A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 88: Twilight of the Apprentice (Rebels 36 & 37)

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Finally, we've made it: to Malachor, to the Rebels season 2 finale, to the face-to-face showdown between... well... That's the thing, isn't it. If this had only been a faceoff between Kanan, Ezra, Ahsoka and the Inquisitors who have been pursuing them all season, it would've been a pretty great season finale. But it's more than that, much, much more.  NEXT TIME: Steps into Shadow Pt. 1 & 2 Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! 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 Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners via patreon.com slash civilized, so head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes. And we just released as a special public drop there. we finally released our, as it happened, end-of-day audio diaries from the Halcyon Star Cruiser. To the public.

They've been patron-friendly for months, but now, in the shadow of the Jenny Nicholson video, which is really good. I have like 30 minutes left in it, but I've liked what I've watched. We were like, people got to hear us go through this arc live. Like in real time. It was really, like, I,

I start pulling my punches early with the Halcyon because I was like, I'm being really mean. Maybe I'm being an asshole about like how shitty parts of it feel for the money. And man, hearing Nicholson tee off on it was like, okay, no, I was right. Yeah. I was right. This is bullshit. For me, the thing that's so wild is just like, and I said this at the time, how much of her experience matched with Natalie, your experience of just not getting filtered into scenes and like not, it not picking. up for your stuff.

It sounds like she had it even worse because it sounds like she didn't even get the thing at the end of night one where it was like, um, hey, everybody DMs you and you pick whose DMs to stuff. She didn't get that. Apparently. I haven't finished. I haven't watched it yet. Yeah.

She talks about like, she gets like maybe, she gets the next morning people messaged her with missions, but it didn't have the thing where it felt like, like, remember the end of the first night for us. It was like, all right, are you a smuggler, a saja, a dark side? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, they kind of check in with you throughout the day. Like, what are you feeling? What are you feeling?

It's not like she didn't even get that. And then that defines your route. It was also real familiar with me as somebody did first order though. Sure. Like just nothing happened. You're right. You're right. You know, the last morning I was talking to someone else who did first order.

Yeah. And like her trip had been ruined because she felt like she paid a fortune to go get like completely fucking ignored and ghosted by the Star Cruiser. For kids. The one meter, the biggest difference between us and her is it poured rain on her one. day in the park and that is because like the activities you do during that day suck i mean the rides are great but the like scanning stuff is boring as hell and it's like it's a day it's like it's a day of doing little errands and doing those errands in the fucking rain sounds like a nightmare so florida rain hot humid yes yeah yeah true exactly not even not even not like a pacific northwest

Drizzle, okay? No, it's like pouring at one point. It's wild. People should watch those videos, and then they should listen to our, they should go back and listen to our original episode if they haven't. Yeah. And then listen to our diaries. I'll say this.

Like, Austin, you're in the last 30 minutes. Yeah. Like everyone, even if you're like, even if you're like, I've heard the AMCA crew go over this pretty extensively, watch the last hour of Nicholson's thing where she starts talking a bit more, like, the first hour or the first like 45 minutes than the last hour, really important for context. Yes. Because there were things that I had completely, like, forgotten and have been memory-hulled by Disney about what Galaxies Edge was supposed to be.

And having Nicholson's start to bring out the receipts in, like, the final act, that was where I was like, let's burn this motherfucker down. Also, her, you know, I've said this, maybe I haven't said this here, but, like, she likes theme parks in, like, a deep, loving way. And so she has an expertise from that, from that love. that means that she can put the whole thing in context to, for instance, previous interactive experiences at Disney that I think are really enlightening in terms of like, you know, the thing that I think all of us were missing because we always are, is a little guys to look at, little things that move around, little freaks,

and there just aren't any on the Halcyon, and there aren't really any in Batu. There's not like little droids or little creatures. There's not. There's a fake door on the floor that eludes. To the idea of a little freak. And it's not even, it's not real. Nothing's real about it. And she puts that in context to a thing that had been running from like the mid-200s,

mid-late 2000s where they did do a lot of extra work to add little freaks around the park. Yeah. You know? That was the thing, the realization that like the Halcyon wasn't trying stuff that was new. It was stuff that like Disney has done before. And the Halcyon was in many cases the most half-assed implementation of it. Right. Was like, God, you all suck.

Yeah. Y'all are terrible. And I think an important difference, the biggest important difference between the one thing that separates me from Jenny Nicholson is that she loves theme parks, which means she can go get that itch scratched at a good theme park, right? Yeah. And when I think about why am I still nostalgic for this thing that I think was bad that we at the end of the day said it was a bad value proposition and like if it was still open, we wouldn't recommend people going to do it, but also some part of me wants to go do it again. It's because, like, that itch won't be scratched by going to a weird German theme park the way for Jenny it will be, right? Now, there are other things that I'm interested in doing that might scratch that itch, but they're not theme parks. They're LARPs, there are other game more gamey things.

Or the Disney Wish with the Batu cargo hole. The cargo hold thing is so funny. Anyway, people should watch this videos. Shout out to Jenny. Yeah. Jenny Nicholson go on AMCA. So. Our most recent Patreon episode, I talked a little bit about Star Wars Night at Disneyland and putting that, thinking about that as the follow up to closing the Galactic Star Cruiser, like what is your Star Wars, your next big Star Wars event and how similarly disappointing, though, in less embarrassing ways.

Honestly, slightly embarrassed. I talk about it on there was at least one embarrassing moment. actually. And there's photos on the Patreon for people who are curious. And our photos of the Galactic Star Cruiser are there now, too. We're all up there now, finally. Yeah. Shoutouts to Austin for doing that.

I suddenly had a lot of free time during the day. No. Anyway, so go listen to that if you're interested in more live Star Wars experiential content. I have a question. Natalie, was it important that you saw Anakin Skywalker just weeks ago going into this season two finale? Yes, it was because I felt even more. What if Obi-Wan was good?

What if Obi-Wan the television show had been good? That is the question I'm asking myself at the end of season two of Rebels, episodes 21 and 22. Oh, they really did. do we want to talk about this year rob did you have something else before we switched to talking about the show well i was i was just going to do the intro on the on the week's episodes um but also i wanted to congratulate alley be the real alley has been the most dedicated Ezra bridge or hater uh on the yeah sure who's been like everyone's else i'm starting to warm up to that little kid hey like he's he's showing us

like way to go way to go ezra and alley's always been there which is kind of quiet he sucks this fucking kid and at the end of the season finale season two of Rebels I'm not saying it's all on Ezra but I'm saying a lot goes south that could have been preventative Ezra were just a little bit less

yeah is he not supposed to have street smarts like how do you get like taken for a scam Mall had me in the first half, though. I thought, I really did, I really did think I was like, good guy mall? I mean, I might still be on wall side in the end, but it doesn't mean that Ezra didn't fall for it.

You know what I mean? This is like an act to Aladdin is like, Jafar's like, I can get you in with her. And he's like, cool, awesome. We've learned that maybe Lothal is, you can be on the street. in Lothal and be soft. You know what I mean? Like, remember when Vince Staples was being interviewed by that dude, and the dude was like, like, do you invite people over for the holidays?

And Vince was like, you be inviting people over? Oh, you're nice. Oh, you're a good guy. You invite people over. You cook for people? No one knows where I live. Ezra is a nice boy. Ezra is a good guy.

You know, he's a good heart, as Vince says. And he is not ready to come face to face with a master. manipulator like Darth Mahal. No. Yeah, that's what I will say for Ezra, is that we really see how much years of being a

crime lord has paid off for Mall in the emotional manipulation department. He has got that on the bag. He has the practice. Ezra is a little boy. He does not have the defenses to them. Here's the thing. I,

there should simply be a list of guys. A A list of guys that is, you know, you are join the, join the cause. A set of cards. And you're like, this guy. No good. This goes back to Allie when we did the, which we should do the summary of this, but Allie, when we did the Clone Wars arc where Satine dies and you were talking about

how Obi-Wi-Wan's team didn't talk about anything. And one of the things that you said is like, you know, the devil apparently doesn't exist in Star Wars because like Darth Mall looks evil by every character you know every caricature of what an evil guy looks like like he is the most evil looking guy and like Star Wars aesthetics are not so wildly different from ours that like red and black face paint red light saber evil horns is not evil coded no I again I might be on his side in some terrible ways by the end of this art however Ezra you got at least like, come on.

And I think you're right. Vibchug. Vibchuk. And I think, again, it's not like Obi-Wan, you know, the shit that happened in Phantom Menace happened. They didn't come back and say, hey, this motherfucker was bad. We killed him. Like, if you see someone like him, he might be part of the same crew. They didn't do that. This is, they, where was- This is what I'm saying. Death of Mirians are, are unfortunately being put in evil plots. Okay. It's, it's, it's, I mean, so much, like, and that's a thing. It's not like the war, mall came back.

Mall was up the loose. Maul was hunting down Obi-Wan Cano. He's literally, this man can come back. This is what we know about him. Right. This is what we know. We didn't even ever see, it's not like he died in clone wars. Put some flyers up.

Put, put his picture out there. They got those holocrons. They be training on those holocrons in the phantom or in the ghost. None of those holocrons just had like, here are a seven. dudes to be aware of. There should have been a Darth Mall lecture series. There was no post-mort of a tattooe that someone recorded.

There was no, here's the dark lords of the galaxy. I was like, you're telling me that's a van full of candy. And that's it. That's the ball game. Oh my God. We've been saying that Ezra was falling into the dark

not falling, but we've been seeing little hints, little hints over and over again. Oh, but if you're going to be bad, you fucking commit to This was, this warmless ass, like, flirtation is some real, like. I like it. I'm so mad. I like it in the sense that it's, well, look, do you want to do the summary so that we can talk about what happens?

Let's do it. So here's the broad outlines. Per Yoda's instructions, and right there, I got questions. I have an answer. The Jedi ghosts. Yeah, go ahead. Head to Malacor. Uh-huh.

Because Yoda told them to go there. Yeah. They find an ancient. Ancient battlefield filled with the petrified ashen bodies of Jedi and Siff. Wait, they go where? They go where? Malagor. We have to play Knights of the Old Republic, too.

Oh, Jesus. It's about that time of year where we stop our entire production run. I mean, we are at a season break. We cannot do it right now, but we need to. Is there not a better time? I don't know. I don't know. Is Malacor going to come up again?

I bet not. I mean, I don't think it does. Who knows? I don't know shit about like Asoka or like a show. I don't know. I don't think it will. But like, you know, and I think that truly it's not the same Malacor, but the thing that they say in the first like three minutes of this episode where, where Asoka and

cana are like, yeah, we always get told stories about this place in the temple. And there's always a bit of truth in legends, like the legends canon, but also legends that they hear growing up, the idea being that, like, the stuff that happened in Cotor 2 did not happen, but is there a weird temple there? Did weird dark side shit happen there? Is there a history between the Jedi and the, a battle between the Jedi and the Sith there? Yes, all of that is true. And it's cool in Cotor 2 is a cool video game, is what I'll say. So they find this battlefield surrounding this, this like ancient temple. And as they explore the ruins. They find they are being stalked by another inquisitor. We haven't seen before.

They split up to go searching for the inquisitor. And Ezra is swiftly confronted by a mysterious old man who proves to be none other than Darth Maul who promises he can lead Ezra to the knowledge hidden in the temple. And he kind of says it like that. Knowledge. This is every turn of Ezra's seduction and deception is like, uh, yeah. no kid good force knowledge right around that corner I'm taking you right there

what follows is a crash course in the Sith Catechism as as Maul and Ezra retrieve a Sith holocron when they emerge from the little quest to get the holocron

they find Assoca and Canaan beset by the Inquisitors all the Inquisitors Maul immediately evens the odds by joining the fight forcing the Inquisitors to retreat Assoc and Canaan don't think teaming up with Maul is a good idea.

But Ezra is all in on Darth Maul. As the group ascends the temple, they are attacked by the Inquisitors. Maul demonstrates the ruthlessness he says Ezra needs by telling him to strike down the cute goth upperclassman inquisitor, Seventh Sister, while she is helpless in Maul's forscrift. Ezra can't do it, so Maul just decapitates her right in front of him, if not in front of the camera. Then he says Ezra on ahead

While he goes to the aid of Assocan Canaan in battle against the 5th and 8th brothers Fifth Brother does not There's never never a good booking for 5th brother Just just completely eats it here So does 8th brother And then Maul immediately turns on the Jedi And slashes Canaan across the face

Blinding him Jokes on Mall Canaan's been posted up on a Zatoichi mode that no one has ever seen before. Well, all those young ones would be training with the helmets on. Sure, absolutely.

It's the coolest Canaan moment we've had since he put the lightsaber together in episode one. His swag levels went up a considerable amount in this episode. A hundred percent. His lightsaber form changes. Yeah. Switches grip on the lightsaber completely. Yeah. No, it's

full Zatouichi where like the fight slows down. He knows everything mong was thinking about uh and so canaan beats his ass throws him off the temple and you would think well that does that that does it for the big showdowns today uh meanwhile ezra has reached the has realized the sith holocron is actually an activation and control module for a sith wmd as he tries to figure out how to shut it down veda vader surfs in on his tie fighter only to be confronted by Asoka, who buys time for Canaan and Ezra to shut the advice down.

Vader tries to stop them before they can leave. But Asoka, Neruda runs up on Vader and cuts his mask open. She tries to reach him, but he is too dark-sight and they resume fighting as the temple collapses. The episode ends. What year did this come out? Because it is the most prestige TV ending.

I've ever seen a Star Wars thing. They do the end-of-season montage of all the characters caught in like a tabloat. blow, we're feeling something about their emotional state. And we zoom in on the back of Canaan, now wearing like a visor, blind, but maybe more attuned to the force than ever. And as the music swells, he suddenly looks off camera into Ezra's room, where Ezra has found a way to open up the Sith holocron, something that we've been told, no, no Jedi can do. Yeah, you to tap into at least the power of the dark side, if not actually, the Sith way itself.

Yeah. Is Ezra going to go darksided? We've been saying. I think he's going to continue getting tempted, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I feel like the more, like, direct they're being about this, the less convinced I'm going to have it's going to happen, especially when I think of, like, this writer's team, having to, write Anakin behind glass for years and years.

Like the thought of like going through a whole arc with another character and be like, oh, at the end he's going to fall. Just feels like a bummer. Like I don't know that it's actually going to go there. Well, but I think something like something else I didn't think they were to do. It appears that

they to be that they decided they needed to answer why are there no inquisitors in like why are there no other force like shock troopers that the empire is rolling with come the movies. they all got got like they just got like they just got written out of the show uh on mass are we done I mean that was we don't I can't imagine they're going to bring more back like we just saw three get worked yeah yeah well but there was that point in the episode where I think either canaan I think

can't ask them like how many more inquisitors are there and they said more than more than you like more than more than more than oh yeah more than More than enough to, like, handle you guys. And they show up in the Jedi games, the Jedi Survivor and Jedi, whatever the other one is called. I should finish that second one. But that's all before this. I think. I think it's all, I think it's all, like, further back from.

No, it's all in this, it's all in this end, because Saw is in the first one. Saul Guerrera is doing rebellion shit. I think it's, we know he's doing this for a while, and let's get in this, in this story. Jedi Survivor, what? Because he hired that evil Lasson who kills Imperial Troopers when they've been ambushed. Which one is that? When is that? That was from the honorable ones.

Remember, Saw's got, Saw had this mercenary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So Johnny Survivor is nine BBI. So it's five years prior than where we are now. Oh, interesting. Less is more than that now. So, yeah, you're right.

They've been out there, been getting worked. Archie beat them now Maul beat them you know it's the record is not looking good Obi-Wan beat some of them and that show is bad but like you know Obi-Wan fought some of the ones we've seen

which is very funny and weird still to me it's so weird nobody's look like the Inquisitors it turns out the entire concept of like what if we could have like shitty henchmen versions of sex

it turns out maybe that's not the most viable model for the empire um but anyway like the the opening of this i do think the setting of malicorn is so cool like this is one of the eeriest things we've seen in the show the whole like weird slick glass like a glass crust of this planet and then the weird like the parts of the sith temple that break the surface it's like the most denny vilnev thing I've seen in a Star Wars thing where it's like inscrutable, enormous, like, filled with portent and meaning that is completely like lost. The like holes in the in the firmament above the temple where like it looks like they're stars, but they're all like beaming light down. It's so good. Obviously a touch some people who haven't seen this, but maybe our gamers is the

Seafra River Valley stuff and Eldon Ring that like the also interesting other space that you go to there, you know, really striking visuals throughout this and also just some great shot composition throughout this. You can feel here, you know, throughout the season and throughout both seasons, we've talked about them drawing on the Ralph McQuary art and like just trying to like bring in particular things. But there's also just the sort of like, how do we, how do we, how do we bring in stylistic composition that we see a lot of here? I think never more clear than in the Vader arrival and the composition of as we're looking out and seeing Vader descend.

But even even this early stuff, these vistas and these locations feel like the Macquarie kind of landscape compositions that we see a lot of when you dig into like original Star Wars kind of ideation material. Also just like both the surface and the descent, below are both just striking and gorgeous. We get a lot of fun echoes, I think, compositionally to previous Clone Wars and Rebel stuff that I think we'll talk about when we get later in the thing. That writing, by the way, the strange writing that Ezra touches, when I said, I think I know to some degree why Yoda knows about this. It's not simple. It's not,

I know why Yoda knows because there's another thing where Yoda visits here and says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But an interesting thing is that the ancient writing that Ezra touches, the weird, like, linear rooms that are on that wall, quote, along the patterns inscripted on the base of Malacor, Sith Temple, is the ancient writing first designed by Ralph McCreery that was also seen on the Lothal Jedi Temple. And so the idea that this is like, that it's on the Jedi Temple and this Sith Temple rules to me because that suggests that it's so old in fact that there's like a convergence point in history which like of course there could be right of course there was a moment where this this religion split in some way you know and I would love to see more of that thank you very much I will also say so I broke down after this episode I bought the remainder of rebels on blue ray I was thinking about yeah I saw the fights and I was like,

I can't keep watching a show that's kind of this many lightsaber fights that keeps like graying out the screen and cutting frames in all this. Because they're good. And the sabres look cool.

Yeah. The Blu-ray looks great. You know, as is often the case, you know, you don't notice the detail is lost with compression when you're watching it on streaming. But like the thing that really popped with the Blu-ray

is how every surface on Malik, has like an oily slick to it that like everything has like dark mirror reflections under it these it's not just like pure obsidian everything has this like sickly oil slick uh look to it um also ezra's just like he hears the sit he hears the dark side calling to him like from the jump he gets near one of those plinths and it's like touch me and he's like yeah why not told me to touch it It'd be rude. Oh.

Oh, before we get deeper, did anybody notice the, this is a wild, there's no way anyone notice this. This episode actually opens with Rex talking to Asoka. Yes. And Rex is like, you know, I could be there. I could be there in two days, you know. Yeah, like bring me to Malacor. Yeah.

Did anybody notice this is a reference with the way he, what he talks about is a reference to the first conversation that they have in. the Clone Wars movie. I knew it had to be some stupid shit like that. I outrank you. Because what the fuck were they talking about? It's the I outrank you. He says, you know, I could have ordered you to take me along.

And she says, you don't exactly outrank me anymore. And he goes, in my book, experience outranks everything. And then she says, hmm, but I definitely outrank you. Which is like a rude thing to say to a person. He was in war with you. You're both in war. Maybe she's just been slang for Jupas for like 20 years. So in the Clone Wars movie, in the first thing we watched for Clone Wars, she says, so if you're a captain and I'm a Jedi, then technically I outrank you, right?

And he says, in my book, Experience Our Ranks Everything. And she says, well, I've experienced outranks everything, that I guess I better start getting some. And then they fight some droids. Okay, Snips. Yeah, this is like the scene after Snips and Sky Guy get deployed for the first time. Just snippy. Imagine if they had said, imagine.

Oh, my God. Imagine. Imagine, imagine. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Anyway. I'm so good.

Like, I know my sky guys is there. Oh. I was like curious about that scene because, like, Rex has such a reaction to her saying that. I know. And I was like, I'm wondering how to read this. And I'm glad that it's just like, oh, it's a flashback. I thought he was like considering like what she had done in the time between they knew each other or whatever and like felt sad or just maybe but maybe right like what we don't know what she did get up to for 20 years or whatever yeah he definitely has like this like considered moment where he like like kind of like looks down and like thinks for a second and then tells her may the force be with you and it like feels like this like sentimental thing.

And yeah, maybe I felt like in the moment it was definitely alluding to there are things that happen or Asoka has experienced an amount of life

since she's left the Jedi Order that Rex has no idea about and it seems like she's not talking about it. So yeah, I,

but I don't know. It just, the phrasing of it was so awkward. I knew it had to be use like a reference of the earlier bit of this had to be something. Because otherwise it's like shut up Virgin and that's it. She's just shutting it down

you never bet anywhere. You're on that planet for ages. You were basically raised in a vat until you were 30 and then all he did was sling for Jupas for 15 years. I've been out there living grandpa. I think there is there is a bit of it's weird like we don't see like because so many Star Wars stories are sort of hived off from each other you don't actually see that many characters reckoning with the fact that someone's grown up like between like you know Vader and Luke have no relationship like you know he Luke I'm your father but like there's been no parental Vader's never thought he had a kid Luke's never really thought about his father until like over Obi-Wan tells him the bullshit version of who his father, whose father was. But like, it is one of those moments where, by calling back to this conversation,

she was a kid when, you know, she arrived in the Clone Wars. And now it's like, man, it's, you know, 15, 20 years later. And at this point, like, Rex has gotten old and she has grown up. Let's not forget Padmay recognizing the growth. in Anakin between Phantom Menace and... You sure we don't want to forget that? Great moments in Star Wars sexual politics. Iconic women moments in Star Wars.

Iconic moments. Oh, Lord. She did see his... She acknowledged his growth. That's all I'm saying. I can't. I can't. Salute you.

You on your way? Have a good one. I mean, I guess Anakin and Obi-Wan is the other one. Like, Obi-Wan basically raises Anakin, right? And so there's an arc there, but, like, he's there the whole time. So it's not the same thing as this where Rex is like, oh, damn. Well, it's a difference between, he raises him from, like, age 10 to age, like, 20 tops.

Like, world of difference between that and, like, the gap and experience in life that's happened with that. Whatever, 16 to 30. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to the other character. Like, Shmi sees Anakin when he's all grown up briefly before she dies. God.

But, like, there's a little much. Yeah. You know? I mean, I guess, like, yeah, there's no one to observe Luke's. Obi-Wan sees baby Leah, and then he sees her again. Oh, that's true. Yeah, they have that whole arc together on the... art together.

The cyberbunk planet. My God, I hate it. I know there are people who think that we go too hard at Obi-Wan because they like the show or they like bits of the show. I got to tell you, this is not going to be the episode for you. Stop now. Like, there's the people who made Obi-Wan had to watch rebels. I fucking know.

We'll get there. We'll get that. So they're down there. There's another ship. Oh, hold on. One person says, I trust Master Yoda. And that was my first red flag of this episode. My note for that was you shouldn't, IDK.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't think you should trust Master Yoda. What is he bringing to the table right now? Not a lot. Great question. Great question. He's hanging out on a tree planet.

Like, what are you doing? He just throws Malacor out there. People are asking him questions he doesn't have the answer to. They just like, uh... Check up Malicorn. Malicorn, yeah. Yeah. You had Malicorn?

Oh, man, like so many answers to the questions you seek. Malichore. I guess we'll see what's in that holocron next season. Yeah, we'll see. As we leave this, they learn shit. Yeah, if anything Ezra knows about the dark side. now he knows the like the tenants of the Sith yeah I don't know that Yoda would have wanted that right he knows the debased tenets of the Sith not the ones that we all we're right

we took into our heart yeah yeah he didn't have it's a fallen age right yes yes he didn't have the God what is her name what is our what was our teacher's name on Corabon you you Thara something like that uthora I think so whatever her name was she was All I know is, like, through strength, my chains are broken. Well, yeah, he gestures at that here, right? He doesn't quite get all the way there. So we should get in the, so. Yeah, let's get there.

They split up. They go look around. And we basically get the call and ambulance meme starring Darth Maul as Ezra encounters him. And here, but here's my question for you all. The first taste we get of Maul, he's actually reverted a lot to the way we meet him again in Clone Wars, like it's slightly unstuck in time. Yeah. A bit hunted, doesn't call himself a siff, doesn't say he's Darth Maul.

See, he's like, I used to have a name. What was it? He struggles to recall. Is this all put on or has once again? Importantly, he is not, in that moment, he's not talking about the name Mall, I don't think. In the moment he says, I used to have a name. He means the name he was born with. Yeah.

Which he doesn't have anymore. But he means that he was given mall by the Sith. What was his original name? And it's weird because Savage, it seems like Savage was named Savage, right? And so was Mall just, it seems in the way that he delivers that line here that he does not mean that Mall was his birth name.

He means that like he had a life before he was taken by the Sith to da-da-da-da-da. and that is it's to your point Rob that he feels like defeated and the line that he says and like I think this is you know this is the stuff that I think we saw very early flashes of in Clone Wars that I'm really excited to see you get developed here he says the Sith this is you know Ezra has said wait are you Sith and he says the Sith The Sith took everything from me, ripped me from my mother's arms, murdered my brother, used me as a weapon, and then cast me aside, abandoned me. Once I had power. No, I have nothing.

Nothing. Which, to your kind of implied question, Rob, is like, yeah, I believe this. I believe he feels this. I don't believe this is part of a put-on, I think he feels this fucking way, you know, but also the thing he hasn't said here is like, and you are my key to getting vengeance. I can't wait to rip you away from the arms of your loved ones to murder the people who are close to you to use you as a weapon and then cast you aside and abandon you to get what I want. He doesn't say that part, you know, but that first part, I think is true. I mean, he introduces himself as old master

Like where is the like I'm getting a bad feeling about this From this like Come on Why is everyone calling him old That's what I don't understand He looks pretty good Once he takes the hood off

He does look pretty good for his age He just called grandpa at one point I was like what's going on Mald is like He's got like a shredded six-pats and is doing crazy... This is after solo, so he's been a crime. It feels like the crime lord thing is hit hard times.

Like his whole run dark sun for Palpatine as like an underground, like, play. Seems like that threat got played out. But that didn't remember, that's not what happened, right? Because he, he, we saw him get crushed by Palpatine during at the end of the Clone Wars arc, the stuff with them. And then we read Dathamere, remember? Son of Dathamere, where Talson gets killed. Oh, God.

And he escapes from prison. And then that's the last time we see him until he shows up as the head of the, I don't think it's the black son. I think it's, um, it's whatever the, yeah, it's whatever Kira is part of in solo. If you, if you offered me $10,000 to tell you right now, when Moll shows up in Solo, could not do it. Are you fucking for real? Really?

I could not do it. How? Dead ass sitting here this whole time being, when the fuck does not come out of solo in solo? What is there? I don't remember. Do you remember what the scene is? No, I'm looking at up. I need to, I need to like burn this into my brain.

Can you guess? Give me a guess. See, this is what critics of legalization are worried about. Yeah. yeah he's that hologram it's basically a glorified post-credit scene like it's it's it's not anything no i know i agree it's a huge like now you've got the code to get on the secret like crime lord network yes there he is it's really stupid go ahead yeah it's a reveal but with no like context no foundation no like like

intrigue it just oh Darth Mall's here I remember he activates his lightsaber on the hologram call for no reason like just to remind the viewer that that's who he is

in case you forgot I'm the guy with the two light saber's on one yeah I'm committing it to memory now I'm downloading it it's in my brain I will not I will never

forget this also remember though the way that the way Palpatine leaves him in the Clone Wars arc is that you're not a set of the prentice anymore but you can still serve me that's where he gestures at but then that's not what happens because the the according to comic that comics canon they talk about it in the

Thaloney zone for this episode Pablo is like if you read if you read but they didn't then they didn't explode then Palpatine just forgot about like you know he does he would do that though he'd be like there's another threat I can Oh, no, sorry. The thing that he was being used for was not to run Blackson. It was to get Talzin. It was bait for Talzin.

That's what his big plan was. I love him so much. Sheave. Such peak sheave. I hope we had sheaves soon in rebels. It's been too long. I agree. But from the jump, though, like,

Ezra, like, it's like one of those things where, like, you know, there's all these cold read techniques. If you watch the mentalist, you know a few of them. Just ways that you like immediately suss out what someone wants you to say and how they want to be connected with. Mal doesn't even have to do that. Ezra just begins like reverse cold reading where he's like, yeah, so you're sort of in the same boat as me. And I'm like, what has he said that actually implies that you're in the same boat? Don't worry about it.

We get straight on to mall begins his, it begins his little tutorial session. Just offering just things that there's no way this could sound at all bad. To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy. Even practice his beliefs. Hey, wait, what about that last one? That last part feels a little different. Feelings a big gulp. Big gulp.

Big gulf between got to know your enemy. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And do the thing your enemy loves to do. The thing that got me where Ezra felt like absolutely lost in the headlights was when he sit or Maul says I think maybe it's that or maybe it's another thing and Ezra's like you seem to know a lot about them and it's like three minutes ago

Maul said they used me as a weapon and cast me aside they took me from my mother's arms yeah I was them we needed to add some critical thinking lesson into the lesson plan we did like we we missed the reading Comprehension, yeah

100%. It might have done two more Sightaber training with the kid Yeah It might have been like Hey

Here's a book Good luck Bud Like Not Not right about the themes Of mice and men Did not have

You know The 101 English comp course It's like when a coach Has no idea What they're doing And it's like We're just gonna run Scrimmages

Every day of practice You have nothing With scrimmages Experience is the most important lesson, you know? You know, I've heard. Oh, Ezra. You know, and then they eventually get in, and we would just stay with them for this

first episode for a second. They get to the temple. They get to the like, the bit, you know, Maul says we need, there need to be two of us. It's always two, you know? This whole temple is built around this idea of there being two. And so the first. Where have I heard the importance of two? I don't know.

Forced I had. Mm, forced I had, right. Yeah, of course. God. And they get to these gates that, like, one has to, you have to open them one of the time. They're like these, like, big physical stone gates that you have to lift and drop and lift and drop. And it seems exhausting. And also it seems like maybe Ezra is being forced to do the hard part. But I really love it as a rhyme with the force gate or the energy gates from the end of Phantom Menace. There's a lot of little, there's lots, I mean, eventually they just start dropping in the one, like, bar of dual the fates in the background or in,

other fight scenes where, like, that's not even the whole song. It's just, ooh, remember, this is, this is the guy. But it's good. Well, and like, the way, like, M.K. pointed this out, the way the, the Sith temple's constructed that every step you take down the path makes retracing your steps impossible. Like, every step further, you can't, you can't take it back. A door closes. The way it always bars behind you.

And it's a pyramid. So going up is not, if there's no elevator down, like, all right, well, good luck, buddy. You're stuck up here now. Which is the trap of the Seth, right? Like, the thing that dooms Anakin is that he's never sure he can make it back into, like, the light of acceptance of his friends, right? That, like, he's never sure how do I, how do I confess to what I've done? Yeah. How do I go too far?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, well, look, I think we see a lot of evidence. Maul could do whatever he needs to in here. But he needs Ezra to get his hate on. That's right. All this stuff is like, oh, I just, I can't. Ezra, you need to lift this stone.

And I was like, I can't. And Maul's like, for Christ's sake, kid. Just like, get fucking angry and lift the stone. And the stone lifts. And he's like, good, you're so strong, kid. Great. My favorite example. And I know Ezra has had a tough life.

And I've not take that. No, no, no, no. Don't make excuses You don't need to We know where you've been You get your flowers today Yeah that's right Allie Use your anger

Draw it out You need to break your chains What chains does Ezzer have At this point in his life Come on Damn That kid don't even pay rent I come exactly

I mean I mean You know Good for them Good for Mall I guess And, you know, he's talking about himself, but he's not, Ezra doesn't know that. Ezra, you know what it is? Ezra is 15 or whatever.

And he's older than that, isn't he's 17 by this point, which is maybe too old for this shit. But he's like, you know, you always feel like you're chained up when you're in your teen years. You're always like the world's out to get me. No one, no one will trust. I mean, that's the kind of back. Chained by your ever-changing hormones. That's right. Cainton, I think.

Throughout this, right, like there's, there are moments where, I think, this is a classic, like, cartoon you're being led off by, you're being manipulated by the evil guy, where, like, Canaan doesn't, to Ezra, it seems like, Canaan doesn't trust him, but it's because he knows that you're going with the evil guy, right? But, like, Maul uses that as a wedge to separate them, which is, like, again, kind of classic construction for this sort of story, which sort of kind of starts to work. think about stuff in this season where Canaan and others have been like, Ezra stopped trying to talk to the space whales. Ezra stopped trying to talk to the spiders. Ezra stopped trying to like do your weird thing. Come do the mission. It'll work out if you do the mission.

With the exception of the spiders, Ezra tends to have the right of it. The spiders and Ketsu Onyo, he also fucked up that mission, I think. But generally speaking, they write him to have like a good idea that works and, oh no, someone didn't trust him. They don't really sell that enough here necessarily. I would have loved another line or tube dialogue where Maul pulled that out of him, you know, like, and Ezra said, well, sometimes my friends don't trust me or like, yeah, my master doesn't think that I can handle it, but I, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da. That would have helped. That is a really good point because, like, so much of what Maul is able to do is being like, well, the Sith are going to kill you or they're going to kill your friends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will give them the credit that, like, at least we've, we've had this build to the season and the friction between Canaan and Ezra. And, like, I'm really looking forward to when we, we go into season three and, like, Canaan's blindness ends up needing, there's going to be a reversal there, right? Where Canaan's going to end up being more reliant on Ezra. And Ezra is going to have to mature really quickly, I guess. I hope. We'll see, I guess. But, like, you know, they're, to Ezra's credit, I will say that, like, he is probably the most vulnerable to this sort of manipulation in this moment than we've seen him throughout the series so far.

Yeah. Yeah, the way that he, like, responds to them getting through, I think they got through the first or as they're getting through the first. Oh, no, it's maybe when they're, he's about to force, he, he asks Small to do the force throw with him. I love this beat so much. This is so good. And Ezra's like, we can do this. And he has just like such an earnest attitude towards like you can see that he's like really approaching Maul as like a peer and as like a good guy. Like that this is really going to do good for the guy.

Like it doesn't feel like he's like, yeah, I want it. I want to get like I don't know. There's not as much of a negative connotation. to how, like, you would think that Ezra would kind of be getting a little more like dark, I don't know, but he still has this like, can-do attitude.

He's like bubbly and bouncy. Yeah. Importantly, for many of these scenes, until the force jump, like right before the force jump, Ezra has once again gone back to his old alias of Java, and so you get all these lines of mall being like, you know, learn from

me, Java, or whatever, you know, you have to remember. Jabba, you can pull on the power of the dark side. It's extremely funny to me that Ezra is continuing to use this alias to people who knew probably knew Java or definitely like also after he's been called out on it. Remember, it stopped working. Someone caught him this season was like, yeah, we know this is one of your aliases. And that is the scene where he finally says like, my real name's Ezra.

That's where Darth Mall says, I used to have a real name once. I don't remember it anymore. Now I'm called Mall. And that's why I remember thinking, oh, he is talking about having a birth name that someone gave him, a Zabrak name, like Savage, which obviously is not just a human word. It was Maul or something, you know. Evol. Evol. No, we already have an Yvall.

That's the crime lord from the Cube episode. Evol, Moral, Evol, Morales, or something like that. It can't be evil, Morals, it can't be. What was his full name? Sorry, it was Moralo Evol. Yeah, it was Moral evil. That's right. Uh-huh.

Brah. Brah. Oh, I can't believe Moral Oral is a spin-off from Clone Wars. Galsuural. It was at this point. Yeah, it was at this point. this point that I wrote down like there there should be a list

of guys there should be his you or he's giving you his name right right he said Maul there should be a list where at the even if you don't remember what the guy looks like hard to forget guy I think I'd remember him you go oh right Maul like the word

we use when you get hit really bad with like a bear's claw and your face is ruined. That's his like way of remembering for the test he's like okay Maul is Also, when you get hurt. So hurt is bad. So Mala's bad guy.

That's right. Ezra is not a key blade master very clearly. Obviously not. So, yeah, they get the Sith holocron. They are keys that can open many doors we come to learn. And it unlocks their way out of this little chamber because Ezra gets stuck on the top of this escalating pyramid. or obelisk type thing and it's raising

into a laser orb electric orb situation and then Star Wars is wild it's so fun to be in a weird ancient Sith temple where there's just random ass lightning laser Indiana Jones suddenly happening you know

Ma's looking out for the kid though like repeatedly just doesn't seems to like the little guy for whatever reason we have the brief moment of like him oh I could just take the holocrine. He's definitely forscrubs the holocron with Ezra attached to it

rather than grabbing Ezra, but then, like, pulls the kid up. I do enjoy the detail, too, of like, now that the lessons of the temple have been taught, the holocron is just a key to open the way back out. Like, we don't need to do anything special to leave. Just put it in the locks. It's a key fob.

Yeah. That was such a Cotor thing for me, and another thing with the like, there's two elevators on either side that you have to walk back and forth. So, video with the party. Yeah. I could like feel

the Cotor UI coming up and being like candorous and you go over here and me, this guy's gonna go over here. Well, what's the other plot? What's the B plot while all this is happening on this side of things? So can't Canaan take an inquisitor prisoner

and he's like, I'm not hunting you. Who gets the dub, actually? As this inquisitor tries to hunt them down, who is the one? who wins the fight. It's chop. It's chop. Chopper comes through.

Chopper kind of solos this guy. He sneaks aboard the guy's, like, Thai fighter, and then just like lifts up and shoots him with it. Yeah? Okay, Chopper. Yep. Because he's a shit. Chopper is over and over again MVP of the situation at.

hand yeah I have to say um but like I'm just gonna say he's he's keen to point out for a change they're not on the trail of the four sensitive members of team ghost you're right they're here for someone else someone they call the shadow this is fun I like the idea that like oh there's an inquisitorious the inquisitors are out there they have their targets It's not just this rebel cell. They're also out, like, cleaning up loose ends, and Mall is one of those, and Mall has led them here. I also, I am a sucker for, like, the force brought all these people together in this place, in this moment, you know? Like, if you're going to have the force, it should do stuff like this.

It should bring together a confluence of people and power in moments that are important, you know? Later, a character says that, like, it was foretold that Asoko would be here. And we never really get what that means. But he doesn't say, like, they told me you'd be here. They say, it was foretold. And that is fun, force, religion, magic stuff. And I want, you know, if we're going to do Jedi stories, let's do that stuff, you know. Yeah.

So. So we have them, like, take the eighth brother now prisoner. But he is sort of, unbeknownstable. them sort of keyed in a distress call to the other Inquisitors, they get jumped outside the temple. And now- We don't see the Trellie. Sorry, I spoiled it.

I spoiled it. We don't see the Eighth Brothers face ever. I was going to ask you if you knew or had guesses on what species he was. Oh, I had no clue. I started to say it, but maybe no one heard me, which is good. He's a Torellian. He's a Torellian gingo. He's a Torellian jingo.

Jumper. Perfect. Uh-huh. Fantastic. What the fuck. She might recall from Lightsaber Lost, the episode of Clone Warriors were... My girl Cassie.

That's... Uh-huh. Yeah, wow. You knew Cassie, but you couldn't remember when Maul showed up in solo? I remember who's the... I want to study Natalie's brain. You know, it's a beautiful thing. I love this.

It was great. I am me. So it sets up a very funny, like Ezra and Mal emerged from the temple right in the middle of this fight with five people who could not be

more surprised to see these two characters sort of appear all at once. So good. I'm sorry, but the part where well, it's the next scene. I don't want to I don't know, spoil that.

They have the fight. And, you know, Kane and Asoka are like, Ezra get away from him. And Maul's like, I know what to do to earn their trust. Kick some ass. He goes in.

And we get the shot of the, each of them pair off with their inquisitor enemy, you know, cross swords. And it's no time at all before the inquisitors. Like, let's leave. I think the saber copters are lame. I agree. Not chill.

Sorry, so corny. They're so whack. You don't get to just have helicopter sabers. No. It's not chill. No. If one of them could do it, it would be fine. But the fact that they all have that.

It's like the little power. It's some inspector gadget shit. It really is. Yes. It really is. It's like those toys that you like pull on the string. Yeah, yeah. Going into the fireplace.

The little fairies. Yeah. It's just like, this is not. That is, it's, it's, yeah, I do, like, mall before the fight starts, sees everybody is like, how fun. Like, oh, there's a little bit of sheave in him there. You know, there's a little bit of like, ooh, like, what a fun, terrible situation I'm in. What an amazing moment I get to be the version of me I like to be.

I didn't think I get to be this version of me today, you know. I wrote down in my notes, what fun. I am having fun. Me. We are all here. What's fun it is. Sam Whitworth's decision to play mall, like a more lucid version of Mark Hamill's Joker, is, is inspired, right? Like, he's not completely deranged the way Hamill's Joker is, but he does have that delight like, oh, now I can, now I can sort of indulge my sense of humor and my sadism all at once.

This is the best. It's really good. When he calls Asokatano a part-timer, fucking incredible. Incredible. Also, there's something fun about him being like, I'm not a Darth anymore, formerly Darth, now just mall. There's something really, again,

there's a rhyming between him and Asoka that I hadn't thought about until this moment, even though this was true by the end of Clone, by the end of the Clone War's season six stuff that we'd watched, which is like she's left the the Jedi he has been ousted from the Sith he's been betrayed by his people she has been betrayed by hers you know I mean obviously they say she can rejoin at the end but she steps away and he has stepped away and in the same way that like there's that's a fun trajectory and I'm excited to see if they continue to play with that yeah also mall whips their asses like mall mall is him like he's he yeah the note that I sent you all was that I felt like watching these episodes made me feel that rebels may be to Clone Wars. What people say Clone Wars is to the prequels. And people talk a lot of other Clone Wars like fixing the prequels or cleaning up the prequels. And you know, I generally like

Clone Wars just fine. But this mall is like they figured him out in the gap between the last time we saw him in Clone Wars and here. They figured out how to like, hone in on both who he is, you know, in terms of visual animation style and fight scenes and stuff like that, but also his, like, attitude, his playfulness, his ideology, this idea that he's, like, driven by this particular vision of revenge because he's been abandoned, all that stuff retroactively makes, and I will tell you here, I knew some of the big swings that were coming here. I didn't know the particulars of this episode. I didn't know the particulars of his relationship with Ezra, et cetera.

But I did know, because of something later that I've referenced a few times now, that there was this idea of Maul as the abandoned, betrayed by, you know, should have been the sort of like, I should have had power, I should have been part of maybe not the empire specifically, but like I was in a position of power and they fucking betrayed me and took, they didn't, they didn't let me come back, you know, I didn't get to be the person I was supposed to be. my life was taken for me, and I'm mad about it. And I think you see seeds of that stuff in Clone Wars, but this is the first time it really develops.

And so it's fun to see him go all out in these opening scenes. And yeah, two Jedi and a part timer is how he refers to Caden, Ezra. It's so good. It's so good. The way that, like, I think Asoka asks him just before this, like, what's your game? What's your game mall? And he's like, the end game, Leitano. The end game.

I'm like, let's fucking go. He's insistence on calling her Lady Tana. I know. And the implication is like, well, if you ain't a Jedi, but you're a well-trained force user, then look, there's Sith in this world, there's Jedi, you're closer to us, you're not in their camp anymore. Again, very, very joker.

Stop acting like you're one of them. Yeah, stop acting as you're one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bit of that, right? The, like, sort of aggressive familiarity with, like, I know you no longer sit in that camp. And if you no longer sit in that camp, then everything you're doing is just pretense.

You're pretending you're not a fallen Jedi, but you are. And so we might as just roll with it. I'm a fallen Sith. I'm old master. You're Lady Tano. There's even an echo a little bit of like, Lady is not quite Mother Towson.

It's not quite Mother Towson, but Lady Tano, Mother Towson has like, you know, he has these other terms for thinking about force users that aren't Jedi. and she deserves a title she's going to get a title you know she's moving in the world of force masters who are not Jedi like you said so got to be something not going to be Asoka you know I mean he says Assoca too at certain points but you know what I mean uh but I also have a note here um let's see at some point I think Canaan tries to tell to tell Ezra

like you gotta be wary of this guy like be careful and as a response mall sees what I could be you don't and my note there is JFC

this kid is fucking dumb yeah yeah well all sees what I could be so to the Jedi this is the nature of dark Jedi

they all see what you could be if this goes was bad. Canaan sees exactly what you could be. He sees the same thing Paul does. He's just worried

about it, you know, because it's not good. It's a bad version of you. This is why Cain is a failure for not being like Darth Vader is what the future is for us if you don't fucking do your lessons. Let's be specific.

Why are we like once upon a time? I mean, Cainon doesn't know. There's evil out there. Canaan doesn't know what's up with Darth Vader though. Yeah. Asoka does. Yeah.

Asoka's not saying shit. Asoka's not saying shit about who that is. Because she's out like, I'm not a Jedi. I'm not a Jedi. I don't know who Darth Vader is. I don't know who that is. That seems like a bad guy. A lot would be solved if Asoka had been up front about some shit.

And you know what is? You say like she doesn't want everyone know that Anakin was bad. But I don't think it's for their sake. I think it's that she's protecting Anakin's like memory. Yes. Like this is like, Like, this is like Bobby Kennedy handing out PT 109 tie clips years after JFK died, right? Where it's like, I'm going to, I'm going to be the keeper of this, of this, of this myth.

Mm-hmm. And it's like, it is not worth it. So, like, this is a dangerous myth to keep, to keep feeding. We don't need, we don't need, we don't need action hero, Anakin memories. We don't need the memorabilia. We don't need the action figures. But also, like, she's the one in that moment who could. speak to what Maul is and what he does and how he acts,

could have even, like, you know, recognizing what's happening between Ezra and Canaan been the one to be like, well, then I'll go with Ezra. Let's all compromise. Like, the fact that she is so, so passive in all of these moments where she could be, like, the adults, the, you know, she already knows that Canaan and Ezra

are looking to her for guidance in a way. And she just, like, keeps fumbling all of these opportunities on purpose. I don't understand why she doesn't do something sooner. I don't understand. Like, I think the first time they split up, it's Asoka and Maul, and then it's Canaan. And when they first go on, like, that very first elevator up the pyramid, right? Uh-huh. Why would Asoka let...

Ezra be in the presence alone of a Sith Lord at any point after they come out of the Sith Temple together of the Sith fucking and he's so clearly getting Sith Lord pelt he's so clearly like I met this awesome guy she's just like not my business not my business I'm not a Jedi you know maybe except she really is like that maybe she really is like you know what that's Jedi business you know what she is like this is basically what she tells Canaan she was like I trust Ezra because I trust you right really loading a lot on Canaan for about what's about to happen but yeah there is a bit of I think there is a bit of like Yoda like what is it uh we are who they surpassed or something the the the the own line that he gives uh in in like last Jedi I think yeah

yeah totally um but the there's a point where you just got to take your hands off and just like see if they can ride this bike right And I do think from Asoka's position, we have arrived, this, like, you're, you know what, you're in a Sith temple. You're sent here by Yoda. This is as close as you can come as, like, this is in God's hands now. Yep. Ride or die. This is the moment.

And, like, maybe part of this is, is shaped by her being so close to Anakin in the sense that she has seen what holding the least too tight does. And it's, it makes Darth Vader, right? if right now you don't let him go learn not to fuck around with Darth Mall, you're going to lose him to Darth Mall, you know? If you make a hard, now, again, is there information she could provide here? Yes. But maybe she knows that Mall will have answers here. And Mall does have answers, which again, the answer is they used me, they threw me out,

I want revenge, I'm the enemy of your enemy. We're going to work together for now. That, I mean, Moll does say I'm here for the end game. Like, I think Osoka is kind of engaging with that. It's like, okay, show me the end game. Show me, like, show me where all this gets us. And, yeah, I guess she is placing her trust in, in Canaan's, you know, Jedi guidance prior to this moment in what he's imparted on Ezra. but I feel like

Osoka is kind of one to let things play out for sure Yeah I do think something else that I'll give Mal this And I maybe it is a little bit harder This makes it a little harder for Ezra to fully suss out

How rapidly this is going to go bad Is that Moll is not doing a palpatine Oh my boy type thing Maul is keyed in on like, I see what you want to do. You want to fight your enemies and you want to keep your friends safe.

And to do that, my friend, you're going to need power. And you're going to have to wield it without hesitation or remorse. And that's the real, that's the seduction of like, you know, getting lost in a good cause

and becoming the villain, right? Where it's like everything Maul says, like you're up against the empire, They're ruthless. They're remorseless. They're cruel. You were going to have to be brutal and you're going to have to be decisive to take that on. And everyone else is preaching restraint. You got Yoda there being like, maybe we shouldn't have fought at all. And here's, and here's Maul being like, you got to fucking kill these guys. Right. Which is important. Yeah. There's a distinction between that. And I think it's important that we lay this out because we've been critical in the past of in the Citadel arc, Tark. in lays out this idea that, like, the Jedi aren't fighting, the Jedi and the Republic's army aren't using, you know, devastating enough tactics. They're holding, they're pulling their punches in terms of military stratagem. They're not willing to do the dirty work of war. And I think that's distinct. And we've talked about how that's like shot through,

go listen to those episodes, shot through with bad thinking and like a historicity and, you know, all this other kind of a, it's fascist double speak, right? What, what Mall is deploying here is something that you've actually brought up to, uh, in response to, I want to say dark disciple, but also maybe in response to, um, some stuff in, in rebels, which is that there are times when it feels like they are not fighting to kill, right? There are, there are times when they're fighting to win an encounter and escape or to secure an objective, but they're not going out of their way to like, you know, they have the eighth brother for a minute. They don't even destroy his lightsaber. They don't, they don't kill him.

You know, and I think there's an important distinction between those two things because that is the angle that Mall actually takes to get into Ezra's mind. It's not you have to fight dirty or you have to use brutal tactics. It's simply you have to finish the fight that you're having. Otherwise, people are going to get hurt. And it becomes pretty clear quickly that, like, that is, he then kind of proves that in a way by betraying them and hurting Kane, right? Like, someone should have fucking killed Darth Maul a long time ago. And I think if there's a way forward that's going to get into Ezra's head, it's that thing. It's that like, oh, why didn't we kill this guy when we had the chance to in the past?

I have been negatively impacted by it. That's the worm. I'm curious to see if it starts to take root in Ezra more than, you know, anything else. I feel like that's Asoka's, like a potential role for Asoka as given some of the things she says later in this episode. I would hope that she, you know, might. Well, we'll see where she, you know, I don't know where we're going to see her next. I need to see her. Well, let's get there.

So Maul puts a real fine point on this lesson when the inquisers ambush the two groups of Jedi as they send the temple. And Seventh Sister engages Maul and Ezra. And she's got a little bit of the advantage of her Ezra. And then Maul just yanks her off her feet, the holds her still with the force, and is like, kill her. And Ezra can't do it. She is defenseless, but not, and this is the thing, right? She's defenseless because basically she's got, she's stunned locked.

If she were not stun-locked, she'd be trying to kill you, like, really hard. This is, this is not an enemy who's, like, at your mercy or who is surrendered. She just can't fight. And she is now begging for her life to Ezra, and Ezra can't, he's nice, he can't, you can't do it. Like, she's not, she can't even fight right now. And the second she realizes he can't do it, you see the smirk, the grinch-like smile, creep across her face as she's anticipating getting back in this fight. And then, Rebels briefly becomes a different sort of show that I've been watching lately. because we get a drone camera basically of the lightsaber

of Moss lightsaber siphing across siphing through the air and eclipsing the terrified expression on her face before her body, no head in evidence tumbles to the ground in front of Ezra. Yeah. Yeah. And he's and you know, he tells, he tells Ezra Darkside fights without remorse.

Uh-huh. This is what it is. Again, reminded of the beginning of Dark Disciple where all the Jedi Masters were like, we don't want to kill Duku. Do we have to kill him? Why are we going to kill him? And it's like, how many people has he killed? Why can't we kill him in a clean fight?

Right. He wins those. They didn't ever want to do that. We have to kill him, but only by shooting his scooter that he's right. Like, you can't be a direct kill. It has to be some ridiculous illusion. I mean, they want to bring him in. A trial.

You know, they want to put him on the court. They want to put him on court TV. You know, they're out of it. They're at war and do not realize it. So, and again, here's the other thing about this. We've, we have seen the crew of the ghost kill people. It's just that they're starve troopers. Mm-hmm.

And that's, there is a bit of, again, a line that is burning my brain from the first episode of, um, boardwalk empire. when like a young gangster tells Nucky Thompson he's gone row and he committed a bloody heist during the night and he tells Nucky Thompson you can't be half a gangster anymore and the tragedy of that series is Nucky Thompson's responses I think I can though I'm pretty sure I can be half a gangster in the time of gangsters forever you can't

but it's that cutting to the heart of the matter which is like you think there's this middle road open And that's what the Jedi are continuing to try to do. Like, can we be good Jedi and can we also be effective warriors? And Ezra's fear is that really they can't. Maul is here stoking that being like, you just got to kill these people. And Canaan and Asoka are keenly aware that, like, yeah, but you follow that thread. For a Jedi to follow that thread, you got a dark Jedi.

Yeah. well you know they have a lot of power right um the the thing that has always been um you know i think interesting to me is is stories of people not the one thing but a thing that's always interesting to me in stories where like people of magic or people of power is like oh how does this separate me out from people who don't have this type of power how how does that make it easier for me to fuck up what come in this is this is just fucking Spider-Man, Great Power, Great Responsibility type stuff. But like, there is, there are ways to read that, that are about, and I think that the way people

read that line in Spider-Man with Great Power comes great responsibility is like, oh, I have this power, I should be using it to save people, right? But there's the alternative to it, which is like, with this power, I actually need to be more careful with how I act, because the outcomes that I can produce are so much larger, right? It's not as simple as, I have the capacity to save people or help people. It's that with this great additional strength I have, my, you know, I need to remember how hard I punch, right? I hit bigger.

And having the force in the Star Wars universe means that you hit bigger. You know, you're going to affect the world in a way that a single clone trooper, it's way for a single clone trooper to affect the world the way a Jedi can, right? Like, this is, this is why Darth Vader is a menace, is that, like, it's, this motherfucker shows up and it's, it's done for, for a whole ship of people, you know? We had that great scene earlier this season where Vader shows up in the, in the tie, and just wrecks everybody. And it's like, oh, right, like, he's a little, a little wing of ships all by himself, right?

And that's the way Jedi touched the world. And so there is, I think, a really good, interesting way of thinking. about that stuff. And again, I hope that that's a thing that we end up getting back into as we go forward a little bit. We'll see. First of all, we have to say the way that

the 8th brother dies is so funny. It is ridiculous. I forget which one's which. The 6th is the reptilian. The big dude who doesn't do that shit and just gets got. Eighth brother activates his little rofocopter.

And, uh, eats it. Like immediately. It's over, overheats as he launches into the sky and then he, this is what I mean by the loony, like, remember when we, remember when in Clone Wars? It's true as a Wiley Coyote.

It is. It is. Remember when Asoka was like. The acme motorcopter didn't work, you know? Yeah. Remember when Asoka was like, uh, when she was on the Trondotion Island and she was like, we can't kill them directly,

but we can like slice the branches that are standing on and they can fall to their deaths but we can't stat like this is what I think about this is like the ridiculous logic of the Jedi that frustrates me but anyway

the yeah he he runs he's running in place in the air until he realizes the floor is gone from underneath him and then he falls to his death and a looney tunes ass sound it's so funny I think it is literally

the will him scream as well in Wilhelm yell in this moment too is deployed which is just like so goofy it's it's used constantly throughout Star Wars but in this moment it's just like okay well and like this for me it was like kind of an interesting

moment just because like oh they just kill all the inquisitors and yeah I guess they're dead it's like are we just retiring them as a threat that's interesting here because at this point we talked from the minute we met seven sisters and fifth brother on that space station we had concerns about like do these inquisitors have the

juice and i think at the other end of the season we had definitively answered these inquisitors they're juiceless like fatal lack of riz yeah it's such a weird like because i i mean what It's such a weird thing because it doesn't feel like there's a different antagonist to slot in there. There's Darth Vader, but Darth Vader isn't going to be the main antagonist of this. I guess Turkin is showing up. We know about that, sort of. We've seen him. Tarkin has been here.

Yeah, Tarkin, we've seen. Oh, okay, right. There's the Tarkin Towns even. Yeah, yeah, he's been on screen. Right, right. But, like, yeah, I mean, unless we just get more different cooler inquisitors, it just feels like such a lost. it's like wasted potential because there was more development that could have happened between Darth Vader and the

Inquisitors I think. Like there's so many questions that we're not going to get until this bear-sophie show I fucking get that like, you know, could have been in rebels if there was like the interest there, I guess. Yeah. We also just don't really get the, we get like, very brief perspective

switches to the Inquisitors or Vader, but we don't get long scenes with them that often, right? Where, you know, you would need Vader to be treated like his own character.

You know, the Bader comic, I think, probably has a lot of the Inquisitor stuff there, which we should read that at some point. I also imagine that we'll get more callous and maybe callus will be the perspective we start getting on imperial stuff though i don't know that we're going to get

i don't know that we're going to i don't know i do not know if we're going to get more inquisitor stuff or what you know the episode where callus begins scrubbing his imperial war record before defecting god uh the episode where he's like posing with like a pyramid of lisan skulls delete boop don't need to see that don't need that one on the record my new friend garizab would hate that that would just make him really sad He starts using Zeb's whole name all the time out of respect. We didn't get that. Hey, look, we got out of the season without Callis's face term.

So, hey, that's something. Maybe that'll be. Season three. Season three. The ground alert is laid. Oh, yeah. To me, it's like that, like, it's happening, folks. And that's like, he is, he is going to defect for love.

We're due for a new uncle. For Zeb. Yeah, new uncle. new uncle approaching new uncle approaching wow Calus doesn't have uncle energy no I agree this is like he's a cousin at best uncle's new boyfriend approaching uncle's new boyfriend this is the thing it's like Uncle bear yeah it's like oh you went out

and you found you found himself a twink okay that's cool he's not a twig he's too big to he's not a twink yeah he's a military man his shoulder pads are doing a lot we'll see yeah I guess I guess we'll see look at that jaw I agree I agree but he's not but also one of them is literally a bear man he needs his he needs his bear to come into his twink form there are other dichotomies

besides bears it's true there are that's simply true I also just while we have this moment I do want to apologize to the handful of people at least I don't know how many of there are out there who was waiting for us to get to that episode expecting for us to love it oh yeah sorry yeah yeah do you know us well i mean like i think i think it's a neat idea and it's just they laid the groundwork really poorly like it was just real hard to be like

well actually yeah i carry this thing to honor the culture of the people that i totally didn't actually know we were exterminating. And really, I was barely even there. Like, I was part of the first wave. It was like intense combat. It was real brave, heroic shit. Don't worry about what happened later. I wasn't part of that. Also, hey, it's, it, I didn't, I had an encounter with one guy who was, who was, he fought us in a bad way. And so I thought your whole species was savage and brutal was not the angle to take us to like why he thought it was okay for him. to do it. Did you know there are rebel groups

that attacked us with ignoble IEDs? It's like, yeah, yeah. So, Darth Mall, though, I guess I can't go too hard than inquisers. Basically, they'll get killed

by a Darth Mall. Like, fundamentally, Darth Mall just tips the, like, shoutouts to him. He really put in that word. Yeah, like it is, he just comes,

wipes him out, and then immediately is in full I can get it back I can be a Sith Lord now Ezra's my apprentice and strikes Canaan without warning

blinds him you know Asoka buys him a little bit of space and then we get the very cool Canaan feeling around finds the Jedi Guardian mask yeah that he puts on

and somehow that mask totally like locks him in. He doesn't give a shit what happened to his eyes. He's like, Yoga's vision. I, the way that this moment

was ruined for me by that Filoni zone because it couldn't have just been like, oh, fate, you know, you know, you know,

it's the force, Alie. Canaan's like subconscious and his respect for, you know, the guardians, like brought him to this moment. He's finding this power.

No, Yoda was like, by the way, helmets are important. Just keep that in mind. Don't ask about it. You didn't say helmets are important. He put it in there. I think it's a coincidence that he, I mean, again, you're right. You're right. The part of it that it's Yoda is the part that sucks.

I agree. The type of Yoda was like, ah, I will show you this vision via of the Grand Inquisitor being one of the former Jedi guardians of the temple. It would have just be better again if it had been true. If it had been a real force apparition or whatever, and it had been the Grand Inquisitor's ghost and all that would just be better, 100%. And then, but now we know that Yoda was like, hmm, I hope it you will find. You know, I was like, shut up, go away. Study for the quiz, you will.

That was, I guess we're not up to this point in the episode, but I do love that Ezra immediately, like, comes to the big temple supercomputer and he's putting the holocawn in it. And the holocron is like, do you remember your Sith code? What is knowledge? It's so funny. We did that puzzle. In Cotor. Right, knowledge of power, right. See, if this was still like the Clone Wars, we'd have had an entire episode where Ezra's got to move the rings.

I know. We had a tower panel. We puzzle. Yeah. No, the entire series would have glitched out and we wouldn't have been able to watch it on to C++. anymore. Yeah. You got to hit both thumbsticks in on Disney class in order to bring up the UI and do the

tele, you know, whatever, teleport yourself out. It's so funny to me that as, I mean, I think we're, yeah, Ezra has like, has like, splintered off from, from the group and is on top of the pyramid trying to convene with the ancient evil within. and he puts the holocron in and the evil voice is like, who goes there? I think the evil voice is a Cotor 2 character, by the way.

There's no evidence of this. There's no evidence of this. It's just vibes, just your heart. In my heart of hearts. I believe you. I mean, this is Malacor. Who else could it be, right? I am saying this. And Ezra's response to the,

evil being being like ominous and omnipresent is like howdy i'm ezra i'm here to i'm here to gain your knowledge knowledge please like truly it's the twilight of the apprentice this is looking dark even the holocairons starts stunting on him yeah kid i got your knowledge right here it's a super laser it destroys all life I was going to bat for Ezra in the last recording. I saw it in him. I saw him. I felt for him.

I, you know, he lost me. You lost me. I'm off the team. I'm off the Ezra's team. And I'm on the evil beings team. They sound fucking cool as hell. They're like, I've got a huge evil weapon waiting of mass destruction, mass killing weapon activated, turning on

now. Yep, that's right. Is the first lesson of being a Jedi not doing a vibe check? Like, do you not understand that you're standing inside of a big super weapon? Like, it was giving big

super weapon vibes. It really is. Yeah. Canaan failed him. Sorry. Maybe he skipped. Maybe he skipped this lesson because he was like. Oh, he was spying on Sateen again, Sabine, Seteen, Sabine, Sabine, Seteen? What's her name?

Sabine? When was he spying on, when was he spying? Because remember, because remember when there was that... He was going to hang out with her to paint a tie fighter. He wasn't spying on her, right? They were doing that together. She definitely wanted him there and invited him. You're right, Roth. Well, yeah. It's very funny. Lowbrow energy. Yeah. It was really quick, because I mentioned the name of this arc is, Twilight of the Apprentice. I do really love. Obviously, it's about Ezra, but like, this is a sort of fun echo of my big rant from Clone Wars. Like, they're all like Padawans, right? They're all

like apprentices in this case. Like, Maul is the apprentice of Sidious who betrayed him and used him and all that. You know, Asoka is obviously the apprentice of Anakin and we'll get to all that in a second. Anakin is an apprentice. You know, like all of that. It's like everybody's apprenticeship is kind of tied into this stuff into these moments and like hey and also when you think about twilight as being both like the diminishment but like the end of a day right and it's like okay like canaan guess what motherfucker it is time for you not to be an apprentice anymore you have to you have to have to step up all the way now because of the shit that just happened you know um hey asoka you have to put this idea that you were the apprentice of anakin skywalker

behind you like it's time to be something beyond that now um so it'd be pretty like it'd be bad obviously a lot of people live in choracent coruscant but it'd be a very funny and the most she've way to die if mall just like

fucks off gets forgotten about and just resurfaces with a Sith super weapon and like she was just hanging out there with tarkin and everyone like all right we're building a death star right Yeah, tell me how the death start construction plans are going. And then just like, boop. Like the end of Sopranos. Just gone.

Just dust. God. It'd be good. Yeah. It would have been like if Nouveauvindy's like little like killer disease caused like, like lab leaks out in the Sheaves office. And like he just died of a, you just died of like a wasting cold. What if he put the holocron in and it was like, it's time to. reveal the truth it's called the blue shadow virus you can you can release it to kill all

your enemies oh i would have felt so vindicated i would have said go listen yeah billboard up go listen to more civilized age patreon dot com slash yeah civilized yeah catch up nobody gets it like nobody understands like we do i would feel so smart i'm waiting that investment will Come back. It will pay it will be paid for it. I know it. I know it absolutely I sometimes I try to think of new o'vindy in my mind. I instead I think of the guy for Megamind. They're the same. Everybody else do that by mistake? They're the same. They are the same. I think if we ever get words like Jim Carrey has been cast in a season of the Mandalorian Newmo Vinci is coming back. That's right. Like that's me my moment where it's like yep. Here we go. Oh my God. It's Oh, oh, it's been, the seeds have been, have been sown.

That's right. It's happening. I mean, he's basically the riddler with a biochem degree. Like, that's, that's basically the energy. He's giving off. Anyway, last thing, I love, I love Canaan telling Maul you had your chance. And it's, it's over. The absolute certainty with which Canaan reengages, like,

It's so good. I love it. It is, it lives up to the moment of like, mall unlocked like a final form from, from Canaan here. That, you know,

he, he's holding it like a big fuck off dagger now. And yeah, just, just kicks his ass. And then, yeah, up on,

up on the temple. I guess we should say earlier on, is it on the way up the temple where mall is like very clearly senses. someone else approaching senses. Yeah, well, he says specifically that this will, like, this will attract Vader. And Vader will come not just for this weapon, but for me and for you all, like, this is the convergent moment that we need. Yeah. And I think Canaan orders Chopper to, like, be on the lookout for incoming aircraft, spacecraft.

Yeah. So I don't like when Vader Is standing on I don't like this I love this shot it's I The ship on the Thai fighter as it descends and he's on top of it you don't like it I don't know it's like a little surfboardy like you said you said he surfed in earlier And it's a little it's a little surfy like I I don't know Maybe there's like a way to make it a little bit more

Imposing I don't want him to be I don't want him to be I don't want to be I don't want to be in the ship, you know what I mean? I think it's... No, I'm with him being outside the ship. That's cool. But like, yeah, I'm a bigger dude. I'm not carrying tons of armor. But like, I'll say this.

I think I look pretty good in my coop. I think it's hard for me to look cool climbing out of my coop. Yeah, right, exactly. I don't want to see you have to like, okay, I'll be right back. Unbuckle my seat down. This moment has been foretold. And then like the lid pops up.

And then, oh, oh, quunk. Yeah, not, but I, but like, I guess the other thing is, maybe that's, it's an Anakin move, right? He just comes, it is an Anakin move. It is an Anakin move. You're right. It is, it is, I'm seeing it in my mind now. You're so right. Like, Vader still, Vader still, like, ghost driving cars, even his age, just like, let me

hop out of this thing and float alongside it. Yeah. He does land and then have to say the line, you've unlocked the secret of the temple. How have you managed this or something like that? I was like, oh, you know, he did unlock the secret of the temple. That is not a lie, but it's a funny. It sounds like a Legends of the Hidden Temple thing.

You know what I mean? You're putting an U.S. Olmec voice right now. And then shout us to Ezra for like not dying literally instantly. He does get whooped, but like, he has that line. He's like, I don't fear you. And then Vader says, then you will die braver than most. Yeah. Raiders good at this.

Vader's really good. It's the most like, I like that this isn't going to follow fairy tale rules, right? Whereas, I'm not afraid of you. And Vader's like, I will kill children. A dime for, I'll kill you too. It just doesn't. Your fear doesn't matter. That's cute.

That'll be good for you. Respect. But still getting this in the neck. Brakes his saber, like immediately. This saber will remain with the other littered sabers within the temple. Beginning of the next season, he already has a new lightsaber. Do you think we see him build it? Like in an episode.

It would be a good lesson time. So many savers lying around that. Great time for Yoda to come back. in and show us how to get our Khyber crystal. I did not, it did not occur to me with a moment of growth it's about to be for Ezra to not have to get a funny

slingshot. Yeah, the same thing again. Yeah, he's going to have he's not, no more stun blaster on this next shit. Or who knows? Maybe it'll be like an SMG. That's an MP5 that also has a lightsaber bandette. I don't know what this goofy ass kid's going to do, but. The secret of the Holocron was assault weapons. Exactly.

You unlock the next ex-com weapon tier. Oh, my God. Saga Rear rolls up with his AK. Yeah. He's like right on, kid. Takes a big hit off his air mask. Yeah. Exactly.

Canaan, I have the next battle pass. Oh, my God. He'll lock the next battle pass. Well. Anyway, now to the real shit. Yeah. I still think this is the part where I'm still like, too many Obi-Wan vibes,

we are still going to be laboring around carrying their little retcon where Vader's putting it in the same terms as Obi-Wan, where it's like, I destroyed Anakin Skywalker. And... Well, okay, so at this point, the thing is... So the thing that happens is, Asoka shows up and is like, hey, like, finally, it's time to fight you.

And Vader says, you know, hey, I can let... Look, the emperor will find a use for you. You just tell me where the rest of the Jedi are. And she's like, there are no more Jedi. The Inquisitors killed the rest of the Jedi, which, of course, we know is wrong because Calcestis is out there double jumping right now this second. But actually, I guess I don't know that. Maybe they'll kill Calcestis and the third one of those, which would be very funny.

Oh, my God. But I didn't think the second one. Maybe he dies at the end of that one. I don't know. I doubt it. But we get that exchange, which is the thing you're talking about Rob. She says, I was beginning to believe. I knew who you were behind that mask.

But it's impossible. My master could never be as vile as you. And then he says, Anakin Skywalker was weak. I destroyed him, which is the thing you're talking about. They've been stuck in this idea, this language of Vader saying I killed Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or sorry, I killed Anakin Skywalker, which is what Obi-Wan tells Luke to begin. with and of course that's revealed to be a fib but he still says it we still see it bubble up here and there but i think he means it i think he means in his own weird emo boy way the guy you thought

i mean later i think especially the guy you thought you knew is dead i killed him but here i think he's actually just like fucking with her because he's evil i think he's he is pretending to not be Anakin Skywalker here. I think she genuinely at this moment does not think, oh, that's Anakin. I think she genuinely in this moment thinks, oh, I was wrong. That guy isn't Anakin. He killed Anakin. Oh, interesting.

Which is why it hits her later. Which is why when the mask opens up, it hits her. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Which is like. That makes a lot of sense. A little silly because I know you felt him earlier through the force.

I was like, oh, that's Anakin. But maybe sometimes you feel something through the forest and you're like, oh, that's someone who interacted with Anakin, you know, I don't know. Remember early in the season when they were flying and she felt Vader's presence in that way, you know? That is like an especially Anakin thing too, because like in the context of that scene of him like making this offer to her and him feeling that rejection and meaning to deflect off of it is cool in my opinion. Yeah. Where he's like, he, interestingly, he did not. not say you can join me again, you know, where you were rightfully or supposed to be or

something like that. He didn't do that offer to her here, which he could have done if he was admitting he was Anakin, you know? Yeah. And that's what Darth Mall would have done. That's what she would have done. Darth Vader does not have it like this. One of his, he did not do the Dup's Polo build. He did not put his points, unfortunately, into charisma. Yeah. Maybe he did in youth, but when you hit the time jump and you become Darth Vader in the game, from that point forward he was all strength. No more charisma points.

True. At that point. So. We, uh, following this moment we get one of my favorite lines, uh, repartes in Star Wars so far is, um, Asoka responding to Anakin saying, you know, that he,

or to Darth Vader saying that he's destroyed Anakin Skywalker and Asoka says then I will avenge his death and Darth Vader says revenge is not the Jedi way and Asoka says I am no Jedi

I was like We're in fucking It's go time Let's fucking go Let's sver's out It's so good Then they fight they fight They fight

This is the best anyone has ever fought, Darth Vader. For sure. For sure. When she does the like, like cat Mario attack on him. True. So true. There is, there is a line. So, Bomani Jones is a sports writer, commenter.

But he has a thing he returns to a lot is when someone is badly overmatched by a more physically like gifted and nimble player in basketball he says that the defender look like they're out there trying to fold a fitted sheet and Vader

confronted by Assoca going dervish mode. Yeah. Looks like he is flailing around trying to fold a fitted sheet. Yeah. You know, I think they get to just fight it out here. It's so good. It's

it's up in the the air who wins it you know yeah I mean oh I mean I guess it's not true because he does eventually overmatch her briefly here right and like throw her away but like she doesn't die from that and she comes back so yeah we we kind of leave them eventually yeah because Ezra has to try to get Ezra who goes I need a lot more training I literally was like shut the fuck up right the fuck now Shut up. Shut up now. Stop speaking.

Go away. The adults are talking, okay? Just leave the scene. We don't need you anymore. And that's going to be a sharp departure for Rebel Season 3, but I'm into it. Asher Bridger, go away. Adults are talking.

Just, yeah, it's a real L script doctor moment and you can feel that somebody added it in. Like, oh, we need a little more Azure here. Yeah. There's another one of the laughs at the end of this episode. He was literally doing the, I think I need a lot more training guy. Like,

he was doing the fucking, like, anime kid. Yes, I was like, dude, please, I'm begging you.

God, if I just could have been there for the moment when they were talking like Tony Gilroy. And they're like pitching, like how they see Andor maybe going and everything. And he just like leans across the table. No fucking kids. Yeah.

and he was right he was right for it um but yeah but there is there is it's kind of a goofy moment i do enjoy chopper showing up guiding canaan uh along and you know they get the they get the holokron out of there it takes it takes two to do it um and then vader just like starts calling them bodily back it's great uh into the temple is starting to collapse and that's where we see Asoka, arms back to run faster as one does, just like launches herself, Rex, this Rex's shit. Yeah, opens up the mask with a saber attack. And his voice with his voice, with Anakin's voice, says Asoka. And then you see his face. Obi-Wan was on nothing. Obi-Wan invented nothing.

This is like the one thing that was kind of good about Obi-Wan and they didn't even invent that shit. It is true. They basically just lift the same. They just lift it. They just lift it. And they add more dialogue.

Obi-Wan and Anakin say more stuff here than the two of them do. But also they put in a worse fight. Absolutely a worst fight. And at the end of that fight, do you remember what happens? Obi-Wan just walks away. The Obi-Wan is like, remember Anakin?

is like, you know, I killed, I killed Anakin or whatever. Anakin's dead, and, and Obi-Wan just kind of shrugs and leaves him there. Well, still can't kill you, not the Jedi way. See ya. Let me, I'm going to, I'm writing this, I'm digitally writing this in an envelope and putting away. If we get a Clone Wars, um, a season seven flashback scene, like the one that was in Obi-Wan, I'm going to lose my mind. Because I feel like even that's fake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like even that happened to somewhere. We're going to get some sort of final Obi-Wan, Anakin. Sentimental montage. Yeah, something there, right? For sure. Oh, my God, yes. This hits so good.

Anna's an entire, like, man, what's an entire episode, or at least a long montage? Like, you know how in like old sitcoms they would have like montages of events you've never seen? But they're just like references. Like when Alex P. Keaton meets that girl

in family ties, right? And he has a sort of price. Austin, you know what I'm talking about. I've not seen family ties. I'm sorry. That's the one. I grew up on Nick at night,

so I could have been me, but I was not a family ties kid. Basically they introduced a girl who's like the serious love interest that's different with this one. I see. For like one episode, they have an entire musical montage

showing the course of their relationship that you're like, when do those episodes happen? The answer is they didn't. But the montage is there to suggest this couple has been together for like weeks or months. And like,

Like coming into it What if we get that With with Clone Wars Where it's like Remember all the good times That Obi-Wan and Anakin Had It's all stuff

We've never seen before Yeah, it's possible It's possible It's possible Them working on swoops Like You know I'd be great

I thought you met our friend From The Black The Star Cruiser Swoop Oh He'd be in there too Because he's a seven-time champion

That's what damn right he is I know Who my next Halcyon character is going to be, by the way, which is the horrible thought that I'm going to carry this around forever. Disney, please. The moment that Jenny in that video, by the way, suggests that, and this is so right, that if it had been successful, they would have inevitably done the Halcyon through different eras is so good. The idea that, like, oh, right, it has this long

history so that it could be deployed in the original trilogy era, in the High Republic, throughout time is so good and the fact that they fucked it up and it's bad instead of good and that we don't get to do all those different eras is a bummer. That's so fucked up. Yeah. Anyway.

So this is good. His mask is split open. Yeah. The temple is collapsing. And how do we take this moment? Asoka says she's not going to leave him again. Oh. Immediately.

I need to see seasons. seven of the Clone Wars. Yes, we do. I need to see this pronto. Yes. As soon as we play Cotor 2 and then watch the remaining seasons of Rebels, but it's so good. What a thing to say. What a potent, you know, so filled with with conscience.

She says, I will not, I won't leave you not this time. What happened? What happened? Unless he's referring back to the day she, like, bailed on the order. Maybe. where he is just pleading with her to stay and now in retrospect that's like haunting right because it is the like I don't know what's

going to happen if but we had didn't we have that allusion to her seeing the chancellor like wasn't it a recent episode he was going off to save the chancellor that's right so they've seen each other one more time

we think right right what was that what was that I need to know oh it's so good again And this is why we watch it in release order, in production order, not production order, but in release order. It's just like this, not knowing that is going to fuel me for the next year. But then as soon as, as soon as she hesitates, she's like, I'm not leaving you. He's like, then you will die.

And we get this great, like literally the curtain coming down on their scene as we get the reverse shot of Ezra and Canaan clamoring out of the temple. And the temple's like collapsing wall shields us from. view as they resume their battle. Yeah, as the temple is like, the electric purple energy of this temple is like coruscating behind them. It's all falling apart. It's going to explode. You know, for the ghost crew, for Canaan and Chopper and Ezra, it looks like they're

all going to fucking die, you know? And they get aboard the Phantom. Yes, on the Phantom. This actually got me, despite a shit talking Ezra the whole time. Oh, really? I have a note here, Ezra Bridge, are crying. Fuck you. It's rare that we see a character in a show, especially like a dude crying about like how some shit went bad.

And it's good. I like the fact that we are able to see this kid, be a kid, and Canaan hugs him. And like, you know who never fucking did this is Obi-Wan and Anakin. Now is Ezra clutching the dark side holocron while he does it, the Sith Holokron? yes but it's good to hug people it's good to cry those are good things to do it's okay to do that and it's good that canaan wasn't like now ezra remember not out of passion right now no emotions or Jedi no emotions I'm right but it's like I want to see like I just need to know that Ezra these aren't just like oh these are sad things that happened there's a degree of ownership

that needs to be taken here my friend oh damn like look what happened to canaan's eyes uh-huh uh-huh who did that yeah I think that's what it is. I think that's Ezra being like, I fucked up, I fucked up. I can't believe I fucked up. I can't believe I did this to you.

He's going to carry a lot of that guilt into the, into next season. I'm so curious how they handle that. Because I do think it's going to be a bit, that's going to be a big emotional weight that will, he wasn't, he didn't protect his friends. He was so,

he was so concerned with figuring out how to protect his friends that he did not protect his friends in the moment in which it was happening. One of them was blinded. One of them is presumably dead. We know she isn't because we see her, but he doesn't know that. Yeah.

It's going to, that is going to be a really interesting potential motivator for him. And I guess that this is a key difference. Like, if we're going back to, this is going to be a decisive moment for Ezra. Like, he does the same shit Vader did, which is like, just tell me what I got to do

protect my friends. But he actually barely, the consequences of it. Vader, it all goes so bad, so fast. He isn't fully aware of like, what happened to Padmay, what happened to his kid, like, and then he just gets lied to by Palpatine

because there's nothing, the truth is even more horrible to contemplate. He swallows that lie completely. But here, Ezra can't do that. Ezra's just got to be like I embrace the dark side. I flirted with it to protect my friends. And I cost everyone, near the cost everyone and everything. As far as we know, it's dead.

He, as far as he knows. And even before that happens with Anakin, he goes and kills all of the raiders, all of the sand people. And that gets swept under the fucking rug. There is no consequence for that. No one even knows about it except for Padmei, who is like, well, you know. Yeah, she's not, she does not, she could, she, that's the opportunity. That's the moment. Here, during this big prestige TV montage, you're talking about, is 2016, by the way, Rob.

It is, it is, we are, you know, breaking bad just ended, I think, you know, or if it did just end, it recently, we are, Mad Men is over, I believe, like, we're in the hangover of the Prestige TB boom. They, we get the montage you were talking about. And one of the things that we see is Rex realizing, oh, Asoka didn't get out that ship with you. And Ezra needing to look at Rex in the face while that happens. and oh it's so bad it's so brutal and Rex you know

Rex is a soldier Rex knows Rex knows the score but it sucks yeah all right so if this weren't a Star Wars show and you're a prestige TV needle drop what's the needle drop for the end

title just mull it over as we kind of play the end of the episode like I'm curious what is the what is the needle drop that you would slot in if you're not bound to be a Star Wars show and do the original score I mean I will say the score in this final scene is like so good it's another like this isn't very star warsy but

like very much like they're not just doing the john williams thing they're like having rebels have a licked identity of its own and i was like damn this is Kevin kevin kiner soundtrack for this is just all it's so good all the way through um we i talk about the i made the dun dun dun dun dun dole the faiths thing but there's like constantly throughout the whole the whole two-parter there are lots of little nods to previous stuff, but it's always then, like, woven into a new composition in a way that doesn't just feel like it's rerunning the Williams score. And you're right, here is a new, it's completely new. It's great. We get everybody, right, all stole one of the inquisitor ships and flew away. Asoka. I mean, we get the incredible

shot of Vader walking across the surface of Malikor, which, has like the same lighting as when Asoka's walking away from the Jedi Temple with the like the twilight yellow white background light she's walking from right to left across the the screen there's like temple iconographer temple architecture behind her it's a very similar composition except in that shot what happens is she walks right to left and Anakin chases after her at the end of that that season uh season five of clone wars and here it's Vader by himself walking across the surface and then we get the kind of close up on him and then we cut to uh we cut to the owl which yeah what's up with that bird i'm telling you i think it's in asoka is it because i think so

because i have the asoka i have the asoka fortnight skin and it's it's it's i think it's like her back bling or something she has the owl on her back for real i think so yeah it's the same i'm telling you the first time i saw it i thought it was the sister's Griffin from Mortis. It's that same green, yellow, blue color scheme. I am so sure it's Mortis shit. I can't. I'm scared.

I'm scared. I thought we were going to get Mortis stuff in this episode, honestly. I thought so too. I thought so too. And I'm glad we didn't. I was very scared, but my fears were. And then we see Asoka walking back into the temple or like back deeper into the ruins? That's an interesting touch too.

That, like, we see mall flying away in complete dejection, which feels like it's a good place to leave his character, but also I want more saying we're mall. Like, we are going to get more. Good. I haven't said this part out loud. For years now, I have seen one late rebels scene that is, like, incredible. One of the coolest things I've seen in Star Wars. It's a mall scene. So that is awesome.

So I'm excited for us to see that. So I've known he's been coming. And I've known generally from that scene, this, the kind of like, I have been, I was used and abandoned. It shows up in that scene in a really cool way.

That is all I will say about that scene. I won't like any other context about it because it's great. That's, anyway, we're going to get more mall, at least a little bit more. I guess I don't know how much more mall. But like,

but his hopes are dashed. He's like, once again, he has this brief moment of like, I see a path to revenge on Cheve on the Sith and it closes again. I feel so bad for him because he gets so close

with Savage as well like he keeps coming right up but every time his curse is the moment Palpatine notices him it's over he can get but so close and then the moment he's like begins to step up to the level of being the slightest threat

he's going to get chopped down because he just isn't he isn't he isn't built that way. He isn't He isn't that tier. No. He's one tier under. He's close enough to, he's close enough to, like, think he can go. You know, he's, he's sort of like one of those, like, you know, a prize fighter who is always, like, just getting crushed in the bout before the bout for the belt, right?

Is the, you know, can get up to that level, but can't close the deal. Vader flying away, inscrutable as always, have no idea what's going through, you know. know, his head in these moments. But Asoka going deeper into the darkness of the temple. It's fun. Real curious. I really wish. This is the most I've been like, I wish I hadn't seen Mandalorian yet because knowing

where she pops out on the other end of all, wherever this all goes, it's just like, taking Grogu to Luke's temple is like, shut up. But honestly, like having that knowledge, it just, it makes me, I think I would be so much more disappointed watching man like it would ruin mandolarian for me yeah it would be so hard to not be fixated on how much they squandered the the character of asoka and i i i'm so curious what osoka the show is like i yeah i don't understand i don't understand i don't understand how we get to is it season three or season two of mandolian where she's with the brings or she doesn't bring grogo but she's there with it's end of season two throughout

season three right i don't understand how we get to the scenes with asoka and luke in mandolarian from i am not a jenni maybe it's like it's different maybe maybe she's on board luke's new vision of jenyes sense what are we talk who you they had this material they knew about this. I know. It's fucking Dave. What do you mean? Please, please.

You were there. You were there. You were there for this. Where did you go? You just gave it to John Favro and said, oh yeah, Soka's been here before and she's, you know, she's sick and... Maybe by the end of rebels, she'll be like,

I guess I always was a Jedi. I will quit. I'm done. I can't... No. No, please God, no. Please, please stick to a, make a commitment and stick to it. You don't have to weave everything back in, like, it's cool when you make, when Star Wars makes choices.

It's, it's, yeah. And it feels like this is the most, like, making choices show that we have, right? Like, I mean, we all know that we've seen the, the Rebels poster with Blind Canaan. Yes. And I was, like, sort of surprised that we got it this early. and like there are other big character design change moments that are coming through that that like these are the characters that they're able to develop and have change over time and like Assoca is one of those too because she doesn't get touched by the movie.

So like why not just like have ownership of that and do a good job of it, I guess? I don't know. I mean imagine a world where the stuff that happens in Mandalorian isn't Mando brings Grogu to Luke. But it's just, I mean, he does. He brings it, he brings Grogoo to Asoka. And Asoka is like, oh, I'm not a Jedi. You got to go bring this guy to Luke. And then it goes to Luke.

But imagine the world where Asoka's like, oh, yeah, I can train him. It won't be, it won't be Jedi training, but it will be force training. And maybe we'll build something new. Like, no, that's not it. And then she just, like, goes and hangs out with Luke in the woods. Like I, I like Luke. Don't get me wrong. But then it gets really doctrinaire about the entire thing.

That's the thing. That's the part of it. That's weird. It's like, didn't you leave over the jet? And maybe no. Maybe she was cool with all the doctrinaire shit. Maybe she was cool with all the Jedi dogma. She just didn't like how it went down for her in the end.

And that's part of the problem. And what I hope we get more of is like, hey, show me what separates you from a Jedi really besides you were a dropout on the day they were going to let you graduate? Yeah. The only other thing I could think of is like something happens with mall enough in this series that she's like, fuck the band. If it's a choice between the Mandalorian to the Jedi, I'm a Jedi. But like, that still isn't it. I don't know. Maybe it's Anakin Gilds.

Maybe it's holdover from like, this is his son. In Mandalorian, she talks to Luke and she's like, you're just like your dad. You remind me so much of him. Oh, does she say? Yeah. Yeah. That's so painful. Oh.

Live action starvation shouldn't exist. Damn. It's that far. I mean, that's the other thing. Ryos Skywalker. The Underground Sith, like it again, I know that this didn't invent

Underground Sith temples. I know. We know this. But like, underground Sith Temple, world destroying super weapon, it's all here already, you know?

It's all here already. Y'all couldn't just set it on Malikor where we'd already set up the flight. You know what I mean? Come on. they even put Kylo Ren's saber in this which had already happened at this point Force Awakens is out and this is where

the Kylo design is from by the like not from this episode but it's the expanded like one of the books that's like oh the you know the technology of Star Wars or whatever the Kylo Ren lightsaber is based on a design recovered from Malacor from the ancient battles of Malacor which is why

we skipped this but Ezra briefly picks up a green lightsaber that has the crossguard hill that Canaan's or that Kylo's has except it's green instead of red and it doesn't do like the flame stuff Wow Star Wars might be bad

This rules but Star Wars? I don't know Sometimes I don't know I don't know Star Wars could be so much better is the thing And like when we get flashes of it like this it's frustrating That's that's exactly what I Like

This is one of the most inconsistent franchises across the board. I'm not a huge franchise. I don't, I'm not in a lot of fandoms. So I don't have a lot of points of comparison. Like, oh, well, Battlegar, like Battlestar Galactica as a whole, you know, across iterations, movies, shows, whatever, you know, this is how. So I don't have context for this, but it is, it is like, mind boggling how inconsistent.

They are in their ability to commit to choices and to putting forward interesting ideas. They're like constantly diluting themselves or constantly, it's so frustrating as a fan. I don't want these oats. I want a meal. I want food. You heard it false.

No oats. I don't want these oats. No oats. Oats are done I'm done Give me a dinner Give me a fucking turkey dinner I'm a vegetarian

But I want to imagine This is when they have to This is when they knew they had to put Mr. Ed down I want to see The cartoon Turkey with the with the shine on it With the little leg sticking out And the ruffles

And the mashed potatoes are there yeah that's i that's what i need please please i'm so hungry i'm starving please but then you get a meal like this it's pretty good and then you get a meal like this i had a turkey leg last night when i was watching this i see metaphorically and i was like that's really weird it's just like door dash turkey leg uh this is such a good Missing Disney land. I was just going to. Missing the giant turkey leg of Disneyland and it brought me back.

Anyhow. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. The rest of that montage ends with, we get the zoom in into the ship. We already talked about this, but we see Canaan. They like, it feels like they purposefully go out of their way to really show you. Like you said, Rob, he does turn to look at vaguely at Ezra's room, but also like, hey, look, the blindfold's staying. Like, we're not.

he didn't get force cured of his blindness here. Well, and there's a brutal thing there where, like, everyone is at their, like, action stations aboard the ship as they're flying off and looking gutted. And he's standing at the ladder to the gunnery, uh, to like the gun turret. Yeah. He usually works. And like, there's kind of question of like, what is his place now in this? Like, what does he do?

He's obviously like, he still got it for the Jedi stuff. But as, like, what he's, like, what he's. been doing, there's going to be waste, his disability is going to be, like, altering of his role with the ghost. We'll see how that. And I'm very curious to see how they do that, right? Like, because there are versions of it where, you know, he has the force. We've seen him successfully fight a guy with the force.

But there's stuff that that's, again, he was explicitly trained. We've seen since Star Wars, we have seen Jedi train to use a lightsaber without their vision. But we haven't seen them trained to eat. We haven't seen them trained to, like, you know, do their, do the dishes. Like, there's all sorts of other stuff in the world that he's going to have to learn how to do without sight. And I'm curious to see how that stuff gets, gets handled. The fact that I didn't, you know, like someone said earlier, Allie, I think you said, that, like, we've seen Canaan blind because that's the, that is the header image on Disney Plus. The version of the characters that we see in, in that header, it includes blind.

Canaan and short hair, Ezra, and different hair color, Sabine, and then just regular Hera and Zeb and Chopper. They don't seem to get a big update. But the, I knew, so I knew this was coming, but a thing that no one, I don't hear a lot of people talk about, oh, you know, they fucked up Canaan's blind arc. Like, that's not a thing that I've heard a lot. So I'm very curious to see how it all goes, you know. Yeah, I'm super torn on it because I feel like, like, I, you know, the, I can still see what the force is such a cool thing. And like, shout out to the Miruka, who were blind Jedi users. But, like, I really don't want them to Yushitaola from Final Fantasy 14, this, right?

Where it's like, you know, she's functionally blind, but every time there's like a magic thing that somebody needs to talk about, she can sense it and she can speak to it and she can basically see. um like there should be there should you know be a sense that canaan's life is altered from this and like he has people around him and you know there's sci-fi uh you know disability assistance in some way but like you know like i've said after going through clone wars where it's a cast that needs to stay in in themselves the entire time because other you know friends franchises move their characterization along, like, the Rebels cast has to grow. Like, I need to see them different from here to the end of the season. Because it's the thing they can do, unlike Clone Wars, where, like, Assoca is the one person.

Asoka and the clones are the people that can, like, grow and change in different ways. And really, it's Asoka. And everybody else is going to change exactly the way that they do in the original or in the prequel trilogy. So, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, he's... got other worries, you know, he is in full Jedi mode and he is, he may not know exactly

where his, where his role is right now in the ghost, but he knows exactly, uh, what sort of nonsense is happening behind that door. And it's, he's looking at that, that no good holocron, that's evil Sith holocron. And that flash of red as he opens it across his eyes. So good. Like it's a simple effect, but my God, it's just good. It's just good. It's just good yeah it does it does it's like oh god how long do we think we walk down dark side azra mode i hope it's all season three we have a full spider-man three type situation here just that's very funny that's very funny i feel like it's going to be a mid between seasons clean up i'm really having this thing here where i'm i'm like anticipating

continuing to ride the Dave Filoni roller coaster in season three of like very strong season opener mid mid-season until you get to like sweep sweep essentially and then you have a really strong closer like it just feels like that's the way the gas goes for this um there's two things one is uh I need to go to the of The Apprentice, one second, I need to go to the Star Wars.com episode guide for this, because I'm vaguely remembering a thing that I meant to mention from their trivia gallery that I've forgotten, which is the, there was something that that got changed that I just remembered. But maybe it's not in here. Originally, here it is, yes, in the original outline

of the story, quote, the infernal machine. at the heart of the Sith Temple actually completes its firing cycle. In the finished episode, the removal of the holocron cuts the cycle short. And the idea that, like, oh, this thing goes off and kills something or someone or lots of somethings or someone, and then they, like, edited that out, makes me think that they will not go too far down the dark Ezra timeline. They won't have him do stuff that is, like, irrevocably bad, right? Because if what had happened here was, because of his actions, this machine

went off and it, like, killed all life on the planet or killed all life on a neighboring planet or whatever the fuck it does, right? We didn't, we know it destroys life and they talk about it in like universal terms, but it's not clear how bad it goes. Yeah, it's not clear how the weapon, like, what happens when this weapon is deployed. The rest of the trivia things draw connections between this and, um, uh, crystal crisis on Udipau, that Yoda has a line in Udipau about how. there used to be ancient cyst super weapons

that used Khyber crystals and that this is one of them, basically. And so you could imagine that this was, you know, death starry in some way. And I feel like them not, them making the editorial decision not to set the temple off and cause irreparable harm to the,

to a hue, to a planet or something means that they won't go all the way on Dark Azra, Dark Ezra kills. I, you know, I'm saying Dark Azera. I don't even know if we're going to get dark Ezra. We might just get like I don't know, he's mean mugging in that in that header photo. He looks like

grumpy. He looks grumpy. He looks grumpy. He looks grumpier. He's short hair. I don't know about the short hair. We'll see. Do you all want to go to the phloney zone before we're done? Hell yeah. Yes. Sure. Okay. There's two bits of this phelone zone that we need to watch there, so, so buckle up. Three, two, one. This week's finale left us with a bunch of questions

that needed to be answered. I sat down with cast and crew to talk about what Mall's been up to since we last saw him, what Canaan's going to do now that he's been blinded and how that whole Vader and Asoka thing came together. Watch. Last time we saw Darth Maul, he was getting his butt kicked by Palpatine. What has he been up to since then? You may have read, son of Dathamere. We continued his thread a little bit there, and a lot of people noticed that he did not die at the end of Son of Dathir. Yeah, uh-huh. Oh, this is going to finish the Darth Mall story. Well, no, we weren't done with Darth Mall just yet. Following the Clone War, Maul has had it tough. He knew. now that the emperor had all power, he couldn't be as overt as he had in the past.

So really, he had to go into hiding if he wanted to survive. A lot of thought went into do, we bring him back at all for this, but it just seemed like one of those things that was appropriate because so many people invested time into Clone Wars in that story and that character, and it was unresolved. What was it like stepping back into Mal's shoes, or should I say, his... He doesn't have shoes anymore.

His robot legs. It was really... It was really fun. I mean, the thing that we always try to do with Maul is to bring something new to the character every time we revisit him. Going into this, trying to figure out what was the new ingredient. And I think he has a level of sincerity now that he maybe didn't have before. Oh, yeah. Those are pants.

Those are robot legs. Pretending to be this old frail man. Part of that has got to be the truth about his frailty, about what his intentions are toward Ezra, all those things. Ezra seems really tempted by Maul in this episode. Do you think he has any idea of what he's really getting himself into? No, I don't think he has any idea, really. He sees the color that Mall has. No, he's talking to shit, actually.

The little opening and is like, I'm gonna take advantage of that in Ezra, that willingness to explore the dark side. Maul seems to have plans for making Ezra his apprentice. What are his motivations now? I think Maul is obsessed with legacy. You know, he's come to the realization that he's the last of his particular kind.

Mother Talzin is gone. His brother is gone. Sure. Damn. Stopped him in the Phantom Menace. It changed his entire line of where he might have. line of where he might have been. Actually, we had an earlier version of the script

where Assoca asked Mal who Vader is, and his response is simply who I should have been. Maul is at a point where I think he sees his life isn't going to necessarily be one of power. This episode is almost like his last ditch effort at regaining some sense of power and control. But Maul is, as he tells Asoka, he is in his end game. That's what he's playing now.

Canaan is blinded by Mal. But seems to say that. cover and sort of gain his sight. How will this affect his abilities going forward? Well, as you know, one of the very first things a youngling learns is how to rely on other sense. There they are. Because Canaan went through traditional Jedi training,

it is a fundamental skill that he has. I think as time goes on, Canaan will become more reliant on the force to see. I think he'll be able to see wider and broader, and perhaps not only things that you see with your eyes. It's a make or break moment. You quit trying completely because it's too hard. or you accept the reality that you're in,

to have your sight taken away and to feel like half the man you used to be is not gonna be something that's easy for him. It's definitely gonna be a process. And if he comes through, I guarantee you he'll be a stronger Jedi for it, but it's a big if. How long have you been thinking about this confrontation

between Asoka and Vader? I've been thinking about this confrontation for a very long time. That shirt's good. She's a good shirt, actually. Dave and I had a conversation several years ago, and Dave told me that it probably wouldn't be a good thing for Asoka.

scene with him and her as something that I've played out in my head for a decade in many different places, locations, for many different reasons. The confrontation between Asoka and Vader really represents something important to us, especially because people wanted to see it. Whether she's alive or whether she's not, I just want to thank the fans. It's been exciting to watch fans really take to her over the years. It was a great moment and I hope I did it well. I hope people like it and I hope it does justice for the fans appreciation of the character. That's the biggest thing. that I'm concerned about.

I hope I've done well for them. All right, with that, we've reached the end of another episode, another season of rebels and a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by you are listeners at patreon.com slash civilized.

Next episode, are we dinged right in the season three? Yeah, two-partner. We'll keep going. Steps into the shadow, sorry, steps into shadow parts one and part two. all right we will see I hope

we pick up these threads and we don't just like clean this all up during the off season but I do share a little bit of alley cynicism about some of this but I'm hoping we continue to explore the directions things are pointing right now

until next time please rate and view us on your podcast platform of choice and you know don't forget that a lot of this could have been avoided if as were just shown a A tiny bit more worldly wisdom. Thank you.