A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 17: The Mandalore Arc (Clone Wars 34 - 36)

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

As far back as the Clone Wars movie, when Obi-Wan Kenobi first bantered with Asajj Ventress, we knew that the bearded Jedi Master had a romantic side. Today, we see that part of him in full bloom--and perhaps in full wither--as he reconnects with the Duchess Satine Kryze. To say there are fireworks is an understatement. We've got a whole damned powder keg here. There's bickering. There's flirting. There's face touching. And at the heart of it, there's a debate about pacifism, sovereignty, and duty. Oh, and some Mandalorians show up too. NEXT TIME: Episodes 37-39 ("Senate Murders," "Cat and Mouse," "Bounty Hunters") Show Notes Fallen Clones: Redeye, Mixer "Concordian Mando'a in TCW"

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We've got another three-part of today, and once again, I think the series may have outstripped its previous highs as the story moves to Mandalore, and high-stakes political gamesmanship meets a sexy action thriller. There's a lot to cover in these three episodes, but up front, I have to say that the series has done multiparters. This is kind of its thing. It does a lot of linked episodes. I think this is probably the one that I've seen do the best job of creating three episodes that are compelling as standalones, but also build up into a really nice cohesive arc that also goes places independently of each individual episode.

So there's a lot to get into. so we will just jump right in with our visit to our visit to Mandelor. We learn that Duchess, I almost called her Duchess Cinema. No? No, quite the opposite, actually. Duchess Sateen is the head of state for Mandelor, but she is also the head of the Council of Neutral Systems, which has 1,500 worlds pledged to,

stay out of the war. 1,500 systems, thousands of worlds, because each system may have multiple planets. Is that right? Yeah, in a later episode, she says, I represent 1,500 systems, thousands of worlds back to back. And I did like a double take. I was like, wait, you just said 1,500 systems. And I was like, oh, but some of those have moons, like, Narshadah is a moon, just like, you know, and those are, those are, that's how it works. But the intro, but the intro narration to Mandelaarvote definitely says,

1,500 worlds. Okay. Yeah. Well, then they change it in the next one. But they change it, yeah, for sure. Or she's running up the score, right? It's a bit like when you have a startup where it's like, and millions of years of combined experience.

I do think she does that. I do. A bunch of 20-year-olds. Yes. It is her in that mode. It is her trying to be as like, you know. Well, she, we'll get to that. It's great.

Yes. She turns to a Tennessee Williams character just out of nowhere. It's delicious. So, in this episode. so we are going to Mandelor. We're going to uncover the Mandelor plot, which is the name of the episode. And the broad outlines

are, Duchess Sateen is both the head of Mandelor. She's the head of this Council of Neutral Systems. The Republic has received intel from somewhere that they are building a secret army on behalf of the separatists, and

Obi-Wan is sent to get to the bottom of it. It becomes very clear that he and Duchess Sateen have some kind of connection from the past. In terms of the plot beats, it's kind of predictable. If you see somebody in these episodes and you're like, that dude seems like he's up to no good. You will be right.

It's like the classic, you know the thing in old cartoons? I reference this all the time where you could see that there was like a cell of animation. Like a thing in the foreground's like, oh, a character's going to touch that. That's going to be the focal point of the scene. That's Clone Wars whenever there's guest voice actors. And it's like, oh, that's John Favreau, that's Greg Proops. They're evil. For sure, for sure, they're evil.

Yeah. I mean, every time, every time, like, they would say something, then they would give this, like, little, like, shifty eye, like, I look, like, side to side. I was like, yeah. Was House of Cards airing by this point? Because, like, it's that level of, like, you know, triumph the insult comic dog delivery of, like, for me to betray them. Anyway, so the deal, we learned that Mandelor used to be a warlike world. Now they're all about peace, except for that moon where they stuck all the warriors, Concordia. They're still there, but don't worry, it's very chill.

They go investigate Concordia. Turns out it is not chill. Obi-Wan and Satine have to work together, have a fun little banter adventure to sort of fend off this return of this warrior order of Mandalians. and the episode ends with this situation is going to have knock-on effects. This is kind of vindicated with the Republic Feared was happening on Mandelor. They are inclined to send the troops to occupy, and Sateen is heading to Corrassant to basically try and block that move and maintain the system's neutrality. So with that broad outline in mind, let's get into it.

I think first off, do they live in Pod Cities? They live in cities based on THX 1138 per phaloney, per philoni. That is, so that is Lucas's pre-Star Wars sci-fi dystopic film that has a much lower budget and much less advanced kind of special effects work happening. But there are a handful of shots of what like the broader city in that space looks like. And those shots are the inspiration for the way this looks. And also Cubism. That's the other big one. Their art is like cubism.

You see the Guernica, Mandel War, Civil War painting in this one. Which, Faloni in his, I don't have any Faloni, like, recordings running out for us today. None of them are funny enough. But he does mention that he wishes that Gwarnica, like, version would have gotten more direct screen time. Like, it just shows up in the back a little bit here. I want to say in Pre-Visla's mansion, manor, whatever On the moon

But between that and then the Cubist like paintings of Satine That are in her throne room The big touchstones were Cubism And then yeah, THX 1138 I also look at it and go like Oh, that's the Vex from Destiny Which Yeah

It's weird I think they're cool It also, there's like a there's a strong like art Deco architecture to the entire, like, throne room. I mean, Satine definitely has this, like, what's her name from Great Gatsby? Oh, Daisy. Yeah, she gave me, like, strong...

Daisy vibes. Before she turns into Taylor Swift, I agree. Not necessarily in her, like, attitude and stuff, but just, like, mostly in her, like, aesthetic and visual. She gave me strong daisy vibes I think it's really Just because we mentioned previsla I think it's really funny that they put a character

I know it's so funny It's so funny to me For people who don't know A previs is like an early animation or filming tool Where you can kind of do like a layout And like a sort of like prototype Of what a shot is going to look like

Or what a scene is going to look like And that's often abbreviated by saying previs and his name is previsla They're like previsla Okay, let's go with that It's so funny I also want to say These three episodes

Had my highest Count of Let's Go In my notes So out of every episode We've done so far These three episodes have the highest Let's fucking go count

So I will be calling. First, I, my first let's go came right after, right after the narration. Right after Duchess Sistine of Mandelor is secretly building her own army to fight for the severance. After introduction of counsel of neutral systems, that was like one point. 1,500 worlds that want to stay out of the world, two points, or out of the war, two points. And then secretly building her own army to fight for the separatist cause, three points. I was like, let's go. We're in it.

That's my first let's go. That's good. Yeah. Also, to be clear, sorry, I realize I talked about the THX 1138 thing. But Rob, also, yes, there are big domes around these cities in a way that's very cool looking. It's very stark. Yeah, because when he flies in, I sort of did the double take. So remember the episode, I remembered what the Mandalorian capital city looks like, which is, I think the style here is so cool.

Like, it has that, it has that cubism. It has that art deco. But there's also something very, like, classically Romanesque about, like, their civilization in how it feels. But I remember the city being this, like, beautiful, airy space. But when he's flying in, the planet's actually a pretty barren desert, it looks like. And then the city has these huge, like, almost, gosh, what were those huge, like, domes? Those, like, ice houses that, like, the Babylonians built. But those huge, like, almost like half of a beehive type structure.

slap down in the desert. And the scale, I don't think they fully sell you on the scale because it looks like when his ship lands on the opening, it looks properly scaled to that. But then when he goes into the dome, it's like, oh, there is a city like the size of Los Angeles in this dome. Yeah, yeah. It's wild. It's really cool. Also, the way just the light plays throughout this city is incredible. It's always coming in windows.

The windows have, they also have angles in them so that, like, sometimes. you'll get like a cross beam effect it's it's really cool the other the other thing to call out here is a lot of the architecture window design a lot of the the kind of shapes that you see making up like the throne and the areas around the room the columns and stuff are pulled out of the basic jango fete boba fat armor and helmet design they use a lot of the exact same curvature the exact same to produce a sort of sense of presence, even though that armor is absent from the planet itself, which is interesting. So we get a bit of exposition right from the start where Obi-Wan enters this throne room,

and he is greeted not by the Duchess yet, but by her Prime Minister, Almec. And he is very skeptical of the intelligence that has brought Obi-Wan to his door. He thinks this entire thing, you know, is reeks to high heaven. and, of course, the Duchess values peace more than her own life. Obi-Wan very quickly interrupts. Oh, I'm aware of the Duchess's views. Almac kind of talked past that. He says, Mandelor's violent passes behind us.

All our warriors were exiled to our moon, Concordia. They died out years ago. Which means for a civilization built on glass, I think they could have used a fucking telescope to check out. Like, hey, how are those warriors doing? But either way, they died out years ago. Obi-Wan points out that Django Fat sure looked a lot

like a mandolin. And it's at this point that Sateen enters and says, well, Master Kenobi, my shining Jedi Knight, to the rescue once again. Let's go count number two. Let's go count number two. Obi-Wan, wasting no time after all these years, you are more beautiful than ever.

Let's go count number three. Kind words from a man who accuses me of treacherine. By the way, throughout this scene, as in every one of their scenes in these episodes all the other characters in the show become spectators to intensely personal conversations and begin looking uncomfortable whether or not they are burned by the guilty

conscious of being active traitors people are just like I shouldn't be seeing this and this begins to happen in this scene yeah I also have a let's go this is that shit written here kind words for a man who accuses me of treachery eight words a Jedi Knight wants to hear

It's incredible. I love this so much. And so, yeah, the reason he showed up is they've got, they have security camera footage of a Mandalorian just wrecking house in a Republic Cruiser. And so he's basically, you're going to be like, what's up with that? But we also get, and this episode is going to be, it's really dense with, like, backstory. It's a really enticing episode if you're into lore. and especially if you watch the Mandalorian because initially it's hard to square this

with what we see in the Mandalorian. But I think the connections begin getting a little clear as it goes. However, so in this scene, they refer to the fact the Jedi and the Mandalorians fought wars in the past.

Satin is very guarded against Obi-Wan because she says that he is basically here as an agent of the Senate and the Senate is overreaching and intervening in her system's affairs, he clarifies, basically says, no, I'm not of the Senate.

I'm sent here by the Jedi Council, which does appear to make some distinction as far as Satina's concerned, but also very weird distinction here. That's distinction doesn't make sense. The rumors are spreading through the Senate. The Senate is the one that's concerned. Jedi would not have sent Obi-Wan just without that.

That's the whole thing. That's the whole thing. I get it. there's like a very loose separation of church and state here but like someone said word over yoda said hmm the sentence getting you know frustrated about this we should send somebody yeah i wonder if that is uh a misstep or if that's just almost um obiwan kind of establishing a bit of gravitas to like his his his being there and like oh this this this This is symbolic or this is emblematic of a whole history.

Like, you and I as, like, almost like romanticizing this entire encounter. Like, I am of the Jedi. Yeah, I am of the Jedi. You were of the Mandalorians. Can love Bloom. Yeah, exactly. I think he believes it also. I think he believes he was sitting here by the Jedi Council because that's his worldview.

that like, oh, well, the Senate didn't explicitly order us to do this. So it's our free will. Yeah. But there's definitely a change in her. Yes. When she says, I stand corrected, like, it's kind of like a little bit of an oh shit moment. She's like, well, fuck then, I guess. Yeah, I guess.

Which is something else. I think those moments will be diminishing because I think the other part of these three episodes is that she sees things very clearly. And Obi-Wan is, and I think right here, this weird distinction without a difference about Juddic Council versus Senate, he's a guy who is lying to himself a lot about what he is actually doing, how this war is actually being run, what, like, interests he serves. And I think, like, this is kind of three episodes of him being a bit of a rube. And, like, her trying to basically make the lesson sink in. that what you think you are part of is different from the reality. We do get a different vibe the next scene where they're taking a walk through the beautiful

airy gardens of Mandelor and we get a slightly under-budgeted terrorist attack. It can't all be winners. It's tough. Well, this is where we get their whole back and forth around. Um, or is this just about the death watch stuff? Or is this a bit about Death Watch? Well, first, before we get there, they, well, I believe, well, there's still, that sort of this, right? Yeah.

In the first, uh, walk scene, we introduced Death Watch, or, uh, Satine introduces Death Watch as, as, uh, they, idolizing violence in warrior ways of the past, um, but they're hardly a movement. She says, they're a small group of hooligans. who choose to vandalize public places, nothing more. Then we get a cut to a Mandalorian soldier talking to none other than Count Dugu. I was very excited to see Count Duku back. It was exciting for me to see them not just jump into we're going to win by fighting and to see Duku immediately on that machination shit. Yes, 100%.

100%. It was like we just the chess pieces were shown to us like he showed us his his hand and I love to see

Count Duku's plans. It just makes me so happy. His whole strategy is basically that once the Senate forces peacekeepers to Mandelor, once there's a

military occupation Mandalorian people will, you know, rise to the cause of the Death Watch, which, okay, if you're going to start, like, an alternative movement, Death Watch is a really aggressive name. Just like, what's that telling me about you and your movement? Like, are we, like, what does this mean for Mandelor, Death Watch Squad? They come from a history of warriors, of doing death, I guess. You know? Yeah. They're a weird group. They are weird.

It's weird that they were ever just, I guess it's the thing. It's like, how much do we think Satina actually knew about them before this bombing? Was this an actual elevation or was this happening in the government was not particularly open about it with people from the rest of the republic? Is this the first bombing or have there been bombings and attacks before this? Does Sateen seemed genuinely shook when that happens? I think given her reaction to like that exchange where the person that planted the bomb and ran away on his like sort of deathbed start speaking in the Concordian dialect. Like her affectation after that. that seemed pretty genuine and pretty like this is getting bigger than I had previously understood.

And I think there's also, yeah, we'll get there, but after this Count Dugu exchange, we return to Obi-Wan and Satine's walk-and-top little date. Before we leave Duke, I just want to underscore. how good it is that this set of episodes states the stakes restates them, never let you forget them because the audience is primarily children and so the

idea and it is what I suspect is probably a complex idea for young viewers which is Duku is counting on a republic occupation which will make people feel bad because no one likes to have the military on their streets

telling them when they have to go inside and that will generate reactionary anti-republic sentiment, which then will lead them to support Death Watch, who is backed by and will back the separatists. And that's an idea I think lots of us are very comfortable with, but if you are 12 in watching this, that might be the first time you've had that idea, and all of these episodes say it over and over again,

without ever feeling didactic, but often from different perspectives and different concerns and people who want to pursue that, and people who are afraid of it happening organically and people who think it might be a plot and history has all of that different stuff happening. And so I like that, that Duke who spells it out very clearly here

and then it continues to get spelled out over this, this three-part arc. And I want to definitely put a marker down because I think with the third episode, I really want to discuss this, what the outlines of this plot and the way it's discussed on Mandelor versus the way it's discussed in the Republic Capitol.

And so I want to say, like talking about the difference in the clarity Each side is very clear on what they think the situation is, and yet it's night and day in terms of how they both regard the politics of this. When we do cut back to Satine right before the bombing, Obi-Wan and Satine are no longer in that sort of cautious, like guarded conversation having earlier. They are now sort of getting more into interrogating what has the other done with their lives in some ways. There's a very before sunset vibe to some of these conversations. And we interrupt Obi-Wan saying a peacekeeper belongs on the front lines of conflict. Otherwise, he would not be able to do his job.

And Satin replies, the work of a peacekeeper is to make sure that conflict does not arise. Obi-Wan, a noble description, but not a realistic one. Satine begins to say, is reality what makes a Jedi abandon his ideals? Or is it simply a response to political convenience? And that's when the bombing occurs. Let's go. It's so good. And I do love this, because what Obi-Wan is enunciating here isn't just a Jedi ideal of

peacekeeping, but it's the entire, like, post-war, post-World War II neoliberal order idea of peacekeeping, which is that, of course, you have to turn these places into protectorates. And what a peacekeeper does is show up back by the full force of the hegemon and kind of, like, intervene in these conflicts and suppress them. That's what that's how you keep peace and Satine's counterargument is that by that point you've already There's a system in place that is generating these conflicts. You're already too late that if you're there with troops You're not a peacekeeper you like you're kidding yourself if you think that's what this is Satine is more of a treat the whole patient type approach to like policy and that's

that's one of the major dichotomies in in the sort of notion of what is a moral international framework and I think over the course of this I think Satin is in many ways a bit naive it is clear she's playing from behind on a lot of this stuff but she's catching up fast her worldview though comprehends what is happening

much more competently than Obi-Wans and I think she is playing the idealist and thinks that's a role that needs to be played more than I do think she's a little naive she's not as naive as the Lerman grandpa who's like I won't raise my hand to fight back even as they kill us um this is like a do-over it's a do-over that whole thing it's and there's two main two there's three big important differences one is that I think she she's hot she's hot and she is a like they have chemistry is one of them I actually this is like one of the most important things is he thinks it's endearing

she's idealistic and wants him to be idealistic, that he sees in her someone who sees a better world than he can see. And that immediately makes all of her arguments when they do seem naive that much more believable or valuable because you can see them working on Obi-Wan. I don't think either of these people are ideologues in the sense that they believe only their despite what Obi-Wan says in the next episode, which by the way, the second episode of these is the first one produced and I think it shows. Like, we'll talk about that when we get there. But here, I think in this back and forth, what, one of the things that she says is, is what is reality what makes a Jedi abandon his ideals.

She's not saying, I don't think that she believes that a Jedi should never raise a lightsaber in conflict. She believes that a Jedi should never want to have to do that. And that ideals are what we live by and we take it and we make exceptions to those things when, for instance, a bombing happens or droids come to a, attack us, as will happen later, or then in another episode. But that the ideals have to be the base. And Obi-Wan is at the point where, or the Jedi Order is at the point now, as generals, that they've given up on what that ideal, where their ideals used to be and have moved into the realm of a state of exception where they are doing kind of what forces in the Senate want to do instead of being that idealistic check on the Senate, which they theoretically

once were, or at least in Satin's estimation, at least. I just, this scene captures so much of that in like five sentences, and it's so good. I also can't help but think about Padmey and Anakin's little political discussions. Huge. There's such an immense valley between Satine and Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padmae. it's it's absolutely wild to me the fact that like obiwan and sateen can talk about can have this conversation and they're meeting on a mutual plane of understanding and indifference and in disagreement and conflict but there's like a mutual respect there for the other person's expertise and then you like go to anakin and

Padme and it's a fucking joke. It's like, it's, it's rude, it's scary, it's fashy, it's not cute. It's like, there's just no internalization of what that other person is saying. It's, they're, both of them are so, they have like tunnel vision when it comes to each other in a strange way. Like, they just can't, they have their relationship. They're like, they're, you know, love for each other. And that's it. Like, anything else doesn't penetrate that concept. But with Satin and Obi-Wan, like, they can move between the fact that they, you know, have love for each other, that they respect each other as, as, you know, of their roles in society, respect.

each other as friends, all these different things. They move between these different modes of or different levels of their relationship in a way that's very nuanced and good and, like, fun to watch. And it depresses me that we don't get that for Anakin and Padmae because they're both fucking morons. They're both children. Yeah. Also, you should say that relationship dynamic is.

is also at stake in these episodes, which is what is so good. It's like, yes, they respect each other a great deal, but also the respect that they hold for one another is what each of them is kind of put in the pot at all times and is what is up to be lost if things break bad in any of these episodes. And that's such a more powerful stake than anything we've seen in interpersonal relationship stakes thus far in this show, I want to say, Outside of, like, the deserter maybe, but, like, they're, I love Rex.

Rex is not Obi-Wan Kenobi, you know? Yeah. In terms of where he's placed in my heart. No offense to Rex. Sure. Um, Ellie, do you have something? I thought it looked like you were going to, all right. Yeah, I think it helps, like, for one, it helps that George Lucas was nowhere near the

the scripts for these episodes. And so I think we get, like, in some ways, in some ways you'd say this, is a parallel relationship, and it's meant to sort of highlight the differences between the two romantic couples. Like, Obi-Wan also has his Padmae, but why does it go a different route? And they do a good job of, like,

showing why it would follow a different course, because these are characters who are ultimately more mature, you know, as you described Natalie, like they are capable of holding these two levels of the conversation in mind at once, where it's like, I am attracted to you, I'm in love with you, but also we have really different views.

these are real important things about us as well. Whereas the, like, you know, the Anakin conversations kind of just set that aside. And because plot reasons, they have to, they have to hook up, even though it's, like, kind of inconceivable that, like, you would just brush over this stuff. But I do think with the constraints of, like, the, within what has been left for them after attack of the clones, they do. do a good job of creating this as a counterpoint to that relationship where like, okay, these are two people who basically make the decision at the end of Casablanca, right? Like the problems of two people don't matter Hill of Beans in this world. These are two people who are capable of both agreeing that like it would probably be better

for more people if we were more, if we self-sacrificed here and continued with our roles rather than our relationships. I think it's a false choice, but we'll get to them. So they have the brief moment of like, who could have done this bombing? And then we get a cut to a decal, a shooter decal that the Death Watch slapped on the shattered wall of this public park. The Death Watch bought the MTX that lets their logo pops up if they get the last killing around of Ballarat. And they're like, boom, Death Watch. I recognize this spray.

It's literally, it's literally the fucking apex, like, hologram fucking emotes that you can leave around the map. It's literally that. It's so funny because, like, so many parts of this episode look good, but, like, having destruction portrayed and a CG thing is so fucking hard. It's hard. And they just kind of throw up their hands. They're like, we're going to put a singed, like, texture on everything. And then we'll put this decal in the middle. And everyone's going to be like, oh, shit.

shit just got real and it extremely does not look that way but fortunately we have the chase the the bomber jumps off that uh that balcony he has that like murmured conversation with sateen crucially and i think this is important for some of the themes of the episode we never learn what they said uh they have a long exchange and at no point does she ever translate what the exchange was it is and this is important it is internal mandolarian business if you like they're are not greeting each other's enemies in the way that like, you know, the droids and, uh, Kong troopers greet each other's enemies. Like, they share their same culture. They are same culture. Fundamentally. Yeah. And so in this moment, there's a lot more fellowship between them than

there is enmity despite the context. And I think this is getting to this point of here, we rarely see this, um, despite the Jedi often being welcomed as diplomats in these spaces and being able to communicate and see what's going on. Here, Obi-Wan's kind of baffled. as to what is happening. And while the Mandalorians have a very good sense of Republic politics, the Republic has no view of what the dynamics are here, or their history, or the context between these two groups. And Satin is not going to crack that open for Obi-Wan to examine or comment on. And so I think, as will be the case throughout these episodes, you know, Mandelor is

an alien culture as far as the world of the clone wars and we get glimpses of it but I think it's stopped short of ever fully unpacking here's how all this works Satin knows that we don't the Jedi certainly don't but either way

because he was speaking the Concordian dialect they probably need to go to Concordia they put together the planet they put all their warriors on maybe that's where the warrior cult is Are you curious about the translation, though?

Because I went to go look it up. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. There are people out there who like try to learn Mandoah and like keep a dictionary. So I was led to a form post on Mandoah.org. And also the Tumblr user Duchess of Mandelor. So shout out to both of these. I trust her.

I trust her with my life. So the first sentence before he like jumps off of the bridge. is Calhava Bruchon, Dralche, Ron, which was like, apparently like a fanon term that they, like, thought that the producers just picked up, which is compassionate leaders will burn. And then, yes, Christ. And then after he's fallen and is like in his death moments or whatever, in terms of the translations that I saw, was a lot of people being like, well if say is they like tay you know like because it doesn't match exactly um apparently it was the unity the saber the eternal glory and then he said something in terms of like going into the afterlife and that's what she repeats to him yeah okay that that kind of comes across here it

doesn't feel like a like a funerary like farewell like a what do you call that um last words last rights. It just occurred to me that they had this civil war where they basically had to put their, like this was a martial society and they had to basically crush the marshal. But it does recontextualize as well, why is everything on this planet made of glass? Well, if you're rebuilding after a civil war and you want to make an argument about like, how are we going to be in the future, there is nothing more delicate and like less resistant to like warfare than glass.

Like to a degree their entire civilization on this main planet, their capital at least, is this testament to this is going to be an extremely peaceful society now because it can all be broken it can all be smashed and and destroyed. So I do kind of like that

in addition to it kind of feeling like oh it's a cool like depiction of a different culture in Star Wars I do like that almost it feels like there's a bit of propagandistic architecture happening in the background of this that's implied by like the form that their capital takes which is pretty cool.

Yeah, I want to say I read so many little trivia bits here and there about this arc. And I want to say on one of them, there was explicitly, the fact that the world looks like this was part of that war. That effectively this planet, Mandelor, not just Concordia, was like basically ruined in that civil conflict. I, I, oh yeah, here it is, sorry. the planet of the Mandalore appears significantly different from all of its past appearances as a result of its new backstory

involving a conflict with the Republic reconciliation on the two portrayals was established with retcons issued by the Essential Atlas reference book which states that the expansive white sand desert seen this episode is only one aspect

of the overall landscape of Mandelaar's surface so yeah there's other parts of Mandelaar that don't look like this presumably but here at the Capitol this is what it looks like well and we get a taste of that sort of a biome history

as we get a little trailer for Star Wars biomes available on Disney Plus as they're flying to Concordia and they didn't have a lot to do with the moon texture so it's a brown and green smudge and by the way Satine has done a wardrobe change and now she's Taylor Swift and Obi-Wan's like I thought this planet was like an agricultural world and And she explains, well, it's actually sort of being reclaimed from being an industrial ruin. It was basically a strip mind to the point of like destruction, but now it's being restored. The forests are regrowing.

Again, like all things the Mandelor system are being, is a time of regrowth and the scars of war seem to be healing. And now they need to check out what's happening on Concordia and talk to the governor there, who pre pre uh pre uh pray visla i think in later episodes i think in later episodes they start trying to pronounce it more prey um but either way uh they they they talk to uh pre visla and it's so slight when you first see him which is like such thing so again john faber is voicing him very clearly the batty but when they come off the ship and first see him in his like dress uniform his like governor uniform he looks like a little man and that's it's so wild to see him here and then to see him where he's at by the end of the arc the way they've kind of like in the armor you know kind of chest out shoulders wide it's it's it's pretty it's pretty it's an interesting it feels like he dresses this way to downplay himself you know in the circumstance the art for this guy and the way faber is voicing him also reminds me so much of michael shannon oh sure yeah michael shannon i think at this point you can't can't play this game with him anymore because he is such a recognizable actor that

like he does command attention but i think one of the things that made him so unexpected during his rise is that he does look like kind of a hang dog every man in some ways um but then there's this like can be this core of like just brutal steel and violence uh to him and that's kind of the vibe that this guy ends up giving but i agree at the start he sort of seems he comes across like a thop almost like um okay this is a guy who thinks he's in charge here but it's probably, you know, it's clearly the ground is rotting, you know, right under his feet. The other thing, though, that's implied is that, like, Satine, Satine visits this guy like a foreign head of state. Like, it's not quite, like, even though she's the head of, like, Mandelor, this is his turf, and there's a strong vibe of, like, we have to check in with this guy because he actually runs things here, and there will be problems.

if we don't, which, again, kind of highlights, well, this comes up later, to what degree is, is Mandelor's peace and unity already effectively a thing of the past? Like, if she has to sort of bend the knee at an ostensible governor, we're already in, like, medieval territory, right? Where it's like, you're the king, but, like, this is an important noble. And so, like, who's really in charge here? But either way, yeah, he doesn't seem too imposing. The vibe is a little more militaristic. His guards are just dressed up in pure riot gear, riot gear. There's none of those ceremonial guards we've seen before.

And then we get another little Obi-Wan and Satine channeling Padmei and Anakin. He immediately is like, I'm going to go fuck with some shit. And she says, remember that you were here under my protection. Please don't cause problems where none exist. And Obi-1, think of me as searching for solutions. Just as he's hopping on the motorcycle about to go away, she's like, I have to tell you, I'm opposed to all of this. And over his shoulders, he sort of mopeds off. I'd be disappointed if you weren't.

Just love them so much. Just I stand. I absolutely stand. They're great. They're so good. It's just there's so much more meat to this than what we've received previously. Like, just in, there's so much chemistry. There's so much back and forth.

It's like a whole tete-a-tete, like the whole time that you just feel like they really are meeting each other at this cerebral, emotional, romantic level. And I love to watch it. It's great. The vibes never feel great, but it feels earned that they're not great, right? Like, this is legitimately, like, I'm seeing this person years later and working through it out loud to each other. Yes. They bicker a lot, and especially later in this episode, Obi-Wan gets kind of insufferable. Yeah, but why are you clowning her?

I don't get it. I don't know. I don't know. It's tense. It's tense. He's shaky. We've been talking a lot about her reminding you all over. of the Padma, of the Padma-Anneken relationship,

it's worth saying that her design for her, I think for her fancier dresses are alternate Padmaid dresses from episode one sketches that were never used. So she's literally that. And then the Mandalorian guards on Mandalor are based on Sith sketches that weren't used from the prequels, which is fun. But like literally going to the Padmae closet and be like, well, she never wore this or this.

so let's make those a little more Mandalorian and give them to Satine is very fun so she has to cover for his sudden absence at dinner she goes to Visla's like governor's residence

and she's got to wait while he finishes writing a letter of condolence to the bomber to the bomber's family which sure but also like hey could you run the language

on that letter past me before you send it out. I'd love to put my name on it, but, you know, I just need to check out what it is your saying. Um, Obi-Wan goes to check out this, this old mine. It's silent, but it is clean and powered and looks not abandoned. Um, and he's there for five minutes before he finds an arsenal of like armor and weapons, uh, that have been left lying out. This is clearly a production facility, uh, for not so demilitarized Mandalians. And right on cue, they show up and kick his ass.

They're real good at fighting Jedi. And it turns out that the way you fight a Jedi is mixed martial arts. You just get in there. You get inside a lightsaber range. And then you just work the body and you don't let him get up. And he ends up taking a boot to the face. And next thing he knows, well, it's cut to black and we go back to business. Yeah. Loses his lightsaber coming out right off a lightsaber lost.

Sometimes you lose your lightsaber. It just happens. It happens. And it's okay. Yeah. Also, again, lighting throughout the season has been getting better, I think, through these episodes. It's really good. I love this dinner sequence where Vizla's office is like pitch black. But he has this table that's got an illuminated surface. And so it's throwing that really dramatic uplighting across everyone. And so they're sort of huddled in this light, surrounded by encroaching darkness.

And she's confiding in Vizla, like her read on what's going on. And he sort of indicates, well, it has to be someone highly placed with the separatists who would be involved with this. And the reason they're targeting her is because as the head of the Council of Neutral Systems, she's a prime target. He tells her to think of it as a compliment. Obi-Wan wakes up, and he's in Luke on Hoff territory. He's being dangled upside down in a force field. He gets on the phone. We have a very comic sequence where she has to conduct both conversations, the one in her ear and the one with Vizla, using the same dialogue choices, basically, to speak to both of them.

doesn't completely come off. I think if you're Vizla, something's clearly up. And then she hastily makes her excuses and leaves, hops on a motorcycle, and starts riding off to rescue Obi-Wan, who is about to be fed into a metal press. Important lore point here. Mandalians are fans of the conversation pit. I was surprised to see that.

Because she climbs elephant and towers over Vizla. the back half of her exit, it's like deep in there. It's like, it's like in the ground. Yeah, I love that. The old ways were best. You're right. They weren't their traditionalists. You're right.

Yeah, the warriors, the warriors loved a good, just a good gab at the end of the day of war. It sounds like it's 1970. There's no Wi-Fi. Just talk and vibes. God, all over the Mandalorian meme sphere. You know, when did this get better than this? We get a better Genosis factory sequence as well

because it's short. She arrives to rescue Obi-Wan and he is increasingly panicking and panicking for him comes out as really catty, caustic criticism. Hey, you're going to turn this thing off? Dude.

He's like, yeah, he's a little harsh to me from here forward this episode. Yeah. Yeah, he, I mean, he is on the verge of dying. This is probably the most scared Obi-Wan has come off in a while, like in terms of just fearing for his imminent death. Like, it's, he seems very stressed, very worried. At least since that time, Keatimundi lost the map to Geonosis, and it was like Obi-Wan and a bunch of.

dead clones and a pit. Yeah, that was understandably very stressful. But, but yes. Like, there's a bit, there's where he tells her, he's like, for someone who doesn't like nonviolence, you sure were too worried about me dying. And she's like, come on. I just got here. I kept you from dying.

The worst of it is definitely when he says, we have to fight and stand or in your case, just stand. Like, what? You need to chill. She just kicked them. She just picked them. You're a team. You're blowing it, my guy.

Blowing it. Anyway. It's not the first time he blows it. He's going to blow it again a few times. That's true. He talks too much, is the thing. There's moments you've just got to be, let's get out of here. Yep.

So they escape this camp and they're doing the bickering as they leave and they come right into a death watch. camp. It's overrun with Mandalorians. They are, they open fire, they're pinned down. And that's when pre-vis, where Vistla shows up, he's there with his personal guard. And now he's fully kidded out in like classic Mandalorian armor. For people who've watched the show, the Mandalorian, it is striking that these dudes are wearing the blue armor. that we saw in season two of the Mandalorian. And because I remember when I watched this episode, it kind of baffled me that like Mandalorian culture

bore no resemblance to the, like, underground, like, exile culture that is depicted in the Mandalorian. All of this is the way shit, the sort of warrior monk, like, type tradition. here there's still no sign of like that brand of Mandelorian culture but we do have

the guys who show up in the second season who are like sort of restorationists for Mandelor and here we see like there's that blue armor and it's Death Watch Death Watch is wearing

this style of armor and Visla is the chief of that movement and he could delivers a speech as he challenges Obi-Wan a single combat. He says,

for generations, my ancestors fought proudly as warriors against the Jedi. Now that woman tarnishes the very name Mandalorian. Defend her, if you will. He flips Obi-Wan, his lightsaber. Then he draws his own. It's a black katana-looking

lightsaber. Sure is. He says, this lightsaber was stolen from the Jedi temple by my ancestors during the fall of the old republic. Since then, many Jedi have died upon its blade. I like this notion that it's all cyclical, man. Like the Republic has died many times before.

This notion of it being this eternal institution, we've been here. Right. The fact that he calls it the old republic is like, oh, okay, so wait. So now let's consider there was an old republic. There is now the current republic, and then post return of the Jedi, there will become a new republic. But that new republic is not the first new republic. This is the new republic. It just runs so long that people think of it as being eternal. But it died before. Well, and you have this implication of like there being a history that's not even really discussed of like there was a point where

wait, so the Jedi were just like battling it out in the streets with the Mandalorians? Like, what was that? What was that over? And were the Mandalorians right? Because you could argue that The Mandalorians appear to be a, not necessarily diminished civilization, but this brand of Mandalorian has been sort of kicked into exile and erased. Meanwhile, the Jedi are like basically at the seat of power. Right. Well, and one of the things that's interesting that is hard to work through here is, all right, timeline. The old republic happens some thousands of years ago.

It's like 25,000 years ago. I think it's more like 2,500 years ago. but maybe I'm wrong. I looked it up for this episode. It was 25,000. Okay. I thought you were guessing. Yeah, it was 25,000 B, B, B, B.Y.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So, so then that old Republic falls, new Republic starts. At that point, the Mandalorian warrior culture continues. Until Sateen's lifetime, when did Concord? When did the Mandalorian warriors get exiled to Concordia? It's explained in the next episode.

It seems like the end of. of that Civil War was where she and Obi-1 met. So in her lifetime. And so she is maybe in some way of the past. So, one, how the fuck is the prime minister at the beginning of this episode being like, yeah, they all died off on that moon? If that happened in Sotene's lifetime. Two, maybe more importantly, I think one of the things that's interesting that does, I believe, go unremarked upon is how did they win that war against the Mandalorian warrior culture at all? And the answer has to be with outside support, right?

that's the thing like the the I obviously him mentioning the old republic is like a great pog moment like if you play those games you enjoy him saying that but I feel like it would have been more reasonable and more like compelling that instead of him being like well so long ago my ancestors did this so I should too when he could just be like fucking 20 years ago there was a civil war and the Jedi helped you then I'm not having this happen again we should have won it then, but it was speaking of the job. That is part of the weirdness of this. Also, I think part of the thing that's, one of the things that's interesting is that, like, that goes on remarked upon here, again, is we would have already had a preview of what outside

intervention is like in, if they, if they talked about that at all, and what the cost of that was. And none of that ends up actually getting brought up, unfortunately, because I don't know if they just don't want to detail what that Civil War was like here. Maybe we'll get more of that in a future arc. I would like to, certainly. But losing that is a little weird. And it's also just a little weird that, like, one of the things, one of the other unremarked upon things in all of this is Mandelor is in many ways a model for what would happen in a world where the clones go to war against the Republic. And a fun what if when it comes to all of our questions that we ask, every episode and every Q&A about what happens to the, the clones after the war. And the answer from the Mandalorian Republic, the planet of

Mandelor was we put them on a moon so they would die there and leave us alone. I think the fact that that we don't get any Mandalorian clone trooper talking in these episodes bums me the fuck out because I want that conversation to happen. I want to know what the Mandalorians think about the clones. I want to know what Rex thinks about the Mandalorian warriors. I like I need to know that shit so bad anyway well and you just reminded me when we see the officers accompanying of it previs vis la yeah previs when we see them their uniforms are like gray with a lot of like blue and red devices which is a lot like what we see the imperial army officers wearing in the later Star Wars shows so like their their

their military garb appears to have at least inspired some like traditional continuity as the Republic as the empire began to like draw from different symbols um so that i that kind of jumped out of me uh as well so they get in a fight uh visill is not bad but he's not good enough to beat obiwan and in true predator fashion um once he gets his ass kicked he basically pieces out and tells his guards uh guards warriors finish him and it's like he's nowhere near finish this is not a coup de gra you're asking him asking them to deliver it's more like he just like fought to a draw and he's like you guys got the rest right um their solution is fire homing rockets um and uh setine and obiwan are are forced to escape

and retreat uh but the fight's over like visl is already given the order this camp has got a retreat like death watch is moving out uh death watch is going on the run and we sort of finish the evening's adventures with them bantering on their way out of the ruined mine but then the next day those good vibes are kind of overshadowed by the arrival of a Republic diplomatic vessel or I guess it's more it's her diplomatic vessel um actually that might be wrong no it doesn't matter the starship Titanic shows up yeah um the starship Titanic shows up and Anne is there, Cody and Rex are there.

So are a bunch of senators, we'll see. The Republic has seen enough. It's time to send the troops in to Occupy Mandelor. She is going, she's also seen enough. She needs to get to the Republic and tell them to stay

out of their affairs so she can wrap up the work of marginalizing this violent extremist group. So they all head off together on their different missions, all in the same ship, heading to Corrassant, and that's where we leave things.

This episode was directed by Kyle Dunleavy, written by Melinda Sue, and yeah, it sets us up for Voyage of Temptation. It's funny you say the Titanic thing, because that is the, in some ways, this summarizes the entirety of this episode. Faloni said that in Voyage of temptation, the vibe he was going for, the vibe that they wanted to hit, the sensibility of the episode, was that they wanted the cordonet, which is the name of this vessel, to be like the Titanic in space, opulent, regal, and very rich feeling in the upper decks, and alien with tight shots, tight creepy shots, beams of light down in the lower decks. And that is like, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, you did that pretty much. yeah that's pretty much it but like look at the screenshots of starship

oh you didn't you weren't being you weren't being like what if there was us at the Titanic in space you were literally calling out this particular starship Titanic yeah that's it oh that is funny yeah the Douglas Adams written uh like adventure game uh the ship has the same like huge giant like rudder sail type thing, and it's got a similar like Art Deco or Art Nouveau hotel traveling through space.

All right, so now all aboard the voyage of temptation. Quo-choo! Quick, broad overview of this one, real simple. We have to get this Duchess to Corrassan. She's brought all her courtiers with her on this journey. Over the course of this trip, she and Obi-Wan are going to have a series. of increasingly public spats with an increasingly thinly veiled subtext. Meanwhile, there is a killer spider probe droid on the loose aboard the ship

that's going to be killing clone troopers, alien style. And before the end of this thing, one of her trusted advisors will be revealed to be a traitor and some truths will come out about her and Obi-Wan's actual relationship. which will be very interesting to Anakin. Anakin will answer a question about who's a bad enough dude to just do what needs to be done and take a dude out. Turns out Anakin, very eager to be that guy. Weird.

Everyone will arrive safely at Corrassant and things will be different, but the tension will linger in Obi-Wan and Zatine's relationship. This episode is just a banger. and also to like I've noticed this now with all the episodes that Deanie has written Paul Deanie's the credited writer on this one Brian Kalen O'Connell is the director

I think if I had to say like what what sets Deany's scripts apart is he is such an efficient writer with imagining like how the edits are going to work that usually like I have about 15 scene changes per episode this one is like 30 and that's what his episodes tend to look like because he does a lot of cross-cutting to build tension

whereas a lot of episodes will just have like one sequence play out and then the other his stories are sort of like shuffled together but like shuffling a deck to sort of tell these two events in parallel and the divide here is upper deck and below decks

basically that Sateen is traveling with her imperial court to the Senate and then down in the depths of the ship, and Austin, you were alluding to this, that, you know, I don't know if it's going to, I don't know if it's going to, I don't know if people heard that. I'll have left that in. That will be there. You don't need to. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're going to have that divide of, there's going to be action on both levels of the ship. But first, we have the briefing.

After we get the, the little epigraph at the start, fear not for the future, we've not for the past. We get into Obi-Wan and Anakin breaking down the structure of the episode for the clone troopers and the audience. Duchess is going to the Senate to plead for independence. Obi-Wan and Anakin are guarding her. That's the mission. The Duchess summons them to her quarters. As they ride the elevator up to her luxury suite, Anakin notes that, hey, the Duchess is as safe as could be, but Obi-Wan seems very anxious. Obi-Wan says it's all in the past.

And Anakin, very eager, just whips around like an owl. And like, oh, so you're close to her. Obi-Wan fucking up says, I knew her a long time ago. Anakin gives a smirk that I can only describe as sleepy. The first of many top-tier Anakin looks this episode.

I have a collection of them. I also, this scene is amazing. Okay, just to back up a little bit, I just want to say that the best I've felt about this show so far is watching that first episode, being like, there's some vibes here. There's a romantic history. And then like sitting in the dark and watching the credits go by and then seeing the description for the next episode is Anakin finds out about Obi-Wand and Duchess's past. It's like, we're really doing this. Okay. Let's fucking go. And then the first scene, like the, one of the first thing Anakin says is like, I'm sensing a lot

about anxiety from you, Obi-Wan. And it just, like, feels like... It feels like that's not a conversation that they have, usually. Because if it was, Obi-Wan would be saying that every day. Do you remember the last time then he said it was also in an elevator on the way up to see Padmay at the beginning of Attack of the Clones? That's right. It mirrors that scene exactly.

I love it. I'm really glad that, like, the most, like, supportive and healthy relationship that we see in this trio of episodes is opium and Anakin. They're like really there for each other. And I do like

Anakin I don't think when he asked that question he is not fishing. I do not think like he is genuinely like hey are you all right now he gets a little bit of a taste and then he does start fishing

a little bit anyway. A little bit. Because he's so alone. But he doesn't he doesn't use this as an opportunity to like to rationalize

his own relationship with Padme or like there's no like he's not really flipping this we never see anakin kind of like take there's there's a small conversation about like uh that will come later um but i don't know we don't we don't the fact that like this is really anakin like showing up for obiwan and just understanding without putting the heat on in a way that like isn't anything more than like teasing or like kind of like you know generally kind of like friendly like banter or whatever like he's not like well how could you how could

you feel this way and you're always saying this shit blah blah blah like he he understands the complexity because he's living it he's in it and it just gives them an opportunity to have an actual, a real conversation about what it means to love someone as a Jedi. And it's fucking great. I feel like half that conversation doesn't get had though, because they have to go fight spider

monsters. And it's a shame. Which is why Anakin eventually asked to be like, look, I know this is a bad time, but, and then direct question about this. He's like, I'm sorry, I'm not subtle. I need stop doing subtext. Yeah, just tell me, bro.

I'm your bro. You can tell me. But, yeah, I do, I think you, like, I could easily imagine a version of this episode where it is, like, him trying to get one over on Obi-1. Like, well, you see, you're, you're all hypocrites for not letting me have my wife. Yeah. And instead, he's very much, like, he's alone in his experience, his experience of, like, having this, like, secret relationship and trying to be a good Jedi.

He's completely alone in it. And he approaches Obi-Wan in this point Mostly as somebody who's like Hey, you've lived this before and I never get to talk about this And so like there's this deep desire to discuss it openly But Obi-Wan is so on his guard about this And pained by it and maybe even a bit ashamed of it In two directions

That like Obi-Wan kind of doesn't want to have the conversation And so he deflects I think throughout this episode In a lot of ways We see the clone troopers miss something in their search They're going through the hold We see a bunch of spider-type legs Creeping out of a box But the legs are like knives

You know nothing good is coming out of there But then we get to The Duchess Sotene In her audience chamber Basically aboard this luxury line I love her Satine and her council of baddies and pick-me dudes It's just

it's absolutely incredible i just love it for her i wish also she is three martinis in to the evening uh yeah they're drunk going for a record she is setting a high score uh for that she's like they're they're gonna you know they're they're gonna put my name up in this bar uh by the by the time this this trip is over a picture of satine and like a little martini glass uh with with her initials on it It's incredible to me that she's on a literal pedestal. Like, she's on a lifted platform, just speaking to her people. People already agree, basically. Fundamentally, this is, or they don't, I guess.

But, like, it's her just holding forth to this court. It's such a look. It's wild. And, like, a lot of them aren't her people. Like, Orn-Free Ta is here from the Twilic arc. Well, we got a real character model, Jordan. Austin. The war has been harsh to the Republic. Who else?

It's Uncle Ono. Uncle Anno. No, it's Uncle Ono. Oh, Uncle Ono. Oh, Uncle Ono. And that's the... The young counselor from the ice. Yes. Yes. And then also, Uncle Ono has two Betty droids

flanking him also. You know, it's... When the betty droids show up, you know you're going to have some decades. And, yeah, Satin is just holding force. explaining that war is intolerable. We have been deceived in thinking we must be a part of it. The moment we committed to fighting, we already lost.

Obi-Wan, just going for it, walks in and says, some would say the best events is a swift and decisive offense. Satine, you're quite the general now, aren't you, Master Canobi? There's a little bit of by-play, and then she says, Senators, I presume you are all acquainted with the collection of half-truths and hyperbole that is Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then, yeah. Ethered. Is that when Anakin gives that look where he's like, damn?

He's like, all the way leans back to me. It has to do. The entire room is having a freak out that continues to escalate. She tells Obi-Wan, I remember a time when Jedi were generals, we're not generals, but peacekeepers. Anakin, as he's being introduced, weighs in, We are protector's highness, yours at the moment. We fight for peace. She then reaches for another drink,

and is like, what a wonderfully ironic turn of phrase that is. Bring two more. And then Obi-Wan says, what Master Skywalker means is that we are acting at the behest of your highness to protect you from the Death Watch and the separatists who do not share. your neutral point of view. Sotene, I asked for no such thing.

Obi-Wan, that is true, but a majority of your court did. At this point, she completely forgets the room with other people. I don't remember you to be one to hide behind excuses. Well, I do not remember you as one to shrink from responsibilities. At that point, Ornfrey Ta gets in the middle and is like, I am certain we all agree. It's been a long day. Yep. I've demonstrated there are two sides to every dilemma.

And the scene sort of ends, but it is... We get Obi-Wan trying to get a little final burn in just to Anakin on her. But he's only talking to his boy. And it's the cornyest comeback I've ever heard. Because he's like, he's basically like, yeah, there might be two sides to every issue. But Duchess Sotene only likes hers. Like, yeah, that's what it means to have a side. Yeah.

It's an argument, dog. There may be two sides to every dilemma, but the Duchess favor is only hers. Yeah. She's one of the sides in the dilemma. That's what an argument is. That's how that works, bud. That's the thing that it is. That's just what's happening.

But I do like, I think this is probably the most, the closest will come to, like, this is the least likable moment for Satin in the entire episode. It is her being maximum princess at that moment. Like, it is what you imagine a spoiled aristocrat kind of being like. Nobody is interested in her speech. She's just... I also think it's the one that I feel is least... I mentioned this in the first episode discussion. This is the first of these episodes produced,

and this feels like some of the weakest we've seen her actually argue her position, given especially. And it feels out of character. given her competence in crisis moments and her history with war that isn't, it isn't there in this speech. This is a speech that feels detached from, I've lived through civil war and seen the cost, whereas we know that her ideology, that's where it comes from. It comes from having seen the cost of seeing so many of her people die. But this does not feel like an argument like that. This feels like she's making an argument in the realm of ideas only. And it is, like you said.

it's it's her kind of just holding court and and talking her shit but like not a particularly well shaped version of it this is the closest she comes to the lerman where it sounds as if she isn't talking about ideals with exceptions but talking about absolutes and it doesn't none of it rings as true to me as her in the previous episode or the next episode yeah i think the speech almost the way the we in the speech feels more like she's speaking in a republic point of view where everything else in this arc is going to be she's very much not of the republic i think i think she would see it as the moment they decided to fight the civil war it was lost but she didn't um and this is kind of an important distinction she's the

leader of so quick thing uh there's the non-aligned movement in the cold war uh but then also the war on terror kicked off with sort of this american foreign policy of you're either with us or with the terrorists. There was this attempt to force people into two camps so that there could be the sort of two-sided conflict. And it didn't, it obviously didn't work, but Sateen wouldn't be speaking to the point of view of somebody who was like supporting that, that position or felt like implicated in it. She would be speaking to the point of view of like a neutral state or like a distant ally who would be like, I want no part of this. And you're, you're completely out of pocket. So it's kind of, it's kind of weird. This speech would work.

coming from Padme, I think, and it would still be a bad speech, but it would make sense coming from Padmae. Even from Yoda, you could sort of imagine it, sort of being reflective, like, ah, the minute we kind of engaged in this course, we were setting some bad stuff in motion. It's just kind of weird, but I think it ends up kind of working because, again, the entire context is she's a little bit in her feelings. She's getting a little bit sloppy, and really so much of what is stirred up with her right now is the disorder politically at home. mirrors the internal disorder that Obi-Wan's reappearance in her life as sort of a sound.

There's a degree to which she's anxious about knowing she has to go make this case. And I think about this a lot as the sort of like, if you've ever had to go give a talk somewhere, a thing you do is you give that talk in small bits for the entire couple of weeks leading up to it as you explain what you're about to go do. You do the like, oh, yeah, I'm going to talk about blah, blah, blah. And, like, you try to give, like, the five-minute version of that talk ahead of time. Or this is me speaking for my personal experience. I will do this.

And I won't give the whole thing. But, like, you're trying it out a little bit. Or, like, like, a comedian working at an open mic before doing their tour, kind of figuring out what in the set works and what doesn't. There's a version of this that I feel like is Sateen getting drunk and seeing, like, does this stick? Does this work? Is this, is this anything? It's just the best version of the case I make. Because when she makes the case later, it is not.

just this again in the third episode. It is a much more specific version of the case that is about an outcome and not just about, you know, what the thing she says here is that it's an affront to life itself. And like she does not use that sort of grandstanding, huge sweeping claim that all war is, she doesn't say all war here, but she doesn't say that this war is an affront to life itself, which is a difficult position to hold because it's such a big thing. or you have to define all those terms. Yeah.

There's something like, it's definitely like a little bit pretentious the way that she's raising herself up to a symbol. But like her attempt to be that person is also sympathetic because like she's being real when it's like she's the one representing like thousands of planets, right? Where it's like I have to be the one to say this stuff and all of these things are riding on me.

Yeah, that's true. She's earned a piece. Or like, and if she did less than, if all those planets have said, we don't want to be part of this, and you go out there and you don't give it your all, then you shouldn't have been the person. You shouldn't have been sent. So, yeah, that makes sense.

Well, and, like, how stable is this coalition? Because, as Obi-1 points out, her court demanded protection from the Republic. So how many people in this council of neutral? Like, obviously, the collection of centers they'd show here makes no sense. We know Ryloth is all the way now. But it's not occupied, right? an important thing that's in dual one. Right.

But I would still say, though, they're, like, working alongside the Republic to, like, keep this. Like, we know that Ano, after what happened with the Rhodians, like, he's all on board. The collection of people in this room that we see doesn't really make sense. But I think you also have to imagine them as if they had other characters they could draw from that we knew were associated with, like, a non-aligned movement, they would be here instead. And I think what we're meant to draw from this is the fact that even her coalition, she's not certain how reliable it is. Because now the chips are down, there's a lot of people who are suddenly being like, well, I don't want to take a side in the war, but I sure want to live under the umbrella of Republic security, both on a personal level, but perhaps also on like a state level. meanwhile the dubious shelter of that security is coming into view below decks as the clone troopers are searching the ship one droid one one trooper thinks he hears something he stumbles into R2 R2 playing the part of a cat in a horror movie where it was just it was just R2 droids the guy says and then

right on cue he turns around and there's a droid uh it's a giant probe droid like a thousand red eyes and it uh just eviscerates him with its little blade legs uh meanwhile upstairs the argument has continued and it is now out of hand um they're basically yelling at each other uh obi one a republic military presence is the only sure defense well even extremists can be reasoned with Obi-Wan, only if one can be heard over the clinging of their battle droids, the sarcasm of a soldier, the delusions of a dreamer.

In each other's faces. At this point, just, like, they're about to kiss, obviously. And this is when someone's like, I think we should all go to bed. Reading the room correctly, I think everyone needs to go to bed. Yeah. It's so, just the way that everybody

else in the room just rises up to be like the vibes are getting worse throughout this scene, to be like, please, please stop doing this is so good it's very honest yeah it's like you go out with like your two friends and like they're in a shitty relationship with each other and they're just forcing you to be witness to their shitty relationship and you're like y'all I'm just trying to chill like I'm just trying to vibe we got good good vibes good food we got betty droids everywhere we're at the hookah spot is this really the place we're at this really the place yeah

please take it elsewhere take it outside the friend group please take it outside the hookah spot outside on the or take that's where these fights and never know we go yeah walk just walk outside take it outside one of you let leave sure

there's a little chicken and rice truck no in front of that no one's there right now anyway and eat some halal probably make you feel better come on it's been a long night we've been drinking we've been smoking I know you didn't eat dinner you told me you didn't have time And also the bigger bummer of just realizing, like, oh, God, you two were getting off the ones.

Like, it's like, oh, shit. Like, this was really uncomfortable for one reason. I thought, like, are they about to break up? And I'm like, oh, you're going to go home and have a sock. Yeah, don't make me witness the preamble to your horny, angry fuck later. Like, this is how you guys wind up, huh? Okay. Get out of my life.

But also, I love to watch it as me, Natalie, watching this episode of the Clone Wars, the animated series. I'm just imagining how empty that room would feel if they had actually left and it's like an empty platform and everyone else being like well now we have to talk about something else how is the ride

that was your state room do you just have platform too they're kind of weird right do you think does this come with the ship or did she like she requested platforms installed with no visibles

I think there's a ramp in the but it's a weird thing. It's like she's a cake topper. Yeah. And it's like it's not the, it's not, it's not the observation deck, but it's a observation deck. Like this isn't where like we're piloting from, but we got hyperspace going on in the background to this whole thing. Like we're just zooming by. It's very funny.

We see them jumping the lights be. We get a glimpse of the crew quarters, the Mandalorian crew. I love that they're wearing like 17th century naval uniforms and later you'll get a glimpse of the helm and it is a sailing ship tall ship like spoke wheel

It's just yeah From the age of pirates Like right here Hopped on on the top of the ship It's fantastic It's very good Also the captain's like yeah Wide hat is extremely funny

Yeah I do really I do really like her Her and the rest of the Mandalarians vibes. I mean, I don't love her her number two's vibes, like his whole look and stuff. But I like, I really like

the kind of like orchid type or the type of flowers in her hair and stuff. It's really good. The dude with her, you just called her number two, I assumed was like her attache for the whole first episode and most of this one. And then later it's like, No, no, he's the senator for Mandelor.

And he's a prince. And he's a prince. Yes. So he's a prince and the senator. And it's like, you don't carry yourself like that at all, but. But that's because of what we said earlier, of people trying to make themselves seem unassuming. And in a way that you instantly look at them, you're like, you're suss as fuck. I'm just waiting for you to pull out the fucking gun and shoot everyone in the room.

And he, by the way, is Greg Troops. Who you probably would have seen on Who Line? Whose Line is it anyway? One of the standard members of that show. Wait. Sure. The Baldwin or the guy with the Danny Kay look. Who's Danny Kay?

Do I not know Danny Kay? Bing Crosby's friend and White Christmas. Yeah, I don't know Danny Kay. I'm sorry. He has like an American Elvis Costello look to me. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, someone who's raised on Whose Line isn't anyway. It's just like, I hear his voice and I go, oh, he was also one of the commentators during the pod racing scene in now we're taught, now these are references that people get.

Now you know. I love Tuesdays line is it anyway. That's all they had in my grandma's house. I would watch that all the time. Also, we should also mention, Satine is played by Anna Graves, who's been a character in every video game you've ever played. If you look through her IMDB, yeah. She's everywhere. She's in dishonored.

You know, she's in a bunch of, well, for obvious reasons, like Star Wars stuff, Final Fantasy stuff. So, yeah, really prolific voice actor. So we also get things are going further haywire below decks. The droids are now slowly starting to suspect that something might be down there with them, but they're not fully alert. You did the Austin flip. That's fine. I do it at least three times an episode.

But yeah, the clones are starting. starting to realize something is up, but they haven't quite put the pieces together. Meanwhile, in the fallout of that ugly fight in court, Anakin asks Obi-Wan, appears they have a history. And Obi-Wan tells us a lot about that history, but also the history of Mandelor. Yes. He was sent with Quigon to Mandelor for one year. Basically, the closing stages of the Civil War. insurgents were trying to get at the Duchess

and effectively they had to live on the run. He says they sent bounty hunters after us. We were always on the run. Living hand to mouth, never sure what the next day would bring. Anakin sounds romantic. And only monster cuts the conversation short there. But it does. It sounds incredibly romantic.

Never sure what the next day would bring, huh? Hmm. You ever just live in the moment, Obi-Wan? I bet they did. Oh, for sure, for sure. And then they go into, this is when they go into Anakin, or Obi-Wan explaining Civil War killed most of Sotene's people.

She had to rebuild the world alone. And Anakin is, like, astounded. He's like, you didn't stay to help her? Which makes me like him. That framing makes me like that more. This is the best thing Anacan's ever said. Great Anakin moment. Great Anagan moment.

And Obi-1 responds and says, that would have been problematic. My duty as a Jedi demanded I be elsewhere. He says demanded. He does say it so defeated. He's depressed. He's down bad. He's guilty about it in two directions.

He's guilty that he had the feelings, that he built the attachment. And he's guilty that he didn't let himself have that life and be important for this person and help her. So, yeah. Anyway, he continues. What were you going to say? What was next? He says demanded, but it's obviously, Annen says demanded, but it's obviously you had feelings for her.

Surely that would affect her decision. Obi-Wan says, oh, it did. I live by the Jedi Coast. Which means that the effect, that means the effect that they had was they were so serious that he had to cut it off. He loved her so much that it interfered. the Jedi Code. This was not a fling. This was not like we spent a year together and things got hot. Like this is

real shit. It wasn't some little summer thing like grease lightning. This is some real Love. That's right. And Anakin responds and says Of course, as Master Yoda says, a Jedi must

not form attachments. And Obi-Wan finally says something. Somebody says something about fucking attachments finally fucking finally season two episode 13 two prequels later

says yes but he usually leaves out the undercurrent of remorse he's full of shit Yoda don't know Yoda has no idea what it's like being out he's 900 years old he's forgotten he's forgotten

he's forgotten no Yoda just kept yaddle on the down love for so long like nobody talking about him and Yaddle, nobody's saying shit. Yoda is living in a world of acceptance for himself. It is interesting that he does say, as Master Yoda says, a Jedi must not form attachments. That makes it feel like it's some Yoda-focused shit. Do you know what I mean?

That like we live under Yoda. Yoda is always pushes this attached. I know that's not the case. I know that it's not the case, but it does seem like, and you know how popes have their thing where they're like, this is my hobby horse? and the catechism might shift here or there. Like, there might be changes under a certain pope. We're in the middle of it. For instance, you have an Immaculate Conception introduced that is unheard of it.

People think it's Jesus. It ain't. It's weirder. Currently, the Catholic Pope is putting restrictions on the Latin Mass. It's causing an uproar amongst tradcats. He knows who likes that. That's exactly it. It's literally about trying to stomp this out before it's a schism.

It's wild. Anyway, Yoda is the Pope of Jedi And it feels like he's leaning in the direction of the no attachments thing firmer than maybe past Yoda Pope or past Jedi popes have You know? Yeah Yeah Yeah

Yeah Yeah. Quigon might have totally looked at this and Ben like seems fine God, Quigon should have been here I miss Quigon so much I mean Quigon had problems but I think around this shit I bet he was right about it I bet he had it in his head that was like

Because he, because Cause, because Quigon was there with Quiggan was part of this era, right? Doesn't he mention that Quigon did all the shit with him? It was him in Quiggan. Like he didn't know. Like he didn't know that Sotene

and Obi-Wan have vibes. Come on. Quagin is like, oh, I'm going to leave. Yeah. I'm just going to stay in the project to y'all. Don't worry about it. I'll take watch tonight. Yeah, exactly. Hang the holocawn from the door handle. Let a brother know.

Um, yeah, I think it does have this vibe of like Anakin's never heard a Jedi talk about this aspect of it and the fact that like again it's still like it's so clear that like

Obi-Wan's not settled in this it is still a really like open and unsettled wound and to a degree even not even like they're still young like even the even the point that like you know as he says, Yoda leaves out this, the undercurrent of remorse.

The thing that sucks here is that the other part of this is what honestly could have been more important than staying to help rebuild Mandelor and like be part of the, like, seriously. There's going to be a Jedi copse somewhere else. Are you for real? Yeah. Yeah, you were here through the closing stage of this like, what sounds like a really bloody and apocalyptic civil war. what the minute the shooting stops it's time to and this is kind of the Jedi way right this is how you get to a republic that's falling apart and this is to the points you made in the previous episode where no like peacekeeping is about preventing the conflicts from even arising and part of that work would have been sticking around a Mandalore and like making sure this like rebuild goes smoothly but instead the Jedi way is like well no one's actively like killing each other and like possibly creating armies that we use against the Republic So time to pull these guys out and send them to, I don't know, go notarize some paperwork. That's like... Which is such a sharp critique of the no attachments clause altogether. Because like when we become attached to things, we want to protect them.

And it is okay to want to protect someone that you love or to protect a people or a planet or like, you know, help people recover after a civil war. your direct attachment to one of the people involved shouldn't stop you from doing that, nor should your love for the people writ large, right? And it's fun to see that brought into relief here, because that's the undercurrent of Anakin's problem with the Gen. Order, but he can't ever say it in those words because he's so angry all the time, you know? This is the closest he gets to saying it so, so clearly. is some of this also a critique of like the genie can be read as standing in for so much here but like to a degree do they also stand in for the various like allegedly neutral professional like classes that exist to enforce existing order like you could read them as well their legal system that can't that has to be completely unbiased and take everything in a vacuum and not sort of assess context as much um do they have to be like

journalists pretending that like they don't know what happened before and they can only evaluate what both sides say in this really narrow slice of time like to a degree you know as we sort of get more into this a lot of this like the Jedi can't form attachments they have to be neutral they they can't be biased uh to your point austin like this is why they are so alienated from anything that's happening in the galaxy like they have no base of support they are they are an institution whose legitimacy is inherited, but it's no longer, like, rooted in any communities they serve. They're completely alienated from these places. And that's nowhere is that true around on Mandelor, where like the only connection they still have is basically the personal

one that Obi-Wan has with Satin. Beyond that, Mandelor does not care particularly for the Republic or the job. Didn't stop Obi-Wan from trying to act like the chief cop when that bomb went off, though, by the way. He immediately started being like, all right, let's put up a perimeter. Let's start interviewing. Yeah, he was like, let's interrogate every person. Let's chase down the one dude running away. There's another thing here too, which is, Obi-Wan, I've said this before, and I think this is a good illustration of it. I had this reading before. I wasn't sure about it, but here I think it's really clear. I really think Obi-Wan thinks that all Jedi go through this shit, that all Jedi form attachments and deal with it. The part of being a Jedi is not

being immune from attachment. It's repressing it and is living with it. And insofar as I thought before that Obi-1 sees the Padmey stuff and looks away, it's because I think that he sees that as part of the heavy, you know, the heavy crown of being a Jedi is going through the process of working through that shit and living with it anyway, what he can't imagine is reform or change. He can't imagine taking this feeling that wells up inside of him with the general alienation that comes out of this sort of thing, which happens throughout the order, and then changing the rules to allow for people to have that access to that part of themselves.

And that is the kind of great tragedy of Obi-Wan, is that, like, it's not like he's Yoda up in the ivory tower separate from these feelings. he knows these feelings but can't and he's and he's you know adequate as a leader and as someone who can convince people of things but he uses none of that aptitude to try to make things better for the Jedi internally he just kind of goes with the flow and doesn't doesn't bear to raise his his voice against the Jedi order and in some ways how could he won his his mentor was a firebrand and he saw how how Quigon was was pushed out of the the kind of center of power inside of the Jedi. And two, he made his one big ask. He said, give me Anakin. Like, this is the one

thing. Quigot wanted me to train Anakin. I'm going to train Anakin. That's going to be my life now. And it's so easy to see or to imagine an Obi-Wan who sees so much as wrong with the Jedi Order, but doesn't feel like he has the confidence to make that ask or make that sort of change when given those circumstances. So in that sense, do you imagine that if, Obi-Wan is indeed aware of Anakin and Padma's attachment to each other, that he's presuming that Anakin will work through it. I think so. Like, he's just giving the space for Anakin to eventually come to his own terms.

Padmae's going to get married to someone for political reasons or because she meets someone else. Right. We're off on the front line. And it will have been the relationship that wasn't. and that's how it goes. Sorry, what we're going to say. It's honestly shocking that Satin isn't yet married.

Yeah. But I was like, yeah, she's busy. But I feel like that's, you know, that's one version of this where it's like what could have been if I hadn't gone down the path that I, like, had the political obligation to go or political and Jedi obligation to go down. Also, maybe it's the Satin stuff that makes him think Anakin will work it out of his system. And then Pad may will too. It's like, well, eventually Satina and I realized we had to go our separate ways. And we did. Well, and what's so funny is imagining thinking that while it's so palpable that like neither of you is recovered from this.

Like, yeah, no, he'll see this and he'll see how it's got to be. And meanwhile, it's like, oh, this is a nightmare. Both of you can't move on from this. And like you're frozen emotionally in this life. If you simply ensure you don't have to see the people you love, then you don't have to deal with these feelings. That's literally it Yeah You know what's cheaper than therapy?

Yeah That's exactly it If you're a Jedi Travels free Just hop on the next fucking Republic airship Natalie hang out

If you still have it though You're going to make another point Yes I do have another point On the On the topic of attachment Do you think That Kiadi Mundi

is out here talking about his women or do you think he keeps it to himself? My understanding is or is he letting the homies

live vicariously through him you know what I mean? I just can't imagine him like if they're in the Jedi council your boys getting bread tonight but it's not like

he wouldn't be like showing pictures of his wife fit her plans on the phone to, you know, Mace Window before that's what that's what he calls him Giani Wendy calls him

Giani Wendy blessed my foresight and he always calls him Mace window and Mace's like, why do you do this? Don't worry about it. Come look at my bay. That fur

looking nice. He has multiple bays. But he only has deep feelings about one of them. And that makes him feel bad and guilty. That's what he tells every single one of them. That's what the books say. There's the one that he's, like, deeply in love with, and then he feels really bad about that

because he's not supposed to be deeply in love with any of them. I bet he's saying that. I bet he's saying that. I'd say that, too. It works out for everyone in that case. Five, five wives. Five wives. Eight children.

You don't think he's ever like, I got some plans this weekend. You know, they're talking about like, yo, we got the weekend off. What are you going to do? He's like, well, me and Bay Three are about to, you know, hit up the weekend, I don't know, Kiadi Mundi. Conception chamber? Yeah. We're about to go to town for a couple days.

Yeah, see what happens. It just feels distasteful, right? Like, I don't know that they have the professional relationship like that. It's very funny. I don't know. Apparently he, so Shea is the one that he's closest to. Shea remained Mundy's closest and most trusted wife, and he felt he could hide nothing from her.

So much so that Mundy suspected she had some of the force within her. What a fucking crockish shit. He definitely came into work and Yodo was like, you didn't tell any of your bond wives about the operation, did you? And he was like, well, I had to tell Shire. Shee, but I think she might have a little bit of a force in her. She got it right. She just asked, and I just couldn't, Jedi mind tricked me.

I think she's just a natural. Yeah, we should bring her in. Yeah. God. Yeah, no, I think, the other thing is, I hope we get an answer to this. I'm not even certain how unusual is Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship. Like, do these Jedi have close friends? They're close to their parentheses.

and certainly there's that element. But like, you know, we see when it is all coming to an end and Obi-Wan is saying, like, you were my brother. I think that is an unusual feeling about your prentice at the end of a Jedi training. And so I think, like, I increasingly regard the Jedi as, like, it's a lonely life. Even though there is a collegial fellowship,

I don't think there's, like, that sort of warm friendship that exists, but even between, like, Obi-Wan and... They don't have what the call. clone half. They don't have that brotherhood. They don't have that, like, ride or die for my Jedi, like family situation. Right.

But looking back at the last arc, there was a lot of, like, well, we shouldn't go back and save everybody, but I'm going to do that for a Jedi, right? Like, there's value there, and I don't know that that value is just tactical. No, but I don't, I also don't think it goes so far

as, like, I think there's an ideological component to that, but not emotional necessarily. Like, it is a tenant, it's been a tenet of faith for, like, um,

the American way of war for like 30 years that, like, uh, leave no man behind, uh, that like you will go to extreme effort to not leave, uh,

comrades, even their bodies on a battlefield. That's a relatively new thing. Um, and it happens sort of independently of like, however you might feel about that one person or individual. It is sort of an ideological tenant. Um,

I feel like, the Jedi value each other a great deal and I think that is especially if you're on the council and I think that can sort of account for some of these rescue missions

but I just don't get the sense I have yet to see it at least of like and I'm so curious like what if you caught like Luminara and Yoda in like not a council meeting having an unguarded conversation what would it look like?

I am super curious and I hope we get to see something like that but right now the way I look at it as, like, so few of these people have any sense of, like, ability to confide that, like, everything about this is unusual by Jedi standards. And, yeah, I think, I'm kind of with you, like, I think Obi-Wan has told, because your experience is your experience, and it's very easy to project from that. I can easily imagine Obi-Wan, it's like, yeah, this is all normal, we all go through it.

And it's like, no, man, like, this is, this is unusual. not everyone has this experience of being a Jedi and it's worth discussing more it's also worth searching more carefully when you think there might be something going on down below deck R2 is doing his R2 thing he's been down there all night scaring clones now he's finding a bunch of dead ones we get a great shot of him hearing the probe droid and then spinning around and we get a great R2 point of view shot of Rex and Cody just towering over him

and it's like a moment where you're like it's Rex and Cody he's safe now just two heroic figures just standing over him but really they're safe because they're with R2 because as we all know if it's going to be if it's down to a fight between droids

they're with the champ and R2 R2 is ready to sort this shit out they call Well, having discovered the bodies, they call in the fact that they've got intruder. Anakin breaks off the conversation with Obi-1 and is like, I'll go deal with this. Well, not yet do they realize that there's an intruder.

When they call Anakin, they say, yo, I think there's something wrong with Skywalker's Astro-Mech. And we're still missing two of our guys. So, like, to me in this moment, I was like, you're telling me that the clones haven't figured out R2D2 speak for two of y'all's guys just got murked. Like, we haven't gotten to that point of fluency yet between, at least, at the very least, Rex and Cody and R2D2. I'm, it's astounding. I don't like talking to droids. I don't understand any of the R2 stuff in the first half of this episode, because. They're always just like, as R2 is being weird.

Like, it keeps saying stuff, I don't understand. And it's, you know, it's leading us a wild goose chases down here. And then in the Filoni zone for this episode, Filoni was like, also I think, I think it was fun to have R2 be like a little prankster in this episode. People like R2, we could make him into a little prankster. Like, what are you talking about? He wasn't pranking people. He was fucking trying to show people where people were getting killed. I know. I don't. And the specific thing that he says, I realize there were some things we could do in the edit room with R2D2. We could make him into a little prankster. And it's like, did you re-edit this to make that stuff more confusing in some way? Like, I don't understand it at all.

Yeah, I don't understand why when the clones, like when R2D2 and the clones were explicitly given the instructions at the same time that R2D2 was going to be scanning the perimeter. for abnormal shit and the clones were going to be walking around looking for their own abnormal shit that when the clones then encounter R2D2, the retcon I mean the retcons the fucking

the reconnaissance droid why they wouldn't be like oh something's up not he's acting weird like what are you talking Another big question for you. Is it so important that you have the like pier one core lamps on upstairs and all the rooms at once that you couldn't turn the lights on in the cargo hold?

Did you not have the power available to light this space? There isn't one overhead light in this entire scene. Come on. Not one fucking floor. This room is big enough that even if you were landed on a planet with the suns up, you would still need light in there to see what you're moving around. Yeah, there's big fucking big. Shelds and shit. There's like a Costco in there.

Troids don't need light to see. I guess that's true. But, you know, storage toys bring stuff in and out. Apparently don't take inventory properly. I mean, I assume that, you know, I think the R2 stuff is probably a very clever reference to O'Hasar and Balthazar, you know, where the entire movie sure shot from the perspective of a donkey. and we see how, I think that's probably what the episode is put in. For sure, for sure, for sure, for sure. And so we sort of see R2's experience of the world, which is being surrounded by dumb-inses,

who are like, I don't know why the droids going like bleep-blute, but seems really upset. A little dipshit droid, like all droids are. So Anning goes down there to sort this shit out. Meanwhile, Obi-1 goes to the dinner. where the court has been assembled to have a truly dismal, formal, formal dinner. So we get a moment of really creepy. It doesn't make a ton of sense, but it's creepy as fuck. Ironically named clone Red Eye is being, Anakin sees him coming through the shadows of the hold.

And he's moving very oddly. And we see from behind now that he's actually. being puppeted by the probe droid who's like sort of hooked its uh little like uh like blades into his limbs to sort of like give him a facsimile of human human movement um and of course you know it's revealed that red eye is dead but there is a probe droid with red eyes behind him uh and so there's a there is a truth to anakin statement uh and then they beat the shit out of this probe and it's like great we slew the monster

and then we realize there's a bunch of them and one of them goes like shooting up the lift the lift shaft and Obi-Wan now defends to prepare the dinner we get a series of like sort of cross-edits as the fight unfolds

both in the dining room where the Mandalorian guards just get absolutely demolished by this droid arriving before Obi-Wan can kill it and Anakin fighting the probes down in the hold. And we see, we get, like, it's cool, like, you get a payoff within a payoff, which is Anakin thinks they've beaten the probes, and then one of them hatches basically a bunch

of, like, little spider droids. Yeah. And we immediately know, like, oh, shit, that's going to happen upstairs. And right on cue, we see a much more serious attack now as only Obi-Wan is there to really deal with this and all these little spider droids come swarming over the dining room and now it turns out

that Zatine has maybe the single most useful firearm I've seen in this entire show Everyone should have one of these Why don't, it's just, what? They're fighting against droids. He's like, you have a deactivator? Why don't you?

It's a deactivator. It's in the name. it's unbelievable all of it is because the conversation that they have is also just bizarre Satine says just because I'm a fascist doesn't mean I won't defend myself and Obi-Wan says now you sound like a Jedi

which makes no sense and then you also get the scene where there's like the one more spider left and Obi-Wan has to like try to fight it with a sword and it's like this is why you have a deactivator or at least a blaster, so you don't have to fight a single spider with a entire fucking sword. Like, you have to compromise some of your ideals, Obi-Wan.

I'm sorry. One of them should be have a deactivator. This is clearly preferable. I do want to take a moment to note the best single bit of animation in this trio of episodes, which is when Obi-Wan and Satin go back to back. The two of them are like separated by a number of feet across this. room and she is like shooting uh you know to the right of the screen oh we want us fighting stuff over to the left and he like sees the he's like oh it's time it's time to go back to the old me

and like swoop and like pulled his whole body across the screen into her back she pushes back a little bit but not in a like in a yeah i got you way not in a get the fuck away from me way it's extremely good and then they start you know doing the back-to-back fighting thing and tearing through these little spider droids it's so good in star wars This is sex. We know this. This is having sex. The most intimate thing we've seen in the show is, like, her elbow, like, being at his waist level, like, their arms fit in together as their back-to-back.

I still think the most intimate thing we've seen is Padmaid lifting up Anakin's lightsaber and saying how heavy it is. But this is close. This is close. This is number two for sure. I don't know what's up with Anakin in these scenes too because he goes downstairs and he's like alright guys I'm missing dinner

which is like such a weird flex I was like what is happening right now and then he's super rude to the C3PO unit and it's like I thought that you fucked with those like don't you don't you have a C3PO respect like it was super bizarre yeah he had to skip dinner

he didn't have his full conversation about the relationship shit with his boy and frankly he's missing the tea right now and I think he hates being around rich people except for his wife who he loves but like but he doesn't like to hang out in her apartment no

this shit is uncomfortable he's he's not from this he's out of his own yeah also the holdmaster droid does seem very much like that droid don't give a shit about that job No. Hell no.

Like, it does a good job. It's got the record. Yes. But, like, also, it's like, what are you on my ass? Like, oh, I'm sorry. Did a box explode full of killer droids? Uh, yeah, not my problem, Chief. Look, once I check in these boxes, I don't give a shit.

This had a senatorial stamp. I don't like the fact that senatorial stamp exists. I think I should be able to be, like, open up that box. But you guys are like, diplomatic immunity. Okay, fine. Enjoy your fucking spider droids. really quick Natalie can I get a rating spider droid on the bug to insect scout how many insect points does this thing have okay uh big spider droid like 10 out of 10 insect for sure uh actually I would say 9 out of 10 because it's bulbous nature is pretty bug-like but then there's all of the arms but then you have all of the arms lots of eyes that's really insect vibes the little guys pretty buggy

but the fact that they're evil leans them more insect so I'd say on the like insect insect bug scale they're like if bugs are you know all the way left

and insects are all the way right they're like a center right I got you yeah yeah yeah either corollary to this question so as when And so, Obi-Wan kind of maybe needlessly decides to do a, like, Ericul Poirot type thing where all the suspect, because the senatorial stamp indicates that someone, the senatorial rank, got this box of assassin droids aboard the ship.

That means there's four senators aboard this thing. Obi-1 decides to bring out the lone surviving tiny spider droid and is like, let's see, which. Which one, it doesn't want to fuck up. Which is a great plan, honestly. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Like, I don't know. What else would you fucking do? Like, I guess it adds up.

It seems like an effective way to figure out who the fuck programmed this shit. It's a little show, Pony. Like, it's a little, I think it's a little cringe this entire thing. I don't know what he's doing. Like, he's proud of what he's doing and it's not cool. It's a little much. She doesn't think it's cool. She's like, this is torture.

Oh, God is so cringed. She does say it's basically torture. I think it's... Is it? He's not letting it out. It's just in the thing. Until he lets it out. Until he fucks up and lets it out.

This is the like, I promise you, no one here is drowning. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, get him out, get him out, get him out, get him out. Like, the fact that he doesn't hold on to this thing, that this prince senator is able to knock it away from him. Like, you have to know the dudes that go for the spider. bot. He's using a dessert tray instead of like a cup with a lid or is it like a container

it feels like he's using a dessert tray and like half of a three gallon water bottle on top. Like it's the least effective captured device. There's got to be a cage or an aquarium. There's got to be something you can put this thing in.

He needed something to make Ornfrey Ta I think it was going to be a delicious dessert. Oh my God, I forgot about it. Because Orn-Rufflyne-Tah That was fucking whack Is the fat guy Yep And he's just hungry

And when a fight breaks out He grabs a chicken leg And like is prepared to defend himself with that Or eat it Or eat it, ha ha Yeah So Anyway Merrick is the guy

Merrick is the guy Oh but here's my question Natalie Yeah When the little spider droids being held by Sateen And it's pissed off And it's angrily Like trying to hurl itself

against the glass. Does it become a bug given that it's so like impotently angry its feet never like to even touch the floor of that thing? It's just like just having a good old like pissed off freak out. Does it become a bug in that context?

That's a good question. I mean I think that when when an insect slash bug type thing displays more childish behavior that definitely leans bug because it's kind of it's more like jovial it's it's immature that's like that's bug shit you know bugs just be chilling and doing cool shit and sometimes they get

a little angie and it's okay um the thing is i'm i'm re-examining this this small this mini one They're really spindly. They're really spindly. I think I think... And I think I'm going to go with its full insect vibes. Wow. Oh, wow. Okay.

I can't even make a comeback with the... I don't think it can because it's just... Especially when it lands on... When it bounces out of the dessert tray and it lands on the table and it's just like... There's no confusion. It instantly hones back in to killing Satine. Like, that's some insections. shit. I don't know.

Bugs. Bugs would be a little confused. You'd be like, whoa, I just flew in the air for a second. Whoa. Okay, I'm on the table. Okay, let me get a second. Where am I? Okay. But this thing is all the way on with like a must complete my mission.

Yeah, that's some Insection. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. No bugs this episode. Yeah. You know, it's like also just not a, not a fun or cute character, Talmaric, who now that the mask is off. Just a real vicious bastard.

Oh, yeah. Immediately abducts Satine, walks to the bridge, kills everyone as they plead for his, plead for their lives. And then does the thing where he pulls out the detonators. They have wired the ship to blow. So if you kill me, this whole place goes up. and actually I might have skipped an important exchange I skipped one no I did

because Anakin wraps up killing the last droids Cody Rex like does a finishing move and the fight ends below downs he meets up with Obi-Wan in the corridors on the first class x and just kind of blurts out this may not be the time to ask but were you and sateen ever and obiwan just gives him this look and it's like i don't see what bearing that has on the situation um which is fair uh but at this point anna is just desperate to know like the rest of that story um and he's just run out of opportunities he's like i gotta know uh before

this all goes uh pair shaped is this is this the point in which he's says, like, you should go get your girlfriend. I'll go handle the droids or something like that. It's soon after this. It's extremely funny. Yeah. And Obi-Wan goes, right. Wait.

Yeah. It's great. In the meantime, Talmeric has called for reinforcements from Bisla, who has sent a bunch of those little separatist driller, like pods, to burrow through the hall and release the the heavies aboard the ship they're not a very big threat of Anakin and the clones pretty

well demolish them that's when Obi-Wan manages to track down and confront Merrick Merrick is hauling Satine to an escape pod while Obi-Wan shadows them and

they sort of blurt out they're running a little on time here and Satine is like, I've loved you since the moment you came to Mandelore years ago, or something like that. So they don't have the exact change. Yeah, it's Obi-Wan. It looks like I may never see you again. I don't know quite how to say this, but I've loved you from the moment you came to my aid all those years ago.

And Merrick immediately goes, I don't believe this. It's so good. And Obi-Wan says, Satin, this is hardly the time or the place for, and she gives them a look. And he says, all right. had you said the word, I would have left the Jedi order. And the crowd pops, everyone loses their minds. This is my first, this is my second longest let's go in my notes. In my notes, I was losing my shit.

Yeah. Merrick then says like, oh, that's very touching, but it's making me sick. We really have to go. And Satin looks at it was as you have the romantic soul of a slug, Merrick. Then steps on his toe and says, and slugs are so often trod upon. I don't know about all this. It takes his gun. I don't know that.

Yeah, that's a big stepy. Takes his gun. Maybe she was... But then... What, Allie, what's up? Well, maybe she was going by the... And this is a reference to, I think, the second Captain America movie where Black Widow is like,

oh, people get uncomfortable by displays of affection. So I'm going to say this to Obi-Wan now. I see. make Merrick drop his guard and that I could do the little break out of his thing situation. Because it seemed to work exactly like that. It definitely, I mean,

it definitely put, I mean, she got away. You know? It wasn't not effective. He was annoyed. He was like, she accomplishes the two things. I'm either going to die right here and I've got to say this or I'm going to say this and this guy behind me is going to give me an opening to

fuck him up. but she can't fuck him up because she's right so he's like aha you're both hoisted by your own petards if he's like if sateen kills me then she proves that it's bullshit

like I think no I think we get you get an exception neither way he's like you kill me you prove the pacifism doesn't work and he's like and Obi-Wan could kill me but then Sotene would see him as a monster and then Merrick can't help but say one last thing

who will strike first forgetting that the scene is comedy forgetting that for the moment he reacted to their confessions it became a scene of comedy uh yeah who will strike first and brand themselves a cold-blooded killer

instantly a blue blade erupts through the center of his chest through the heart just no I cackled when I saw this I started laughing so It was, like, the best moment of these episodes.

Clone Wars, Alzheimer. The music raises for, like, a split second. It's, like, like, gloriously, and then it turns into the Vader theme. The Vader theme. And it's Anakin. By God. Yeah, that's Vader's music. And then they both look at him.

I think everyone goes, like, Anakin, and Anakin shrugs and he goes, what? He was going to blow up the chef. It's incredible. It might be one of my favorite moments of Clone Wars so far. It is so fucking good. It's so on the nose. It's so funny. I love it.

It's great. This episode is charming. So, and then they've arrived safely at Coruscant. The senatorial landing barge is there with its little, like, Oscar Meyer Weiner-Mobile for senators to take them to the side. Chancellor Palpatine is waiting on the landing pad. we do get again, like, as the Jedi disembark, Obi-Wan's very court-curtain formal with him, Chancellor. Anakin, a bit more deferential, Your Excellency.

Anakin's leading into that, the monarchism that's starting to creep into the position of the, like, dictatorial position of the Chancellor. Yeah, and that's basically where we are now heading into... That is not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely no. Absolutely not. Sotene comes down the rain. Okay.

Anakin leaves off the right side of the screen. Sotene comes down after everyone else is kind of left. Her retinue is around her. She walked right up to Obi-Wan. There's so many other people in this scene. It's incredible. They're surrounded by people. No one didn't see the thing that's about to happen.

She has guards all around her. There are clone troopers all around. There are Senate guards all here. How ironic to meet again, only to find wrong opposing sides. Obi-Wan says, the needs of your people are all that matter. They couldn't be in better hands with you to guide their future. She says, kind words indeed from a mindful and committed Jedi. And yet, she says playfully, what, he says, his voice trembling.

I'm still not so sure about the beard. And he crumbles. And as she reaches out and touches him, strokes his beard, puts her hand on his shoulder, and he goes, why? What's wrong with him? And she puts her hand back on his face and says, it hides too much of your handsome face. And then pulls away and drifts across the platform to her ride away.

And O'B. And Anakin comes on, he's like, what was that all about? And then immediately puts his hand on Obi-Wan's back and, like, becomes his friend again. It isn't going to drag him too much. He goes, she is a remarkable woman. And Obi-Wan says, she is indeed. and then they just stay quiet as they both know what the fuck is going on

is 100% clear what the situation is to everyone who is on that landing pad and she flies away. It's so good. The Obi-Wan's voice breaking here is like, oh, this is not like, it's a reminder that he's performing Obi-Wan performing Obi-Wan

all the time. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like that boisterous safari champion obiwan is kind of a it's a role he plays as much as anything else it's so good we so rarely get to see him caught off guard yes in like mask off like in in a state of vulnerability where he's where he's outside of that performance even when he's like about

a die like he's still you know like all that snark all that sass like that's still his like his defense against you know who he truly is and then you just has this one little moment of him letting his guard down and it's so good and it makes, I mean it does such a good job of leveraging

what we know from Star Wars to make some of these characters even more sad, these moments more sad that like Obi-1 has this whole life and he saw other ways for his life to go even before it all goes to hell on the end end, already there's a lot than sacrifice, and then all that sacrifice will kind of have been for naught, right? Like, the entire, like, everything dedicated his life to will kind of crumble, and the rest

of his lot is going to be hoping that this may be, uh, one of the Skywalker kids will, will pop up for 20 years of, yeah. He lives in the, on a desert planet. And like, that was already bad when it sucked to live on the desert planet. by yourself in the like in a cave somewhere as old ben that everyone kind of is suspicious of it it imagine being there and being like should have stayed with sateen should have stayed with sateen should have left the j Jedi order would have been fine that's the whole thing is it's not just it's not him just saying i loved you or i love you yeah it's he said he would have left

the Jedi order yeah which is huge that is like that is fucking Obi-Wan who's like Mr. fucking Jedi Like What? That is This is such a bigger thing Say the words

Just say the words I'm begging you She shouldn't say everything I was like Sateen Do you not hear what he's telling you Please I'm begging you Like you just You have to say it

Free him He can't do it himself He can't He's a Jedi he's scared It's right When Jedi admit things They're scared Okay

I saw a Tumblr post about it Yeah I think there is this element of like I look at this And I think there's a way you look at The devotion to procedure and ideal that the Jedi embodied are like Oh there's something inherently noble about that It's good to be like there's something inherently like Self-sacrificing about that in a way that is good But it matters how it all plays out right

Like in the end like these choices that Obi-Wan makes for the good of the galaxy for the good of the Jedi order none of it changes you know what I mean like it doesn't lead anywhere like it doesn't serve the benefits he thought

were going to flow from that decision and so like yeah he gives up this entire other life he could have had basically to you know guide the Jedi over the cliff and then sort of live in exile waiting for a chance to make this right. It sucks. It's bleak. I love it.

Great episode. Also, the Jedi Order really would have benefited more from having Obi-Wan be like Prince Consort to Mandalor. With like their martial history and like, like, same as would have been way more valuable to have like Anakin be like Mr. Amadala. hanging out on Nabu Like all this stuff is more valuable than like No we must Everyone everyone to your Monastery

Yeah Here's your sword Don't engage with the world Yeah Yeah the only way to engage with the world Is to like solve legal disputes Or kill people Or the former by the latter

You know You could have been a Jedi Running that greasy spoon diner With that cool dude For attack of the clones That could also be a Jedi And you know People would like that guy more

They would like normal chat More And if you're the Prince of Mandelor or whatever, the Duke of Mandelor, guess what? When Order 66 happens, you got some people to help fight that. You got some, you got a place to go to. Yeah, you know that demobilizing we did? Yeah. I know you never felt great about it, and it turns out we were wrong.

Yeah, exactly. Ready up. Ready up. What are your own needs help now? I'm one of your own because I'm fucking your queen. All right, so we come to the end of this little trilogy, Duchess of Mandelor, the little epigraph at the start in war, truth is the first casualty. And here, we remembered, Duku was behind all this stuff from the start, and the episode opens in very Star Wars movie fashion with a cut to the enemy fleet, just waiting in the darkness. And Vizla is on the phone to Duku.

Vizla is now just full, leading a terrorist militia in a desert camp somewhere. He is eager to fight. Duky's telling him to stand by and wait. But Vizla does order a Death Watch assassin to a Corrassan to put a stop to whatever Satein is trying. And the scout gets back to the Mandalorian capital. And I seriously thought that guy was just. going to get killed the minute he delivered his report to the prime minister. But it doesn't go that way.

He goes and he delivers the warring to Almec, who we met at the start of this series. The scout, and then again, they give the stakes for the audience. The scout says if the Death Watch attacks the Mandalorian capital, they will lose the war because they will be so unpopular that there's no way they will be able to hold the capital as the populace. turns against them. Almec points out, though, that the same dynamic cuts the other way. If the Republic arrives and occupies Mandelor to save it from Death Watch, Death Watch will become the resistance. Death Watch will become sort of a heroic rebel band as opposed to a, like, hated terrorist group. And so we've got these two characters who are now, you know, it's basically, you know, side characters in the Shakespeare,

who like will come on the stage before the real action begins to explain what has happened so far and what we should keep in mind for what follows and then we're gone they're they're dispensed with uh and we cut to a stormy day on corassan as chancellor palpatine is naming uh death watch an enemy of the republic and by the way this stage of the series kids show or not they no longer have any hesitation for getting the nitty gritty of like legislation and debate because the that unfold over the course of this episode, but even in the sequence, are really Byzantine. Like, the machinations, like, happen fast. Palpatine is there naming Death Watch, an enemy of the Republic.

Satine hovers up on her little senatorial hovercraft and says, hey, we don't need you to do that, and it's not even appropriate for you to do that. This is an internal matter. It is being handled effectively. Death Watch is a group that is being suppressed by the Mandalorians. It is not Republic business. Chancellor Palpatine then does the home. I wish that were true, my dear.

But we got this message from Mandelor earlier this morning. And a dude we haven't met yet, and never will. Just a Mandalorian Rando, Randolian. Thank you. is in this hologram basically saying that the Civil War is already a fact, pretending that it hasn't already started is a lie. The government is concealing the depths of the conflict. Death Watch is too strong to be suppressed and it requires Republic troops to suppress them. But Satin is hiding this for the sake of pride.

And Sotene is stunned by this. That's her friend. That's her deputy minister, Jerich. There's no way he would have said that without at least telling her something about what he prepared to send to the Senate. She demands recess to talk to Jerich, and Palpatine, would that we could. But Deputy Minister Jerich was going. killed in a Death Watch bombing this morning. Gras. Anyway, we have to occupy Mandelor.

We will take the vote with the next session. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then, Satina's really shaken. She is trying to repair, like, how she's going to get ahead of this. She's trying to prepare her response before that next vote. Obi-Rone runs after her Catches up with our landing pad He wants to help her

As a friend And she looks good at He fucking blows it He fucking blows it You blew it, bud Want to take us through how he blows it And where this conversation Just goes like nuclear

It's unbelievable He approaches He's running after her as you said, they're outside of the Senate hall now or Senate building and she's extremely troubled he grabs her. He's like, wait

stop, Satin. Very romantic gesture. We've seen it before. Her guards instantly raise their fucking their sticks, their spears. Reflecting her emotional state. Exactly. And Sabine's like, or Sabine

Sotene is like it's okay like I'll talk to him and or he goes he goes I just heard what happened in the Senate she she asked them to move their things down and she says you're sweet to be concerned I promise I'll be all right

and he goes I am concerned we're friends are we not and I feel like I know where I know where Obi-Wan's coming from he's trying to establish like you know a romantic relationship

has a friendship behind it. You know, a solid romantic relationship has friendship there too because there is romance in the way that friends care about each other. Just because it's romantic doesn't mean it's intimate, you know? And he's saying, like, I care about you. You're a dear person to me is what he's trying to get across. But he fucking uses the F word. He says, friends.

And she's like, yes. friends and nothing more in just the most defeated just disappointed tone and he doubles down and he goes he doesn't read the fucking room he doesn't read Satine

and her response to it and it's like Satine as your friend I don't think you should make any decisions in the state of mind and then I was like oh you really fucking blew it you are really

truly fucking blowing it and she's like this state of mind and what state of mind would that be you fucking idiot and he's like okay wait i feel like i'm going the wrong way but let me just keep going down the wrong way a little bit longer and just really really punch this end let me show you how sympathetic i can be yes he's like i mean i lost it And he says, what I'm saying is any person would be hysterical by now. And she flips her shit. She's like, hysterical. The Republic is attempting to force its will upon innocent people.

And he's like trying to interject. And she's like, I'm surprised you're not hysterical. Perhaps if more citizens got hysterical, they'd be more inclined to speak up when the Republic tramples on their rights, rush, and then, you know, Obi-Wan's, like, rushing in like this, it's, it's foolhardy.

And I'm just like, I just, the hole is like miles deep at this point. Obi-Wan is just digging himself so far in, and she turns back with absolute venom, and she's like, ironic words from a man who spends his days running hither and yawn, wielding his lightsaber with deadly force as if on a crusade.

Why should I listen to someone who so frequently relies on violence? IMO, you're the one who's pooled. Exactly. And she gets in her little ship, which obviously has been rigged. But she has that expression. Like as she gets on the ship, though, like, she doesn't look angry as she drives off. It's still just, like, utter devastation of, like, everything now is just, shit.

Right? Like, Obi-Wan, that relationship just... It's too far gone. It's just, they've both individually gone down their paths too far to recoup what they once had. This exchange also hits the thing Rob said earlier,

which is that like she has such a accurate view of the situation, which I, there's something she didn't say here that was like front of mind for me, which she starts to say. say it, which is like, Obi-Wan, you're always running all over the fucking place. And the answer, sometimes you got to run all over the place. Sometimes you have to be, like, sometimes you have to be hysterical. Sometimes you have to make moves immediately. Why can't you see? And this is what I wish she had said, was like, that this is one of those moments, that this is, if we don't

act on this right now, it's all going to fall apart. He should know that better than anyone else. Why are you blinded by your loyalty to the Republic? And the answer of court, the real answer is he is so guarded his heart he will not let himself side with her because he thinks he would side with her because of love and so he dismisses his own

that position isn't available to him because he'd be afraid that he'd be doing it for the wrong reason and it's heartbreaking it is this is a heartbreaking scene it's so disappointing

he also didn't have to say anything He could have just been like, I'm here. Yeah. What's up? What do you need? Sometimes people don't want to hear your little solutions and your little answers for everything. This is a life lesson. He doesn't have one.

He's just like, why can't you be cool? Yeah. It's like, because tomorrow we're voting for war. Like, effectively that is. And it basically means we're voting to reopen that civil war that like we just wrapped up like 10 years ago. Yeah. And I think this is the So there's a couple things I want to get to here as well

It's like resonances again with like war on terror era politics Like one of the things We have that dynamic of The fact that there is no inherent enmity on the part of Mandelor Mandelor like they're not inclined to side With the separatists or the republic Mostly like they are they want to be neutral

They will they wish to be left alone but whoever comes in and attempts to, like, dictate to them where they stand in this galaxy, that is the person the Mandalorians will fight. And there is so much that's reminiscent here of, like, this is all made in the one of the worst moments in the Iraq War where the initial theory of the invasion was completely exploded, not only the justifications for it, but also the entire notion that, like, you could parachute in there. occupy a place and immediately set up a friendly, legitimate, neoliberal democratic government that would sort of stand behind you from here. All of that had basically been like blown up

literally and figuratively. And there's this question of like this, what to do about this massive insurgency. But this does cut to the heart of some of the issues that started to bubble to the fore of the war on terror at this point. And I, I still don't feel has been adequately reckoned with remotely, this dynamic of where you send force, you create enemies, where you send force, you create grudges and grievances that are much harder to solve than if you hadn't done anything at all. And so you have this vision of the Republic that, like at this point, this is a very, like, recognizably

United States type foreign policy of there is a potential that Mandelor could become a hotbed of like separatist activity ergo of course we have to send the troops and occupy

it and take away their political autonomy and we are going to ignore the fact that everyone from there that we know who's not even an enemy is telling us here's exactly what's going to happen if you do that. The people you are scared of will be the most powerful people on Mandelor

simply by virtue of the fact that you are there and they are fighting you. And then the other part of this is Obi-Wan's attempt to talk her down, the appeal to, hey, just calm down, like no need to be hysterical. There are elements of around this time,

you know, Code Pink was one of the most active anti-war groups in this in this era it was like feminist led it was it was it was women led you had Cindy Sheen in this era who was a anti-war protester whose son had been killed in the war and was sort of made a point of protesting George Bush at his house in Texas and these were accusations led against characters like this the entire thing like was often shot through with misogyny, right? Like, the Dixie Chicks had their careers, like, completely altered and derailed by the fact that they chose aside in this, in this political dispute, they became a culture war

battleground. But my point is, when Obi-Wan is like, hey, can you just be calm? Can you be more decorous? Can you not be such a little girl about it? This is, like, that is so recognizably of that moment where even people who were well-meaning kind of like, oh, but they're methods, though. Does Code Pink have to be so noisy in

the committee meetings and shit? And so, like, I think all of this is so capturing a pretty recent moment in American history relative to the show and sort of recasting it as like everything,

like the good guys sort of the centrist position is represented by Obi-Wan, the people who are just proceduralists are condescending and completely out of touch and really deceiving themselves about what is going on. Which is why they end up

making, you have Obi-Wan saying something that's basically incoherent, which is like, well, you just shouldn't act while you're upset. And sometimes it's worth being mad. And sometimes there's a lot of value in putting a marker down. And then the other part of this is this paradoxical thing of like

the nature of like a militarized foreign policy is the moment you put something out in the world you change it and you can't control the reactions and a lot of times the best thing to do is nothing at all and people who made those arguments in that era were sort of accused of being like neo-isolationists of being naive but here we kind of have enunciated like

the story of that stage of the war on terror was the United States and its allies would show up in a place and immediately fight themselves with just lesions of enemies they could never come to grips with because effectively they were fighting not just like armed terror groups but also people they were fighting populations the U.S. is also here in this stuff in the other way which is that the Death Watch are a revengeist, like, reactionary kind of cultural terrorist group being supported by a group that wants them to destabilize a planet to allow their entry into war, which is like CIA Playbook 101 shit. This is Taliban versus the Soviets raising kind of religious reactionaryism. and religious fundamentalism in places to push back against Soviet occupation. But it's also any attempt to plant the idea that there is a threat somewhere so that we can go intervene.

And I will say that part of the thing that I kept coming back to when thinking about this stuff as allegorical to American foreign policy is that it's clear that Mandelor and then the 1500 systems of the 1500 neutral systems line. or whatever or don't want to be part of this war but they are part of the republic they do have standing in the republic

Sotin gets to stand on one of these floating things and to talk about the situation here that is not true in American politics there was not a place

for for there to be a representative of Iraq or Afghanistan in America obviously we can talk about the ways in which the UN

a function factored into those those wars um but that that's an important distinction here right that like when we when we went to vietnam there was not a senator from vietnam being like hey chill with voting power in our in our senate right or in our house or any other any other uh legislative body um and so that that distinction is important in the way that we think about only only it's worth recognizing the degree of like privilege that Satin has available as a person who governs a place that's under threat of occupation. She's allowed to look the executive in the face and say to him, you will turn our planet into a military target, which will bring the war to us.

And that's just not a thing that's widely available to much of the world in any real way at this point in world politics, you know? No, but I would also point out, though, that it does mean she's in a position. of privilege but also I think it's kind of a this is the sort of corrective to reality that fiction can do right like that we live in a we live in a media and political ecosystem where like if you are not regarded as legitimate you don't get to like you do not get the mic

but here we have multiple point of view characters who are like yep here are the dynamics of insurgency and here's what is going to happen when the imperial hegemon just sort of belly flops into this pool of like buried issues um and yeah we we don't get that but we never hear from those perspectives uh you know in the run up to iraq what you heard from was like lots of groups like Ahmad Chalabi's uh fraudulent bullshit um who was out there being like as an exile of of uh Iraq who's on like eight different defense payrolls I can tell you that people there are just they love the US military and they're waiting for it they can't wait for us yeah uh yeah so like

You know, this is kind of the Ah, if only, you know, it only, like, on our, on the floor of our, like, legislative bodies, the people most affected by these things were able to directly address, you know, the legislators and also the people. I raise this only because it further underscores her point,

which is that there is no time to hope that you've debated your way through this the right, like. And then it, go ahead. It further than, I mean, the next plot point, the fact that the vote occurs without her even being aware or even present, just further solidifies that, like, powerlessness. Like, yeah, she has, she has a platform on the stage. She represents 1,500 systems, thousands of worlds, and yet that's meaningless because a vote can take place while she's on planet in the building. Yeah. Yeah, in the building.

in the building that determines the future of her her world and the worlds that she represents. It's fucking nuts. And there's this tendency of like institutionalists to be like, well, there's always more time to fix these things. And she recognizes like some things are revocable. Like once the troops go, that doesn't like, you're not like, ah, you know, on Monday we sent the troops in. But on Friday we're thinking better of it. That's better than just leaving the troops out there. But like still, like once that vote is taken on Monday, you know, on Monday, you know, on Monday, but on Friday we're thinking better of it.

day. By Friday, you're kind of too late. You're dealing with different options now. But he has this sort of like, well, yeah, but you know, we shouldn't rush. Like, we got, we got till tomorrow. It's like he has zero under, I mean, to be fair, I mean, it's not even being fair, but like, Obi-1 has excused himself from a lot of the politicking of the Senate and of the Republic. Like, he's witness to it and is often has to act in the, consequence of it, but is willingly ignorant to how

it actually, how the process actually goes down. So, you know, it's, I think it's insanely naive on Obi-Wan's part to be like, we have time, it's going to be okay. I'm sure Satine knew

on the trip over that she was going to go deliver a a plea in vain to the Senate. Like, there is no way that her, you know, monologue was going to result in actually her planet not being invaded by, if the Republic wants to end up somewhere, the Republic's going to end up somewhere. It's not in whatever way that has to come about, whether it's manipulated fucking hologram data or, you know, or just sheer. a sheer number of votes and things like that like that that will just happen and i think satin is is cognizant of that and that's why she has had such a removed presence in the the like we haven't

seen her yet we haven't heard about mandolore yet we haven't like they haven't been a part of this It's another reason why the presence of, you know, Uncle Ono and, I forget, the other, the other senators that were present, it also makes that much more confusing why these specific senators were there and, like, what that means. And if that's really representative of who's in the coalition of neutral systems or if that is just the character models that they have. ready to go for this. But yeah, it is, it's a, she knows she's leading a futile cause eventually. Like, if the Republic really wants something, it can, it can get whatever it wants. This conversation for some reason clicked something into place that has been like a, not a stumbling block, but a thing we've come back to and tried to unpack in different ways.

And I think I have a fresh reading on something, which is the classic rejoinder to a lot of, well, why does it happen this way or whatever? It's like, well, because both sides are being played against each other by Palpatine. Palpatine is behind both sides, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know why I hadn't thought of it this way before. But it is true that the separatists and the Republic are in opposition to one another. And they're in opposition over certain material things around. We know historically tax codes and embarking all sorts of shit like that.

But when we think about their fundamental character, especially as, the Republic becomes increasingly like the empire it will be. And as we keep in mind things like Rob, your analysis, a few episodes or a few podcast episodes ago from a number of arcs ago about the fundamental character of the separatists being kind of technocratic or at least an aspirational technocracy, this idea that you have a handful of kind of VC Wunderkind at the top. What you end up looking at is a sea change in, on both sides of this war, in which a informal, there's an informal shift towards a sort of, um, uh, uh, kind of individualist authoritarian model for what

governance looks like galaxy wide. Um, and in that way, you can start to think about this as being, yes, there's a conflict happening between these two sides. But they're actually more aligned in their style of governance and their and their vision of statehood long term than otherwise, which is a way to start thinking about this stuff in this other way where you're not just stuck talking about two states having a fight, but can talk about the world historical character beginning to shift that can account for kind of styles of behavior happening, styles of action happening. And the way that today you might say, yes, there are conflicts between certain states or whatever, but both are functionally happening inside of a world order that's dominated by neoliberalism, the way in which you could talk about there being historically organizing principles around civil conflicts inside of a given society in which, despite the fact that these are split, there is still some underlying thing that limits what the outcome of that of that. that literal, you know, civil conflict might be because there is a fundamental agreement about some organizing principle, that's something that we should think about here is that, like, behind both of these things is not just Emperor Palpatine, but it is a move towards the individual as de facto final authority behind both the separatists and the Republic, as republic still, as they move into this high chancellorship, as they move towards the empire. Well, and that put me in mind of when Duku lays out his theory, right, of what's going to happen on Mandelor, he is actually also sketching out, ironically, the next stage of this galactic conflict. Like, once you send in occupation troops everywhere and people know they're under occupation, you create resistance. Right.

And the funny thing is Duku's strategy. If Palpatine had ever actually paid attention to what Duku was doing in Duku's theory of, like, galactic politics. he would have seen that, like, his vision for the empire, like, these forces didn't go away. It's weird. You can see, like, he's going to synthesize parts of, like, the clone army and the separatist, like, political vision. And we can see, like, maybe even some of the overt militarism of the Mandalrians. But the forces that are still out there of, like, we don't want to be taking orders from Coruscant. We don't want to be under threat of military occupation of coercion.

Those are not going anywhere. And while the end of the Civil War might temporarily suppress them, like Palpatine is going to move smoothly from seizing control of this thing to fighting the exact same war, except this time he's only in control of one side of it. Because the political forces he's playing with are still alive. And even for the puppet master that is Palpatine, sort of throwing all these things in the air and saying, like, where are they going to come down? um well and it seems like you know from what little we know from our perspective i have no idea how rebels is going to frame any of this stuff i've no idea about bad batch or anything else that's coming down the line but the rebel alliance which i mean i guess it has been renamed canonically uh into the uh the alliance to restore the republic

um what yeah i i don't want to talk about that until we get there but uh the rebel alliance uh as far as i know is not top down the way the late Republic or the separatists or the empire are. The Rebel Alliance is bottom up in contrast to those, right? Like, it is a different fundamental organization. Like, yes, there are leaders. Yes, there's Monmothma. Yes, there's Admiral Akbar. Yes, there are the organas.

But from what we've known from things like Rogue One and Saul Guerrera and even things like the unfilmed Padmae's helped start the rebellion stuff from Revenge of the Sith, like it's clear that we're talking about a collection of people that have, different perspectives organizing towards a common goal. It's a lot of independent, but aligned cells and groups. And they have different perspectives on it. And that is a different, like a fundamentally different perspective on governance writ large than any of the established galactic powers at this point.

So. All right. So, yeah, so there's immediately an attack on Satin and her limo driver heroically sacrifices himself by driving slowly past a rooftop bar and having her and her bodyguards bail out and he immediately flies into a wall. The Senate won't investigate and they're completely stonewalling Satin. They're like, we don't even believe you were attacked. There's no proof. Just you and all those witnesses and the destroyed car. And then they're like, oh, but maybe we do believe you. It was probably Death Watch, which is why we have to occupy the planet. She storms out and she receives word. So she is like mad past the point

of being able to speak. She's sort of thinking out loud as Obi-Wan tries to talk to her. She says this attack proves I've upset someone. I must be on the right track. Which, fair point. This is not faulty logic. The more resistant she is encountering, the closer she's getting to what's going on. Obi-Wan is like, we should work within channels. We should work at the Republic. You know, our resources. She basically laughs in his face

and she's going to talk to a source at the intelligence ministry. Padmey appears to announce the vote was pushed forward while Satin was in that meeting. And the Senate has voted to occupy Corrassant. The troops are leaving at dawn. We go.

How the fuck did Padme not filibuster that shit. I know, yes, good, true. Because you know someone got out there, it was probably Palpatine, and he was like, oh, this affront to our democracy. We need to push this vote up,

ASAP. Well, he left to let everybody vote and meet her in the side chamber. Maybe, I don't know. This should have C's band. She should have had that on her phone. She should have it on her. So,

we go into the depths of Correscent, Once again, they've built these assets. We're going to use them a lot. This corsod is so much better. It's great. It's so much better than any other corsons. Yes. Yeah, you are descending through layers of what looked like cool, bustling neighborhoods,

but also there's sort of a night city menace, like a noir city. And the other thing is it's starting to feel like the lighting, again, Keeps getting better. The Senate feels more oppressive in this episode, and Corrisson feels more like a noir stage in this episode. There's two different flavors of, like, cops basically roaming around. There are the clone troopers with their... Are they Jedi-badged under shields?

There's clone troopers who are, like, basically serving as gendarmes, and then there's, like, the droid cops, policing the city Satine meets up with her source they are being stalked by the sniper the Death Watch sent and he hands her

basically a Star Wars USB stick and he was like your instincts are right here's it proves that Jerich's speech was doctored here's the real footage and then he gets shot her source is also Bill Nye for some reason

wait it's Bill Nahi No, it's not actually Right, yeah, I was like, I was going to die He does It looks just like him And he sounds like Kiff Unfortunately from Futurama Which, it's not him

But ripped Davoo So he gets shot by the sniper The cops immediately assumed That while she was standing near him So she must have done it Yeah, with her deactivator Clearly not a gun Clearly not a fucking gun, you dumbass cops.

So the robocops start chasing her. As she's continuously being sniper shot at, by the way. And nobody's like, hey, where's that fucking rifle beam coming from? No, let's focus on the woman with the fucking BB gun. Like the, oh my God. Here's where that deactivator becomes useful. Satin reaches the inclusion. Sometimes you've got to kill some cops.

But not really, because they were droid cops, so she just turned them off for a few minutes. I think she only hits the camera one, right? She doesn't hit the other one? She hit all of them. No, she only hits the camera one. That's right, I guess. I don't think she shoots the little police constable droids. Yeah.

She could have, though. She definitely could have. Yeah. She ducks into an alley, and she sees someone wearing a similar red riding hood cloak, getting into a convertible. And she was like, I'm just going to wait. but cops are dumb. And they are.

And so they see someone coming out in a cloak, and they're like, there she goes. And they chase her. And meanwhile, she escapes. It's good. Yeah. All this stuff throughout, I just want to couple what,

or repeat what Faloni says here. In his, uh, Faloni's own, uh, update, he says, uh,

he gives a lot of credit to Matt Wood and Dave Accord for this whole episode, but especially the chorus on stuff, who did all of the sound design and he's right that like the background noise as during all these chase sequences the stuff that happens a little bit later when a

grenade goes off a thermal detonator goes off and like deafens the listener for a little bit or the viewer for a little while just in general the clinks and clanks and everything about the way Choracons sounds in this episode is so good

and I will add the way it looks throughout this stuff the kind of depth with how far back each, like, there's all these, like, lanes and walkways that just go and go and go. And then obviously a little bit later, we get the plaza, which is based on an original Ralph McQuary piece from the way he first envisioned Corrassant during the original trilogy, like, pre-production. And it looks sick. So, yeah, we have a brief check-in with Count Duku and Palpatine, and they're both like, ha-ha, everything's proceeding according to plan. We don't get enough of the two of them, by the way. I just want to give a shout-out.

to this because it was great to see them and have a conversation. Yeah, I was really happy. I mean, I was really excited when Duku was like the intro to this episode. I was really hoping that we'd get a little bit more Duku action throughout. And with that like a little bit more Duku Palpatine interaction, but, you know, I'll take what I can get. Whenever Duku's not on screen, I'm asking, where's Duku? Yes, that's my position.

yeah and they do repeat again for people who like have forgotten if the republic occupies mandolore there will be a civil war and the republic will be waging it against an insurgency the meanwhile I love this sequence the clone troopers are now doing a a sort of a dragnet basically to try to find sateen they're showing her picture to people in the deaths of croissants that They're waving it in the front of an Athorian, who are those... What if E.T. were a dining room chair, I guess, is the way I put it. Like a 70s dining room chair. Just a big contoured thing with, like, eyes on the back.

Anyway, Athorians. He's in the original... An Athorian pops up briefly in the background of the original mass size of the canteen scene in the original Star Wars. But anyway, they're just being like, you've seen this woman. and the Athorian, while we don't know what it's saying, his gestures seem to say, get the fuck out of here. Can I tell you what the script says it says?

What? According to the script, the authorities translate a dialogue to the clone troopers is, ironically, as follows. Clone 1. If you see this woman, report her to the local authorities. Alien. Yeah, yeah. I just saw her. Clone 2.

I don't think he understands us. Let's try someone else. Alien. No, wait, she's over there Oh my God I thought it was like I thought the Athorian was like not snitching Nope

It's just getting frustrated because they're two But full snitch mode to cops who don't know Athorian because why would they bother Learning the languages is that the people Who live there is sweet. Why you gotta have droids It's a big capital city you gotta just like Here's three POs for every If we just put a three PEO with every squad car

We won't have these issues What if there's a schism here between the writers and the animators? And the animators are like, nah, I'm not going to make this guy snitch. This guy's too cool. I love that. Also, the Clon Troopers are clearly intimidated by this towering piece of furniture. He's great. He's fantastic.

So, yeah, then Satine reaches out to Obi-Wan. They meet at this plaza that is very much like 30 Rock Plaza, but on Coruscant in some ways. Like, it's great. again like I think Corrassan often trades and like it's just a big cyberpunk

like super city with like city canyons like alleys and shit here I do like the idea of like yeah it has the normal civic architecture you'd expect

like there's plazas there's like little touristy places you can go hang out that are the Republic and yeah that's great knowing it's a Macquarie concept

because it does have that look of like 70s concept art like what will cities of the future look like leisure activities look like on Martian colonies because you got people sitting in these

like a little conical like multi-story restaurant places they're just great she meets up with Obi-Wan and she explains to him what she sees as the play here. He has to take the document and smuggle it into

the Senate. If they went in together, they'd search him and take it. Obi-Wan argued I'm a Jedi. They wouldn't dare. Satin just looks at him so sadly and is like, things are changing, my dear. And they are, and this is the frustrating thing.

And on some level he knows it, right? Like this whole episode has this feeling of you can feel it slipping away. You can feel it all turning. And he won't let himself see it, even though it's so clear that like, this is sort of like the Germans in World War II refuse to believe that the codes have been broken.

So they continued to use the codes, even as evidence mounted, that, like, all their codes were broken. But then, in, like, 1944, as they're planning, like, their last offensive against the Western allies, without ever admitting, the codes are broken. They say, we're not putting anything over the radio. We're sending everything by courier. There's only going to be paper trails. We are not saying anything on the radio. We're not using our telegraphs.

And it's, like, one of those, like, double-think things, right? where it's like, you know, you know that the game is up, but you kind of can't let yourselves admit it because at this point it would call everything into question. I think Obi-Wan is in that mindset where he goes along with the plan. He's like, all right, yeah, I will smuggle this document past my own troops to the Senate, which I serve. So that, and then I will give it to the one senator I can trust

who can immediately get it publicly aired. so nobody can fuck with it. By the way, though, there's nothing wrong with the Republic, and I'm absolutely on the right track here, serving it and Palpatine loyally. It's absurd, but that is his position, and that's where he's going to stick to it. The assassin then tries to kill them with a bomb.

Obi-1 throws Satin the safety, the sniper in Obi-Wan brawl. The sniper flies off. The plan goes off without a hitch. and as Palpatine is delivering his speech for the occupation, Padmeh hovers up and is like, I have the actual recording. And it turns out Jerich was just spliced together, saying the opposite of what he intended, which is that he says Satine's strategy is perfect.

Mandelor, he does, the message, the thing that wasn't changed is he does take the position truthfully that the Civil War and Mandelor is already kind of underway. But Satine has a strategy to deal with it and it requires the Republic not intervening, which is the correct play. So I do think we have that question at the start,

how much is Satine kind of underplaying when she's like, oh, there's just hooligans, it's kind of nothing. It's not nothing. Like I think at this point, if Jerich is there saying in a speech candidly that, like, hey, we're already in a state of civil war, I kind of feel like

I do kind of concede in that first episode Satine just wants Obi-Wan to like file his report and go because she doesn't want she cannot confront this publicly Right

Yeah To your point before about Obi-Wan we kind of slid over one of my favorite scenes in this episode which is It's the hallway fight after the Palpatine talk When Obi-Wan is like Why don't you just go to

authorities after Popatine was literally like we're not going to investigate this and then she looks at Padmae and obiwan and says I knew it counting on the Republic was a mistake and like from what we know of Padmae and Obi-Wan's positions I was like surprised to see this show so willing to like let its main characters and his heroes be like so on the back foot there because like Satin ends up being right in the end and to like just challenge their loyalties and their morals so directly like that and then be right about it I was like damn clone wars

okay yeah actually going there another thing about that scene that I had written down and forgot about was just it's it's illuminating that Obi-Wan says like hey you should rely

on your friends in this scenario and what he's doing is confusing or is conflating personal friendship for friendship to the Republic in such a basic and simple way that he's just clearly never thought about in a serious way because he's not

lived that life, you know? And it shows. Yeah. Yeah, it's, and Padmey does kind of save the day here by having, being the one to present the recording. But yeah, it's like Satin, this is the episode where Satin saves the Republic or it gives it a stay of execution.

Yeah. Yeah, but, I mean, she saves the day, without actually really, like, she just is the vehicle in which that recording is presented. She's not, you know. No, I was saying Satin saved the day. Like Padme is just kind of... Right, right, right. Yeah, I see what you mean.

I see what you mean. I mean, I think it's frustrating. Padme is a career in the end. Yeah. Exactly. Like, Padme, the one person, the one lead character, well, not the one, but one of the lead characters that expresses, you know, confusion at some of the Republic's choices, you know, has expressed doubts about the, like, the, the, the point of the

war itself, you know, you think that she would have a little bit more to say in this episode watching, you know, a neutral party try and advocate for themselves, advocate for their rights, but she really just kind of stands there and delivers the message, like, She doesn't really have much to do in this episode. I mean, it's a pretty bloated, it's a big episode, there's a lot going on, so there's not, there may not really been the space for it, but as our kind of forefront, like, political character, and, and, you know, one that will go on to establish sort of, like, the, the foundations for an alternative movement, for the resistance, it's kind of just like, Why, like, is this, is this inciting anything in you? Are you affected by Satin at all? And, like, her way of approaching the Republic and her way of, you know, establishing her right to refusal and sort of engaging in this war itself.

Like, is that being internalized in any way, Pad may let me know. I would love to find out. I mean, that's the thing is, like, Satine is so much of what we wanted from Padmae from the jump. And I hope that, I hope she learned some lessons here. We'll see, I guess. We'll see. We know not enough. We know where Padma goes.

This is the, that's the thing. That's the whole thing. It's like, whenever I talk about, like, what, like, even talking about Obi-Wan and Satine's relationship in comparison to Anakin and Padma's, it's like, there's so much about Padme and Anakin that's just predetermined that we just can't, we can't get. because of where it has to go. And it's kind of frustrating because it feels like there's just a limiter on, on their character arcs, on their relationships, on what they can do, what they can accomplish, because we know that they have to go to this final place, which is, I guess, like, I'm happy, question mark that we get the chance to explore these things through other characters like sateen

and um you know other people in the past i'm looking forward to uh future episodes about like these sort of resistance characters um but they aren't at the end of the day they're essentially i mean they're they're they're day players they're not you know hanging around in a significant way that is really going to shape the future of this universe, this series even I hope that it has a bigger impact.

I have my doubt. It's based on like serial like children's television. We have five seasons left and I know. A lot of major characters haven't even been introduced yet. Right. And I'm so curious to see which those end up being, if any, more central than the Padmae. Anakin and Padmae are still going to be central no matter what, obviously. But when we think about, you know, when you look at the art for the Clone Wars,

the final season on this, on Disney Plus, it is Asoka years older. And then two people we have not met yet. A lot of folks, we never, I don't know who those people are. And I, and I do know who some of. other characters are, surprising ones and otherwise to come in the future seasons, who I know will be central, and I'm very curious to get them. I'm excited to get more Sotene. I know Sotene shows backup multiple times in this show. So, like, I think you're right that we can't put our hopes on Padme and Anakin to continue developing, and instead we have to hope to get those

development from the Hobie 1 series, which is about his busy family life with Sotene as he commutes regularly to Tatooine to play the part of old Ben Kenobi checking in on young adorable tot, Lucas Skywalker, and then flying back off to hang with his family with Satine. Yeah. Loves it. Yeah. That's what the series is going to be about.

I'm pretty confident. Oh, for sure. I feel like it's worth saying to Natalie's point, though, that, like, it feels so much like a missed opportunity to have a, like, set it. drama episode and not have the majority of the conversations be between Satin and Padmaid working this out instead of just constantly rehashing the Obi-on Satine stuff, which like came to like a point in the episode before it and like they were flirty and then the exact next episode they're like just duching it out. Like there's no affection there. Yeah. And I wonder how

how much of this is like just the logistics of schedules for like voice recording sessions. Like Is it easier if you're dealing with the set of episodes? Like, here's who's going to be primary on who's going to be involved with these and, like, how we're going to construct these episodes versus how much of this is. No, this is Obi-Wan and Satin. That's the focus. Because I am with you. Like, there are so many places in this where it's like, instead of seeing Satine and

Obi-Wan go one more round with this argument, like, it would be worth, what does Satine make of Padme? Right. But I'm also kind of, I'm also kind of with you, Natalie, that, like, they're so, you have to be so careful of Padme because, like, the decisions and motivations that end her story in the movies, like, are so brittle. Like, you are so, like, all of you are one question away that requires a moment of introspection for making her arc from there, totally perplexing. Like, the minute, the minute, like, she gets a girlfriend who is like, hey, um. Um, Annegan seems like he's really dealing some bad shit and maybe not in the best way. Are you okay? Yeah.

She can't have a confidant. She can't have, she, she has to be a loner forever. And I think it's honestly getting to a point. I mean, we're still so early on. I know, but I feel like we've spent some, these, these seasons are long. We've spent a lot of time with these characters already. We've had these two prequels. Like, I know there's a lot to come, but I feel like I'm.

reaching a point at which I feel like I need to like divest from Padmae because I it's I that's the right call because because because I feel like I end up in these futile like these these these places where I want so much more from it and I am just never going to get there and I have to feel okay with the fact that I'm going to get it from a character like Satin and her relationship with Obi-Wan rather than her and Anakin, which, you know, is obviously my main anchor for coming into Clone Wars is Padmae and Anakin's relationship. Like, that's, like, what brought me in here as far as, like, my understanding, as far as, like, who I knew and that kind of thing.

But I do feel like Padme, ultimately, I need to divest from because she, she ultimately, has to land in this predetermined place. And there's so very little, like, Anakin can kind of have these ebbs and flows in a way that's more flexible because his whole arc is about oscillating between extremes. And whereas Padme just doesn't have

that room to question things, really, in as big of a way. So I do feel like I need to move away from her. Yeah, and I'm not, I wouldn't be surprised actually if the show does the same thing. Because, like, at this point, we're two seasons in, they've established, like, what the show's vibe is. They're doing better job, like, bringing good, supporting players in. I do kind of wonder how much of the show is going to turn into, hey, the Clone Wars is a backdrop of, like, this amazing galaxy-spanning event that has this tragic denouma. But we can use that just as that, a backdrop to tell.

stories that we want to tell about other characters from other points of view. And so I do kind of wonder, in these first two seasons, it is a lot of anticipating the arc of Darth Vader, a lot of anticipating what's going to happen in Revenge of the Sef. I do kind of wonder, like, before we get to those endgame stages of the series, how much are we going to be like, let's look at the reality for people elsewhere in the Republic, elsewhere in this war which I think has ended up being more satisfying

anyway like I think most of the time I think you're banning 500 though Yeah Those episodes are also like the fucking pirates man Like the douchebag pie well I mean they wedged Duku and the gang Into that one but like

I have hope for Honda Honda's gonna come back He's gonna be great He's gonna come back as a tour guide At Galaxy's Edge And we'll meet him as soon as The Zeta variant receipts and we've all got our vaxes

and yeah before we wrap I know we've a heart out I need to just ask Allie because Allie you're the biggest Mandalorian fan not of the show of Mandalorians the people that I know and we just haven't had this discussion yet which is I know we don't have a lot of time

but so I just need like what do you think of the debut of the Mandalorians here the debut of their dark saber of their particular version of this history of all that shit how has it left you as the lifelong Mandalorian.

I liked it. I mean, it's interesting because it's such a different version of the Mandalorians that we've seen, and I haven't dug into like the comics or the book stuff with the Mandalorians,

but like obviously over a span of like thousands of years that's going to be different. And I feel like introducing them as like peace people in this was a little bit of a shock. I was looking at some of the other Mandoa.org

form posts before and people like reacting to this episode when it aired and some of those takes were interesting but I liked it and like I think the Darkseber is great it looks amazing in this it sounds great too it sounds so cool it sounds so weird yeah I you know we live in a post the Mandalorian War I mean the post mandolorean world where we've seen that and we like gin and it's great and everything but like the mandolorens that we've seen like in the star wars movies are pretty mid like yeah jacobed is just there to be like a coolness you know to try to make bobefet seem cooler by proxy and like it doesn't it doesn't land right like bobafet was cool he was like a cool bounty hunter but there was like no grit there in terms of being like oh there's this whole society and there's all this shit going on it's really interesting so it was

like fun to see that here and have it be so outside of like what i think fans expectations were at the time on top of like you know these like real you know differences that she has with the the political actors around her was compelling it fun to see so does that absolutely sorry i picked up a little subtext of like alley do you have some ambivalence about the sudden like popularity of Mandalarians? No, no, no, no. I'm just saying that, like, it's good that we have that now because it, like, provides a different perspective to the Mandalorians outside of Boba and Django Fed who are like, I don't think

that they're top to your life. They don't like that. They're just guys. They're just guys who are around. Yeah. I agree with that. I think, well, they're not Mandalarians, right? They literally aren't.

Are they? Boba is not for sure. Yeah. Right. Jango is not question where is he from he's like a murk but I don't think was he not I mean even even in the first episode of this of this arc that we talked about yeah but that's a person who that's like that's a guy who has every every desire to separate himself from right just don't know I don't know I but I think okay canonically he was born on a planet

called Concord Dawn. Oh, that's a Manorian planet. There you go. And then, wait, though he told others he came from that world, his exact history remained unknown, much to his enjoyment. At some point, he was taught by a mentor and became a Mandalorian foundling and participated in the Mandalorian Civil Wars. So, if you fought in the wars, you're a Mandalorian to me. That's canon. Mandalorian Foreign Legion.

Yeah. Uh-huh. No, I think he earned his armor. That's an important distinction here. So much Star Wars is explained by trying to make the fast as cool as fans imagined them to be. Where it's like, I guess this guy's important now. Yeah, so I think, yeah, I also I'm so curious to see how they managed to square all of this with what we see in the Mandalorian. And I think they started that work in the Mandalorian season two where like the, oh gosh, Carthrace and Battlestar.

What's your name? You know the name of the character I don't know I don't know the actors Oh I had it and lost it Because I've not seen Battlestar all the way through And I don't know those actors But the name of the character you're talking about It's Bocauton

Yeah where Katie Sackoff Yeah When she sort of just unloads on Mando Where she's like You don't even know what you are Like you do not even know the sect Like you don't understand Rob do you know that character's full name

I forget it but I think I thought I did. Don't worry about it. You mean Mandoz? No. Bocatans. No, I don't remember it. Don't worry about it.

Now I should not look it out. You should not look it up. I will not look it up. Oh, my goodness. What little treats we have in school. You have no idea. Yeah. And speaking of treats, I think this trio of episodes was pretty great.

I think we will leave it here. The next episode will drop on the main feed, and it will cover a series of standalone. loans, Senate murders, cat and mouse, and bounty hunters. Week after that, Patreon supporters will get a Q&A where we take questions on the Mandalore arc and those episodes I just named. I want a flag here that would be taking a brief break after the end of season two, I think we've all planned on.

We've all been part of projects that basically only take breaks by working a ton of overtime to work ahead. And that never actually leads to any balance. Or getting sick. Or just getting so sick. all at once that you are forced to take a break? Time to enjoy my vacation, but recovering from the overtime to get all these projects done. Yep.

So in September, we're going to skip one regular release day before picking up season three in October. We will have the Q&A like normal. I think we're going to have a similar break sometime in the traditional holiday window, December, January. We need to see how that lines up with our plans for season three. Thanks for understanding, and I promise you will always like us better when we've taken a minute to recharge. Until then, if you've been enjoying, please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice. You can get all those Q& episodes on patreon.com slash civilized.

If you choose to support us there, we're always grateful for your support. And just remember, if you want someone to take that leap, you've got to say the word. My heart. Aww. Aww. You can be a Jedi or supportive boyfriend, but you cannot be boy. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be.