A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 80: The Siege of Lothal Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 (Rebels 16 and 17)

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

After months spent bouncing around the galaxy of the Old Republic, we are finally back to the wonders of the... lemme just check my notes... the era of the Empire! That's right, folks, the Emperor, Governor Tarkin, and Darth Vader are at it again, expanding their control over the galaxy and squeezing out any attempt at resistance. And you know what? It's good to be back. Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next time: Rebels 18 & 19 ("The Lost Commanders" and "Relics of the Old Republic") Show Notes Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Ricardo Contreras (@a_cado_appears) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akimpora, Austin, Austin, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners, via patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes and our tour of Tales of the Jedi. So this week, we're going to pick things back up from where we left off with rebels all the way in last summer when the writer's strike happened. We pivoted to Cotor and Cotor is really long. And we're going to open with this brace of episodes from season two, the Siege of Lothal Parts 1 and 2. Before we dig into those, we should just remind ourselves of where things left off at the end of the first season with an eventful three-parter that we again talked about coming on.

a year ago now. All right. So remember that the crew of the ghost had figured out that the sketchiest dissident in the history of Asian provocateurs, Senator Gall-Travis, was in fact working with the empire to entrap rebel groups. With him failing to trap our intrepid crew, who had spent months wreaking havoc on the empire on Lothal, our friend Governor Tarkin arrived on the planet to whip. its garrison of Keystone cops into shape. He had the Inquisitor literally behead our two comic relief imperial officers in front of a shocked ISB agent Callis and Minister Tewa, marking a shift in the overall tone and level of palpable danger present in the show.

To fill the void by Travis's Potemkin insurgency, the ghost decided to broadcast an authentic message announcing their resistance and calling the people of Lothol to action against the empire. In the process of getting that message out, Canaan was captured by Tarkin, and the ghosts had to launch a rescue mission to get him from Tarkin's flagship. Over the course of that rescue,

there were a whole lot of other things happened. There were deep, you know, dark nights of the soul, what do we do, how expendable is any member of the crew? But long story short, the rescue went pretty well. The flagship was destroyed, and as the Inquisitor realized he'd been bested by Canaan and Ezra,

he threw himself into the reactor core rather than face what he ominously warned them was headed their way. As the ghosts made their escape with the Imperial Fleet in pursuit, they were rescued by Hara's contact with the nascent rebellion, Fulcrum, who proved to be none other than our old friend, Assocetano. Finally, with Tarkin's plans in shambles and his ship destroyed, he announced a callus that the emperor had sent an alternative solution to the empire's problems unloathal. When the season ended with Darth Vader descending the gangway from Tarkin's shuttle. That brings us to today with a hell of an opener for season two. In the broad outline, the ghosts have been working as part of the rebellion as part of more conventional military operations for some time. And Canaan is chafing against working as a soldier rather than as an independent pirate and saboteur. This new status quo is immediately thrown into upheaval by a message from Lothel.

Vader is scaring the hell out of everyone especially Minister Tua and she wants to defect Ghosts move to seize this incredible opportunity but over the course of these two episodes discovered that Vader is one, then two, then three steps ahead of them the

entire time. Vader is him. That's my king. Vader is they... He's him and they should they need to figure that one out because that's not changing.

Go ahead, Allie. I just want to say at the top, I've never been more mad about Canobi. Bro! Canopy! It's all here. I mean, this is the thing that, like, my big feeling,

my the gut feeling in my heart is that we may leave rebels, Clone Wars, Bad Batch, all of the animated stuff, feeling like, why are they even making live action stuff? They already told the best, versions of these stories. We'll get into this later because I will take us to a

Faloni zone, but one of the things that comes up is like, is, is like, oh, Vader has a hit list. And like, and Vader is, beyond the hit list, which is very funny, which we'll get to. No one knows about Vader really. And Vader doesn't have, Vader is so powerful, partly because he's so isolated. And Asoka represents a chance at, at, you know, touching and the Anakin inside of Vader who we know exists because we've seen Return of the Jedi. We know it's possible. And so there is something very fun there that is like so much better than what ends up happening in Obi-Wan Kenobi, the TV show. So if they hold the course, they're going to fucking do it. So I'm, did you finish your, wait a second, Rob, did you finish your summary? Do we

just have to talk about Darth Vader immediately? Just, that was just the broad outlines. I think we'll get into the rest of like flushing out the plot as we go through. I think we just like, you know, discuss whatever we want we can talk about space battles sure Natalie what were you going to say i was just going to say i was imagining the inevitable osoka darth like osoka talking to darth vader but speaking to anakin i'm ready is going to melt my brain i'm so ready i even when i saw when i saw darth vader in in this like opening two-parter yeah i was constantly thinking about him as Anakin. Like I, it was, it's so exciting to have that just under the surface and for it to be and to wonder when that's going to sort of break out of the veneer of just, you know,

Darth Vader. Right. But yeah, great space fights as well. Great space. Opening on, I guess really quick, let me set, let me set a little stage before we start getting into the episode proper because it's, Rob, thank you so much for summarizing. the previous. Yeah, I needed the recap, to be honest. I did end up, like, rewatching the final 15 minutes of the last episode of the last season because it was like, I got to do it. Otherwise, I don't remember enough about this. But an interesting thing is that this episode is sort of like a, was sort of like a standalone movie for viewers. Because so season one of Rebels ends on March 2nd, 2015. The soonest you could see this, was April 18th at the Celebration Anaheim screening. They showed the whole thing at Celebration Anaheim, April 18th, that same year. Then it hit DisneyXD on June 20th of 2015, so in the summer. Then the next episode, the next one we're going to watch, we're going to watch the Lost

Commanders and Relics of the Old Republic next, and those hit in October. So there's a gap between this episode and the next. next true season. In a weird way, this is like a little standalone summer event, which I think is kind of sick. And it hits that way, you know. And so I think that's kind of the only major production. I mean, there's a lot of other little production things happening here, which are like, we get the season two look for for Ezra, who has the like scars on his face. We get what I think is about to become the season to look for Canaan. One of the trivia things on Star Wars.com notes that, like, he's going to keep the scar on his armor from where Vader hits him in the

fright in the first episode. That's just, like, his season two look. So there's lots of, like, on the behind the scenes front, there's one Rebels recon episode that we'll watch most of later. But there are, like, 43 pieces of concept art. We talked during the first season about how, like, the Disney takeover had happened. We'd gone from the kind of, like, rough Faloni zones to, I love the Flonians. I'm not dissing the old Poloni zones.

But the very buttoned up, very posh. Posh is the wrong word. But you know what I'm going to I don't know. They have a little, they have a full-size animatronic chopper rolling around those. Correct. High production values, multiple segments, all that stuff. And now. Right. And now we're getting 43 pieces of concept art for the Siege of Lothal, which is way more than we used to get. It's like they're just like, all right, show them, show them, show them what we put into this, you know, show them the work. I think those are the big production things that I have to bring to bear here outside of just like some other key, you know, the voice talent is who you hoped the voice talent would be in these episodes.

That is James Earl Jones. That is Billy D. Williams. There is a little bit of weird. So there is a moment where the emperor shows up at the very end. And that was originally Sam Whitweer, but they, who did Darth Mall in the previous season. But they have since changed it to Ian McDermott, who played. Who plays the Emperor in Return of the Jedi Forward, basically. Oh, wow.

And played Palpatine in the prequels. We ever get to a phase where we're doing interviews, something, a person I want to just, like, get in the interrogation box and sweat, is Genevieve O'Reilly. Mm-hmm. Because I think she plays Mamma throughout everything from the prequel trilogy through to Andor.

Is she in the prequel trilogy? I think she might have a brief cameo in there. Interesting. But she, I think she, it's like she is the voice, though, at least. And I know she's in, she is, she is the voice of Monmothma, I believe in the animated, like, we will meet that Monmothma. But that's the thing, is it that Monmothma? That's the thing I'm so curious about is like, right, you know, when you have the same

player in different context, different tonal things, like, how do they, you know what I mean, for that performer, is it the same in Mothma? Or is it like, this is a different gig and it's a different, like character effectively in playing. I'm very curious. You're totally right. Geneviva O'Reilly played her in Revenge of the Sith as effectively as a child, you know.

She was so young. Only filmed a few scenes. She studied the original Mon Mothema's performance from the original Star Wars film. Or she's only a return of the Jedi, right? She's returned the Jedi. Yes. Yeah.

So studied that. Riley did such a good job. I was convinced they'd see. They tarquened a moment of Matama effectively. I was like, that's got to be like a CG. Yeah. Well, and then she ends up playing that Monmothma in Rogue 1 also, right? So it's like

boo-bo-bo-bo-bo-boo. So that totally works. I don't see Rebels here. So maybe Rebels is a different but no, yeah, she totally does. She totally voices her in Rebels. We'll get to that Monmothma in Rebel or A Monmothma played by that actress in Rebels. To your point, Rob, who

knows how she's directed, right? So I think I'm a sucker for is my, like my background in Star Wars, one of my favorite things in Star Wars are the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games. Uh-huh. This opening to season two

is the most X-wing and tie-fighter as sequence possible, right down to the fact, so they are raiding an Imperial Convoy. Yep. And it's a multi-step thing. Can you set up what the X-Wing and Tie-Fiter games are for people who are like,

I don't know, I always hear people talk about these, but I've never played them. What are those? Yeah, so these were some of the, like, gosh, what's the way to put this? They've always been Star Wars video games. And some of them are kind of what you'd imagine for like, you know, the early 90s where you've got like Star Wars platformers on the, like the Super Nintendo, have, you know,

have Luke or Han jumping around and shooting things with a blaster, slashing with a lightsaber, little platformer levels. And then you have like, Luca, and notably at this time, Lucas filmed. opened a games division that made some really well-regarded adventure games in like the late 80s, early 1990s, but they also started producing a lot of Star Wars games in-house, you know, under their own supervision effectively. And in over on the PC, one of the series that they launched was the X-Wing series led by Lawrence Holland, who made a bunch of World War II sort of flight sims prior to that and then they made x-wing which was a game where in contrast to a lot of

like arcade games or games you play on the console these tried to treat things like x-wings and y-wings and tie fighters as objects you could simulate the way that there were flight simulators where you could like pilot and f-16 and do all the stuff a real-life pilot would do the x-wing and tie-fighter games tried to create that sense of authenticity uh about the experience of like flying an X-wing or flying a tie fighter. Along the way, they also do a lot of trying to fill in the gaps of like, okay, well, what does it mean to like, what did it mean to be fighting a war like this? What would the, what would the rebellion be up to?

What is the experience of being a tie-fighter pilot like? And they tell all of that sort of through the lens of, you know, you see all these events playing out through the glass of a cockpit canopy. one of the things that you do in the X-Wing games, like you do a lot of these missions because it's a scrappy insurgency, you do an awful lot of raiding Imperial Convoys, and this is like their favorite mission structure.

You start with an attack on a defended target, you wipe out the defenders, you disable the treasure ships effectively, and then you wait for other ships to come in, board them, and steal all the goods. That is basically what we have here, right down to the fact that at a certain point, they literally blow a bunch of shipping containers off of.

And this is, they look like better textured versions of the things you saw endlessly in the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter games. It was, yeah, go ahead, Natalie. Are there cut? I'm, what is the gate? So, yeah, so it's. I always thought the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter games were just like, like, basically, like, Flight Sim

Like, but would the Star Wars wrap around it, I guess? That is right, but then there is a sort of downtime between missions when you're back on the like the carrier, back on base. And you're like a, this is like a third person. No, it's like an adventure game. It's like an adventure game. It takes a late in our background. But you don't have a character. You're, it is like first, it's a camera view of like the space, like the central corridor of the ship.

then like there will be three big hangers or three big doors and one of them will be like go review your stats and one of them will be go look at the ships and they'll open very satisfyingly when you might open a great sound effect will play and then you'll get like a hand drawn like a cut scene or like a hand drawn but like a pixelized cutscene of meeting your commander or you know a new ship comes in like oh wow luke skywalker just on this ship or tie fighter is kind of famous because it detailed a lot of the internal goings on and like internal power struggles inside of the empire where you were eventually, you know,

you're working for this one admiral or this one muff. And then like eventually you get kind of tapped to be part of the emperor's like secret selected special group of best pilots who are like going after internal threats inside of the empire or people who are trying to make power plays against him. But then the missions are so, there's something about those games that are just so good

because they walk the line between, very arcadey and very, and giving you the sense that you're in a simulated cockpit, there are the games that I first played that let you do the thing of like, I'm going to move all of my power to shields, or I'm in a slow-moving Y-wing or Thai bomber, and I need to outrun something, I'm going to move all my power to engines and like zip, go faster, right, or try to get in quicker than the fighters who are chasing me or whatever, right? or the catch up to the shuttle that's trying to get away

or something like that. Lots of, oh, switch to ion cannon so you don't damage the ship and you just knock out its shields or knock out its engines. Lots of you could target individual parts, right? So like, as an X-wing pilot, you know, Rob, tell me where the shield generators

are on a Star Destroyer. Yeah, of course, the two, like, geodesic domes, like tiny little ears at the top of the bridge superstructure. And like, this is the thing that was like, it's like, you know, they make all those stars. Wars, like the machines and ships of Star Wars. And it was one thing like pour over that

information as a nerdy kid, but to put it to use in that way and to learn it, learn the ins and out of it by kind of being like the work-a-day fighter pilot was so sick. Or like you get a mission where you're like, you are the shuttle pilot for Darth Vader. You have to fucking, you know what I mean? Like this one mission is just get from point A to point B without being killed by the X-Wings who are way better than you. You know what I mean? At at combat, and you have to, like, rely on your, your, your, your Thai fighter support squadrons and stuff like that. Just real quick, too, like, they did some really interesting narrative stuff. Like, they would set fuses that wouldn't go off for, like, the better part of a game.

Like, the original Thai fighter campaign, you're basically put with a dude who appears to be a pretty competent admiral. You do some, like, aggressive peacekeeping operations, basically, like, whacking people's heads together until they both submit to the empire. But then you get word that, like, things start getting weird. like you get word that there's rumors he might be a traitor might be looking to he's up to something and you start getting like this vibe that you were getting more and more isolated within that fleet as like the game builds to its crescendo and then you do a mission where you're given a very simple briefing and you're sent out alone to like do mind clearing operations and they try to kill you your wingmen turn against you mid

mission uh like the the guy on radio control was like Or do you hear your two wing men, he's ordered, yeah, Alpha 1 is the emperor's stool pigeon inside the fleet, take him out, and you end up having to fight for your life against, like, the ship you've been, you know, serving for the entire game. Yeah, your boys. Yeah, it's great. And again, like, I can't, at the time, it was like, for me was, like, the reason to have a big flight stick on my computer desk next to my computer. But again, it wasn't so advanced that, like, you're checking the manual for how to even launch the ship. which is like some flights and just really lean into that. This didn't.

They all felt like this opening. And they all played the music from this opening. That's not true. This is a new composition, I think, by Kevin Klein. That's an interpolation of the classic Star Wars space battle music. That like, da, da, da, da, da, da. Well, sorry. Tie Fighter had an original score that was dynamically remixed.

Sorry, I meant this scene specifically. But yeah, you're right. Tie Fighter's music. Go ahead. Really like cutting it. stuff at the time where, like, you would have, uh, the, the, the music was arranged as a sequence of motifs that the game would kind of strain together. And as different actions occurred in the game, they would just blend like, okay, a new Star Destroy arrives, blend in the Imperial March

reinforcements motif. And like that would just come in as part of the soundtrack. It was really cool stuff. Uh, that like, even they games don't really do as much, uh, you know, with, with, with ideas like that. Yeah. And, Anyway, also, we're just like, I didn't understand what the difference between a tie fighter and X-ring was until I played these games where you're like, a tie fighter doesn't have hyperdrive and it doesn't have shields. It just has engines that are really fast and like armored whole, but it doesn't have shields. The X-ring has shields. That is huge. Like, this is how the rebels win this war fundamentally to me is they have ships that don't just consistently take damage when they get hit.

They're like, their baseline fighter is not just throw more grunts at you. It's something that can take a hit and not, like, take permanent damage. But they also don't really have proper carriers. That's correct. Yeah, sure. I feel like there's this whole layer, like, not even, like, just, like, reservoir of Star Wars understanding. 100%. That is, like, secret forbidden knowledge that is in these games.

I've sent you a time. stamped random timestamp of a long play of Thai Fighter where you can kind of see what the in-between Yeah, I was I was scrolling through this stuff where you're just like, okay, you can like ask this guy, what did you, what did you accomplish? And it's like, what was that mission about? What extra stuff did we do? Are we supposed to be doing? Like, tell me how it went. And then you can see, like, it's just like click around this. It's sick. I believe there's a newish, like, fan release of these games that keeps a lot of the basic rendering styling. the same. I remember Brad Shoemaker was really high on it a couple of years ago, but I don't remember, I don't remember what the whole thing was.

I found a time stamp to the doors opening, and it is, it is incredible. You may proceed. Shuttle, departing. The way those doors

open. It's like it's like slow and then it snaps in. Yeah. And it's like if only you had a sound blaster really appreciate it. Then you then you'd really be tuned in. I want to replay this game. Wow. It's fine. It's fine. Anyway. Yeah. I'm throwing it in the idea zone. Sorry everybody we have a we got an idea zone now. FYI. One of the ideas is going to Niamos. I'm just going to put that into the world. This is what going to the Galactic Star Cruiser and then having it be destroyed does to a motherfucker. We need to go to Niyamos. We have to go to there.

It's in the idea zone. It's a place that we can go to and we're going to Niyamos. Anyway. I don't know what the stretch goal will be, but we're getting there somehow. And it's going to cure us all for our various afflictions. Yeah. My maladies will be cured finally. We're like a Victorian child.

I am. Go to the seashore. I need to go to the seashore. I need to, I need to take the waters. Exactly. I need to take in the waters. I need to go on a constitutional. Like, I need all that.

I need the mineral waters. Absolutely. Anyway, this opening scene is like a fucking X-wing fight. And it rules. It rules. I have such a fondness for the, like, photo-realist, uh, uh, uh, explosion. overlaid on the siege it's so good

it feels so like actiony like but in just just really fun yeah they're going after like what the original trilogy explosions are here in a big way there's like big bright white like blasts of smoke and light

when a ship blows up there's a lot of banter here the team is working you know what I mean like they have they have a different type of banter I mean I guess Hera and Canaan still have a little bit of have a little bit of bickering

around flying solo versus flying with a group but it's fun to see them yeah yeah like I think you know yes this certainly like will call to mind memories of the X wing games but also the crew feels like they're playing a game

they love that they're working with the Rebel A wing squadron Phoenix Squadron and they've got these Rebel Carillion Corvettes that are like the heavy firepower and now instead of the ghost always being overmatched and kind of overwhelmed there's people that can call on for help

they can help other people they are like things are going according to plan because they have the resources to pull off these heists The size of the ghost is actually has made it kind of like a key part of a bigger unit which is really fun like instead of it it used to be that the ghost could kind of punch above its weight because it was bigger

than the average fighter it was like a small Corvette or whatever but here it ends up It's like a Mercedes Z-63 wagon with guns, I think, is kind of the, like it's, you know, it's got carrying capacity. It's just what I was thinking, but fast. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah.

Just like that. Um, and now, they don't have to punch above their weight. They get to be the sort of like, like, you know, a banner holder for the whole group that everyone can kind of pull around their strength in the middle of a formation and let the A-wings go do the work that they're doing, you know? Um, it's not true, though, Rob, but everybody is happy in this moment. No. I think, and I think it is the happiness we see every other member of the crew.

Every other member of the crew says something during the opening fight that indicates like, this rules. I love the new, the new way of things. And Canaan is sulking. We were fun. We were good alone too. We were always good. What are we, you know? Kind of nice having Phoenix squad and watching our backs.

We always did all right on our own. True, but I prefer life with our new fleet of flying solo. Oh, you were solo. By the way, we were always having fun. Yeah. It's not fun now. Oh, you didn't like my homemade rebellion? Uh-huh.

You didn't like, oh, you think store brand is better? Well, and we can kind of just talk through this a little bit. I think now, because one of, one of my first questions when the episode started was, ooh, what's up of these rebel guys who do the thing that the imperial soldiers do? Austin, let me interrupt because the thing that prompts the showdown is going to stem off this imperial scene that we get right after five. Let's do that. Well, let me just hit this one note, which is another thing we see here is we get rebel pilots for the first time. And like the imperial pilots, you can't see their faces above their mouths and noses.

They don't have eyes. They don't have, they don't have foreheads. They're maybe more humanized in some ways. But they similarly have that classic animation technique of, hey, we got to make a billion of these guys. They can't all have unique faces. But I also think there's something else going on there. And when I first watched this episode, I was like, hmm, what's up with this rebel helmet? But it's not the rebel helmet from Star Wars.

It is like a little more oblong shaped. One from the Jedi, right? I don't know if it is or isn't. I don't know. But I think the important thing is it has a blast shield that is opaque. You can't see through it. Contrast that with the X-wing pilots at the end of New Hope, right? Where you can see their faces really clearly, right?

So anyway, talk to me about the... Tell me what happens next, Rob. Yeah, so, you know, with the raid on the convoy having... gone really smoothly, we cut back to Minister Tua's office back on Lothal, but does it still feel like an office? Don't most offices have like windows and a sense that you can leave them when you want? Minister Tua is sort of being called on the carpet by Vader for not having done enough to quash the, quash the rebellion on Lothal. And in so many words, he makes it clear, that like the blame for all of this is going to fall on her shoulders.

It's down to her to figure out like how to get on top of this rebel situation. And if she doesn't do that, the threat of, she's seen two dues beheaded just like, you know, weeks ago at the end of season one. The sense that once Vader tells Tarkin, she's not getting the job done, it's curtains for her. And by the way, Agent Callas, who was also in Hot Water in season one, it's clear that he's adopted the position. It's like when the new boss comes in and you're going to toadie up to them. He's taking a shine to you. Callis was scared of Vader, was scared of Tarkin at the end of last season. But, oh, he is, he is thriving as Vader's little lackey here.

And you sort of ominously lets Minister Tua, who protests quite fairly. She's not like a secret police captain. This is not her bag. She is an administrator. She was role play. She was larping as a secret police captain last season when it was like all fun in games. But now she's being asked to do some shit that's like really real and she doesn't like it so much. I love that her, she's like, we've doubled the patrols.

We've set up checkpoints. We've set up curfews. And it just, the way that Darth Vader is like, well, we're going to have to figure something else out. aren't we? He says, perhaps that is the problem. You lack imagination, minister, when it comes to producing results. That's the first line we get from Darth Vader in this show. And it's just like, yep, he's here.

That is Darth Vader to me. Hey, Allie, you messaged me last night. Okay, bro. Okay. Actually, okay, bro is maybe harsh. That's not the tone you said. You said, okay. Then you said, bro.

That's what I said, bro. Bro, I love Minister Tua. I do. Oh, no. Oh, no. I said, yep. And I had already seen these episodes. I like, okay, so we've been coming back to Rebels, and I've been like, I'm coming to see you, Hera.

I'm coming back. I've been the rebels crew. But the way that I popped when I saw Minister Tua again, I was like, I forgot about her. I love her. she's baby girl she is baby girl well she was well yeah

well shout out to submit us her to uh she you know what I'll say is if Darth Vader wasn't here first of all she says Lord Vader

with all due respect which incredible confidence to say that to Darth Vader that's just wild well that that I think highlights how like much

Darth Vader is being established as like his role and his reputation and everything like you would never talk to Darth Vader at his prime at his peak in such a way

right well I think there's something fun happening here right which is like he's in his prime but he's not at his peak if that makes sense right like he's as we will come to discuss he ain't never been stronger but he might not have the reputation he comes to get by right a new hope or whatever right also something like becomes clear and clear as we we see more of star was universe

Vader is not himself from the moment he senses the X-wing pilot ahead of him during that star attack is strong in the force yes like everything from there Vader's capriciousness his like seeming disinterest in pursuing like the goals he's been assigned all of that stems from that yeah this is a vader who's undistracted he is on program as it sure is um yeah and and i just want to reiterate it's so good to have james r jones do this um it's just good to have that particular voice for vader uh i think he's he's kind of playing him a little younger than than the vader we get at New Hope. There's something quicker in some of the delivery. It's great. I'm just thrilled to have him here. So, shout us. To a degree, I think it's like in the film so often, it's just all

ominous portent and like I am, you know, Darth Vader, the Lord of the Sith. And here it's, oh, I am one of the cleverest operatives the emperor has. Yeah. Like, you know, under all of this, I'm also Anakin Skywalker. That's right. A very crafty, you know, ex-repul. general. That's right. Who, like, will play the man. I, I remember, I'm the guy who put the Stinger missiles in the hands of the rebels in Afghanistan. I mean, I mean on Anderon. Like, you know, he has plans. He's got, he's got a playbook. He is not just force. He is also tactics, you know. Well, and poor Mr. Tua. She's not wrong. The rebel group is gone. Yeah. Also doesn't have, it may have, you know, people responding to Ezra's message from the previous season. Like, local might have like a high unrest value if you're thinking in like, you know, strategy game terms. But the rebels thereafter are gone. That's done. And all of this, you know, might be, you know, this whole scene where where callous makes a point of, we don't know if he's locking minister to in the room, but he certainly makes it feel like she's not free to come and go as she pleases.

and so she comes out of that scene scared to death that she is next for the chopping block and that leads her to desperately reach out to because having studied the rebels enough she has some idea of what their informal back channel communication network is and so she does what I think a lot of us do in situations like this she goes to a bar and spills her heart out to a bartender that's right old Joe old Joe is back we're Joe back And that sets off I think one of the I love this so much

This is there All the whole rebel crew now The expanded rebel crew Assoca Captain Sato Who's new? That's the guy who runs The ABA wing squad Phoenix Phoenix squad

Phoenix Squadron Yeah he's the head of like the Like fleet of crevettes they've got But they're all there Like in the command center Of this of this rebel ship And Chopper rolls in saying he's got a message.

And I love that something extremely petty proves to be kind of the breaking point here for Canaan's discontent with this situation. Chopper comes in saying he's got a message. And Canaan pauses over it just long enough that you realize he knows better than this. But he's like, I wonder if it could be. Eh, who cares?

Throw it on the screen, chop. and immediately everyone is quick to sort of head that off because you're not just going to open a Zoom you're just going to open a Zoom link when you're in a Rebel CIC and that is sort of the that sort of sets off a fight that's going to open up between Canaan and Hara

but Minister 2 is moving fast she ran to Old Joe to announce that she wants off Lothal she's got to get out She's not built for it And she's been ordered at this point To go like turn herself into Tarkin Basically for For

Some some light punishment Probably death It's probably death And you think so I I guess it depends on how that That conversation goes with Tarkin Right

Maybe there's a world where she shows up And she's like You know I don't know She begs for her life In a way that Tarkin likes and so she gets reassigned to you know, count

slaves somewhere. But that's not going to be like evilification. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because this whole thing's going to be a work. Right. In the end, it's all bullshit, right? Yeah. Like I think, you know, if she doesn't

do this, Tarkin will scare the shit out of her. And again, like make her feel like she's just days from going in front of a firing squad. But this juncture, she is convinced that, like, she's got a very narrow window here to get the hell off off Lothol. Yeah. And she needs the ghost to come and bail her out.

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, this is, Canaan doesn't like this. Canaan doesn't like the idea of going to rescue Tua. I mean, you know, they're kind of, the crew is kind of split on, should we rescue Tua or not? Ezra, of course, wants to go rescue Tua. It's what the good guys do, you know. We help people around here. and that's that's you know where where they go but canaan is ticked and he and hera talk it out in the

yep one crucial piece of the bargaining chip that minister toa brings is that she has a a list of rebel sympathizers both on lothall and in like the kind of surrounding area of that planet So that's her sort of like, if you help me, I'll give you this list after. And that's, I think, the case that probably makes Canaan go along with it, that like, well, at least they're getting something material out of it. But he's not even really with the resistance like that. And that's the thing, right? is the big argument he ends up having with Hara is like, listen, I saw what war does to people. I lived the clone wars.

I, you know, I was scarred by that. And so was everybody else on every side of that war. This is not, I already lived through one war. I don't want to live through a second, right? Which is really interesting in a lot of different ways because. So let me connect back to the thing I said before, which was like, it's interesting. interesting that we have these characters who have these helmets that cut off their faces, right, even on the rebel side, right? Because you could just, you could make that a decision,

oh, we're going to really humanize the rebels on and versus the kind of dehumanized, uh, imperials. But like, while they're having this kind of argument in the hallway, one of these soldiers walks past Canaan, uh, with the, again, with the helmet on inside that hides the face and it's just the mouth kind of poking through. And it's so easy to be like, this is he grew up around comb troopers right like the world for him is soldiers in masks he knows what happens when you start surrounding yourself with soldiers who wear helmets and masks who aren't showing their faces like we're not them our faces are open you know it's i don't want to fight along soldiers i don't like being i don't like armies i don't like red tape that's the

other thing he kind of says he doesn't like is like regulations and paperwork and all that like that's not what i signed up for he wants to be robin hood right he that's that has been how he conceptualized the ghosts, making small change, not being part of the military. And I like that difference, especially given, you know, how these other characters, what the backgrounds are some of these other characters are. You know, we know that Zeb lived through his own planet being invaded by or being, you know, effectively, you know, seemingly at the hands of genocide by the, or, you know, dealt genocide by the empire.

Have we talked about Harris' background? Did that come up as a spoiler last season? No. We've alluded to... We've managed to dodge that. That's great. Love it. But we do know she's Twilight. And we know that Rylok.

And we know that Ryloth was like... We'll talk with Rylok. The front. Exactly. But at the same time, like, again, everyone on the ship is digging the fact that, like, it feels like they can accomplish more. Yeah.

They can achieve more. Like, Canaan comes across as a little petulant and childish here. Because the other part of this is... you know, Zeb, for instance, seems very down with, like, Zeb was a soldier, right? He was part of, you know, the honor guard of his, of his people, yeah.

But there's also an element of, yeah, dude, we were like robbing, we were robbing from the empire and giving to the needy and all that. And everything we do can be swept away in a heartbeat. We can't really do very much. And now we're with resources that actually allow us to strike real blows.

And Canaan's objection was, There's sort of a wounded idealism behind it. Yeah, I don't like, you know, military stuff. I saw what work can do to people. But there is an also, there is also a sense of, he doesn't like the vibes. He doesn't like, and the fact the lack of privacy is he and Hera, like, he likes being a family. They can go have their family discussions, and it is a family discussion, and you're not surrounded by strangers. Like multiple people pass through this argument multiple times.

contrast that with Hera and Canaan going into a room in the ghost where they have their little privacy and they can talk or do whatever else they do. No one knows. Who could say what they do privately? And they don't have that here, you know? Also, by the way, Asoka is in these scenes. Assoca is just on the ship. She stays quiet often, but every now and then pipes up and kind of, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was super interested in Asoka in these scenes because I kept looking at her because I sort of don't like. Asoka's design. Yeah, me too. She just looks long and sort of. It's because she's a mature to Gruta, though. Yeah, sure. Head. Why is she so long?

Tails get big. She does look like Shocktee a little bit, though, right? In terms of, like, tall, long. She's tall long. She had a growth spurt after we left her. Yeah. I understand that she's an adult now, but I just, you know, Peter 2 is like a little, like got hit with the long filter as well.

Like his helmet is. What is so funny with that? I don't know, it's funny, yeah, I got you. He looks like a little, like his eyes are... His eyes are got a little bit more of an oval-esque. Yeah, we've talked, I think we've talked about that being a little bit based on the original... The Ralph Roury design. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Is that bug or insects? Oh, because that's what I was thinking about... Oh, it gets insect. It does. It does give insect-y. Long is insect-y. Yeah, yeah. The thing that I kept thinking when I was staring at Asoka this entire scene is that, like, she, they did a very good job animating her, like, noticing things in the conversation. Like, if it was very clear that she was, like, trying to size this crew up in this moment of, of indecision, so to speak. Yeah, totally. I'm curious. Let's wrap back around on, she's a big scene later, and I want to wrap back around on her there and talk a little bit about.

her absence in the first season and then just the gap. So between Clone Wars and this. But they commit to doing this mission and they got to get on like a little like a bus. They got to get on their space bus. Yeah. But this time they've like now they have a charter bus before they actually had to ride the greyhound around Lothal. Now chopper can beat the bus driver and they just go to Lothal and, you know, they're they're preparing to rescue Minister Tua who we see being.

tailed by agent callus and then he just decides to go out into the open and be like hey let me drive you oh you're going to the space part let me just let me just drive you i'm for your safety you know the rebels they're they're everywhere right now kind of a heavy hand but okay uh and so the rest of kind of goes to shit yeah there's so hijinks we get canaan in a stormtrooper outfit after he beats up a stormtrooper there's just like a there's a lot of little things throughout this where it feels like cana is like i'm gonna go do my own thing any like I'm part of the group. I'm going to do the group thing,

but I'm going to be, I just want to get a little, you know, I just do it my way, okay? Like, it's, going back to calling impetulent, I think is right in some of this.

There's a little bit of like, he's going to color outside the lines because it, like, he's still going to color the picture in, but he's going to go outside the lines on purpose, just so you know he could, you know, just because,

yeah. Well, there's also like a bit of like D&D party, like when the road player is just like, no, I hate the strategy. Yeah. I am going to,

sorry, I leave, I'm going to go to stealth shit. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it's partly like, I don't want this adventure to come down to the tanks and the fighters doing their thing. I want to do the awesome shit. Yeah. You know who else does awesome shit?

Chopper. I've decided that Chopper is the Ken to R2D choose Rio. And they, I need them. You know what I mean? Oh, my God. Yeah. So R2D choose Barbie. to Ryu, uh, different ken.

Though, there's some overlaps. I feel like it kind of, like, Americans from California, their blonde hair. Yeah, there's some overlaps between the two cans. Yeah, yeah. They should switch for a little while and see how it goes. Yeah, see what happens. Let's see what happens.

Yeah, do a little wife swap. Yeah, do a little wife swap with Ken. Um, but he, Chopper puts it on that one, that one Stormtrooper who tries to open the door. Then he like seals the door again. He, like, leaves a bomb behind. He does all sorts of wild shit. I got to see the R2D2 versus Chopper, like, spar.

I don't need to fight to the death, but I need them to, like, have the end of the movie. They respect each other. It ends with them, like, punching each other out. You know what I mean? They're like, yeah. Oh, I need, I need that. And then they clasp little tears. Yeah, exactly.

It's the, in respect. Exactly. 100%. You've now referenced two different, why am I? This is bad. Carl Weathers. Carl Weathers 10 of Rocky 3 and beginning of Predator.

So shoutouts, rest in peace to Carl Weathers, a true one, a real one. And a Star Wars actor, Grief Carga. We have now lost Grief Carga from the Mandalorian, one of the best bits, best recurring characters in that show. So, rip to the homie, like, truly. Anyway. So, the reference.

Rescue goes poorly. Minister Tua, you know, as the, as the ghosts spring, what they think is their trap, Minister Tua is sent ahead to her to her transport. And the second she's aboard it, Calus has a, has the bomb that was planted there, go off. And Minister Tua dies in a bombing during a rebel attack on Lothal. Yeah. And yeah. Do you think that he could have just waited seven seconds and killed all these people at once?

Or do you think it's more important to get the propaganda win of the rebels assassinated? I think the propaganda win. Yeah. Because then they look like martyrs. Yeah. Right? Like I think, but I mean, that would be the whole, oops, that would be the whole rebel contingent. So it's not exactly like there would have to be a new rebel contingent to move into Lothal to like, you be able to use that as their own. Or, I mean, you know, people of Lothal would have to rise up.

Their goal isn't to kill the rebels here. It's to maybe eventually capture them eventually, but it's to kill the idea and to use them as an excuse to continue the iron grip, to tighten the grip. Yeah, as well, I think, I think, Darth Vader is like we said, three steps of head here. He can get so much more information out of these,

the loathal rebels of the ghost crew. than just simply, like, eliminating them and eliminating the threat. Like, he, I think he suspects already that they've made contact. He might already have intelligence that they, like, are working with Phoenix Roger and are working with other. So, yeah, I feel like there's more to get out of them. But to begin to isolate them from Lothel is like a good starting place just to kind of separate that connection.

We skipped something, which is Ezra hasn't been at Lothal for a long time, which is his home planet. And when he's on the way back, he notices something as they like kind of come into orbit in the space bus. Doesn't everybody remember what it was? No.

It's cold. He feels a coldness below. Right. Which is important because then they feel it again during, as things go bad. Canaan doesn't feel it from orbit, though. He doesn't feel it from orbit. Allie, what were you going to say?

Oh, just back on the question of the Darth Vader-Annequin thing, I think that also in this point of the career, he needs slash enjoys the cat and mouse thing. Yeah. Like, he still needs to establish himself as Darth Vader. And also, he's holding on to so much hate in this moment. This is peak mad for Darth Vader. So, like, this thing of, like, oh, I'm not just going to kill these rebel people, but, like, I'm not just going to kill these rebel people, but, like, I am going to ruin their plans and their lives and their ambitions for like a week and a half before I kill them is probably, it feels very Anakin to me.

Does this predate Rogue One? Yeah. This does. Rogue one is still four or five years away, right? But it feels like the thing I think we've noted before when we talk about like the scene at the end of Rogue One where Vader comes and does Vader stuff, which is the sense of like lying in the cage type. thing like a very bored apex predator yeah well it's also lines up with our city of stuff

from clone wars right the oh my god finally i can stretch my legs and go fight mall and savage right vader has a lot of that here too but it's actually out in the field more than the emperor is he doesn't want to be micromanaging cute girls so he is to kill them you think tarkins pissed you think tarkin's like veda that was one of the cute girls I'm like that's not a that's not a Tarkin but whatever that's just random imperial because there is a governor isn't there also a governor besides Tarkin because Tarkins is governor price who's never there where the fuck's that guy he's always on Chorusant attending various functions so he's right he's like a political appointee you get the

sense of like governor price is doing the cocktail circuit that uh you know we see and mothma on in andor like there is an absentee landlord effectively of this planet who's out just enjoying the power and privilege of being a high ranking uh you know imperial official with no real responsibilities and then all the real work is done by minister tua well and uh i i've just now remembered this when you said the word price i did read in the trivia section on starwar's icon for this episode that the early outline it is governor price who blows up in that bomb in that bombing It's, it's not Tua. At that point, it would have become governor, but they ended up killing Tua instead. Wow. Rip. Oh, wow. They ended up rewriting it, so.

Wow. That's how it goes. It's fine. I'm going to miss her hat. I'm going to miss her hat. I'm going to miss her sassy nature. Talk about the, talk about being hit with the long filter. Her head gear.

Just could be, you know, just doesn't have, doesn't have the commitment to go for a full beehive. but we'll wear the hat Anyway, they're on the run They're getting They're getting blasted on the news for killing Tua I love the photo the empire has of them Which is them basically caught mid-fire fight I think But it looks like a big game hunting photo

Where they're like pausing in front of the burning transport Or Minister Tua was killed And it looks like they're hey It's very funny Yeah, it's us we did this Lothel's got shooters, folks I don't know I wouldn't put this image out

People are gonna put this image out On murals you know Like that's just gonna be on t-shirts It goes too hard You're doing the work for them Do people really like Tua like that I guess yes The answer Allie has already broadcast is yes

But I mean But on Lothal We like Tua On Lothal Tua's putting in curfews Tua's putting in Tarkin doing that.

They don't call them Tua towns. They call them Tarkin towns. Yeah. That's a good point. You know? Maybe they're like, yeah, well, if Tua could, if Tua had Tarkin's role, this would all be great. I'm sorry, guys. We're just going to do this for like a couple months.

I'm sorry we're getting rationed, but the rations are pizza. You know? I'm sorry. Fagel bites for everyone. Natalie was this close to just like just improvising. short skirt long jacket about minister toa what short skirt long jacket the cake song she's touring the facilities she's assigning curfews she's authorizing rates oh my god someone needs to do that for us thank you yeah yeah um anyway they're on the run and as i said said before there is a coldness pursuing

Bang them. Fucking Darth Vader is here. It's crazy when you think about how he, when he was hot and he was burned and now he's cold. Oh, he's cold. Wow, it does makes you think about it. When you think of Anakin, like he was always so fiery and hot in lava, and now he's cold.

It just really makes you think about things. It does. Wow, damn. Yeah. Also, like, real quick, because we're sort of marking, like the end of things here. They retreat to their former safe house, which is the Bridger family residence.

Right. They hide there and that's where they see the news that like, you know, they're being blamed for this bombing and everyone loves Minister Batua because, you know, she was, she was their cute girl governing their, governing their planet.

And then they get raided by the empire. And to make cover their escape, they blow up as for his family home. And he, you know, puts the very fine point on it. You can't go home again, I think, is the way he wraps that up. Well, it's funny you say that because, so the writer, Henry Gilroy for these episodes, who I think it's in a video we'll watch later where he was like, you know,

it was the first time I had to write Darth Vader. Obviously, Gilroy has written Anakin before, but Darth Vader is different, and like there's some extra stress there. But the original, the given theme when he first detailed the outline was, sometimes you can't go home, but you can find a new one. That's what he was like out to write with these episodes. So, yeah, there it is. You cannot go home again, but it doesn't mean homes are off the table.

So, yeah, Vader is right behind them. They steal some shield generators at the end of this first episode. Yeah, they think the idea to escape the planet, they're going to go to the last place the empire would look. Right, right. And they do the classic, like put on the helmets, trick the very gullible guards. let them in. Yeah. Esra can't do it yet. Aser can't do

a giant mind trick quite yet. It hasn't leveled up enough. He failed so hard. He only has affect mind and not dominate mind. As we know of the Cotor. So the reveal so they find the shield

generators and it feels like everything's going to according to plan but we are playing by a new hope rules which is the empire only looks this incompetent at this moment because like they are currently going through the motions of a plan set in motion

by Vader in this case and they're on their way up to this shuttle they're going to hijack with the shield generators they want to take for the rebellions the mission is going to be a total wash they feel that cold and they turn around to maybe the single

greatest image yet on this TV show Vader like Vader standing framed by like the yawning like darkness of this huge hangar door just a sliver of black that is darker than the night that surrounds them yeah and then that then that darkness is cut by the extension of his burning red lightsaber so sick this is star wars to me you know um it's just good he's he's here and and they could have missed on

this and we know that because i hope you are canobey the television show watched uh it It's, it's, I think it's actually probably pretty easy to miss on this stuff. And then, and in some ways, like this first episode, it ends here and it's like, okay, can they deliver on this now? Are we going to, is this stuff going to land or are they going to like blow the opportunity? And I'm very glad we get to watch both these episodes at once. I'm glad that the people who first watch these episodes, that these were delivered as a single unit because, you know, it opens with a duel between Canaan, Ezra and Vader. And I remembered immediately how fun the, the saber choreography. is here. All of the motions are so clean and crisp and tight in the kind of, you know,

descriptive literal sense. Vader has these really decisive attack patterns. They're actually like parries, actually, that sometimes blend into aggressive. He's defending aggressively in a way that's like, okay, yeah, you can hit me, but my block is actually going to be harder than your strike. And he's never on the back foot. And in fact, like, sometimes, his blocks are fully forward motion strikes the intercept an incoming attack. I really hope we get a behind the scenes at some point on the saber choreography because I know, I think I know about this show, because of the one late season spoiler I know, is that there are people on the show staff that care a lot about saber styles.

A thing we'll learn more about if we ever get to Cotor 2 is that there are a number of different light saber fighting styles and different, you know, different Jedi have different expertise is, you know, in different ones, right? And so, like, you know, if you think about the Jedi who holds the saber forward and out versus the, you know, someone who holds, you know, the Obi-Wan position where it's like hand out and then the sort of the blade is like up above his forehead, that like that, or the Duku style fencing, like those are all different, um, you know, lightsaber forms basically, right? And, uh, it feels the, the saber work in the show feels informed at least by the idea that there would be different stances.

And that you can pull on real-life swordwork instead of just doing action movie swashbuckling. You know, the prequel movies are really into action movie swashbuckling. And they're fun. I like them quite a bit. But there was something so crisp about the saber work in this opening fight. Mm-hmm. It's like big legible strikes versus flurries, if that makes sense. Yeah, that was another thing that, like, in these two episodes, I was noticing how much better that they've gotten at just, like, cartooning in general.

Like there's all these small visual cues Like Canaan keeps the like orange shoulder So you know that it's him among the stormtroopers There's like good visual gags in terms of like The crew coming up with the plan And then like it'll cut to them immediately In this like goofy situation walking across the catwalk Like doing it

And just like very small things like that That I was like oh that like this is just As far as making a show has gone, there has been this seasonal shift that we sort of saw in Clone Wars, but it's good to see that this team is still finding those pathways

to get better. And this is Season 2. This is the first arc of season 2. We still got two more full. We had this whole season and we had two more full seasons. And that's like a lot, versus Clone Wars where it felt like they only found it, found it. In terms of the cartooning acumen and the technical prowess and

the tech just being there in the middle of that run, you know, it's nice to see some of this stuff start hitting now. We also just get a killer, Darth Vader line, which was, your master has deceived you into believing you can become a Jedi. Huh. I wonder what that's like. I wonder if Anakin Skywalker has any feelings about being deceived about being able to

become a Jedi or any long held resentments around such feelings. such promises that you were a child taken away from your home by someone who told you, you know, you could become a Jedi. In fairness, he was a Jedi. He was just pissed. He didn't get the promotion he wanted. Yeah, well, you know, until you're a Jedi knight, you're a Padamon, you know?

You know? They should have just let him. I guess he became a knight. He never became a master, right? They wouldn't give a master. You wanted to be a master. Yes, he wanted to be on the council. Exactly. Yeah.

Because he cares. A lot of people care. I care about a lot of shit. They don't show them for me in charge of it. Also, it was just Palpatine who was like, I think Anakin should be on the council. Yeah. You know, that's like when your mom is like, you should be the captain of the football team. Mom, I am a defensive guy.

Like, what are you talking about? I don't get to be the captain. That's not, they don't let me do that. Well, maybe you have the best team spirit. Exactly. You know, he does. That's what Palpatine is saying. Palpatine is here.

I think like I agree I agree with him I know there's so many good things here I think again the I am curious how we feel because if we're saying that like Vader's gotten hit with the long filter the way he towers over Canaan in as he like brings that blade down oh it is like Kane is fighting a giant yeah he should have hooped he should have hooped Vader

I literally wrote down in my notes Damn Darth Vader should have hooped Because Maybe he does We don't know

What he does in his off-time I bet he's like Obama Yeah he's got a court On Mr. Far Yeah There are

So because I'm in Northern Mass And like you know Sometimes I go Zillow's talking Uh huh You can find A number of the homes

Listed by people who either play for the Celtics or the Bruins or the Patriots. Some of them live up here. Most of them obviously live further south in the state. But the point is there are some of these homes that you're like, that is 100% an athlete's house. And sort of the marker is like there's a bathroom that tends to look like a locker room slash physical therapy room.

And then a lot of them have some sort of half or full court, like indoor like facility. wild and you know Vader's got one I feel like like Vader's Mustafa Zillow listing you'd be like

looking over it like who the fuck lived here because there's like the keep my biomechanical husk alive room what's that all about yep and then

and then regulation basketball court regulation basketball court life size like tie fighter simulator you like you separate it lifts you up you know it turns and shit

does the whole Oh, this listing? It's got a 12 spaceship garage. Oh, yeah. There's a, there's a Nabu Starfighter in one corner, just like meticulously maintained. Oh, do you think he has, do you think he has like a little pod racing track? He has to. Yeah, I think so.

No. He never uses it, but he has it. Justin King. He just, he could, he could have aged into a train guy. Oh, he could have become a train guy. It's so sad that he did. He could have been a train. guy.

Building's entire little life-sized model tattooing. Uh-huh. Yeah. Looking the switch to make the podrace happen. Well, a friend of mine just watched the episodes where I made the toxic AMV of the Scipio arc. And I'm reminded of his bedroom in the Jedi Temple. That was just like the old model Starfighter that he built or like the trophy or whatever

it was. that has, like, the Starfighter on it, and then, like, one poster from the, the pod racing days. And it's like, he doesn't have a lot from his childhood. Maybe not that he's Darth Vader, he gets to, you know? Maybe he's like, I get to. He's had back into his inner child. Yeah. He has a, he has a whole room for building and destroying droids, you know.

I just, I want to say this out loud. When Natalie was like, oh, he should have hooped. I was like, I was about to say there was one of the Jedi Council. Wasn't there? A hooper? With the basketball? court at the White House. That's what I'm saying.

Yes. Yoda. It was a court at the Jedi Temple on Correspond. Yeah. On the roof of the Jedi Temple on Corristan, there is a basketball court. Imagine if that confrontation between Anakin and what's Luminara's pupil called again, I just said her name the other day. Oh, uh, Barris Offie had happened on the court in like Jim shorts and tank tops.

And you know what I mean? Like check up. And instead of like looking at for the bet, you know, looking for the, the lightsaber, he's like, ooh, this ball feels the, this isn't the right ball. This is, this ball has, this ball has. Oh, man, she still would have gotten worked. She would have gotten worked. Just, Agon knocking off, he on her ass.

And she's, that's a foul. Yes. Oh, we're calling fouls? I don't think so. I'll hit you with the sham god. Do, do you, like pull the ball over on you. Break your ankles. You don't know, uh, have I, Anakin on the court.

That's white chocolate. I think I suddenly understand why there are so many AUs on AO3 where it's like, what if these characters played for a sports team instead? It's good. So the problem with the Jedi is that they're Jedi and not footballers. Exactly. Yeah. It would be great if they were just athletes.

If they were just famous athletes with superpowers, it would be, that'd be great. So, man, Coach Sidious. It is so in discord among the starting line. Exactly. Actually, Coach Sidious would be like the owner of the team. And then Yoda would be like the, you know what I mean? Yes. And it's like the owner is getting involved, you know?

And then Yoda might be like the GM and then like Mace would be the head coach or like maybe Mace is like offensive coach and then some other cone head motherfucker is defensive coach. I don't know who defensive coach is. They don't have good defense. That's the, that's the Jedi, as we learned. They don't have good defense. No. So anyway. The point is, this fight rules.

There's got to be fan art of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as soccer players. I also like there's the sense, because you might think, and I think it would be easy to fall into this trap that, like, we're going to be waiting for, like, what's the thing that's going to get through to Anakin underneath the Vader? It ain't going to be killing a kid. Because the way he made his bones as a Sith Lord was to kill,

like a hundred of them. You're right. So if you're thinking that like him, he's going to have any qualms about like cutting Ezra in half, you're just misreading the situation, my friends. Yeah. Like this is like he thinks it's sad and maybe a little bit funny. That Canaan brought a kid to this fight.

Yeah. Knowing what befell the, the younglings and the Padawans back in the day. But yeah, there's zero sense that there is an ounce of. There is understanding. from his point there might even be a trace of sympathy

but it does not translate into an ounce of like pity or hesitation. Yeah, exactly. He is all power and cruelty and aggression and you always get the sense that he is just

taking a tiny little sip off his power reserves because when they drop an ATST on his head Yeah, they throw some grenades or some sticky minds They'd crush the monster. Yeah, it's anime.

Anime is here. Yeah. In so many ways, Allie, I sent you a message last night. I was like, oh, this turns into a Gundam episode at a certain point. This isn't that point. This is like a Dragon Ball episode. This is like the ATS falls on him, but he has caught it with the force. And from the smoke, he emerges, lifting the whole mech above his head like it's nothing.

It's, and it's like glowing around him. But it's not corny either, which I think is an important thing. Because I think there are some people who, even the Rogue One stuff, hit, like, kind of a corny mark where it's like, okay, I get it. He's like invincible. This, I remember this. Maybe that person also thinks this is too corny, right? But this just feels like maybe it's partly the way it's animated. It's not like he's not struggling. Or it's not like it doesn't take effort. It, he's doing the thing Luke will do under Yoda's tutelage with the X-wing on Dagaba. But with a flaming wreckage of an ATST or whatever, the, the walker. model is on this planet. And it's, it's just, it's raw power. It's, it's strength. It is the promise that we were made about who Anakin would be one day, the person for whom the force is this, like, is an ally and is, is something that you can leverage for intense, unbelievable superhuman feats. You know, Canaan and Ezra can't do this, you know? I think that's the key is that,

good, on a good day. That this, this is Canaan and Ezra's first encounter with him. And I think it's less, I mean, it's cool for us to see Darth Vader, like, drop a giant

ATSD, you know, mound of wreckage behind him. Like, it's nothing. But I think what's more important is how this sets apart his power from where Ezra and

Canaan are at right now. And the inquisitors. Yeah, and the inquisitors. Because the following, the conversation that Ezra and Canaan have, they're able to get on the ship and the ship kind of takes off and then they're having sort of a one-on-one. Sabine gets shot by her own gun. Sabine, yeah, Sabine takes a huge owl and she like shoots at Darth Vader and he deflects it into her chest and her head.

Real air ball. Yeah. It's, yeah. Swish. But they get away and Ezra is, like, asking Canaan, like, who was, what was that? Was that, like, another inquisitor? Like, what do we do? And Canaan's like, that was a Sith Lord, the ancient, you know, enemy of the Jedi.

And Ezra's like, well, how do we fight it? Like, what do we do? And Canaan was like, we don't. We do not fight. We are lucky to have our lives right now. And I think that it's nice to feel like Ezra and Canaan have a ways to go before. Like they're not just like already competent and already, you know, that Ezra is just like supernaturally gifted with, in the kind of way that Anakin is when he's introduced to us is like in Luke eventually like where they are just so powerful. at the get-go and, you know, go through their own training or whatever.

But the start, the seed is, like, so strong. And I think that Ezra has been shown to be already kind of a bit ahead of Canaan in some ways. Or at least his connection with the fourths is a bit more sensitive. Because, yeah, he's feeling the cold. You're right. And the cold. Yeah, he's feeling the cold when Canaan can't feel it. Like he's, he often he's the first one to send.

something is amiss before kind of Canaan then catches on and is also sensing it, or he's asking Canaan, like, do you feel that? Do you feel that? So I think we are seeing that Ezra has like a really strong foundation with the force. But I just like knowing that there is a huge skill gap here for- Well, and television lets you do that, right? Yeah. Part of what makes TV so good is you can do something over the course of, I don't we have 60 episodes left or something like that, that's a lot of time to show growth and change and challenge and struggle. And it's hard to do that in two or three movies. You know, it's, it's easy to make it. Things can kind of collapse inwards. The format, you know, if what you're

trying to try and trying to do and say, okay, this character's at this point now and they're trying to grow to get to point, you know, from zero to a hundred. But we got six hours total to do it in, you know, you got to montage some stuff in there or you got to take some big jumps. And here we, and narratively what you end up doing sometimes, what some storytellers end up doing is saying, well, this person is like preternaturally gifted in a way. So they're not going from zero to 100. They're going from 40 to 100. They're going from 50 to 100. Wow, they're so gifted already that every step they take is actually like five steps of what a normal person would take, right? And there's a little bit of that here. But we have the time to do

It's slow and to check in over the course of, you know, this happened in Clone Wars 2, right? It took a long time. Asoka was like totally good at sword fighting early on or okay at it. But like we had that whole multiple episode arc of her learning how to Jedi mind trick people. It's not an arc, but a recurring gag throughout season five or whatever that was, right? And it feels like we're going to have similar things with Ezra here for sure, you know. Also, the other half of this, I got like some shades of Trinity and Morpheus telling Neal like, what do you do when an agent shows up?

You run, you know, so you don't, the Sith are not, it's not Inquisitors. Yeah, we beat Inquisitor together, you know, Canaan kind of came into his own and had that great 1v1 with the Inquisitor at the end of last season. That's not this. This is not something that you can just face down. We run from this, which is also interesting because I think that maps nicely with Canaan's broader feelings about the rebellion. We can't face Darth Vader.

We're not strong enough to fight the empire. What we can do is steal some shield generators and get the hell out of here. What we can do is get some food and give it back to some people. But there's no world in which we can face Darth Vader and the emperor. They're too big. They're too powerful. This is not something we can do. And I think that the fact that where Canaan is at this moment is when you come against

the Sith Lord, you run is, I think, really clean, you know? So. Vader lets them go. He has them on the ropes, but he lets them go. They fly off. And, you know, the stormtrooper captain is like,

you know, shall we pursue? And he sort of tells them they haven't left the planet yet. And we see they have the idea that there's only one person who helped them get off the planet. And we have a little interlude

with them having a negotiation with, not Vizago, who I was praying would show off. I was ready for Vizago in this episode. you know, having, having been the guy who initiated Ezra into the world being of a smuggler kingpin. I was hoping for more of Zago. But no, it's Lando. It is.

And we get a little bit of Lando Calrissian, irrepressible scamp. He's here. Negotiating hard to make sure he gets his cut of the shield generators they stole. It's kind of an odd thing because then they go to his place to like get. the stuff they need to escape the planet and he's not there we never see him right yeah like it's just i wonder if they could only get him for over they only call on the phone like i don't know why this and not the whole again the the trivia section says that it was originally supposed to be he was supposed to be there and they don't give details as to why he wasn't maybe they maybe

we'll find out later this season that he needs to be somewhere else in this moment i don't know somebody's like wait so when does it get best pin and everyone's like fuck right city shit we got he has to be in cloud cloud city right now Exactly. I don't know. Shoutouts to this being between him, James Joel Jones, and David O'Yaloa, who plays Callas, is the most black folks in a Star Wars thing at the same time until Rise of Skywalker, maybe, I think, potentially. And if you start counting up supporting cast, the most people of color, you know, voice in terms of the voice actors, maybe. It might be. So shoutouts.

And also shoutouts to his droid Shout out to his droid Shout out the fuck out His droid's name is W1L-E AKA Willie Please someone described to me Willie's whole vibe

Amazing Give me more Incredible He's got kind of like a sassy Southern energy Yeah I I was like into it First last side I message you

Austin and I said Who's this cunty rober He did say. Which is the only way I can describe this drama. But I, then I realized upon second watching that, like, Landau had to sit down and,

like, install the, you don't know that. Southern slutty Apec on his droid. He don't know that. He could have bought him this way. We don't know where he got this.

How Landau feels about droids. We, it's just, I feel bad about it now. I like, I can. No. Solo has ruined so much.

Does he still. Landor at the droid market I think I can think of some upgrades you need does he still have when does solo work when does solo happen what year is solo like 2019 no no no no no rob I mean in setting I mean BBI I mean how many what year in setting is it does he still have that's what I want to know who has the money and falcon right now yeah I hope he doesn't uh it's That happens in 10 BBY, so that's all already happened.

Okay. So he doesn't happen anymore. Maybe he's on the hunt for a new droid friend. He's not even on the, he would be on the planet with him. He wouldn't let the droid behind, if it was. You're right. If it was like that. Yeah, you'd be on the ship with him.

This droid is just the homie droid that hangs out at his- This is the only episode this droid is in. No, I'm so excited for him to become a main character or side character. not main character, but to become a recurring thing. What a funny one-off gag to do. That's weird. Just someone in the booth like, let me try something out.

Let me get silly with it real quick. Let me just try to get silly with it. I have preferred everything to Calrusian's instructions. It's so funny. Oh, he's good. Anyway. We also got a quick interlude with Callis and Vader. Oh, yeah.

Where Vader explains something he's going to use to turn up the heat on the on the rebels. He's going to find the people on this planet they've aided at what they call Tarkin Town, and he's going to burn them out. But something occurred to me in this scene. I think it's one of the reasons that, like, Vader always hits so hard in this, it feels to me, like, with the entire

coloring of the episode and lighting, that the darkest thing that can exist in these episodes visually is Vader. The only thing that is as, like, pitch black, is like the deepest parts of like the shadow you find around some objects but like Vader like because the empire's all like black trim and like you know cold steel Vader is so much darker than everything around him his cape almost seems like it just sucks the light out of the room and it's one of the coolest fucking things like every single

scene like it is just magnetic how dark like a shape he becomes like an abstract like void at the heart of the frame. There's, um, so over on Shelf by genre, where we are currently reading the Earthsea series. We previously read through, uh, the book of the, book of the new, nope, is that right? Yeah, book of the new sun by Gene Wolfe, starting with, um, a shout of the torture. And in Shadow of the Torture or the Torture wears, oh, this, this kind of all black, the main character wears this, this all black outfit, uh, that is, that is described as being fologen in color, quote, which is darker than black, admirably around.

races all folds, bunchings and gatherings, so far as the eye is concerned, showing only featureless dark. And it's not that, it's not quite the abyss to where you can't see folds in the, in the cape, but it is that sort of like, you're in a room where other people are wearing black. Darth Vader's wearing something blacker than that, you know, and that's fantastic. It almost feels like his cape is animated on a different cadence than everything else, too, too like it flows like water in these frames at a different rate than anything else seems to move it's again like really kind of hypnotic like like how he exists in this show but the rebel gang so they go to pick up the stuff from Lando they see Tarkintown's burning and that is their cue to to get the hell off this planet well Ezra this is canaan being like this is what war is by the way war is they burn down the Tarkintown and they kind of like do some some you know uh a slight of hand to make it seem like okay well maybe everybody didn't get burned to death here um it's like everyone's been driven from their homes or some other

language similar to that in the segment um uh but canaan's bigger point to to ezra here is like i know you want to help people but like everything we do creates a reaction and it's nice to help people we should help people but it's not it's not just a linear thing you know it's not just oh the revolution happens and then this is him justifying his bullshit point though it is but he's also not wrong because ezra is a little naive baby about this stuff to some degrees right yeah um if he said this to hera i'd be like all right dude calm the fuck down but esra does i don't know that esra has quite got his head around what it's going to cost to commit himself to a revolution you know yeah he's just like we got to do the right thing right which i think he should do i think you're right that

canaan is being a baby and like he needs to step up. And I think it's important because the point of this is like, Ezra's final statement here, despite seeing this, is I'm not afraid, right? I am going to step forward, you know. He hasn't lived through what Canaan has lived through. And that's kind of what makes him a great hero here and like a potential danger to the empire is despite living on an oppressed place like Lotho, he hasn't lived through war yet. He is part of a generation that is not afraid the way, you know, we come back to this a lot, right? That there's a lot of generational stuff in Star Wars, right? That, okay, in Cotor, we have the air of the Jedi who don't want to live

through another war, and they don't want to commit to, you know, Revin and Malik going to fight the Mandalians, and so they don't, and everything bad kind of comes after that. We've talked a lot about how the, like, Annikin's generation of Jedi and the Sokish generation of Patowans is, like, led by a group of Jedi who have lost touch with the force and who can't, you know, see that that things are kind of collapsing around them and they've come to rely too much on that in some ways. And here I think what we're seeing, and maybe this is also true throughout the whole of the original trilogy

and the sequel trilogy to some degree is like, hey, there's a generation that comes after the generation where the empire came into power. And they are a generation ready to do stuff that the previous generation couldn't because they had it beaten out of them. And Ezra is not scarred by the Clone Wars, right? Canaan is.

Canaan has to struggle with that, and it has to not project the sort of futility that he felt as a child on to Ezra, or else Ezra will be doomed by that, you know? And I really like their relationship in these episodes for that reason. Yeah, I think you need both. You need, like, when you need Ezra to kind of reignite the sort of hope and dedication in Canaan, and then you need. Light the spark. Yeah, light the spark. And then you need Canaan there for when inevitably, Ezra sees, like, the truth of what that commitment looks like to provide, I don't know, like the moral support and life experience, like, reassurance to him. So it's, I think I'd so much rather have both to compliment each other than, like, you know, just.

just one or the other. I think it's, they're a great balance. Yeah. I got it wrong. It's ignite the spark and then you say light the fire in response.

And you also say, bright suns. Tabui-tay. Oh, yeah, bright suns. What was that night? What was it at night? Rising moons.

Rising moons. You know. God. It's, we can't just keep saying it. We can't keep doing it. I back to

I guess we didn't give context to the listeners but what happens to the scene is Ezra sees like the smoke in the distance and then like goes off on his own to go see it which I really love the framing

of the scene of like Canaan being the one of being like let him go ahead and then like going to be the one to talk to him I also Austin because you said this is a Gundam episode I kept like looking through it

to this fame and then like the Amaro ishness of the like oh I'm returning to my home and like seeing it in this different way and like having to to deal with the truth of war or whatever like if we get a shoe drop on Ezra's parents as good as Amro meeting his mom I will be so blessed will be the only star which I ever talk about yeah it's true it's true so they've got what they need to make their escape which is a bunch of decoys that will mask their They will not mask their ship, but will create so much chaos, you know, as they, as they make their escape that the, the empire will to deploy a proper net to snare them. Quick thing here, once again, skies and clouds in the show look so good. This is such a beautiful show. Like, every time they fly off, fly off into a sky, it's like such a gorgeous moment as they, and they deploy these little pods that are basically going to. to spoof the same signal signature of their ship

and they're going to be all over the high atmosphere and all the imperial ships part of this blockade are going to not know which is the real ship. And we get some cuts aboard the Star Destroyer as they do sort of fall for this plot. They're clever enough to quickly realize what's happening but not fast enough to stop the ghost from escaping. Once again, it is revealed,

as Vader explains to the captain, Captain of the Star Destroyer, he knew while Longley would escape this net. All these captains, their fuck up, was sort of built into the planning for the operation. Again, Anakin worked with better soldiers than these, right? Like, I think we were doing this a few times. Everything about the military the Empire has feels like he diminished version of what, like, the clone army was capable of. Well, we were about to see it's literally the furthest extreme version of the old superstar Anakin plus the clone troopers because Anakin is now more the superstar than ever before.

Darth Vader is and the rest of the crew may as well not exist. We don't have a commander Rex. We don't have a fives. These other motherfuckers don't hang, you know. No, I mean, Calus isn't exactly doing much. I guess you're right. He's there. There's something about how comfortable.

Yeah, he hasn't been deployed in doing anything yet. But there's something about how comfortable he is next to Darth Vader that throws me off. It's like you haven't earned the sort of like swagger that you're exhibiting right now next to it's interesting. But I am now, though, you thinking, you mentioning that that Callis is standing right next to Bader reminds me of, you know, the classic

Sullivan on co-host where he's like, you know, Luke, when gone I am, the last of the Jedi will be, except for Assooketano, Ezra Bridger, Cal Kestis, Quinlan Voss, a double jump he can do, you know, that one. It makes me realize that like when Darth Vader is laying on the second Death Star dying, people in his mind are not just Luke and Leyen, Padme and Obi-Wan and the emperor.

It's like, oh, yes, I'm thinking about my life. And Callis was there next to me on both. You know? And that time, me and Asoka met the Guerrero, you know, siblings on Andoron. And oh, what was that prince's name under the water? Prince Charlie, right? Oh, my God. And I was like, that's all in his head.

Now it's so crisp and clean in. when you're just watching the movies, it's like, damn, yeah, he's dying, he's thinking about his kids. I don't know who he's thinking about. He's got a lot of people he can be thinking about. Look, some, you don't even know what every tear in the rain is. Yeah.

Oh, it's so funny. Anyway, so yeah. One last thing really quick, before we move off, this was actually I looked at my notes, like a person who's prepared. And a thing that specifically Canaan says while looking at the, the wreckage of the Tarkintown is he's like, yeah, things are bad now, you know,

the thing to understand is like, things are bad during the Clone Wars, and there were 10,000 Jedi to protect the galaxy. And I think that's like, so the center of his trauma is he was a Jedi who believed in the Jedi and the Jedi couldn't stop what happened and the Jedi are fucking dead now. And he doesn't have our perspective on what happened. He doesn't know that he was being played on both sides by Palpatine, right? He doesn't know that there was, like, you know, maybe he knows to some limited amount because he has that message from Obi-Wan about going into hiding and not trusting the empire

and stuff. But the people that he was part of as a Padawan, that he was like, that he was, you know, learning to become the next great generation of Jedi or whatever. Actually, I guess we don't, do we know? I don't remember what we know about Canaan. What did we learn when Canaan and Yoda and Ezra all met? Did we learn more about Canaan's background? Oh, yeah.

I'm trying to remember what's... I try to remember if he got full Jedi. Versus, I don't know if we know. I don't think he did. I don't think he did get full Jedi. Because his age would have been, he would have been young, right? I think this was the thing is that he, yeah, I think he didn't get, he left before, like, he had to escape before.

We did, we did talk about this. Okay. Where is there stuff with his master or something? I don't think we've met, I don't, I don't remember. I think we had questions, but we didn't know for sure. He knew who Yoda was, right? He doesn't know who Yoda was. He remembers Master Yoda.

Yeah, and I don't remember if Yoda calls him a Padawan or something. Oh, the thing my notes say is, so he called himself Canaan, did he? Because Yoda knows he has some other name, remember? Oh. Well, yeah, we kind of brushed over this with the reaction to Darth Vader. But his response of saying, that's an ancient Sith Lord, the enemy of the Jedi, is such a weird, like, I, we've talked a lot about, like, Jedi miseducation here. And the, like, the weirdness about, like, the eternal Yoda forgiveness and the statues to people who defect. But, like, it never came into picture to me as clear as it did that, like, there's such a gap between you were a Jedi.

every day you were afraid of the dark side and of, you know, becoming this version of yourself or be of temptation or anger or hate or whatever. But there's no that Canaan can't see himself or his connection to the force in Darth Vader. There's never been a you can be that if you fall to the dark side. Like that is so weird to me. Like it's not like this is a different thing. This is an ancient thing. This is an enemy.

Right. He doesn't say, he doesn't say, this is not a person who fell. Right. He doesn't say, Ezra, that could be what you become if you give into your temptations. He doesn't say, this is an ancient enemy of the Jedi. That's different than just a dark Jedi, you know, in his mind. I'm curious how he knows the word sit. I really want to know what his education was, you know. Anyway, the core of what I wanted to get out was the thing of like, he's so caught up in the destruction of the Jedi and in the admiration of the Jedi and his desire to be a good Jedi. And all that was in the first season. His stuff is like, I don't know if I'm good. enough to train a kid, you know, to train a new Padawan, is all over the first season. That it's kind of, it's interesting that that's where he goes. And if only you had the perspective we did, you might understand that the fact that 10,000

Jedi couldn't protect the galaxy was kind of a feature and not a bug of what happened last time. Anyway, to pivot back to what Rob, you were just saying. Why didn't they check for bugs on the shuttle? No, no, no, no. This is actually really well handled. Because it's not a live tracker. Oh, it only turns on.

It's not broadcasting. It is the minute it docks. Yeah, right. Then it turns on. So again, like, Anakin Skywalker, man, like, he knows. Well, he knows you're going to sweep for trackers. He's already. Just ready to turn it on.

Yeah. And so they think they've got a clean, they've got a clean bill of health. And then once they've docked with the rebel command ship, he gets his ping. Uh-huh. And he doesn't even wait for the rest of the fleet. Because what does he need the imperial fleet? for. I love the sequence so much. This is where it becomes Gundam. This is Shara Hasnibal or Amrora Ray one v.10ing the enemy fleet and being like, oh, you're just better than everybody else.

Like this is, you're at a different tier of, you know, person in the galaxy when it comes to fighting stuff in space. The name of the song that plays during the segment is Best Pilot in the Galaxy. Stop. Shoutouts to Kevin Kiner. I said Kiner again earlier. Kevin Kiner, another killer composition on this. Describe this sequence for me.

What's Vader get up to? It's so good. It's one of those things where the rebel pilots don't know what they're into yet. Like they get, they see an Imperial fighter coming from the 12 o'clock. No, he's not hiding. and this is this we get the top down shot when he shows up and it's just the single fighter appearing is that or is it is that shot later i can't quite remember i can't i can't remember

if we see him jump in okay um we do see like the rebel pilots racing to their to their a wings uh as they you know get the get the scramble order uh it's just kind of a cool shot they've got them all like stacked up one after the other and they sort of hopped down from these little catwalks above the canopies but they go rushing out there with overwhelming numerical advantage to go take on this this lone fighter yeah we do see him come in alone and then a massacre unfolds and it unfolds fast like it is it's not it's barely a dog fight it is it is a series of just like he annihilates the first wave of rebel pilots and then just starts effortlessly working in on the on the ships themselves crippling not killing yeah

Uh, he sets, he sets whatever their command ship is on fire in like 20 different places and just leaves it burning. He is doing shit you can't do in Star Wars version of space. There's a moment where he like deactivates like, he goes into our version of space and does like a zero G maneuver where he like spins backwards but keeps his momentum going. I guess you could do this in Starz version of space. But generally speaking, dog fights just look like World War II dog fights in Star Wars. Yeah, Star Wars doesn't do Newtonian physics. It doesn't, but here it does. He is playing I War II, the PC game, where you could unclick your zero G Newtonian,

your anti-Newtonian physics thing, your compensator, and just spin on the gyro, spin backwards and start shooting backwards while you fly it forwards. He's doing wild maneuvers out here. It's incredible. For people who don't know, I-War was like, it was a, like, had somewhat accurate space physics, and you were commanding, like, not a fighter, but also not like a huge battleship. And it was once again, like, PC games in the 90s, just built different. Just built different.

Still, it's one of those things. There's still no successor to I-Wore. You're just zipping all over the galaxy in this thing. It's cool. Don't give me elite dangerous. Totally different bad, like, bad. Shout us to I-Wore. Shout us to I-Wore.

But yeah, this whole sequence, like, it is such a profound beat down. And you get such an evident sense of joy and satisfaction. from Vader. Otherwise, he wouldn't have come out here by himself to do this, right? Yeah, he wanted to have some fun. He wanted to get back in the fight. There's something coming into perspective for me that didn't occur to me while I was watching it. But for years and years, what I've always wondered is what does it feel like to be like a seven-year-old kid who grew up Clone Wars and never saw the Star Wars movie and then has to like emotionally try.

transition from Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. And, like, this introduction to him fucking rules. Like, they, they nailed it. They, they did it. Also, over on shelf by genre, I use the term in the most recent episode, bad booking to describe something that happened in a book. And for obvious reasons, if you don't follow wrestling or if you're not listen to people who talk about wrestling or watch wrestling on podcasts for years, you might not have any idea of what bad booking means. This is good booking. And what I mean when I say booking is that there is a, so in professional wrestling,

there is a creative team that makes decisions about who wins matches and who loses matches. What? Okay. And they book the matches. That's what that's called. And like the outcomes are often determined. Sometimes they get to be determined by the people who, do the wrestling in terms of how the story or how the fight unfolds, but sometimes someone

decides an outcome in a big way where it's like, oh, right at the last second, someone's going to come in the ring and hit them with a chair and then they're going to lose. Bad booking is when like you fuck up the momentum of someone who is, I'm just going to read a thing I wrote. It's wrestling slash industry slash fandom terminology that describes a wide range of situations, but the core of it is when a promotion's decision makers, the people booking the outcomes of the matches, decide on an unfulfilling storyline or scenario, either failing to live up to the hype that they've been building for months, or which undermines

a performer's status, momentum, and reputation. A classic example is when a rising star that diehard fans love finally gets a championship match, only to lose it to an older, more established wrestler in a quick or embarrassing way, losing their credibility and momentum, and, you know, T-shirt sales, which is often how they really make a buck in the process. But it can also be when a good performer is given terrible lines to read by the writers, one of an exciting match gimmick fails to deliver, or when the promotion decides to end a highly anticipated match with an ambiguous rush or otherwise uncathartic conclusion.

Good booking is the opposite of that. It's what leaves you wanting more. It's what makes you go, oh, wow, that person's really a threat. Even though you know that the outcomes are predetermined, you go, whoa, I was surprised by what just happened, or I can't wait for these two people to get in the ring again together. I'm so amazed by this person has just convinced me of their aptitude. through the performance and storytelling and scenario positioning, and this is good booking.

Everything that happens from this point, this whole episode, but really from Vader showing up forward, like, it's mouth-watering booking. It's the sort of writing and plotting that makes you like, I cannot wait to see where this whole season goes, because it's setting the table for everything that might come later, right? We talked about this already earlier, where I forget, it might have been Natalie or Allie, one of you talked about how like, oh, I can't wait to see when, you know, Vader does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or when Asoka does blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm paying attention to X, Y, Z.

That's, like, really good table setting. And it's so exciting that they didn't just make a cool action sequence here. They could have made a cool action sequence here where, like, Vader shows up and, like, blows up some ships and they get away. And that's the gist of what happens. But the way it happens is, makes him, it makes his presence such a convincing threat. And then there's also the stuff that happens with Asoka. Yes.

I just want to say real quick, I love the point that Ali made a moment ago, too, that this is a way to like connect Anakin. Yes. For people who know him as the character in the Clone Wars to like Vader. Because the work is done for us in the original trilogy, you know, you know, Luke, you know, I am your father. but here it's like how do you connect the idea of this character that was like our hero for a number of seasons to like this this monster he's become and now the through line B here

that like he is still underneath everything there is still the guy with the poster of fighters and pod racers in his bedroom there is still sort of a childlike now this is pod racing as he lays waste too that is still in there he is still sky guy Yeah, he is still the best pilot who ever lived. This is still like the water he was born to swim in. And you would argue, everything else has been artifice that's been like trying to force him into a shape he was never meant to take. And like here, in service to pure evil, he is able to give fullest expression to who he is and who he used to be. Because also here, it does not matter that he is wearing all these artificial limbs.

and organs to keep him alive. This is what Thai fighter pilots already look like. They already were all black with tubes coming out of their faces and helmets on and their face is hidden. He is as much a person in the mechanistic language of Star Wars where we've talked about this before, hiding faces, turning body parts into robotic parts, or biological parts into robotic parts. All that stuff is just Thai fighter ship.

But also like the ship was always a place where it was like a second skin he donned. It was another body he controlled. And so going back into this one, you know, this is a place where he goes and he's not lost anything by virtue of what's happened to him in his life. Which to me is why it's so important that this is where Asoka first feels that he is here. Because this is him as himself. This is not, you know, even more than opening the door and the red light saber comes on me. Obviously, she wasn't in that scene. So she couldn't have felt him there.

I mean, if she had been, she probably would have, right? But this is, it's what you're saying. This is Anakin as Anakin in such a big way, joyously, you know, twisting and turning in a machine and, you know, spinning around doing all of that and, and leveraging his guns on them. I popped so hard. You can tell that she is, she, she says, wait a second, someone, that pilot, you know, is using the force. That pilot, you know, has control of the force. We got to figure out who's in there and, like, reaches out her arms and then asks Canaan to help her.

And he's like, I don't know how to do that. And she's like, remember your training. Like, come on now. Which is, we're in a moment of a Padawan leading maybe a Padawan who's leading maybe a Padawan, you know? It's like really a great little trio of people who never really finished whatever they were doing. And they reach out and start to like feel through the force for,

The shot is so good, by the way, I just want to shout out. The edit here is both shots are like, there's sort of a match cut happening. Yes. Where Asoka and Canaan are on the right hand side of the frame, reaching toward the left hand side of the frame with their, with their palms extended. And then we match cut into Vader's cockpit. And he is looking out the left side of the frame to the front of his cockpit. But just visually, it almost feels like their hands.

are extending into the back of his mind. As their consciousness touches his, he also now is aware that they are there. Yeah. And we're getting narrative here, or we're getting a voice over here from Ezra who has felt the cold again as he's trying to pinpoint Vader with these shots. And Vader's effortlessly dodging the barrel rolling away. Once again, he says, I feel cold. I think I know who this is. Back on Lothel, I felt something. Canaan did too, the fear, the anger, the hate. And Asoka feels it and starts to, like, get her face starts to contort. Asra says, it's the Sith Lord we faced.

Asoka's eyes, you know, open wide and Vader speaks, having felt Asoka reach out to him. And he says, The Apprentice lives and she screams and the whole screen goes white and she faints. James Earl Jones, I said it puts a smile on the line too. I know. He killed. I love the force. It's good. This is also Gundam to me.

This is new types touching minds in space. This is Lala. This is four. People, you know what it is. If you know, truly, if you know, you know, it's great. It's so good.

I, yeah. It's hard. And again, if you think that Asoka being there is going to break through Vader's Sheld against the Anakin, That ain't going to happen here either. Not in this moment, but I do want to, we'll come back to it at the end,

because I think something interesting is happening at the very final performance of Vader in this episode. But you're right, that this does not, he's not like, wait a second, Asoka. Call me. You know, no, he's here to destroy this fleet or to send them running at the very least. Yeah. It's great. They're, they're bridged together. They're as one.

their minds and hearts connect to each other across space and time. That's right. Because their force sense is. That's what it is. That's what it should be. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. And again, do you know what didn't land this for me?

Obi-Wan Canovi? It should have been this times 100. Because Obi-Wan and Anakin are like, it's Obi-Wan and Anakin. Uh-huh. That's them. No offense to Asoka. Asoca's cool. I like Asoka.

The master student relationship Yeah, okay. But Obi-Wan and Anakin, I know it's also a master-student relationship, but they're like, you know, by the end of that series, you remember the cut episode where you watched the like their final mission together and saw all the animatics? I think about how tight they were there. The Obi-Wan and

Anakin meet for the first time again are in the same place and feel the presence of the other should have hit like this. It should have. It should have. And we were robbed. We were fucking robbed. Like, that episode's canon. Like, you botch it.

That's your chance. Your chance is to like, the only way you start doing cleanup on this is like what they start doing in the expanding universe novels where you start doing entire things. They're like, well, that didn't happen like that. Right. Yeah. Or you can't redo it. Where it's like Kevin J.

Anderson. I know. They blew it. And we have that now. And we can never have it better. We can't have until like fucking 15 years from now. And we're like, we're going to redo. the whole thing

to tell the story again or whatever we're going to remake the Skywalker saga yeah let's remake it and it's not going to be the same and we had the chance

for there to be something magical it's going to be shot in 15 years now it's going to be shot vertical video the whole movie well you know

but the good news is we'll be able to feed AI our prompt for the one show we should have gotten I'm going to I'm doing it after this time. Natalie's opening of SORA the second we get on the pod.

The only Sora I want to hear about with Natalie Watson is Sora Kingdom Hearts. Speaking of Sora Kingdom Hearts, I've been trying to get that fucking amoebo for like months and months and it came out and I picked it up at, but sorry if you don't know that I'm a big Kingdom Hearts fan, AMC, listener, go listen to Lord Reasons, but I've been trying to get that. trying to get this goddamn amoebo, and by the way, it looks like shit, it looks like shit, but I don't care. I'm still gonna get it. They haven't in stock on GameStop. What are you doing? Well, I put the pre, I put the pre-order at Best Buy, and I was supposed to pick it up yesterday,

and I had a long day. It was a long shitty day yesterday, and I hadn't made it to Best Buy yet, and they fucking canceled my order, and that was my last, that was it for me, I was, I'm out, I'm out. I'm out. I don't even know if I'm trying to get it anymore. It's on GameStop.com right now. Okay, I'll be ordering that after this.

Okay, thank you. Oh, yeah, I thought that this story ended with you picking it up. No, I didn't get it. I was too, I was so distraught and defeated. This is going to make Natalie go darksided. I'm going to ignore it. The process has begun.

The process has begun. I have my, I'm Excel tall or whatever my fucking ex-name is. Oh, my God. Anyway. Real quick, Austin. If we're talking about, like, what's going on with Vader at the end of this. Yeah, you want to just jump to that here?

Well, I mean, the show is my question is, is he already beginning, like, does he not go in, like, yes, he identifies that it's Asoka. And then he starts to, you know, he's been toying with his food this entire time. Uh-huh. But, like, boy, does he wait to squeeze the trigger on the ghost? Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know. Oh, so, so you specifically are talking about the final segment of the, of the escape here. He tells the Imperial Captain, hold your fire, like block their escape, but don't do, basically don't do anything else.

Yes. And then he's chasing the ghost. The other, the rest of the fleet has escaped the flagship, which by the way was a medical frigate from the Clone Wars. That's a reuse of the old medical frigate ship, which is sick. It has destroyed, it's been destroyed. All the people are escaped on escape pods that have jumped to hyperspace. The support, the other support frigates or whatever have also jumped to hyperspace. So it's just the ghosts left, and it's up against three Star Destroyers, and, you know,

Hera has kind of a plan, which is to kind of get between the two of, get between two of them where she knows that they will try to get, they will try to tractor beam her into, into one of them, and whatever, and, and just when that's going to happen, she's going to go into light speed or hyperspace, whatever, and, uh, and let Vader get caught by the tractor beam instead. But he's behind them for quite some time. And he can't land the shot. Now, Hare is a good pilot.

So she's, you know, dodging and weaving. I'm not going to say she couldn't, I don't know, maybe I'm going to say. It's a wagon

versus a supercar. It is. Yeah, because this is Vader's personal tie fighter, by the way, which is like, how it has

hyperspace abilities, right? It can do that. It does, he can't get the shot off. So you think he's holding back at this point? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, I mean, it's, the motivation, of Vader, Anakin Skywalker, I think, are one of those things that you're always, like, at what point does he, we've always sort of commented on, you would have to be the biggest rub in the world not to realize the depths to which Palpatine fucked you over the minute you wake up on that table after being burned on Mustafa.

Right. And like everything you were promised has fallen apart. You're maimed. You've killed all your friends. And now you're enthralled to Cidias. Right. And speaking of, yeah, here he is. He's got to report back. He reports back. There's a small scene before this in which Asoka says she doesn't know who it is, which is interesting.

Oh, yeah, that killed me. From a certain point of view. She doesn't. You know? You're right? She's lying. She does lie. Because the thing that makes the bridge is the connection for her is as we're talking about the fear, the hate.

and that is Anakin Skywalker. That is what Asoka saw in him for ages. And the minute he describes, like the force user, it's just this like well of hatred and anger and sadness and fear, Asoka like tunes into that frequency. Uh-huh. And she says, I don't know who it is, but I know he'll be coming. And Esther's like, that means we got to be ready to fight.

And, and Kane's like, I guess we got to get, we got to find the strength to fight and the courage to know when to fight. Like maybe sometimes we got to get out of here. And Assoca is like, yeah, totally, taking all the money out of the ATM, just, like, throwing it in some bags. Yes, 100. Getting her, like, her prepper kit, her mugout bag ready. And we get, again, a really great match cut. She looks up, you know, like forward past the camera, above the camera, and it cuts to closed doors that open and reveal Vader's face.

As Vader goes into the, like, the bridge and orders Callis and the other Imperial office. to clear the bridge so that he can call Palpatine. And this is just from the original trilogy. But when he, this is Darth Vader. He's, we saw him. We know what he's capable of. And he kneels. And that's just, it's just good.

It's just like, okay, the most powerful person we've ever seen on the show kneels to this other guy. It's, there's a huge grin on Natalie's face right now because it's just good. It's good. It's good. It's good shit. It's good shit. Clear the bridge.

Yeah, clear the bridge. Lord Vader, have you dealt with the rebels in the loathal system? I'm just going to play this. We haven't done this in a minute. I'm going to play this. Sorry to Cato, but I'm going to, I also might need to, let's see if it'll work. Yeah, okay, it should work. Okay, I'm going to play this and we can listen to this little scene.

Now, see, even if we all have vision and pluses, we couldn't do this. That's right. Yeah. That's true. It'd be like, sorry, did you try to share copyrighted material for? No, I am getting around this by turning hardware acceleration off on your, or my browser a thing everybody should know that's a one way to get around this sort of copyright material you can't stream it to your friends anyway well this is we're commentating this is fair use

yeah three two one go lord veda have you dealt with the rebels in the lothal system yes master they are broken and yet i said not send you something more to your victory. I believe the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker lives. Not my apprentice. He's in league with these rebels. Are you certain? It was her.

This is an opportunity we cannot let pass. Skywalker's apprentice could lead us to other lost... He can't see his face, even his last face in this moment. face in this moment, such as Canoebe. Perhaps if he lives, be patient, my old friend. For now, dispatch another inquisitor to hunt them down. As you wish, my master. Oh, the resignation.

There's so much happening. Go ahead. There's so much happening. I didn't realize he says my old friend in that scene the first time I watched it. because I was already just like hung up on like this 40 minutes of being like Darth Vader is the scariest coolest person and like this is terrifying and I'm glad Darth Vader's here and the force is great and the show is great but then this like dehumanizing of himself the separation of himself from Anakin his like inability

like there's the sense that like he just doesn't have it yet like he's been positioning this entire time and he's been really good at positioning and he's he wants to be he wants Darth Vader to be a separate thing from when Anakin is and he's making all these moves to have that happen but that he he says Anakin Skywalker and then it's like oh what's going on there but then he has to say it was her it was to like acknowledge that he is Anakin and like be like no I know who she is because I know who he is and it's like and the pivot that he has to to make, which is so fascinating to me, he has to, he's, you know, the Palpatine says she could lead us to the other rebels. And, and Vader says, like, Kenobi perhaps, right? And he can't, it's, it's,

I think one of the, my, the best things about the introduction of us, this is like one of the moments from like, oh, I'm so glad Asoka exists as a character. Because it, she isn't reducible to Obi-Wan Kenobi. We know that based on watching the, Obi-Wan Kenobi show, but also based on just the original trilogy, there is a lot of, and the end of Revenge of the Sith, the enmity for Obi-Wan is through the roof. That has solidified for him. He hates Obi-Wan-Kin-Kinobi. He feels like Obi-Wan-Kin-Kin-Nobie betrayed him.

He feels like Obi-Wan-Kinobi, like, you know, is the fundamental reason everything bad happened, that this was his brother, this is the closest person he is to anybody in the world, and he's the one who left him like this. pushed him into this space. And, you know, we don't need to get into the conspiracy theories of the Obi-Wan Padme stuff, but there is like, you were, you know, conspiring against me, right? And you were part of the organization that was conspiring against me. Asoka isn't that. Asoka, and this is where I'm so glad we have not watched Clone Wars Season 7 yet. We don't know what if they ever have another contact.

There's another season of Clone Wars. Yes. Yes. And the ambiguity of who is Asoka after she leaves, the Jedi enclave, the Jedi Temple, is so powerful in this episode. We've never seen. We don't know what she's like after that. We don't know what's made her the way she is.

And we don't know if she and Anakin have had another conversation since then. We don't know. Truly, that ambiguity is so juicy. And it's such an open mystery that this show can play with because we haven't seen whatever happens at the end of Clone Wars. And then Clone Wars is going to get to play with this show and what they end up doing in the future. This is why we watch in production order. It makes the whole, the steak is juicier for it. And so, anyway, to go back to the thing I was saying before is, I don't know that he hates her the way that he hates Obi-Wan because she's not part of the Jedi Order by the end of it as far as you know.

I don't think he does, which is why Palpatine immediately moves him off this case. That's exactly right. This is just good show running, which is just like you can't have Vader be the enemy of the week. Good booking. Yes, because it makes him look weaker if he gets outplayed over and over again. Right. So you're going to have to introduce, like, different sort of foils for the ghosts. But what they've done here is very clever.

You know, he's there at the start of the Rebel series, and he shows up at the end of the first season. and now we get a full, like, concentrated, like, dose of, like, yes, Vader in his prime. But I think something that you always, that I've always had a theory that from the moment Luke Skywalker breaks cover, Palpatine realizes he has a huge fucking problem. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want to seduce Luke to the dark side. That's plan D. Like, he just wants Luke to, like, die and disappear anonymously.

If there's any way to achieve that, he would have done it. because he wants to avoid anything that reminds Vader of anything positive about being Anakin Skywalker. Right. And anything that was taken from him by Palpatine's deceptions, his

lies, and sort of the ways he manipulated a kid into doing evil and unforgivable things. The core of that argument is, has always, or the core of the leverage Palpatine has has always been, I'm all you have left. Right. Everybody else is dead or betrayed. My old friend.

My old friend. You're not my, I'm not, I'm not your Sith master. You're my own friend. Yeah. Like who else has been with you this entire time? And so the minute, the minute something shows up that could divide the loyalty, Palpatine's like, yeah, this is, no, it's totally awesome that Assoak is here. Let's put an inquisitor on it.

I've got other things I need you for. Which gives, I feel like it gives Darth Vader and it gives them the space. to stew on this, to like, to wonder and to like, to think about and to like, you know, just go down rabbit holes over like the possibilities that Asoka might lead them to of Asoka herself. Um, I feel like giving Anakin that room to brood on what this could mean instead of immediately setting him off to attack, like to, you know, go after this is only going to help Palpatine be able to stoke the fires of anger, hate, you know, fear in Anakin to prep him

for that eventual encounter. I hate Obi-Wan Kenobi, the television show. So much. that already happened he all at at this point he's already run into Obi-Wan all of that happened

five years ago already they expect us to want this Darth Vader to be after that show I've got to find him again what the fuck are we doing he's slippery as a eel it

it undercuts it so bad for me that he's already gone through an arc of running into someone from his own life once already. This is so much stronger if he's not already run into Obi-Wan once. We're just slow.

And Austin, the good news is he hasn't run into Obi-Wan. Oh, that's great. Because I think we're gonna be at a point where like, the Obi-Wan TV show took a bunch of awesome ideas from other parts of the Star Wars universe, fucked them all up,

and now we're all just going to collectively pretend that never happened. Yeah. The thing that made me realize is that the Grand Inquisitor dies at the end of season one. But it was in Obi-Wan because that happened before. That dude has a way

that dude had a way more squished face. It's the same guy. It's just totally different guy. Different guy. Okay, that's good. I'm glad. Different actor. I mean, what was it? Is Rupert friend versus Jason Isaacs? I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So I...

You're right. Okay. Yeah. I'll just close the Spokypedia tab and just ignore it then that's good It's not safe on there It was like a dream You're right It's not safe on there You're totally right

As we learned we discuss The Bob Newhart show Yeah you're right All the Obi-WI was just a dream That Vader had After this episode He has that whole dream Yeah it's like wild

Like at the end of Obi-1 Anakin wakes up next to Padmay And it's like the craziest dream And then the end that he wakes up as Darth Vader And he's down back in the In the continuity's fixed And then he goes to us basketball court.

I got I got to do a little shoot around to get my head straight. Bring me my ones. He says, but it is like, it is shocking the degree to which the Obi-Wan show missed the market. And also, I think to your point, I thought you were going to say it is shocking how much the Obi-Wan show never happened.

You will be shocked by how much that show never happened. I was thinking about, like, also just the, it's so funny that we live in this world now, we're like, the idea of the live action thing being the, like, higher value, like, we're doing it more for real thing is so laughable. Like, this is what happening with the avatar thing on Netflix, right? Where it's like, dude, we all know what CG looks like. You're not going to make, like, boy, I'm glad I finally saw the real bossing say on the Hollywood sound stage. You're just not going to do it. Like these shows can, like, move into a gear because they're animated. Yes.

And because animation is an awesome medium, they can do things that are prohibitively expensive and impossible to do in live action unless you're like Peter Jackson. Yeah. You know, a handful of those auturys who have the budget and, like, know how to, like, you know, mix those mediums. But. Especially now that this show has gotten to where it's gotten with its stylization. early clone wars is a little rough still because it's it has really high ambitions for and

there's stuff that it does well in terms of match cuts and you know camera movement and you know we talk a lot about there's that one early episode where uh george we don't talk a lot about but at the time we mentioned that george ended up going in with just like you know torra torta tora and some other uh world war two like flight footage and flight and you know uh dog fighting movies and stuff to be like, hey, like, let's look at how battle scenes and and dogfighting scenes were shot and let's pull from those and, like, let's recut this and reshoot this so that we're using filmic language in cartoons, in this style of cartoons.

And, like, that stuff was there earlier than, like, the particle effects and the texturing and stuff were. This show hasn't already. You know, this show came out, what did I say before? The show came out almost a decade ago. These episodes are from 2015, maybe to 2016. somewhere in there, and that's, you know, that's getting on an age. It doesn't look, it doesn't look dated the way that early Clone Wars does, you know.

They've kind of gotten past that hump by finding the identity, the visual identity of the show, and by technology getting to a point where they're able to render out their creative vision without feeling like it's being held back by where the, you know, the tech is, you know. And that's exciting in some ways because it's like, that means the show is going to be able to still rip in 10 years. You know, it's still going to be like, you can watch Rebels without thinking about it being an old show, which I know is just the way, listen, I'm a first Gundom 1979 person. I think that show looks great. A lot of people are not. I think getting some people on board Rebel or Clone Wars season one, it's hard because it looks so goofy. I don't

think that Rebels has that same problem. Maybe it will in 20 years when we're all, you know, jacked into the Matrix. But, Austin, you want to take us the following. Lonnie zone before we call it. I sure do. I sure do. We are going to start exactly one minute into Rebel Recon episode 201 inside the siege of Lothal. I always say Lothal, but it's Lafall or something, isn't it?

Yeah, they put the emphasis slightly different. We're coming in on our boy Pablo. Let's go back. Let's hit that good sound. All right. All right, 59 seconds in. Three, two, one, go. What is the state of rebellion at this point?

Is there a rebel alliance? There actually isn't. The organization that we've come to know as the Rebel Alliance really doesn't form until much closer to the events of episode four. The rebellion in the beginning of the empire is very secretive and small. There are militant groups out there

that we showed in Clone Wars, but they don't talk to each other. They're not aligned. How has Ezra and Canaan's relationship involved. I think they've gained a lot more confidence in each other's abilities. Canaan tried to see what Ezra is capable of. Ezra did rescue him and Ezra saw firsthand, Canaan defeat the Inquisitor.

The challenge now, though, is that sometimes in these stories you do something and the consequences of what team like such a heroic act are actually far greater and you might not be prepared for what has come out to find you, in this case, Darth Vader. Darth Vader is possibly scarier than he's ever been in this episode. Is Henry Gilroy, who's the co-reacting producer and the writer on these arc It's exciting, really a dream come true, and also very stressful, because every line and dialogue, every action that Vader carries work. And we're very careful to try to write him as George wrote him in A New Hope. This is Vader in his prime.

You got to remember how far we've come from the country when he was Anakin. We're seeing pictures of the young Anakin. There's no reason for it to come out yet until he gets exposed to Luke. Which is what makes Asoka so dangerous. because if she were to figure out or if she already knows who Darth Vader is, it's a big threat to him because it's like revealing these horrible truths. I think he walks something else back there. As Anakin Skywalker, and as Anakin Skywalker, someone he wants to forget, never existed.

If you had a top five list of who does Darth Vader want to destroy, the list is on screen. Obi-Wat number one. It's probably really close between Yoda and Osoko. Swapping between Yoda and Asoka. Are there any bits of old school Asoka that she's held on to over the years? Yeah, I think so. I mean, part of what makes Asoka interesting is that while she's much more knowledgeable now,

while she is kind of experienced in the galaxy, I want aspects of that kid that was there to shine through. It's tough because I played Asoka as the student, as the Ezra character, for six seasons. So to completely disregard that side of Asoka, And now, just to jump right into the more leader, Asoka, it is tough, and I do have to redo some lines. I don't like the tall design compared to the old one. An exuberant character that is Ashley from Assoca.

I think that's still in there, but it's been tempered by a lot of what she's had to do to survive after Order 66. Right, now we go to Chopper Cam. Chopper's doing a little grilling outside. Yeah. Got some hot dogs on the little grill. Dude, chop, what's up? I've been looking all over for you. Are you coming back for season two?

I know it doesn't technically start till the fall, but we're going to need you for just this one. Does the Lucas Ranch have a beach? Are they on a different beach? They have a beach at Lucas Ranch. Fuck. How are you even going to eat them? They should bring us to Lucas Ranch.

They should. Disney, if you're listening, bring us to Lucas Ranch. It's not Lucas Ranch. It's Skywalker Ranch. SkyWalk Har Ranch. Especially since Star Wars celebration, you've been sending us your questions online. As usual, we managed to corner the story group's Pablo Hidalgo for answers. I love to corner Pablo.

It's been a while, right? So since it's been a while, we have two questions for you. Okay. First one, at Reliable Toaster asks, was Ezra born the exact same day as Luke and Leia? He was not because Ezra was born on Empire Day, the day that Popatine declares that the first Galactic Empire is created, and Padme was at that Senate session. So we figure about two more days past before she actually gets birth. Cut to the death of Padma, made. Cut to the booba, boom, blah, blah.

Pablo, our next question is from my... He asks, do the stormtroopers we see in the series have a different phase of armor like the clones in the Clone Wars? Not really. I mean, the stormtrooper army we see in rebels is a stylized version of what we see in a new hope. And although fans with keen eyes will know that the stormtrooper armor suddenly changes between a new hope and return of the general. that I, it's not enough to actually call it a different phase.

It's more production-based reasons than anything that happens in the universe. Nothing that's as radical as the difference between the episode two clone trooper armor and the episode three clone trooper armor. So it doesn't seem like there's any major phase changes in stormtrooper armor. Interesting. Thank you so much, Bob. Have a question about siege of lowthal, tweeted to at Star Wars using the hashtag Rebel's Reacon and we'll answer what we can online. It's over. The show's done.

And since we have a little while until our next new episode, we have to Dave Filoni about what's in store for season two. All right, season two preview from Dave. all the way until the fall for new episodes. Is there anything that you can, you know, give us to tide us over until then? And what would you like? I don't know. Tell me all the secrets.

All the secrets? It moves really fast. We get everything into play rather immediately and then we deal with the repercussions of those ideas and every episode you're getting, I think, valuable information about the characters. We'll be introducing the new Inquisites in short order. Captain Rex will come to the story rather quickly

and I think that that was very important. And I will say that Assoca's white lightsabers look way better than I thought they would. I knew they would look cool, but they look so much cooler than I thought they were going to. I love you, Dave. If she fought her in this moment. She won't be a pushover. She is very well equipped to deal with fighting Anakin Skywalker because she used to do it all the time. She knows his weaknesses.

So let's see how that shakes down. Whoa, guys. All right. We'll stop this here because then I don't want to show the next episode. But if that's not enough to get you sufficiently hyped for the rest of the season, we have an exclusive preview of our next episode of The Lost Commanders. Though, again, if you saw the Disney Plus things, you would know this already. Wow.

I didn't look. I closed my eyes. Well, you're going to know immediately. I cannot wait for the next episodes. The next episodes are called The Lost Commanders and Relics of the Old Republic. I really wish Disney Plus didn't just show you the screenshots of like what's coming next like I don't but I'm excited because we're getting another big it's it's going to be good and I think in general this season we're going to be able to do two episodes at a time there's a

couple here where in order to maintain a two episode run we'll have to turn it into a three episode I think but basically we're going to be doing twos through through the bulk of this season I think so look forward to that a little lighter watching after our very heavy cotor long you know five, six hour long prep sessions. We get a little bit of a break here, which is nice. Again, I think I want to emphasize that Filoni was, I think Faloni pulled back on something in that clip where he's like, it's really important that, that, you know, Asoka, you know, Asoka's dangerous to Darth Vader because he's about to say everything we just said.

Yeah, 100%. And instead he's like, because she knows all the dark stuff. She knows about all the dark stuff. All those terrible secrets. No, no. Everyone knows Darth Vader just terrible shit. Darth Vader. The thing that she has is an emotional, it makes him emotionally vulnerable.

So, good to have Dave back. I, I, the lady who does Rebels recon, Andy, is it Gutierrez? I want to double check, but I'm pretty sure that that's right. What are you going to say about it? I need the hookup on where she gets all the novelty Star Wars shirts. They're good. And the hoodies are good too. Like every single one of them, like these are not like

trash tier like Star Wars shirts. Like that, Some good stuff in there. Like, it's up there with the, um, the, the production shirts they gave, uh, the team for, God, what was there, what was their little festival? Oh, my God. Uh, named for their producer who hated it. Oh, the potluck. The potluck.

What was it called? Oh, I feel bad that I don't remember it, but it was, it was tremendous. Uh, but yeah, I want this, I want those shirts. I want to know what store, uh, she was getting them from. Well, didn't someone, somebody sent us the, someone sent us the, someone sent us the PSDs of those You could have the Why haven't we made these yet?

I don't know Because of that production team Yeah it feels kind of I don't know But it's like a You know you know I don't know, I don't know Yeah but we don't

We weren't part of that team Like yeah it would be kind of Stolen Valor right Like we didn't go through We weren't in the trenches When they were trying to make We've been through enough trenches We should be

We should make shirts for ourselves We should make AMCA shirts. What would an AMCA shirt look like? I don't know. That's a great question. Let's commission some artists. Allie is shaking head because we're in, because Friends of the table has done more merch lately and is a process.

And I'm sure that what she is thinking is, don't you fucking dare make me make another store on the internet where I got to manage some shit and commission artists and chase it down. So we can have the one shirt. We have the one shirt. We should do like a yearly product for AMCA. I like to talk about this privately. For us. For us. Just for us.

Oh, I thought you meant for everyone. No. No, they don't like the podcast. I mean, our patrons make the podcast. Yes. What? Okay. We're going to talk off.

We should talk when we hang up. Yeah. With that, we've reached. What if we go to Niamas? We go to Niamas, but we make one of those like Disney style, like, we're like family vacation. I get drunk. I love that.

We've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. Forget what I said. I'm going to go, y'all do make the show. You do make the show. But like you don't record it with us, which is also making the show. I have them in my heart when we record. They're with me always.

Yeah. We're doing it for them. Also, like, truly, y'all showed out for the Cotor episodes. I think we went into that season being like, is anybody going to like this? Ready to lose our audience? Yeah, like, truly, that's where we were. And it turns out. That game can be a tough sell.

Yeah, 100%. And, like, I don't know that it's as good. Well, we'd be as good talking about that as we are other stuff. Like, will that be an entertaining show to, like, go over SideQuest and da-da-da. Turns out we had, we all, y'all really did send us a lot of love. So thank you for that. We are excited to come back to rebels, especially if it's going to, going to continue to be this this complete like this is heat like this is we're back so very excited

to see where it all goes but also small regularly scheduled break because next week the main feed and the patron feeds those will be dark again we will encourage our patrons to go back listen to the february q&A on nights of the old republic if you haven't yet if you haven't heard that you haven't been a patron go to patreon.com slash civilized our next regular episode will be on March 6th, I believe, where we're going to discuss episodes three and four of the second season, The Lost Commanders and Relics of the Old Republic. Until next time,

please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice and rising moons to you all. Rising moons. Or raising tons, depending on when you're listening to this. Tabuite. Tabuite. To booie. Thank you.

We're going to be. I don't know. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to be.