A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 26: Witches and Monsters Arc (Clone Wars 56 - 58)

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Week after week, we return to the same conversation: What if, instead of focusing only on known characters and therefore being boxed in by the events of the Prequel Trilogy, Clone Wars could spread its wings and spend time developing new characters with yet unwritten endings. Finally, with the arrival of a character really, genuinely named Savage, our prayers are answered, even if the monkey's paw does curl... You can support the show and gain access to a monthly Q&A cast by going to patreon.com/civilized NEXT TIME: Episodes 59 - 61 ("Overlords," "Altar of Mortis," & "Ghosts of Mortis") Show Notes Shout outs to Mat Jones, @pillowfort on Twitter, for producing this episode! Fallen Clones: "Trauma" Fallen Zabrak: Feral, many unnamed others Fallen Jedi: Halsey, Knox Fallen Kings: Katuunko Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Mat Jones (@pillowfort) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zackney, joined by Ali Akipura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We're finally here, Dathamer. Thank fucking God. Did you say let's fucking God? Or you said, thank fucking God. I don't know what I said, but I'm happy to be here, y'all. You know, girls can grow up to be anything they want, provided they want to be

forced witches, bad girls get to be night sisters, and slavery is for the boys. So this is a bonkers trio of episodes that starts strong, go some places, and ends with a truly shocking reveal. A reveal that I fully thought y'all knew until about three, I had like a month ago. I referenced when this comes back in a movie And everyone seemed dumbfounded Of what I was referencing So I've seen

I just refused to believe I was look I'm not just going to assume Like I figured that species just looks that way I'm not just going to assume that like That's a that's a Darth Mall It's a Zabric Zabric that doesn't have to be Darth Mall Even though the legs are robots in that sequence

We'll get there Yeah so Since they're pretty like They all flow in to one another. I'll give you the broad outlines here. It's going to take me a minute. I apologize. It's a lot. It's a lot. Take your time. As Ventris leads a separatist

fleet in a major action over Salas, Palpatine chooses this moment to kneecap his apprentice Duku by demanding the Duku prove loyalty by killing Ventris. And so when the battle turns against Ventress and to request help from Duku, he coldly tells her that he's

recalled her fleet and is abandoning her. Then attempts to have the ship she's on, destroyed. She barely escapes their life and makes her way back to her home planet of Dathamur to reconnect with her people. The tribe of force-powered witches called the Knight Sisters. We get a brief flashback showing how she was given up by the tribe as an incredibly cute infant. She was rescued from pirates, Dark Jedi, Dark Jedi who hired pirates? It's a pirate guy who has her first, yeah. A bounty hunter type. I was waiting for fucking Hondo Anaka to show his ass this episode with these three episodes with bated breath.

I mean, it is weekway pirates. It's different weekway pirates who kidnapped her or who were, she was traded to, question mark. Given, you know, it's a weird situation, clearly. So she was rescued by a Jedi Knight. He starts training her in the basics of being a Jedi. And then her fall to the dark side begins when he is killed in front. of her and she slaughters the assassin in a fit of rage. That

anger leads her to Duku and begins her career as a Sith assassin. Now she has come back to this tribe led by the sorceress Mother Talzin who helps Ventriss carry out a false flag attempt on Duku's life. He survives the attempt but believes the Jedi have somehow

turned into ninja assassins. If only! I think it would be a good move. And so he is receptive to Mother Telson's oddly timed suggestion that she be the one

to find him a new apprentice. The apprentice is drawn from a warrior village of Zabric Males the same species as Darth Mall on the other side of the planet. And from here, in a shocking turn for Star Wars, things are going to get kind of racial, so be

warned. Ventress narrows her search to two candidates. Big, strong, savage oppress. Savage. Savage. Oppress. Savage, oppress, and his weaker brother, farewell, to spare fuel,

Savage agrees to go with ventress. The Knights Sisters use forced steroids and hypnosis to turn him into a golem-like killer under their command. You remember what I was like, we're going to learn real quick about other ways of doing kind of force pedagogy, how you can give people the force and Jedi powers? as well, here we are. It was in the girl boss gatekeep gaslight arc of Clone Wars. So they verify their control over

a press by having him strangle Farrell and then send him off to Duku, who Vince McMahon reacts to Savage as he sees him. This is true. So

in Sith style, Duku abuses him as part of his training and then has Savage interformal apprenticeship by proving himself by wiping out a Jedi base and the two Jedi guarding it. I would just do this. This is how, this is the way you get in. I would simply.

Yeah. So this alerts, because there's a security camera that catches all this, this alerts the Jedi to a new threat. They quickly follow the trail back to Dathlet and, like, learn the story of, learn part of the story of his origins and chase him down on Toydaria

just as he turns a kidnapping of King Kutonko into an accidental assassination of King Kutonko. Um, yeah, R-I-P King Kutonko. Yeah, my guy's done. He's done for, it's over. Hey, good, it's pretty, it's pretty pathetic. And his corpse stays on the screen for quite some time. Too long, too long in my opinion. Ragdolled.

Duku begins brutally torturing torturing oppress as punishment only to be interrupted by Ventress, who gives him the Manchurian candidate code words to bring him back under her control. But then starts negging him mercilessly as soon as he

fails to kill Duku immediately. Truly pissed off, he becomes Savage no oppress and starts beating the shit out of both Sith. Duku and Ventress, Both make their escapes, and oppressive makes his own escape, back to Dathimir, badly wounded. Vaging Mother Telson for aid and guidance, she reveals he has a special destiny to find his long-lost brother, the very much alive, Darth Mall.

That's the twist that I thought y'all remembered from the end of Solo, as people who, who, yeah. Oh, I haven't watched Solo. Oh, I thought you'd seen it. Neither did tons of people, which is why they are not making annual Star Wars movies. this moment. Yep. Wow, what a trilogy of episodes. What a trilogy. What a season. What a season. The moral of the

story is this is what happens when you need girl boss too close to the sun. There's a lot here to go through and I think that I am it is easy to like get caught up on the Darth mall shit probably in the night sister stuff but I do just want to say the first of these episodes, Night Sisters

and all of the focus on the relationship between Duku and Ventriss is so good and it comes from a place We're not going to this Filoni zone today We're going to do a different one But in this one he basically says That like they had two ideas coming into this episode

The two things they'd always wanted to do The first one three things they always wanted to do First is give Katie Lucas a multiple episode arc to write She'd written Jedi Crash at this point I think had been in the writer's room for other stuff Also she's super young I didn't realize how young she was when this was happening. She's, like, in Jedi Crash, when she writes a Jedi crash, she's like 17.

And then she's, like, in college during this. Damn. Uh-huh. That'll look good on the college application. The Patrick Kleppek of... Yeah, uh-huh. Two, more of the two, like, goals they had were, hey, we always want to do something from the perspective of one of our main villains. We always wanted to get into their heads, do a little bit more backstory on them.

And then, two, we want to get into what the rule of two is and, like, explain how, what that actually looks like. With the answer being, it always looks like your number two is raising their own number two to try to kill you. Always. Always, always. It's all bullshit. You probably have your own other secondary apprentices going on, too. Everybody is always trying to backstab everybody. And that's why I love the kind of through line of this ends up being one is about Ventriss's relationship to Duku and her.

and her failure to recognize that she repeats the same sins that were put on her in terms of tutelage, and then, like, in a big way, and then, two, that it ends up kind of being a long con to produce for Towson her own Sith assassin, all said, right? Everybody has all these different ways of teaching and learning and getting loyalty to them and trying to bring out something in someone, and Towson is the one who's the most manipulative of all these people to send Savage out into all of this and be there to catch him when he comes back and get to like kind of play at being the caregiver who can now just point him at whatever target she has. We'll see how long that lasts for, I guess. I'm excited about it. The like realization that

she had thought that through plus the being like post the Savage Obi-Wan Anakin fight was like I really deeply felt in that moment that I wanted an AU where Savage kills both of them and the rest of the Star Wars universe is just deeply different for the rest of it. That would be sick. Just let Savage and Talz and run the show for a little bit. I just want to see what it would be like. I just want to see what would happen.

It would be wild because like do you think at that point Sidious is like pissed to have lost this resource he's been training in Anakin this whole? time. And it's like, well, fuck I guess we got to kill the night sister. And it's like, dude, you have to stay on point. We're trying to win this fake civil war that you've constructed for us. And he's like, yeah, we'll do that once we deal with the night witches. Okay. There was a moment where I was like, when Savage went against Ventris, I thought this might be the last time we see Ventress. I was like, this might be, like, Savage might be the new ventress. And I was kind of, I don't know.

curious about it. You get the sense because of the way he's been abused and mistreated and, like, kidnapped effectively, that every single person who's, like, trying to control Savage is playing with fire, that they don't fully respect, that they all think, my handle on the leash is secure. Like, I've got this. And at no point, like, like, the way he's animated, just the expressions on his face, there's always, like, just a deep reservoir of, like,

No, there's a wild card element underneath all of this. And let's say, shoutouts to the one and only Clancy Brown, who was voice acting him. Well, I saw his name in the credits. Are you fucking kidding me? Perfect. Do you want to set up who Clancy Brown is for people who maybe, like, don't quite know the dude? Clancy Brown is, what, a first ballot Hall of Fame character actor who does appear in a lot of, like, sci-fi and fantasy, a fair bit of. of B, sci-fi, and fantasy type

stuff. Most famously. Mr. Crabs' voice actor. Most famous. I mean, that's probably actually most famously. I think Austin, you and I would probably go the same place. Yeah, Detroit Beyond Human. People do love him in that.

People do love him in that. People I don't like. Hellraiser. I think in terms of B-movie sci-fi fantasy stuff, it's Highlander, right? Highlander. It's the Korgon.

Highlander. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My personal go-to fave is Carnival, where he plays brother Justin Crow and is just... What an incredible performance. People don't talk about that show with the other Davids, with David Simon, David Chase, David, what's the... What is the Deadwood, David?

What's Deadwood guy's name? Miltch. But Carnival, which I guess that one's a dance. Daniel. That's Daniel Knopf. But of that era of HBO, Sopranos Wire, I just said the other one I've ordered at Deadwood. Carnival gets underrated. I think it was ahead of its time in terms of audiences not quite being ready for... I mean, it kind of falls in the same awkwardly ill-fated lane as Deadwood in some ways. Just Deadwood ends up having more satisfying resolutions when it does hit the stopping point. Sure, it does. Also, I've not re-watched Carnival on quite some time. I've re-watched like two episodes of it this year. This is me saying, y'all should look up some content warnings on that one before you go diving in, only because I remember it getting into some shit. So know what you're going into. But he's incredible in that, and he's great here.

My understanding from a feature that I watched today is he was a Cloned Wars fan already. And so when Faloni hit him up, he was like down. He was like, yeah, let's go. I'm ready to do it. It feels like a major role, though. It sounds like we're going to be dealing with oppressed for a while, so... I believe he will be back a number of times, yes, yes. Why did they have to call him that, though?

Because they suck. Yeah. I don't understand it, because, like, maul is a verb in the sense of, like, I maul you. I hit you with something. You know, I have a big rake, and I mauled your face with it or whatever. I don't know why I went there. But savage and feral, feral, are both just adjectives to describe just to be shitty with. Unless you're using the noun.

Like, to savage something. But you can't feral something. So. Yeah. Like, we don't know. Do we know Malt's first name? Darth. Well, that's the thing.

That's the thing is his name can't be Moll, can it? Is Darth Moll? Yeah, that's his Darth's name, right? Did he just get to keep his regular name? I also, when I was looking up, Talzin saw a spoiler for stuff. You should not be looking shit up. I've been worried about this.

Natalie, I've been worried about this for months because of some shit you looked up. I was like, oh, you're real close to some stuff I know about that you don't know about yet. There's a big thing I'm worried about people hitting that I'm like, I need no one else to start. I need you all to promise me not to look shit up because there's some big shit coming.

that is like state changing in a way that I need no one to know about. Nice. That I only know about for other reasons. Can we go back to just Knight Sisters the first episode and kind of hit some big beats? Because this is actually not a big beat. This is just, wow, they're getting good at it.

The fights in this whole arc, but the fights in this episode specifically, the opening one between Ventris, Obi-Wan, and Anakin, and then the three Knight's sister assassins going after Duku. I don't know that lightsaber combat has ever been this good in this show as these fights.

Plus force bows. Yeah, true. Force bows are cool. True. Although, okay, hold on, though. Let's be real here. The Knights Sisters are just Knight Else from World of Warcraft

in a lot of, like, crucial ways. Yeah, but what came first, Rob? Dathamere, World of Warcraft. Well, this Dathamir comes later. Okay, but Adathamir or World Warcraft.

These are not the same these are not the same forest switches. They're not. They're not. They're, man, that book is weird.

Anyway, point is, this is the courtship of Princess Leia, correct? Yeah, where a detail I forgot was that

the reason they all end up on this planet is because Han wins the planet in a card game It was a crazy game of poker. Pink slips, but they're planets? Yeah, yes.

And so he takes Leia there, except whoops, it's Imperial Warlord Zinges, like, hideout. Point is, Luke chases them there. Luke gets clubbed over the head by Tenennial Joe, who is an incredibly hot force witch. And she's like, I would be so. powerful if I had a force sensitive mate. All I need you to do is be my mate. And he's like, oh, no, I don't want to be your sex slave. That's such a fair deal.

Yeah, I don't want to do it. This would be horrible. It'd be the worst. Oh, I just, ugh, gross. I hate the idea of just, like, being your sexual play thing. Nah, don't want it. And then she's like, all right, fine. I'll run away with this prince guy.

He was like, cool. Yeah, good. I didn't want, yeah, that's what I want. I didn't want to do that. It was bad, it sounded like a bad deal. But then, Han realizes, you know, it's pretty fucked up that I just won a planet in a game of poker. True. And so he grants the four switches, the deed to their planet.

And Han decolonize the Stathamir that way. So way to go, Han Solo is such a nice guy and such a good character. Like, I fucking love Hot Solo. Shoutouts to Han, you know. Which, by the way, the point at which they drop that Savage O'Press is technically Ventriss's mate is glossed over so quickly. And it's just like in a sentence, it's like, yeah, that's her mate. That's, it's why they think she took him. Right, but the thing there is that that's to suggest that's what does normally happen here.

Yes. You know what I mean? Look, ForceWitt. Night Sisters, problematic. Oh, deeply. Deeply. Allie, what were you going to say in defense of this, I think? Hey.

This is one of those things that, like, this episode especially is, like, one of those moments that really slap you in the face of, like, how, like, systematic and integral slavery is to the Star Wars universe. We're, like, we see two of the most powerful, like, engaging characters we've seen in Talzin, Duku, sitting down, and then just making this deal about buying. this guy. Yep. Yep. Yep. And then and then fucking Ventris goes and just like kills all like has her little trial of let me kill everyone who I deem like unfit to even have a chance at being my slave. I'm just going to kill you instead. Right. Which by the way, it's not even like I'm, you know, hey, this is a really important task. It's like I'm going to turn you into a missile that I'm going to throw at someone I'm mad at. And so everybody else is the fuel for that missile effectively.

Like, I'm basically going to kill everybody else to prove that you're like, this person is going to indirectly kill everybody else or I'm going to if you fuck up and it's a while. Also, again, it's not like she didn't already live this life. She was kidnapped as a child and was enslaved by pirates and then had to go through Jedi training and then was picked up by Duku. I mean, the best thing about this arc, for me, as a fan, is Duku being sad and being torn up about what he's about to do and then fucking doing it anyway. Yeah, in addition to the lightsaber combat, which does look awesome, the, I think, are they animating on, like, what is it, animating on twos where you're, like, holding a frame slightly longer to exaggerate, like, the motion and... I don't know what the exact, I don't know which, I wouldn't speak to what particular technique they are using, but that is the effect for sure.

Yeah, where, like, you have a stronger sense now of the choreography and, like, some of the more, like, striking images that they end up in the middle of the fight. But, yeah, when Duku is given this order, you can tell, like, there is a sadness and regret over doing this. This does not sit easily with him, but then once he commits to it, he does it cruelly and without a backward glance. Yeah, there is no going back. He commits. I definitely thought there was maybe a chance at their eventual confrined. Like I thought when, first of all, when Assange was being like picked up by the, after she gets fucked up in the battle against Obi-Wan and Anakin, when she's being picked up by like the pirates, I thought that was going to be Duku. Like just kind of low-key coming in and being like, yo, I had to do all that because.

you know, the holograms are tapped or whatever, but I'm going to come pick you up. And he just, he didn't, yeah, the commitment is real. The commitment. And the fact that both his hench, hench people are surrogate children in some ways. He has a principle relationship with both of them. And like, he both uses it to exploit them, but also it is not a like completely made up connection. And her realization that he is turned

on her her sadness at like first that he is disappointed in her and then her anger that he's going to like let her die um the fact that first is the disappointment in the fear of failing this guy and the fact this is the this is the model he keeps repeating with his apprentices is of a stern remote abusive father um it's it's deeply sad it makes it hard to regard his apprentices as complete villains because they're so obviously mistreated children children. Right. There is so much to unpack here, too, around racialization. We already know the character's name is fucking Savageo Press. And Rob, as you mentioned, the response Duke who ends up having to him is this sort of like appraisal of a body that is like historically

deeply racialized, especially when it comes to slavery and ownership. The entire thing is the flesh market like... A hundred percent. And this is doubly complicated by some additional material that I've come into control of. Thank you. This one is actually from CyperSurpans. So I got two. Do you want the good news first or the bad news first?

Oh, boy. Let's open on the good. Okay. So here is a propaganda poster that comes from a collection called Star Wars Propaganda, A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy. Let me drop this in here. So this is a poster for a talk called Count Duku, Words of Truth, Leader of the Independent Movement for Self-Determination and Voice of Reason amid the corruption and bureaucracy that strangles the Republic, date and time, TBD, Panos Lecture Hall, Rina University Lecture Series. This is a fictional propaganda poster.

I mean, obviously it's fiction. Well, or is it? That happened a long time ago. Maybe it came to us to time. Of Duku, when he was part of something called the Independent Movement for Self-Determination, which has no details because it only comes up here and is one other thing that seems to have just been like a movement before the Confederacy of Independent Systems existed, where Duke it was publicly out there being like, we need more self-determination. We need as members of the Republic to be like, you know, more in control of what our lives are, more independent from the Senate, right? which I think we can make the case for

given the way the Senate has been. That's what I get how you get there. That is what I'm calling the good news is... Weird, it doesn't feel related to what we're talking about. Well, I mean, it's related in the sense that I do think that you could tie that position up immediately to Duku wants more state's rights, right?

That is what he's arguing for. But then here's the second thing. This is from, again, I'm just going to double triple check here. Yes. for Serpent was reading the Revenge of the Sith novelization. We talked about this. We talked about how we really wanted to know how that book wrote about Duku's worldview and what he saw as his arc and what his goals were. I'm just going to read this page. And this is him thinking

about what would come after the war, right? This is him thinking, we're going to go take Coruscant and then everything's going to go good. The new government. This had been been their star of destiny for lo these many years. A government clean, pure, direct. None of the messy scramble for the favor of ignorant rabble and subhuman creatures that made up the republic he so despised. The government he would serve would be authority personified, human authority. It was no accident that the primary powers of the Confederacy of Independent Systems were Nemoideon, Skokohen, Khoran and Aqualish, Moon and Gossum, Symarithian, and Kouravar, and Gionotian. At war's end, the aliens would be crushed, stripped of all they possessed,

and their systems and their wealth would be given into the hands of the only beings who could be trusted with them, human beings. Dooku would serve an empire of man, and he would serve it as only he could, as he was born to. He would smash the Jedi Order to create a new, not shackled by the corrupt, narcissistic, shabby little beings who called themselves politicians, but free to bring true authority and true peace to a galaxy that so badly needed both, an order that would not negotiate, would not mediate, an order that would enforce. And Cypressurpent expands by saying the general plan that he ends up outlining in the book is that at the end of the war, when Palpatine makes the empire,

Duku's plan is to defect blame all of the war crimes on him being an idealist who grievous in the corporations took advantage of and then become second in command openly to Palpatine. That is Duku's a terrible plan. It's a garbage plan. No wonder he got his head cut off. So, I am going to let you become the face of a bunch of war crimes and then wink, wink, at the last minute, I'll just make you my guy. I'll just appoint you assistant coach. It sucks that we have so far.

It sucks the guy we've stand all this time also seems to be the least. leader of Cerberus from the Mass Effect series, but oh well, human supremacy, it's a common thing in science fiction, I guess. Yeah, that's so weird, because, like, we get a lot of, we get a lot of, like, on the street racism in Star Wars, right? But we don't get, like, something, like, systemic like this. Well, we get it in the empire eventually when they, like, enslave all the wookies, right? And all of the leadership of the empire is human.

And a lot of these motherfuckers, we just never see again. Uh-oh. original trilogy. So like, hmm? Which one was that? The sound you just made, that sounded like,

was that a, was that a, was that a, I'm just saying, the writing that I see on the wall from the Nemoids does not look good. Correct.

Yeah. Uh-huh. So, but I think that's in his character, too, I think like the way that he's written to be this kind of like, aristocratic,

dualist who is like, a count. Like, he is a count. He's literally a count. He's literally a count. He's literally a count. He's literally, Literally count Duku.

Yeah, that's not like, he's, he's not pretending. He's, it's not an affectation. He's the count. Meet the handsome, cultured former Jedi master who's leading the separatist movement. Right. Oh, my God. Him and his little pajamas on this cheek you.

You know, when you think of a separatist, you probably think of a grasping Nemoidian or a cowardly little, little, what's the mere? What species of that guy? What's who? The guy they point to rule over Ryloth. The guy who looks like a minion with the little goggles. You know who I'm talking about now. I do. It's Watt Tambor, but I don't know what species he is.

These are our pictures of the separates. Right, I see what you're saying. Just imagine. That's a Schekoen, FYI. Other Knight Sister stuff. Anything else? Duku's O.P. Well, no, he just plays the endurance game, right?

Like, he tires them out, and then he has his opening, and then he has his final strike. His super meter charged up all the way. Uh-huh. And he was positioned so he could throw them out of the windows, you know? He rope-a-dopes them. Yeah. And he does have the pajamas on. Yeah, he is powered up.

I don't know. The whole force lightning thing. Wait, are you anti-force lightning in the situation? I don't know. It's just so, like, it's so strong. Like, the fact that you can just whip that out, like, any time. I mean, I get it. If you think about video games, how do you, how do you boost your, how do you get ultimate? Uh-huh. Take damage. You either take damage. Yeah. Yeah. Often. Or you do damage. He was doing

a decent amount of, maybe you parry in Seckeros. Did a lot of parrying. A lot of pairing. Very well done. So, I guess. But then he does it to one person and he's like, actually, psych three. I mean, he only has two hands. It was like, wow, Palpatine ain't shit. Yeah. No. Like, Palpatine pulls this move once and he turns to a desiccated little frog by the end of it.

And the second time, you know, the third time he does it, he can't stop and like he just gets blessed. Yes. Meanwhile, he does it to three people and goes back to bed. And it's got locked on targeting. Yeah. He's like, all right. Yeah. He is so untroubled.

I need to pour myself some Camomile tea. Yeah, then he takes calls in the morning. What if multi-attacks are Duku's Force specialty? And that's also why Ventris is good at it. Because she also has a lot of multiple chokes in the series. Oh, I forgot. Yeah.

And I was like, damn, Ventress. Yeah, this is true. She sure does, doesn't she? Also, she's a sick spaceship at the very beginning of this episode with like a sale. Oh, my God, the big fan. Yeah. Well, and the way that it moves independently or cockpit, uh, so that like it makes crazy moves but it she doesn't uh like that's awesome it's very bwing

esk another thing about that opening sequence so again we kind of blew past us but it opens with a space battle that turns into a lightsaber battle um and in that sequence one of my favorite little details is all the banter between obi won and anakin is contrasted with her dead quiet in her own ship she's giving orders but there's no emotion there she's the one who is like stoic and completely focused on the mission and it's just it's just death quiet in a way that's creepy and powerful for who she is. Anyway, she rules. She's great in this episode.

Also, I love that the Force Witch is just to have a totally different force thing going, where it's like, hey, step into the invisibility mist. All right, you're cloaked. Go fuck them up. I was like, God, damn. Yeah, that shit is cool. When she gets there, she's all fucked up, basically, from just time and that fight and stress and trauma.

And that's when they, like, bring her to, like, the aromatherapy chamber. The force aromatherapy chamber. The magic aromatherapy chamber that gives her that flashback. Is your Rae-Shal-Gul? It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. What did y'all think about the flashback? What did y'all think about baby ventress and smiling Jedi ventress?

I don't know. It's like a little too scripted. Like, it's a little tweee to me. Like, I don't know. Why can't she just be evil? The answer here is because they had already written her this way, and this is the other thing the Flonie Zone talks about, is he, Faloni apparently went to Katie Lucas and was like, listen, this is like, this is going to mean a lot to some people. There's already a lot of established venturous backstory, so we can kind of do right by that, even though we're going in new directions.

And so like this particular dude, the guy, like the Jedi who we see her with and who gets killed is named Kai Narik. and he was already written in some book about Ventrists. And so they kept that stuff and kind of made it fit into their original story around the Knight's sister stuff that was not as established as my understanding. I see, I see. I mean, I'm not opposed to it. I just don't want every time we meet, we get a backstory for it to be like this super tragic, like traumatic childhood that, okay, and that's why they're.

all fucked up now. Like, we had like a similar thing. Well, actually, we haven't really gotten to see it with Grievous, but maybe one day we will have like more insight into his backstory where he like talks about it a little bit more. But I mean, the idea of Ventress as Jedi Paduan is super interesting to me. Like, given that she specifically comes from a culture where the force is deployed so differently, and the relationship to the force is, it's worlds apart from what the Jedi's

understanding and relationship to the force is. So I think that I'm really interested in. I would love to see how... How does she reconnect to them? Because we see her leave them as a baby. Yeah. How does she know Mother Talzin like this? You know what I mean? She hasn't, I don't think she's ever been back. She remembers. Yeah. I mean, I think she knows where she's from. I I mean, I'm sure the Jedi who, like, adopted her, made her aware of, like, her background and, like, what that probably did talk about. I mean, I'm sure that she had some predispositions given just, like, a cultural, like, whatever cultural understanding she was able to grasp from a really young age to the point that she's working with the Jedi, that there may have been some differences there that they talked about. So I think she has that awareness. But to my understanding, I mean, all these other four sisters are grown-up women and they don't know who she is.

They don't recognize her. True, true, true. I don't think she's ever really been back. Would it make you like the stuff with her as a teen more if you knew that Katie Lucas said that she wanted to give her a pop punk haircut? Natalie's squinting and considering. I don't know. Wow. I don't know I like her as a bald-headed batty like keep it that's fair

I like the bald sometimes you're 16 and you're like I'm not allowed to do anything I'm gonna grow my hair out yeah I don't get to have a life so I'm gonna at least gonna grow my hair out and do an undercut like yeah I mean undercut Padawan good because you don't have that stupid little braid oh that's true she doesn't have the braid does she in the this is the thing. She doesn't really get like taken into the proper training program. This is the thing I find so funny. She gets rescued. Do we not? I guess so. Yeah. He's like, yeah, I'm going to start. The Jedi don't know that she's out there. They never come looking for what happened to Jedi so-and-so's Padawan. So I think this is one of those things where like, man, Jedi on deployment are just a law under themselves. This guy is just like, cool, a force sensitive kid who needs like a guardian. I will. start training them in my ways and before he can complete his circuit back to HQ and be

like, hey, found a candidate Jedi, he's dead and nobody knows that this incredibly powerful force wielder received advanced training and now was just cut loose in the galaxy. And becomes incredibly sick. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe this was

like a low-key Padawan Jedi apprenticeship. I was like a Padawan on the side. Yeah, my sneaky Padawan. I kind of love that if it's the case because it's in line with what we end up seeing with, that's what she is for Duku also. Yeah. This helps emphasize this thing. Because that's also part of this, right?

It's like, if you, if someone is your teacher, you want them to be fucking proud of you. You want them to be able to be like, yeah, she's doing a good job. Like, check out the work she's putting out there. And in every stage, she's actually getting her emotional need. Her emotional need is being met by each of these teachers. She needs, she needs a protective guardian figure. A Jedi shows up. that Jedi is like taken from her and she's left with this like anger and rage and grief

and Duku shows up to give that direction as well like at every stage you think that's an emotional need being met or being manipulated both yeah sure like this is this is what's happening here like I think she kills the she kills the assassin but like she still left with this she was a kid taken from her tribe as an infant and now once again is orphaned like I think, it's brutal, which every turn, you know, her alienation deepens. Something that I've noticed is that the Sith, when they meet someone powerful, they're just down to bring them in, like, they're like, yep, come on, I don't care how old you are, just come on in.

Not doing a background check. Yeah, just come on in. The Jedi have all, like, this whole stink about Anakin being like seven. or six or whatever, like he's too old, or he's nine or something, I don't know. He's too old. As well, when I saw how much older Ventra seemed when she was taken in by the Jedi,

I figured like, okay, that must have been, like, either a special exception or, like, there was some, you know, maybe she wasn't as official of a Paduan as we may think, or it's interesting to me that I wonder if the Jedi would benefit from, You know, just widening the pool a little bit, you know, just... It's that fear of emotional attachment, right? That's what it comes down to, is they're all shook that like...

You have to be emotionally stunted from a young age. Yep. There's also a weird youth sports analogy here as well, where the Jedi are just this like end product of specialization and specialization, where it's like, no, your path is, if you're going to amount to anything in a really highly specialized field, your path really needs to be set by the time you're like nine. And it's ridiculous, but this is the direction that we see a lot of these things go, right? Like, and the Jedi have fallen to that trap where it's like, well, you know, we can really control the outcomes a lot more if we've just taken in all our candidates by like age 10 and then it's done.

And it's true. It does give you a certain like lack of variance in outcome. It produced some predictable results, but also pretty fucking weird and you're excluding a lot of talent. The thing I wanted to go back to earlier with Natalie was you noted that the witches have such a different relationship to the force, which I love. And one of my favorite things about that, I don't know if other people felt this way, was like, it seems like the witches are more collective with their relationship with the force. It's lots of group rituals and multiple people chanting and a team of assassins going in at once. And both the Jedi and the Sith, I mean, there are moments where you get the Jedi meditating together or interrogating someone with. the force together for instance. But both of them have a real individual like edge where it's

like we're about crafting the perfect Jedi, the perfect Sith warrior, the perfect duelist, the perfect, you know what I mean? Whereas all of the stuff we see, obviously Tausen is the leader here, but the way that they like heal her is with this big group ritual chant. And then I even think that the poison is something that's like presented as if it's like come from a group of people crafting it or something like that, which we skipped, but like, do who gets poisoned briefly. And he still be popping out the force lightly.

Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, it's true. I think that's a neat version, a neat difference between their force and everybody else's. Yeah, the fact that, I mean, yeah, the chanting was one of my favorite parts about that whole ritualistic process that there is, like, language attributed to, like,

like a specific engagement with the force that was whereas the Jedi just be sitting there and be silent whenever they're doing shit that they're just like nothing not talking don't they chant ventures's name but not like in reference to her at some point like in their chant i don't remember which episode this even is there's a bit where they're saying the word the lowercase v word ventriss i think Or Asage. I forget which one it is. I wrote down, they said, Nadi Ma Rez,

Vendu Latren. Hmm. Okay. Ven du la Tren. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, I see it here. I'm looking at Vendulal Tren. Yeah.

Nadi Ma Rees Venn. Uh-huh. Yeah. Do La Tren. Somewhere in here, someone says Asage or Ventress. It might be during the, maybe it's during the Savage.

super shredder creation part they call him super shredder or super super savage in some of the backstory stuff to differentiate him

from regular savage which is very goofy to me another thing that really stood out to me with the Knight's Sisters magic stuff is like the reason it stands out so much is because it seems so centralized to this environment and like the reason why

especially like the cloak thing is so cool and specific is that like when we see a lot of this technology in Star Wars it's like a force shield that's been manufactured and standardized like the

in juxtaposition with like the guy who comes up to Adventress and like injects her with something and like that's played as nothing because that happens in Star Wars all of the time as opposed to this like mystical still juice that they walk through

is like yeah, this universe is fucking weird about this shit. Yeah, I mean. And third impact has happened on Dathamur, which we just passed over. I can't believe we skipped it. Fuck. Oh, no. I really liked the fact that another big part of the ritual in healing,

and also in some of the other rituals, but especially in healing Assas Ventures was like the water of life that they kept referring to. Right. And that that was like presumably something either developed from the world or, like, gathered from the world that was a part of this process. Like, I just like that it's this... Interlocking? What are we doing?

Interwoven, yeah? Interwoven's a good one. This is weaving. Okay. Yeah, that's weaving. I'm making a hand signal. Gestures. Well, I think, so this comes up in the next episode where, again, Duku, weirdly credulous

throughout all this. Although, this guy is a chump. He's like, yeah, I should just kill my... apprentice. Palpatine wants that because that's a normal request and not because he's cutting my let the pillars of my support out from under me at a key moment like no this is just I should do this um but Talson calls and like hey man heard uh or you lost your apprentice and he's like last night how did you yeah he's like fuck word travels fast out here you know and he's like I have no further questions how how does she know

her number like I don't I'm always stuck on this but I know he's like a public figure I guess but like well they make it sound as if they had a previous relationship right oh that's true because at one point she's like I gotta pay you back for that thing

now we're now we're even I want to know what that thing is I really gotta know you say uh the hairstyle the hairstyle dips okay hey is that a hood or is that her that's her hair I think I think it's her hair I think it's awesome I don't know

I can't tell I think it's hair It's braided There's little like It's a hood Let's be real We know wigs exist in this world Is, okay

Is the thing on the front of her head Her head She is like a little bone plate Oh the like door knocker That doesn't have a door knocker attached to it That then is attached to either a hood or her hair I don't know I don't know what I'm looking at

And that's fine I love that her little her little Floaty like Weight I'm on team hair I switched I've been staring Yes

Yes welcome I'm still hood I think it's I think it's like a command strip I can see individual strips It's like a command strip You just stick to your forehead And you hold the hood up

Okay look at this picture of her in a comic That's what I want to see Thank you Thank you for their research Right How they're like separated And it looks like there's two It goes up

And then there's two ponytails that come now Those are tassels That's hair Those are tassels Those hair They're individual strands It's the same color As her whole outfit

That's just because they got a thing about red She's got the diad deck Tows in without hood It's Tassels I'm team Tassels I don't fucking know I'm looking at a lot of images And I can't tell

It's not hair! Look at this Look at this Look at this This is hair This is hair I mean this is this is the hood This is hood. Look.

Dude, this seems looks more like hair. Are you kidding me? It's fucking parted. No, because look at the corners. Look at the... Look at this. The bends.

I'm zooming in. I'm zooming in. The bends. People who can't see what we're pointing at, everyone listening. Include it in the notes. Okay, well, now we've agreed to something. That's fine. Thing is, Mother Talzin has a big, tall, oblong head.

And then it keeps going up to a peak. And covering that peak is long red strands of something that looks like a hood or like a big weird haircut. I don't know that I can make a commitment. Look at the, look, this is cloth texture. What the fuck is old DACA? What the fuck is Palpatine doing in that photo? Why is Palpatine cosplay as a statue of liberty but fucked up? That's a character we even met yet.

We got to meet this character. Yeah. Damn. It's in 2020 Tops Women of Star Wars Powerful Paris, hashtag Pee-P-P-10, Mother Talsin, an old DACA Star Wars card at Amazon's Entertainment Store. I just saw the Tops logo in the lower right. Yeah. What's Tops? It's a card company.

Well, if that doesn't encapsulate the crisis facing the trading card game, I don't know what does I don't know Topps was the bad brand of baseball cards I got this image This is a good one I don't know what's going on here But

I'm going to share this with the class This is an image That is What the fuck It was titled What if Mother Towson sings Sing's Poor Unfortunate Souls To Asoka

True True What's poor unfortunate And then the image is, it's just great. We're going to keep a movement. People can find that on their own time. Makes you think. So, the everything I love that.

Second episode. Oh, yep, go ahead. So they're mysterious because Duku's like, you know what? I'll just swing by Daffir and you can fill me in on this whole like, give me a new apprentice thing. Yeah. And M.K. pointed this out, but I'm inclined to agree. There's a point where she appears to conjure for him a refreshing cocktail. But they're illusionists.

It's just there. But she is happy to be like, oh, look, I created a potion out of the ether for you. And he drinks it. Yeah, he's like, awesome, cool. Wow, there's nothing you witches can't do. And it's like, it was already there, man. You just couldn't see it. She's stumping on you.

She's using the same thing she did to the assassins to try to kill you last night to serve you a drink and you're like, slurp. That's very funny. I hadn't thought of that. That's great. Dooku walking into this meeting and being like, by the way, Talden, it would be great if you joined the separatist. As if he has any leg to stand on. Like, what are you doing? He is nothing to offer.

He is nothing. You're talking about allegiances the night after you kill Ventris. And all you got for that, by the way, was felt between being like, you've proven your loyalty. Not even a good job. Not even a good job. This is the same thing. This is the thing. Is that like, if Ventress had had a disciple, and Duku had said, you had to kill that person, she would have done the same shit.

And she would have called up Duku been like, yeah, I got rid of him for you. And he would have been like, yes, very good, okay. And he wouldn't even said very good. He was like, of course. Yeah, he would have said very good at least. He might just be very good. He might have. But this is like a British English versus American English thing.

Very good actually means shut the fuck up. You know, it's different. Sure. Okay. I'm just saying it's a raw deal. It is. And also, to come up to this, like, much powerful witch

and be like, by the way, do you want to join my the expression on her face when he opens that pitch too. I know. She sort of looks slightly in the direction of the camera like the kind of fucking office. She's Jim. Yeah, she absolutely does the Jim Halpert. I'm good actually. I've got a whole

planet. I'm like, I'm doing well here, trust me. Yeah, I have stuff going on. Then she does have a whole planet. I've got my cult sister. I got my slave village, got my hairstylist. You know, I'm really thriving here. Yeah. So, she's like, let me tell you, let me put you on this.

Since you couldn't tame the female of our species. Oh, my God. I tweeted this. You ever hear a dark? Yes, but what man can tame her? Just sorry, pulling the Simpsons out of my head. So she's like, let me tell. You ever hear of dark?

Darth Mall. And he's like, yes. And she's like, what if you could have a Darth Mall of your own? And he was like, that'd be pretty cool. And she's like, I'll get him for you. And he's like, cool, I have no further questions. Flies back to his HQ. And they send Ventress to go kick up the new apprentice. And so here we go to, this is where I'm like, these are not my knight sisters. These are not my, well, these are night sisters, but these are not my force witches. They are running, like, a local empire with a slave society under them that is, exists to, like, supply them with mates and, like, warriors as needed, uh, via, like, fights to the death. So, like, basically, they've got, like, the first act of Spartacus happening all the time over on the other side of the planet where it's like, yeah, you guys fight for amusement. to see which of you makes us horniest.

And, like, that's just how these poor bastards, like, live. Beyond that, they're just hanging out a nice little village trying to, like, just vibe. It's fucked up because there's another planet where these guys live. And these are just, like, the unlucky guys. This is correct. This is where it's weird. So I was doing a little...

And I don't know why they are these guys here. Why are they here? So they're... In the credits they're referred to as Night Brothers. Yeah. And I'm like, that makes it kind of sound like, well, they're a voluntary order who are like, no, we love being enslaved by the Knights Sisters. I'm sure that's what the Knight Sister propaganda. Exactly.

I got a poster for that too. It's complicated in weird ways because Zabrax, which is what Mall and Savage and Farrell all are, are actually from a planet called Iridonia. Yes, I wrote this down. If, for instance, you know Bauder from Knights of the Old Republic too. that's where he is from, the Zabrax on this planet are part of a Dathamarian, I guess they're not part of a Dathamarian subspecies, but there's like, I guess it's the other way. The Dathamarian witches in canon are a quote-unquote subspecies of the Zabrex native to Dathamere. In legends, the Dathamarian women are hybrids of human female night witches of the courtship of Princess Leic sort and male Zabrax.

And so that part got jettisoned when that book got jettisoned, which would not have happened at the time of which this aired. Adding to this even more is that people thought that Asaj Venturist was a Rottitaki for good reason, because this is what the Rottitaki look like. That's a ventress. That's ventrish to me. So it's a fucking mess.

It doesn't matter. The truth of it all is, it doesn't matter. Ventress was in Borderlands? Ventress was in Borderlands. Yeah. Epic. She looks sassy. Uh-huh.

Yeah, and so then, here on demand, now like this other like imperial force arrives and is like hey looking for slaves and the knight sisters are like we got you we'll send one out to our little like our warrior gladiator

yeah the Olympics it's time for it's time for the slave Olympics let's go and so Vendres she's washed a ton of full metal jacket she lines them all up starts beating the shit out of them and yeah poor Savage and Farrell, where they're both like, we better not get noticed. But

Savage is just too much of a stud. Where he's just like, brr, I'm big. And like, Ventris can suss out. He's big. This might be the guy. And also, he's attached to this slightly less

impressive dude over here. We should again say she susses it out by killing the rest of these people. Yeah. In a series of trials. She promises to kill them. But the first turns don't look like she's killing them. She throws a fucking spear into someone's chest. Well, that guy doesn't. A lot of people just got kicked around. Yeah. And then she has that second round where she's like running around in the dark with like a sight. Oh yeah, they all died.

Oh yeah. Everyone died there. Yeah, that was no, like no response. Also, that weapon is sick. She should use that weapon more often. Yeah, that weapon's really cool. It's like a grappling hook with a scythe blade on the end of it. Also the like giggling trick, but like, I'm a scary person I'm going to giggle. She went to the Joker Academy Yeah, she is the Joker now She's been jokerified by By Duku, Duke of a trainer

And she got jokerified, yeah Yeah, she had stuff to work through I mean, she killed all those guys But she was having a bad week Yeah, yeah Those guys would all die eventually anyway Yeah, I mean, tomorrow The same shit would have happened

Like the way that she just plows through these guys Is unreal to me Like, I can't even It's just how many more villages are like is this was this the first stop and like there could have been like three more of these that she was going to go visit like if this one didn't work out there's so there's no way this happens that often because otherwise you just run out of dudes right maybe i don't know because like what if there's another genet what if it's like all people who are 18 get to go to the the slave for slave Olympics and like there are there's more 18 year olds next year i don't know also they have to go across the planet to she's like Mother... Yeah, but it's a short-speeder bike ride. Okay.

Star Wars time doesn't exist. No, because when Mother Talzin was talking about, she was like, oh, yeah, the men. They live on the other side of the planet. We keep them far away from us. I get... Okay, let me give you hyper speed, hyper speed, or whatever it's called when you go super faster than light speed in Star Wars. Is it called HyperSpeer Speed?

What is that called Star Wars? HyperSpeer Speed, right? Okay, yeah, I get that. But when you get onto a planet, you've still got to go around the planet and you're not going that fast anymore. You can't go hyper speed on Earth, on the ground. Even a plane takes a long time to go around the planet. Yeah. And she was just there anyway.

Well, first of all, speeder bikes are way fast. Like, now, you might be the sea because you think like there's no way they're driving those things that fast through Endor. But they were. They were going like 600 miles an hour. Oh, okay. Wow. That's dangerous. All those trees. It is. I'm actually not sure how those guys got that good to, like, ride through it. The forest. The forest. It was Luke and Leia, and then it was some stormtroopers. They were part of an experimental forest program.

You could read about it in my friends. And that's the thing with the whole race in Phantom Menace, right? It's like those guys, the guggs. Yes. What are they called? Gunggons? What? Gungons? Gungans? No. No, I think, are you talking about Sibolba's race? Yeah, Sibbolba's race, what do they call?

They are called the Dug. Dug. Yeah, the Dug Dugs. I think it's just the Dug. I don't know. Maybe there's like an affectionate, you know, colloquialism. It's like, oh, the Dug Dugs. I'm sure they love it. Yeah, nobody, yeah.

They have the ability to go that fast because they're Dugs, right? That's true. And then. Baby Anakin can do it because he's a gifted child He's in the gifted program He's in the gifted program He's in advanced classes The really cruel thing here is that

Savage gives himself up to protect Farrell And Ventris takes the deal They go back, they do the incantations thing He gets He gets his steroid injections This is where they chant skull, zoom Assange. And maybe that's just like you report to Assange. But maybe

Assange means something like... Skull, Zoom meeting, to Assange. They're anticipating our moment. Star Wars.com was nice enough to post what the night sisters were saying. I thought it would be fun to find out what they were saying in English. My sister has a...

This is from forcecast.net. My sister has a background in linguistics, so I presented it to her in hopes that she could translate it. Pause. that's not how it works Yeah, I'm gonna She doesn't know She can recognize patterns except

Okay, okay, let's, I'll read what she says Alright, so the spell is Geis Khan Erdmach Harden Obstein Geis Khan Lufmach Kriegab Blitz Geis Khan Pyermach Blood Logue Raga

Geis Khan Vosbin Skoll Zoom Asage Erd Blitz Raga bin Erd Blitz Raga bin Erd Blitz Raga bin Erd Blitz Raga bin Zum massage. Here's what she had to say. It's definitely a geese from Celtic mythology, which describes Assange's defeat in casting of a spell on Savage exactly. It has a dramatic base, but it's

not German, most likely closer to Dutch. However, it looks like it's a mix of languages. After a little bit of research and just a touch of creative license, here's my best educated guest. A spell that will make the earth as hard as stone. A spell that will make the air, crackle like lightning. A spell that will make the fire as blood pulse and harmony. A spell that will bind him fast as an asset to Assange. Earth lightning harmony bound to Earth. Lightning harmony bound Earth. Lightning harmony bound to Assange. I buy it. I'm back around. Once you read the incantation, I was like, oh, there's like just straight-up German words in there. Like, this is not that hard to reverse. Yeah, I hear it. I see it. That's just, yeah, blood is in there. And yeah, yeah. Blitz. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's all right there. All right.

See, that's where linguistics does get you. You learn like all the, like, construction of a bunch languages and you're like okay I can I can work from this that's awesome good and also good translation like nice poetry shoutouts to yeah yeah absolutely nice work um speaking of nice work savage is big bigger than before bigger bigger than before real angry uh his front horns get so big his hands turn to claws don't do they yeah his nails lengthen but also the last joint sort of extends and looks um and so he goes from being like a guy with horns to being Super Shredder, you know? To being horns that have a guy under his teeth.

Yeah, basically. And then like kill Farrell. Yeah. He doesn't even look like Farrell. He has no recognition, just none. What he does react to is Farrell begging. And that's when he just like breaks his neck. And they're like, well, ready to ship this guy off.

Huge success. This will not come back on us at all. QA, QA pass. It's so fucked up. I'm mad that they did this. I mean, it makes sense because, you know, we have all these twos. This was his two. Yeah.

And he proved himself to... Wow, he does it, yeah. Against his will. I mean, he has no will at this point. He is a zombie, essentially. He does reach out and start to choke asage basically immediately before she's able to be like, stop it. Don't do that.

Right. Right. That's what she's told. But this is a lot, yeah, but this is like, in a lot of, like, early zombie fiction. Yeah, right. It's very, like, this is very reminiscent of that of, like, their being, hopefully, I mean, with the, ideally. The intent is to bind them. The intent is, I mean, a lot of early zombie fiction is literally slave allegory.

So I think that, like, it. feels very much like just a repeat of a number two sacrifice, of an apprentice sacrifice, essentially. That's really good. I hadn't seen that, but that's actually really, yeah. They just jumped to that part. They jumped to what Palpatine has Duky do right away. Yeah. So in some ways, Sith training is this really like warped, fun house mirror version of Jedi training. Instead of forming attachments, we will make you destroy what attachments you have. you know instead of like controlling your emotions we will torment the worst emotions out of you and then you will throw them on the fire for fuel and that's what will what will make you go basically

but on the other hand you can't help but notice the similarities as well right like the alienation from your society the fact that so much of this does put people in these like dependent relationships on the approval of a remote master. There's even the notion of like apprenticeship, right? Where like apprenticeship as it's supposed to be is that you get practical training from a master of craft and then you are recognized as a master practitioner yourself and you move on. But there has always been a exploitative model of apprenticeship in which you're never

allowed to move on, that you just become like forced labor forever for the master. and that's the Sith model that they've adopted. It is an apprenticeship model from which there is no escape except through violence. And so we see Duku blending the two models. His training is clearly like he is repeating beats from Yoda.

You know, like, oh, you can't move these rocks. That's just your mind telling you you can't move these rocks. But he completes the lesson with electrocution. And then it's like, give in your hatred, like feel your hatred. Fun note on that electrocution, too, is we do get Duku's eyes going that, that evil yellow, that his eyes normally are not that color.

But while he is teaching and doing the electricity, that is the time we see that happen with him, which is a fun little beat. I mean, it's funny because both of these Apprentice Master relationships advocate for deattachment. Right. But they also are entirely dependent on loyalty. and what is loyalty without attachment? Like, how do you have, I mean, this is why the Sith are fucked. Well, that's the thing is they want there to be attachment to themselves.

Exactly. They do want that, and they're open about that. Like, that's the difference is Yoda would never say you're only allowed to be attached to us here in the Jedi Order. He would say, no, no, no, that's not attachment, that's something else. Whereas I think Duku and Sidious would be willing to say, like, yeah, you should be attached to me. I'm the best thing in there is in your life. But just to me, because anyone, yeah, because anyone horizontally, Like anyone else, literally any other person.

You have to be ready to... Because it's a weakness, they would say, to let them get in the way of your... The person you should be attached to the most is actually yourself. And the reason you should be attached to me is, I'm good for you, actually. Those other people, they ain't good for you. Woof. Uh-huh. It's like that.

Sith, watching Whiplash, just getting fucked up, misty-eyed. Yes. Now, this is pedagogy. I mean, the funny thing about all of this is we're talking about these people being forced to kill their kind of number two to the people that they care about and it's like, you know, the Jedi do that too

it's just indirect. It's just one of your apprentices says I'm having dreams about my mom and you go, shut up, it's fine, don't worry about it. Right? You got to let it go. You got to let it go.

Yeah, they're going to die. Like, it's fine, don't worry about it. A senatorial ally is under threat. Drop everything. Scramble the ghost. You've got to go. Yes, 100%. I will say, I think Duku's, like, garden, obelisk garden force training park is sick.

It is cool. If I were the count of a planet, you got to hand it to him. He has a bunch of ancient Sith obelisks that he floats with his mind to show off that this is what the power of the force is. You know? Not bad. It's good. I like, I like Savage, too, though. He's actually really curious about this stuff.

Like, this is all been forced into him. but like he's not at no point is he actually actively like choosing to be evil like he's under he's enthralled to people throughout all this and when he finally breaks out of it all he wants to do is get the fuck out it's the total frankincise monster thing of like i don't want to hurt anyone i just want to get out of this nightmare in into which i've awakened and so this notion of like he doesn't lust after the power duku is showing him so much as you get the sense of how do i get this power so that people can't do this to me Yes. I mean, that's, yeah, that's one of his first question. He said, this power seems impenetrable, essentially. Like, how, is there any way to combat this? And Duku's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This, too, the Sith law says, you cannot have. But I see a bunch of lawbreakers and not a gentleman. I have sight. Wow. This is the crossover I didn't know we needed. Well, Magic Mike 3 is coming. Matthew McConaughey's and Magic Mike?

In the second second one. Is he in the first one, too? He's the Sith master of the stripper gang. Oh, that's right. It's a bad apprenticeship. It's a different movie. Why haven't I watched this? I'm surprised you.

Oh, dude, you should watch Magic Mike. Don't watch the first one. I've heard good things about the second one. They're two totally different movies. Like, I have been told... Yeah. Man hunting needs to be the new type of man hunting over on Waypoint Radio, Rob. Just one end this time.

So, anyway. So anyway. So, Duku's like, if you want to know the rest, if you want to be accepted into the rest of my seminars and be able to order the rest of my tapes, you have to go kill these Jedi. And also, again, he seems to pick up on something where he's like, the Jedi hold up this temple. And, like, Savage says, temple. And what Duke who hears is hesitancy that I didn't hear, but Duke who says, like, hey, no, hold on, it's not like a temple. It's like a military headquarters. Like, don't even worry about it.

These guys aren't, like, priests. This isn't a holy place. Go fuck it up. But, like, he picks up something from Savage. We're, like, Savage's like, I don't want to do that. But he's like, yeah, go do it. also we forgot the awesome weapon yeah uh again his big glave yeah other traditions with the force other hand-to-hand combat weapons uh-huh you know what beats a lightsaber something with fucking

mass yeah uh-huh mass and range it turns out this being able to like slam this huge spear into somebody from a distance is useful it turns out um truly that feeling when you were bestowed with their enchanted plate. Yes, absolutely. Plus with their most potent magic. It's true. It's 100% true. I love it.

I don't know what the magics are necessarily, but it does good work. I think the magics are like they turned him into a linebacker. Yeah. This is what the Jedi are not prepared for. It is like a modern NFL 4-4, like secondary player. Because he literally comes blitzing out of the secondary from behind. the droid army. My guy who has the fucking brainhead

does like the kung fu run up his body like it's a wall and he's like, I'm good, what? That poor little Padawan. I know. I know. I felt so sad for him. Little kid Fistow.

It's just like No, mess. Ripped a kid fistow. Just brutally ragdolled. Yeah, we don't even see the actually. attack we just see his body going it's great and so when the Jedi learn of all this

Obi-one you know always count on him for this he's like this wasn't this is just savage beast show like hatred just animal like meanness and viciousness we got to put this beast down I am so mad it's so fucked up because like Savage is dehumanized from the moment And he's even introduced as an idea. Like, we have this conversation between Talzin and Duku where it's like, I have a cow to sell you. And that's like how they treat him in every conversation, every scene from this. And then for Obi-Wan to come on the screen and like bring that like 200% marker to like 300 is like, I suppose that Obe's. And it's like completely matched with what Duku, like how Duku treats him.

Like this is like, oh, this isn't like unique to Duku. This is just how dudes like this. see guys like this. And also... This is the world. I'm sorry. He's like, it's raw animal savagery. He's a monster.

He's a freak of nature. This thing, this animal. It's like, I'm sorry. Just because it worked? I'm sorry, I'm sorry he's big. I mean... I'm sorry he's too fucking based. You fucking...

I'm like half joking when I said freak of nature because this is the way black athletes could spoken about. Stop thinking about this. I think this is why football was on my brain. I was like, everyone's like, oh, he's just like, it's a fucking animal. I just, yeah, the stuff he does out there.

What are you supposed to do against it? What are you supposed to? I don't know, run a fucking better defense. Yeah. Like, oh. Right. And this is the thing. It's like, no, because an animal couldn't wipe out a Jedi in their detachment of

clone trooper guard single-handed. I think what you mean is mighty fucking warrior. that we just were not equipped to deal with. Right. We got beat, is what you just need to say. Yeah, he's explicitly well trained. Yes. He, he's just epic, and they aren't, and they're jealous.

And they aren't. So they have to be racist. Apparently. Before we move on to this third episode, I want to say two things. One is, I did remember to look at my notes, and my notes do have this note from Star Wars.com that says, as he did in Knight Sisters, duku makes mention of an old allegiance with Mother Talzin, though the full nature of this association is yet to be revealed long ago, presumably when he was a Jedi, Duku helped Towson out of some manner of predicament.

Given Towson's pension for long-term planning, she may have been concocting this scheme since that day, which is extremely funny. That is very funny. So that's one of them. And then the other thing is, I just want to note the Filoni zone for this is very funny, especially you've already watched the whole arc. It's not funny enough to watch the whole thing. But he does open it by saying, you know, the fans really love Darth Maul. And this whole arc really came together when Lucas said that he wanted to bring back Mall. And we were like, well, George, you really made that hard on us when you cut him in half.

And then we landed on this going to Mall's hometown and getting another one, quote unquote. Another one. But wait, they are going to go find Mall. I know. It's such a fucking bait and search It's so funny Because maybe you watch this feature red Immediately after watching the episode

You don't know yet what's happening The third episode You know Yeah So he doesn't show all sad Yeah I think there's a version of this Where they don't really make us care about Savage

And it's just like This is the one we find out Mal's still alive He is so well characterized By the end of this Moll is like A fun cameo at the end But like Savage is the star of this

And like Moll is now just a step in his story is how it feels, which is something. I'm going to be so disappointed the next episode that we watch and it just doesn't have Savage in it. I'm just going to be fucking... It's not going to have

some other weird force stuff, so get ready for that. Whenever Savage is not on screen, Natalie's asking. Where is Savage? I want to see him. I want to see him. I want to see the oppressed. I want to... Oh. Did we say

that Count Duku's getting ready to kill Sidious? I mean, no, but yes, right? I mean, that's the premise of the training. That's the premise of having an apprentice to begin with, and it becomes clear here because he says it outright, right? At first, it's assassin. I just need, like, the personal assassin to do assassinating for me.

But then he recognizes that Savage is really good at what he does and what he's been trained to do. So he's like, yeah, you and me, we are going to kill Sidious, and we are going to rule the galaxy. The fact that Force Lightning only appears to piss Savage off is a huge step in Kill and Palpatine plan. Yeah, yeah. Loyalty is blooming, blooming between these still. And it's, again, it's just such a good illustration of like this is how it always isn't with the Sith. You're always plotting to, like, get the other dude before it's too late.

And then you, like, settle into your shit and are like, okay, I'm the best now. And you're just going to make sure your underling doesn't come around on you. Yes. It's a raw deal. It is. It's a bad system. But, okay, so the reason we end up here is because there used to be more Sith and the Jedi hunted them to extinction until there was only one left. And so it's like, that's why they all pretend.

Like, again, I like to think about the rule of two, the way you think about, like, if you're Catholic, like, you have to make more. Sins. Okay. Where, like, you do them. You just have to, you're not supposed to do them, but you're going to do them. Yeah. You're going to do it. But try your best.

But like, they give you some guideline. Try your fucking best. It ain't the rule of 200. The rule of two means at most you're still going to end up with, what, 10, 20? But you're not going to end up with 2,000. Because that's the number you got to worry about. Because once you hit 2,000, the Inquisition is on. The Jedi are coming for you.

People know who you are. I see. I see. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I'm just saying you'd have like 20. You don't know. You can't because if you have 20, you have 400.

Because each one is going to get another You know what I mean? There's like a Spartan training element Where it's like If you're smart enough to do this You're gonna piece out If you can't get the master You're gonna piece out in ghost

Like that's the other part is How are you get more Sith? Because eventually Like there's going to be a bunch of like Crypto Sith out there in the world You just like couldn't like Take down their master Or their master's master

And so now on Lamb creating their own, like, Sith relationships out there. And you get the thing that I love in Star Wars of the Dark Jedi who goes out there and tries to find old Sith relics and being like, well, I'm not, I don't have any direct connection to the Sith, but I do have this cube. And this cube, that shit's evil as hell. And it told me that if I do a ceremony here on top of this volcano, I'll get superpowers. And then, uh-oh, I'm possessed by an ancient Sith ghost or whatever.

Like, that happens all the time, and it's sick. Where is it happening? Why haven't I? You got to get in the EU So bad Why are people talking about this? No one is talking About the Dark Jedi rituals

On top of volcanoes I want to talk about it I know We gotta read some comic books Is the thing We gotta talk about I think some of it's implied By visions though

Which you should Absolutely check out On our Patreon Shoutouts to visions Yeah And yeah Go listen to it on our Patreon Patreon

Patreon.com Slas Civilized Thank you The one A name that only Gains in in prosperity as we continue down the show and its notion of what civilized and uncivilized

look like. Anyway. Anyway. So, Duke is like, that went well. I dig it. Now I need you to bring me King Kutunko. Don't know what his plan was. We'll never find out, I guess. Yeah, I wish we knew. I'm actually curious, like, what was the game plan there? I think it was just punishing Kato for siding with,

For that time he let Jar Jar do magic tricks while everybody else snuck food to Rilov? He's got to die for that shit. He's got to die for letting that whole dinner party go down. I bet it's like, listen, look how easy we can touch you. You're going to side with us now. Yeah, he was pretty pissed when Savage actually brought Kato dead. Yeah. He was a little upset by that.

He dragged Katoonko's body across a lot of the ground. Like he kills Katoonko Put him in a shit And then just drags him He doesn't lift him up over a show He's a big dude He can lift Katoo up No

He's like nah, you're just on the ground While we're on it I want to give Kato His credit for pulling out a sword True When Savage approaches him He's like I'm not going down without a fight

I got the ceremonial sword here I got it in the pre-order from Monkey Island It doesn't I appreciate the jess That's true. Really giving me Mirkat energy from him. Yeah, it's tough.

The thing we should say is while he's on his way to King Ketunko is when we get Obi-Wan and Anakin going to Dathamere to investigate what the fuck is up. Yeah. We get a closer look at some of their dubious decisions with character models. I think Obi-Wan's eyes are too big. Uh-huh. Something's off here. They're so big because they're taking. in so much of the world, Rob.

I don't know. There's some battle angel shit going on suddenly with the way he looks. I don't know. Everyone looks a little more squished. Yeah. I can see it. Yeah, I'm looking. I'm seeing what you're saying. I think new Anakin looks pretty good. Like now he's starting to converge

with Revenge of the Sith Anakin, which I dig. But there's Obi-1. I know we have one more model update coming, so maybe we'll get a better Obi-Wan in the end. I don't know. Fingers crossed. We also get these sick force bows, which someone mentioned earlier. The night sisters have these sick.

Obi-Wan's out there with his phrenology calipers and is just like, what's up? Zabrock, Dathamer, dudes, tell us what's going on here. And that's when they're like, oh, our guy Savage was taken away to be a mate. And Obi-Wan's like, yeah, that tracks. No further questions. By the way, the Jedi just knew all this shit was going on. Like they knew about the night sisters. They're like, I don't give a shit.

again again I don't give a shit not ours yeah yeah right yeah there's in fact like a good Obi-won moment where it feels like he has like an outdated

encyclopedia of races it's like oh Savage is from Dathamere like Darth Mall and he's like wait I thought he was from somewhere else it's like you gotta you gotta update your app

bro like you're caught slipping about that well and Towson now is just like it's our first inkling that just total chaos agent here where she's like I'll tell you exactly where he is right now just let me make sure all these pieces

converge to a point meanwhile she's like the Jedi like so this does trigger she's like yo Ventress the Jedi are on their way they found out not going to get in and how but they found out what's going on and where savages, so you've got to go do this now.

And Ventress, quite rightly, is like, he's not ready for this. He's been on the job for like two days. Yep. And, yeah, Talzin's like, sorry, I think you got this. I believe in you. Which also sure recasts her style of mentorship, where she's like, where some see failure, I see opportunity. No, Ventress, believe in yourself.

Go take on the most dangerous Sith master in the galaxy. You and your baby Sith. Who has no real loyalty to you? Yeah. By the way. Just swing away. Yeah, yeah. Also, we should say that there's a bit where she tells Obi-Wan and Anakin, she's like,

oh, you know, there is, there reports that there's a male Dathemeer on the loose. You know, we don't have any control over the males, which is like the biggest crock of shit, incredible lie. Neither of them catches on to that. I mean, they both say that, like, I bet nothing happens that you don't already know about. And she's like, well, I guess I could look into my crystal ball and see what we see. Oh, Toydaria. And it's, they're just, she's better that everybody and everything.

Yeah. And Obi-One season is like, mall? And I'm like, bro, you just saw like 40 other of this guy. There isn't just one of these guys, bro. He doesn't even look like mall. He doesn't even have red, bro. He's yellow. Like. I felt like you.

Which is a bad one. by the way, saturation low on this hall of display. I guess to the, to, for on, in Obi-Wan's defense, Darth Moll did kill his boy. He'd kill his master. So you should know what he looks like even more so. But when you pulled up, then when you pulled up to the squad, you should have been like, mall here?

Like, what do you mean? He's running into these guys every day of being like, you're a mall. Like, no, like, you should know the difference. different. Yeah. Look, unprocessed trauma. He's got it.

We all got it. Right. Yeah, you know Yota didn't give him shit when he came back. He was like, yeah, sorry about Quigon. We'll do a funeral, I guess. Maybe. Off you must walk in. Wasn't Quigon's funeral?

Like, on the boo? They just set him on fire, yeah. On the boo? They didn't even bring him back to Corrassan. They didn't even give him a state funeral. And years later, Padme brings this up. Oh. Anyway, so, we get to, also, quick thing.

He was born on Corrassan. They didn't even bring him back to Corusc- He was, not only is he, I just looked it up, and I'm going to exit out of this before I see something I shouldn't see. But Quaghan was born on Corrason. Take, take him back. Don't do the shit on Nabu. The fuck?

Anyway. So, also, King Katunko. If I could fly, I would turn off the elevators and hover things in my throne room. And while I believe that Savage is very strong and big, I think if the hover platforms had not been there, I think he would have had a real standoff situation that would have been tough to navigate, because I don't think that spear is going to fly super fast. Well, he has the double-bladed lightsaber at this point. Yeah.

Duku's giving him that, so he could throw it and do like the force saber. So Ketunko does make an escape. He does trust his wings and all, he should just go on up water.

I would just simply fly away. I would have a door behind me I could go into and I could lock. Maybe that or maybe even an up high door that you go. Right. Only you can only fly up to.

Yeah, you only fly. Yeah. Or other flying species presumably could also do it. Yeah, right. But Toydarean shaped. Oh, speaking of shapes, did anybody else notice?

the perfect square that was cut into Count Duku's castle by lightsabers with the trio. Okay, good. I don't know if that was Asage doing it, but if it was, it's evidence that she was trained. It was the blue lightsaber. It was her. She was clearly trained by a Jedi to cut perfect squares. So, there you go. Anyway, Savage wrecks Obi-Wan and Anakin while they come to try to save King Katoon and drops one of those hover platforms on them in a way that I think should have killed them, frankly.

Agreed. let's see what happens yeah again you're going to alley's previous a u what if one of those two fucking died yeah and then he force pushes their ship away right he's real prococious like he's like i'm gonna spike their uh ship and just tosses it but then they just take a toy d'arion yacht but it's a good thought yeah uh so he takes poor dead king katunko uh back to Duku, and Duku's like, you dummy, you screw up, you idiot, I told you to kidnap him. This was so easy. How could you not, how could you not, unaided, walk into a sovereign ruler's throne room and

kidnap him from among his guards and drag him back? He calls him an ignorant beast. Yeah, I was going to say that. It's like, it's all right there. It's all in the surface. Not a single person, like, approaches him. Like, he's a person. Like, from the moment the spell is done on him,

everybody only calls him a monster. Yep. Including the episode. Including the episode titled Monster. Yeah. Farrell was the only one who saw him for who he, like, as a person. I bet he had boys in the, you know, in the... Right.

I don't know, but when you got, when we landed there, everyone was fighting each other. And he and Farrell were just kind of like, okay, like, let's... Yeah, okay. Well, that's because they all have to get ready for the day when they have to fight. Like, it sucks. But, like, again, like, see also Spartacus, where everyone's like, I guess we're all co-workers here and we like each other, but also we have to be ready to kill each other at the drop of a dime. Yeah. Yeah, and so Duku, just being a real piece of shit.

But then Ventris comes in and does the little ping on his forehead. It's so good. This is, it rules. We didn't mention this. This is my favorite bit of witch magic that we do. seeing this but every time they do like a little thing with him there's like this dog sound that happens they like flick his forehead it goes dog it's good it's very bell book and candle honestly just in in terms of like very 60s witches uh type thing with music cue and so then yeah

she's like aha he's actually my savage beast let's get him and they try to get ducu but ducu immediately is like, no, I can take you all on. I'm at least 12 levels above you. Like, it's just not even a thing. Y'all just load it in. Like, I've been grinding. I've been grinding. And then Ventress

is like, you sack a shit. You worthless piece of garbage. And he's apologetic. He's like, I'm sorry. He's just too strong. It's so painful. And this is the part that that really gets me about

about Savage's, like, his interiority and, like, his, like, self-sovereignty, because in this, in this moment, he, and in many, many times, like, when faced with Duku's, like, orders and things like that, especially when it comes to the force, he's like, I cannot do this thing. He's not, he's not, like, just, just raw power, and that's it. and there's no, you know, nothing else behind that. He is able to recognize his short, he's still able to recognize his shortcoming. So he still has this like, like this degree of free will to him, which he is not overconfident. He does not have the sort of, like every other character we've talked about this episode actually does think of themselves as kind of a fucking big deal.

Yes. And I'm not sure he does at all. Like, I think he's able to win some fights, but he doesn't, I don't think he ever shows pride in those wins. No. Do you know what I mean? Like, again, I think it's important that he drags King Ketunko behind him. He isn't like, ah, trophy. You know what I mean?

He's like, here's some shit I did. I don't know. Even when he kills those two Jedi, he's like happy to be to have succeeded, but it doesn't come across as like a great deal of confidence in himself. No. He does feel like he badly needs and wants, you know, to feel like he's a successful, good person, and he doesn't get that from literally anybody. No, which makes, like, his questioning Duku of, like, is there a way to combat this power?

Like, it still feels as if all of these sort of missions he's completing for Dugu are a means to an end, where the end is his freedom, essentially. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And, I mean, the fact that he, you know, after Ventris berates him throughout this fight, he eventually turns, and he's, like, on his knees begging. Like, I can't do, we need to bail. Like, we can't win this fight. And she is just humiliating him. And he turned.

And Duku was electrifying him again and again and again. Yeah, it's just, it's just an awful, awful scene. And he turns on both of them and fucks him up a little bit. And then Dugu's like, J.K., I can really fuck you up way more. And so he starts to run away. And where does he go? but home. Right.

I mean, first he fucks up. I guess he gets past. He wrecks everything in his path. Like, I mean, this is the thing I love is everyone's like just berating him and berating him. And the entire, so this is the other thing is this notion of he needs to learn discipline. He needs to be trained in all this stuff. And here, what's kind of juxtaposed is he actually has a tremendous amount of natural strength. What people are doing by training him is teaching him submission to their will.

Right. They're not actually giving him. much at all like just rudiments of like here's how you use dark side power but what they actually mean what the gift they're giving him is discipline and obedience to them and here when they finally push him beyond those lessons and he just like explode almost literally explodes but like also just breaks the breaks the guardrails of all the control they tried to put on him um it turns out that he can throw them around as easily as he did those Jedi. And by the way, it's so serious that Duku's like, I'm leaving. He does not, Duku is like, I'm not going to fight

this. He's, he's done. I got to go. He hopses there's a little escape patch. It's so funny. Everyone gets a drain plug. Yep. He just opens that shit up, hops in, and he's out. Except Ventress chases him and they have another final confrontation in the hall also. And if, and if O.B. and Anakin hadn't showed up he might have gone after them and just fucking like that would have been it the timing on that is so fun the timing on Assange and

Duku jumping in the escape patch and then a second later Obi-Wod and like I this stuff bothers me sometimes and it's like oh the timing didn't line up right for the important scene to happen but here it's just it doesn't I like it a lot here for some reason I think it's just fun to have them

show up a moment after all of the drama hit and they're just like what the fuck And my look, okay, here this guy is. We'll take him also a little forward, a little foreshadowing here of Obi-Wan and Anakin. One of them says, we'll take him together, which is the line that they use when they go finally kill Count Duku in Revenge of the Sith, because Anakin previously did not do that in attack of the clones. Anakin went in by himself in attack of the clones and got his hand cut off. And so the we'll attack him together thing is implicitly being like, okay, this time. you're not going to get your fucking hand cut off

because you run in by yourself, bud. So, yeah. Fun references. Better reference than... I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think there, was there a bad feeling about this? No. I don't think there's a single one, was there?

But there was a Darth Vader reference and they do it, they do it, and then they do it in the flashback when he's like, you failed me for the last time or whatever. Isn't that a Darth Vader thing? I was thinking of something else, which is in the first episode,

there's a moment that it sounds like. like Vader's breath hits for a second and I don't I couldn't I went back and listened for it like four times you'd be like what are they trying to do here and it might have just been a sound effect that sounded too much like Vader's breath I don't know which speaking of the voice effect on

Mother Tellson is so cool so good it's so good it's so good she's like layered she is like in Dragon Ball when you characters who've done like the fusion dance and their let their voices get layered on top of one another she has that going on but with multiple voices classic my mind again went to protoss actually as well

sure yeah I could hear it but I guess the the night elves to dark templar thing it's a it's the the Venn diagram is a circle we're all telling on ourselves in various ways yeah here's the fucking turn though because you expect well he broke

loose from Asage's control so like surely mother Talzin is going to have something to say about that or put him back under control. Instead, she's like, oh, poor baby. I'm so glad you found your way back to us. Come here.

Get him some cocoa, somebody. You know what you need? Your big brother. And he's like, what? And she's like, I know. You thought all your brothers were dead. But what about your biggest brother? And then we see the crystal ball.

there he is, Darth Mall. Uh-huh. Yep. Secluded on the outer rim. Uh-huh. The thing is, well, I guess the thing this guy, the problem he really isn't to solve is, like,

he needs security and he needs, like, companion shit. Yeah. I don't think he needs lessons, per se. Because I would say, in terms of, like, I don't know how to start Darth Mall do that shit. He flattened, like, a... Yeah, but he butt.

It's been years, and he somehow lived from getting cut in half. So maybe he picks some tricks up. Also, we don't know what Towson. We don't know what the Towson Mall, like, relationship is. She already save him and help him and teach him shit. Maybe he already knows stuff from that. We just don't know. Also, she gives him, like, a medal or like a pendant or something, right?

Yeah, it's like a... Charmlet race. She's like, this is your compass. Yeah. Follow your heart. Your heart will be your guide of key. Your heart will be your guide of key. Um, fuck.

One half of a pal-poo fruit. I can't, I can't wait until Savage oppresses in Kingdom Hearts 4. Please. Oh my God, it could happen now. Fuck. It could happen. It could. It's not gotta, but imagine.

Imagine he did a Clone Wars world. Imagine Mickey had to be like, hi, Samosch. You still have good in you. He's like, yeah, duh, I know. Yeah, I never wanted this shit the fuck. Oh. I have a couple of notes. the end of this episode. I have a few more notes. One, everyone should listen to the Game

Study Study Buddies episode on Ron Sierra's The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which is a book about pedagogy that I think is super interesting because it's about a particular model of education in which it's the dominant form of education, which we think of the school teacher as the person who has the knowledge, who then gives the knowledge to somebody else. And Ron Sierre, who's a kind of cultural theorist, critical theorist, writes against that model, pulling from a particular French school teacher, Jean-Jacques, what's his last name, Jacques, or something like that, who the story on this dude is so funny. He gets, he gets, um, he gets hired to go to Belgium, to teach people, to teach, like, students there, French. And he

doesn't know Belgian and they don't know French. And so he sends them a copy of a book that's in Belgian and French. And he's like, I'll be there in a month. And he gets there and finds them speaking colloquially in French and be like, what? That doesn't make any fucking sense. And it completely blows up his mind about like what education can be and how it can be participatory and how you can trust your students in different ways. Anyway, read that and think about what a forced school based on that style or go listen to that episode of Game Study Study, Study Buddies

and because I couldn't stop thinking about like, what would that style of force teaching be like? It would be sick. That's one, two, important one. There's a bit where someone says, focus on your power building, but the subtitle is

focus on your power building. And there's no dot, dot, dot. And it's extremely funny to me. The thing about the Sith being like inside of you have a building and it's your power building. Go inside of your power building. The third thing is I'm a Faloni zone.

Wait, before Faloni Zone, this episode had one of my favorite lightsaber shots we've ever seen. And it is when Ventris is running up the hallway towards Count Dugu. The camera actually tracks with her lightsaber. So her lightsaber is like the majority of the screen and like we're pushing forward with the lightsaber. And I just think that's a fun perspective that we don't usually get. Just being in like this weird lightsaber, POV kind of vibe.

I remember this shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in general, all of the action sequences in this are getting more and more inventive in the way that they're doing choreography and shooting these scenes. So like keep it up. Yeah. Well, two of these were directed by Jean-Carlo Volpe. It was like sort of a stand-by director on Avatar and has been tagged in for a lot of the momentous ones

of this series as well. Yeah, I was just going to say, I'm sure that there may be some shots like that in the newer, in the more recent trilogy, if I'm, like, really thinking about it, but I also haven't seen that a long time, so I just liked it.

Yeah, it was good. We should just also say that, like, that fight ends up being Duku thinks that he has a sage, and then she does the classic trick that we've seen her use before. She stabs the steam pipe. The steam pipe blinds him.

She escapes. No, she doesn't. She forces his lightsaber down into the pipe. Which is pretty cool because it's not just that she's, like, doing a little trick. She actually is able to exert, like, control over him in order to, like, change the direction of the fight, which I love. But it's also, it is reminiscent of when we first saw her kick ass against... She loves those steampipes. Oh, yeah.

Well, Lumina. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luminar what? Unduly. Dooli. Lunguera and duels. I said Luminaro with zero confidence You were right

I did not expect to be right You nailed that Thank you I'm ready for Philona zone All right so this is the final Flononi zone for this arc What do you all think the Flonio Zone for this arc should be The final episode of the Cowboy Hat

What do you think it'll be That's not what I meant But okay cowboy hat vote yes Should we vote Cowboy Hat yes or no I mean you can I don't know if he's in the thumbnail Oh he is He is he's in the thumbnail with a cowboy hat

I mean I think he'd want to talk about The moment he turns on both of them. The pivotal encounter between the three dark Jedi. I think it's going to be about force obelisks. Sure. Yeah, the stone garden. The stone garden. Okay, ready? Three, two, one, go. Slopper. Slopper. We're getting all sorts of shots from the various arcs there. Is this the garden? Lightning. Are you up for the check? Are you up for the check? of putting your hate to better use. This whole arc, wow, so powerful, Savage.

In Witches of the Mist, I had an opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time. And that was bring Republic Commandos into the... He focused on the arc troopers? Now, I played the game, Republic Commandos. He's talking about the video game Republic Commando. When it came out, I really loved that game. And I've said before that the cinematics from that game, really kind of influenced me as to what I thought the Clone Wars could be.

It had such a great, you know, look at the world. Everyone is distraught. From the trooper's point of view. This is also just footage of Republic Commando, which he keeps calling Republic Commandos, by the way. The group of clones that brought back the bodies of the two dead Jedi were not Republic Commandos. It occurred to me, this would be really great to me. Commandoes that were bringing back the bodies of these Jedi.

So I felt very strongly that the fans deserve it. I wanted to put the commandos in for a while, and here was the opportunity. I think this is a masterful troll. I really do. We didn't even mention this scene. Yeah. It did jump.

I did notice it. Yeah. I just thought they were master chiefs. It was a very great thing the crew did here because they weren't in the initial design. Shut up. And there's a limit to how many things we can actually make in any one episode. And it just happened that, which is the of the mist, because we had two previous episodes,

it wasn't as heavy as a normal episode would be. Yeah, definitely not a heavy episode. Really late in the game, I said, you know, we really need these Republic Commandos. And the crew, as always, responded brilliantly. We had designs done. He was like, we have a little bit of budget. Can we put my faves in? You know, they're, of course, already designed, which made it really easy for us to, to

We had these maquettes that really gave us a great guide. I don't want to speak over it. It keeps going. But here's the fact-top thing is that you're Dave Poloni, right? You're like, I love the Republic commandos. They're so important. They're so cool. And the thing that you say to yourself, they're going to deliver a body?

This is what the commandos are doing now. Yeah. It's below them. They're commandos. They brought back crucial intelligence. Yeah. No, they did it. The video.

Here's a video of our dude's getting rocked. It cuts off before they see the phone call, which would be the import part. That's true. He did also note that the water effects were good when that was... Yeah, they were fine, but they weren't exactly, like, beating up on the guy's faces and, like, their hair. When I saw that armor, I thought it was just like, oh, we've gotten post-beast armor. There's been an upgrade. Oh, there's the Zilloo Beast, right?

What I had written here was when they came on... on screen I wrote the following note who the fuck these clones are looking like a goddamn video game and then I looked up the Star Wars.com and said these clones escorting Halsey's body into the Jedi Temple are the four Republic commandos

created for the 2005 LucasArts video game it's literally those characters so if you were like what happened to those guys this is what happened. They deliver bodies now. Yeah, uh-huh I'm convinced they're pallbearers that Faloni is determined, nay committed, to pointing out the least interesting part of every episode

in the Faloni zone. Yeah. It matters to him, though. I think it truly does matter to him. I don't give a fuck. Like, bro, you literally had so much. I mean, here's the thing. That it opened with like 15 seconds or 25 seconds to talk about of like all of the high moments of this arc with like it doesn't even open with showing these commandos because they don't matter to this arc.

It's all it's incredible. Well, I think I think the real the real thing that's happening here is nobody trusts Faloni to talk about the actual material like the actual narrative material of these fucking shows. trust Faloni to talk about racism on Dathamere. Nobody wants Faloni to talk about it. So instead he talks about the fucking four master chiefs that

he really liked as a kid. Master's chief, please. Master's chief. He's you know what? He's just highlighting the little details that people might overlook. You know, everyone looks, admires the cathedral, but who notices

the beautiful intricate carving? You know, at the altar. Not many people. So that's... Phelone does. He wants to call it out. Like, look, I created an inlaid... I inlaid the archtroopers from Republic Commandos.

From Republic Commando on the GameCube. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. The fans deserve it, as he says. I like that he just wears rebel pilot wings. Just... That's his swag.

That is his swag. Please, please excuse my swag. Yep. My dope-ass swag, sorry. My dope-ass swag. Thank you. I would need to see his score as Next Wing versus Tie Fighter. Probably dismal.

Oh, sure. Wow. You don't think that he was playing that game? I bet he was. I bet he was playing a lot of it. Yeah. You just think not so good, though. No, he's probably good at it.

I don't know. He seems like a gamer. Dave Philon, If you're listening to this, come fight us at Star Wars squadrons. Pick your, pick your crew. Yes. We should do that. We should 1V1 Fallonian Squadron.

This is the thing, is that like, whatever our differences with this show, it seems like it was hard to make. I'd play a video game with anybody who worked on this show. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I'm down. In fact, I guess we're not going to discuss it, like, in depth, but you would link to like a 16-minute, like. behind the scenes on this arc talking about like

different beats of the story and talking about with writers or whatever and I thought that it was interesting that they kind of set up that the way that Clone War stories tend to get written is that Dave Filoni and George Lucas will be like okay here is the overarching plot of this

writers you go hit the minute to minute yeah it was one of those including like footage of the writer's room where it's like Lucas is there holding court at the top of the desk and it's it's a it's fun to think about that in relation to some of our previous conversations around how involved is lucas on this and it seems like i mean one of the things pheloni ends up talking about there too is the thing that rob already mentioned which is like we've seen the night the night uh sisters before we've seen the witches

of dathamere these are georgies witches of dathamere these are what he thinks the truth is and that's the canon because it's george fucking lucas so the whole idea came to be able to Colverton, get your hands off my knight sisters, George. But maybe George already sat down with that dude and was like, there are, there's a place called Dathamere, and there's some witches of the force there. And now he's getting to do it himself, you know? Hold on, hello. Did anyone else notice Katie Lucas's button in this featurette that says, I heart ethics?

Fucking queen, let's go. she does have an I-heart ethics button on her leather jacket that's right I heart it I do love ethics I heart it I heart it it was a different time you know but then she's like I read this book where women were controlling the men and I decided to do it for death and be like misandry rules okay it that book was like the early 1910s so you got to get a little bit of 1910 she was in school Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She wrote, she wrote, she wrote her land, which is like a feminist, like, sci-fi book, you know, from the 19, from 1915. Gotcha, gotcha, got, so. I think he meant the original book of, of Kathamarian, of Space of Night Witches, it's from 19th done. I was like, Austin. Natalie. H.G. Wells is the courtship of Princess Leia. Oh, my. They're a cultural cornerstone.

They're real. This happened. We can't just do that bit again. We can't. It already happened. It was good before. The only two people I think I would not play video games with that worked on the shows, whoever was responsible for naming Savajo Press.

Nope, playing with them. Dave Filoni. And whoever was responsible for naming. Misa gonna die. What was that guy's name? It was Amma gonna die. They're all awesome. They're all winners here on the Clone Wars.

However, as you might be hearing, it's time for us to call it. Uh-huh. In case it gets edited out, Mina, the dog, is barking in the background, lovingly. Lovingly is how I would put it, yes. See, that's loving

She said Subscribe to us On more Pay for my treats and toys You got the treats covered But we do need help paying for her daycare Okay That's the real Mina expense

Where like the red carpet Like her fancy feast is day of daycare Yeah Where she's like Pay for Mina's gifted child program It's true She leads meetings of the other doodles They bow to her authority

As the most poodleish of the doodles You know She is their You know She is the Sith master Of the dog daycare Oh my god I should get a fucking Sith hood outfit for her

You should I really should She wears clothes She likes them She loves clothes She's always saying this What are we watching next time, Rob? Oh, I don't know

Okay, I do It is overlords Altar of Mortis And Ghosts of Mortis Okay I don't know anything about what that means You don't Let me tell you

Let me tell you I cannot wait For y'all to see this shit because it is an arc about the force is all I'll say and I don't remember liking it whenever I watched this the first time like a decade ago is this the arc that made you bounce off Clone Wars no because I definitely remember like a hot cat what empress who had some slaves I think that's season four so so I think I at least got to the beginning of season four and that's where I stopped not because I was like mad at it but I just don't remember what

happened after that. Do you say hot cat empress though? Yeah, what about it? Nothing, I'm just into it. Yeah, there is. Her name is, she is a name. I'm not going to say what her name is, but she's powerful. She's evil, if I recall. She's like straight up evil. I don't remember a particular. That's not the feline representation I wanted, but I'll, well, I'll make of her people, or maybe it'll be a good one in there. I don't know. What do you want for me? I don't remember how that arc went. That was the last episode. I barely remember some of the, there's stuff coming up that I have no memory of. So I must have just like, I'm, I think I'm slipping into, yeah, I had it on mode.

Do you know what I mean? The difference is feeling like I'm watching it to like, yeah, it was on in the background, you know? So, and I know I didn't get past, if I got past that arc, then I don't know how much further. So we're really getting up there. We're getting close to where I'm at. We're also getting close to the end of the season, which is exciting. Right. And Patreon backers next week are going to hear our Q&A after this.

So that's the next thing. The Patreon backers. I can look forward to if... And that'll be for this arc that we just finished plus the previous one, is that right? The whole killed faded peace deal that they try to reach. Right.

Like two great arcs. That could be a great Q&I. Yeah. So, yeah, that's what Patreon backers will get to hear. If you'd like to hear that or you just want to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash civilize. We're still trying to work out what our holiday recording schedule

and production schedule is going to be. We'll let you know. It's TBD. we're going to have to have a skip in there somewhere. I am thinking we might need to work the skip in order to put the schedule. If we stay on every two weeks, we will end up with a really incoherent schedule next year. So we might just want to sort of reset it to a beginning of the month, middle of the month, like. Yeah, expect us to get, expect us to fuck with stuff.

Also, we're coming up on the end of a season. At the end of a season, we like to take a break because that keeps our brains from being fried. I guess we're not coming up on one actually. but we're getting there. We're getting near it. Yeah. I almost slipped into a Natalie Watson bad. We're getting near it.

British. Getting near it. Yeah. Getting near it. The end of the season. I think we're getting near the end. I think we're getting near the end of the season. Until next time, please forget what you just heard.

And then rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And please. What's all this then? A more civilized age at gmail.com, by the way. Just by the way. For the Q&A episode. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas.

It's a Tuesday. Please. I end this with a plea. Are you going to any boxing day sales? I end this with a plea. Please do not judge all witch covens by the actions of the Knight Sisters. These are, this is a radical sect of Dathamarian force witches. This is not the Dathamarian culture I recognize, which is way more chill.

Daphimir. Daphimir. Daffamir. I think, I think we're on Daffamere. I'm so sorry Oh, speaking of British people Oh yeah Shout out

Excuse me There is a chance I'm just going to say this outright Speaking of British people I can't believe we've done this I can't believe how bad this is I'm so sorry Shout out to Matt Jones

Who Potentially is editing this episode Shout out Who is from the UK Oh, no. I'm so sorry. No. No. Matt deserves to edit it for the edit.

Nope, I'm leaving it in. Matt deserves to know what this is like and how terrible we are. So, shout us to Matt. Thanks, Matt. We are handing these files over to. Uh-huh. Thanks, Matt. Pillow for it on Twitter. Well, have a wonderful, wonderful brilliant night. Bye-bye. And I'll see y'all next time. Good day. That's Australian. Good night.

I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. Oh!