide as to where the fight is going to go with something like, you know, the role that music might play in this moment. Yeah. You're just, it's just the sheer, like, collision of father and son, their lightsabers against each other. Mm-hmm. It's really good. do we think So she've Somewhere in here

Maybe it's actually right before this It explains that he leaked The location of the deflector shield base Do we think he did that Because like he has to produce a situation Where in Luke Is drawn to hate Because he explicitly sees that his friends

Are captured But could have won Why didn't he just Why was this? really the deflector shield base instead of an empty room filled with guns and poison gas? Why did

she leak the real information? I think you're right. I think it's the it's the they were so close. Like they could have done it. They and so frustrated right. Yes. Like that frustration that

and that also if Luke hadn't left to face the emperor if Luke was still there with them that maybe they would have a chance I think like there's the kind of multiple things at play here where

but the crux of it is like it is real it could have been real it is the only way you can save your friends as I think Vader tells him here this all this stuff

in the under underneath the throne room stuff in the shadows is just so good, you know. Rob, this is the bit where you're talking about where he senses the sister, the twin sister. It's funny that he's like, you have a twin sister and not, I have a daughter. I didn't know about that, you know? Yeah, it's weird. It weirdly centers.

I wanted to ask about this because it does center the relationship on, Luke and Leah on the sibling relationship rather than like I've always felt like Leia was not a part of this family unit and I think that's emphasized. Yeah. Like it's like if you were to draw the family tree, it's like Vader to Luke and then there's a line between them and then a line between Luke and Leah and no line between Vader and Leah even though. But here's what I'd say.

of that. It is always implied that Leia fundamentally knew who she was and like had a, like, she had a place, an historian place she belonged, right? She's Princess Leia of Alderan. And Luke is very clear, feels out of place and lost on Tatooine.

Right? There's just a, like, he has a guy who's searching for like, meaning and purpose and like belonging in his life. Leia kind of already has that. I think that's part of it And then look, we're two movies into this He's tortured the shit out of lay in movie one Felt no spark of recognition

Torture the shit out of Han a movie two Neither really awakens To the other at this moment And then the last thing I'd say here is This isn't Vader on the level This is this is Vader needling Luke It is what can I do to induce the most like violently protective impulse I can

It's not that like Yeah conceptualizes of it now, it is Vader just trying to get Luke to sort of activate. That makes sense. Also, two scenes ago, when they're talking in that Skybridge, Luke calls him Anakin, and he's like, that name doesn't mean anything to me anymore. And so he's at the very at least putting that shield up or taking that perspective of like, he is an Anakin Skywalker. He is Darth Vader. So, yeah, that makes sense. I can, I can see it that way. I can see it that way. It's not conceding it, but you know what I mean.

The only thing I wonder, for me, I think it speaks to a larger feeling of Leah not having the same role is the wrong word,

but I guess like when Luke says to her, you know, you have just as much force power as I do because we're in this same lineage and like you are also going to be like a force user and then to not really there's just kind of a it feels like a I don't know what the right way to describe it is but like unrealized space here that is like it's

it feels like they're talking around this version of Leia as you know an equal to Luke in enforceability that once Luke kind of once this is all over that Luke will bring Leah, like we'll train Leah into, you know, being a Jedi or something. But there are all these moments where Leah's kind of filtered, there's a distance created between her and the true lineage, which is Luke and Anakin and Darth Vader I can't help but feel like

she yeah there's like unrealized potential with her that just doesn't feel like he's also that she is also Anakin's daughter like she

I think you hit on something which is she wasn't right we talked about this last time maybe in the Second Empire episode, maybe it was the beginning, it was the first return episode, that they combine Leah and this other sister of Luke's late in the process. And I think if you go and read about what some of Lucas's early plans were for a sequel

trilogy, you can, you can see that because, you know, some of the earliest plans were coming off of, coming off of the original Star Wars, I think. You can find notes that were like, the plan was that Han was going to die. Luke was going to become a master, Luke was going to win and go off and become a master Jedi and find his sister and train her as a Jedi while Leah

gathers up the people of Alderan to become their queen, like the remaining remnants of Alderan to become a queen instead of a princess. Like that was what her story was going to be. Like that gets tossed together here into Leah is his sister now, which was not the original plan.

And so she's kind of like attached. But she's still going to continue. continued to be a senator and like a political figure. I mean, who knows, right? Because we know, we just never get, we never get Lucas's vision for what the sequels are. Oh, right. Right. The reality of what we get out of Leah, out of her future is that she, you know, becomes a mother to Kylo Ren, or to Ben Solo.

Right. Well, and we do get that she, I mean, now we have seen her use the force. And specifically in a way that a lot of assholes are really mad about. When she floats? When she floats. Right. Which is like... That's like a really long thing.

Like, yeah. She could have used... Yeah, that's... Yeah. I mean, I think I don't feel bad about it not being... I think that she gets... I wish she had more to do in this movie, for sure. Yeah.

I don't know that I needed it to be Jedi stuff because that isn't even understood until halfway through this movie. And what I would have, you know, what we just don't have is a fourth movie, a sequel trilogy by Lucas that would have had to deal with making her Luke's sister. And theoretically would have to have been to some degree if it had come out in the 90s instead of like, who knows, right? Zahn was on this. Yeah. It's like she's going to be a Jedi-powered diplomat. And like her skills are going to work on this axis and training her and the future of her kids.

is going to be the anxiety dominating, like, both their lives. And, like, but in this movie, there really isn't much of that. In some ways, she exists to be, like, to make it more heroic that Luke goes, because now a few people have said, well, first of all, Yoda's been very, like, in Empire. He's like, actually, he's on the Skywalker. This doesn't work out. We can just go to plan to plan B. Luke

like desperately lunges for that he's talking to Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan just looks at him like it's a little late in the day to try and say like oh, Leia can do it. And I think that's fundamentally

the problem is that she's held out as like well she's another Skywalker era of the Skywalker legacy but not really in the story she's not really offer it like this is not someone can go in Luke's stead or Luke's place because we haven't laid any of the groundwork for her preparing to take on this mantle.

So she's going to go hang with the crew and do the commander stuff. It's going to be a new hope. Back in the shield generator, creeping around the station, all that stuff. So it just feels like it is strange that there's this sort of lack of payoff. Like this is something the audience has known for three years now at this point, four years at this point. we don't know that at the end of empire. We know it in this movie. Maybe some people suspect.

He does call to her and lay in answers. Yeah, but again, that was not Lucas, that was not Lucas's plan as of that moment. So you could read it that way. Now we read it that way. But Lucas did, Lucas, Luke had a different sister somewhere else in the galaxy

that was supposed to be a whole other arc of this movie, which is wild to think about. There would be a whole other art. Again, this is Lucas. Like, okay, so originally, had one movie in mind and it was going to be nine episodes. Okay, so then it became three movies. Then I realized those three movies were actually nine movies.

Yes. But in other words, like when he wrote that scene and when they shot that scene, she is not his sister and she does not have the force, right? So that is supposed to be the real of this movie is, oh my God, Leah is his sister and she is the force too. So probably not the three year thing. But I do think you're right that like she could have sensed something at the shield generator, right?

We could have seen the, what's her version of a new Hope era Luke? Right. The tier of intuition or something. Or, man, the dark portent if she choked out a stormtrooper. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, a key moment. And it's like nobody's talking about it, but it's like in the middle of that. She's just like fucking snap to do his neck.

Yeah, I think it's tough because we saw a lot of Luke needing to train to get anywhere. And he tells her that a second book. before the war starts or before the battle starts. And so we don't get, we didn't get scenes of him being like, okay, so now like, let's practice lifting something with your mind. Or like, but she does say she always sensed it. So maybe that's part of it. I don't know.

Yeah. I think sensing something would have been the right, the easiest way of doing it. Yeah. And I find it really interesting that it feels like the fandom just sort of like back puts in these details. Like Rob's saying before that like the speeder scene is, a force scene for Leah.

And, like, I feel like I don't know if it's something that I picked up through the fandom or just something that I've always thought that, like, Leia, Leah talking about Padmae here is force-induced memories. I've always thought that. Right. Like, there's nothing in the film. I just, like, have seen two different Star Wars movies that have completely different details and thought, oh, I have to make an excuse for it.

She must have. Yeah, she must have sensed it through the force. Yeah, I mean, that's a perfectly fine answer. And that's like a beautiful thought, but it's not real at all. And it's not something that like this script is at all interested in. No. Yeah, I think that she's really, again, like during the scene where they're talking about what the attack is, she is like, well, who would be stupid enough to do that? We don't get her even being the like, come on, we got to go do the hard thing person in that moment, which is very unlike early.

early layer. It is kind of a goofy. That whole bit, too, it's like, kind of washed sitcom humor in that moment, too, of like, oh, boy, honey, you're going to be so mad at me when you find out about the mission I volunteered us for. It's kind of like that hasn't been the dynamic. Yeah.

But now it is and it's kind of, it again, it's got that, it's got that pre-war screwball to post-war comedy. vibe of like, oh, it's not the same fast talking, tough, independent character it was. Not somebody's better understood in relation to the various dudes in her life. Yeah. There's another moment like that, Rob, the like an almost

sitcom level joke, which is when they first land on Endor, Han goes to deal with, I want to say, the stormtroopers. And both Leia and Luke look at him like, Uh-oh, like, are you sure you can do this? And he goes, come on, it's me. And you can almost hear them go, like, that's what we're worried about.

Like, but they don't, they don't fall off the cliff, but they walk up to the cliff of that style of humor and don't, don't take the leap. But it's right there. It's right around the corner, you know? But yeah, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like there's lots of opportunities you're right. Like, here towards the end of her, and maybe I'm misremembering or I'm missing something.

Like, does she sense what's happening to Luke at all in the, throne room? Do we get any knowing glances? Do we get? No, she does. No, she does. In the Han-Leo scene, Han says, she's like looking at this guy wistfully and Han says, oh,

don't worry, I'm sure he's okay. And she's like, yeah, I know he's fine. That's right. That's right. But it's not during this. It's, it's, she's not spiritually dreamt through the battle with him. No. Well, no, but it's when they see the, the Death Star

blow up. blow up. Right, right, right, right. And Han has to assure her, well, it doesn't have to, but tries to assure her, like, I don't think Luke died in there. And she's like, no, I know that he's alive. So there's the force connection. That's the one little bit that we get, I guess, but, yeah. It just doesn't feel like much for somebody who is, like,

related to the greatest force, you know, force-sensitive family of all time, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on it, but it does feel like it just, it just feels so, I know these movies are about Luke. They're not about Leah. Sometimes, except they weren't.

That's the thing. Like, I feel like, I feel like they're less and less about Leah as they go on. That's the thing. It's for me the issue. It's like by this one, it's increasing. It's, it's about Luke. I guess it's for the story it is.

But like, for me, there's a broader art. of Leah's story becoming like increasingly just tied to to Han really and to again like where she stands in relation to two men in her life but like the the woman like leading the resistance to Vader and then like leading them out of the Death Star that version of the character starts to recede a little bit and I think sort of the last real taste of it we get is more implied

is when she pretends to be the bounty hunter. Yeah. That's old school laia, but that mostly happens off screen. And then we see the end of that story. It's interesting to think Go ahead. I was just going to, and it just occurred to me that the move

where she like shoots the stormtroopers behind Han's back, like that's a Han move. It's not like really a Leah move. It's like a kind of a Han, you know, gotcha move, which... Yeah, but that I like because it's a nice payoff of, like, them rubbing off on each other and, like, becoming more alike, which is cute. But the thing I was going to say is, it's interesting to think about these characters in relation to other characters who aren't that core trio. Because in the first movie, you get a lot of Luke with Obi-Wan.

Like, that's where who they are gets kind of structured, right? So in the first movie, you have Luke and Obi-Wan, master and apprentice, mentor and mentee, kid who has the very first rumblings of a connection to the force. His whole arc is leaving Tatooine behind and learning about the force and trusting in it in the big final moment. That's like two hours of the movie. That's like his whole, every scene from when they meet to the end is about that for Luke. in that movie, Leah's role and her primary interlocutor is Darth Vader.

She is the representative of the rebellion. She represents the sort of the kind of stubbornness that you need to fight an empire, but she's also stalwart and also, and is also kind of like a badass

like we talked about, right? She's like, she's smirking and she's willing to shoot people and she grabs the gun from Han and all of that stuff. And like that's who she is. But her primary character She speaks to that isn't part of our core set of characters is Darth Vader.

Han doesn't really have one outside of Chewy, right, in that movie. But in the second movie, it's Han and Landau. And obviously, in the third movie, it's Han's relationship to Jabba. It's Han and the crime world. And Luke gets Luke and Yoda in the second movie. And oh, my God, that's really what it's all about. Leah's big character in the second movie is Han. So Han gets this kind of exterior vector connection to the rest of the world.

And Leah doesn't have one anymore. She's in the rebellion, but all of her scenes are about her relationship to Han. Even when it's her and Lando, it's her and Han with Lando as a mediator in some way. Even when it's Vader showing up, you know, Han shoots at Vader in that great scene where Vader blocks it. Vader and Leah don't talk in that movie. You know, not that I remember anyway, right? She doesn't have that secondary interlocutor.

And then here we get her killing Jaba in the first half and her being, you know, captured by Jaba, all that stuff. but then we don't get like her positionality in the rest of the world outside of her ongoing love triangle with Luke and Han, which is diffused here. And then also her relationship, it's diffused by way of her relationship to Luke, right? The revelation that she is, in fact, Luke's sister. But she doesn't, she's not an agent in the story in a secondary mode in the same way. The whole first half of this movie is about Han's world, the world of the scum and villainy,

the world of criminals and et cetera. Leia doesn't ever get that at all after the first movie. And I think that that's for me what's missing more than I would like to have seen her force push someone or something, you know? Well, and it's interesting too, like, when Mav was not in the first movie. Sure. Like, yeah. The figurehead of the rebellion that were given to a degree is Leia.

Like, she is there alongside General DeDana. But like, in terms of people who are important to the rebellion, it's like, Like, Leia's pretty high up there and a lot of the sort of hinges on, on her. And then the third movie, oh, we have a princess lay at home. It's kind of like she's even dressed. Again, the senatorial white and all that. The long white. Yeah.

Guess what? You've got a girlfriend. So we needed to go find a different virginal ruler. And so we found a mobma out there. I couldn't even let her be the one who saves everybody from the Ewox, even though she meets the Ewox first. Because, I mean, and again, the C3PO gag is very funny. She could have come out just having gotten her hair, like, combed out and all that.

And she could have been like, hey, wait, those are my friends. And she does. And they ignore. We're going to eat them. Happened. Yeah. She does. She's like, those are my friends.

She's like, you do realize that would be cannibalism for me, right? That would be like, that stew would hit different for me than it would. for you. Yeah. But yeah, no, it is disappointing. And it is kind of a,

like, it is sort of the ways in which like, as the, as the trilogy goes along, it starts playing more and just pure archetype for some of these characters. And in a weird way,

the first movie, it's like, oh, it turns out the princess is not just some damsel. She's ready to, like, lead this rescue herself. And by a third movie,

it's like, yeah, so she's the, princess she's over there uh the the smuggler's gonna get with her yeah yeah and yeah to be clear i don't want lea to do a force push at this movie i just wanted i just wanted moments of her more moments of her kind of feeling in touch with that i think the luke bit at the end is good but no i mean again we're telling like the invention of like this is the first star wars movie this is where star wars for the boys

Yeah. She doesn't even see the... I mean, not know. She doesn't see the ghost at the end, even, does she? I don't think so. That's what I mean. So here's the thing.

No, but that's the thing. It would be so... Yeah, here is the thing, though. None of that works. That is a different movie. Like, I think this is the other problem is that... This guy is a... Like, Luke can't...

Like, you're talking... You're talking, you're talking like 25 more minutes. Because, like... Leah's not going to be, oh, that's great. Yeah, I love that. Oh, who's this Force Ghost? That's my dad. Oh, that's awesome.

I'm so glad he was redeemed after blowing up my birth family, like my actual family that raised me and my planet in front of me. I'm so glad that he's a Force Ghost. That's the other problem of this is like they do have a relationship. It's 100% violent and horrible. Right. And to a degree, it is a disservice not to reckon with that, but I think that's why he has to die in the Death Star.

because the version of this where if he was like all right son I will cross the I'll cross lines tonight I'm not gonna take you to death star take me to the rebel camp and we'll take care of this tomorrow

now mind you I'm salivating at the prospect of that movie like that he like the hey guess guess what I found he followed me home and like now Bader's hanging with the

Ewks and is like I can help you do this and like are you all of your fucking minds. Right. Yeah, I think she... Oh, you're just like your mother. Yeah. Yeah.

I think what someone said earlier about the fact that she did get a father. She got Senator Bale, Organa. She was raised. Like, she had, you know,

she got to grow up with a dad, with, you know, a family unit. Whereas Luke, was always kind of, you know, orphaned. She's Leo Organa. She grows up with the Organas. Luke is Luke Skywalker, growing up with the Larses.

Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So it is like she, she is not missing. She's not want for that like fatherly relationship, you know, outside of everything you've just said about, you know, how fucked it would be. to try and to rehabilitate Dary.

It would, I want the, yeah, it would have to be its own movie. He comes back, he escapes the Death Star, and it's like, I'm good now. And it's like, yeah, we're convening a tribunal. Yeah, I will shout out again, Claudia Gray's Star Wars Bloodline, which is a new canon novel about the post, like the, the in between this and the sequels about the, the kind of new, republics fall into the state of things at the beginning of the Force Awakens that's centered on Leah and it's explicitly about her being Vader's daughter and that not being public knowledge and her really difficult relationship to that fact because she did not get she was not in the room and she never saw good Anakin and they never had kind words and she never really believed

in her heart that there was good in him because he's the guy who tortured her. I cannot recommend those parts of that book enough. There's other parts that are fine, you know, but those parts, I think are really strong. I mean, it is not a lot I think I mentioned this before. It is not a beloved series in the expanding universe,

the old EU. The Blackfleet crisis opens with Luke going on sort of a mission that's got to distract him with this entire trilogy while they fight this war with some really like oriental nightmare enemies that are that are rising here.

The New Republic gets into all this like nightmareish war against like space imperial Japan. And in the meantime, Luke goes off trying to uncover the secret of like who his mother was. And but when that opens is him trying to explain the layout like, hey, we've got lead on like who our mother was. And, you know, like, I'm going to go try to answer this mystery and like, do you want to come with. Like, it's so important for us to know. And I think it's probably the finest moment in that book where Leah just like unloads on him where it's like, my family is here. Right. You're my family.

Han is my family. The twins are my family. Vader wasn't my family. This stuff doesn't matter to me. And it hurts me that you're obsessed with it. And like that's, and I love that. The conflict there is that actually Leah finds it deeply painful, that Luke keeps trying to shade in like detail. about who their family is and keeps coming at her with like, oh, don't we need to know who our parents were? And she finally just sort of snaps at him where like I know who my parents were.

I know who my family is. Like I'm tired of you always being half out the door whenever you're chasing these ghosts. And I think that's probably, to me that's always been the most convincing, like I think that is where Lay would end up with this stuff where Luke has always had this like, hey, where am I from?

How can I explain my place in the world? And Leah doesn't need that. And she doesn't have this entire memory of this, this Anakin being redeemed. Yeah. It all happens offstage for her. And I just want to be clear. Like, I don't, I hope I was not coming off as too dismissive, Natalie,

about, about this stuff. Because I do think, what you really hit on too is, the tension of that absence, of the absence of all of the Leah of force stuff emerges from the film's insistence that bloodlines matter for the force, right? It's not just that Luke is gifted with the force. It's that it runs in his blood, which is one of like the big central fictional conceits of Star Wars

that ends up getting us to the Midllorians, it ends up getting us to the chosen one because once that stuff's in your blood, once there's this sort of like you can do the blood test to see how many force points you have, you end up, it ends up,

of course you're going to ask questions. Like, well, wait, how has this not ever shown up for us with Leah? It also is how you end up getting to a thing that was like super common when I was coming up in this, which was like, well, Haan obviously has a little bit of the force too

because he does all this remarkable stuff. That was like such a common fandom position was like anytime anyone does anything remarkable in these movies. He wields the lightsaber, right? He wields the lightsaber that one time, which at the time no one really understood was that, do you need to have the force, have the force, whatever that even means? But even just like the way he pilots, the luck, the stuff, he's always counseled his luck, is his luck the force.

But all of that stuff ends up being this sort of like, as you mechanize it, you start to have to ask questions in that way. And the core mechanization that we get, the loudest we get is Luke is Darth Vader's son, Leah is Luke's sister. As we just talked about, that's how the format goes, like you were saying, the kind of L-shaped family tree. And so, like,

I do get the feeling of, like, the movies are really loud about how important that relation is, except for when it doesn't exist at all. You know, I do think it's funny, and we will get to the sequels one day, about how, watching the stuff and seeing how

much emphasis is put on of course Laya is going to become a powerful Jedi too just one more example of how ridiculous and reactionary the response to the last Jedi stuff was you know I cannot begin to

overstate how frustrating it was seeing people get mad at Laya holding her breath and floating through space in that movie because it was the first tiniest little thing you know and we're coming of movies where people are doing

fucking double jumps, you know, and they're like, well, that's too, this is a bridge too far. So. Yeah,

fuck those people. Yeah. This fight's great. Luke's like, fuck this guy. Lenny brings up, Leah, comes out,

starts beating his ass, and then the music's awesome. And music's like, is this good? It's not a heroic theme, but it's full of portent and, you know, gravitas.

As he, and in this point, what's interesting here is, it's barely a fight. You know, he just, this is now, this is the onslaught, this is in a lot of ways like,

Anakin's second meeting with Duku, where it's like, it's just, it's over fast. And, unwitting advertisement for the power of the dark side, maybe,

a little bit, uh, where he just gets, he just gets a bit hot under the collar and just, Absolutely Rex Vader. But yeah, it's great. And then before you can administer the coup de grace, he sort of reflects on, you know,

early in the at Jabba Sail barge, his hand was shot and the wrist assembly of his prosthetic was exposed. And he's sort of been worrying over that, the whole movie and sort of glancing at it, at odd moments. And after chopping off Vader's hand and so he was a lightsaber spinning off to the side,

he looks at Vader's hands and looks at his and draws that connection of there's a lot happening here, right? Like, Vader did that to hand, now he's turned around and done it to Vader, taking off a hand. There's also the, he has lost a hand,

and it is his first, like, the first limb lost in this sort of path he's walking as a Jedi. and for Vader it was cleared like in so many ways pieces of him kept getting taken and replaced and he's drawing those connections you know you

I actually don't think in this it's fully the Obi-Wan he's more machine than man I actually think this is like very like Luke's reaction here is not oh I'm becoming a machine too or anything like that I think it is the state of Vegas

in his vulnerability here and what has become of him. It's like this is the wages of sin moment, right? Like this is the, if I continue down this path, which starts here, if I just strike him down, that is the path he walks and this is where it ends. Yeah, I think that's true. I think this is a both and thing because it's like the core metaphor is he's more machine than man, but it is, we're dealing this with a lot over on show by genre with the Tolkien unit right now, right? Which is like, Tolkien is writing a story about how the thing you need to beat evil

is to be tolerant and to build community across cultures and to work together and to let the weakest among you lead and all of this stuff, which is fundamentally true. And that the orcs represent a bad way of doing politics. They're constantly turning on each other and eating each other and stabbing each other in the back and working at cross ends and the ones from Moria versus the ones in all that stuff. But fundamentally they're also broad-nosed swart have scimitars

and are meant to be outsiders and other to the British reader, right? It's both and that's bad. It's one of the South Wrens the Eastern Link show up. I know. And it's like, holy shit, the Commonwealth is here. It's literally, ew, get them out of here. It's literally like you can't trust refugees because there might be some terrorists among them. Like,

it's very wild. I think that's the same thing here, right? Which is like, yes, the metaphor here is about giving into a way of life that will break you and following in your father's footsteps that you know that he wishes he turned away from. But the metaphor is still, what if you had a hand that wasn't made of flesh and bone? Wouldn't that metaphorize losing yourself really well? I think it's just, for me, it's like, it's always freighted with that even when I think the, I think this is the most beautiful moment in all Star Wars.

I don't throw it away because it's also caught up in this metaphor of the thing that makes Darth Vader scary is that he isn't flesh and blood the way he used to be. But I have to also admit that that's part of the metaphor even if I don't want to throw away the scene, you know?

But I, you know, again, I think this is maybe the important way to frame it for me is like, you don't have to throw away a work because it has a problematic element or a complex element that doesn't like fit with your worldview. You can recognize that it has that. And also, what is it doing?

Because the thing that it's doing here, and in fact, the thing that maybe you can push back on here is like, Luke's response to all of this is not like, well, because Vader is more machine than man, he's unsavable or something. Also, it's Obi-Wan who says that. And that is an important detail.

Obi-Wan is the, like, very dismissive. There's no redeeming him. He's more machine than man. And Luke isn't having that. Yeah. And I think it's like Luke sees humanity, whereas Obi-Wan comforts himself to a degree. Like there's a lot happening.

Like, Obi-Wan's bullshit like from a certain point of view, but in a weird way, I think there's a horrible degree of truth to it, which is he comforts himself by saying his friend died. Yeah. That guy there, that's not really Anakin. His friend died. That's Darth Vader. My friend isn't living in torture and pain in this like mechanized like two.

tomb that the emperor built for him. Death Starz Vader and he's he's a machine. And he'd be better dead, in fact. Yeah. And that is not where, that is not what Luke sees. And I think it's also, you know, Obi-Wan isn't rocking a prosthetic in these movies. Like, like, Obi-Wan didn't come through. Like, Obi-Won doesn't bear these scars.

Right. And in fact, he dies without a body. Right? He doesn't even ever, he never has to wear a source. scar, right? The body is is literally self-effemoral. Right. Yeah, he's pure. Same with Yoda.

They're both like purely transcend into There's not even a head rolling around the deck of the Death Star. No. And you know the other big metaphor here is just fundamentally not just the not you know to move away from the question

of ableism and stuff but it is machine versus man because that's what's happening down on the forest mood of Endor is a bunch of little teddy bears with bows and arrows are beating the world the galaxy's most the galaxy's most moral army you know the galaxy's most advanced army is out here with giant mechs getting beat to shit with logs um and i think like again like star wars has always been about that sort of yeah uh that's what i don't understand luke was already an iwok when people get mad about the Ewox beating

the Stormtroopers, which again is a real contingent of the fandom when we were growing up. There are lots of people who are like, I don't like that the Ewox beat the Stormtroopers. The stormtroopers have blasters. How could they ever do that? Luke was already an EWAC. Luke was already turning off the targeting computer.

That's the first big climactic moment in these movies, right? And so... Huh? This is just an aside. People really overrate how impactful firearms were in the conquest of various parts of the world. They had guns a long time before they were able to actually hold positions in India, etc.

I think there's a book called The Military Revolution in Europe. And its thesis is that it took the Europeans like 300 years to develop firearms and tactics and state infrastructure well enough to get a foothold in India. And then that is the first thing allowed Then make a dent on China. Interesting. What's the book? The military revolution in Europe.

But yeah, it's basically, people tend to have the story of like the Europeans got gunpowder and then they conquer the world. Right. Not that simple. It turns out. No. It turns out like trained warrior casts across a variety of cultures.

Like people who will spend their life like fighting. You don't just get rolled by a guy with a, with a musket. Yeah. And, you know, I think here's the, this is one of the great moments of the end of Return of the Jedi for me is like, it is the synthesis moment, right? You have a thesis, you have the empire strength is its machines, it's embodied in its giant walking robots and maybe most embodied in this thing that blends machine

and man in Darth Vader. You have the antithesis, which is the rebels, Luke turning off his targeting computer. you have the Ewaks fighting down on the ground But then you actually have the great terror synthesis first Which is he beats Darth Vader He gives him to his anger He almost kills Darth Vader

He smashes the saber away into the pit He cuts off the arm like you were just talking about Rob He has him at you know blade point And she starts laughing Palpatine starts laughing Comes over Luke throws away the saber And you go oh well look

he's rejecting the terrible machinations of the empire. But here's this little guy, this little cursed, you know, wrinkly old man, who then reveals what he says is the truth of the force. He doesn't have any robot parts that we can see. He doesn't have a lightsaber. He doesn't have a blaster. He has the pure power of the force, which itself is not fundamentally a good thing as we learn as it's turned against Luke. The fact that he is able to then come back around on Luke and be like,

I actually don't need the machines of my empire to win this fight. I just need the force is like kind of deeply scary. You know, the emperor uses lightning is just something I've known my whole life now. So I don't remember what it felt like the first time I saw it. But thinking through it as like this is the first time we're seeing something like a force power that isn't just throwing shit around that is like, it feels like the pure force is being used and it's being used to torment somebody.

It throws all of the other metaphors away. It counters all of that other stuff. It brings together this idea of, oh, true power is not a machine. It's something deeper than that. And then goes like, aha, but sometimes the evil guy gets true power too. And then you have to go, okay, well, what can counter that?

And what Star Wars says is love? And that's what Star Wars is about, right? The stuff with him getting elected while Vader watches is just so good. Yeah. Yelling father, please. And Vader sort of, and this is a moment that resonates well here with the prequels having come in here. And like Vader having literally been in this moment before. Yeah.

And chosen the wrong side at this. Yeah. You've fallen for Palpatine's bullshit pleas of weakness and lies about what he's going to help Anakin protect. Oh, I can save, I can save Padmay. And here he is literally killing your son before your eyes. Yeah. The whole thing that set this in motion.

So you can't imagine on levels, like with the prequel trilogy, this being the further, like the scales falling from his eyes and realizing the degrees to which this is all, the snake has in its own tale, the logic of his life. If you think about it too deep, it's so fucking. It's just so sad. This whole guy, 40 years of this or whatever, you know, from being a little... This is where it works in the broadest strokes from me.

It's like, this poor little boy has been brought through hell, you know, and was turned into the devil, you know, along the way. Oh, and you can't rewind the time, you can't take it back. No. It's just that...

All you can do is just carry the... that weight, literally just pick that load up. That's right. And just carry him like a hay bale to the air shaft

and just chuck him. Jam him. Chuck him over. Chuck him right over. You get a you'll get like the cartoon skeleton effect

in the process where when you get when you're a cartoon and you get electrocuted your skeleton shows for a second and then it goes back to normal it's clever that lightning effect though so ethereal it's like hard to tell like what's it actually hitting what's it doing

so they got to show it like really zapping the shit on a Vader somehow it's kind of kind of a clever little way to have him just line up like a light bulb and like oh we really got him. He got him. Do you think...

It is so cartoon logic. It is. Do you think, you know, the very obvious read here is he gets zapped as he's doing this. He gets zapped to death as he's doing this. But as we were talking about over the last, this episode and the last episode, all of the, I must do what he says stuff, you don't know the true power of the dark side. Do you think the emperor was extending Vader's life and with the emperor being dead, Vader is now fundamental.

He says it's too late for me to Luke. Like you can't save me here. I have always felt to a degree that like the suit as prison, the way it is introduced in the prequel of like some unholy magic. This is not like

load him into the medical bay and have the droids work on him. Vader has done something to a net, like Palpatine has done something to a naturally extend Vader's life but also hold him in this like twilight state right like i think vader's really understood as a guy who was like like in limbo between life and death uh you know while he's in that suit and it's not entirely

mechanical that's happening to him the question is is it like palpateen's will that is animating him or is it Vader's own rage that is fueling him which i think is increasingly the direction that other star wars things have gone which is that Vader and you get to take of this like the scene on Mustafa in in in Rogue One but this is a guy who is like seething and using that anger and rage to just sort of like cling to life through spite and make up the deficit of whatever the suit lacks and so I think there's a dual like the animating force behind the creation of Vader's just been destroyed but also the resident vitro of of Vader is also gone

at this moment. Like, Anakin is no longer consumed by rage and anger. Like, his identity and his son has been restored to him. Yeah. Seems good. Takes off the helmet. Also, he gets nailed by that hurricane force, uh, addition to the execution. Like, there's a category five dark side, dark side like energy release.

Hey, man. That's true. Has anyone who's ever fallen down a pit in Star Wars died? Okay, Darth Mall didn't Darth Mall fell down a pit He got cut in half and fell down a pit He's alive He's alive, he's a new show

He has a new show Emperor falls down a pit As we know, he has returned Somehow Boba Fett Falls into the pit The Sarlac pit This is not Oh, I have one

Oh please The Twilight dancer at Java's Palace I guess that's a pit But you're right Here's an important distinction Pits with ground versus an endless pit, bottomless pit. We never see the base of the Sarlac pit. And I would count the Sarlac is bottomless because it's a mouth that, like, who knows,

like, you're being pulled deep into this monster. And in this movie, we never go down there. We only go down there later. Whereas here, is there anybody else? What about, like, every stormtrooper ever that is shot? Great point. I got to, okay, corollary. or read them you let's rewrite it

this is a great great counter is there anyone with a name who's ever died when they fell down a bottomless pit we're zeroing in on the right way of saying this it's just not an efficient way to kill somebody in Star Wars the hit rate at the very least is pretty low

I bet like did Rush Clovis get to fall into a pit or something did I bet some Clone Wars people found to a pit and died so really it's like if only if only If only Vader had like American history exed Palpatine at that moment or it's just like, oh, he just caved in his skull. Oh my God. That's really gnarly.

Yep. There you go. That would have gotten the job done. That would have been it. Okay. A crucial exception is Han Solo who is killed and then falls into the pit. And see, this is why Kylo Ren is doing his job. He said I gotta kill him first.

Wait, yeah, but hang on. I mean, it gets fucked up because he shows up as a weird... Why is Han there in the third movie? He's not... He just is. And Mall gets killed, too. Don't they both get cut in half, basically? Yeah, but Mal comes back after being cut in half.

Right? Right. Oh, I guess you're right. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but he... They both die pre-pit.

He's still, like, He's still shaking and blinking on his way down the pit, I think. Yeah, the hate fueled him, obviously. Yeah, yeah. I can't believe we're still doing mall. I know, I know. Another character who falls down a pit and doesn't die is Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker, right, of course.

In the last movie. In the movie we just watched before this one. you're right maybe it's not 100% but if I had to kill someone in Star Wars it would not be Pitt related I would shoot him Grito is dead I think

100% to me I say it's 100% I think we just proved it we haven't watched the we haven't watched the prequels with an eye to this maybe there's someone else and we haven't watched the sequels yet but when we give it the sequels

Oh shit. Doesn't Obi-Wan get shot into a pit by the clones when they turn on it? And then he falls and falls and he's fine. He does it. It's fine. He does. Which means, but he survives. Hello. Mace. He falls into the pit that is Corrassat. And again, that's not a pit. That's not a pit. Samuel Jackson is like, we don't know that I'm dead. I think he's going to be, I really think he's going to be the Mandalorian and Grogu. I really do. I really feel it. I will freak the fuck out.

I feel it in my heart I also Like if we do that I really hope we get like Full on I don't give a shit like Tarantino Jackson where's where did you go After you fell out the window

Fuck the Jedi order No he needs to Like hate the Jedi Yeah that'd be great Dark Jedi Mace Windu Yes Yes yes

Yeah I like it I like it like it. I like it a lot. I like it a lot. Anyway. So, Vader redeemed. Emperor destroyed the scene rendered meaningless, but not meaningless, but it sucks, though. It's pretty bad to have this build to, like, Vader's big, I am going to destroy this evil who's destroyed my life and, and consumed it with darkness. And then we're going to have him come back on a Fortnite event. And we're just going to re-rack. It sucks so bad.

mad. It just sucks. We need to get there. We will. We need to go through it. We bring the Fortnite stuff all the time because of the symbol of all the ways in which it sucks, but it's not actually the worst part. It's just that he's back.

And it's like, yeah, we're out of ideas. Here's, we're going to do this again. And it was his plan all along to memorably parodied in the sheave, like, pivot, you know, essay, as it were. Because it becomes even more deeply solely, but very disappointing that this is not the big payoff for the fate of Palpatine. And then Luke tries to get him off the ship and the invader lets everyone off the hook by dying on the flight deck. He asks to see Luke with his own eyes. He has the bottom half of the masks still on, which I always thought looked really cool.

his head is all ill-shaped his eyes are incredibly roomy yeah yeah like which again gives you the sense of like ooh it's always painful in there oh yeah

uh Luke says I'm gonna save you and Vader says Luke you already have you were right you were right about me it makes me want to cry tell your sister

you were right tell Leah I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about I didn't know. I told Moth Tarkin not to do that. I was like, this is so bad.

On Dron, my B. Alderon. If he said, Anderan, that would be so my greatest regret is that I let your father die

when we destroyed Anderan. Yeah, I mean, or whatever. or whatever. Father, I think you mean Alderan. Oh, was it? Was it Alderan?

Okay, yeah, tell her Alderan. Wasn't it Scariff? Wasn't it Scariff, I think. Remember, we blew up Scarf first? It was very sad. There was some stuff I heard about. I just was reading the Caldroma Comics, and it's top of mind right now.

I'm thinking about it. And yeah, by the way, If you went into any of my old friends, I've heard some of them are still out there. You know. If you see a punk named Lux Bonn, Terry, please. Please kick his fucking ass for me. Is Luxemontary still alive at this point?

Oh, great question. His fate, I believe, is either in the video game, Star Wars Battlesome 2. That's right. That's right. Or it's in the novelization of Battlefront 2. Yes, we've talked about this. Yes. His daughter is involved in some way, right? And that's contemporary to this. So he's out there. Yeah, yeah. He's married. I think Quinlan Voss might still be out there somewhere. Say hi to Quinlan for me. He was always kind of cool. I always admired him. You're not the last Jedi, Luke.

Yeah, by the way. There's actually so, there's actually so many out there. Ezra Bridger. as he's somewhere in the in between with Yoda if you can get there. The whales, the whales are out there. What's Kane and Jerus doing that day? That's right. You can go find a wolf if it's, if it's really big money, you can put your money on. That's a Jedi actually.

That's a Jedi. Yeah. Asokatano. That's the wildest bit. You know in his head in the current vision of Star Wars somewhere in there. He's like, damn, I hope Assoca is okay. I wish Assoca could have seen that I became a good guy. Tell your sister.

And Assocato, do you know her yet? Well, she run into her. Is Assoca can be in a Manabwe? Probably, yeah, because it's all. I know her from the Mandalorian show. Yeah. She's in the Mandalorian show. And they're setting up whatever that movie is going to be.

We're gonna have to watch the Asoka show at some point too, right? Because of, Yeah. Listen, that's on Blu-ray somehow. Is it really? I was pretty sure that one is. Is that one on Blu-ray?

It's mind-boggling to me that and or season two is still not on Blu-ray. We will find out. It just came out. Did it? It was like 18 months before they even announced. Oh, yeah. It was.

It was-and-or season one. My guess is we'll hear it announce at the, The weird one to me is Clone Wars last the final season. That's the big one, man. Because, like, they put all the other animation out there on disc. And the season, which I heard is really good. I keep hearing it. They didn't.

Yeah. Which is kind of an odd thing because, like, I think there's not pretty ample of it. Physical Media is not really dead. It's become, like, collector thing, just like everything else. So it's kind of an odd decision. There's going to be, there's going to be some phaloney, like, That's it. Faloni wants the Clone Wars, you know, box set on his shelf.

They're not going to release the season separately. It'll be part of some sort of fucking box set. Box set, $150. Here's my criterion collection, but Star Wars. Yeah. And my dumb ass will buy it. Yeah. I mean, this episode comes out, May the 4th will have happened.

So we'll see if there's new announcements on Star Wars Day. Any predictions? We will get another trailer for the Mandalorian and Grogu. Maybe we'll get a Starfighter or whatever the name of that movie is like teaser. Oh, right. Right? Oh, yeah. That teaser image took so much the wind out of my sales.

I know. What if a Starfighter had a little kid mentee, protege thing? I don't, I'm tired. Yeah. Will there ever be a Star Wars property without a. kid's sidekick. We're just going to keep doing lone wolf and cub until the heat

death of the universe. Yeah. I have some friends reading lone wolf and cub right now and telling me about it. And it actually feels like it actually feels like they've been doing what they think lone wolf and cub is. Yes, well there's that too. And not actually a lone wolf and cub. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, so much is also like again the like embittered mental tour and then protege at the sort of the the dawn of life, the dawn of adult life. Yeah. Great setup, but often way darker than Star Wars tends to go with it.

Yeah. You know, which true grit is a good example of that of like, oh, your plucky little hero actually needs a real bastard to do this. Rob, you mentioned true grit actually just made me realize that. The song you were talking about, is to say this out loud before I forget it, when they're fighting underneath the throne room, has like a Western,

has like a spaghetti western feel to it. Do you know the one I'm talking about? Like when he's really, and the Corey starts to come up. It really has. But you know, now you say it like a Morconi. A Morconi track.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what track that is in the Star Wars, like soundtrack. What's weird is, it often doesn't show up on the side. Like, it's a weird,

Like, but there's not many, like, because I have a few Star Wars, like soundtrack albums. This isn't. It hit me in that way. Like, I haven't heard this song ever, which is like, obviously not true. I've seen this movie a bunch of times, but I haven't, I haven't heard it just like on the soundtrack or in a video game or any. And you know what I mean? So anyway, yes, true grit, which does not have a soundtrack like that, but you know what I mean. Westerns.

True grit. It's good. It's good. I hope Zero Company is there. That's what I want to see more of. I want to see gameplay of the tactics game. We didn't talk about this, but there was a big write-up of that tactics game recently that sounded good as hell.

So, hell yeah. All right. So Luke takes Vader's husk down to the planet, puts the helmet on, so maybe his body got raptured like all the others. We just don't know. But either way,

he's going to build a pyre for it. Meanwhile, Han has his graceful, well, attempt to be graceful. he's fighting back tears as he's like you won't need Han to kick around anymore very like he I'll just I'll just step aside so you can

you and Luke can be again and she's like silly Han tricks are for kids and Luke is my brother and Hans like I swear to God there was tongue in that kiss on Han he was a little bit

his face he's like I swear to God he's like I'm not sure I felt like there was a little slip. Yeah. Yep. But no, we're just, it's all good. Not weird. We're gonna just seal the books on Hawth,

Splinter the Mind's Eye, all this stuff. Uh-huh. Don't worry about it so much. In fact that he's like, they're kissing and he's still looking and his eyebrows go up as he's like doing the mental math of it all. It's so funny. Yeah.

Ha, On's like, oh, so what a, crazy thing. He's your brother. Cool. And then they party, man. They party and yov is such a bit. They got fireworks.

First of all, I want to say, it seems to me very irresponsible for there to be so many fireworks on such a heavily forested planet. However, I've chosen to believe that the Ewarks follow very... This fendable forestry. Yes, exactly. sustainable forestry and that this is a very wet climate actually. It's more of a rainforest-y vibe than you know you're more

it's pretty damp when we see it. It is like this is not a drought stricken like this is not California 2025 yeah with like 75 years of like maximum fire suppression brush growth also maybe the thing that's happening is the X-wings are flying through the sky and dropping the fireworks. Maybe they're really high altitude. From a safe distance. Yeah, exactly.

There are cool ashes by the time that they land, you know? I love the shot of Vader's corpse burning or is Vader's mask and stuff burning on the fire. I think that's great. It retroactively makes the Quigon funeral

cool, you know? Or it doesn't retroactively. That's not true. That's... Lou for undertaking the studio alone. Yes, yes. Like, Mahon and Leah join him to draw him back to like the circle of friendship and like family and celebration but like Luke is alone here with this burden yeah um which again i kind of like and in that in the same way it's

like a little disappointing you don't get like delay interaction with with Vader but on the other hand you're left with this this like enormous thing happened to Luke that he carries alone right it's like that no one else knows the story or knows this person that you saw briefly. And so in the midst of like the greatest day of, you know, the rebellion's history

keys off like mourning and private this sort of unfinished connection. There's just a really great effect if you look at these two shots side by side, the Quigon one and the Vader one one, Quigon's head is on the right hand side,

Vader's head is on the left hand side. They sort of like, you know, They're opposite there. And then also obviously different is Luke is mourning alone. Kwai goddess body is surrounded by Yoda and Mace and Anakin and Obi-Wan. All of these people, Sheave is there. All these people are mourning him at the end of Phantom Menace. Luke is alone, right?

This kind of like closed door on the saga is really great. I don't know what happened at the end of Rise of Skywalker. So I just couldn't tell you. If there's another rhyme. I'm not sure, actually. I genuinely, I do remember. Never mind. I remember. No, I remember it.

I remember it. I got mad. I remember it. I'm Ray Skywalker. Embarrassing movie. They should do one of the, they should do a yield log, but it's just, it's just the various flaming pyres. Oh, my God. It's just Vader burning for a second. Vader and my god

quigod 10 hours someone send this to the onion this is this is this is really good content oh wait hang on shit vair quagon and no it in Peru

oh my god I did find a Vader when someone has done this oh god the jaw was no no but they were it has to be ongoing it has to be something that you can loop

there's nothing to loop with Owen and... Oh, you could always have Obi-Wa, like, 3PO, dragging it on your Java into frame and tossing it into the fire. The Vader Yule log, that's...

Wait, the first... I'm dead at there being one comment, and it goes three years and no comments. How? I did not find a Quigon pyre 10 hours

Yule log, but I did find Lego Star Wars Quigon in death sounds 10 hours. Awesome. There are so many types of perverts in this world. It's beautiful to me. I love, I love creativity. Oh, I found it.

There is a quiet guy one. It's fine. Don't worry about it. In the special edition, they try to tie all the pieces together from the prequel movies. So you now have a cut to, the first special edition had a shot of course. and Best's been celebrating. We didn't know when the special edition's released in theaters what Nabu was. So that is a later edition where you got people celebrating in the big city square of Nabu.

And you hear from on top of like the dome of the basilica of Nabu, we suffer. Oh my God. Is that real? Have I forgotten this? No. No. You probably never saw it because it like in the various version of special edition, this is a late edition.

So it wouldn't have been what you saw in the theaters. It wouldn't have been on the VHSs or DVDs you had with special editions. This came late. And it's not great. When was the last update to Return of the Jedi? Like it feels like to me

low key that they are still throwing shit in these movies constantly. Because I was looking at like the updated Ubabubah Uba droids from What? Just the I

Is there a version of comparison of the Uba Buba droids? I don't know if there's like a comparison out there but when I was skimming skimming my copy of Revenge of the Sith

Is it like a 4K version? They look super upresed. I don't know like they look they look weird. Maybe it's the 4kness of it all. But my question is, yeah, when does it stop? When do you get to stop editing your movies?

We'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah, maybe we'll never live to see it. I don't know. I just keep happening. The Gungens is killing me. I can't stand it. I can't stand it. It's really. It's really fucked.

It's really fucked. Anyway, yub-nub. Anyway, yub-nub. It's a better celebration song. It's, it's fun. It's fun. Is yubnubnub on YouTube? Yeah, yubnub's on YouTube.

Yub-nub. Everyone goes to show yubnub-nub some love-nub. Some love-nub. Yeah, here it is. Yub-nub. Yeah. classic. And we got the rebel pilots dancing

with the Ewoks. Great. We can understand each other. Absolutely poisoned with alcohol that night. It's like, shit, we killed a bunch of Ewox. Like, this stuff's toxic to them. Oh, God. They got the Ewoks doing cartwheels. They got the Ewarks

really just getting their freak off. And then the Rebel Alliance took off and went to assume power and then days after they left. an extinction level event happened as pieces of the best star fell through the atmosphere of Andor Oh my god! And blasted the landscape and left us the barren wind-swept plane that we see in the, uh, in, in, in

Scott Walker. Oh, my God. And he's coming over and being like, all right, Luke, we got to, we got to get out of here. T-minus. We'll leave now. We got to leave now. 12 minutes until impact, okay? Say your goodbye.

Can I bring Wicked? Can I, can I bring? No. No. Not a single EWalk can come with us. That's right. They know too much.

Not pap lu. Yeah. None of them. We see the ghosts. We see the Force ghosts. In a special edition. Anakin is Hayden Christensen, which doesn't really make a ton of sense.

Yeah. But there he is. Yeah. It's just weird to put, like, I love hating Christensen I'll defend him forever It is weird

For the most recent version of your dad That you just saw To not be the version that you see When he becomes a forest ghost Well you don't see You see That's even Because he sees his father's face

Yes And then he sees Hayden Christensen The Force ghost Yes Yes But the version that we get In the original version is still not quite Darth Vader's face

because it's not bald with the face scarring. He gets like hair back. So it's some other third. But that to me is like that's, that's his father if he hadn't. Yes, that makes sense. To the dark side. Like that's, you know, the good.

Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. De-lavified. Right. But that's his age. It's the right.

age, it's the right, it's the right guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it not the same actor? Yeah, it is. It is the same actor. I mean, I think that that's like part of the power of it is you get to see a Darth Vader, you get to see an Anakin who isn't all Darth Vader-fied, right? Right, right.

It's like, wow, this is what he could have been. And I think that's what's special about it. But to see Hayden Christensen, I guess the argument for it would be like that's the, that was the last time he was. not Darth Vader yes I guess except for the very end when he's not Darth Vader

exactly he should have put Jake Lloyd in they should have put little kid in they should have that kid had massacre in a village of sand people yeah that's my dad the kid the child what are you looking at Lou it's like a reverse interstellar situation

an interstellar situation where yeah that's really could you imagine like Luke just calling his dad on the Forest Ghost phone and it's just Jake Lloyd every time picking up

being like, I don't know how to work this thing. I'll put you on with them on. Am I an angel? Am I an angel? Jesus Christ. Where's Padmay? Oh, I mean.

Oh, kid, kid. I got some good news and I got some bad news. Let me tell you. You're going to be psyched and then you're going to be really disappointed. is, let's coming down the line for you.

Is there material about Force Ghost Vader? Force Ghost Anakin? Does the Throne? Because the Throne book starts with Force Ghosts. He only ever sees Ben. Ben leaving.

And none of the others ever appeared to him. Hmm. Interesting. What's he up to? Yeah. Yeah, what is he? He's with Ezra Burger. Again, had the decency to be like

my presence will not be super welcome here. God. Or maybe he's just, He like keeps calling Asoka, but she's on Do Not as Her. I was just thinking this. I was just thinking, do you think

Force Ghost? Hey, Snips. Vader shows up in the fucking Asoka show. That would actually... Because it's when it takes place. It takes place after... What if it's good, though? Crying?

What if it's crying? Good cry. No, like, good cry. I would be crying. Imagining Aniken, like, reaching out to Asoka but then here and here's the thing that won't be the

Anakin that had that relationship with Asoka because this is you know what I mean this is where the I wish they'd stayed in the cartoon realm so that these characters like Ashley Xstein is is Asoka and to a degree it's like oh this is just someone playing a so in a weird way you know what I mean it's like

this character was developed over season and had this relationship and led to that moment of like her leaving the order and him calling after her. And it's like, oh, devastating, perfect. Yeah. The live action performers have no connection to that, nor to each other as performers. That second bit is it, right?

Rosario Dawson and Hayden Christensen don't have years and years of... I believe in Hayden. Well, well said. You know what? I can't comment because I've actually seen as other movies. That's a shame. Yeah. That's a shame.

Yeah. missing out. We should do a watch of... Watch the space. Yeah, name one. Yeah, uh, jumper. Is he in jumper? Oh, no, we have to watch the one where he's like waking up during surgeries. What's that what's called?

No. Isn't that jumper or no? It's not like a race. No, it's like awake or something. Away. Okay, wait. Really quickly to go through Hating Christensen's filmography so that everyone's aware. Oh, I've seen in the mouth of mad as he plays a paper boy.

that was before Empire rather attack the clones Wow he was acting from a young age He was I've not seen any of these I've seen nothing here Don't scroll down too much Is what I'd say

Wait he's been the Virgin suicides I totally Missed him there He must be like I don't think he's a primary character in it Right? No He has a name He's the you know what

He does have a name. He is a character. Wow. Was this Lucas pulling the Coppola connection and it's like, hey, there's a guy maybe you didn't do right by? Maybe. Do you think Sophia can, like, find something for him? Or just going direct to Sophia where it's like, you know what your dad did to you

with Godfather three? I kind of did that. Oh, my God. He's such a baby in it. I have seen him, of course. I saw him in Shattered Glass where he played Stephen Glass during the, like, Fabulism Scandal. Oh, is that good?

It's interesting. It's entertaining. I don't think it was a very good film. But it's like, you know, it's a media scandal movie, Rob. You and I will eat it up because of just the fundamental facts of the story are fun. You know? Yeah. I don't, I remember thinking that he's like,

detestable the whole way through, which is one way of telling that story. But, um, yeah. Oh, God. Anyway,

maybe we'll see him again one day. Is he some version suicides or you, or, you know, he's also in virgin suicides. No, he's also in virgin suicides, yeah.

He's one of the, like, the group of, uh, uh, boys. Oh. No.

I don't know what that movie is about. I haven't seen it. Yeah. Oh my God, Rob. You should, watch it now just to make good on that comment. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a movie.

It's a movie for girls. Wow. I do hope we get, not to make the return of the Jedi podcast about Hayden Christensen, but, but boy do I hope for another, another shot for Hayden beyond the Obi-One Canobeeby show to reprise, to reprise. to reprise Anakin Skywalker. Boy, do I. But yeah, that's return of

the freaking Jedi. What a movie. Yeah. Star Wars is pretty good. That's my feeling. Star Wars is pretty good. I liked coming back to this after doing a Star Wars show for five years. It's so funny. We did this.

It's useful because I think like It's all still here You know what I like it I didn't get so burnt out on Star Wars that I'm like Star Wars Fuck original Star Wars It's still good It's still so good Luke finding it in himself

To throw away the lightsaber Is the most powerful You know until Darth Vader then saves him But really that moment Is like the that's what it is Like everything else I think about in Star Wars Has to be able to move through that lens. And when I find myself frustrated with everything ranging from Mortis to some of the

stuff in Rebels, to the prequel stuff missing for me in places, it's because it kind of loses that clarity, you know, or it adopts some other positions. And it's fine to use Star Wars as a franchise and as a setting to tell other types of stories. But like, it's always going to need to be compared to this moment where Luke has Vader at the point of his lightsaber and he tosses the saber away because he has this deep moral belief in his father. And everything else has to kind of stack up to that. And the stuff that's good, I think, does stack up to that, you know, or at least is playing in similar. And it might come to different conclusions. There's definitely Star Wars out there that we love, like, and or where it's like, sometimes you've got to pull the trigger.

But it comes from the same sort of moral clarity and that same sort of like, the heart of the moment demands something. And in the final instance, Star Wars says it demands belief in redemption and love even in the face of terror and like and that it will be fulfilled right you know it is it is a little cheesy it is a real it is a real like it believes in the good at the heart of people

to come up to come together and throw the emperor in the pit and at its worst it's then the emperor will call back out because we need a villain for our third movie oh fuck what have we done you know so Star Wars

what are we doing next Good question. Rob had a thought that I love. Oh, doing the first series of Gillen Vader comics. Let's do it. I think we should do the Vader comics. We talked so much in the last few months about how interesting Vader is. Those are bastards to find online.

Sorry, say that again? Those are bastards to find online. They're out there. Print editions? I'm looking at like nice print editions. That is the thing that's fine. I was going through use books. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm sure that maybe it's hard to find new, whatever.

No, like it is just hard to find copies anywhere. Yeah, it's digitally available, like, officially, through, where did I find it? Through somewhere. It exists digitally, is what I sent you months ago. I said five arcs, we could go pretty slow with it. But so if we want to do it, we probably have to do it digitally. This is the cure and dealing run.

I would say we either do that as our next cycle, or we could, As a one-off, or maybe this is a Patreon, I don't know, the, um, the radio drama of A New Hope. That's interesting. Very well-regarded. I've never listened to. That sounds interesting. That does sound interesting. That feels like it could be a Patreon up to me. But.

And then there's that novelization of a New Hope, which is interesting as well. I would love for some scheduling reasons not to do a novel right now, I would say. even a would probably be a pretty light one but I have some travel coming up Let's do Gill Invader Let's do Gillinvader

This is this is available in a I believe an omnibus That you can find digitally on one of the apps Or elsewhere Yep And what do you want to do the first arc of it like the first So the omnibus combines five trades

That's correct Do you want to do one trade Like whatever the first trade of Vader is. Yeah. I think that that makes the most sense. Which I think is again, that's the Kieran Gillen run. I'll lay out what it is

in the episode description for people. All right. So that's what we get into next. And it'll be fun to see someone explore what is the thing that's interested us across these movies, which is knowing now what we know about Anakin and Vader and what he rapidly learns of course

the series. What's going on in his head? While this is all unfolding. Okay. I can just say really quick, though. Sorry. You can find, it seems like you can find these in trades, individual volumes, pretty regularly. 12 bucks to find Darth Vader volume one. So even we can't get the big omnibus. You can get those, the individual ones pretty easy. So this is Star Wars, Darth Vader, volume one. One is easy to find. It's like three and book, like trade number three, trade number four.

That's where you start running into like, where the hell is this thing? So that is the issue. But you should be able to dig it up. They do come up semi-regularly. So that's what we will do. That's what we'll do next. What's that first trade called? Vader.

It is called Volume 1, Vader. Love it. It's going to do exactly what it says on the 10. Get ready for Vader. Woo-hoo. All right. Until then, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, this original Star Wars, pretty good.