A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 57: The Disappeared and the Lost One (Clone Wars 116 - 118)

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

After a brief hiatus due to health, travel, and a half dozen other delays, we are back to the Clone Wars. And what a return it is. We begin on the world of Bardotta, where a culture of force sensitives (and Jedi haters) are led by a queen with the best taste in men we've seen so far in this series. Then, finally (well...), we (sort of) learn the (tentative) truth about a mystery we've long been driven to understand. NEXT TIME: Episodes 119 - 121 ("Voices," "Destiny," and "Sacrifice)  Show Notes Deaths: Peteen, Silman, Lom Pyke (and his probably some of his boys)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zackney, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are back after, as we've alluded to, a challenging month of health stuff, and then around this recording in particular, kind of airline travel issues, we've all been hearing about so much lately in this great land of crumbling public and private infrastructure and services. But hey, we're here today to talk about a different crumbling order, that of the Lake Galactic Republic, where the Jedi simultaneously lose the plot while also discovering

a major one, and where the only person with his head on straight is Jar Jar Binks. King! King! Jar Jar's up, y'all. Jar Jar is fucking up these days, and I'm happy to see him. I was glad. I was chuffed. I was delighted when I saw that little freak walk through those doors, all right?

Jarger beat the herb allegations. He did. He did. The first five episodes, like minutes of the disappeared part one are such a war blanket. I was so glad to be back in his own wars. There's such heat in the beginning of this. You're saying this after the Obi-Wan Patreon episode re-released last week, which is four hours.

long, us just in pain, disappointed. They should have put Jar Jar in that. Because when I saw him, I felt. Can you imagine if episode five of the Obi-Won happened? Darth Jar Jar-Jar confirmed? Not even that. If it was just like, Obi-Wan walked into a bar, like, depressed and then, like, Jar-Jar was there.

Missa Paulo! Exactly. Yeah. That would have saved that show. Uh-huh. I felt comforted. I felt like a war. I just felt like I was home when I heard his voice.

Well, good news, everybody. We have this and one more episode of Cold War before we go do rebels. Oh, my God. Before we go do legacy stuff and then rebels. So, yeah, we will start with the disappeared, a two-parter in which the planet Bardota appeals to the Republic for aid from Jar Jar in particular. but not the Jedi. Without a Jedi.

Please don't bring the Jedi into this, they said. Their religious and political leaders have been going missing, and their ruler, Queen Julia, wants Jar Jar Jar's help with a few matters, but one of them is to help solve the mystery. Mace accompanies Jar Jar Jar against the Bartowton's wishes and makes a complete mess of things, while Jar Jar is rekindling a heretofore unheard-of romance

with the Bartowton Queen. She promptly goes missing herself, and the trail leads Jarja and Mace into a kind of ducktales temple of doom, where a cult is stealing the living essence of the force from their victims and trapping it in an orb. You know things are good when there's a mysterious orb. Orbs are back. At the center of things. We love orbs here. Jar Jar Jar and Mace run the cultists down and save the day and discover that all of this was Mother Tallis. is doing and she's been behind it all along my second jaw drop she really needed that orb

but they smash her orb and she screams and vanishes into a puff of smoke and that's it is that it great job everybody are we done with talzum i mean i feel like there must be a talcum comic or a towson book or something but they kind of felt like she died and i was like this was that this was the big game plan this was you're like we don't need to worry about general grievous killing all the night sisters because don't worry I've got plan orb in my back pocket as long as nothing happens

to this delicate wine glass full of force juice I'd make the orb stronger go ahead Allie we're getting way ahead of ourselves here but that was the Talza thing that sort of disappointed me in this episode because I was like she's here I love to see her

this is great she's back for the dead and then it's like you book her to fucking die against Jar Jar Binks and Mace Window Sad. It's sad. Let me tell you, but Jar Jar's up, though. Jar Jar is up. This is true. His next show is going to be a sight to see. Let me tell you. Are we going to get more jar? I wonder. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sad. If this is the last time we see Jar Jar Jar, if the last time we see Jar Jar is she just let me hit because I'm goofy, I'm happy. Yeah, this is the perfect set-off to see that Jar Jar is the only one in the series of any game at all. I want what they have.

Like, that's my OTP. Like, I, in this whole, Anakin and Padmey are not looking good compared to Jar Jar and Julia. Let me tell you. Every dude on that ship ended up hooking up with a queen at some point. Oh, you're right. It's something in the water. I don't know. Well, at first, okay, we have to go through this because it opens with the call to the Senate from

Julia, right? Yes, which is a Bargota is a neutral. On Bardata with the like we see Bardata, they're cool sea horse people or something, right? Like that's kind of the vibe. She's a baddie, by the way. I love the queen. I love the little masks still.

Love the fit. Their whole vibe is great. And I was like, oh my God, she's making a call in. She's asking for someone in specific. And I was like, yo, is another Jedi going to have a queen on the side? And then it was Jar Jar Jar instead. And that was

Secret Jedi. Secret Jedi. Definitely force sensitive, undeniably. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I'm sure he's sensitive. Well, and we get the revelation that like, well, why don't they want the Jedi to come help with an issue like this?

Oh, because in the ancient history of this relationship, they accused the Jedi of being child thieves. This is wild. Why? Because... Because... When you said, the... Deyogan masters believe that the children

were taken against their will. So they were taken against their will then? Because... It's their kids! If they felt that way, there was no consent there. Yeah. And what's this...

But if children were taken with their, like, with their will, like, it's a child. It's a child. The child doesn't get the child in the child who thinks that they want to go off and... If you get the child into the transit van because, like, something was cool. was in it. That still doesn't make it right.

Like, hey, look, kid was like parents are candy. Kid chose candy. They made an adult decision. It doesn't work like that. You're still going to jail. But also, this is one of our favorite things, right? Which is, like, other people in the galaxy who have the force and, like, have a different

relationship with it, who are in tune with the force in some way that isn't just Jedi or Sith. There's that specific, I think, is it... They said that, yeah. They said that... A strong connection to the force to DeGoya masters have, yet unlike the Jedi or Sith they are. Warriors there are not. How did I

not know this was Yoder by looking at the quote? Intuition, knowledge, the harmony of the universe is what they sense. Passively, they connect to the force. Love this for them. This is what we've been saying. So this is also I think, I have a theory. This is why Anakin can't be the one to go on the mission. Because if you put, like,

the way that you think of it is, like, the reason the Jedi can't detect what's happening is because like, they are force emitters. They use the force so much that they like they talk about in Revenge of the Sith or attack of the clones that they're like struggling to see the future like increasingly this is an order being debilitated

by like sort of a lack of connection to the message is the force is supposed to bring them and they say it's all Sith influence but yeah the DeGoyans are like force censors they are you know passively taking in what is being broadcast and I think like if you put Anakin on a planet like that. Narratively, they have to figure out that like, holy shit.

Like, this, this guy is incredibly, like, close to the dark side. And it's just, like, roiling off of him. So he can't go. But instead, they send master of form seven, Vapod, the form of lightsaber combat that draws in the dark side, Mace Windu, Shatterpoint's Mace Windu? That's still dangerous. And he fucks it up. He's bad at this.

I fucks it up so bad. It's, it's a terrible, like, it's such a terrible decision. Like, first of all, being like, don't send, when someone says don't send a Jedi, and they say, we're going to send a Jedi anyway, like, horrible move. Horrible move. But second, yeah, sending this Jedi, like, the most, the most arrogant Jedi on the council, and certainly the most, like, bullish. Yeah.

Like, on the other hand, and I do feel like maybe this is what they're going. going for a little bit in the show. Buddy comedy. Buddy comedy. Like, he's the straight-laced cop. And Jar Jar is his wacky partner. Like, this is, yeah, the vibe is, like, not quite 48 hours, but just that whole genre. No, it's a lot more rush hour.

Yeah, yeah. But honestly, this is, like, one of the most I enjoyed JAR. Like, I feel like Jar Jar Jar was used so, this is the best Jar Jar Jar. Jar Jar Arc. I'm sorry to say to performance art, I, like, loved you. But this, I just feel like Jar Jar Jar, there was no Jar Jar Jar moment wasted. Like, we were using him efficiently and to the point. And, you know. Well, he's a clown, but he's not dumbass here. Right. Like, he calls out. We'll get to this in a second. But like, so they go to this planet and immediately, like, Mesa's antagonizing the guards who were like, we didn't ask for you here.

You're going to have to surrender your Jedi, your lightsaber. And Jar Jar Jar's doing the, it's cool, he's with me. And he does on the trip just allude temptingly to, oh yeah, Queenie Julia. Lisa. She's knowing her for a long ago time. And the way he says it is loaded. The minute he said that, I was like, that was kind of an odd deliverer. Oh, great Queenie Julia

Palo So, but it's so weird That like this is the like This isn't This is a great This is a trope on a lot of different shows Where you go to the place Where we're a ridiculous character

They discover there's a place Where this character is like Admired and revered This is C3PO becoming a god to the Ewox Right Right, right, right It's been in this And also this whole thing is like

Extremely Indiana Jones right This is like Temple of Doom stuff happens here. They basically do the like get from point A to point B map flyover thing at one point. Like it has the, they're fighting in the marketplace in the, and like all of that stuff definitely has some baggage. But it's less baggage than Indiana Jones. I'll tell you that much. Here's the thing. I will say that I think when, when you said this was the Jar Jar Fuchs arc and I'm hearing, you know, him talking about his.

relationship with Jewett, like knowing her for a long time, stuff like that. I had the conception in my mind that Jar Jar was going to have to seduce someone. Like, like the Queen Slaver arc with Anakin. Like that's what I... No, his risk game has already got him here. You know what I mean? It's been done. It's been done.

How do you think they hooked up? How do you think they met? Was it like a Senator Vixen meet and greet where she came to a chorus on? So bad. How long has Jarjar been on Corrason? How many years has been? A decade, right? I don't know.

What if he's been a wrecked for a while? What if she happened to visit Nabu and like went down to the Gungan city and he was performing? He exiled from the Gungan city. Like he was kind of a nobody. Yeah, this has to be post-Phorasan. It's like he's the goofy aide. Yeah. And he makes him laugh.

He's so good. Yeah. his that's like he just he he he has an exuberance and he exudes lightness and ease and she he puts her at easily you know what I mean like he makes her laugh they have such a good vibe and neither one of them is fucking it up neither one of them is fucking up the situation you know what I mean they do the dividing the personal from business because like first she lays out the situation which is this is a society where like the religious and political order like partially overlap or maybe entirely overlap but you know they're in this council chamber in a bunch of the seats the high seats are empty uh because a bunch of their rulers have been just gone missing just completely mysteriously and everyone is freaking out because they have a prophecy that says if anything like this ever happens uh is because a time of darkness is about to sort of dawn uh for the galaxy

and for the bardotans and so they are very for them it's like it's a minutes of midnight here, as far as they are concerned, and they need his help. And then Queenie Julia is like, okay, that was great. Everyone needs to leave the room now. I need to talk to Jar Jar alone. But her guards don't leave the room. They just turn around. It's so great. And what happens, Rob? Right there in the room with all the guards. They got two long little snoots and they start making out like this is this is the hottest things

since sliced noodles started making out with that literally literally my jaw was on the floor his eyes are like fluttering he does the little leg kick

does the little leg kick a kiss has never been better animated in this show and like the reason that you hook up with a queen is so you can kiss her while all of her guards have your back to you That's right.

Like, Georgia is the man in this situation. I love this for both of them so much. And she's like, meditate with me. So our minds may be in the long. Let's go. Yeah, I'll meditate. And they meditated all night long. All night long.

Mace was not allowed in. Being in the moment. I love that for them. The next thing we see is Mace, just like angrily pacing the corridors. This is why you're not fucking a queen. Being like, where the hell is. what are they up to? And it's like Mace.

Mace. Again, completely, completely unable to sense any currents of energy, emotion around him. Just zero. That's because Mace has like turned off horny in his brain for so

fucking long that he cannot even see horny when it is looking right in front of him. He cannot see it and recognize it and feel it. He's so like, no. and maybe more importantly he also can't recognize like when he is not in a position of power like they didn't want that's it right they don't want Jedi here and after like 12 hours of cooling his heels he loses his shit and starts trying to break into like her private quarters

to talk to her and the first time the guards turn him away at that point he like makes suspicious movements and leads them on a chase to draw them off so we can sort of crash her conversation with Jar Jar. First he tries to Jedi mind-trick them, right? Right. First he tries to Jedi mind-trick them

and the guards are like, bro, we know what you're doing. The guards are so cool. Trying not to fuck this guy up. They're like, man, come on. They're like, we are force users too. Just like let them be, bro. Just not letting it. Also, we can't skip over.

We can't skip over Yoda saying about Jar Jar, the innocence of a child this Gungan has. Perhaps appealing to the decoy in his mind is, they don't understand anything. They don't understand anything. You have to go back to the world. You have to be out here. Paul Yaddle. Reconnect. Pete Davidson has.

They pagan out here and you had no idea. I do not. people like funny goofy funny goofy silly boys yes um a thud costumeing note i love about this is mace has on his like clone trooper armor arm bands are like arm guards his his shin or his shin his forearms are covered in like the white plastic steel armor that he would wear in a battle and it's like you're hanging out in the like in the queen's palace like take that shit shit off, be in diplomat mode, like calm down.

He just doesn't have it. The fucking Jedi Order icon is like, you know, on the armor. They're also, they're paid up. And again. And again. It's like, you're wearing the badge of the child thieves. What are you fucking doing? They're not wrong. Like, the Bardotans are not wrong. Like, you literally

were stealing their kids. And these are like a force sensitive fucking people. Like, you were farming kids out of, out of this place. It's not chill. They have every right to not fuck with you. But, you know. And the thing is, like, even if you, like, come down in a position of, like, look,

they went a different way, but they, like, accused the Jedi of too much. Doesn't matter. You're on their turf. You have to meet them on their ground. And Mace is incapable of doing it. But the thing this does bring out also that I do kind of like is this is so often the mode of of diplomacy that powerful, like, Western nations or, like, global North nations with like Imperial Pass have tend to adopt to the rest of the world, which is that this really

high-handed condescending, like, I'm not the one, like, sorry, the empire you're talking about is gone. Like, we're not in a colonial power anymore. Like, stop whining at us about the past and just get with the program. Like, you know, get with the political. order they're here establishing and like in this mode mace is a really familiar type of like american diplomat um or you know british or french diplomat of the 20th this is the like nato power offers you grain subsidies but only if you let exon mobile come in you know what i mean

like it's that it's that vibe you know i'm the power here why would you ever shut me out everything moves through me so if you don't want to talk to me nothing will move and And what is moving is that now that she and Jarjo caught up, Queen Julia is ready to tell him what she's sort of seen in her vision. She's like on the cusp of telling him the secret. Now the secret is... We'll do a little Tai Chi first. You're trying to get their minds right. Loved that.

They're in sick. It's like, can't tell the Jedi this, but I have this horrible vision. And I can only share it with you. and that's where that's where Mace breaks in. Immediately the guards show up and like the situation is dangling by a thread. And Jar Jar is like, I'm going to take care of this. Mace and I are going to chat. And I love the way Jar because Jar Jar Jarst stands his ground here.

I love him. I love this. This is out of control. And Jar Jar Jar Jar calls him, he's like, you're the one blowing this. Yeah. You're the one making the situation worse. And it's 100% true. And Mace keeps freaking out because Mace is like, you're distracted.

You're not, you're like, what were you doing all night? And Jarger's like, uh, Misa loved the Queenie Julia. What's the wrong with that? Like, he has a relationship with this woman. Mesa Love with Beautiful Julia is the only thing starting of these talks. Come on. Come on. That is, the fact that to Mace, a relationship is it, it's, it just, it's, it's,

It's such a clear example of how unwilling the Jedi are to see any valid. Like, I don't know. It's almost as if they don't respect the fact that you can have attachment in a relationship with someone and still know how to prioritize. And that be a valuable thing. That be a valuable thing in terms of trust. Like Julia Truss Jarjar tells him, tries to tell him about what's going on. And yet to Mace, this can.

only mean they're getting farther and farther away from the mission the more jar jar and julia are just spending time with each other it's it's just it's it really shows yeah and this is a this is a cute pair of episodes it's it's it's it's it's light but the thing i do dig here is that if you think about the bardotin's connection to the force suddenly realized like the jenni and the sif in in that framing are actually closer than they appear You know what I mean? Like the Sith and the Jedi regard themselves as opposites. But from this third perspective, these are both force-sensitive groups that define their

connection to the force by instrumentalizing it, by how do we wield it as a source of power. And that is fully on display here. Because, yes, like, the fact that Mace can't read these rooms, the fact that he doesn't understand, like, he doesn't understand that, like, relationships aren't about power here. Like, the entire, the thing he keeps coming back to is, like, We're here to do serious business. Like the thing, like this is a, this is an interaction about power and its usage and doesn't see that there's other dimensions to, to the situation, there's other dynamics at play.

Because for him, all he can see is like the direct use and aiming of, like, power and authority. And that that's not what Julia and Jarjar are doing. That's not what the relationship is. They are collaborating, working together as a couple. to try and solve a problem. And it completely, like, leaves him at sea in this situation until it turns into a more kinetic, like, now we need a warrior, and that's Mace's. Like, that is ground that Mace does understand.

But here in this early stage, it is such a sign of maybe just Mace, but maybe more broadly, the Jedi Council doesn't have it anymore. Truly do not. And speaking of not having things, no one has Queen Julia. anymore because she disappeared. Turn your back for one second and she's vanished. Why would you leave a spiritual leader of that where all of them are disappeared? Why would you leave them alone?

But they were like they weren't alone. They were right outside the door in a room with no entrances. How did somebody get in? Let you turn invisible. She was still there. Oh, right. Yeah, she was turned invisible against her will and then presumably taking out. after this is the we get a very short locked room mystery here of where like how was she taken and

the answer is she was there the entire time they just couldn't see her uh but so her disappearance causes a crisis among the bardotans the council has an emergency meeting panic is in the air uh this whole society is about to melt down uh because thankfully a hero arises here a hero rises and that here's name austin jar jar binks takes to the senate floor or whatever, the palace floor to deliver a speech to calm everyone's nerves. Tell us of his rhetorical stylings. I mean, first of all, there's a, there's the, we get a little bit of a setup here, right? Which is that, like, there is the prophecy.

The prophecy is being fulfilled. The DeGaiian masters are gone. The queen is gone. Everyone is really, darkness will rise throughout the galaxy, which, true. The prophecy is right, by the way. The darkness is rising throughout the galaxy. but Jar Jar Jar steps forward and says that Queenie Julia was his bombad palo for many years, that she knew that there would be trouble here.

That's why she called him in. That's why he brought his palo in. And that between him and his loyal helper, they will find the queen. Loyal servant. I hope he enjoyed saying it. You know what I mean? I love that he goes. My loyal servant, master in Mace.

It's just like, it's so fucking good. It's great. And it calls people down. He follows up. Mace has him asked some questions. Everyone chants. They're cheering. They're cheering.

They love it. It was killing me. You know? I loved it. Sometimes you need a jar jar. You do. Talk to people. He can talk to the people.

And what's great is you kind of buy it because he is so reassuring. Everyone is so freaked out. It's like the, it's the, like, it's the, like, energy opposite of the shitty Moncal prince giving his speech where it's like, oh man, we backed the wrong horse. Like, we should just put the quorum in charge.

The smart thing is, he asks like, okay, well, what's up? Where are we going? And they tell, they say, like, okay, well, there's this evil clan from our ancient history. You know, this story is really caught up in some real, in the ancient days,

our tribal background. And also, it's also very caught up in captions saying things like oriental music plays. Oh, yeah. It is really doing Temple of Doom shit a lot. They don't know what accent of Bartotin speaks scene to scene, but it's different, right? But, you know, he and Mace commit to going to the darkest place there is in their mythology.

Like, that's where we're going then. And that's what everyone starts clapping, because it's like such a nonchalant commitment to walking into the dark to save the queen. I will say, I don't think they're changing accents from scene to scene. I think the entire thing that they're getting with the Bardotans is, like, we are in the land of, like, the South and East Asian, like, gods, right? Like, so you've got, like, you have, like, Indian accents crop up. You have, like, Chinese accents, but there is a whole lot of, we're just up in the, like, Himalayan range. Sure. And all just the religious vibes are there.

And that means because we filed it all off. That's what we name things like, name them things like Julia and Joseph. but our ancient demon is malmoral and we're of the fran fran fran graal clan uh-huh you know some guys some funny colorful masks uh doing ritual sacrifice stuff that seemed that seemed cool that's about to start happening isn't it as we go into this dark tomb also they did the thing they did the thing that the jenni did which is they built the palace on top of the most evil place in their mythology because the jenni temple's also on top of an ancient sin i would simply build it It's somewhere else. I'd put a sigil or a seal on top of the evil place. Yeah, I would do magic. Parking lot. Maybe you have to honor your mistakes in order to grow your power.

See, it's arguments like this that let us build temples on top of evil. See, that's why Anakin built his palace on Mustafa. He's like, you have to honor your mistakes. So they do a little dungeon delve. I love it. It's good. I love their torches. Like there should be more fire in Star Wars.

I will say, I wanted to say, this three episode arc looks extremely good. Sorry, I have to bring something up, as you say, there should be more fire. Did you know that there's no paper in Star Wars or there wasn't? and that this is one more thing that super nerds got mad at The Last Jedi about. Wait, what do you mean no paper? What about the old Jedi books? That's what I'm saying. From the Last Jedi, people don't like, there are people who don't like that part of the Last Jedi.

Not because of what it's saying, but because it introduced paper to Star Wars. Oh, I think you meant like, so because we go to the Jedi library in, uh, go look up that picture. Yeah, right, they're not, they're not books. They're like little lit, tablet things. tablets. There's no paper. There is now. But there's posters.

I agree. I agree. I see things that look like paper all the time in Star Wars, but I'm told there's not paper in Star Wars. Okay. Well, there's paper in Star Wars now. I'm happy with it. Hold on. I'm on the Wikipedia for paper.

Uh-huh. And, um, okay. By the time of the Galactic Empire, the Galactic Empire, the existence of books with ink printed on paper was relatively rare in the galaxy okay but Xylan Graff of the wealthy and esteemed Graff family delivered a message to

Sylvester Yarrow on paper which Yarrow thought that Graff was showing off his wealth by using paper to deliver the message. So maybe more of a luxury. The first rule book for the first edition of Star Wars the role playing game stressed that there is no paper in the Star Wars universe

and that the inhabitants of the galaxy exclusively used electronic means of data storage. And apparently this reflected a thing that George said back on the first production of Star Wars, A New Hope, which was to make sure that paper was never visible, ever anywhere, that this was a world without paper, which hit two different in 1960, you're 1970, whatever, right? Like, you're saying something there that's, like, interesting that I guess now I would not say, 77. There's no way you can maintain the Millennium Falcon. There's so much wood.

We go to so many places with wood. We know paper would exist. There's like so many appearances of paper. Yeah, but a lot of those are more modern than... It's in Andor. That's like I said, more modern. Yes. They've given up on this.

But for a long time, this was the rule about Star Wars. Okay. Mm-hmm. So... Mm-hmm. Well, that's stupid. I agree. I agree.

I'm with you. Jar Jar gets got. He gets, like, dusted with the magic dust and watches himself melt. Basically, his, like, Mesa disappearing. And there, he's just gone.

That effect was wild looking, by the way. The, like, the blue glittery, disappeary juice powder is, it looks really, really wild. I recommend looking at it. Because it just, it stands in such contrast to the rest.

of the animation of the episode and Clone Wars in general. Like, it feels like something out of this universe that's been brought in for this specific moment. It's odd. There's something else happening here

that's, I think, worth saying in terms of our ongoing conversation with the Jedi, is as they're going through this little dungeon before Jarger gets turned into magic, Mace gets his lightsaber back. And the guy, the guard, who he's with, gives it back to him,

and then begins to talk about the history of the frangal and says the frangal ruled bardata with an iron hand for most of its early history they were warriors some would call them barbarians but in fact they were men and women of spirit they're Jedi not literally but they are force users right they were men and women of spirit who people would call warriors but in fact were spiritualists this is why they move away from that Right? The implication is we got out of our Jedi era, you know? Because they kept getting too dark-sighted, clearly. And then the other question is, when did they take on this cast that we see here? Because the minute the minute the disappearing powder showed up, M.K. was like, is this a Mother Talzin episode? Wow. Because think about like the signature of their entire force use was disappearance and illusion.

And so the minute you see somebody, like, given, like, invisibility sprinkles, like, it was a good poll because, yeah, like, this is, this is how the witches operate. Now, the question is, like, coming, coming to this, like, is Towson, like, an ancient figure who's sort of riding this clan from the start? Or have they sort of been subvert, like, you know what I mean? Because, like, it sounds like a bit like the Mandalorians or the Death Watch. they were sort of cast down and society moved in a more like Pacific or pacifist direction

and so did they fall into the clutches of, did they go from being like a force-powered warrior order to a weird magic death cult because they were vulnerable to someone like Talzin, I don't know. But it's one of the questions I have like lingering

over this. Yeah. I have to wonder, I feel like I feel like, this is my conjecture, is that Talzin found an opportunity here. Like, I think the great mother existed as a concept. I don't think Talzin herself was the great mother. Like, she's a knight sister. Like, what is the connection between, unless Talzin herself is just an, is like an entity moving between different force using groups.

I thought, is she a knight sister? she let them die at the drop of a dime and was like, don't worry, it'll be fine. It'll be fine for you. But like, we always sort of wondered, like, well, this seems bad for the knight's sisterhood, but what if she's not really of them? You know what I mean? Like, what if it's just a, again, like a bunch of kidnapped kids that she sort of raised

into an order around herself? Like, maybe she is kind of an ancient, like, figure that's just kind of appearing and disappearing through forest times, I don't know. Well, we know that in the legends canon there was the mother as part of the fucking... Oh, yeah.

What's the name is that arc? Mortis? Mortis? The Mortis. Yeah, Mortis. Yes. Who in the legends canon is revealed to actually be like

a bringer of chaos forest goddess who gets out of there and goes off to like become Mother Talzin. I mean, that doesn't happen in the Legends, to be clear, but she is that style of

she is a twisted immortal entity known as the as Abeloth. And so something is happening inside of Star, inside of... Is that the thing that 8th Callista in Legends? That sounds possible. You know.

Abeloth? Yep. Okay, so yeah, never mind. You know what? I don't need to get into the Colistaming situation here. We've done it before. We've talked about Clistaming.

We talked about on maybe a Patreon episode. But my point being, something was in the water in Star Wars, legends, writers, circa, I guess this is probably like 2000s, is my guess.

Is it the Fate of the Jedi series? I don't know when that is. 2010, yes. Or in that late 2000s era, you know, people talking about evil moms, Evil, evil mother figures, which is also just a classic of this sort of big adventure genre, you know, space, right?

The evil, the great evil mother is a type of evil goddess, right? So, yeah, could be, could be that Towson is either that figure. I have always wondered why she was, like, so nonchalant about all the night sisters getting got. I wonder if we'll ever find out. We'll have to see. but anyway they've got a whole like sacrifice temple here set up and jar jar comes to in a cage along with the other like religious leaders who've been abducted and he's like i'm going to get us out of here and one of these poor guys is like no you're not we're all going to be we're all going to be sacrificed here and that turns out to be true for him but jar jar still has his com link and he gets on the phone to to Mace and they begin

using a little, like, they use the tracking function and Mace begins closing in rapidly on the temple as Jar Jar comically bobbles the communicator and drops it into the middle of the temple, but not before Mace effectively finds the spot

and begins battling his way through the, through the cultists who are all like masked up and still going out with the sacrifices and the sacrifices cause like they suck the spirit out of the one guy we see sacrificed and it's it's sent into the orb and uh you know jar jar is next up and he's like oh i'm not a jedd i'm not force sensitive and their response is basically well you got a little force in you everyone does

so yeah no harm in sacrificing you and so he sort of kicked down the the the uh slide toward the like sacrificial altar and we get a pretty cool action scene of like Mace window What's been a while I typed Mace window

in the notes I He was like what is wrong Perfect What's you do? He speed kick somebody into the fucking lava is what he does And he's juggling Jar Jar Jar.

Like this is, every time we see a Jedi let someone fall, you kind of think about Mace. And like what he's doing here, which is he can't split his attention and like fight a bunch of guys and keep Jar Jar Jar like from falling. But what he can do is like take a quick break, let Jar Jar Jar begin to fall to his death, kill a couple people and then get back to that whole saving Jar Jar Jar thing. He does that repeatedly. And it's very cool. It's once again like Maris is. this is Mace's element. This is why Mace is on the council

because they need a heavy. Yes, yes. Mace can win in these. And again, it's wild to me that it's like, we know that Mace was in a higher position of power before the war and stepped down to go do this shit, you know? And it's like,

yeah, I guess this is what you're actually good at, because I don't know about all the force stuff. You're not really killing it on that front, to me anyway, personally speaking. He's good at fighting this stuff The choreography here is good. It's fun. I love a staircase fight.

Oh, yeah. I love Jarjoar crawling through people's legs as a defense strategy being silly and effective. So shout-ups. Also, I really do love, like, the moment of realization that, like, yeah, they're, like, truly stealing the force out of people and, like, turning them, putting them in this orb. It's just like, yeah, damn, I guess they're. doing it. I thought that maybe that was like a metaphor or like

they're, you know, doing something out. No, they're stealing the force out of people and putting them into an war. And the Jedi have heard of this. Well, in Georgia's like, they're putting in some sort of like sphere thing, like, and Mace's like, oh, containment sphere. He immediately clocks it. Yeah. You know

that there is, they have one of these in the Jedi archives. Oh, yeah. They got some fucking juice down there. They got some juice or. This is why Palpatine took over. Halpatine was like, ooh,

what sort of goodies do they have? That's probably why they keep all the Jedi in the tomb in Obi-Wan Kenobi just in case

they want to get a little extra force juice out of them at some point. Right. Sure, sure. It's like

preservatives. It's preservatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like all your jams and jellies. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For sure.

So they basically bust up the temple and send the send the cult is fleeing, but they make their escape with Julia. Mace and Jar Jar Jar did not save Julia. She is taken, and the next episode is basically a pursuit and rescue episode. And I don't know, like, we get some beautiful, like, again, both these episodes look great.

The shots of, like, let's see, I love the town they go to, the first town they get to where you see them. You see the remaining cultists arrive in this little town out in, like, the countryside, out in the plains. And I don't know. It's just like a really, like, cool and cozy, like, cute town, you know, full of people. I have no idea what's going on. And we get sort of a, yeah, a pursuit through the, through the marketplace. And exotic animals are running around, et cetera. One of the cultives of the cat boy

It's true, Catboys are back Which is in the backboard Also, I think it becomes clear here That there are two different size scales For the Bardotans There's little ones and big ones And we've met a little one once briefly There was a pod racer who was Bardotin

Though didn't say he was Bardotin in episode one named Mars Guo Or Mars Guo I guess G-U-O-G-W Whoa, fast. Mars grow fast. That's right. And he was just a little guy.

He was just a little fucked up guy. Freak. And, yeah, loved him then. Love the Burdoten's still. Agreed. Yeah, Rob, I think you're right. This is just a cool little, I like this little town. I like moving through.

There's lots of little chase sequences here. Like, not too much happens in the first half of this. I guess you learn, again, they talk about the great mother again, which is where I was like, ah, it's probably Talzin. and I realized that was the point. I was like, oh, is that why Palpatine cares about this? Because Palpatine could have just said, no, this is your deal, you deal with it. Does he know?

I bet Talzin's up to some shit with them. I'm going to send a Jedi to go interfere with that because even though I totally hate the Jedi, I also hate Talzin. And stopping Talzin is worth use. And maybe Mace dies in this. And that'd be a fun little plus for Palpatine. You know? Certainly would have changed some things in his future if he'd got the win on that here.

But it is funny the way that they are just, well, first, I like, I like Jar Jar Jar's explanation of like what happens to people when they get forced, sucked. Is that they become crispy fried? Oh, yeah, they become crispy fried. They become crispy fried. I also love he says, Master, or sorry, Maxie. Big the force master in Mace, but how's are we going to find the Queenie? She's still a prisoner.

I love Maxie Big as a nut. I love Maxie Big. Maybe we've heard that before, but it's not in my brain. It felt no. It felt fresh. Yeah. The like, the, like, bickering in the ship scene is actually really fantastic.

A vase being like, well, we have to think about this. You have to let me use the force and think about this. And Jarjo's like, maybe using the force as taking too long ago. When Mace is like, oh, I see a town square. I see people. And George is looking at the window and he's like, yeah, me too.

It's so fucking good. And then immediately as Mace is done, he's like, all right, let's go. And he's like, what do you mean? You just said we wanted to do like covert a taco. Like, and Mace is like, well, now I know where we're supposed to go. So we're fucking going off. I'm like, I want to be clear really quick again. Like, they are definitely doing a lot of.

fighting little guys in tribal masks in this episode. This is all, again, this is all quite literally Indiana Jones shit. This episode ends with an Indiana Jones shot of them riding off into the sunset together. Like it is intentionally that. It is noted as being that. And it's a lot of like, I'm moving through the dark shadows of the Orient, of the Near East, of the Mid-East, right? Like all of that shit is happening here non-stop. It's also just so much better as a production than Obi-Wan Kenobi was.

that it feels like home comparatively. But again, I mean, this arc did make me think a lot about the adventure story and the, you know, these are places on the periphery of empire and like what places that serve in our stories. I think that you could do a lot of that deep dive here. There's also just not a lot of meat on the bones. They're just doing Temple of Doom. They're just doing Raiders of the Lost Ark. Oh, you know, like it's not, they don't ever say anything about this stuff really.

And I will say part of what they're hiding behind in some ways, part of what prevents deep, deep breathes from happening is our closest Indiana Jones stand in whose Mace Window sucks the whole time. And I mean, he does some cool action shit, but he's such a piece of shit that it's like, it's kind of indifferent about whether, I don't think this thinks that Mace is the right dude to be here necessarily, especially in episode one. And episode two when it's action stuff, he's much better. And so there's like, it's a little resistant of, of deeper reeds than just, boy, we love it when we go to a dark place and people have creepy masks on and we get the joy of being in a little market town, you know, in the desert, right? Yeah. Fight their strange beasts. Right. Which is kind of cool when Mace finally gets a lightsaber and kills one.

The other is just like, you know, I'm out. Yeah. And. Also, all the little guys have AKs. Like that's true That's true I'm like a huge machine gun Yeah

What I bet I really like Is that Jar Jar Jar punches somebody Twice He hits someone with a clothes line It's great It's good He's like in his

He's just in his prime This is peak jar I might This might be an essential Clone Wars watch Oh it's bolded It's bolded It's bolded

Like You have to go in knowing what it is But it's bolder It's the Jar Jar Fucks Ark, and you're watching it. And you forget that, like, Jar Jar's got that whole, like, little, like, frog tongue thing that he can do, but, you know, when it's the moment to pull that out. I don't think Queenie forgot either. And Mace learns about it as Jarger rescues in, flips in the lightsaber. Yes.

And then, you know, we get some beautiful shots of them riding across the mood that coming. countryside and they have a little exchange because Jar Jar keeps sort of urging his mount on by making a admittedly annoying yaha type sound but there is also an element of like or it seemed me there could be an element here of also there's a bit of like the relationship of there's a bit of like the relationship you see unfolding between mace and jar jar here is like in this in this relationship like jar jar is the neurotypical character and mace has no patience for any of like any of his differences any of the things that make him different uh in like terms of how he relates to things or like how he uh passes time and it just exists uh as individual individual and all of it is just under mace's skin and mace keeps treating him like a kid like keeps treating him like a

child who doesn't understand what's really going on, even though he does, like, Jar Jar is on the same page the entire time. He's just not like Mace. Yeah. And Mace can't, like, he just keeps treating him, even here, kind of like shit until the coin finally drops in the scene where he's like, okay, Jar Jarja's really worried. And it's, but it's sort of in this vibe of like, in this moment, Mace realizes that, like, oh, wow, like, Jar Jar Jar has emotions and feelings that, or as deep as, you know, a normal person's is kind of the way he, the way, the way it kind of comes across. And, you know, I guess it's, it's good that like, you know, Mace gets to some sort of point

like that, but it is just, he is deeply frustrating in this to watch how he interacts with Jar Jar Jar because it's like, Jar Jar Jar has been on this the entire time and it's been Mace who just doesn't give him any credit or patience. and ultimately, you know, he's not called to account for that because that is not who Jar Jar is. You know what I mean? Jar Jar is not going to like make him sort of admit how badly he's behaved in all this, and Mace wouldn't do it. But yeah, just watching it, it's like, I guess the thing that is a lot of times in the sort of the buddy team up thing, you do have the moment where the straight-laced character is forced to reckon with their own bad behavior

and where it comes from and how ill-treated, like how they've ill-treated a person they've now come to care for and work with. And that's just not what this is about. It doesn't do this here. This is more about like, this is more like, I guess you're not so bad. But that's kind of it. Well, it helps that Jar Jar Jar's KDA is so high when it gets in the big fight. they yeah so they get to a second temple

there's like a cool moon alignment eclipse thing I don't know why this is so much harder than the other force juice sucker thing is this because they lost the main temple like so they got to use this weird I guess so I think it's yeah I think so I think that other temple was like built for it but also maybe this is like if it only lines up once in a while truly once in a while it's two moons eclipsing with the sun

at night And they have Queen Julia, so, like, that's going to be a big, a big force suck. It's going to be one of the biggest four sucks you've ever seen. And the, I guess, like, to me, it's like maybe it's harder to do. It's harder to, like, line it up. It's less reliable. But I bet you get a lot into the orb from this. I bet, like, the return is higher.

Also, Towson is here and can oversee it herself. We see Towson finally. And really, like, I don't want to go beat for this whole fight. No. Because really the thing that this, the thing I think I, I'm most interested in in this whole fight is a line that Mace says 2,000.

After she has conjured a sick magic sword, he says magic is only an illusion. Is it? What are you talking about? Seems like it just made a sword, actually. It just made a sword. It's about to take the soul of

this queen. It seems very real. What do the Jedi think about magic if they think it's an illusion? Like, it's not, it's real. Well, first of all, they're separating. I mean, it's the force. Is that what they're saying?

But they're calling it magic instead of calling it using the force. Because she, this goes to another point of something Mother Telson says to one of the like head fall, uh, fangarles, warriors. Fan duels, yeah. Vandals. She says that, like, the way that I use the force is to come. conjure dark magic and the way that you use the force like she separates herself from which further leads me to think that she was like wandering around in the force space and saw oh here's like here's like an exit ramp like an off ramp that I could take that has to do with these guys or

whatever um but yeah it's it's just weird that the Jedi are saying oh yes there are other people who use the force in other ways than us and then are so quick to like demean it as magic when what the fuck is a Jedi mind trick trick is a trick not a fucking magic

got him trick what are you talking about I saw this Dr. Umar video he said the same thing there's kind of an earthy thing happening here where it's like this is weak as women's magic that's like yeah and it does have that exact vibe yeah 100% where the Jedi are coming from with all this.

But there's something interesting going on with Talzin here. Did she always shimmer weirdly like this? No, I think she's fading. I think that this is like she can't hold together the physical form. Yeah. And like she needs the juice in this or... She needs the juice. Yes.

To like fully manifest again and like really get back up to her like prime mother Talzinish ways. Yes. But they didn't put the orb in a good enough vessel. My note here Right after where I say This is a Dark Souls boss fight I say my suggestion to Towson Is to get a less fragile orb

It shouldn't It only fell like three feet It fell on the ground It didn't fall from a building You know what I could have just happened This could have happened Without the Jedi there Yeah

It was almost bound to happen Someone's gonna drop that orb At some point Human error is something you have to account for 100%. But this is where she goes fully Steve Jobs about the entire thing, where, like, the initial builds, they're like, so this is like a metal case, like, you know, and in it is a sphere. And she's like, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. I need to see the force juice. Like, I don't see the force juice. It's nothing. It's just a box. You're saying it's a box full of force souls. I don't want a box full of force. We've got to see the force.

People have to see the force. They're paying money to see the force. Not a box. It's a vessel. And that is your design directive, and I want you to go sit with that for a while before we meet here again next month at the eclipse. And, yeah, so it just. I also, I also have to shout out Jar Jar's fucking giant Halo energy weapon.

Yeah, uh-huh. Pulled it off a turret, like it's literally the thing. He's shooting people from like two feet away. I might be a triple kill or a quad kill, Al. It's like, it's a, it's a, it's four. people. I'm watching it. It's four p. It's a quad kill off this. And that's it. Damn. Player of the game. Oh my God. I want to Jar Jarve's Overwatch player of the game screen so bad.

Please. Please. Get Jar Jar Jar at the AI voice. Don't do that. Don't do that. Oh my God. Don't do that. And then he like caps the point right as the meter fills. Yes. Yes. He does. And then Queenie, seeing what's going down, makes her own play, and kicks the last cultist into the path of the Force Sucker. And he just gets like obliterated. It falls off the plinth. And it could have fallen backwards off the building, but it falls forward onto the floor and just shatters instantly.

It's like a small nuke going off. Yes. Yeah, the, like, the zoom out of, like, it's so good. Yeah, the zoom out. Yes, yes, yes. It's so good. It looks so cool. Star Wars.

I wrote, I wrote my notes, Obi-Wan, the television show, Who? Because it looks so good. And Towson looks at that orb, like the raccoon that just watched the cotton candy disappear. Just, like, looks at it, turns it upside down, last sort of souls leave, and then she screams and is vanishing. into the ether. I think she's got another fight in her.

I think she... She does. We will encounter our melodotiles in one more time. But this seemed like pretty bad, like for her. Like, she'd not want... She's not thriving, is how I feel. In the wake of the destruction of the Knights Sisters, this whole, like, it'll be fine.

It feels like this plan... You know what this reminds me of honestly? It's like... Like, in Cabin in the Woods, where they've got like all these little, like, plots going to... make some sort of ancient prophecy fulfill, and one of them will surely get through. That kind of seems what Mavitalin has done.

So like a sheave type of thing, kind of? Yeah, honestly, it could be. Yeah, like, somewhere somehow I'm going to get my witchy force powers back, and I don't need the night sisters for this, even though that's my most stable base of power. I'm going to go fully liquid and just invest somewhere else and sort of divest myself of the knight sisterhood. And here, like, the big play has failed already.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Fun episodes. You know? Yeah. It was good to. It specifically says the hero is right off at the end, quote, like, the end of the last crusade.

So, like, really? I love also, Mace gets the big, like, stallion animal, the mount. And Jarger has the goofy, like, the way it runs, its head spins in a circle. It just gives sort of an ungainly. like trot it's so good uh rob to your point about buddy cop stuff and buddy team up movies quote one of the starting points the crew explored regarding the unlikely pairing of jar jar binks and mace windu was the 2005 comedy the man which teamed up samuel l jackson and eugene levy wow i have zero recollection of this movie it's a buddy cop film starring eugene levy samuel jackson and mcgill ferr

Harar, Ferrar, you know, from Twin Peaks, from a lot of things. But for me, he will always be, what's his face from Twin Peaks, Agent, what the fuck, Albert, Albert. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Anyway, I bet that movie's bad. And it's very funny to be like, we should make an episode based on The Man from 2005. Speaking of things that lift from old movies, should we talk about our third episode that's disconnected from this one?

The Lost Ones. It opens with a kind of a banger scene. Yeah. Yeah, we, I just give the broad summary. You know, the lost one is going to return us to one of our favorite questions. What were the exact circumstances around the creation of the Clone Army?

A sudden distress call puts the Jedi Council on the trail of Master Cipho Dias. The Jedi, the Kamen Owens told Obi-Wan had originally ordered the Clone Army. The Jedi Council finds all records of his last mission were sealed by the Chancellor's office. Speaking to Palpatine, they learned that it was the previous Chancellor, Chancellor Valorum, who sealed all the records about Sypho Diaz. And as they uncover what was going on then, they discover he was sent on his final mission by the then-Chancellor to a secret. diplomatic mission with the pike syndicate.

When Obi-Wan and Anakin visit the Pikes to learn what happened, the Pikes admit up front that they were paid to ambush and kill Sypho Dias by a man they only knew as Tyrannas. The name does not register with any of the Jedi, which only at that moment that I realized, even though Nodoku has become a dark Jedi, they don't know that he is a Sith. Like, I went and watched the attack of the clone fight after this, and in it, a thing Duke who says is, my Jedi powers are far beyond yours. He calls them Jedi powers. In my heart of hearts, I think he still thinks of them as that, right? Like, I think that he sees himself as a Jedi. He's not chaotic enough. He's divorced from the infrastructure. He's divorced from the council, from the temple, from all that kind of stuff. powers in his mind, you know? With the, following the conversation with Palpatine, Palpatine realizes that the Jedi are onto something. Right. And warns Duke.

There's all loose end. That, yes, he must retrace his steps and figure out where the loose end is. When they, when the Jedi speak to the Pikes, the Pikes admit, yes, they, they ambushed and killed D.S. on Taranus's orders, but they didn't kill the, the deputy chancellor or the assistant to Chancellor Valorum who was accompanying D.S. on the mission and they have

been keeping him in a sort of Chateau-Dief situation for a decade in a locked room with nothing but like bugs to keep him company and he has become gross. Quite like Hollywood deranged. He's like Renfield.

You know what I mean? He's like eating the bugs and talking to them and like he's like in that mode. He's mall when And is in the cave in spider mode. Just when he is about to sort of reveal what actually happened around this mission, Duku shows up, kills his way to the cell where this guy has been kept. What's his name? Silman?

Yeah. Is that it? Yeah, I think that's right. And chokes him out just before he can spill the secret of DS's last mission. The Jedi have to get better at being in a prison cell where someone. Someone is being choked and then realizing it's someone outside the room doing it. Isn't there an anti-choke force move? Like, can you open things?

Like, open the airways? Like, where's the counter for the. How is that just like the uncounterable fucking dark side move that like nobody can, it's not making sense? But what does make sense is the awesome lightsaber fight we get here. Oh, yeah. So good. This series is firing on all cylinders as in its final.

in its final year. We get an amazing fight and a revelation that Tyrannus and Duku are the same man. Duku warns Obi-Wan, I told you, I gave you all the clues, Mr. Policeman.

And makes his escape. There's a little more pursuit after the fact. But in the wake of this, the Jedi counselor left with this knowledge. The creation of the clone army was put in motion by Duku. And they wonder what they should do about that. How did it take them this fucking long to figure that?

They wonder what they should do about that, and they decide at the end to do nothing. It's just like Slim Charles said, Rob. Don't matter who did what to do. Who at this point? Fact is, we went to war, and now there ain't no going back. I mean, shit, it's what war is, you know? Once you win it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie.

But we got a fight. It's unbelievable. By the way, I've been thinking a lot about Slim Charles ever since Obi-Wan. Because we were talking about there's no, there's, like, all the Inquisitors trying to, like, front is so hard. Yes. And the thing about Slim Charles is he doesn't front as a hard man at all. Nope. But you don't doubt for a second that he is, like, the coldest killer in the entire series.

Mm-hmm. And because of that, he doesn't need to prove it. Nope. He can just be kind of laid back. Yeah. Anyway, this is This is an episode I think we've wanted the whole time.

It's so good. I want to shout Like, go ahead. The first couple minutes of this episode as Plow Coon is moving through with the Sand Troopers, or yeah, sandtroopers going through

this abandoned space crash looks so good. It's gorgeous. It's like, Like, genuinely, 100% worth watching, but it is such a, there's such a noticeable difference in quality, especially in terms of lighting and texture. As we get these, like, super close-up shots on Plow Coon's face, we have all these particle effects with, like, the sand dust moving through the air, the snow, or sandtroopers

suits look super fucking good. Like, it just... The ambiguity of the... that planet they're on. Like, it doesn't look like desert and it doesn't look like snow. It's like the perfect like wasteland. They are in like, you know, it's like almost a metaphorical void, right? Like they've gone to a place that doesn't really correspond to a physical reality.

Like, like, I watched that scene and my assumption is it's like a sand planet, but like it's just so off. It's a place without like visible light, but the like dust almost like glows as it like both lights and blinds, the characters in it. And then you go into their like command crawler and you just hear the storm howling outside as they're screaming to be heard. It's so good. Even as they're

sitting in the cockpit of the tank and the reflection of the screen on the Sand Trooper's helmet, like you see the red little lights on across his house. It's so well like the extra. The extra

rebreater. The extra air It's so good. And that they've styled with their little wolf pack thing. So now they've given themselves like cool little muzzles in the plows bros unit. So happy to be home with the plows bros. It's so good. Also the really bulky uniforms that are like bulky on top and then have like a little skirt on the bottom looks so cool. My man with a cyber eye.

I know. I know. It's so good. You know, this is also like clearly, it's a love letter to like the beginning of Close Encounters or. a lot of films that start with the sort of like, we found something. We found it out in the desert. We found it in the sand in the snow.

Digging through it, trying to figure out what's going on here. The degree of mystery out the gate is just so high. The intrigue of this. I'm so glad I did not ever say what this. This is an episode I knew it was coming up. This is, I've said this a few times. I was like, this is the last big spoiler thing I knew. I've known about this episode coming forever. I've been desperate to get to it.

even more desperate after reading Duku lost. Oh, my God. And what I didn't know was that it would be so beautiful and be so, like, such a standout emblematic, like what the best of Clone Wars can be in terms of production, right? I have a note later on, Rob, you were talking about some of the cool Duku fight stuff. And my note is just every bad episode of Clone Wars should have just been replaced with one where Duku was doing some shit.

And, like, this is, like, it's because it's so. well done here that I would write something like that obviously there have been bad Duku episodes they've been bad everything episodes they don't let them doku it up enough they don't let them do this shit is the problem yeah yeah yeah exactly and I think that's also two for scenes like this in the sand and the snow we've seen them do sandstorms

before but we didn't with that with Luminara that time and it was cool at the time this blows it out of the water you know because it's like you're in the dark you can feed like the flashlights just scattering around like you it's so atmospheric it's a

92nd or like two minute long scene that we never go back to and I get why they didn't get to make this in the first five seasons. They don't have the budget to do three minutes in a single location like that. Like it's a waste of money. It's very easy to justify not doing that, you know? But it sets the tone. Because it is so, like, the thing that is, like, this is the thing that astonished me about this episode. Usually when you get, when you get like, when you were fed this much by. Clone Wars. Usually it's like a two or three parter. I wish it was. I think there's value in this being a tight little 22 minute episode. But my hats off that they did it all in 22 minutes.

It is such a statement of how good they've gotten at their storytelling with some of this stuff that they're able to move this many pieces around the board, including a lot of exposition, to get us to like this level, like this number of revelations. But this opening scene

does do so much lifting in terms of, is this a buried, like, secret in this universe that is, like, foundational understanding what's gone wrong? We are about to move through an impenetrable storm that's hard to put together. That's a great thematic, you know, mirror. I will say the single episode thing is complicated for me, because I think that there is some ambiguity that remains at the end of this episode in terms of what did Sifodias do and what didn't he do.

What do we know is true about him versus what do we not? which I think a two-parter would have been able to clear up a little more clearly. So, for instance, at the beginning of the, at the beginning of the episode, we get a sort of like reminder from the Jedi Council. After, you know, Plow calls back and it's like, yeah, Civo Diaz's a ship. Like, we found his lightsaber. And, oh, and Mesa Wendu is like, hey, can you remind us of what, Obi-Wan, can you remind us of what you learned about Cepo Dias back in the day? And he says, like, yeah, when I went to Camino, I found out that it was the, the Cameroon told me that it was Cepo Dio. Deas, who ordered the productions of a clone army, and Yodas says, without the consent of the council or the

Senate, he did this. And then, and then, and so, like, at that point, that's on the table is a thing that's potentially true or potentially false, because that's what Obi-Wan heard. That's what they've extrapolated from what they've heard from Kamenowans. Then, Mace says, and then this is just true, prior to the blockade of Nabu, Sifodias sat on this council until we judged his idea to be dot, dot, dot, dot, too extreme. Indeed, says Plow Coon, he foresaw a great conflict and that the Republic would need to raise an army. At the time, the council rejected those ideas.

And then Obi-Wod says... Amazing. Just like showing how, like, doubted out these characters are. The story of Clod Wars has destroyed them. He says, well, that's not the first time we've been wrong recently, is it? Unbelievable. And then, and then Yoda is, like, you know, see what he's kept. the clone army secret,

how this was done we don't know, yet now a new piece of the puzzle we have. And so that's the stakes, right? And the mystery still remains, how is it paid for? Because, like, there's a, like, again, the Caminoons of memory serves, they got cash up front for this,

which is why they're here, they're so happy to be able to deliver the clone. They're delivering the clones, right? You're right. Yeah, so it's like, but I do I do love this notion again like the whole vibe of this there reminds me a lot of the um the arc where Asoka is acute again it is a mystery the Jedi council is like the knight has drawn in uh it is dark in that room and they are digging

through their own past trying to figure out like what has led them to this moment I do love this notion of like Dias well especially I don't know how canonical Jedi lost is at this point but I think it is because the character we meet in that goes from sort of the you know adventurous bookworm to a tormented prophet yes

and the notion that like he is doing this like militant Cassandra thing on the on the council and is obsessed with this idea of there will come a moment he is he is both beset by visions of coming Apocalypse for the Galaxy and the Jedi Order, but also he's convinced that the remedy to it is that the Jedi need an army.

But also in his visions, the army is there for when the, you know what I mean? It's like one of those things where like the classic prophecy thing of, you know, are you bringing the thing that you need to avert the prophecy, or are you fulfilling it? This is, you know, this is core too. This is what Yoda is trying to warn Luke about later, the way this ties in. into that which is like visions like this are ambiguous because sometimes you are bringing the worst thing to pass in your fear and your panic at what you see bearing down on this but yeah they just they completely lost track of what he was up to and they disappeared and they never really

knew what was going on and so they they they you know the the next lead they have is well what was in his portfolio at the time of his disappearance So here's what the Jedi Council knew of D.S.'s death. He died on Felusha, which is a planet we've seen a lot of during the Clone Wars. And he was there to arbitrate a dispute between Felutions, and he was killed in the middle of that conflict. What they find when they pull up the file on him is that he had another mission around that time, but the file is sealed in the chancellor's office. Sealed by the chancellor's office.

And why does the chancellor have the... Sealing powers? Over Jedi info. Over Jedi info. Over Jedi, like the Jedi library. Yeah. It's fucked up. It's bad.

This is why I want to see the agreement. I want to see the paperwork. And what is the relationship? Interesting. Yoda says, like, I'll be the one to hand. and I'll go talk with Palpatine, but there's just this vibe. There is a vibe. Yeah.

It's happening. Yeah. It's like, especially because we've heard Yoda say that so many times before. And then the first time in this episode, we finally get a follow up on one of those conversations. And we get the follow up to all of those conversations because Yoda says, Mace Windew's like, oh, how to go. And Yoda's like, as much success as usual, I am afraid. it. Vives are bad. Vives are bad. This is like one of those things are broken. Where someone, you know, you get a new manager at work or you say a new co-worker or a new, like you've been reshuffled in a reorg and now you have to work with somebody else.

And you go into it the first time and you're like happy to meet this person. Happy, you know what? It's not what I'm used to. I used to work with Valorem, but I'll go meet with Palpatine. And maybe it'll be, you know, Palpatine's from Nabu. We like Padma. Padmaid's from Nabu. Maybe it's a good sign. And then little by little It starts getting into your brain And next thing you know You're in the group chat And you're like I cannot believe

I'm meeting the Palpatine I can't I can't not today I can't do that today And everyone's like Oh you got this you got this Don't worry about it It'll just be whatever

Just go in ask the conference Ask the stuff you need to ask about And get a 50 It'll be a 15 minute meeting Like and then and then you go like It's never a 15 minute meeting Palpatine always wants to talk about some other shit And that

And you get the vibe. Like, it's, it, I think that what was once and, uh, let's say potentially antagonistic relationship, but fundamentally, you know, workable has become increasingly hostile, you know, has become increasingly like, I know you are fucking me. I know you were trying to get one over on me. You will always leave out some information, like, and I don't know that they know that they obviously don't know the depths of it. But we know that very soon after this, they're going to ask Anakin Skywalker to be their spy

against Palpatine, right? They know that he is at the very least trying to make a bigger power grab, trying to do something in a civil sense that they think is bad. And I think it's starting to show, and I like that a lot. The fact that Palpatine is like, Cifodias, doesn't ring a bell. Oh, not really. I just, what was his name again? Cipho, yeah.

Cepho. Cepho. If he pronounced it wrong in purpose, does he do that? Yeah. What's he say? Well, because everybody says Cepho Dias, but he says Cipho. That's so funny. Oh, that's really good.

God, I love it. Well, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. In my head, it's been Cipo too. How do the Caminole say it? I don't have a fun. I don't know. I'm curious of the mispronation itself is implicating. Oh.

Oh, sure. So Duku would know how to, Duke is his, it's his, Ducco is, it's his, Duko's boy. Duku wouldn't fuck it up. Yeah. Spoiless for the end of this episode. So, yeah, because Yoda has this conversation. They're both on their guard. Like, yes, Palpatine is, he does a couple things.

He pretends one, like, I never heard of this guy. Like, what was his name again? But also, he's reminding us that, well, this time I was just a humble senator from Naboo. I was nobody. I was definitely not elsewhere in the galaxy doing anything else at this time. I definitely haven't lived for like 500 years and have been sort of arraying groundwork for ages. And so we have that as well where he's, you know, trying to, you know, he's kind of new to this job, really. Actually, if you think about it, he's only been chancellor for a few years.

So there's so much that he just doesn't have any insight on. You have to go talk to Chancellor Valorum, who we remember was sort of the weak ineffectual chancellor in. phantom menace and was also we get the longer scene sort of outlining why he's so weak in Duku Jedi lost why he's sort of emblematic

of the failures of the Republic and partly what disillusions Duku about the entire structure of Galactic Governance he's still kicking around I thought maybe part of the plot was going to be where to find he's dead but actually he's sort of living in comfort

and style as a retired politician still under Sanctorial Guard but the Sanctorial Guard thing made me wonder too. Yeah, did he do you think is in their house arrest? Yeah, right. That's, is he being protected or is he being surveilled? Like, is he living the life that, uh, and ma'amma is effectively living in, in, uh, andor.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's a lot of guards for meeting with Yoda. Mm-hmm. It's true. It's like eight of them. It's wild. He's still, like, basically wearing a politician's outfit, too.

Yeah. We don't see him like, there's a version of this scene that's, It's like in a robe at poolside. And that is not the vibe. You know what I mean? He is, he has his like medals on or, you know, he's, he is still a, he feels like an elder statesman here and not a retiree, right? Yes, completely.

And the story he tells is interesting, too, which is that the Republic was being destabilized, or at least Khorstant was being destabilized by a drug war that was stemming from a conflict within the Pike cartel. And it was so bad that the Republic needed to use a Jedi for an off-the-books, like, diplomatic mission, to sort

out the drug supply situation on Corrasson. The Chancellor's office was like, we got to make sure the crack cocaine keeps getting to the hood. Like, that's like they were in the business of, well, drugs are bad.

Right, but the drug war, but the, sorry, but gang wars are worse because it disrupts the status quo. It throws a wrench into daily life. The violence is pouring over. The spice ain't where it's supposed to get. It's the most snowfall shit, though. It is. Of like we're bringing in the intelligence agencies.

We're contracting a Jedi master. Don't tell anyone about this. They didn't go through the Jedi. They didn't go to Yoda and Mace and say, hey, we need a guy. They just went to Sifodias. Oh, I know. Because he is the guy. He's kind of out there.

He'd be down with this kind of shit. shit. Because they say because of his connection with the underworld, right? Because Seva already had an established connection with the underworld of Corson. That's why they went to him specifically. I also felt like the fact that they call out, first of all, they said they're making a powerful drug out of spice, which I thought was really interesting because I think we've talked about on this podcast before how spice has gone through like multiple versions of how bad it

is because of this being for children, that them specifically saying that something is being made out of spice rather than the spice itself being the powerful drug was really interesting to me. They don't say the word glitter stem, but I'm pretty sure they're talking about glitter stem. But that's the thing, right? It's like they call in CFO to stabilize the situation. They're basically playing Kingmaker among the pikes. and that is unbelievably wild

you know also again empire shit good work your state is done yeah your capacity your state capacity

is done so because you have a drug war and it's bad enough that you're like oh and specifically it's a disaster because it's not your capital world maybe it's not such a big deal

elsewhere but it is it is the fact that the lower levels of Coruscant And again, it's just what he says. Like, again, remember, they're all up here in the clouds, a natural sunlight and, like, live in the high life in Corrassant, the glittering capital city. And they're talking about, like, the lower levels.

It's basically Predator 2 down there. It's Robocop. And so their solution is, yeah, they're going to basically install, they're going to wrap up the Pikes of a war by installing a proxy in there to stabilize, like, the galactic drug trade so that things can cool down in Coruscant and they can get back to, I don't know, being thoroughly captured by their vested interests within the Republic? Because they say, he said, Yota's like, why did we not know a fucking Jedi was on the case?

And he says the Senate committee assigned to the matter feared that open discussions with such a criminal element could legitimize their activities and give strength to opposition leaders within the bureaucracy secrecy was the only choice so let's unpack that because you just said a lot of things

I'm trying to follow so you you didn't want to legitimize the criminal activity by we couldn't do like a public sit down with them you know what I mean We couldn't, like, invite them to talk. We couldn't send an ambassador.

We couldn't put, you know, Representative Jarjar on this one because people would know. It's like an onion headline for, like, U.S. surrenders in drug war. And it's like a Photoshop of, like, the White House podium with, like, a bunch of drug, like, drug lords taking over the White House. Yeah. Yeah. And what sounds like happened is there was supposed to be talks, but then there was a flare-up on Felushia. There was a, and something got paused, and so then he got reassigned to Felusha, and then I kind of lost the thread, Shrug, which is a bad thing to do when you've set an undercover Jedi and your second in command off to go do this shit. I think, personally.

The other thing, so again, they don't, like, they don't talk, I don't think they get to where all the money came from for the clone army, but I do wonder. Was Siposo neck deep in underworld shit that he was able to, like, Iran-Contra some stuff where it's like, he has now. I literally was reading about the Iran-Contra affair because he'd be like, okay, is that what's going on here? Are they doing an Iran-Contra? Does he have black budgets now? Exactly. That is my question. What do you mean by that?

What does that mean? So, like, one of the, one of the, so Iran-Contra is this, like, horrendous scandal. Like, as they say on only murders in the building, worst. Watergate, but just not as interesting. So Iran-Contra is, like, was effectively a complicated operation run by, like, the White House and, like, U.S. intelligence services and segments of the military that all existed outside the proper chains of command for the stuff. And because those chains of command usually demand levels of oversight, like, what are you doing?

the operation had to also self-fundraise so that it could do what it wanted and it involved things like arms dealing like drug trafficking etc like I have not read a book about Iran Contra recently what was the exact like the end game was to send arms to a right wing group in Nicaragua right to do to do classic

you know regime change stuff right and it just this is the stuff that we're always constantly doing, right? We're always constantly involved in local conflicts in this way across the world in order to produce a more beneficial sort of background for our government and business dealings around the world. We want there to be people in places like Nicaragua. We said this already today. You know, who will let Exxon get there and put down drills that they own and will pay the leadership or the government some money, but in order

to just take the land from regular people, for instance, or to take that place of locally owned businesses who could benefit from owning those drills and selling the oil themselves, for instance, right? And this is true for all sorts of different resources. There's also true for all sorts of different retail operations. This stuff is happening all the time. And doing regime change is like a key part of that. And then bigger than that, the black budget thing that's worth saying is that the DoD, the United States DoD, and this is true for a number of different governments, a black budget is where someone goes, hey, we need X billion dollars to do some stuff. And you go, what is it that you're going to do with it? And they go, oh, we can't tell you. We can't,

it's not, I'm sorry, we can't tell you about it because of a security concern. But we do need $80 billion from you, though. And that is effectively how U.S. intelligence is funded. I'm going to start doing that. I'm just going to start going up to people and saying, I need $80 billion. And just, you know, can't know. So, like, the Snowden leak is, the Snowden leak gave us a glimpse one step in past the DoD, like the National Intelligence budget was on the Snowden League, like, $52 billion. And then what we learned was the CIA gets $14.7 billion of that. Now, where does that go?

Some data collection. Some management facilities and support, some data analysis, some data process and exploitation. What's that mean? No idea. No idea. But normally what happens is U.S. national intelligence gets $15 billion. And then how it shakes out from that, we just don't know. We just don't know.

Right. And so, like, I think one of the very serious one thing is about Contra as well is that, like, black budgets exist. but the thing is, like, yes, there's still, like, ripe, they're ripe opportunities for abuse. But again, there are normal chains of command in there. There are some people who are read in on how those budgets are being spent. But Contra was such an, like, out-of-pocket thing for the people involved to be doing that they kept it, it's like government within a government-type stuff.

Exactly. But one of the things that, like, what gets you caught doing things like this is if you keep asking for money. so sometimes operations need to self-fund and that is where you end up with things like hey was the CIA selling drugs was the CIA involved in extensive like drug smuggling and such because they would have had motivations to do so because if you are basically taking your cut as a middleman

of a drug operation that nobody knows you're involved in you now have millions and millions of dollars that you can sort of reinvest in whatever the thing is that you do not want anyone including maybe your bosses and the government and the CIA to know about. And so is this, like, this is kind of one wondering, is like, is CFO Dias doing some of that here? Would love to know. I mean, and the part of this that does map to Iran-Contra is that, like, the, uh, there was an arms embargo, right?

You're not allowed to sell weapons to Iran at this point in time. Um, uh, and then we did it. And then the government did it. And then that's part of where. the scandal really comes from. It's not just, they weren't selling teddy bears and using teddy bear. And there was no teddy bear embargo. You know what I mean?

And so that's what's happening here in some way, which is it sounds like CFO is part of an underworld doing stuff that is illegal, working with groups like the Pike Syndicate, who as the way that they're talked about, it's like moving spice is legal, but selling the drug is not maybe, right? They're called a cartel, which for us, of course, summons contemporary. usage of the word cartel inside of the drug cartel world. But they might, are they also a more traditional cartel in the like monopolistic control of a, right, we have a charter, we've all agreed to sell at a certain rate, et cetera. The way they talk about spice makes me think of opium, like in the 1800s where it's like, yeah, it's legal, but we don't have become a social problem for our people, but on the other hand, we could flood other people's, like territories with it.

Yep. And so, like, yeah, it does seem like it has that sort of semi-legitimate status as a trade good, but then if it's processed in certain ways, it becomes illegitimate, et cetera. But either way, the implication that CFO, like, was sort of half in that world, the chancellor's office knew that he was in that world. Right. Which means he was also in the chance of the world of the chancellor's office. He was also in that orbit for some reason, probably because he thought we knew.

needed a fucking army. And even told no, like 50 times by the Jedi. Yeah. Yeah. So imagine, I need to know if he, if he thought we needed an army because he was already talking to Duku or if Duku validated that concern of it. Like, is it, what came first? Jedi lost at least tells us what. So remember in in Duku, Jedi lost, as part of the misfortunes,

he sees the planet they go to. He has, he has, He always had like the gift of prophecy, but of course becomes a curse because he sees like the galaxy burning, people chanting Duku's name, and he sees an army. He sees an army of the republic. And so he becomes convinced that they need one to meet this moment. And that becomes an obsession of his. And then he's also protected by his Jedi master. Right. He hides all of this obsession from the council.

God fucking Jedi loss is so good Go now go leave now go listen to that Watch that Patreon.com because it's fucking important It's fucking matters And they're hiding it from you So so like the Jedi You have to hire Cepo Diaz to go get it for you

They put the most critical text in Star Wars In a radio drama audio book Or do we just think it's that critical Because it's the one we read If we had read a different book, would it have become our holy text? I don't know. We need to read one more book to find out, I guess. We're about to, right?

Yeah. We're about to read a book. We are about to. I hear that one's bad, but maybe we'll be the defenders. So the thing is, that book covers so much of an era that we are interested in, which is the right before Phantom Menace era and, like, how did we get here? And I know that that sounds like we should be reading high repriments. public probably but like that's a lot of different books and this was one and it was and I got

to listen to it all walking around my neighborhood I got to go get a nice slice of pizza and then listen to about Cifodias having a terrible vision that that tortured him and High Republic isn't no no no no that's too far back it's too far back I mean Yoda is still in it but yeah and phase two of High Republic is going further back which I didn't expect that that's what they would do I think they kept going forward in time but they're actually going back another generation. I appreciate that. Let's get farther away from. I mean, let's keep going back. Let's keep going back. I'm, but there's enough over. Okay, but so the thing that we learn in the scene is Silman. Yeah, that's the key. He says, yeah, it was only, you know, he says,

Yoda says, um, uh, was there another, was there another Jedi? I know, Codias did that. Because the solution said there were. They said they, they buried two people or burned. They buried two people. exactly and right and Valorum says other Jedi no it was only it was Cepo Dias and it was my personal aide Silman they were the only two and you know it was like

I's huge Silman who what huh who's this motherfucker why would the Folutions describe Silman who is not a Jedi as a Jedi if he wasn't a Jedi well so the Jedi the Jedi the Jedi Council is like well the

Fallutions are primitive people and they're superstitious Oh right they literally said that yes So, like, can't rely on them because they don't know, they don't see, they don't know what they are seeing. But this is a good question. Was Duku there? Right. Like, this is the third man.

It's like, the third man. Like, like, Silman was there. Cepho was there, but then two bodies were burned on Felucia and we know one of them wasn't Silman. So is also there a previous unknown Sith. that, like, went down in all of this, uh, like, I don't know, but like the entire story is weird and the Jedi are underreacting to how weird it is because like every, it's like one of those things where every detail feels like it's alarming and how odd it is and how little it matches up with what they thought they knew. Uh, so I should say really quick, we saw Cifodias

his, we get his hologram here for the first time. We finally see him. It's nice to have a face to put to the name. That's all. So speaking of going back in time, Cidius gets on the phone immediately to Duku and says the Jedi are asking questions about Cifodias. Duku is convinced he left no trail to follow, but Palpatine says, well, there is clearly a trail they are following,

so you need to go and figure out what detail you missed. I love this tone so much. much. Duke who defends himself. He's like, I've never failed you. I've always been like a loyal servant. And Palpatine has had it. And this is like a clear sign of the coming breach.

His answer is basically failures are accumulating around you a lot. And then through the call, through Zoom, Sidious chokes him. Did we know he could do that? I didn't know that he could do that. And it was very cool to see. Because when Towson puts the hex on Duku from a distance, that's like wild. Yeah, we are like, oh my God, she can do some shit that even Palpatine can't do. And it turns out, if you're Duku, you're like, I cannot believe that these two different super powerful force users fucked me up in my own throne room, in my own office.

This is supposed to be my sanctum. This is a sacred place to me. To admit that happens, I'm just saying like my webcam is broken. Like, sorry They're back ordered I've got I'm gonna get one real soon But I don't let's not here yet

I don't know what's going on Serrano All the best buys on Serrano are out I tried I tried You know the logistics you know The ship got caught in the canal It's production production You know

Yeah Yeah So Obi-Wan and Anakin Go to Is it Obadiah Obadiah Obadiah

Yeah Odd name I'll be a biblical name for Pikeland So they have a meeting With the head of The Pikes It's just an odd dude They're so cool

I love them They look so fucking cool I love them I want to hang out with them more These three episodes make me want to play Destiny so bad Same Because like The glowing sword the green fire, the, like, techno pikes.

It's witch queen, baby. It's all witch queen. I'm ready. It's installed. I'm ready to go. So they have this whole, like, I can't even figure that the dude, Lampike is sort of the pike leader that they're talking with. And I can't even really do justice to the whole vibe he's got going.

It's a lot of, like, he's giving off, like, strong. I'm about to betray you vibes, but he's not. That's not what he's doing. He's just like, he's a weirdo. And he's like just kind of enjoying his little martini glasses, invites them to partake. And as he sort of talks around the visit, they notice that he's wearing that little device from Valorem's day. He's wearing that like, Chancellor's ship medallion that Valoram had. which means he probably got that off Selman.

And at that point, Anakin rips it off his body and, like, demands to know, like, what's really going. And you expect this is going to be where things, like, turn. And instead, Lompike laughs like a man relieved of a burden. Yes. Because he says, you finally put the pieces together. He's been waiting for this day. He's been wearing it just so somebody would notice it. He put it on.

He put it on. He put it on. clue. Some Jedi are coming. Let me put it on. Yeah. I need somebody to ask me about this because it's time for him to get his, like, we realize later he's always, he's terrified of Taranus.

He's always been worried that Taranus would show up. And he sort of, he guides them down into the depths of the Pike Palace and explains. We should really quick. The palace is filled with other criminal types we've seen. Like there are multiple huts there, including the one with like the monocle on. We get one of the cat boys. Slavers is here. Everyone's smoking on something.

Hell of slaves. Hella. Hell of slaves around. And no mention of the Shadow Collective. No mention of our lost voice of Age or of Maul who's in the air right now. We don't know in the wind right now. We don't know what's up with Maul or what the relationship is here. But the fact that there are like these other elements, like the Pikes fill that

fill that gap in space? Like what happened after? After all, that I'm desperate to know. Anyway, yes. Deeper and deeper into the palace we go. And he sort of does a walk-and-talk and explains that they were paid off by a man named Taranus to ambush and kill Cifodias and anyone with him. But they recognized at the time that anyone who pays to have a Jedi killed is dangerous and unstable in the Pikes view. So they kept an insurance policy, which was they took.

Silman and have kept him imprisoned so that if the Jedi ever came asking questions, they would have something to deal. And before he lets the, basically he wants immunity. He's like, I'll let you talk to this guy. But we're cool. Like the Pikes and the Jedi, like this is not a feud. You're not going to hold the assassination against us, are you? It's a decent deal as far as the Jedi are concerned.

They need the info. And so they go when they talk to Silman. who has become Redfield. Oh, Django Fett's name comes up here too. Right. Jango Fett mentions Tyrannus. Obi-Wan says, I've heard that name before, Tyrannis. Jango Fett mentioned it when I was on Caminoa, or Camino, rather.

And that is where he says that it was Taranus who wanted Cepodeus dead. So, yeah, we continue, again, Obi-Wan is slowly trying to piece all this shit together. Silman's domain is the grossest place we've ever been in in Star Wars. He's got big old grubs in his beard. When that guy was eating the trash in the two point day. That's pretty gross too. But this dude's eating and talking to him covered in bugs and larva and shit. He was having a rough time in there.

That's true. It's a rough time. They should have let someone go hang out with him every once in a while. while. Yeah. I feel like the, yes, they should have, especially because, well, you know, again, the humanness of it all. But also, he's not actually a good witness now.

He's, uh, he doesn't have a cogent explanation for what went down all those years ago. It's kind of frustrating just in terms of if you're just going to kill him right before he says the key bit of information, which was it even, like there's no promise that. Anything he's going to offer is going to be valuable at all. But they just, like, they kind of ham fist this, like. And they just did this. Like, Fives was too, he'd been drugged. So, like, at the critical moment, he needs to explain what he knows he can't.

But there you let it pass because he's drugged and he has been directly under the influence of a Sith master within a day. And so you kind of buy that, like, by the time Anakin and Rex get to him, he's two strung out to really, like, he's too much of in a panic and too strung out to offer clear, like, narrative of what he now knows and what he has, like, what he's come to believe about the Clone Army. Now we're doing it again, where once again somebody is holding a key piece of the puzzle and, oh, you just, what could prevent him from providing the information? Well, once again, the answer is going to be, well, he's just too crazy to, to tell, tell them what's going on. And then it's like, this is like kind of the one.

failure here of the episode in addition to being kind of a, you know, icky portrayal of someone being like really disturbed after years of abuse, but also it's like just from the standpoint of this entire episode has done a really great job of delivering on like the beats of a good mystery.

And when you get to the key witness, you should have a good story to tell. Well, and the thing that's weird is like he tells us we the viewer get it, right? He says, there's other person wanted to be Sifo Dias, right? All is deception. And then he's choked. And then we get the

reveal that we see Duku march through land, march through this place, choke out some pikes, and then finally choke this dude. And then we get the final act, which is this big running fight with Duku as he tries to flee after having done what he did. And it's like, whatever he was about to say, we basically get it, right? Like they understand, they come to understand that to Rannis is Duku. They understand that Duku is, has fallen all the way and that he's tied up with all this. Why would he want to be Sifu Dias? So he could go place the order, presumably, as Sifodias as part of the Republic.

So I don't know, right? But that's, he goes and places the order for the, for the clone troopers, because Sifodias is dead. So this is where I say, like, there's stuff that's not fully unfolded here. Wait. Duku goes and makes this order. So Sifu Diaz never even makes the order in the first place? No, he dies before he can. Which was the one noticed immediately in attack of the clones.

They basically tell him X number of years ago we got the order was placed. And because like the death on Felicia was known by the Jedi, they know that he was dead, like, Cifo Dias was dead before the order was placed. So, like, it couldn't, that story doesn't make sense. I see. So, yeah, at the end of this, at the end of this, we have the line that is from, from Yoda. We should come back and talk about this action sequence because it's just so, so, so, so good. But while we're here talking about the mystery, Yoda says, No, now we do that guide the creation of the clones from the beginning, Duke who did.

Hmm Our enemy Created an army for us If this was known Public confidence in the war effort The Jedi and the Republic would vanish There would be mass chaos Cover up this discovery

We must No one Not even the Chancellor may know Reaction from Anakin Valiant men the clones have proven to be Save my life and yours They have many times Believe in them

we must, win the war swiftly, we must. Before our enemy's designs reach completion, whatever they may be. Are you sure we are taking the right path? Hmm. The right path. No. The only path.

Yes. Designed by the Dark Lord of the Sith, this web is. For now, play his game. we must And so I don't We don't It doesn't ever get fully extrapolated We know that Duku wanted to be

Cepo Dias But only in order to place the order Like this is what's confusing Anyone could place Why is Diffo Dias have drug money Could did he wants I think it's more like The jet

Or the relationship They needed to have the Jedi would not have accepted delivery of an army from Duku and they might not have accepted it if it was not from one of their number but that they are willing to accept that like maybe it seems like

maybe the chronology got weird or something but like they accept that somehow or other Cifodias gave them this army and because it is him because he was a council member they trust that army

And so that's why Duke who needed That is probably one reason why Duke who needed to be the one to place the order So that it could be like a delivery Like it's a Trojan horse right So that it is a gift from a friend Who is who is now gone Right It has to be Steve Odeas because otherwise they wouldn't accept them

Right yes But it does like It does bug me that everyone gets amnesia here about top killing that Jedi and the revelation like oh yeah the clones

have a inhibitor chip in them oh we didn't know that well they do don't worry about it and like these two pieces of information right that like

the clone army was ordered by someone else and provided by Duku and then in the last like few months we have seen a clone kill a Jedi because of a previously unknown

like piece of like cybernetic equipment or like bio it's a bio chip right a piece of equipment is in their brains that we didn't know about and the Camino's like don't worry about it we just didn't bother you with this detail this is this is so confusing for me because I just don't understand the phrasing of from Silman of Duku

wanting to be Sypho Diaz. Like, it, that, it evokes the idea that, like, Duku wants to, like, embody, like, be, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting stuck on semantics. Yeah, I think there, he says it that way because he's been stuck in a room for 10 years and they're writing him as being, you know, obtuse and, and not being able to use language the way he would be previously, right? Yeah, I see what. But maybe, maybe CFO just had it going on like that, too, though. every every every Jedi in the council

just wanted to be but but also I want to be clear I do think that this is ambiguous and that's part of the problem for this right and part of it is I feel like they wanted to keep that

ambiguity ambiguity there we go because closing the door on it completely is closing the door on it this could be a thing that the Duku what is the show that came out that we haven't watched yet

Oh, the legend, yeah, the Tales of the Jedi. The Jedi could address. I don't know if there was more here. And again, I think if you told me that there was a line in here that explains something that we missed somewhere and that also the Star Wars fandom.com, the Wikipedia has missed somehow, I would believe you. I'd believe you if this read on this is wrong. I like it more of Cifodias places the order.

But what doesn't make sense is that Sifodias could have placed the order, and then Duku could have gone and given them Django Fet. Because we know that Jango Fet comes from Duku. Duku hires Jango Fet as the guy, as the prototype, right? As the prototype. So we know Duku was involved at that point. And it only kind of makes sense then that Duku is who they think is Sifodias, right? Well, remember, though, he's also, he has suborned some of the Kaminoans at least, or maybe their entire leadership. But in the five's arc, like the head doctor in charge of the operation is now directly taking orders from, now, is the implication there that all the Caminoans or all the leadership of Caminoa have like sold out to Duku?

Or is it another of these cases where you have a weak point in the organization get like, because this seems like the most Sith way to do things. You don't take over an entire organization. You take over key elements of it. and then you like turn it inside out right um the the thing Yoda says like it's funny that partly one reason he doesn't want to stand down the entire clone army um is like his conviction that will be these are individuals these are these are men we've served alongside we we know these guys we know who they are and doesn't see them as weapons in this case that they They can't be, like, they can't be a poison chalice because they're brave men.

There are comrades in arms. But also, I think the real motivation here, this is what the Jedi Council is getting at. They don't know what would happen if they, like, they would have to demobilize their entire army overnight. And with that, maybe it means they lose the war of the separatists immediately because now they don't have an army and the separatists just roll over them. But I think more pressing. is the realization that their power and prestige is now wedded to this clone army. That the Jedi Council's legitimacy now stems from the fact that they are the supreme command of the war. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Totally. And so when confronted with this dilemma, they can't bring themselves to put down the poison, the poison chalice. Totally. I'm going to read from the Wikipedia this section on Cepho Dias. Now that we've gotten here, I've let myself open up the Cepo Dias page. I'm going to read this

There's a section on the pike stuff The mission was kept secret from the Jedi Council As the Senate Committee dealing with a matter feared the political repercussions Of openly negotiating with the Pikes We've talked about this However, Cifodias was never able to complete The Chancellor's mission

Shortly after he arrived in Obadiah The High Council called him to deal with another conflict On Felusha, a skirmish had broken out between the local tribes And Cepo Dias was assigned to quell this conflict Because they don't know that he's already out here doing this other mission, right? As a consequence, both Sifodias and Sillman were diverted to Felusha aboard a T6 shuttle.

However, neither man would reach the destination, for Sidious needed Sifo Dias' clone army for his plot to bring down the Jedi and the Republic. I don't know how that however is functioning, but it's in there. Unwilling to leave Dias alive, he ordered alive as a loose end, Duku, who had since apprenticed himself to Sidious under the title of Darth Taranis, betrayed his former friend by paying the spike syndicate to destroy Cepo Dias' shuttle. since the syndicate wished to gain an advantage over rival crime families and Tyrannis's substantial offer would allow them to do just that, so they're getting paid and that payment

will let them win that war. They accepted and shot down Cifodias' shuttle over the Obadiah moon. After inspecting the wreckage, they turned over the Jedi Master's corpse to Tiranus as proof that the deed was done. After inspecting the wreckage, sorry, while Cifodias had died in the crash, Sillman was still alive when the Pikes inspected the wreckage, they decided to keep the chance. Chancellor's aide locked up. We know this part already. The Spice Dealer's also left the lightsaber at the crash site for some reason. Taranus subsequently took Sifodias's body

and traveled to Felusha, posing as another Jedi, says the Wikipedia. Taranis deceived the Fulcian tribal elders into believing that Sifodias had died in the conflict and had his body cremated according to the Fulution custom, thus leaving the Jedi Council unaware of where and how the Jedi master had truly died. So he must show up and do the job for the Jedi. Right? He must show up and solve the solution crisis and then be like, damn, my boy got killed in this. We got to bury him here. So they think there's two Jedi because that's what they, there were, effectively. One of them was just a corpse the whole time, right? Then following Cepodeus's death, this is an utter legacy, Taranus, this is about to get even weirder. And I don't know

that I believe what is what I'm about to read. But maybe I'm right. Maybe it's right. I don't know by it. Tyrannus and Cidius took over his clone army project. Cepho Diaz had originally planned for a behavioral modification biochip to be installed in each clone, which is to be a safeguard against rogue Jedi. However, Cidius and Tiranus retold the chips to brainwash the clones into murdering the Jedi. Posing as a Jedi, Tiranus presented the chip to Lama Su and Nalaisei, then deceived them into believing Cifodias's intention. Ducu also traveled to the Jedi Temple and Corrassant to erase any mention of Camino in the temple archives by way of making use of Cepo Dias's codes.

So this is theoretically why he needed Cepo Dias to be Cepo Dias is so he could go, but this makes it sound like it is his army. This makes it sound like he'd already pro, he had a code, he had a brain chip like designed out. Yeah, like there's already been many meetings between Cepo and the Caminoons. So then is he posing as like, oh yeah, Cepo set me in his stead. I think this is... That's terrible security.

This is an editor trying to put some shit together, right? Yeah. Like a section that wasn't reconciled with previous section. Because I think the implication here is there is no CFO-Dia's clone army project. There is Duku's clone army. Well, no, because we know that he believed there needed to be an army. Yeah, but he left... I believe lots of them.

He was only out of the council. Totally. You don't draw up your clone army project? You don't have the... Well, it might be a document. You know what I mean? In the folder, but it is not... I have met with a contractor.

Right. Right, because he didn't meet with Django Fent. Yeah. So, no, I think that part is a bit money. Is a reach. This is where I'm like, once we get to the biochip stuff, I feel like it's a mess. But this episode should have clarified this beyond the shadow of the doubt. We shouldn't have any questions about it after this.

And I still do have questions about it, you know? Yeah. It's weird. It says he never met anyone named Sifodia. So it's like, that's all, that's all Tyrannus. That's all Duku. So I think the clearest version of this is, Duku uses the fact that Sifo Dias was known to have wanted an army as cover for getting his own army and claiming to be Sifodias for the reason you said, Rob, which is, it's an effective Trojan horse because it doesn't look like a gift from an enemy, it looks like a gift from a friend.

It looks like, it specifically looks like, oh, I can't believe Sifo went through with it. yeah I get why Sifu's role was so important but it's also strange that from the Jedi Council's perspective of someone being like of them being like we don't want an army we don't want an army we don't want an army

and then the army gets made and they're like I guess we'll just take the army like it just it's it's a little weird remember they're fucked up it's what Obi-Wan says like we were wrong about so much all the time these days where our connections of the force is failing it's easy for I imagine and it's very easy for them to be like,

fuck, we dismissed Sipho Dias's visions. We did need an army. There's this droid army. We don't have an answer for it. It's very weird. Like, the timing of this, this is effective. The army shows up the day when they need one. Like, that's kind of the problem is, like, literally they get the army as they realize,

we need a mountain assault on Gianosis. Like, it happens immediately. Like, shit, we, like, we need an army to face down the separat. and boom there's an army and they never they grab it it's a weapon in hand yeah i'm also why would go ahead well i was just going to say like why would the camminowans just accept ducu as a representative of sifo diaz slash the jedi without ever seeing them together and Cepo not, like, mentioning Duku, presumably. I'm just like...

Oh, but the Cam and Owens are portrayed as so creepy throughout all of this. Like, they are, at best, like, unethical military contractors. When we meet the... So you think they're just taking wherever the checks coming from? Oh, yeah. They're not really questioning. They were, like...

Yeah, sorry, Austin. No, I... Here is... what we are there is vestigial stuff happening right there's a novel there's a legends novel that fucks with this and i think what we are seeing is that there had been an answer and now there's a new answer and as philoni has often tried to do he wants to leave some space for legend stuff to be potentially acceptable even if it's not directly mentioned so i'm looking at at the Sifodias' legends biography, which also draws from the Darth Plagius book.

So there's a section here about Sifodias going to a party at Valoram's place and hanging out with people. Sevo Deas openly admits that a growing darkness is approaching, the way that he told Jedi years before. Not long after this part, he ends up talking to a guy named Damasque, who is a immune, financier, right? He has a company called Damasque Holdings. Hego Damascus approached Cepodias, and once more he openly admitted that a growing darkness was approaching, as he stated to the Jedi 20 years before on Sereno. Cio Deas agreed to Damascus claims, and Damascus informed him of cloners on Camino that could grow an army and hold it in reserve until it was needed. The Jedi Master was at first skeptical of this, but he was persuaded to think about it. Not long afterwards, Cifodias approached

the Kamenowans as requested, and requested a clone army for the Republic. With the funds provided by Damasque Holdings, one of the Mune, Mune banks, Civo Diaz paid the Caminoids. At the same time, Cepo Dias was contacted by the Supreme Chancellor Finis Valloram, who knew of the Jedi Masters' expertise on the criminal underworld and was given a secret mission to the Pike Syndicate. So all of this stuff, that's what's missing, is this book that's not canon anymore includes where he got the money for the fucking clones.

And it was him in legends that did it. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit here, right? Because the rest of that stuff basically does happen, right? The Cepodeus does not inform the Jedi Council of his mission. It's around that time that Duku resigned from the Jedi Order and fell to the dark side, joining the Order of the Sith Lords as Darth Tyrannus. Little did Cepodeus know that Cidius and Duku had learned of his ordering the clone army and planned the steps to his demise.

The first test provided to Duku was to murder his old friend. In doing so, he would fulfill. the ancient covenant that prescribed the murder of one who was close as a measure of commitment to the Sith cause. By executing the man, Dukut would gain full control of the project for the Sith using Sifodias as a cover, seeing that Duke would embrace the Dark Side, Sidious gives him the title of Darth Tyrannus. So that is, it is this episode plus these other events that are not actually canon, even though the new canon would have just hit just before this because of the Disney acquisition. And it makes me wonder, was this episode scripted

before the Disney acquisition and then they had to throw some of that shit out. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Yeah. I just, I don't, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, I guess it is. I mean, it's sillier because it means that Duku then goes to the Kaminoin's and it's like, you'll never meet Sifo again, but I'm here and I'm his boy and I'm here

to take over, right? It just kind of mixed, maybe that's how the Jedi roll. Then the Kaminoans don't give a fuck because they're so. getting paid? I guess. I'm not going to read the Starth Plagius book, so I'm never going to know. It's just, yeah. It is, it is the Star Wars experience to, like, go into an explainer episode and walk away

with, like, no, like, more questions and not that much more clarity. Like, we knew that Duku was working. Like, we know that fucking Duku's tear in us. Like, I don't know. I don't know how nobody, everyone's like. who could tyrannus be, who could be, there's one really strong ex- Jedi

that you know is working for fucking Palpatine. Like, I'm asking for a little critical thinking. I'm asking for a little read between the lines. They don't know. No, no, no, no, no. They don't know that Duke. They know that Duke is working with the, with the separatists. They don't understand

that the separatists are a Sith thing. They know that the Dark Lord of the Sith is out there and is fucking around with people. You're right. This is so stupid. Right? They think that their old friend has become a political extremist. They don't know that he's a Darth. That's Count Duku, not Darth Tyrannis. They're not in a war against the Sith. The Sith in their minds are a third party who are fucking with them. Right, right. They know that Ventress is working, is, I guess they know that Ventress is working on behalf of the, of the separatists, right? And has

a lightsaber and does Sith shit. So maybe they do know that. But they don't think, for whatever reason, they don't think that Duku is a dark. Zithy at all? Like, he's not giving Sith at all in what he's doing?

Listen, I'm reading from this, I'm reading the summary, and they're saying Plagius is the one who told Sifofodeus to build an army. This shit's bad. I can't go down this rabbit hole anymore. No, we can't. I'm closing this.

I think some of this probably should still, like ambiguity should probably remain over some of this. Yes, I prefer some of that. But there's a bit too much of it here. But like, in the end, this is a bit like, this is the late Republic equivalent in some ways of like, uh,

gosh, I don't know if that's the right analogy, but we'll roll with it. It's a bit like their Kennedy assassination, where it's like, there are so many weird things happening around the event and so many, like, players, like, the Pike Syndicate is where this really, that analogy comes into focus.

It's like there are weird mafia connections to the assassination as well as partly related to that, the huge presence of like Batista, like Anticastro, Cuba. I was going to say, the mafia was literally actively used as for multiple attempted assassinations against Castro and Cuba, right? The mafia was brought into the American. intelligence apparatus to be a weapon against against communists in Cuba, right? Actually, even before Castro was like avowedly communist when he was just a

revolutionary. The mafia was being used to use the mafia. They still had connections. 100% across the country. Yeah. Uh-huh. So there is a connection. Yeah. Was that all, did Kennedy also get, you know, there are, sure is a bunch of shit we're not allowed to read about the Kennedy assassination, right? So, Biden again, kick down the can. It ends up in that place where it's like, You end up saying stupid shit also, right? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Either way, though, now they know, because the Pikes sure knew it was Taranus. And when Silman is killed, that is when the coin drops for Obi-Wan and Anakin that, oh, my God, Duku is Taranus. He's a siff. Which, again, is like, you fought him at this point. Yeah, didn't they learn this? Hang on.

During the duel. Have they seen him do Sith magic? Yeah, he does, yeah, in attack of the claws. He's a red light saber. He's a red light saber, and he does force lightning. He's like a force lightning plus a force throw at the same time. And Palpatine showed up to like, like, and that's what he says my Jedi powers over Palpatine was like, damn, he knows Emerald Justice too.

I think so. That's so, you, y'all deserved it. Y'all deserved it. I'm sorry. Y'all deserved it because, come on. Yeah. Again, I think that they think of him as a dark Jedi, not as a Sith, because the Sith have been so, which is stupid, it's stupid. It's bad.

But they're always like, don't go too dark because you'll get Sithy. Like, here's a man who's gone very dark, very dark-sided. I don't think that they think of the Sith as a particular historical thing separate from evil Jedi. Right. Because there are lots of Jedi who go evil, and there are not as many. And they make statues of them. And they make statues of them because that was a personal failing of the Jedi, actually. Yeah, I...

But Anakin, is this like an episode out of order thing? Because, like, there was a Duku-Annequin duel. We watched it. It was sick. Because he's the dark Jedi who runs the Confederate power, right? He runs the separatists. So they know that he does that. But they don't know that he's Darth Tyrannus, who's a person that they've heard about a few times.

like Obi-Wan's like, oh yeah Django Fett mentioned Darth Taranus to me but he doesn't know that that's Darth even though they saw Django on a balcony with Kalduku Yeah Timeline thing I guess No, no no but like they

They've heard about who Darth Tyrannis was like four years ago Or five, you know years ago And then in their head they were like Well I was still fucking with Duku then right Or like Duku couldn't have become a Darth by that Right He was still in the wins Right. That's what becomes farther and farther apart in their heads until they're like, oh, shit.

And as we learned- But Duku was standing with Django Fet. That actually is the thing that's going to fucking kill me now. But Django doesn't know who that man is. And so, and as we know, this is a world without Google search, as we know from Andor. This is true. And so it just would have been beyond their capacity to do like an image search of like, who is this man? So Django has no idea who he is And then, yeah, I guess I think he's just all so weird that It's messy Yeah

And it's not worth it It doesn't make sense I get the desire to retain this thing That is like the Jedi don't understand That the masters of the Sith are Operating right under their noses But like literally this is the sequence What's his name?

What's the head pike guy? Lon Pike is that his name? He comes out and he's like You have no business stuff with the Pike's Tyrannus and then Obi-Wan and Anakin go, Tyrannus? You're the man called Tyrannus? That's right, yep.

And that's when Dukyu says, he's right. Duky says, I told you everything you needed to know on Giannosis all those years ago. That's what I'm saying. I mean, you should have joined me.

You had all the clues. Cifodinas understood. He saw the future. That's why he helped me. You lie, says, or says, says, uh, Obi-Wan. fights real good though like we get incredible

once again we get every Jedi like they're really good at this point it giving different combatants their own like styles yep this is form two this is macashi for those following along at home and Duku he has that like courtly fencing style like the

the way he tucks his arm behind himself to like uh like again also show how little effort it is for him to beat these folks but also to maintain that perfect form and composure throughout the fight. And so you see Anakin and Obi-Wan both like

giving it their all like, you know, wild swings trying to break this guy's guard, get around him, and just with that beautiful. And he gets in on them with like throws and kicks too. He's like, he's just beating their

asses. Yeah, such an economy of movement the way he fights. It's terrific. Like this is, it makes sense why they did this but like the last fight between him and Anakin is nothing because Anakin has become so powerful

and he's so close to the dark side that it's kind of nothing but I do like we get one last fight here of oh that's right Duku is the best swordsman in the galaxy and even like our two heroes one that is just all jacked up on the force and one is just an experience, like,

Hero in Obi-1, they're still not a match for this guy. He's able to blow through them while also demolishing the entire, like, band of guards for the Pike Syndicate. He even anticipates them using some force push. They do, like, a, like, a dumb-te-up

force push. And he's like, hop, I'm just going to hop over this. Like, it was like a slow fireball. And the little lightsaber salute as he jumps off onto his escape show. I know. And it's not even his. real escape ship because he's too smart

for that. But it's a good in this one, unlike Obi-Wan. Yeah, it's good. Yes. This is good. Did y'all also clock the like, there's, when Anakin lands on the ship and then they like collide, there's like that brief second of their lightsabers coming together

where everything looks super weird and then goes back to normal. It was like... I did see that. Yeah. I didn't know what was actually happening there if that was like a... Is that a Disney Plus like, repression error? Is that a render error? Or is it intentional? I don't know. But everything looked very weird for like two seconds. It's weird because, yeah, it gets, it gets dark as we cut

into that. The lighting changes, yeah. The lighting changes and then it like, everything gets blown out a ton. It gets like grayed out and then the lighting gets blown out with the lightsabers. Which is odd for, because remember where we started when we were in, in this show, in this episode, we started on Felusha with the sand and everything and we had... I think that's the Obedoian movie.

The moon, right. It's right, right, a moon. And we have a moment where Plowcun like ignites the blue lightsaber and I couldn't stop thinking about Obi-Wan when the blue lightsaber is like holding up to Plowcun's face and just seeing like the soft blue reflected. But it's just, it's, yeah, it's interesting

that, you know, it's, I wonder what happened there. But yeah We get back And Yoda is like The shit we already talked about Time to Time to continue to We're just going to have to walk into this trap

Yep What is going on here? What do you do? How do you eject from this moment though? Like what do you do if you're a Jedi at this point? You're like well fuck Anything I think it's easy to be

I think it's easy to be At least spend the night meditating on this before they're like, we're fucked. Yes, they should have, they should have slept on this one. I think. I think, I don't know, could you, like, I would, I would go, I would go to Palpatine. And I would just simply say, like, hey, getting some weird vibes and just try, like, I would, I would confront Palpatine like they end up doing in Revenge of the Sith. And just, I would do it. I would bring more guys.

I would not go with two guys. I'd go with way more guys. Or I would just start like, I don't know, like a TikTok account where I just start talking about this stuff and spreading it to the people. I would get the people on my side. Yeah. Fair. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, Yoda is always like, hey, can you go talk to this other person or spy on this other person?

or tell this other person of this thing and make it move in some way? Like, he's just going to sit here and take this down and not, like, DM Padme and be like, why don't you talk about

how the war is actually really, actually, really bad? There's two thoughts that occur in me. One, just because of the way this show is, like, the episodes are crafted, and you have, like, war episodes

and then, like, behind the scenes drama. So the thing that gets lost a little bit is that I think we are supposed to believe that in the backdrop of all of this, there is a colossal and high attrition rate war happening at all times. Like at any moment, they're talking about this. They are just feeding Jedi and soldiers into the front lines just to keep the separatists at bay.

And so it is like one of those things where the engine is like redlining all the time. And if they were to slow it down or stop it as reacting to this clone news would require, they believe that separatists would just like conquer the galaxy overnight the minute they they do anything to change

like the way they're fighting and the way they're behaving what they don't realize because you know the peace talks have been stopped so many times but like if they stopped fighting it would trigger a crisis among the separatists as well they don't realize

that like there is the separatists are a real political body and if the republic stopped fighting it would trigger sort of a breakdown to the separatist alliance as well because a lot of members would defect but the other thing that does that we have to bear in mind is they're out of time because any day now their capital like their capital world is about to be struck by the separatist and the chancellor is going to be abducted like i do think like palpatine recognizes coming out of this that they're on to me.

Like there's too many, there's, like they're starting to unravel too many parts of this plot. It's too close. But one way he's able to buy himself time is he stages the setup where like there is a crisis on Corrassan

and he is the victim and the target of it. Yeah. And then they have to rescue him. Mm-hmm. I'm very curious to see where we go from, from maybe one more arc or one more episode. I don't, I think it's one arc. I don't remember if it's, I mean, let me tell you.

I wonder where you end. this. Like, where, and where we began. This is a Yoda three, three episode arc.

Just as Yoda talked to the clones at the beginning of Clone Wars episode one, um, uh,

we are, we are wrapping up season six with a three-part Yoda story. At least that's what the, the episode descriptions all start with the word Yoda. The way the shit series began.

Yeah. Wow. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So. I don't care about the little fucking thing. Okay. Okay, well, okay.

What about this? One of them is, Yoda faces the evil of the Sith So I think we're about to get mad About how did Yoda not know X, Y, Z, and revenge of the Sith I'm going to get so mad We'll see, we'll see how it goes I'm curious, I'm curious what we're going to say

It'd be very funny if this ends with The implication that Yoda has a little escape plan That like, at the end of this he's like Dago, I could hide out here But I'm not going to mention this to the other Jedi Let me call the wookies up and get that That, uh, that, uh, that, uh, eject, the eject pod, yeah. Objecto Cito.

Oh, my God. Uh, so yeah, that will do it for. Oh, I have one, uh, thing that I forgot to say at the end of episode, yeah, the second episode of this arc, which is the fact that, Queenie Julia says, perhaps this will be a new era for the Jedi and Bardotans. Fuck the show After they were stealing your kids You know

She's trying to be nice Mace lied to hit her face I know I know But but She's fucking Jar Jar Jar Queenie Julia She's trying to be And Mace did come through in the clutch

In the clutch Mace was there So why Okay but they still were kidnapping kids For mad long That was what Maybe this new era of Jedi is different But also, Georgia... They're going to send their kids.

They're going to let them go. They're going to send them out. That's the new era. Mace didn't need to... Jarger could have come with, like, a bounty hunter or, like, somebody who fights really well that he knows. Like, to be like, oh, well, because Mace was here this one time, I'm going to restore the order between...

Like, I know this is what Clone Wars does, and that's why it's so annoying to see. But, like, Mace Windu fucked up so much here. Yeah, it was really... I mean, other than... Okay, what does Mace being a Jedi actually offer? Like, what did that benefit the situation? He was good that one saved Jar Jar.

Like, I, like, I, I think. He did save Jar Jar Jar. The situation comes for a woodman. Well, actually, he was holding Jar Jar Jar over the lava and then. I love Jar Jar Jar Binks, but you need Mace Win Duty to beat Towson in a one-on-one. That's true. Jar Jar Jar can take care all his, all her doing. No, what about that was Jedi?

Jedi. But what about that was specifically Mace, like, that a really good, like, Savajo Press couldn't have done? Or, like, a extremely good... Savago Press could not have beaten Towson. We know that's true. Like, this is the one thing Mace can do a job done either. Like, Enbo couldn't be Towson. And the, not to become on Twitter.

Cad Bain couldn't be Towson. Could you create an enemy so strong that Cadbane couldn't. defeat him? Yeah, unfortunately, it was Boba Fett in the book of Boba Fett.

Well, he just wounded him. They're going to give the Cadbane series. Cadbane will have his own show. Cadbane will be back. Yeah, I hope so. It'll be better.

I do feel like they sent the right guy. The situation called for a Jedi. A Jedi was there. And I do think it doesn't mean that this could be

a new beginning for a relationship. That could mean we will have diplomatic relationships with you. We'll no longer have like a blanket ban. Yeah, we won't call you the Harbinger of Doom.

How about that? I don't think it means we're going to normalize relationships so we're going to start giving you our kids. I don't think that's the implication at all. You can come hang. You come to the party. Yeah.

Like when me and Jarga have a party, you'll be invited this time. I'm with you. I wouldn't invite them, but I think that it's hard when someone has saved your life. I would not say it's a new era.

I would say, you know. But she's a queen. She's trained to say that shit all the time. You know what I mean? she's supposed to speak big. It is some padmaid. It's some queenie talk, for sure.

Also, I bet I truly believe, I love Jarja, but I truly believe Jarja was in there last night afterwards being like, don't you think we could maybe be a little bit nicer to the Jedi? Like, some of my best friends of the Jedi. He definitely was hyping them up. He's like, Master and Mace is here for a reason. This is why I brought him.

Like, you should be telling him this. Like, he was definitely, you know, putting in the good word between one-on-one meditation sessions. I think that her saying that was about Jar Jar and not about Mace. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah.

Your partner has a friend you don't like, but like, maybe this could be a new era for me and Greg. And it won't be. And it won't be. You can say we're cool, but we just don't have to hang out. Right, exactly. Yeah. All right.

So that will do it for. For the disappeared and for the lost one. And yeah, next time we are having our final Yoda arc. Wow. As he sort of goes and explores the mystery of the Seth here at the end of the Clone Wars. Yeah. Voices, destiny, and sacrifice.

I think you're about to read casting info. I thought you were like, voices. I was like, yeah, who appears in this one? That must be crazy. No, the episode names Voices, Destiny, and Sacrifice. Wow. And then that is temporarily the end of the I can't believe it. We will have to do the legacy material.

I don't, which to reiterate again, there's a, there's a Darth Mall comic that's four issues, so that's very little, right? There is an incredible looking animatic only story that's four episodes long called Crystal Crisis on Utapau. And by what I say it's animatic only, do you remember when we watch like Unfinished, scenes in the past it's four whole episodes that look like that oh my god delicious and then it is a

book and i don't know if we're going to do those each is one episode but we'll see i think we might have to um as excited as i am to get to rebels those are all big those are all it's a four it's a four issue comic it is a four uh episode it would just be like a six hour podcast it would just be a six hour episode and the third thing and the thing i know needs its own thing is the book Dark Disciple which is the Quinlan Voss Osage Ventress novel That's the one to get sexy as hell, right?

I believe that that one gets sexy as hell. So excited. When are we doing the other Clone Wars? After Rebels. Okay. You mean season seven of Clone Wars? No, no, no. I mean the other Clone Wars.

Oh, Tarkonsti. Before we go back. I would love to do that right before we go back to Clone War Season 7. So after Rebels is exactly right. Oh, you don't want to do that until after. I want to do it after Stephen says and then compare them.

I want to do it before season 7 and compare them. But maybe you're right. Maybe we do it after season 7 and compare them. Because season 7, the thing about season 7 is, season 7 run exists in, it's in Revenge of the Sith in part. Parts of Revenge of the Sith are happening during season 7. Whereas the clone, the Tartikovsky. Tarkovsky. No, I thought it was Tartikovsky.

Is it Tartikovsky? I always get the name it backwards. Is it Tartikovsky is the animator? Yes, because Tarkovsky is the filmmaker. Tartikovsky, Clone Wars, animated shorts and serials, go up to Revenge of the Sith. It ends at the final moment, at the beginning moment of Revent of the Sith. Interesting. With Palpatine being kidnapped, right?

Gotcha. And so I would love to do that right before season seven as a sort of like, here's an alternate way that all could have gone Right, okay, I like that, yeah So Okay Also that show bangs

That show bangs That shows very fun I'm excited Good grievous Good grievous stuff It'll be a good way To reintroduce ourselves To some characters that we love

I miss grievous But with a different vision I know I think there's grievous in season seven But I'm mad that we didn't get Do we get any grievous this season Maybe we'll get some in the next arc Maybe eventually we'll find out

He didn't die When his heart got shot that'd be great season five of the Mandalorian I would I'd like to waste me again as a character but yeah so in two weeks we're going to be doing that final arc

of the original run of Clone Wars and then later in March we'll be having our Q&A on this arc and that final arc if you'd like to hear that Q&A or just want to support the show you can do so at patreon.com

slash civilized and of course that will also give you access to the oft referred to Duku Jedi Lost episode and our marathon endurance run of Obi-Wan which is well worth hearing

if you want to just work through some feelings about Obi-Wan Kenobi the TV show. It's cathartic. Truly. It is. Till next time please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice and hey, if you discover that your worst mortal enemy

has given you an important gift on which your entire existence now depends, maybe do something other than nothing. It's like they brought the Trojan horse in and they learned that there are enemies inside of it and they were like, but it looks really good.

But I like the guys in there. They've been so nice to us. People would be so mad if we got rid of the Trojan horse. It really ties the whole trojan horse. together now, like I can't imagine life without them. Yeah. I'm going to be. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to be able to go.