A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 138: Darth Vader Vol. 4 — End of Games

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

This week we wrap up the 2015 run of Star Wars: Darth Vader! With the ore barons of Shu-Torun leashed and Cylo drawn out as a traitor, Darth Vader can finally address what really matters: Locating the missing Doctor Aphra, facing whatever truths Inspector Thanoth has found, and telling the Emperor that his manipulations are all too obvious.  Next Time: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 1 — Aphra (Doctor Aphra 2016 Issues 1 - 6 Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Show Notes 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 Zakene, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners via patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes. And here we have come to the end of our arc with Kieran Gillins Vader, and every character must go. It is a clearance sale here at the Empire. Get them. These characters won't be a...

round long folks. It's like QVC's Christmas in July. Look at this. Everyone ever admires the sophistication and intrigue of Inspector Thothoth gone, done. No more Inspector Thanoff. He's finished. Okay, well, I don't think we were, maybe he's the guy we're really going to miss now that I think about it. Well, you have to put Afro on layaway. We couldn't afford to get rid of Afro. Yeah. So we just put her on layaway for now. Yeah, we are doing, we're doing the Karna financing option. with Dr. Afra and Triple Zero and BT.

Yeah. They put Karnan on Star Wars 2. Yeah. It's everywhere now. The guy introducing you to Star Wars Klarna is going to be a super racist stereotype. Don't you worry.

God. But yeah, so we are at the end of it. And I'm not kidding around. Like we are burning through most of the characters. There's a lot of plot threads being wrapped up some not so ceremoniously.

Yeah, we also get some new characters who get wrapped up basically immediately. That's true. Do we have to speed run the cyborg lady? This whole time, I was like waiting for the cyborg lady to be something and it was like four pages. Actually, hold on.

Because the whole, this whole last arc, this whole last set of issues does feel like a speed run, by the way. Oh, yeah. I have enjoyed this. comic a great deal. Yeah. The last one, I feel it's a bit like the

the John Mullaney happy birthday bit where you just, you run on a room and now we have to, we have to conclude this fast. 100%. Because the thing is, there's not actually that much stuff for me to summarize. Not in some ways, in some ways not that much happens, but also tons of things happen, like tons of events happen.

So, you know, when we left things off was Inspector, Inspector Thanoff, it reached out to Vader. It's time we had a talk. And just as we suspected, Inspector Thanoff had figured it out. He figured out that Vader was behind the mysterious crime spree and the misadventures of Dr. Afra. And he puts it to Vader. I'll give you Dr. Afra's location. But I know who you are. He knows, he's figured out that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker.

Walker. And he, the reason he's going to keep this all the secret and not tell the empire and back Vader's play is that Fanoff is loyal to order. The eternal empire. And he needs Vader to make the empire strong after the screw up of the Death Star. And Vader just cuts him down. Like it happens so fast. You may not even be sure. Vader just slices him off. You see his cane go flying. There's a gout of blood and the droids cleaning up a body. Yeah. Ripped at them. And then also do we think the eternal empire is of course the eternal empire of Zakul from the Star Wars the old Republic expansions it must be right it must be I believe that's familiar with the old text yeah okay okay uh yeah and then and then

we are we're really off to the races here uh Vader Vader talks to the emperor and the emperor has an entire explanation for what the game plan here has been with Silo. And it's actually really good that Silo's showed his hand and is now a traitor, because this is really just sort of a test that Palpatine has been arranging for Vader this entire time. Meanwhile, Silo has just decided that he has, he has an upper hand here, and he is laying the groundwork too. It seems like now, the isn't just trying to take out Vader, his whole plan here is to somehow seize the empire for himself. And then things sort of split into a parallel structure.

The droids go on the Afrohunt using the information that Thanoff gave. And it is just a series of, they're kind of doing bits. It's BT and triple zero bits. They find someone who has the secret of her location, a fellow, former collaborator and rival of Dr. Afras, someone who, a guy who works on tons of rare and illicit droids. And they exchange blackmail threats. And they both hold each other in a deadlock. And this guy thinks he's gotten the upper hand on the droids and they leave having done a deal.

But, oh no, Triple Zero has given his droids the gift of free will. and we'll see if he's been a good droid master. No, he is not. And they immediately kill him. Then they're off to rescue. Rescue is doing a lot of work there. Rescue is not the right word. Somehow Dr. Af, somehow, Dr. Aster escaped from the rebellion.

I did not do my reading. I cannot tell you what that was. I'm sorry. One day I will read the Star Wars, the rest of those Star Wars comics, but not quite yet. But she's in a space Western bar hanging out. seems a little bit down. They show up and they basically kill everyone in the town

to find her. And drag her back to the executor, which looks kind of weird. This is not the executor that we've seen before. You know, Vader has to go off and begin his hunt for silo. And then we get a lot of repeated bits here.

of things start building to a head really fast. As Silo plays his hand where he is, he's going to overthrow the empire. Vader, Palpatine has gone to the executor to oversee its final steps of construction. Silo's going to decapitate the empire all in one go here. And he has laid the groundwork for the executor to be sabotaged. And we get a lot of, going to put it is like, repeated bits here of Vader crashing the party, a character monologuing about how immaculate their plans are, Vader dispatching them and humbling them, and then encountering the next

remaining member of Silo's menagerie. And that repeats where they explain, you're too late Vader. I've foreseen how this goes. And Vader killed. They play this, this exact exchange happens with Silo twice. Yeah, just with Silo. Not to mention Morit and Voidgazer and whatever the name of the living weapon that's just a big brain is. He's kind of in a boss rush mode. You know, he's kind of like in the Mega Man end of game. You got to fight all the robots again before you fight Dr. Wiley. And then you have to fight Dr. Wiley twice, you know.

And I think it kind of contributes to a slightly dull Danuma of this. Like if you just want to see Vader like tear through people, I guess this is going to be gratifying to you. if you were kind of intrigued by the tensions and subtext between characters we're not getting a ton of that and you're really not getting it when he finally confronts silo and silo reveals that he's had a kill switch installed on vader from from the moment that they fashioned him into his suit and revealing that he was one of the doctors just off screen

who cracked the whole turning vader into vader thing we knew it and silo gives him the are you a man or a Muppet, a machine. A Muppet would be a wild, actually. Darth Vader in a Muppet movie, he's the only human, is Darth Vader? Oh, my God, please. Such good idea. Disney can make that happen.

They wouldn't, but it would be fun. Yeah. Except then it would make everyone realize how much Grogu's sucks. So they can't let Star Wars do Muppets. They can't let any of the Muppets near Star Wars. it would do it, yeah, it would change the whole situation. People are realizing like, wait, the old ways are better. They should reopen the Disneyland theaters and only do it in the Disneyland theater

because people at Disneyland are obsessed with Darth Vader. Free idea. Free idea. And then Disneyland Parks is apparently obsessed with, like, recycling Gaston hairpieces for Han Solo sometimes. Why not? They had a lot in common. both cocky brunettes.

I think this concept works. So, Vader, you know, Vader has his moment where, you know, has he just had his machine heart shut down? Has he been,

has he been checkmated by, by Silo? But no, it isn't his machine heart. It is his boiling rage full of clips from the prequel trilogy that resurrects him and causes,

causes him to beat the shit out of, out of Silo. And I think this is part like, Silo escapes, right? And that was confrontation one on the executor. The Silo escapes and gets back to his whale ship. No, he dies. No, he dies. But there is no silo. There is, but Silo has many clone bodies.

He's infinite clone bodies, right? So, so Vader has his dream sequence, the clip show. where we'll talk about that at length because we get some characters and then he breaks through because the force is stronger than his kill switch and he reactivates his body

and he stands up and he stabs Silo and then Silo just has a freezer filled with silos. That was Silo 5 this is Silo 6 back aboard his whale ship yeah and so now Vader has to go get him on the whale ship meanwhile in the background of all this

BT and Triple Zero appeared to move up to send Afroff to her death. She does use a loophole in their logic where, well, you completed Darth Vader's command. So now I can give you a new command. And her command is, let me go rat out Vader to the emperor. And so Vader runs down Silo's command ship and kills him for real this time, kills the whole, kills the brain behind Silo. And then he returns, sees that Afra has confessed everything to the emperor and the emperor,

says, you are my finest creation in whom I am well pleased. And basically says that you pass the ultimate Sith test. You've been so sithy. You created a secret empire within the empire. You're crushing a kid. And then Vader drags Afra to the airlock and ejects her out in a space. walks over to Admiral Tash, force chokes him to death,

and is like, Admiral Azul, this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. And then roughly around it. But wait, wait, it turns out, one more thing. Dr. Afra knew she was going to get airlocked.

And Black Cresantin triple zero and BT the the starship homie rolls up fishes her out of space and it's like it's like the end of an episode of entourage it's like we're all aboard the ship

black or santed hey how about we let that debt go oh no I would never try to cheat you my wookie friend and the droids are like let's kill people for no reason and then the entourage theme plays and cut to the Tuskins building a like doing Burning Man in honor of Vader or I guess you'd say like

it's like to ward him off yeah yeah that seems right there's a yeah there's a piece in the in the post in Kieran Gillen's writer's notes where he actually kind of explains what's going on there because at least for me I had a bit of a hard time understanding it just from the visuals alone but essentially they build kind of a

this you know like an effigy like a genre yeah like an effigy to ward off this Satan like figure this like demon that comes to haunt them that is

Vader. So. Yeah. Yeah. Which does, I guess, confirm something. Because I think at the time, I don't, I think we talked about this that like it wasn't clear back in Vader trade paper back number one, whether he went and actually killed a bunch of additional, uh, Tuscan Raiders or if he was remembering having done it before. Yeah. I always confirmed that. is like he for sure wouldn't kill more. Me too, but I know that there was,

I know that we had talked about it as being, is this just a memory? And I know I definitely had seen some fans being like, oh, I think that was just a memory. Very clearly he was there to also just literally kill some more as Darth Vader. Because that's what this is, this is about. This is the aftermath of that. And wild way to end the Vader comic.

You know, but that's how it goes. And then, yeah, we get the, in the digital omnibus version of this, which I think some of us are reading. There's some, you know, alternate variant covers and some sketches. And then like a pretty good write-up from Gillen that's like, here, here's what I was working through with some of my traumas. Here are, you know, here's some of the big ideas I was playing with across these different

arcs and here's how our goals were. And it was, you know, pretty solid read. Or as Vader. On the other hand, this last arc, it just feels a little too abrupt for it. And part of it is, I do think some of it, somewhat. that was done in early issues is so fun and so evocative, it's like, I want more of this Star Wars. And starting right out of the gate, I thought Inspector Thanoff was cool. Yeah. And now admittedly, what happens here is part of the motif we've seen here, which is people are

routinely thinking, I've got Vader's number, I'm the smartest person in the room. And that might be true, but there's a Tyson-esque, like, everything's got a strategy until the first punch. Yeah. And like, Fanoff kind of goes down for the same thing. Like, he's misread his man. But is he even, it's funny because maybe I read this differently. If we want to start here, which is like, it doesn't, I actually don't think he expects to get out of this. You know, his final thing that he says is basically like, listen, I could have sent this message to you anonymously. I could have told you about where Afri is anonymously. I could have spent the rest of my life running from you as you try to like chase me down and kill me. Or we could save everybody a lot

of time. And, you know, he says, it's been a pleasure working with you, Anakin. I thought it was a rhetorical ploy. Where he, like, puts his, I think he shows his neck, but he's like, I need you to do what you're, like, to me, it's felt like a piece with Afro, where it's like, I'm showing you my neck. Right. And I'm, I'm saying that I know you kill me, but I'm actually loyal to you, and I will back you to, like, serve the empire. I read this as I won now kill me. Because what, I think him saying, it's been a pleasure working with you, Anakin. She is on the cosmetic steps.

Being like it's a pleasure, it's been a pleasure working with you, Anakin, is the most like, oh my, you can't call him that if you expect to live. You're saying those words out loud so that you can tell him, I got one over on you.

You thought, you thought, but I actually know. But what am I going to do with that information? Right. It's like, or it's like the Columbo confrontation, but he knows the,

cops aren't coming. So it's like, oh, I'm not going to get out of here. But I... Yeah, the only satisfaction he can get from this is to, essentially, is the reveal. Is, is to reveal to Vader that he fulfilled his quest, I suppose. Like, the mission of tailing Vader and figuring out his... What he was doing behind the scenes, what his whole plot was. was successful.

I think I initially read it the same way as Rob where it was like I am placing myself in front of you at basically my most vulnerable I have no escape and so

you know by putting up no defense perhaps that makes me a valuable pawn in your scheme like I you know I'm basically submitting myself entirely to you, I'm allowing myself to be completely, you know, at your whim.

And then, and does that buy me, like, does that loyalty buy me a spot in your empire? Does that kind of show vulnerability buy me a slot in your empire? And I thought, to me, the presumptuousness of him calling Vader Anna Kameh. seem just like a step just way too far, like just a complete misread. But I think it actually does make more sense to me when I think of it in the way that you described Austin as like, I know my hand has, like, I know I'm doomed.

This is like, this is my, this is my eulogy essentially by, you know, of myself. Here is like my final speech. I just want you to know that I figured it out. You were going to kill me anyway. I'm saving you the trouble. I'm here. But, like, know that I know you.

I know you are Anakin. Right. You know, I know what you seek. I know you seek your son. But I'm not going to die evading the reveal. Like, evading that information, I guess. Especially if by knowing that information, he's potentially a threat to the eternal, his vision of Vader's empire or whatever, right?

Though I do wonder, Rob, like, I like you, like Thandoth a lot and would have loved Thanath to be a recurring character in years further of comics. And it wonders if it's, it makes me wonder a little bit if we're getting one of the things that we got a lot of in the Clone Wars cartoon, which was like, well, we know he's not important in the history of Star Wars. So time to kill him off. you know, was that part of the like, not agreement, but like, okay, well, you can invent all these characters, but none of them get to live beyond the pages of this. Um, because we need him, he can't be important.

Uh, but it's, it's so easy to imagine a version of this where he becomes a new afra or almost like a Pelion, um, from Theron for Vader. It would be really cool to have that sort of a relationship for him. But, you know, end of the run. So it's not like we're getting more Vader from Gillen anyway, I guess. So this is it for Vader from Gillen, just confirming that. That is correct. Yeah, he goes on after this. He, a little while after this, he takes over the Star Wars comic and runs that for years.

And then while he's doing the Star Wars comic, he also does Dr. Afra, like as a second run running comic. He does like a year of Star Wars. And then he kicks up Dr. Afra. And then I think Afra closes up before his run on Star Wars stops. But they kind of give him the keys, you know? Sorry, Alie, you were going to say something. Oh, well, yeah, so is it. I was going to say it's interesting because it's like there's two needles being threaded here in terms of like, well, he's expendable in this way because he's not going to be important in Star Wars anymore.

But like as we're getting to the end of this run, they're being so selective over like who, gets to get one over on Vader. Like, so much of this comic seems to be about, like, Vader, like, you spend the pages, like, Vader cutting people down really interestingly or whatever else. And, like, to, like, have sort of, like, a pet character who's, who you can have the success of being, like, well, I figured out the master plan, and I can also be the character who tells Darth Vader about this.

Just feels, like, very efficient, you know, page number-wise. right here's our guy who gets the win over vader basically nobody else does afra sort of does at the end and in a way that's kind of connected to this right which is he kills stanoth quickly and painlessly with a lightsaber strike the thing he refuses to do for afra in the end choosing to do the thing that she specifically asked him not to do so that she could get one over on him in the end actually i kind of do love that oh no i would hate it so much of you oh Oh, no, my ickyest fear. Yeah.

Rob, she got the, tell me the one place you don't want to be deployed. Yeah, what's the one place? Her favor. She reversed. She reversed. 100%. The harbor. And to your point, Allie, about this being a comic of Vader, being the one who gets one over on somebody,

this than-off conversation actually comes right after we get the really bad Sheave's speech about what the nature of the Sith is and where Vader fits into all of that. Yeah. Which Rob, I mean, you and I had a conversation last episode that was like, how do we feel about the, I think you and I felt differently about the sheaf stuff in this, in which I was like really frustrated with how stupid this plan is from Palpatine and how much it kind of no-sells him. And it makes it seem so obvious that Vader would be against him. I still think the plan is stupid, but like never has it been more clear that your read on the situation, which is like, yes, this is a comic about Vader. breaking from Palpatine. This is the moment of the break.

This is it. And like, whatever gets him back on side in between Empire and Return of the Jedi, like, that's another story to be told. I mean, maybe it's the Luke stuff not coming to fruition. Who knows? But this conversation between the two of them with Palpatine in full bright, you can see his eyes and all of his stupid little grins and you can feel the gaslighter failing to gaslight as well as he used to.

is pretty wild. It's prime abusive parents. It's like so, it has all the beats of like, I had to do this because you failed. Then you were able to overcome this. And like, now I've made you better. Aren't you glad that I got involved in your life to make you better?

Yeah. Yeah. And in some ways this is like the most, I think from the jump, we've had what's Palpatine's way of thinking about himself is the Sith? And it's funny to like turn the page and have him go like, all right, so here's the deal. For generations, there's been the Sith and the Jedi and the dark side is too powerful. And it's always been the situation that we would go to work with ourselves.

And so there's always been one master and one apprentice. And I'm the end result of all of that. I'm the guy. I brought order to the galaxy and I needed a good, a powerful second. And as you said, Allie, the way that he spins us back around on Vader to be like, I had the perfect. apprentice named Darth Vader. And then you fucked up. You lost on Mustafa.

And then I had to do, I had to spend so much, you know, to get you up to a situation where you could still help me again. And of course, Vader says, you would be telling this, you would be making this speech to whoever else was here. If any of, if any of silos toys had succeeded, you would be making this speech to them. we just get this really great sideways like profile panel that shows Vader being taller

than Palpatine looking like above his forehead which is just you know very classic visual imagery about power and control right but he just holds that silence yep and he doesn't let he doesn't fill it and then he says that does not matter the dark side of strength I am that strength

and Palpatine agrees and sends him off on Vader but yeah to me it is like, to me, this entire scene read to me like Palpatine trying to like rekindle the magic, trying to, like, trying to pull the same act, right? Right. I remember how good this was. And Vader now sees through this that, like, because also part of it is when Vader crashed the party with Silo, Palpatine had an entire good line about how this is like all

according to plan. And so the problem is now Vader's been seen. too many iterations of this, just in this comic, he's seen Palpatine Don these faces. But he's also seen now, like, this is a guy who revealed another face at the end of Revenge of the Sith, and yet another one midway through when the mask drops for kindly uncle, Senator Palpatine. And so this is, like, so many times, like, Palpatine has sort of forced this intimacy of, like, finally, I can take you into my confidence. And here, to me, it does feel like he's an unimpressive figure here.

and you're seeing him kind of the way Vader does with like, you know, this guy's a cockroach and you just turned on the light. And he's kind of, he's kind of scattering. And Vader lets him think he's back onside. But, and, you know, I think the thing that kind of works here is ultimately how valid or committed his Vader in returning to the service. But the one thing is clear for me in this scene is like, Palpatine's pitch here has based not worked.

Vader is keenly aware of the salesmanship that he's trying to pull. And he's just letting it pass. For now. Totally. The pivot is explicit, I feel. And it does feel

like with Vader getting the access, the power, the fleet at his command, And he's also been kind of given the reins to continue to forge his own empire. Like, this is, this is his access to, you know, this is like the blank check to go find Luke, right? Like, this is, go for it. You are, you're in charge now. I'm no longer babysitter, setting babysitters after you.

as we know it will eventually come back to feed Palpatine. Like Palpatine always eats. But for the meantime, it does feel like that Vader gets to assume some control over his future. or at least over like who he keeps in his proximity, who he like what his desires are, what is kind of compelling him. Right now, the only thing that's really compelled him is Luke, but he's had to deal with all of these interruptions along the way.

Like we started these comics with Bader identifying that Luke is his son, right? is, you know, that the soldier on, that destroyed the death star is his son. And the whole, like, along the way, we've just had all these kind of interruptions

from Dr. Afra, from the non-force, anti-force twins, from silo, from void master, whatever her name it. Like, all these different people have just kind of gotten in the way. And it feels like finally his journey, his quest can kind of resume. The only, the irony that he fails to see and won't see until the end is that it will eventually come back to feed Palpatine. Because it has to, right?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it feels a little bit like there is a, I mean, what is a, I mean, what is. You know, again, I kind of complained about the way Palpatine was here, but all of this does really lean into our really positive reading when we were doing covering Empire a few months ago about how it was very clear that Vader was working out of pocket and was keeping secrets from Palpatine and new stuff that Palpatine didn't. I think, you know, I think actually the the Palpatine scenes in this comic, when it's Vader and Palpatine, all work so well for me, even with Silo's menagerie around when they're in the scene.

The stuff that's so tough is more just like Palpatine really, really invested into Silo. And part of that is because they get worked over so quick, and because they just don't stack up. You know, if he had a, he says here, there's like a wild line here where he talks about how sad it is that Maul didn't work out, unlike Tyrannis, Stucu, who was always just a stepping stone, which is like really interesting to think about him, thinking about them in that way. But when you think about the two of them or you think about some of the other stories that we've read where either Palpatine or another Sith master, you think about Kraya's relationship to the various Sith students, and you're like, oh, like, ooh, I could see how this Sith master is playing characters against each other, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, I can see like, yeah, there's like something smart happening here, even though this person's like fundamentally evil and the evil is going to defeat itself and all of that stuff is going to happen. Here it's like, you really gave silo resources? And I wouldn't feel that way if maybe characters, these characters did have the space to be decent, at least some of them, at least one of them turned out to feel like a good rival for Vader, you know? there is a bit of like the you're turning Palpatine into Mark Andreson in some way right right where it's like you've turned it into a venture capital

like I will fund fucking anything and most of them's bad and I will just be like what an awesome thing I've created and you know what's weird is say what you will about the overall concept, but the blue shadow virus fucking worked. Like, it wasn't a good idea,

but it was something. That's the thing, Rob, is we thought we've talked about Palpatine in this exact way before. They're like, listen, he's just going to put his fingers in every pie. He's going to try to get the list of all the known Jedi. He's going to have his little secret team of apprentices.

He's going to let Duku develop out, you know, venturous until the point at which it's too far. then he's going to intercede. He's going to like, okay, yeah, I got a little bit of something going on everywhere. So I'm not, he's going to, he's going to try to capture the Zillow Beast. I'm cool with it. But the Zillow Beast wrecked Corrassant, man. The Blue Shadow Virus could have killed everybody.

You know, Nouveauvindy clears Silo by a lot. You know, Silo could not hang in the old Republic. I got to tell you, in the, or in the fall of the Republic era. He wasn't, he couldn't stack up like that. he wouldn't know what to do with umbara are you kidding me they got all that weird tech they would have washed him and so i think that's really it it's like i don't mind the fingers in every pie i don't mind that idea but it's hard to see when it's such a flop and when it's like basically it's a flop

that contains six flops within it it would have been cool if one of these things turned out to be a hit in that exact investor way rob where you're like oh while, like, you know, he's put his money into all these different candidates. Most of them are terrible. This one shines through and is actually kind of a threat to Vader. And Vader still wins because he's Vader, you know. But in a weird way, it's like, I almost wish Stanoth was that. I kind of wish, you know, Afra isn't that because she's not really connected to the emperor

in that way. But it'll be, you know, she gets one over on Vader. You could imagine one of the two twins maybe having or siblings having like a moment where maybe you could have seen them do something with their lives that was important or interesting, and then it was ripped away from them by Vader. And it's like, no, no one in the click had a hit coming. You know, they were all signed to a deal that never would have generated a top 10 hit. Well, it's really interesting because I feel like him revealing here that Duku was always just a missile to be pointed at something.

whereas the real things that, like, the pivots that he's mourned are the sort of creations. Like, when I think of mall, when I think of all of silos, you know, various, various kids, these are like things that feel like they've had palpiting kind of cultivating from an early point in their kind of manifestation, right? There's like, and when I think specifically of the silo experiments, there's, there, there isn't really a philosoph, like a philosophical aim to them, right? They're like very much kind of tools to be deployed, which is interesting because the tool that he describes being deployed is the ideological guy, is Duku, who was like the representation of separatist politic, the fact that. that Duku himself already struggled with Jedi ideology

without the influence of Palpatine. Like, that was a self, he was a self-starter in that sense to use more entrepreneurial terminology. Yeah, exactly. Like, he, Duku was already on the path of rejecting the Jedi ideology at large. So I wonder if in a way, he was more of a threat. And so by kind of under representing him in the way that he does here and saying that he was just a tool to be deployed is kind of like a way to kind of, I don't know, undermine Duku himself as like a potential threat to Palpatine.

but I just there's something really interesting about Duku being this this manifestation of the ideology of the politic of the like we must reject the republic and and start something new we need a new empire we need like new ways of running this galaxy and all of his favorite failed. experiments are just the creations, like the kind of raw power, the technology experiments, all those things. Those are the things that he's like, oh, it's too bad. That didn't work out. It's like two things. It's both the things that don't have ideology and are basically just missiles, actually. Like he describes Duku that way because that's how he used him.

But Vader is for him, for him, Mahl was for him, Siler's experiments are for him, the Zillow Beast, obviously. He doesn't bring that up. Imagine if he was like, and there was that thing with the Zillow Beast. Oh, you didn't know that was also me. That was also me when he came to Corraceant. It was honestly kind of crazy, Lord Vader.

I spoke too freely in front of the beast and only intuited until later that on some primal level it understood my plan. And then it leveled downtown Corrassant. Exactly. But like those are, it's just so it's like, it's power,

But it is also the thing you hit on right away, Natalie, which is like, it's the things he raised. And obviously he's doing it by proxy with silo, but it's like it's like unmolded clay. That's what he likes. And I think, again, we've talked about this for six years now. Like, what is it that Palpatine wants? He seems to fundamentally be like a nihilist and like the worst sort of hedonist and narcissists. Like it's just about his own pleasure. It's just about the joy he gets from being a shitster and a vileist.

and someone who hurts people and controls people. And so if control is his fundamental set, you know, sort of like the center of joy for him, maybe it's not surprising that the ones that he actually cares about. The ones that he at least says he's invested in are the ones who look, who to us look most like weapons he's shaping and forging and controlling in contrast to Duku. I think you brought me around too because like so much this is all, so much of what Palpatine is doing with the forced influence. intimacy here is that unlike these other people I led around by the nose, these other people

I tricked and deceived, they actually value you. And it's like, no, like, you just told me the story of, like, all these people who, like, thought they were in on your plan. Like, this is part of your tool that. You couldn't have pulled these plans off without the proton torpedo couldn't know it was a proton torpedo. Right. And, you know, this is what Vader basically saying, like, I fuck, I know you. I know who you are now. I see it. And then, he doesn't start lying, I don't care. Which kind of he doesn't care, but kind of very much he does.

We can get that dream. The violation is not about this. What he's angry about is not Palpatine's nature as a deceptive sift. And maybe that's the fun thing here. Palpatine thinks the thing he has to clean up is like, I know, you're still mad about the silo situation. And it's like, no. No, actually, you have not,

that is not a drop in the bucket of my rage. And Palpatine can't get to it. But this also then makes me think, I do like you're reading, Austin, the Thanoff conversation because it does, it sort of flipped in my head the order, but they follow on the heel one to the other. Fanof comes next.

And in the context of the Palpatine conversation, here's the guy who has figured it out, doesn't use that information to hurt Vader. Right. Instead, he just levels with him fully cards on the table. And it's like, do what you got to do. Yeah. Here's what my objective has been in all.

of this, the person you're looking for is on this planet. How you play it from here is up to you. Right. And Vader dispatches him because he can't be leaving these loose hands. But it is like it does juxtaposed. Like you see the faux respect of

a clever mind of Palpatine and then Thanoff who stands tall in the parlance of the wire. Right? Like that's that's kind of the, this guy is going to do whatever time he's got a face for, for, like, having come across this cursed knowledge about Vader.

He doesn't run from that. And he also doesn't try to leak what he now knows about Vader to, to undermine him. The thing you just said around, um, Vader being like, no, I'm not mad about the silo stuff. There's other stuff that I'm mad about actually brings me back to Allie, you talking about, Palpatine as a abusive parent. And a thing that kind of just clicked to me in my mind is like, what does Palpatine want, based on this conversation, we're kind of, you know, diving through is there's a parenthood desire there.

He liked them all because he got to shape him. He likes Vader because he gets to shape him. He's shaping Silo's crew by proxy. He wants something that's formed around his desires and his control and his power. And that's the thing that was. taken from Vader. That is literally the thing that Palpatine has denied him is the truth of the fact that he had children who lived. And that's the thing that Vader is pissed about. Right? And it's funny. Like they have in some ways the same parental desire, the same like I want to have a little me who I can

shape to help me do the thing I want. My whole life would be different if I had not a little me Because Palpatine does not want another Palpatine. Palpatine is explicit he wants, might. That's why he's talking about Vader and Mal in these terms. But I think that that's kind of interesting. Like, it's not, imagine sitting here and going, like, you're treating me like a child when what you've done is hidden my children from me. Not literally hidden, but hidden I that actually, when we last last.

Well, entrap him in this perpetual adolescent. That's right. Yeah, you've got me as a kid. Another moment of growth has just happened. Yet another, great, another milestone in your journey becoming a man. Let's go get ice cream. I'm 40. I'm 40.

And you've taken my kid. You hid my child from me. Yes. And yeah, no, this the abusive parent and also the, I won't let you grow up. Yeah. There's the scene in the first of the book of the New Sun books, which is this like kind of science fiction, science fantasy, sort of

dying earth fantasy book by our series by Gene Wolfe, where the main character has to go, as a child, he's a member of a guild of torturers in this kind of science fantasy world. And he's sent by his guild master, by one of the masters in the guild, to a library to go get a particular tome.

And he's sent there and it's all super dark. And the guild master there or the head library, there is, you know, ancient and has been blinded because he just lives in the dark library. It's like all he does. And he has his own apprentice, who is, I think, like, one rank above where the main character of the book is. But he's like 47. And the main character is like 13.

And there's this moment where you're like, oh, this assistant librarian is pissed. His master was supposed to have died by now and let him become the full version of himself. He's supposed to be the 47-year-old head librarian, but the head librarian refuses to give in to death because he doesn't want to let go of all of the things. He doesn't want to let go of the library that he's controlled for 70, 80 years or whatever. And there's like a little bit of that feeling here, right, of like, Vader can't become the Sith Lord. He's some, that, you know, Palpatine does his whole speech about what the Sith is. Vader says, I am strength, you know, like he knows that he, in his heart, he believes. he is the thing that the dark side is supposed to be.

Maybe more in this moment than Palpatine. He's looking down at Palpatine and he says the dark side is strength. I am that strength. But he doesn't get to blossom into the dark, the actual Dark Lord of the Sith. He's always Palpatine's Dark Lord of the Sith, you know. Does make Thanos opening argument. Like Palpatine is a spent force. You can't you?

Yeah. Can't you? And you can't. And you can't? we just had the scene where like the full lights were on. The big light was on. The big light is on. The overhead light was on.

Yes. And there was Palpatine, right? Like this is, uh, this is the moment the, the, the, the affair ends and the graduate. Like, wait a second. Like, none of this was quite how I imagined it. Yeah. Uh, and then I was kind of calling it out. And, uh, nothing that Vader says or does implies that he thinks anything differently.

Um, and then we're off to, you know, we've got the, the droids going on their search. And someone's been yes, I'm like they're fun, they're cute, I don't much to say about them. They interview this guy in the droid workshop. He's fine, right? He's a scoundrel.

Yeah. I, you know, I always love a moment to shout out droid rights. I, but like that's the most I can get out of this little side.

I mean, literally at the end of this, at the end of this little side quest, there's like the big text at the bottom that says the misadventures of Triple Zero and BT. Like, yeah, it was, it was the like,

they let them do a silly one. I do think this helped clarify why I'm not as annoyed by him as I thought I would be by Triple Zero. And maybe actually this is some of the best triple zero dialogue for this example or this this idea that I've that we've had this is the most he's felt like C3PO to me like his dialogue I started reading not in you know poorly remembered

hk voice but in C3PO voice and that actually made it all read better for me um uh he's like uh he's you know the way that he's generally very very very very very very proper. And there's a couple of lines here where he's like, I've taken the liberty of detailing what we require. It's quite extensive. That's not an HK-47 line. That's a C-3PO line. You know, during a recent adventure, I had to replace my arms with some standard Galactica limbs. And since she's been away, I haven't been able to have them be replaced. I have managed to have a syringe installed, but little else. You're not a med bot. Why do you need a syringe for medical emergencies. And that to me works just fine in a way that if he was like, I mean,

again, the way H.K. would have done it is he would have been like sarcastic reply, exactly, for medical emergencies master. And like, that's just not, that doesn't have any juice for me anymore at this point. Whereas I think that when I'm reading this in a three-po voice, it's still mostly working for me. Totally, totally. I completely agree. Because it's just like, You get to be in on the joke with him rather than feel like the joke is being told to you. If that makes sense, like, HK, the joke is to us, the audience. Whereas I feel like the humor can live in the universe with Triple Zero,

Like the kind of Like I don't know what word I'm looking for I guess subversiveness Of having a protocol Looking droid be this kind of killer You know assassin actually That oxymoron

I feel like works in the world Because people are being kind of fooled By this protocol looking droid Who has this very protocol looking Or protocol way of speaking but obviously has other aims and purposes and motivations. So I think it does crystallize for me. What works about Triple Zero is that he's like believable as existing in this world

and the humor, the humor of him existing in the world being humorous to the people in it, I guess. Yeah. I, you know, we haven't, we haven't said this yet, but we're going to read. the next, the first Afra trade paperback next. And I'm guessing we're going to get more of these two. And so we'll see how they continue to develop, I guess. I'm very curious. Presumably they're in that book.

They're in the ship with Afra at the end of this book. So we'll see. I like them. I like them as companions. They'll have been, yeah, and there'll be two years between the end of this book in the beginning of the Afra book, which means, and they're big years, right? At 2015 to 2017, a lot happens. in the world. I'm curious to see how

here and here will have been writing Star Wars stuff for an additional year in between. So I'm curious coming back to them what their vibe will be. So we'll see. I remind myself, 2019 is when Rise of Scott Walker hits Star Wars like an asteroid. I mean, I got to

tell you too. I was thinking about that that in relation to the Palpatine stuff we were talking about before. of wanting a child, but also, you know, Ray and we all, you know, you know, yeah, all of the, all of the cloned, all of it. We don't have to go there. One day, we keep threatening it and we keep thinking about it and keep going. We almost thought about it.

The other day, I do not know what prompted this. I don't think, no, because I haven't watched Three Days of the Condor in a while, so it wasn't that. But it's like, I just started thinking about Mac's. von Siddow showing up at the start and just like the most unearned like oh yeah we have Obi-Wan at home and just I almost feel like I just need to like exercise it out of my brain do you know what I mean like it's it's just kind of haunting the the back wells of my mind and sometimes I hear echoes I mean he it's like he it's like

It's the fucking backroom's demon in my head, basically. Yeah, we kind of defaulted to Afra. If we wanted to pivot, we could make that call. We haven't done any extra, you know what I mean? Yeah. Let's finish the episode and maybe let it simmer in our hearts. And we'll see. Let's think about it.

Let's think about it. Check the episode description. It'll be an announcement of what we're doing next in there. It's just like a stove that I know is going to bird be when I touch it. But maybe the burning will be fun. I know. I did just into M-night stuff. Like sometimes it's not fun to really dislike it.

We'll like some of it. Maybe we'll come out of it like, yeah. Don't give yourself that burden. This is how we pivot to YouTube essays. Like eight hours on why Rise of Skywalker is actually the greatest Star Wars film. It's actually good. I don't know. Yeah.

I'm just trying to be an optimist. I know. I was optimistic about Mandalorian and Grogu and look where that got us. I have to imagine. I have to imagine we would come out. Maybe that would be a good, it would actually be good for like resetting our, like judgment,

our meters, you know, like our gauges. Recalibrating. Yeah. Right. Which is like, I bet I would come out of Rise of Skywarker be like, Mando and Grogu was kind of fine, comparative. This is the thing.

we watched Peak, but we haven't watched Slop. So we don't have to. I would say Peak is Andorcese one. I think we've hit a lot of slop over the years. To the degree that we do defend some of the stuff that people hate. We are, we are, what the fuck's his name? Fucking, what's, blank Qudis? Manit Jacinto?

Yeah, what's his character's name? Camere Cootie. Like, that's us. Camer cuties. Yeah, you can tell us. I remember the name. We defended some of that stuff over the years, you know? I know, but just in terms of like if on the kind of like canonical objective Star Wars scale.

Yes. You've got, we've seen peak. We've seen peak. But we haven't calibrated towards objective slop, right? Like objective. We've had, we've seen a lot of like. But by not watching Rise of Skywalker, I feel like our collaboration could be off. Maybe Rise of Skywalker would make me like the Star Wars holiday special more.

Maybe it would make me like Prince Charlie Tuna more. Maybe it would make me like the D-Squod more. It's possible. I like D-Squod. I know, I know. Two of the episodes are the four episodes of these. I don't remember what Camer Cudies is. And I'm like, Camer Rouge.

What do you mean? You don't remember what Cudie? That's not the Camer Rouge. Camere was Mani Yacinto's character's name in the accolade. Yes. Okay. Yes. And we were his stands and we were Camer Qudies.

Wild. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, Rob. You didn't get the notice. Killing fields. More like slaying fields. That's right. Oh, my God.

So This next scene is It's a passage From getting information About where is silo I do love Vader Just in this mode

Is interrogating the scientist Who like It was like a death star engineer Who escaped before the explosion Yeah And just this You lived through one disaster Professor

Surviving another Seems unlikely It's like That's good This is good Just like Using that To just get the information

out of the guy Indeed, he does not survive this disaster. Vader verifies. Yep, this is where Silo is hiding in the Crucank nebula. And now you can dispose of that. Scientist, that's fun. I do think this is interesting. So Afra appears to have actually found a really good place to go to ground.

Like she is in a quiet little village. Seems really nice. Cosmitanic steps, the outer rim. it's like good vibes Moss Isley, right? The sun is shining down on beautiful meadows. There's cool villagers

who like mind their own business and don't immediately rat someone out who's sort of come among their number. And BT and Triple Zero kill every single person in their path on their way to Afra. The person in Afra is drinking with. Yeah.

They go to, like goes down fighting alongside her. Like immediately just like draws down tries to fight off the droids, gets completely moat down. Even his intro scene, Rob, where he's, like, pressing her on, like, hey, what's your, what's your secret, basically? He's genuine.

He isn't trying to, like, get one over on her. He's like, what are you running from? It can't be that bad. And it doesn't seem like he's, like, secretly a bounty hunter or an info dealer or something. He's just your friendly local bartender who's checking in on you because you've been ordering a little more

than normal, you know? And I think Afra's face in that panel really sells it as well, because she just looks so, like, she looks like she's been on the run. She looks tired. And it does feel like it's this moment of kind of someone genuinely reaching out to her and being like, hey, yeah, are you good? This is like your fifth time in here this week. Like, what is going on? All these people are good. And also, I think the way this plays out, you know, they drag her aboard. the ship and as the spaceship is lifting off uh you know she is seeing this this town has basically been leveled right that um you know she gets a glimpse before you know she's dragged out of the bar she gets a glimpse of uh the

the the geonosin droids uh just conducting a massacre uh and then they drag her out of here and there's like literally nothing left the town is like a smoking ruin um and that is a sad but like certain harsh moment for her

I'm curious kind of makes me curious to read Afra because like how has this experience changed her because to a degree

that earlier scene with the guy in Nebu there's a little bit of a grieved like who were you to have a nice life

don't you realize the galaxy is this horror show where people get massacred for no fucking reason like my parents. And now she's the person bringing the shit to people's door, right?

Because these are droids that she, like, they might be working for Vader. But BT and Triple Zero are kind of her creations, right? These are a little bit things that she is responsible for. And she is sort of enmeshed in this conspiracy of Vaders. And now, like, she is now the engine of this kind of destruction. being wrought. And it's an interesting moment because like after a lot of bad things that happen around her in this series. This one seems to appall her a little bit. But then she, you know, she realizes the droids are not going to let her talk her way out of this. And neither is her friend

Chrisanton. And she's she's sort of she's sort of back in it. But I'm curious how this ends up playing. But but but I do kind of I do kind of like it as sort of a part of the story where a thing that she uses to justify a lot of what she does is like imagine how horrible this this thing was that happened to me. And it's like yeah, now you are the galaxy's chaos and violence disorder. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, we'll see. I'm surprised we didn't get more of that here. You know, I think coming up for the first trade or two, I thought we would get more Afra story in these books. But maybe the plan from early was like, let's just have her be a, you know, a supporting character. And if we do well by her, we'll end up wrapping back around and giving her some more

detail. Because yeah, I don't know at the end of this book what she believes, which is a thing I thought I would know by now, which isn't a criticism. It's just not where the book went. And, you know, I didn't read those Star Wars issues, which she was maybe in. Maybe there's some clarity there. I don't know. I should read those before we get to Afra. I do like her doing the little logic trickery here, which is they have been ordered by Vader, who is their other, both she and Vader are their master so they can both give BT and triple zero orders. And the order is to bring her to Vader and failing that to kill her and to silence her, but to kill her.

And so what she says is, I surrender, which means that now they can bring her to Vader because they have not failed to capture her, so they don't get to kill her, which that's just classic robot story shit, you know? They got a protocol to follow. So got to say the magic words. That's right. And is this the point at which we enter? Whaleship.

Whale ship, Vader boss rush mode. Yeah. I do like the bit where he just shoots a hole into the side of the whale ship and crash lands into it as it's about to jump to hyperspeed so that he's aboard it. That's fun. Yeah. It's gross. Whale ship gross.

Whale ship gross. Like command vessel is aboard the brain. Is it above the brain? Yeah. Yeah. How is this? Like, I want to know what the whale looks like without the ship on it. Maybe.

Like, how do you start development on the whale ship? Is it kind of something that grows with the whale? Is it like you go find a good whale? I'm really curious. Do we think they are pergill? Or are they a different sort of space whale? They're kind of like, Evil pergill.

They are kind of like evil. Well, hang on. They might just be enslaved pergall. That's true. Okay. Yeah. But do we know, we don't really know what they, they don't look like pergill. They have these like big jaws.

They are. Yeah. And these are like fleshy, like pinky. They're fucked up. Bajy. What's that like, is it an anglerfish? It's kind of anglerfish vibe. does have that energy.

Yeah. The huge overbite and the fucked up, like, Ma. It's got a bit of that. Yeah. Which I'm looking at Pergall, and they don't really look like that. But they could be. There's different, apparently, there's different species of Pergle. So I can't really read this.

This seems to be, this seems to be, it seems to be spoilers for a show we haven't watched yet. Oh, I guess this is worth saying. These predate Pergle. Rebels hasn't happened yet. In terms of production history. Rebels isn't until the end of Rebels hasn't happened yet. When's the first Pergul episode in Rebels?

Let's see. Maybe that's maybe I'm wrong. That would have been 2014, 2015, right? Or is that? No, it wasn't. It was the year after this, I think. So maybe, what are they actually called? They're called Pergel, right? Yeah, February 2016 is the first Pergill appearance, seemingly.

And this is issue what? This is issue... This is all from 2015, right? Yeah, I think so. Oh, was there like a Star Wars.com, like, news thing of, like, Pergill. All the Pergill sign is for this month. I'm wrong. The Pergill episode is February 2016.

this issue is June 2016. So it would have four months different. So people would have met the pergul, but not yet seen the end of rebels where all that other stuff happens. That isn't until like 2018. But Silo's whale fleet says it first appears in 2015. It first appears in the 2015 Darth Vader comic.

Not in 2015, right? Oh, I guess you're right. because they're in that first, they're in that early issue in May 20. You're right. This isn't the first time they've shown up. They're in the very beginning of this book when Silo first shows up.

I forgot about that. Issue 5, I think. That's right. Yeah, totally. But all they're known as is whale ships. Well, we don't know anything else about them. Because Silo's not curious about them that way. You're right.

He's a big fucking whale ship. You're right. Because all he sees is what he can turn it into, which is a whale ship. He doesn't know what they're, He doesn't know much about them. He doesn't know what's not doing their studies. No.

Yeah. He doesn't know that they have languages that can span galaxies. Yeah. It's just like I think you make a cool Star Destroyer substitute. And they kind of do. They do all right. You know. I like an organic plus metal technology inorganic vibe.

Well, could I interest you in a far scape? Lost the space If you love whale ships Boy let me tell you What's how many episodes Far Escape has What's Farscape? Oh, do you not know what Farscape is

How did you work with Danielle And not learn what You must have heard Danielle Talk about Farscape is about it I've heard about it But I don't actually know What it is at all I mean it's kind of funny

Because we were talking about Muppets before And it is a Henson show right? So true Is it? Yeah, It's at least they're involved. Brian Henson, the Creature Workshop, just go bonkers on this Australian-produced sci-fi series where an astronaut on a routine mission is sucked through a wormhole

into a wild and wacky universe of space adventures. And he finds himself aboard a prison ship that is escaped from an empire-like polity. and this prison ship has a little quirk. It's a living ship. Moya. That's not its name. That's not his name is like the name of a ship. That's who she is.

That's kind of what's going on in there. Okay, if you were to ask me five seconds ago, what is Forescape before I Googled it? And you just explained it to me. I would have said it's like a city builder game, video game. Or like, what was that video game that you used to play at Waypoint that was like the world's, it was like space. Stalarus? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a little Stolaris. It's way hornyer than Stalarus. Oh, okay. Yeah. We should watch it. It's very horny.

Yeah. Oh, there are some characters in this show. Where did it? Sci-Fi, I think. Was it sci-fi in the States? Sure. So, like, vaguely remember. We see this thing.

We bring cable back, man. I'm playing the same. We had so much sparscape. And that wasn't even that successful a show. It was always one of those things of flirts with a disaster because we're wrapped up with a mini series movie. But like, 88 episodes is wild. Yeah. Yeah.

It's all my list of things we should do one day. It's like that, Babylon 5, D. Space 9. And they read their audience, too. They were like, all right. We'll sell you season DVD sets. of each season. But we know you people are sickos, and we got to make our money back.

So we are going to charge $120 per season. And I was like, yeah, I'll eat that. I'll eat that. You owned it. Do you still own it? I owned, now I own the complete series. Right.

Now you can get it for a penny. You want to hear something tragic, though? What? The series was shot on film. All that exists are the digital intermediates. they lost all the original film that they shot for this series.

That's so sad. And so like, there's a Blu-ray series out there who are asking like, it doesn't look as good as I hoped. And like it's, it never will look as good as you hope because they lost material that exceeds,

uh, it exceeds like 1080 basically. That's so sad. Um, yeah, it's, it's pretty bleak. But they go, they go,

uh, there's Muppets everywhere, man. This thing is all Muppets. Yeah, Muppets and shower scenes We gotta watch that Oh, we gotta watch it You see something?

No, I was just I had a delayed processing When you said Muppets and Shower scenes I was like, we gotta watch it for the Muppets And then you said shower scenes And then I was like, ooh And then you're like, we gotta watch it We gotta watch it

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah It's double downing on we gotta watch it I see So now we're off to Vader gets aboard the whale ship Silos like void gazing go handle this for me. And we get,

this problem identified earlier where everyone like has the Ha Vader, you're too late, you can't stop my plan. It repeats with Void Gaser too. Because first Void Gaser is like, I'm not even going to fight you

with my machines, my void gayser abilities. Instead, you can fight this big ranker that has been modified somehow to be awesome. And so we get Vader fighting a rancor. And then in a little bit

after Vader, like, kills the rancor, he cuts his way through to fight Voygazer, and Voyager's like, I actually knew you'd beat the rancor. And I love that you did. Because I was going to be mad if me and my droid buddies didn't get to fight you so that we could show the strength of our art and our science. And then Vader kicks the shit out of her again.

Yeah. He literally just like one, one move. E, uh, Uno reverse. Uno reverse. Boom. She's dead. It's a scene they couldn't even make a cool illustration out of but they try to. You get like

the mid-chapter thing and it's like her at a weird perspective, Vader at a weird perspective, all of her drones like trying to shoot at him and it's like before their confrontation so you kind of know what's going to happen

next couple of pages because it's It's really just she stands there and he cuts her down. Yeah. And then like lying on the ground, I mean, this is just so. I don't know. Don't forget the panel where she's the shocked Pikachu face. They do it like three times. They keep trying to make her eyes have like cool aura and it's like not happening.

No. And after we learned about silo, which I don't know, we sent it to a microphone, but we had that writing about Silo. Oh, yeah. You want to explain? So we thought Silo was also sort of a cybernetic situation as well. We thought that was like a big droid eye. Apparently, it's a grito eye. It's a grito eye.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's a rodian eye. Yeah. for some reason it's also like the artist's face cast himself yeah apparently Salvador La Raca did a is

is the like inspiration for Silo's face which happens you know I wouldn't know I would have someone

but should have here yeah I don't know I don't know I don't know because but if he's If he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, if he, it's, if he, it's, it's really hard to put yourself in your own work, you know, you know. Yeah, for sure.

But I think, but it kind of underscores like the silos kind of in no man's land with the, like, is this guy supposed to be good as a foil or not. And the face casting kind of feel like Natalie, that's a kind reading, right? Where it's like, yeah, he knows this character kind of is just some dude. And he puts some dude in it. And I've got, I'll just throw myself in there. But I do think the problem is you're working in a medium like this. And here's the way I put it. In a lot of movies and TV shows, even the people were like,

man, that guy's got like a great face for someone to just like some guy from Philly or Boston, but actually not, right? Like character actors, even they have like a different charisma along different access than like stars, but there's something about them, right? There's something that like, you know, people doing casting C where it's like you're totally believable as just some bartender or just some dude on the street in this scene. But there's some sort of charisma, some sort of affect that you've got that like, like visually, like there's a story that's just like you come into the frame and it communicates

something to the, to the viewer. And Silo really doesn't. And the story he's part of doesn't help him, right? Where it's like, is this guy kind of shit or not? Does the story know he's shit? That the face casting, I think, doesn't really help because you see a lot of this dude's face. And it's like, yeah, they're silo again. Just a guy with a greto eye. Yeah. I similarly lack a lot of grace here when it's like, you're the guy with a great oh eye who also has the cool remote

that can make Darth Vader bow to you. And that's me. That's me over there. It's tough. It's how I feel about Barry a little bit. It's like that's going to be yourself insert. That's a good point. I forgot about the remote that makes Darth Vader bow to you.

That is a great point. Yeah. I wish I just knew what the Grito I offered him. Yeah. Is it like purely aesthetics? Is there some, you know how like humans can only see, you know, like so many colors and shrimp can see like so many more? Like is it that kind of vibe where he's just saying like hella more. colors. Like, I would respect that. I want to see more colors to, I just wonder what the,

what the benefits are. Well, you know, it's one of those things that's like, maybe it would be, maybe it would be a thing. Maybe it would be bad if what happened was there's a line where he said, you know, I added this Rody and I so I could see the extra colors. That might suck. But on the other hand, him just having it feels like a sort of narrative shortcut to be like, isn't he kind of fucked up? He's got a Rodeon's eye. He's got an alien eye where his regular eye should be. And like, unless you're doing something with that, it ends up feeling like a shorthand for something that I'd rather seek explored with some more depth, you know? We've talked about, I mean, like, in some ways, this is the, like, the bad version of when people write or talk about

Vader is being more machine than man. And it's like, well, yeah, anyone who doesn't have flesh and blood is therefore, who isn't all flesh and blood is somehow impure. And you're like, okay, well, like, the character clearly is more going on than that. But like, when someone does that sort of write up, right up of Vader or uses Vader in that way, it ends up running into a bunch of stuff that sucks. And it's also just like not very interesting. And so it's like, if what we're doing here is like, he's a fucked up scientist because

he does weird genetic facial modding, like, okay, like, I guess you could, I guess, There's nothing else. There's no reason he has a Rodeon eye other than Affect. You know, it's fine. That's a tool you can use as a writer and as an artist. But like, I don't know, maybe there's a Silo backstory episode. Maybe Silos actually Rodeon and he has to put on a fake human face to fit in in the empire. I don't know.

Now we're being met in black. Right, right, right. Maybe it's that like his experiments started with him before he, you know, was augmenting Charlie Tuna's cousin I'm forgetting his name Carbon

Yeah Carbon Carbon General Carbon That's right Or you know Void Mast

Void Gaser Void Gaser Void Gaser who already looks a little bit too much like Admiral Dala Yeah If you're

If you've seen Admiral Dala Let me just Yeah, you don't drop it. I don't know her. She's on the cover of the Kevin J. Anderson, Jedi Academy trilogy. It's like, who is this lady? And it's an imperial admiral who eat shit nonstop.

And I'm really curious about the timing. Was Felicity on the air when they made this cover? No. Okay. So they just anticipated. Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. You mean the dollar cover.

Maybe. The answer is actually, probably. Let's see. What is this from? no no actually this has to pre-date pre-dated earlier 90s and not late 90s yeah yeah so just anticipated carry Russell you know yeah carry Russell did not exist the 90s would have had to invent her all right here I found I found a Kieran Gillen quote yeah about silo this is from comicbook com who asks Kieran what can you tell us about the mysterious other guy hanging out with

emperor. It looks like, does he have erodeon's eye and a portion of erodeon's face there? And Kieran says, he does definitely appear to have erodeon's eye and a bits of cybernetics. That was immediately, originally, I just said, I wanted to be a guy who obviously has got stuff up with him. You can kind of sort of work out things. He definitely has erodeon's eye and he's not a rodean. That implies the sorts of things this guy might get up to. And there's bits of cybernetics. He's finding out who he is is definitely one of the core elements of the book. finding out why the emperor is hiding from Vader, and what else he might be hiding is one of the tasks.

The other big issue is Vader's new position beneath tag, which is, so that's it. He's the type of guy who gets up to this sort of shit. He's the type of guy who's got an eye that is a roean eye. Silo's finding out who he is, where he's like, like, the Rodian eyes, like a band tattoo. He's really figuring himself out. I'm just a guy who's really into Rodian body parts.

Yeah. I'm in my Rhodian era. Yeah, I see what you say. Yes, that would be very funny. Actually, no, it's that Vader is finding out who he is. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I read it the same way you did. He's just trying to figure out. Maybe he's like part Rodian on like a distant, you know, his great uncle's Rodian. He's trying to connect to the culture. He got back his 23 and me. And he was like, I have to, you know, like, maybe it wasn't even his 20. It was like his parent. His mom got back to the 23 and me. Right, right. She was like, oh, my God, we're like a third roadie. And I had no idea. And he's like, well, mom, it doesn't really mean anything. Like, we got to, if you want to, like, claim the erodean heritage, we got to connect to erodeonness in some way, you know. That is such a kinder reading that I thought, which was we've all been there.

We've all been, like, obsessed with an accessory for a little while. Like, the year I always wore a scarf or only seamless shirts or something. The year he always wore a rodey and I. A year before this, it was like, it was the whole head of a, Oh my God, where are they caught with the hammerhead style? Athorian. He had a whole authoritarian head going on, but still his head and then just the authoritarian like eye stalks, you know? Yeah.

I just like describing him as a guy who gets up to stuff when all of the other characters are like very defined by the things they are getting up to by. Maybe this is Gillen leaving too broad a brief to the IRS too where it's like, I can only imagine. I was saying they're like, guy who gets up, what the fuck does that guy gets up to stuff? What kind of stuff? What kind of guy? It's just like, I need to put something on this page. So basically, I cannot tell you anything about that dude, except that he's important and he definitely has a rodee in sight. We went back and forth on what sort of alien to put in there.

So maybe there are sketches of silo with authoritarian eyestalk or with Devon, what is it, Devinorian? What's the Devereonian? Devereonian. Devereonian like Devilhorn or Maybe there's a version of him with the big titties from the big titty race, you know? Oh, that would be awesome. Could be. Big titty race. Yeah. The Zeltrons.

Maybe. The Zeltrons. Thank you. How did you have that? Well, you've been for a while. I've been for a while. Yeah. You have it before I said it.

Had you thought about a Zeltron today? before? Okay. I love that. That's good. Good. Don't mind that. I hope the Zeltrods are in

Roque company. No, it's the actual zero company. Zero company. Oh, yes. Which is out so soon, by the way. I'm so excited to play that. I've got a preview in like 10 days. I need to put it up my calendar.

Put it on your calendar. Maybe that should be a little special thing we do. I'm sure you're deciding how to stream it and all that Rob over at remap, but we got to dip. We got to at least take a little dip. Yeah. And the zero company. A little taste. Oh, yeah.

So the other thing that's in the middle of all this nonsense with Vader fighting Void gazers, creation is now this is where, this is where after a place or card that, hey, I've been delivered to the executor, your mission is complete. Now get me out of this. And the triple zero is like, ah, damn it,

foiled again by her logic. And also here we get unceremonious exit time for Tash. He is realizing that the executor and all the ships in the shipyard have been sabotaged, that Void Gaser didn't just come to make upgrades aboard these ships, but actually was installing knockout gas aboard the ship that puts everyone to sleep and makes it easy for silos troops to board and begin taking, taking over the ship. Vader avoids, they crash the whale ship into the executor to kill Vader. It doesn't work. Vader escapes somehow. The comic is very much like, yeah, we're not even going to get into it. We're not even going to talk about how that should have. happened. Don't they say that he

jumped out and landed on the hole of the executor or something? They don't show it because... Don't they? Do they? There's like an epic. There's a lightsaber fight. No, that's what he goes and fights him. But we don't see how Vader escaped. Yes.

And no, they're very, like, tongue and cheek about it. Yeah, we're not even going to talk about how Vader escaped it. He just did. That's what Vader does. He sends more it out there to deal with him. And you know, nothing says,

we know that we know this from first-hand experience. Nothing says awesome stuff, epic things are about to happen, like donning a big metal space suit, and going outside. Clank, clank, clank, clunk, clunk, clunk, clank. Clank, clank, clank, clank.

Imagine you did have to fight one of the darts out there, you know? Or do you have to fight Malik out on the side? of the Star Forge. I'll say, but you know what I really wish so badly is that you could get me on board with the shitty twins if it were D and Dennis.

It's always sunny. Yeah. Like, this whole plot works. Basically, if it were more inflected by always sunny. Yeah, maybe that's the solution. Oh, did you burn on Mustafa? Oh, do the limbs burn off? Maybe the solution for all of these folks is they need to be shittier.

You know, they're like not quite, because if they were like complete train wrecks, we might, I might root for them because they're so bad. You know what I mean? But they all aspire to greatness instead of being so pathetic that I actually love them. So yeah, maybe if this guy and his now dead sister were even worse, I would be big fan. But alas. He gets wrecked in the most funny way, which is he gets his foot, like, magnetic connection thing plus thruster,

like cut off. And so he can't stick on the side of the ship anymore. And Vader just force pushes him into the atmosphere of a nearby gas giant. And he burns up. He's out. they'll do it I mean both the twins

just got just got from a push actually now that I think about it and they both burned to death

both both burned to death after getting pushed yeah off a ledge happens to the happens to the best of us as Vader knows

mm-hmm uh yeah Afragos meets the emperor fights her way through some droids Vader goes and confront Silo Silo says you're one of my machines too

and forces Vader to kneel and then we going into Vader's mind yeah I mean was there did anybody have a reaction turning the page and seeing the issue 24 cover

I was concerned because it is Vader standing then the Vader's shadow and then standing in the shadow with her face away from us, Padme. It was more like, yeah, Padma hasn't come up.

And it was just like, here we, yeah, no, I remember, yeah, we know who this is, but it's like, I don't know, it was just kind of like a, we know that's always in the background of, of, of Vader. Yeah. I don't know what makes it, what brings it to the fourth this particular moment.

Well, here we are. He turned the page again, and it's silo being, uh, extremely out of pocket. I don't think you can, even if you have the button that deactivates Darth Vader, I would not try to palm Darth Vader's head like a basketball at waist level, ever. No. No, I feel like that's, that's a, it's like kind of like a cat tummy situation.

That's right. You don't, you don't do it. Yeah. You don't pet the tummy. You can't, you can't treat him like you're about to make him drink a smear enough. You can't ice Darth Vader? You can't, you can't do that. I'm kidding.

And yeah, so we go into Vaders' Theater of the Mind. And at first we think he is just replaying the events of Mustafa. But actually, he's sort of reinterpreting them. There's a bit of wishful fulfillment. There's a little bit of regret. You know, he imagines the scene until as

Obi-on's about to walk away, he says, you know, if you loved me, Obi-Wan, you would have killed me. True, maybe. Maybe not true, but boy, he should have. Yeah. Yep. A lot of things go different. But anyway.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of things go, a whole, you know, we just don't get, we just don't get any of who knows what happens. It's all different. And so here you imagine something tossed into the lava coming out and then striking down at, striking down Obi-Wan as Obi-Wan delivers his last words from a new hope. and then he confronts a vision of a younger Anakin appalled at what Vader is done by striking down at Obi-Wan and they fight he fights his he fights his shadow self except here it's his light side self and then there's there's pregnant Padmay telling telling him stay with me and he starts revisiting like choking her and that sort of bringing

him back to wakefulness. Yeah. There's some, there's some, there's, some of this works for me. I like the, if you love me, you would have killed me.

I like him, I like him working through all of these feelings and finding himself reinvesting in being Darth Vader. I think that's like, important for who the character is, where it is going into Empire Strikes back, right? Like, he doesn't go through all this and then come out the other side,

ready to be Anakin Skywalker again. I like him, I like him, I like just fine him fighting himself and like defeating him the way, himself, the way Obi-Wan defeats him. He does like the backflip and he cuts Annikin's legs out from under him and cuts his arm off and force pushes him into the ground. Anakin says, how could you do this? Vader stabs him and drags him to the edge of the lava and says, you were a child. I am well accustomed to killing children and tosses him into the lava. and now metal hand.

I guess he already had the metal hand by then, but Anakin says, I hate you, I hate you. And then, yeah, we get pregnant Padmay saying, turn back, Annie, stay with me. He says no. He kind of turns, and we see that he's already chained to the table where he will become Darth Vader. And she says, you don't need to go on.

It can be over. You know you don't want to leave. Stay. And then she starts choking to death. suggesting a little bit that this is like not just not just a twisted memory but also like stay as in you don't have to go back to the world you can stay dead you can stay shut off

here this apparition or this ghost or this figure is saying hey you can just let it all go and he refuses and does so by choking her to death again it's the first time we've seen Padme in this comic is that right Yeah, I think so. We've seen echoes of her. We've seen other princesses. We've seen, or other, you know, royal figures.

We've seen Leah. But it's kind of a bummer that the only pad may think we get here is this, right? I just don't know that I like it for, I think I was kind of, I was in line with your assessment of this previous scene, which is Vader kind of killing his younger self. It plays into the whole like Ben Kenobi, Darth Vader killed your father. Like, I feel like it kind of works in the mythology of Darth Vader. And it worked for me as like coming back to the relationship between Obi-Wan and, Anakin and how

like the decision making offering like a possibility of what if something different had happened. Yeah. Like what could the alternate what would have what you know what would it have meant for the universe for the galaxy

if Obi-Wan had just killed Anakin? Like actually just killed him. that and then to have that kind of go into this like metaphysical I'm killing you know I'm killing that previous version of me again like what you said doubling back down on being Vader choosing again to be Vader I think that all makes sense and like plays into the dark side of the force and power and then him being able to overcome this button, I guess, to power himself up to be able to kill Silo.

I think with Padme, it doesn't hit the same because, yeah, it just feels like we're using this, like, horrible moment of domestic violence, essentially. to re and then that's like that that is like the actual trigger that push that's how he power like I just it doesn't work as well and I think I don't know I think there's a way there's a way to include Padme here that doesn't have to invoke the force choke like if it was if it was Padme saying like stay stay like choose to die basically like they're in they're in this kind of purgatory state you know when you're you're like kind of dying and you see both sides and you you kind of you can choose to go one way or the other that kind of vibe of where vader is at in this moment i don't hate the idea

of vader seeing her in that moment i don't hate the idea of her asking him to stay with her, asking him to choose her, essentially. And I don't hate the idea of him choosing the dark side, him not choosing Padme, because that is essentially what he did. I just, I wish there was another way to invoke that without having to literally call back to the moment he force chokes her. Like, is there another way to just show that, no, he's not choosing Padmay, he's going to choose power, he's going to choose the dark side.

That's where his loyalty lies. It does not lie in Padmei and didn't. I don't know. I think that's, none of this really works all that well, but the Padme stuff especially doesn't, in part for that reason, where it's too, it's too instrumentalized for the story. And now here's Padmay, and now here she is being choked,

and now it's time for him to wake up. And the other part of it, though, is the meaning isn't clear to me, but not in a way that feels like it is filled with interesting ambiguity, I think, is the way I put it. Like, there's a few different things that could be happening. There's a version of this that, like, Vader can't be ushered into the sweet embrace of death

because what waits for him there, the most comforting thing that he can envision is like his lost loved ones, especially Padme, except that has tainted for him forever because of what he did. And ironically then, because he can't find that piece, he can't surrender to whatever comes after because the passage to that is filled with regret and rage and anger and awareness of what he has done

and that turns him away. That is one reading of this, but it's not there in the page. It is a possible meaning, but I can't neatly draw it from the picture. More, what comes across almost, is that she is a siren song. Right.

This is Padmei saying give up, surrender. and it is Vader again symbolically choking her and denying the temptation she represents, the surrender she represents, and recommitting himself to this fight. In which case, this is Vader saying, me choking Padme is fucking awesome. That like this is my place of power.

That like this is where Vader's like, no, I'm going to. And he says, like, no, I'm going to fight. Except then that's a deeply, like fucked up way to look at it in part because there's never a moment where you think Vader has ever accepted

what he did there as a like good positive thing right like Padmay is a tragedy for him and there's parts of it he denies responsibility in but he would not revisit that memory or that moment and draw strength from it he might draw anger from it

might draw anger in himself but it wouldn't it wouldn't be this neat one to one, now contemplate choking Padme, and now break from the table and go kick this guy's ass. And so the whole thing gets like messy and touches on something that's kind of grossly tropey in, in Star Wars and the Vader story. And doesn't really do a lot of interpretive lifting with it in a way that makes it land. Yeah. I think, also there's, there's, I agree with everything everyone has said here, basically. And I think another additional level of this or another thing that's happening here as a reader

reminds me of, um, of a few things. But the first one is something we just talked about going back to Return of the Jedi. One of the notes that we had was like, huh, you notice like Vader doesn't seem like the same guy he was an empire. He's not choking anybody anymore. And one of the things that I said was like, yeah, well, it's, it's a movie about saving Vader's soul. And it's hard to make that movie where at the end, Luke goes, you're really my dad if like throughout the whole movie he's been killing people left and right.

And we've now read six trades of does Vader's story where we're like, ooh, Vader's kind of our cool anti-hero. He's like learning about the way he's been manipulated. We're learning with the way he's been hurt. And so I do think that there is a natural friction to suddenly get pushed back to, oh, right, this is the guy who choked his wife to death. Sorry, who broke his wife's heart to death in Revenge of the Sith. A scene that we've talked about at length over the course of the show. You can go back and hear us talk about it over and over again

throughout the various adapt, you know, the original movie, the book adaptation, when things like it have popped up elsewhere. The other thing that it does remind me of, and so I guess what I'm saying there is like, I think our friction is extremely natural because it's one of these moments where Star Wars wants us to think about Vader as both victim and, like, victimizer as both, like, terrible person and also, like, a page before we're thinking about the tragedy of him. And so it's kind of hard to square that feeling in a way that I don't think is actually very

productive in this moment. We've read six, six, you know, things of trade paperbacks of him, not being a good guy necessarily, But we haven't had to come face to face with him choking a pregnant woman who he loved to death or he says he loved to death, right? And I think that there's a compartmentalization that happens when you read fiction about anti-heroes in which you don't have to do that sort of thinking. The second thing reminds me of is some of our conversations around Cotor 2, the gender politics they're in, the sexual violence that is gestured at throughout that. and a deeper friction inside of Star Wars that often bubbles up when it goes from kind of folk tale or fairy tale or, you know, kind of that style of fantasy story. And when it becomes military science fiction, when it becomes, it's never hard sci-fi,

but it's sometimes in that military sci-fi role and where the depiction of certain types of violence are and like what is the dark side. And when like the dark side is an evil thing, a wizard who wants to clone himself is doing. It's all very airy and conceptual. And when you think about what evil is, especially evil that people do during wartime, we know what that looks like. We know that there is sexual violence. We know that there is gendered violence. We know that even beyond those types of violence, just the regular violence of two soldiers doing war is much more brutal than what's depicted in any of these comics or any of these movies or most of these shows.

I don't think Andor really gets to like what the Andor that I've seen anyway has not gotten to like what war is like in the way that, you know, certain other types of war stories can get to in terms of the depiction of violence. That's not a critique of it necessarily. But I do think that like in moments like this, suddenly the limits of how the dark side has been depicted can be fructive because. You start going, I start going, well, yeah, right. The dark side is like the dark side.

Nothing is off the table for Sheaf, Palpatine. We're drawing boundaries because we don't want this to be a story about domestic violence or about sexual violence or about gendered violence. And the story would be worse, I think, if that stuff was here. I don't think that that's like the type of story that Star Wars is trying to tell. But then it also is saying the dark side is about power over others. The dark side is about control. The dark side is about raw strength with no restraints.

And all of that stuff carries all of the real human evils that line up with all that stuff. We just don't have to see those in these stories normally because that's not actually what is at stake in the stories. And this is not me saying that there should be those things there. But I think when moments like this pop up, that kind of innate friction would say there's a light side and a dark side and these guys are just like devoted to pure evil. they're not motivated by ideology. They're not motivated by a particular vision of the world. They're motivated by like the evil force that's in their brain, that's in their souls is like moments like this bubble up sometimes. And I think that the wise decision as a narrative, you know, is someone trying to tell a story is to maybe anticipate those moments and not walk into them because the whole, the whole, the Wizard of Oz kind of comes out, right?

you kind of see behind, you can start to see the smoke and mirrors. You can start to see the structure that has kept you from thinking about this the whole time. You know, and I, it's not the only strategy. Again, I think, you know, Andor does a really great job of being like, no, remember, these are soldiers and these are people. This is an occupation. These are people who are being hurt. And that's a different strategy for it. But here, where we've done six trade paperbacks of Darth Vader brooding anti-hero bantering,

bantering with Afra and Thanoth and 12 pages ago Triple Zero killing a whole village and it not being a big deal for us to suddenly get the example of the violence that I think most of us have been the most unsettled by in the whole series

of course it jars us out of the moment a little bit you know but then he wakes up and stabs I mean like you know to that point he wakes up and stab silo and that doesn't matter to me you know i don't give a fuck that he not just because silo has 17 other silo bodies on the next page after that but like the feeling i get watching him choke padmay for two pages is completely different from the feeling that i get of him stabbing silo in the chest the next page so yeah storytelling's hard it's complex it's

it's a strange thing to do and then silo wakes out without his rodie and i And does he not have it? Does a new silo not have it? No, because those are just blank chassis. He hasn't allowed them each time. Fuck. Wait, really? I don't think the new silo has the...

Maybe we just don't see it. Maybe he does. He does. He does. All right. Okay. Later, in the next issue, you see it. He just turns his head and now you see it.

I see, I see. I see. I see. This was a bit confusing for me on my first read-through. I was like, wait, how was silo? But I realized now that maybe I would, you know,

was just not making attention or something, but I got really confused when I got to the next issue and I was like, wait, silos back and he's like wearing the same clothes. And then I was like, oh, wait, let me. I was like, oh, I need to just read this again. And then I realized it told me when he says he killed Silo v somehow Silo

wait, he killed Silo 5 somehow Silo 6 has to escape quickly. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're in a Mickey 17 situation. We're in a Mickey 17 situation. You're right. That's who he should have drawn Silo as is proper patent. That would have worked back. That would have been good.

Silo is ripped in the sequences where it's naked silo that he's killing. He's killing like all these naked silos. Yeah, he is. That's not the body I thought he had under those robes, you know, or those, that jacket. So he's hitting the gym in the clone chamber,

I guess, I don't know. Maybe that's the thing. It's like, we come out of the clone chamber. It's like, all right, coming in, if I just really like, if I just like really hit the gym and, like, crushed it for a couple of years, just lock in.

Then I can just copy people. pace that shit like a hundred times. But then SILA 5 is like, oh man, the gym's fucking boring. I'm gonna race these gains, but I just would rather stay here at my desk and do a little more work. Ooh, who's delivering right now? Yeah. Yep. He kills Silo in a very funny way.

All the silos are all in the same whale ship. He mind controls the whale. He force persuades the whale to fly into the sun. There's your problem with having a living ship is Darth Vader can mind trick it. It is really wild that the observation deck has this transparent floor that you look down and you're literally looking at the brain of the ship, the organic being piloting the ship. Yeah. That also does feel like a design error because if I were somebody that was evil,

or wanted to destroy the ship, I know where the brain is now. And especially susceptible to Jedi mind trickery. Yeah. Well, Silas dead. This is inviting trouble, yeah. Yeah. But you gotta show it off.

You got to be, look at this cool whale ship I have. Yeah. This is the brain. This is like when, like, supercars have, like, the translucent deck over the engine. So you'm like, you want to see the engine, right? It's like, yeah, I do want to see the engine. That's where the money is.

But here's kind of like, hope nobody fucks with this thing. I do like how gross it is. All the scenes of silo like standing on the bridge looking and like the, he's looking out, but like below him is the brain. It's weird. It's a weird ship. I like that they're willing to get weird with it. It reminds me something that could have been in the old Republic comics we read with

all the different weird ship designs, you know? Yeah. Well, it's clean up time. He goes and he meets up with the emperor and guess who's there with him? Afra, who's already given the emperor a full report. And maybe just Afra. Fanof did tell us that Dr. Afra seems like maybe a bit of stolen academic valor. Listen, the name of the comic is Dr. Afra, all right? So it's spelled out. Maybe it's, what if it's just her secret first? name. Doctor.

Doctor. Kind of a manifestation sort of thing from her parents. They were like, we really want this future for you. I hope we learn about her parents more. Like lawyers who names are like Jim Lawyer Man. Right. My son jurisprudence. Judge.

Judge is a great, bad first name for someone who you want to do a little nominative determinism on. It's so cool when the nominal of determinism works, but it doesn't. It's pretty crushing. I want to know who told Afra this was a good idea or like it was this triple zero being like, you want to escape? Okay, I know exactly what we'll do. We'll go to the emperor and we'll simply tell him everything.

Yeah, I think she's the one, right? Isn't she like, isn't she like, I have a plan when the, um, she's like, she's going to get, like she's been delivered. So now that now she can give an order to them. She asks for them to get her out of there. And then I think it's once the one's void gazing does the gas attack on the ship maybe that she's like, she goes to sleep and wakes back up and then asks, yeah. I can't quite remember.

But it's more so like, I don't know, it is kind of a wild thing to do to decide to go pitch the evil emperor of the universe. Like maybe it's just the, you know, she's been working for like the C-O-O, so like it's not that big of a deal to kind of just take it one step up. maybe that doesn't feel as big of a jump, but in just the kind of idea of it being like, I'm going to go to the most evil guy in the world, and I'm just going to pitch him and see what happens. But maybe, I guess it does kind of fall in line with what she tells Triple Zero at the very end of this issue

where she was like, this, you know, makes sense for my plan. Like maybe she did this because she knew she'd get caught. Right. Because she knew that Vader, this would be like the biggest betrayal to Vader. And because Vader would be so hurt that he would always choose to do the airlock rather than, I mean, she does say as much she says to Triple Zero, like her last words are, you know, Vader would never. essentially like Vader was never going to be kind. Right. He's Darth Vader.

He was never going to, you know, kill me mercifully. He was always going to do something cruel. So maybe it's like she kind of baited him into doing the airlock thing, in which case she had a backup plan for saving herself. Like that was the only possible way she was going to get out of this, get out of Vader's control alive. Because the thing that she's getting here is that Vader thinks she's dead, which means that he won't...

In some ways, this is the other way that Thanoff... Thanoth was like, I don't want to live the rest of my life running from you. And after he's like, I don't want to live the rest of my life running from you, so I'll trick you and make you think I'm dead. You know? So I think that that makes sense to me, Natalie. I think that that's... It's not...

Or maybe there's like a win-win here, which is like maybe she thinks the emperor will like her enough to employ her himself or something. But I think that you're probably right that she's like because they're ready. You know, they're like sitting ready in the right position to pick her up. It's not like they,

she must have made that plan immediately. Or Chrysantan must have been around, like, because she's with BT and Triple Zero. Somewhere on the way back from the Cosmanton planes or something, whatever that is. But yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's like a contingency, right? Like they're, you know, I don't think that she is ruling out the like S rank end here that like Vader is actually like yeah. It's chill that the emperor knows this about me, but like you're right. You proved me to him and now we'll just all work together and be fine. And there's also, I mean, when she sort of gets here at the end is she wants to be clear of this. And I do think like the the scenario that doesn't have Vader killing her is he keeps her on as a henchman, basically.

Right. And that's just not a good place to be. Like this is clear now. There is no, that's not a good lot in life. And it's going to end poorly for you somehow. And so she needs to sort of arrange what is going to make Vader kill me in the spiteful way possible. Right. And betrayal is it?

perceived betrayal. Yeah, I kept expecting to turn the page and see Vader be in on it in some way and be like, now we've both tricked the emperor. Though maybe I shouldn't have given that we were just reminded that he suffocated another woman once. And so here is actually the last thing we see. Right, maybe God, grimly, is this maybe also like, oh, this shit again?

Another Cherche Lefam. Oh, my God. Right. That's, yeah. Maybe not leaving this this book feeling as high on Vader as I thought I was going to be, you know? Turns out he is the Dark Lord of the Sith, it turns out. As he, for instance, kills Tash and tells Azel get two months of work done in two weeks or whatever. Yeah.

So wicked. Yeah. He's going to end up on bad bosses or whatever, you know. But then there's this, this, these four panels of him reaching out to his son. And it's like, they're so close to reconnection. Yeah. But it does feel like we've kind of fumbled some of that motivation across these last few issues, right? Where it's like, Luke has receded so much from this.

And now he's just like kind of been twirling his mustache for the last like many pages. That's the thing. When I, when I talked about before going back to the first. first issue, we all had this conversation of like, how do we feel about the star, the rest of the Star Wars protagonist showing up and there being interactions between these characters. And I think all of us had this instinct that was like, it feels like it deflates some of the feelings of the Empire Strikes Back for some of those feelings to get aired out ahead of, ahead of the Empire Strikes Back, right? For Vader to have not just interacted with Luke once,

but in the Star Wars comic, they fight once by the time at which the Empire Strikes back at least once. Maybe they do it again in the Star Wars comic. I have not read past the big crossover. We talked about Leah and Han having like versions of all the conversations they'll have an Empire Strikes back, but having them in that Star Wars comic and about like how that doesn't sit as nicely with us as Vader gets to meet a new character and we get to see on their side of him through his exploits with these new people.

And I do think that this is kind of the like the chickens coming home to roost on some of that here, which is like now that we've got, we got the cool moment of him learning Luke's name. And we know that he's been motivated by it. But then he's had to like sidebar that and deal with all those other bullshit for four issues or not for four issues for four trades, you know. And it is kind of like, well, we've already had the big Luke Vader. Vader knows who his son is now and is reaching for him. And so like, yeah, I think you're right. There's a degree of like in having already had the moment it undercuts how this could hit. This panel would have hit at the end of trade paperback one or two or this page, you know?

In fact, we kind of got a version of it just without Luke reaching back. This is him staring out at the windows is kind of where the one where Boba Fett comes back and says his name of Skywalker, right? Like that is very similar, him alone at the windows. So. And then earlier we see Afra floating through space. Yeah. And a little observation camera tracking, locking in on her, being fished aboard the ship, taken to a secret asteroid base.

And then Cresanin glam cam. Oh, yeah. He's so cute. They've built a lavender mood room. for Cresanton to welcome her back to the land of the living. Yeah. There's like a rock formation that I swear to God looks like to put a garland of flowers around his head.

Yeah. It's just the way he's like softly glowing that is really giving this cozy. And he's also smiling like I don't know how to describe it. Like a jelly cat would smile. I don't know. This is a,

This is our guy from Book of Boba Fett. This is our guy from Book of Boba Fett that did him dirty. That's not my Chrysanton. Yeah. My Chrisanton's like a get in here, Chrisanton. That's a bring it in. Bring it in.

Yeah. Agreed. Because this ends with like Afris now got her gang of gang of buddies, right? Her droid buddies, her bounty hunter buddy, who has been in on every one of her schemes. This is true. Cresantin is like sort of her ride or die. Yeah.

Compatriate from like issue two to now. Yeah. Yeah. It has always been the one who's on the real scheme, you know, as the other bounty hunters get got. So. And I'm presumably, he's going to be all over the Afro book, right? I guess we'll find out. Yeah.

And then we get. Then why wasn't she with him? A book of a fat? In tattooing. Yeah. Well, different timeline, different era, right? we don't know what happens in that book maybe she dies

we just don't know she can't exist she can't she can only exist for so long she's got an expiration date on her eventually or maybe they have a big falling out in Afra you know and he's like I'm gonna go

become loyal to the die of who knows maybe and maybe and maybe Dr. Afra can't appear in Book of Boa Fet and like a Disney exec's hands begin trembling. That's what I'm saying, yeah. Couldn't we find her a nice man? Yeah.

Well, speaking of Tatooine, we get this coda. I think the one really cool thing here is those pages of like were in the mythic space. Yeah, it feels like it's painted on linen or like a canvas. That was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I like the art of the, like, I like the art here. I don't know that I needed the, like, mythologizing of Vader in Tuscan, like, in the Tuscan raider culture, I guess. Yeah, that's super awesome.

I have a theory about these pages, actually, which is that, okay. My read on this is that they are not, is that Vader is the latest in a long running figure through from history. Because if you look at those first eight panels or whatever of the ones that are on the linen, the first panel does not look like the sand people we know. One of them, in fact, looks like this other sort of, this looks like a cotor scene to me. Like that armor looks like Cotor era somebody. Also, importantly, do you see what's in the sky in these images? Moons? I think those are three suns.

And what happens is one of them, one of these figures, blows up the place and then flies to the stars and grabs a sun and turns it into a lightsaber. Like, oh, so this is like the Jedi have always been enemies of, I mean, isn't it? that the story that is told in Kotor? Well, the thing that happened... Yeah, the thing that we learned there is that the Roketan have turned, you know, this used to be a world that had a sea, remember? And then they, like, destroyed it and sucked up all the ocean and changed it into a desert world and conquered them and enslaved them.

And they are like the remnants of an earlier people. But yeah, this kind of looks like, to me, like there is a historical or mythological figure who turns the sun into a weapon, who turns the third star of Tatouine into a weapon, and then just devastates them all. And then in the telling, this guy is like, and guess what, he's back as Darth Vader. And we get this image of that figure again,

but now with Vader and the red lightsaber instead of the orange sort of sun saber. And then they build the thing to Vader. And to me, my read on this was like, Vader is the latest incarnation of the devil you know and we got to now take action we got to build our anti-devil thing or our pro devil thing

and not really clear from the our wicker Vader. Our wicker Vader. Exactly. Exactly. That's I don't actually fucking know. So. Yeah. A bit of anticlimactic final arc.

It's funny because it's like there's all these beats that I think are supposed to be climactic. All of these boss fights that we keep talking about. And yeah, they're not, where is the climax in this story? Is it Vader, like the traditional narrative structure? Is it the dream? Is it Vader deciding, no, I'm not going to kneel to silo? Is it the conversation with maybe, maybe the actual overarching climax is actually Vader talking to Palpatine in the first issue of this run, of this trade? And, and that relationship kind of

of reaching its conclusion. And that's kind of the thing is like, all the rest of this is Dana-Mont, all the rest of this is falling action from the real stakes, which is his relationship with Palpatine, question mark? Yeah. I mean, when I think about the things in this comic that work for me, that is the finale of that, right? Like, Vader takes an Afra,

he has this sort of relationship with Trios. He goes into this conversation with Palpatine with this, like, real understanding of, like this is what the rule of two is. This is what it's like to be a Sith master. Like this is how to move around with like secret plans and people you're keeping close to you and how are you keeping them close. And like he is like going back to Palpatine like I am on the same level as you now. I have become a Sith master in a way that I haven't been because I've been like just getting teased by fucking military guys at like board meetings.

And I fucked up the death star or whatever. But that, I mean, Afra and Trio's are the things in this comic that I really liked. So it's easy for me to be like, well, you ignore all that other stuff. But the people who wrote it were not ignoring Silo and all of this other stuff. And I think that like, especially with the like flashback scenes being such a play the hits moment. Like it's really hard not to be able to sell like the like extremely cinematic. I am going into my own mind. like working through my own emotions thing.

And it was tough that this didn't hit, really. And I think it's for all the things that we spoke about and especially the thing that like he stands up and he beats Silo. Like, who cares? Yeah. Right. He doesn't stand up. That isn't a moment of defiance against the emperor.

Mm-hmm. It's not a moment of, yeah, yeah. Because it always felt like Silo wasn't shit. And we only got the, maybe if the silo reveal had happened earlier, like if Silo had been able to get one over on Vader earlier, either through the button situation, if it just felt like Vader was more stifled by Silo being in the position that he was, maybe that would have worked more,

but it's hard because Bader always feels like he's going to come out on top. Like he never, he's, none of these people are ever really a threat, right? Like, it's never really a struggle. Vader never really struggles against any of his adversaries

throughout this entire comic run. The only reason why he kneels to silence, is because of this like, you know, backdoor button, basically, that allows Silo to just turn his suit off. So I just feel like the tension isn't properly built to feel like interior at the beginning of, I guess this takes us to the beginning of Return of the Jedi, or the beginning of Empire?

theoretically the beginning of empire, but though I don't actually know when this issue was supposed to be over. But this comic takes place in between those two. And I guess I actually know, I actually do know it's not the beginning of empire, because Dr. Afra also takes place in between New Hope and Empire. So that comic, which I believe continues from this moment, is also not yet at Empire. So we're not even there yet. though maybe it read through Empire, but I'm pretty sure that that whole,

I thought that that whole comic also happens before. I thought so too, because, because of the, because of the Star Wars Cross, yeah, the Star Wars crossover, I don't know.

Like, because those adventures were supposed to have taken place before the drama between Han and Leah before Empire Strikes back. No, I'm sorry. I mean, the, the upcoming Dr. Afra comic.

That whole thing happens before Empire Strikes Back. In between here and Empire Strikes Back, in between the end of, so that like not only is this not yet Empire Strikes Back, but a whole other comic run happens between now and Empire Strikes Back. I don't know if this is making sense. You know what I mean? But all 40 issues of Afra happened between this moment and Empire Strikes Back happening. So Vader has a bunch of other shit he's presumably going to do out there in the vast galaxy still. But yes, it's not yet empire. It's still posts a new hope.

But yeah. Which, of course, he didn't know that at the time, Ghillon, I don't believe Afra had been greenlit two years before it was coming out. You know what I mean? So. Right, right. That's just comics. That's how that goes. Yeah. I really feel like for me, it just doesn't, yeah, I don't feel like we hear.

hit kind of a peak of of tension throughout like I I enjoyed my read through the comics very much so I liked these little moments I don't know if at the end of this all I really feel everything on the line or that there is kind of a a threat to Vader yeah I'm sorry wait I'm wrong The Afri Comics do run between Empire and Return of the Jedi. So this could be leading right into Empire Strikes Back in terms of timeline. This could be the next thing that happens is, I mean, it ends with Vader taking control of the superstar destroyer, right? And so we could go from this right into Empire and that would make perfect sense. So that could be the thing that happens next narratively.

So apologies for getting that wrong. Right, right. Which is I guess leads to like we have this is like always the kind of Star Wars problem, right? Is that we have to get to an already defined point of something that's already happened. So we can only kind of and I find this to be like a real challenge for like I don't know how I would solve for this problem if I were, you know, I wouldn't know what to do. But it is, it's a really tricky thing to, to figure out because there's only so much you can, there's only so far you can stray before you have to like correct, course correct back to landing the plane in the, in the runway that is, you know, already there. The beginning of the next. Yeah, that's already there. I mean, like, that's the, it is the highs and lows of all this whole project in a way, right?

It's like, not just this comic, but all of the, like you said, like you said, of Star Wars, which is like, I find myself at my highest when we're telling a story that shines new light that's resonant with the events that I know are locked in place. When you're learning something about Anakin in the Clone Wars, you're seeing shades of Vader in Anakin in the Clone Wars cartoon. Here, when we're getting a different version, I like the Shuteroon stuff a lot, Shuturan stuff a lot, because I was like, oh, look, we're spending more time with Vader and with this person who has shades of Leia and we're getting a new piece of the world, but it doesn't feel

as constrained. It feels characterologically constrained. Vader can't not be himself by the end of this story, but the events aren't constrained because they're a side story inside of the same universe. Whereas anytime there does feel like there's some sort of deep character shift in one of these stories, I know in my heart it's going to get shifted back or it's going to, That shift is just on the road to whatever the final state is that we know it's going to be there by the next movie because that's locked in place. And I'm not saying you could never do that well, but it's hard to do it well.

We know watching all the Clone Wars that Anakin is going to come back on side enough, no matter how much he dips into the darkness, to still be a Jedi by the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Like, we know that Vader throughout this whole comic run is not going to secretly decide that he's a Jedi again or something. Though, though, of course, counterargument to this is sometimes Asoka shows up in an episode of the Mandalorian and seems to be a Jedi again, despite the last thing that we saw her say being, I'm not a Jedi. So, you know, maybe it's actually good when they are consistent instead of inconsistent. did. Maybe actually I don't, I would take the constraints over the kind of willy-nilly. Oh, just tell us what happened. Like, why is she a Jedi? Like, I just made, yeah. Just tell us what happened, I guess. I don't know. Maybe that's in Asoka. But she changed your mind. Maybe it's in the Soca show. Maybe you hear about the massacre.

And you're like, well, I guess I can kind of reinterpret the role and make it mine. I'll make it. Yeah, that's the thing. With no other Jedi out there, I get to decide what a Jedi is. So me and this Luke guy who's just over there telling this little Yoda motherfucker He has to make a choice Oh no she's like she's like convincing Luke that this is how you train a Jedi but actually psychically She's visiting horrible violence on Yoda Right yeah yeah yeah finally she's convinced yourself that making grogoo sad actually makes Yoda sad in force heaven or whatever you know yeah Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Parts of this are parts of this rod have been like, I've been incredibly high on. I even like the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the chute-touroon war. I love that, but yeah. I think, yeah,

that was awesome. So much of it is, when this series gives Vader some kind of foil, um, and characters bounce off each other, it works. It's fantastic. And here,

he's kind of, because we're in the process of losing all these supporting characters, and Afra is sort of moving into this adversarial position and really tangential to this plot, there is no foil. And lacking the foil, he has no rivals. And you're right, like, Palpatine is his antagonist. And that's basically wrapped up with that first scene.

But now we run into kind of a structural problem with this, which is he can't fight his antagonist. He's now isolated from the characters who were sort of his foils. all you have are these like villains but not really antagonists, not really nemeses just they're just people sort of in his way and it's multiple issues of him

just sort of like bringing the boot down on them and crushing them. But they've been so crushable and we always knew this is what they're headed for that it's not satisfying. I think maybe the series maybe hopes that it is going to be satisfying like watching them be humbled

and sort of put in their place would be sort of fun. But it kind of isn't because maybe they haven't been hateable enough either. It's bad booking, brother. You got to book them stronger if you want the... Bad booking brother. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. Yeah, it's just not good looking.

You have to make them look strong and interesting for us to feel like he's getting a win over them in the end, you know? Or just annoying enough. Annoying enough. Like, them being chased out of the ring and then drag back and getting like knocked around. has us like hooting and hollering and like we love it and they're not fighting they're just getting ragdoll and it's like yeah that's great the or duke or whatever the or baron last time he was barely in that book but he was enough of an asshole where we're like hell yeah you're getting owned right

now he was barely in that book and i was happy to see him get his compared to void gaser who's like i that's the other things like i think there's so much it feels like oh what if blah blah blah What if what if we'd gotten something deeper about? Or what if, you know, Voidgazer and Vader had gotten to be foils or rivals? It's like none of that happens. So we don't really. There's not enough of them in a way that's convincing or, you know, interesting to pull us towards them in that way. And it's funny because we read that quote from Gillen about Afra that she was written explicitly because Vader doesn't have a foil and needs.

someone to be a little funny and to be a little sardonic and a little direct because he's going to be so brief and so short and so buttoned up and quiet. We needed a character who talks about the situation and after the crossover, they're separated. And even throughout most of this book, they're separated. We just get her perspective on stuff. But the two of them don't get to talk. And I think the book was at its best when the two of them were like chopping it up and on the same side. And we could have had Thanath step into that role. And instead, yeah, not so much. So I'm still high on this book in general.

I still think I really recommend. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Folks read it if they're curious about any of the stuff we've talked about. I would recommend it to someone who's like, hey, what's a good Star Wars comic to read? But yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, to that point that, like, you know, it is a portrait of Darth Vader in a way that, like, you know, coming to that Pad Bay Bobin and feeling. kind of repulsed by it and, you know, the silo stuff aside,

being able to go through that and then also have the, like, the epilogue, the coda of this, of the Tuscan sort of reacting to Darth Vader, the sort of like shadow that he has all over the galaxy. Like, that's cool. Like, just spending more time with Darth Vader alone is satisfying enough that, like, these things I'm complaining about is because they're more interesting,

ways that those things could have gone. But like the Vader of it all was pretty good. It hit for me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Agreed. Yeah, if there was another trade, I'd bet let's read the next one. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm kind of bummed. I know, that's why I was

asking earlier. I was like, are we sure there's no more Vader? Because I do, I want, I like I like the way that this team tells Vader's stories. Yeah. Like, I I mean, I've enjoyed it a lot.

I think my qualms with it are are qualms that we've had, like I said earlier, across so many of these kind of offshoots of the mainline Star Wars stuff that just feel like they have to too neatly land the plane at the end of it all. But otherwise, I feel like I've had such a good time reading these. And I like the new, I mean, I like Afra a lot. I like 3-0. I like BT,

Triple-Zero. I like the whale ships. I like, you know, I like a lot of what we got to see here. I wish for more. I wish there was more to read. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. But there's always more Star Wars. It's true. So true. So what is it going to be, y'all? Is it going to be Dr. Afra? No, wait a second.

What's that voice? That was actually a little Danielle Rieando voice. I haven't heard that in quite some time. Dr. Afra. Dr. Afra. Or is it going to be the Force Awakens? We embark on the sequel trilogy. Here's my pitch.

I think we should keep going with Dr. Afra because I find it will probably be hard for us to come back to her later. I see. If that makes sense. Like finding a slot, unless we did like a one-offer for Patreon or something. I just think like if we've been viving with her, we should see her story. you through, see what's going on. And we can always read the first trade and be like, oh, I'm actually not having a great time. Let's pivot.

True. Pivot. Pivot. Right. Does anyone have counterarguments? I get like, no, you actually sold me. This is actually, we're going to do Afra. Like, this is the moment.

I'm curious about Afra. Yeah, we left curious about Afra. Let's do it. True. I'm down. I could concoct a counter argument, but not really. you know, but like, why should I do that? The sequel trilogy will be there.

It's not going anywhere. Hey, here's what I'll say. If they're like, we've decided the sequel trilogy didn't happen, we'll watch the sequel trilogy immediately. Like, if they decide, like, you know, in my heart of hearts, my dream is that they say that third one didn't happen. We're redoing it. Or that was all a dream.

We're doing something else. We're doing something else. And they're not going to do that because that is not how. it works. What if they did? I keep, you know, yeah, episode nine for real this time.

They can't do it. What if they did it, but it would be like, they just re, like, everyone got too old so they just had to recast everyone as, like, younger. Yeah, because they're not just redoing the third one. They're redoing all of it. They would say, like, new canon.

New rules. Yeah. I don't know if they would ever do it. The whole thing would have to get sold again and someone knew would have to restart. The, would have to reboot the whole. That's the thing that I'm waiting to happen. It would be like a Harry Potter situation where they just, they start it over from the beginning. They just redo all of it.

I think we will all live to see Star Wars reboot it. Wait, had they come? I guess they have. This is the controversy around John Lithgow casting thing. right? Yes, this is the HBO Max Harry Potter show.

Instead of there being eight movies, there was a show. But it's still the Harry Potter story. It's going to be like eight seasons of, or I guess, I don't know, maybe they'll do seven because, or is, I don't know how it works,

whatever. But yeah. Like that's what I, I think that's what would have to happen. Or it's just everyone is new. Right. Everyone is like, it's a whole new creative.

creative. Maybe it's a TV show on Disney Plus. And it actually starts at Phantom Menace and it goes through linearly. Oh my God. That would be so weird. And the characters grow over the course of their whole lives. It's shot over 25 years. We're doing seven opera boyhood.

We're doing boyhood. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. God. Oh, my God. That is a curse thought. We make the equivalent of making the biggest bet in history on Jake Lloyd.

That's right. And you're going to carry this franchise kid. I mean, we live in a world where stranger things and the Harry Potter original cast already happened. Like, I need someone to open their eyes and cancel the second Harry Mother project. All right. So, Dr. Afra. First trade paperback of Dr. Afra next time. You know, I will say we've not done any work into looking at how this is a very much.

So we've made this decision, but I, I mean, I own the omnibus of this. I've had it for a decade or whatever. Let me look it up. So, but I would suspect that it's similarly available in digital format in the same way that the proof that this one is. But I should double check that. This is Star Wars Dr. Afra 2020 to present. No. No, we want the 2025?

27. 2017, 2017, not 2027, that's the next year. You have 15. That's what I thought I was saying. The Omnibus. The Omnibus. They added the microtransactions. The Omnibus came out in 2017, but I actually don't know.

Let's take a second and make sure we can actually get this regularly. Not the audiobook adaptation. Dr. Afro. Okay, yeah, there's a Dr. Afra trade paperback. Is this friends and enemies? I don't know if, no, Dr. Affra, Volume 1 is what we are looking for. From 2016, that is a trade paperback, and that is available for $12 new and used. So I think that we'll be fine.

I think it's also available digitally along with the rest of the Dr. Affirate run. So I think we are fine. I will look into this deeper, and if we're not fine, I will do an update in this episode. Right now, I'll cut in and say, hey, actually, we, You can only get it this way, but I believe we'll be okay. All right. Well, join us next time for Dr. Afra. Until then, please rate and view us on your podcast platform of choice.

It's been a trip. Try to remember Silo, but I suspect the details will escape you rapidly. It's going in my solo storage bank. Do you remember the end of solo real quick, Natalie? Do you remember what happens to the very end of solo? Um, who do we meet at the very end of solo? I know Maul is there now. I remember he's there.

We're good. Do you remember who sees him and secretly is working for him? Um, the girl. The girl. There we go. Yeah. The girl. I know it.

I know it now. Hashtag Keira cute us. I finally know. Sorry, it's not that we've forgotten. It's just that we're so in the realm of mythopoetic archetype that we can only remember at her as the girl. Because she was the girl to Han Solo. She was the girl.

That's right. I think all the time of the person you asked us, does returning to the original trilogy after watching Solo change what you think about Han Solo and Leah's relationship, which is a great question. Nope.