A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 89: Steps Into Shadow (Rebels 38 & 39)

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Welcome to Star Wars: Rebels season 3! In this pair of episodes, we dig into how the ghost crew has changed after the dramatic end to last season. With Kanan absent to work through his own new reality, Ezra gets the change to lead a mission and goes through some familiar... growing pains... with a dark sided twist. But hey, Y-wings!! Freaky new force sensitive guy! It's all fun and games here! And in case you were wondering if we were going to tackle The Acolyte while it's running, we've got an episode on the first half over on our patreon!  NEXT TIME: The Holocrons of Fate, The Antilles Extraction, and Hera's Heroes 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 Alleyocampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you are listeners by 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 other special editions that we occasionally release. Also, this most recent, this most recent, this most recent. Q&A was really good we did our season two

thoughts you know on on rebels great questions I think we got like deep into some really good answers I was really happy about it so people should should subscribe and go listen so this week season three begins with Steps in the Shadow part one and two where

Ezra gets a big new promotion and a big new demotion all in the course of about a day so we begin with a real I'll just give a quick summary, and then we'll get into it. It starts off with a raid on an Imperial prison to rescue, none other than Hondo, who we haven't seen since the Lirassan episode,

where he was left in the hands of Callas and the Imperials. Ezra seems a little bit dark-sighted here at the start of season three. He's got a serious new haircut, and he's doing a lot of like the Kubrick stare sometimes. He's doing the Kubrick stare. It's bizarre. Letting you know he's gotten a little bit twisted. And you really know he's gotten a little bit twisted when the plan goes awry and they're ambushed by an Imperial Walker. And Ezra just mind controls the pilot into killing all the stormtroopers near him and then throwing the Walker into an abyss.

Back at base, Honda has brought some key information. He tells them about an Imperial Scrapier that has a full squadron of Y-wings they can steal. Ezra is promoted to lieutenant commander and given command of the mission to go check things out. But when his reconnaissance reveals that the Y-Wings are next in queue for scrapping, he decides to just launch the raid himself with him, Sabine, Zeb, Chop, and Rex, just sort of going full yolo on this. Hondo's there as well. Meanwhile, Canaan has been in a bit of a dark place at Chopper Base,

but he is called out to the wilderness past the spiders to go commune with a big Torin from World of Warcraft a fucking Torin druid is here his name is Bendu he rules and he has some very important

messages for for Canaan we'll get to that in a minute the Imperials meanwhile are getting very serious about their efforts their attempts to quash out the ghost have come under new leadership. A governor price has arrived. Actually, no, it's always been governor.

It's been governor price. We never saw her. This is not what I did not predict another evil woman. But, you know, I'm excited, excited to have her. I'm happy she's here. Yeah. I like, I like that she's not giving too much away. Like she's not, she's not overtly evil about a specific thing yet.

You know, she doesn't, like, I'm not getting, like, she's not, like, evil lady with droids, like, the sister was. She doesn't have like a gimmick. She's not like, yeah, yeah, I got you. I don't know. She's giving Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra at least a little bit. I mean, that's the haircut. Yeah. And she, do you think that she appointed our, Tua, Minister Tua?

You think Minister Tua was like a little pet project of hers? You know what I am? I'm going to make you a goth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I could see that for sure. Why is everything powder blue in here? Oh, I just thought I'd brighten the place up.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, I'm going to leave a little note for Tarkin and Vader. But Governor Price, crucially, has reached the inclusion that Admiral Constantine doesn't have that dog in him. Not the guy to lead the effort to deal with a ghost. She's calling in with Tarkin. with Tarkin's permission, the 7th Fleet, led by Grand Admiral Thrawn, who puts a marker down

in his first scene that he's going to pull the rebels apart piece by piece, and they will be the architects of their own destruction. As Ezra's mission goes awry on the space station, he continues to double down, trying to force the mission to succeed, and as the Imperials realize what's going on, they call in. Admiral Thrawn for aid. The mission, by ghost standards, I think, goes maybe a little bit below standards, but it's not, you know, it's not the worst thing we've ever seen. But there are some crucial oversights like, do these Y-wings have hyperdrives?

The answer, as they begin to make their escape, turns out to be no. Does Ezra have an exit plan after his solution for releasing the Y-wings from the like scrapyard, was to cause the Imperial Station to crash in the middle of this giant planet. Well, he does have an exit plan. It's Honda, which is never a good exit plan. Honda exits, not with Ezra. Ezra's abandoned to his impending death as the station plummets. Fortunately, Hara realizes that Ezra is in over his head. Canaan, having finished his spiritual journey and feeling ready to rejoin the fight, joins her on the ghost and together they rescue

they rescue Ezra but back at base there's a reckoning Ezra has screwed up he is immediately demoted and told that he was responsible for everyone on the mission and he needs to get his head right but we close on a more optimistic note as he and Canaan

reconnect at the end of the mission also they lost the phantom the little The phantom's gone Who took that? It fell Into the At like

Oh right right No he took a different shuttle Right Right Because Ezra's a skate plan for himself Was to get back to the Phantom And it just like detaches And falls into the thing

And blows up It's gone Got hit by falling crane Yeah Yeah Yeah Unfo Ripped to the Phantom

Also that's the sort of thing That I couldn't I couldn't handle that of her hair Like you remember how like You had a play set when you were kid and there's like two components to make it all kind of go. Yeah. And then

one of them gets lost and now you get like an empty socket where like the cool little and it doesn't matter. It was like the cool little thing the cool little modular thing wasn't the main toy but now it just feels like shitty and that's kind of where I would feel about how this has ended up. Before we get into plot stuff I have to start

with fashion with vibes. What do we think of all of the new outfits and modified looks for characters? Ezra haircut and like taller. I'm into it. You're into it. You like short hair, Ezra.

I like it. I like it. It's, it, I think it's a fun, new look. I think that he kind of looks like a PS1 character where his hair hasn't loaded in all the way. You know? Sure. Or you know, like Xbox 60 game, when you play a Mass Effect 1 and for that split second when you first load into the level, like all the textures have finish loading in the high quality.

I keep waiting for it to pop in and it doesn't. It's fine. He's serious now. He's serious and he needs a serious haircut. Yeah. He can't be like, he can't be looking someone down and he's having to swoop his hair

like Justin Bieber out of his eyes. No. He's chuny? Like he, which I didn't expect, which... He's what? Okay. In Japan, there's a term that's like chunibyo, which is like chunni, it means eighth grader syndrome. And it's like when you think you're like a cool guy, you see it in anime a lot.

It's like it's like when you are like in adolescence and you think that you're hot shit and you like try to be really cool and you know, you cover your face with your hand and you say something. dark and mysterious and you give people to like the evil stare down because you think that you're like more advanced than them you know he's he is in that mode in this whole thing now are his lightsaber skills cooler than they used to be yes did he use the uh the 2010's syndicate first person shooter suicide power on some enemies yeah he did do that which i didn't know i didn't know that was a, you know, we're cool with that now. We went from, we don't really show too many people dying directly to to massacre.

Multiple people dying. Yes. Multiple, so many people die. I feel like Mace Windus Forrestco should have shown up and been like, this is fine. And then just pieced. Yeah. Approved. Yeah.

Like, Master Plow, Forrest, Guest. I called this Emerald thought leadership. That's right. All right. Sabine's new look. We got new armor, we got new hair. I don't know about the hair. Ooh.

I don't know. I don't, it's like, it's cool, but it kind of looks weird in execution. Like the idea of it is cool. But in execution, it kind of, it's giving wig. Oh. Which is fine. I like wig. Yeah.

I like wig. Yeah. But it just, it doesn't feel, I don't know. There's something about it that feels more. kind of toy-ish to me than anything else. But the idea of it is cool. Like the idea that it's like this white,

blonde hair with the purple tips. Like, that's cool. But yeah, I don't, I don't, I'm still warming up to it. She had a matches, now I'm thinking about it, Zeb. She has, like, Zeb hair. She has, like, like,

Zeb is also white and purple. Sabini's her own hair cut. This is not, I can't do this anymore. That's why I, like, I hated her old design so much that, like, I'm like, yeah, this is fine. I'm with Natalie that, like, imagining it in real life, the, like, I know that she isn't using purple shampoo. Like, I know that that bleach flawed, like, is it lasting? Like, in real life, I bet it does not look good.

But I needed to see her on my screen. The power of her. Maybe she, like, maybe she bleached it hers, like, box bleached it herself. And she, like, gave her, she had to give herself, like, a chemical cut because she frowned. ride the fuck out of her hair. So she was like, well, all I can do is, like, put some color on my tips and, like, chop it off. That's my new. That's my new.

It'd be wild if it, like, changed over the course of the season as, like, it grows out. And she, like, doesn't re-dye it. It's not going to happen. That'd be cool. Then we noticed that she has the weird owl I keep pointing out on her shoulder. I did. What's going on? We just not going to get a conversation about that weird owl.

Is it a different owl? It's the, it is, sorry, it's a different owl than the one Canaan sees. We are now an owl leadership, owl guidance territory. The force speaks to us through owls, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Because it doesn't have the tails like the Asoka owl. It's just an owl. It does, it does have the tail.

It does have the little curly tail. Yeah. I'm looking at the like the, you know, like the character art, like the spread, the sheet for for animators. It's one of the things that they put. Was she even meet Asoka? This says, as part of Sabine's new season three character model, her armor has an illustration of the Conroy Owl described to her by Ezra.

So Ezra must have caught sight of it at some point. You know, during all those seat conversations they have. Right, yeah. That's really funny, actually. And he's like, and there was this owl there? And she's like, uh-huh, uh-huh. But then she shows up with it on the shoulder pad. there's another animal that shows up on a piece of equipment

did anybody notice Zeb's new the new thing on Zeb's chest plate no no I did not I just drop this whole this whole image right into our chat here he took some memories from the start of last season and seems to have added the Jupa the big Jupa onto his chest plate

the jupi The jupit what ate him that time. Shoutouts to the boys. Shout out to the boys. I love that. That's really cute. It's like if you went fishing with the boys and you caught a big one and you're like, I'm putting it on my armor.

I need everyone to know. I went fishing with the boys. This is the equivalent of him like wearing a fly fisherman bucket hat. Suddenly, just from that one time, it's like, I'm a fisherman now. That's right. This is always, sorry, always got to have my lor. I'd hate to be caught somewhere without my lures. I just need to go at any point

We don't know when fission's gonna break out Gone slangin Yeah exactly I'd rather be slangin Other tiny things Hera has like a rebel rank badge on her shoulder now like in her sleeve And then obviously Canaan has a beard

And the mask which I like the beard a lot The beard is good It's doing great things for him Yeah I can't imagine him without it now It's just like, You know what else is great about it? That is an 80s beard.

True. And that's so important for rebels to like tune into what do people look like in the original films. Yes. And this is a, this is not a hipster beard. This is a grown man, 80s beard.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I love it. It's great. Letting it grow. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's fashion update. And then a new lightsaber for Ezra. Yeah. Which we saw in the trailer, which one of the things we did during the Patreon episodes where you watched the trailer for this season people wrote it and were like, you have to watch the trailer.

It was such a big part of the fan experience. Like, at the time, we got hyped for it. And it was, so you can go watch us or listen to us to do that. Normie lightsaber. New lightsaber, it's green. I didn't really like check out its construction. I don't know. Like, I'm curious what went into it,

but I guess I don't need to see it necessarily. I want there to be a trick. He's past, his tricks now are, I'm going to mind control you to kill all your. friends. It's, you know, that's where he's at. No more, no more little, no more funsies. No. The funsies, the quips, I will say, the quips are gone. No quips. No, he's still, he's still a little creepy because one of the things that I, that I noted is he actually feels a little like Anakin now. When, when, um, including his deliveries, including his like, I mean,

that's what I mean. It's a little snarkier. Yeah, he has, he has found his way when, when everyone's complaining, okay, so when they get to Honda, and Honda reveals that Honda has a little pal that they have to escape with, too, Turba. Everyone's complaining about it. And then Ezra's like, hey, twice the fun. And I'm like, oh, that's a thing. Anakin would have said exactly that. Anakin absolutely, like, it's Anakin line delivery.

He's dropped his voice by an octave. The actor is obviously growing up also. And like, there's some fun. They're doing some fun. Ooh, is he going to fall to the dark side stuff here? Which I don't think he is. I think the way that this whole episode resolves, or these two episodes resolves. make me confident he won't, but

I'm still happy to see him. It also makes a case for maybe he should fall to the dark side a little bit because like, let's just say this first sequence is very much like oh, you're raiding with a good crew today. Everyone

is ready to play their role because and it's Ezra's plan. The thing is the mix of there's a ruthlessness to him in this scene, but also as they're running in there, it sounds like people are not enthusiastic about rescuing Hondo.

There's a lot of people who feel about Hondo the way members of this podcast feel about Hondo. But Ezra, in contrast to the ruthlessness we'll see, has this real sentimentality. He's in here because of us, which is not true. Like, Hondo gets himself caught

because he always has one double cross too many and it blows up in his face. But Ezra's like he's in here because of us and feels this like real protectiveness toward his uncle and so like there is this mix of sort of a childish

like everyone I've ever bonded with is now my family and I want to help and protect all of them and then we get little gestures like there's a moment where Stormtroopers appear from behind him in the middle of the rescue and he just turns and shoots one dead. It's actually way cold in the lightsaber thing.

It is. He just turns around shoots one, drops him and then moves on. he's never been so cool he yo homie is that my brief briefcase that stormtrooper he does oh you know who should have had a lightsaber is tom cruz and collateral

we did one more we need Michael man to make one more movie that's right this Star Wars movie oh Michael oh I want it bad I want it bad

anyway uh yeah it's it's fun it's it's uh he's handling business. He's handling business. He's been on a role lately we hear that he's

had a string of well executed plans. And I guess it's because he's you know, taken some notes from the disembodied holocron lady. This is a lady from Knights of the

Old Republic 2 is the last time I want to say it. I'll never know that. You'll never know. Unless it only there was some way for us to Yeah, it's a shame there's no way to play nights of the older public, too. Sorry. Possible. After Cotor 1, I ain't doing any Cotor stuff unless there's a podcast, like, content outcome for it.

And I don't know, we might need a stretch goal. So that, like, there's a little more on the plate. That's a good idea. When it comes time to play Cotor 2. The other thing that I like is that Hondo is impressed, but there's an undercurrent at various points of uneasiness toward Ezra. where he senses something shifted, and he says, is that really Ezra to Sabine? And Sabine's response most of the time

is such good economical writing for the sense of like how the vibes of the ghost have slipped since the end of last season. Where like they're working better than ever and it's all just a little bit cockyed. Something's off in terms of how, like, success is coming, but it doesn't feel like it used to. And that's telling, you know,

know. I think both of these episodes are really good with that. You know, the big picture stuff that you already kind of hit being like Canaan's absence, you know, Herra in some way isn't necessarily absent from things like mission briefings, but with Ezra leading teams in the field, it means that like, you know, this whole mission probably doesn't go this way if Canaan or Herod are here. Canaan probably keeps Terba alive because that's the way he is a Jedi is like, you know, he probably force pulls that dude back. The reason that this little Ugnaut dies is because he runs forward past everybody and like tries to betray them effectively.

He's like, fuck it, I'm out. I got mine. I'm going to escape this prison and then runs right into like giant, you know, Walker cannon fire. And Canaan probably keeps that from happening, right? And Heron in general probably does not vibe with the wild, like aggressive cruelty that Not like Canaan would necessarily either, but like both of them would keep things a little more in the space that they used to be in. But this specific set of people, Sabine, Rex, Chopper, and, or I guess Chopper's on here.

And, wait, who else is on this mission with them? Oh, and Zeb are like, they're the ones who kind of get their hands dirty anyway. Chopper's on the mission. Chopper is on this mission. Because remember, the other thing, Ezra is now confident enough that part of the plan is he'll just catch chopper in their air. You're right, 100%, yes. And I think that's interesting, right? Like, you pull out the two parental figures from this crew, and the vibes shift, and they're going to keep getting dubs.

But like, like you said, Sabine, I think notes, yeah, things are a little different around here these days, you know. And look, there's a little bit of it, like, these kids want to win. Yeah. Like, you know, the parental figures are a little bit, like, go slow. Let's, you know, let's stay inside the lines. And in various ways, like everyone's kind of on board with the, I don't know, just mess them up program. Like, Sabine is a little, you know, it's creepy what he does with the walker. Yeah.

This is where we get our first Kubrick stare, the like eating up at the camera. When did Canaan teach you that? Ezra, he didn't. And Kubrick stare toward the platform. Yeah. Oh, and I think there's something interesting here, which is they know it's creepy and fucked up. But it's also not, again, it doesn't cross a moral line with anybody here. No one here is like, well, don't do that again.

Like, hey, Ezra, chill. No one goes back that we see and reports it to Canaan or Hera and is like, yeah, Ezra mind control some people. I think partly, I think part of it for me that's interesting is like they aren't force wielders. They don't connect to the force in that way. they don't necessarily feel just how much of a violation it was, right? They do stuff like hack robots to turn on their enemies all the time, you know? Yeah. Or like override a ship to fire on itself.

We've seen Sabine do cool stuff like that. Like it's not a big deal. And I, again, I feel like if Canaan were here, he would immediately, obviously, be like, whoa, the thing you were doing is not quite the same thing that we always do. Like, this is a different type of maneuver because it's using the force to get into someone's head in this way. Yeah, there might be a certain, like, amount of, like, abstraction or, like, not really understanding what it is exactly that Ezra has been doing when he's been able to accomplish these big feats. Like, I, from the, from the outside, Ezra is, like, waving his hand. And the giant robot is, like you said, turning on all of the, all of the, you know, stormtroopers around him. But do Zeb and Sabine understand that it's actually, no, Ezra just got in the head of the person manning the ATAT and is physically controlling him to fire on, or is like.

Which we see because we get those great cuts between Ezra and. the pilot, Ezra's hand gripping so that we see the pilot gripping, the control stick, Ezra pushing down the button in his head with his hand and the pilot doing the same. That there is a, it is a one-to-one, not just with the mechanics, he's not force controlling. He's not using the force to push this thing around. He is in there, but they can't see that, right? No. Love it.

Well, and it's an interesting part where, like, this being a children's cartoon, and I think it comes into play in an interesting way, because, like, Austin, you started referencing the syndicate video game where like when something similar is used it's horrifying because people know they are being like puppeteered to destroy themselves like you see them fighting pretty hard to not place a gun to their friend's temple but they're unable to stop it here you know stormtroopers imperial soldiers are completely dehumanized in their presentation and so there's a bit of like you can get away with just like stone cold shooting them dead and it's Fine. That's what, you know, it's a stormtrooper.

They're kind of hearing the story to do that. They have no. This show doesn't grant them much humanity. Now, what's interesting is you could make that move. It's like that is a neological, like, underpinning of the ghosts where it's like, yeah, you puppeteered an imperial prison guard who was controlling a, you know, walker, fuck him. Who just killed one of our sources? Yeah. A second ago.

Yeah. But it's a place where like the show, I don't think. really, like, it's not going to get into that or it will struggle to get into the horror of it because in the way that this class of enemies presented, they aren't fully people, which is why you can show them being violently destroyed in the show where otherwise that can't happen. But then it also, like, it precludes a little bit in getting into the, well, what's actually bad about like using these powers? Right. Because it is a violation. Right. And because it is. Because we are living in a world where metaphysically, the force is supposed to be this other thing. Though, as we get into the Bendu stuff, we will see. Like, I'm very curious where all that stuff is going in terms of this new character who is starting to talk about the force in ways that we haven't in the philoni canon, have not seen many people talk about the force in the way that Bendu does here, you know? Which I don't know if we want to save that. I don't know how we want to get into that layer.

How do we want to tackle? Yeah. Because the next thing that happens is Ezra, again, consults with the holocron. Ezra comes back and gets like... Immediately logs on to the Sith chat rooms. Yeah. Like, he needs to get off, get off the evil chat rooms. Get off Reddit.

He's like, he's, it's just, it's, it's very funny, but... Heron, like, scolds him for not knowing all the details is the, is what, like, triggers this, right? That, like, he didn't know that there was a second guy that they needed to extract. He thought he was just here to extract Hondo or, you know, and that meant that they weren't necessarily prepared in some, some way theoretically. It's not that big of a detail drop. Yeah, I agree. I don't think this is like one to really hang on. This is the sort of shit that always happens to this crew.

It's what happens when you deal with sources, you know? This is the thing like, well, we'll talk about like what we think the overall scorecard should be at the end of this. But like my first reaction to this is, it might just be the way, the way Ezra is being, they want to curb him. him a little bit and like call out the things that go wrong. But yeah, like the whole, well, you're in charge of the details. Yeah, but also like this was an unforeseeable detail. Like no one, no one knew the mission was a success. It's a little bit of a blown like pedagogical opportunity. Because instead it's just like, I'm going to hold you responsible for something that's completely out of your. Well, because it's an open, it ends up leaving the pedagogical

opportunity open for the Sith chat room to fill in. Because he goes to his room and logs on, and this little red cube or little red pyramid goes, well, the thing you need to take away from this is that you can see things, that they can't actually. You actually are the one who has the perspective here. They just don't have your perspective, which is the most thing a person online will tell you who is trying to manipulate you. He is about to be asked to move into the sit house, you know? Like, it's all there. He's in the wrong corner of something. awful. You know, it's about to break bad.

I just know it. It's bad. He's about to move him with a Sephiroth cosplayer. You know, it's not... It's too bad. All he knows. Don't understand. Exactly. If you lived here with me,

I would understand. Don't do it, Ezra. There's like something happening with the dynamics of the crew that I think is interesting here is that like nobody is, everybody is, everybody sort of consents that somebody needs to take Caten's place in Ezra's life, but is refusing to. Like in the next scene, I guess this is following

the Holocron scene when Harris specifically is like, you did a good job. Canaan would be proud of you. Instead of like, you know, saying that to herself or, you know, you know, everybody else sort of passive-aggressively being like, you know, you're sort of not supposed to be doing these things you're doing, right? But I don't know how to tell you that this isn't what you're supposed to be doing. So I'm just going to kind of hope that you get it yourself until Caden shows back up is, has been really interesting. It is a little sad. Like, as frustrating as Ezra is in all of these scenes is like, oh, man, like being on your own is hard. It is. They don't say it here, but the Star Wars.com trivia notes it's been six months since the end of the last season, both literally, I think, in terms of release, but also like that's how much time has passed. And thinking about like, oh, it's been six months without Canaan and Ezra like really talking about shit.

It's been six months of the Sith chat room. That's a lot of time, especially for a young person. You know, you have six bad months that reshapes you in a pretty big way, you know? Yeah. So. Yeah, it's true. And it's doubly, I could see how it's doubly frustrating for Ezra because it doesn't seem like Canaan is, he hasn't gone away. he's just like disconnected like he's he's at the rebel base that's what surprised me because when

he said like well he hasn't been around or like you like uh when she says he'd be proud he says yeah well he's a funny way of showing considering he's never around and then like it you know soon after that reveals oh he's around he's just outside he just didn't come to the fucking meeting yeah yeah he's meditating with the spiders that's what feel like punishment to a kid yeah that's going to feel like i fucked up yeah and he said it was okay but he hasn't really really spoken to me or anyone for six months he's been like withdrawn yeah and that's going to feel like blame yeah yeah and again that vacuum will be filled by the Sith holocron so um you know to the point on that scene also highlights to the reader which hair has been left holding with bag

too you know where she's the one speaking like Canaan would be proud but obviously he's not here to show it and he's not invested enough to be around to make those displays and then when she tries to talk to him he's he's doing that thing you know he's to be fair he is also going through like a traumatic life event yeah but you know she's trying to draw him out and he is just not from his standpoint's closed book he's not angry in anyone he's just not there he's got to sit here and just like meditate while snails climb all over him yeah for some reason it's gross i don't like it oh i don't know the snails are very cute though.

Yeah. Think about it actually, though. Think about it for real. Not. Think about really sitting there in the snails crawling all over you. And then think about it like it's your partner because Harold walks up and the snails are all over him. And she's got to be like, all right. All right.

Hey. Hey. You know, you could get those snails off. You can come help. Take those off. You want to talk to you? Yeah. Can we please?

Just one-on-one? Please. Do you start taking showers at least when you come back? Oh, my God. After the snail, after a snail meditation session, please. Yeah. Also, so we cut to, we cut to the Imperials at this point, and Governor Tarkin greeting Governor Price, who I think we always imagined was an absentee, like, factotum of the empire. Like the governor, sorry, Minister Tua was the person actually doing the,

you know, unglomerous business of running this imperial outpost. And Governor Price was swanning around Corrassant, sort of enjoying the benefits of being, you know, of high imperial rank. Boy, do we seem to have had that one wrong. Governor Price comes in full imperial admiralty black uniform. Again, doing the Cleopatra thing. And appears to be the person who's ready to like bring full fascism mask off to Lothal no more of this

you know no more screwing around with bringing the hammer down it's time to eradicate the rebels and she demands the seventh fleet because Constantine Admiral Constantine is a politician she needs someone who sees the bigger

picture it's Admiral Constantine for what it's worth is the is the person who we've seen sometimes with Agent Callis. He's like the kind of aristocrat-coded Admiral. Not a super, not a super... He's never been effective, right? Yeah, yeah.

But he's been around. When they first brought him up, I was like, ooh, who's this like, who's this politician player? And then I realized it was just the guy that's been... The guy that's been around. Yeah. Well, meaning that's how we got the job, right? Like,

I think that's the accusation. Yeah, that's a good point. This guy isn't a commander. This guy isn't, this guy is a tody. And that's why he's got the billet. And this is the time for guys who have high rank for like favors is,

is coming to, to an end. Also, I think Constantine's going to be the guy where in the end, it's going to be his fault of callus defects. He'd just been like, Hey, Callis, what's up?

when Callis came back from the ice planet. Right. And it'd been like, you won't grab a drink, man? We were worried about you. Like, let's just, you, you're okay? Like, let's drink some, let's drink some warm beverages. Like, catch up. Like, how was it on the ice plant?

Callis, Imperial till he dies. But instead, Constantine was like, oh, yeah, you. And that just opened the heart. That's it. Which we get some of that callus. We get a little, I don't think it's in this immediate scene. But we can talk about the next thing. Because we're going to meet who Price was requesting.

Right. Who is Thrawn. And who we get callous response, you know, when Thron is described as being, you know, super effective or whatever, callus's response to this is to say, you know, hey, isn't that the time that like more civilians died than insurgents? And Price immediately is like, it was within, you know, acceptable numbers or whatever. Like for, here, civilian casualties outnumbered the insurgents at the time. And then immediately price shuts that down. The callous redemption arc is here. It's going to happen.

He suddenly cares about civilian casualties quite a bit. I believe. I believe. I mean, it's going to happen. The thing I want to believe is that it's fun from here and that I can make peace with that it's going to happen. And I'm frustrated by the stuff that they fucked up before. But, you know, I'm going to try my best.

to get on the ride, you know. Other than that stuff, I actually think that this stuff is really good. It's so fun to have the camera inside of the imperial planning, the heart of the imperial planning stuff. It instantly, like, forces the writing to take a broader picture of things, to start thinking about how the empire responds to this stuff, you know, seeing Constantine get owned in conversation by Thron, him being, like, surprised. that Thron has gotten the promotion.

And then obviously the thing that I think has always been fascinating about Thron, the thing that has always been the one of the main magnetic pools of him is like, here's this guy wearing white with blue skin on an all-human ship of pale whites and grays, right? It has always been the thing of like he is the rare alien amongst a human-centric empire. that has, you know, eliminated aliens from the, you know, the kind of galactic core and has done these purges and has put, you know, the wukies and the slavery. And obviously there's a lot of other storytelling there in the EU around the chis and their relationship to the Galactic Empire. And we're not getting that said out loud here, but the visual storytelling of it is very clear, right? Like, here is the blue guy.

We have never seen an alien in an imperial uniform. I don't think in this show before. I can't think of anybody. It's all humans and droids. And here is this high cheekbone motherfucker with this kind of soft but precise affect, right? Who is like instantly, he's not talking down to people. He isn't ever patronizing. But it's clear that he believes he is the smartest person in the room and is definitely a step or two ahead of everybody else.

He's not as cartoonish as some of the other characters. where does where does he come from like why why is he the first alien well let me talk about the outbound flight project launched the waning days

of the old republic now especially because this is like there's an entire where does throne come from an entire arc of shit in the old EU but how much of it is the villain the current status

I guess you haven't read those new throne books right no Can you give us the out of character, not out of character, the, yeah, the publication history of Thrawn and so, you know, to kind of set the stage for people who maybe have only watched Rebels or are watching along with us. If you listen to us, watch the trailer during the Patreon thing, there was a little bit of a pop for Thron showing up.

We've talked about Thorn before here and there, but now seems like the tie, Rob. Yeah, so early 90s, sort of the first forays into telling new Star Wars stories that come after the end of the original trilogy, starts to happen in comics and novels. And they commissioned three, a trilogy, sort of a sequel trilogy of novels, from Timothy Zon,

the heir to the empire trilogy. And the main villain of that is Grand Admiral Thrawn. Whose real name is? I don't know if this was well advised, but later we learn, his name is Mithron Nuoto. But Thron, for sure, because obviously, you know,

that's a bit of a bit of, a mouthful for human, for human tongues. So, yeah, Mithron Nuoto was somebody they were that they found and recruited from like beyond the outer rim. And the backstory on him given in that in that series of novels is that, you know, from the beginning, it was evident that he was a military genius. And the emperor kept using him as like when a mission absolutely had to get done, you called in Thrawn. And he just got promoted to be one of the empire's. Grand admirals, a sort of mythic, like, you know, Napoleon's marshals, like seven or eight military geniuses that were the highest level of the empire. So he's the main villain of the series

of books. And yeah, like, the thing that this intro for the character gets across very, very well is that he is a villain who isn't just smart, but is capable of, like, using deductive reasoning and drawing, like, causal connections between events. He's a little bit of Sherlock. Yeah, very much so. Like I always felt like Jeremy Brett would have been the ideal character, like actor to portray him. And he played the definitive Sherlock. But anyway, you get a little bit of this here where like, you know, so often the Imperials are set up to be a bit like cartoonish or like, or just very straight from the shoulder. And here very quickly he's like, well, they rescued Hondo, who was Hondo with?

The rebels have been cited here. Boom. here's the target they're going for. Right. And that happens throughout the books where like every time they begin to wind up a plan to try to take on Thron, he anticipates it and causes it to blow up. And then the end of that trilogy, he is defeated. But they keep coming back throughout the series to occasionally like, well, what if there was more Thrawn stuff happening? And then they started filling in backstory stuff around Thrawn.

Well, where did he come from? How did they find him? And then when all the EU stuff was blown away, Thron would have gone with it, except that it pops up in rebels. Because Faloni, presumably, is a nerd of the exact vintage and influences that, like, I am. And was like, I'm bringing my boy back.

And so Thron reappears. Throne also appears in the same window as the hero. your main buddy, the guy you're working for in the Thai fighter series so you're getting mission you're doing missions to serve Admiral Thrawn

in the Thai fighter video games he also ends up being part one of the vessels for one of the big EU spins on well maybe the empire had some good ideas

partly because he is partly because as an alien and he can be the vessel for that. But partly because he's one of the people who knows about the Eujon Von coming or is theorized to know about that, right? He's one of the ones who's like, oh, actually this big alien species is going to come and fuck us up. We need to get ready for that.

The reason we need an empire is because we're going to need a galactic, like war machine. Which is, I think, such a boring way to use this character, but it's the sort of thing that grows naturally out of people really wanting to cosplay imperial soldiers all the time is like, well, what if there was a good reason? What if they had it? What if the, what if Palpatine knew that actually we all had a common foe coming down the line? It's like it, it is real franchise. Crucially, Palpatine didn't know that. I will say that. That it is a piece of information that Thrawn held. Okay. And held separately from the emperor because he thought Palpatine

sucked. That's the other thing they introduced. Thras thought Palpatine sucked. There is an honorable Vermoct thing happening with Thrawn Where like him and his buddy Captain Pelion Who's your point of view character on Thrawn Are both sort of like

Military professionals Who were like the Empire went too far Like this is you know Death Stars You know campaigns of like mass Mass Genocide these are You know foolishness So what are their goals if not

Order? It's still yeah it's the it's the it's It's the big, it's the big order speech from, um, season one of Madeleurian. It's the Werner Herzog. What were things like when you, um, you know, before, da, da, da, da, right? Um, part of why that stuff hit was like, I mean, I think it's just well, it was well written and well delivered. You're not going to get better than, than Herzog there.

Um, but, uh, the, the way it echoed some of these ideas was really fun, you know, uh, we know that. And, and because it's like, it's a pernicious myth, right? Um, it is, it is. In the same way that here we get some of the, it doesn't matter how many civilians died here, the rebels got killed, right? Like, they got the mission done. Similarly, one of the kind of myths that we've talked about before that gets talked about with a certain wings of critics of how the U.S. government does war. Oh, we're being too nice out there.

We could get more done more quickly if only we were willing to take the gloves off, that type of stuff, which we talked about with regards. to Tarkin in the Citadel episode back in Clone Wars. So we see the first shades of some of that here, except I think unlike there here, we immediately understand that it's meant to be a little ridiculous, because we have callous in the room being like, uh, I don't know. And I think that's part of why I really like this stuff is we have a number of prospective characters here, or we've callous as our perspective character in these rooms. And then also, it represents to me a big shift in where Rebels is going, it feels, which is our season one protagonist was the Grand Inquisitor, our season two, or sorry, antagonist. Our season two antagonists were the

other Inquisitors and a little bit of Vader. And now we finally get an antagonist that is about the rebels and not about the Jedi. Thrawn, I'm sure, wants to kill some Jedi or whatever because they're enemies. But fundamentally, he is interested in stopping the rebel fleet, a thing that he gestures at in the second episode here as not just being our little rebel fleet but a larger growing rebel fleet somewhere that we do not know

about. And fundamentally that means that the story can change and not just be about Ezra and Canaan and can be about the rebellion because that's who's antagonist this is. And this is where I do actually find a little bit of a fun parallel with Andor because Governor Price

has started showing up and she's like the rebel fleet is forming. We are we are on the cusp of having a real problem here. And when we have this scene with Constantine, he's denying, there's no evidence there's any rebel fleet. Like there's, you know,

there's, there's insurgents, but like there's, there's no, there's no rebel fleet. There's no rebellion. And the first line, Thron speaks,

is I would like to keep it that way. As he enters the scene. And that sort of is your mind of the speech from the ISB, where it's like we are, we are in health care. We are, we are finding, we are finding the sickness before a conspour.

bread. And it's so fucking good, dude. Yeah. And this is good too. I'm not dissing this. I'm not, this is the children's cartoon version of it. 100%.

But it is a place where it parallels it. It's sort of a seminar being given here where you have Constantine being the unimaginative line officer who's like, see problem, send fleet, blow it up, move on. And you have Governor Price who's like, we have to, you know, there is this threat. We have to sort of meet it. And then you have Thron, who is, I theorize this thing is out there, and my mission is to lure it out and destroy it, all of us. So much more exciting, so much more fun.

It is. It feels like a better, just a better enemy, a better, it's like a more fun foe to be up against. Although by the end of last season, I enjoyed the, I mean, I don't know, the Inquisitors were quite. We didn't get them enough. We didn't get them in situations like this almost ever, right? There was no, like, it didn't feel like there was a plan. It just felt like, like we've said before, take guy, launch at other guy, launch at enemy, and move on. And I so much more enjoy Star Wars when it feels like people are making decisions and plans.

and calculating and whatnot rather than just constantly reacting to the kind of action sequence in front of us. And that's what's so disappointed about like seventh sister when we met her. Yeah, we were like, oh, spider lady, yes, yes. Going to entangle us. Yeah, she was just like posted up waiting.

She was like at some point someone was going to show up. And the idea that one of them was clever enough to just be like, I'm going to state this out because it'll be irresistible to. And I'll just be, I will just be waiting. We never see that again from the rest of, from then on, it's her and dipship fifth brother going around him being like, er, I hit it with a rock. And it was a big rock. Thank you for picking up on the killer crock reference.

But yeah, it's like that was kind of the problem is that when she's introduced, it's like, Oh, we have a thinking woman's inquisitor here. And from there we get to, I don't know, they're kind of dumb cops. Anyway, let's have them show up a day late and a dollar short, literally for the rest of the series. Every time. Yeah. And we'll see, right? Because we'll see how Thron does. I don't know if Thron is season three and season four.

If Thrawn is season, just season three, are we going to want and done this? I don't know what's up with Price. You know, Price is a character I didn't know existed, right? So new, new character to me, really fun. She feels like she's a San Isard type character, though, that might also be being smuggled in under our nose. I get to see that. I also just want to say visually, the decision to make her have these, like, super bright

blue eyes and have her be the Thron lady is so funny to me. It's like, oh, yeah, Team Blue is here. Like, here they are, like, they have, they've coordinate, color coordinated genetically somehow. The forest works in mysterious ways. It really brought these folks together, you know. Yeah. Can I ask one question? Yeah.

Why does Thron look like handsome Squidward? He really does. I think that the, I think that the cheekbones are a step too far. I really do. It's really a little much. Like, he seems like a very cool villain. I'm glad that we're out of Monster of the Week. but the monsters are always the same two fuck-ups um but it's the design is lacking i think well

don't google thron oh no natalie what you do don't do okay i know that you i know what you've seen you know what i've seen i know what you see oh live action phone it's a live action throng can get worse not good not good uh handsome squirder word might be the peak actually okay uh i'll enjoy Actually, who's this Thron? Who's... Natalie, you're treading very, you're in the, you are close to the sun. I love the sun. It's so warm here.

I, it's, my, my feathers are getting warm. Show me this Thron. Who's this Thron? Who's this? Oh, this is bookthron, right? This is, this is... Closer to. That's one of the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Handsome, handsome gigathron. I'm sorry. So. The canonical Gigathron. It's true. Anywho. That's not wrong. Thrawn appears on the first cover of the Air to the Empire trilogy, Austin.

And he looks good. He's tiny. He's tiny. But he's on there. You look good. Over on the left and the white. It's the all white. The all white grand admiral outfit just does it.

You know, he's out here looking navel. It's swaggy. Yeah. It's swaggy. It's giving, it's giving sailor. It's giving a hooy. It's giving a whole. is the live action

Thron is giving Connecticut Republican I think that's part of the problem The live action Thron is giving He was a Beauregard looking bitch I can't remember He does actually He does that is actually more right

I hate I hate real Thron I hate live action Thron it's it's jump scareworthy From You know from everything I've heard and seen about the Asoka show It's just all the way down where every single thing is like, oh, no.

Oh, no, this didn't, this didn't, this didn't come across. Maybe we'll like it. Maybe it'll be good. Maybe, you know what? Maybe we'll get to Asoka and be like, underappreciated. What if we love Asoka? What if we love it? Who knows?

Anything's possible. Anything's possible. What of the MCA is like, she thought it was like pretty okay. Okay. You know? Pretty okay. Pretty okay. You know who plays him is a Mickelson.

It's not Nads, but it's Lars. It's Lars Mickelson. Wait. On the TV show? Yeah. So they cast the same guy. Is that who's voicing him here? Yeah.

Then yeah, they cast the same guy. There you go. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we're going to come to love the vocal performance. If I look at Lars Mickelson, he looks like a better Thron.

It's just something with the blue and the hair. You lose a lot of the definition in... The hair is really what's killing me. It looks badly lit and it really calls out and nothing's quite made up and dressed quite right. It's not good. There's a Collider interview with Benedict Cumberbatch who says... They asked him, it was in 2021, 2021. A lot of people, there's a lot of people who would like you to play a character called Grand Admiral Thrawn.

And I'm just curious if you've heard people saying this because I could see you playing this role. And Comber Ratch says, Grand Admiral Thrawn, does he turn into Peter Cushing or something? Is that? And Collider says, no, he's blue. He's a very cool character. That's a villain. You'd be under a blue makeup thing. I'm just curious if you've heard about it.

And Combermatch says, that's a straight no for me right now. There is no way I want to be turned blue. He complains about how long it takes him to. be painted blue and how he would have a blue character on Farscape who quit after a season and a half because she was like I cannot handle this fucking makeup I don't doubt it no thanks

It's not fun You have to sit for so long It takes up so much time it's also so annoying To have to production plan around Not gonna lie I bet I bet Anyway

Thron is here Thrawn is here Honda is here Hondo is here with Intel He was so the reason Turbo mattered is that he worked at Recklam Station, scrapping Republic era ships, and they've got a full squadron of Y-wings that are sort of slated for scrapping. And Commander Sato immediately realizes, well, we could make great use of those. So the mission is on. Let's try to steal a

working squadron of bombers before they're torn up for scrap. They make Ezra, Lieutenant Commander, and send him on the recon mission. A small thing here. And look, militaries can, you know, fictional militaries don't need to work like ours. But everyone keeps calling him lieutenant. Lieutenant command is very, very low rank. Yeah, Lieutenant Commander is a different thing. Yeah, that's like, it's like lieutenant, I don't know if it's a lieutenant colonel, but like lieutenant colonel is fairly senior and then lieutenant is really low.

Ezra has big lieutenant energy because he doesn't know shit. And this is his first like, hey kid, go be in charge this relatively low-stakes mission. Lieutenant Commander is quite the jump for him, but everyone treats him like he's a bit in over his head. So I think they just sort of put the commander on by mistake because Luke is a commander. So what if Ezra was like a little commander, a lieutenant? Yeah, I think that I think what's Harris rule? It's Harris official title. She's commander.

She's commander. I think they're like, well, one under that is lieutenant commander. So that's Ezra. And that's not exactly the way that that should go. But I think it's like there aren't that many people in this unit as the problem. If there were more people, he could be lower-old. There needs to be more people in between. You know what I mean?

It's like when you have like a hierarchy at like a job and there's like someone who's like the VP of something and then someone has like, well, that person needs a report. So they're going to give somebody a director title. And like that person's not a director. That person is senior writer or whatever. But, you know, let's call them associate director instead. Why not? Yeah.

I didn't want to bring this up because I don't want to just be a hater. But if there could be someone between those, it seems really embarrassing to come from a military academy and be shadowing the commander the entire time that you're basically her number two and immediately get outranked by some guy. Yeah. You're saying here that Sabine perhaps has the trainer and the experience. I think Rex would also be a good commander because of... No, so here's the thing. Rex knows too... Like, this is about test, trialing people out.

They know Rex has got this. You're right. You're right. This is, so this is a minor league assignment. This is we are sending you down to sort of, you're going to pitch in the minor leagues. This is the problem is all of these people should have a team of three other, like, low-tier people. But there aren't that many people around. apparently, you know? Like, Sabine should have a squad and, and Rex should have a squad. And

Ezra should be being put in charge of like, remember the kid who was in jail with, or who was it not jail, who was, his sister was in jail? They were both like, um, like tryouts. They were both like, uh, like imperial. That kid stayed with the empire. Yeah. Right. Well, like, a kid like that should be reporting to Ezra. Not Sabine and Rex and Zeb. Zab maybe. I kind of think Zep, reporting to Ezra makes some sense for me. Because Zeb feels like someone who doesn't want management, you know what I mean? Zep doesn't want to be a commander. Zep wants to be like

in the trenches, fighting it out. Again, though, we know he was the commander of like a palace guard. I guess you're right. So there's a bit of, but yes, he has a strong non-com energy. Yeah. Like him and Rex both feel like, you know, more comfortable being like first sergeants. But the

I think the other thing is there's a special, there's a special forces problem that the ghost represents. which is everyone else is doing like standard rebel mission shit, right? Fly the fleet around, you know, if someone calls for help, fly starfighters in there. Right. Get some transport some cargo, whatever. The ghost is out here doing this dirty dozen shit. And the problem is Hera is starting to move just beyond it a little bit.

Where there's been more missions where it's like we want Hera back with the fleet doing like fleet leadership stuff. But we still want to have. So there's kind of a problem with like someone needs to be in charge. of our merry band of weirdos, but who is that going to be? This is a trial run to see if maybe Ezra's got that, you know, got that juice. We'll see how it goes. But I do think it doesn't speak well of Sabine, or it's like, no, maybe you should pilot the ship. Yeah, I don't know.

I will see. I really, I think, I think and hope we'll get some Sabine stuff soon. That's my hope. Sabine, nobody else on this, on this crew has a commercial driver's license. It's got to be it. For what it's worth, we pretty much saw, like, most of what was in that season three trailer in these two episodes. Yeah. I think the next one is where we get the rest of it.

The Sabine stuff, yeah. And I think we're going to get some Sabine in our next episode, like our next podcast episode, will have some Sabine. So we'll see. We'll see. Did we accidentally skip a giant monkey force wielder from last episode? Well, we haven't even gotten

through that whole first episode yet because we haven't gotten to the Miner's Guild showing up, so, or the mission starting, right? We only had Canaan argue with Ezra about, hey, I came in your bedroom and I found you, I found you with your Sith Holocron.

Yeah. So we should talk about That part. Yeah, I got, I got, I thought that the beginning of episode two started with, yeah, I got They're already on that mission. Yeah, it starts with them descending into the thing. So yeah, Canaan finds the stash. Canaan, Canaan comes in as like, hey, Ezra, I think we should talk about some stuff. And doesn't, you know, has the helmet on, can't see, has been blinded, and is like,

leaning up against the table where the holocron is just out. Aser just has his holocron out. and Canaan finds himself leaning against the counter, the table. And the next thing you know, it just, it just, oh, he bumps it. Wait, what's this? Oh, what's, oh my God, Ezra, you have the Sith Holocron? You've been reading the Sith HoloCron? You've been on Sith chat rooms?

What are you posting? What kid, what kid hasn't, hasn't experienced this of their parent coming in the room? They, you were pretending to be asleep or something. you hide your laptop or your Game Boy or many different scenarios you're gesturing at here, various types. Various types, many different contraband type objects could be hidden under the covers and they, you know, sit down on the bed and their hand starts to, you know, wander on the bed, fix your blanket or whatever, and perhaps they find a secret, a secret object. It's going to be hard to stash. Yeah, it glows. It's big.

It's a pyramid. It's also that strong dark side energy. Like, if Caden had come in without a purpose and just, like, wandered in and his mind was clear, he would have just felt it. But he came in, think, concentrated on the idea that he needed to, you know, bond with Ezra again after six months of ignoring him, I guess. And, and stumbled upon it. know. I just think you have to put it away if you're Ezra. Don't leave it on your table. It's the only thing that understands him. I get that, but like he's hands behind his head looking up at the like the bunk above him,

just chilling after a Sith holocron sesh. It's like you put the crystal away, man. It's served its purpose. I want to, I do want to compliment Ezra here that his one hiding space for it is sick. It is. With the helmet glows with the red eyes because the holocron is inside of it. It's sick. Yeah. It's good. It's in his helmet collection, which is the most teen secret stash thing that you can imagine.

Yes. Yes. Well, those are my helmets. I'll put it in my baseball glove collection. Yeah. He, for real, is full-on suburban kid goes to the Army Navy store to get like an old World War II helmet, except it's a clone. horse helmet, you know? Yes.

And he has three of them now. He's been collecting them, you know? So. Which maybe that's unfair. Because what he really is is a revolutionary who's taking trophies at this point, which is actually the opposite vibe. And he says something really mean. He says like the most teen kid thing you could do, right?

Which is, which is, he says, you know, I'm using the thing. Basically, Canaan's like, you can't stop it. You can't use this thing. You have to be darksided to use. is you have to use the dark side D team to do this. Yeah, maybe it's giving you some quick wins. You know, you can act out of anger to get results quickly, but that's a trap. You know, and Ezra says to him, you know, not for me.

I can keep doing this safely. And Canaan takes it away. And he's like, well, I don't need it anymore anyway, just like I don't need you. Which is like, all right, that's, this is the mother. Hasn't said something unspeakably awful to a parent. 100%. In retrospect, was also deeply pathetically petulant.

Yes, and wrong. And just deeply incorrect. Yeah, very wrong. And big on Canaan for just being like, all right, guess what, I'm going to walk away. Because, like,

there are parents who, like, use that as an opportunity to, like, tee off on a child. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, well, you've just given me an opportunity to complain about you for the next 40 minutes and all the shit that I'm annoyed by you

and forgetting by the way that you're a child who hasn't fully developed as a person yet and also it's my responsibility to help you develop as a person and by the way I've been gone for six months so good on Canaan for just walking away and giving Ezra some space after saying that and then going out into the wilderness

to commune with the voice he's been hearing in his head that's like hey come over here hey come hang out hey I have I have beer do you want to chill in the desert come over and so Canaan picks up one of these little emitters that keep the spiders at bay, because they're still on that planet.

And he begins to head out into the wilderness. And he eventually senses an owl that's hooting and follows the owl's hooting. It's just a regular brown owl, not one of these glowy, green, and yellow ones that we see associated with. Sorry, it's a convoor. That's what they're actually called. Not the one that's associated with Asoka seemingly. The one who reminds me of the sister from Mortis, but just a regular one. one. And yeah, it leads him to a giant. It leads him to a giant creature who is like almost built

into the environment, right? He has like these big growths, these big like antler or like moose-like antler growths on his head that look like the vegetative growths throughout this planet. It's almost like it looks like dried coral. And he stands up and he's fucking huge. He's like, You know, the size of a of a small hill, you know. And apparently, originally, when they first scripted this, he was supposed to be even bigger than this. Quote, in early exploration of the story, Bendu was much, much bigger. The rebels had built chopper base on his back. And apparently they were going to arrive and the base was going to have moved because Bendu moved.

I love that idea. That's so fun. Instead, he's just really big. He's just really, really big. He's like rancor-sized, maybe even bigger than that. No, so much bigger than rancor. Yeah, yeah. He's great.

He's here. I love him. What's his deal? What is this? He's just out there chilling? Like, just radio signal. Damn. All right, well, let's, let's, let's, what are his points?

What makes you say that? All right, so first of all, what we got here, isn't honest to God, Hermit Sage. Far as we can tell, he's just out here hanging, meditating on the mysteries of the force. He was asleep. He's like, you were so imbalanced to woke me up. He was like, your vibes were so off.

Sometimes really good meditation sessions, you're going to get sleepy. You're going to just like sort of, you're going to fill your mind with the void, and then you're just going to sleep for a while. But then, yeah, he was awakened by the storm of Canaan's inner conflict. damn um and what does he say the the the the conflict is between what are the what are the words he uses do you remember he's not about this light side and dark side shit well no so you that's

not canaan's conflict you're so he so canaan's like oh you're a force wielder and the big man is like hmm wielder Jedi and Sith both wield the oh god what Is it, the, uh, the, the, the, the bad ones, the Bogan. Ashla and the Bogan, the light and the dark. I'm the one in the middle, the Bendu. All right. Have we heard the word, sure, okay. No, we heard the word Joggin.

Like Jogun fruit. Bogan like an Australian slang word. I think it is. I do think that that's, that, that, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, Bogan is, is like, uh, almost like calling someone a redneck or something. thing in Australia. Yeah. Someone who's unrefined or unsophisticated. I see.

I don't think that's where he, I don't think that's where George got it from, but. Probably not. Because these are apparently terms that originate, uh, in maybe just Bendu. Let's see. The term Bendu dates back to the original story treatment's written by George Lucas, when he was first defining Star Wars 1973. The Jedi Knights were alternatively called the Jedi Bendu in the light

Side and Dark Side, Aspects of the Forest were called the Ashla and the Bogon, or the Bogan, respectively. Filoni's digging in the old George Lucas notes again, folks. Okay, but, okay, so other than them, like, what is the significance of that other than that they're cool words? I think it's just the core words. And this guy doesn't, this guy is not from the Jedi Sith hierarchy, right? That part I like and appreciated. It's just, hey, there's an outside view on this stuff. And, you know, maybe they don't just mean the same things.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They don't have the same. They're not freighted with this. I mean, he does say that they're the light and the dark still. But he's not either. But like the, you know, the perspective he feels like he has on this is like they're both kind of getting it a little bit wrong here because they are locking themselves into this mannequian struggle over uses of two aspects. one thing.

Yeah. That's what he says. When did Ryan Johnson meet Bendu? You know, maybe Ryan Johnson simply met Jolie Bindo. I don't know that he had to meet Bendo. Bindu, Ben-Doo, hmm, very interesting. Very interesting. I would have they got to Bindo via Bendo, actually, if Bendu was from old Star Wars

notes, now that I think about it, but he has a, he has like a big feeling. right? Because what Canaan thinks when he says, I sense a conflict in you is he's like, oh yeah, well, I have this evil pyramid I took from my mentee. Yeah, it's just my evil triangle. Yeah, sorry, you're just sent to my evil triangle.

And he's like, well, a triangle can't be evil. It's just a thing. A person can be evil, you know. I like that little bit that an object cannot make you good or evil. Yeah, Canaan's like, I'm worried because this kid I've been training has been on the evil chat rooms

and I don't know what to do about it and he's like, well, the chat rooms aren't going to make him evil. The object cannot make you good or evil. It's about your choices. Femptation of power and knowledge and sometimes even the desire to do good can lead you down a dark path. But only you can change yourself.

And I'm not sure that's true. But it's fun to have a character say it here. For instance. Why? I think the Death Star is evil. I don't know that there's... The Death Star as an object is evil. I think having the Death Star

produces pressure on you in terms of when you have a hammer or when you, when you have a hammer all you see is nails sort of a way. I think having, I think that, you know, I'm a little bit of a material. materialist here and that I think that the world is made up of physical things and that physical things exert pressure in the same way that systems of power do. And that the way that we structure our lives physically, including with objects, is partly what leads us to take the actions that we take. I, in fact, I kind of think the idea that, like, oh, it just comes down of the decisions you make is a way often to shrug about the, shrug off the idea that part

of the way we have to change our world is to change the things that we build, both structurally and, you know, physically, or to change policy around things like guns, for instance. But again, I actually really like the idea that there's a character here telling Canaan, hey, dude, it's not the book that you, it's not the evil book. The evil book isn't going to change your dude. what will change him is that the he doesn't have someone who can help help him understand what it is he's reading right um and I think that there are there's a big difference between as we've talked about a lot the way Jedi you know a Sith holocron and the death star I don't think those two things match one to one and I think that like in fact part of the problem with the Jedi is that they seem to think that knowledge is inherently as dangerous and as structuring as as a big laser weapon, you know? In fact, they seem to have more concern over the fact that they have some like old

Sith books in the library than an army, for instance, you know? Yeah. And I think that they maybe have misplaced what they are worried about. Isn't that some, isn't that, aren't you creating a giant weakness in your own ideology if reading a book can turn you evil? Yes. I feel like there's an issue here. Well, you should be able to look at dark side, like I can read an evil book as a person.

I can read a book that has that is making. Do it every day. We all live in the world of evil books. We're on, we're on fucking Twitter. Okay? I'm on Wikipedia right now. I know this place is evil. There's evil out there.

And we read it and we do not turn evil because our idea. our values, our intellectual networks, everything that make up our way of perceiving the world and how we relate to it are strong enough that they're not, you know. This is the thing that's funny is I don't think he actually means this object. This is the thing that's like the way that they write him is this object can't be a source of evil. But I think the thing that he's, that the version of that, that would work for me and I think is compatible with what his broader vision is, is like, hey, ideas can't change the world. Actions and good physical things change the world. The things we do change the world, not simply

ideologies, right? That is the version of this. It's hard to imagine Ben-do being like, the Death Star can't be evil. Right. It's hard to imagine that character being like, oh, I don't see the inherent like this has no other purpose than to like to eradicate life yes but staring at holocron you know with how the Jedi freight these things and being like no this isn't this isn't this isn't anything this is well in case and point what's he do immediately after this he picks up the the um emitter the sonic emitter that or the sense emitter that that canaan has that's keeping him safe he thinks from the spiders and destroys it bendu knows that object have politics and that objects

create us. Because he destroys this to force Canaan to sit in the world where the spiders could come get him and have to confront that in some other way, you know? But now the thing that I'd be so curious about if we're, you know, if we're going to say like,

Sith Holocron, there's nothing inherently evil there that like it's just got ideas. Is there a point where it's like some of these abilities? They're just abilities. It's how you use them. This is, this is, this is Ezra's point. I'm using it for good. So far, looks like kind of, yeah. Like, it's creepy a little bit, but it sure was cool when he just cut down the stormtroopers and helped his friends out of a jam. I'm not going to complain about him killing them stormtroopers. You know, it is, it is the, uh, and also, I mean, the other thing here is, we are talking about a world in which the force is a real thing. And the force is a real thing. And the force is, and the force is,

force has power in a way that it doesn't seem like such a thing exists in our world in that way. As far as I can tell, I have not seen anyone touch the force directly. But if you live in a world where that exists, suddenly all of morality has to be looked at under a different, you know, again, it's a different sort of metaphysical violation than simply shooting some guys. And in the world of Star Wars, that seems to be true. And so I think we have to like come at it from a different angle or we have to talk about it symbolically, you know? And symbolically, what Ezra is doing is different because it starts at a sort of, it's kind of again, Bendu talks about the Sith and the Jedi as wielders of the force. Or he doesn't respond to himself being,

he's like, oh, a wielder. Like he doesn't think of himself as a wielder of the force. He thinks of himself in some other relation to it It doesn't kind of get too deep into it But if the force is being wielded as a weapon We are meant to understand that that is something deeper And more serious and higher stakes than holding a gun Or even holding a lightsaber

The force is sacred in some way Or if sacred might be the wrong word Sublime or Fundamental And so it's extra dangerous To fuck around with it in some way the outcomes could be that much worse if it goes wrong or something like that, right? And maybe we'll get that as we go forward. I'm not sure.

Again, I'm very curious to see how much more Darkside Ezra we get going forward. Yeah, I'm a little worried that like all the kind of questions, a lot of the questions, I said this earlier, but a lot of the questions that we had in the trailer, like, ooh, dark, like, my hope is that this doesn't tie the knot on all, like the end. end of the next episode doesn't tie the knot on all of them and that we kind of lose dark side as we're going forward but um yeah it does feel like that'll be their move though woof resolved that back to normal i mean by the end of this arc it felt a little bit like which we talked about the not the previous episode but the one before that when they first got to chopper base

and the sense that like the the big hera canaan goodbye and like okay well how quick are we going to get back to a status quo and clearly they took some bigger swings in terms of of character change with Canaan, you know, being blinded and Ezra cutting off his hair and starting to lean a little into some stuff that he doesn't otherwise. But by the end of this episode, it feels like, okay, we're back to our kind of like sitcom status quo that we needed to get to so we could start doing some episodes of the week again. Minus, Canaan is still blind, right? Not to jump at the end of this.

Canaan is still blind, but Bendu is helping him kind of see in different ways and not just in the, not only in the force can give you daredevil eyesight even though you've been physically blinded but like oh I'm going to think about my relationship to nature in a different way and to the world in a different way all of which is also obviously

freighted with the sage in the woods the old natural sage in the wood stuff is not unproblematic entirely but it is like I think that here as deployed it's I'm interested to see where it goes largely because it does represent an outside position from the sort of big Jedi

in Sith, you know, a hegemonic view of the force. So we'll see how it develops. I mean, we could probably just finish off this Canaan stuff now, which is like that conversation continues into the next episode. And he continues to ask Canaan to kind of think about and feel, you know,

feel his surroundings since the fact that these spiders are there and, and come to realize that the thing that is motivating them to close in on him is fear. And it's not their fear of him. and it's not his fear of what's happening to Ezra. It is his fear of who he is and his internal fear of himself. A classic beat. They hit it pretty well here, I think. I'm not, I was not mad about the way that Canaan came to understand that he was still

struggling with his own trauma and his own fears, right? Yeah, I think, like, it is well done just how they, you know, render the entire, you know, path of discovery. He goes on. And I do like, they circle back to this notion that, like, the animal, that, hey, some, some spider's just evil and you got to kill them, actually is an unsatisfying answer that, like, you still didn't quite get to a place of understanding this new world you've landed on. And that, you know, it turns out you were the, you were the aggressors here.

You were the agents of destruction here. Yeah. But it's because you don't know what you brought with you. You don't know, you know, what the thing, the environment around you is picking up from, from what you were giving off. I like those best stuff. I did Canaan who gets this and not Ezra also. Like, we get Canaan who gets to have this kind of journey of learning and knowledge. And it gets us one step away from Ezra's animal superpowers. Like, yeah, other people also can connect to nature and to the world around them. And the force isn't just like handing out, you know, this Jedi's superpower is blank. This Jedi superpower is blank, which Filoni said he didn't want to do and then like did for the whole back half of the last season.

And so I'm glad here we're starting with Canaan doing it instead, you know. And I like just the way he questions, Canaan, the whole like, well, how do you know where they are? How do you, just constantly asking like, what do you feel? What do you sense? And the revelation that, like, Canaan's sense isn't as complete as he thought. That, like, a lot of what he thinks he's picking up from the force is just impressions of fear and memory that he has from other events that are sort of coloring his belief that, like, you know, there's a spider near me right now. And he's wrong. And then he doesn't see him approach because.

the spiders aren't aggressive and so they're not there to harm him they're just kind of being it's yeah it's good stuff now what it all leads to is a realization of Ezra needs my help and he he runs off

we still don't get any we don't get any closer than we did in that opening exchange to well what if it's not just light and dark side yeah what if the problem even is the notion of wielding the force which is maybe the most interesting part of this whole thing, which is the, like, well, both these sides think the force is a tool.

Yeah. Which, we are not talking about it here today, but the acolyte is starting on some of that stuff, too. By the time you hear this episode, I think there will be more episodes of that out than what we have seen, but, you know, an ongoing concern. Hey, what is the force? What would it mean to not just wield it as a tool or a weapon, but to have a different sort of relationship with it? happy always to see Star Wars have a voice in the mix starting to ask those questions.

You know, there's a lot of, I think, structural focus on the Jedi and the Sith who get to do cool things like double jumps and backflips and wall runs and force pushes. And I think that's always like a little, it's really fun when it hits right, but it's also very limiting to what the stories can be told are because you end up defaulting to that perspective on that stuff. It's a very video gamey perspective. It's really fun to have a character who learns a new force technique and it's really legible and it's much less legible. And it's also much harder to write like actual interesting spiritual, you know, relationship to an invisible force that feels like it connects us all. And I would love it.

if Rebels actually hit some of that. So in some ways, that's one of the things that rebels could do that a show like Andor can't do directly because of the lack of that perspective from any of our main characters. I mean, I guess we get some of it here and there through some side characters last season. But one of the things that having forced, you know, wielding characters gives us is a direct perspective on the spiritual side of Star Wars. I would love to see that continue to get developed as we go forward. How's the heist going? actually it's on high sorry how's the recon mission going the last thing happens in this first episode is that and this is another moment where I'm like I don't know that they're I don't know that Ezra's as wrong as they think he is they run into a mining guild patrol and they have to fight it off because they're being extorted for a toll and I love this shows your papers I love that we got more of the mining guilds cool yellow tie fighters with the bits cut out and Honda fears that more than the empire Honda fears that more than the empire because they're going to send you somewhere worse

than an imperial prison, which is, which is to say probably into like the slave mines, right? Yeah, labor camps. Labor camp, which we know the empire has labor camps. These must be worse somehow. Presumably they're being allowed to be run worse because they're willing to do this for the empire. And I love this little detail, which we've already known that there's a relationship between the empire and the mining guild that was set up last season with the Pergel, the Space Whale

episode. But I like this and remember last season also the Mandalorian like the Mandalorian remnants at Concord Dawn who are serving a similar function where it's like, yeah, they're allowed some autonomy in exchange for being snitches for the empire and kind of being an extra arm of the imperial reach where the empire isn't themselves already there. I really love to see that extra focus on or, you know, as a world building detail, the idea that like, Yeah, listen, the empire can't be everywhere by itself. And one of the ways that it functions is effectively by vassalizing or, you know, these certain other corporate interests or other paramilitary interests that serve as their extension more cheaply, more efficiently, more autonomously than the empire could themselves, you know, without rocking the boat. But also, I did use the word vassalizing because there's something medieval about this as well where like it's sort of a a weak proto state thing to do, which is before the rise of the administrative state.

Like, what is a toll road? Well, it's a road that, like, maintenance and upkeep is paid for by tolls. Well, who collects it? Once upon a time, appointed people who could collect the toll and you're to keep the road open and reasonably, like, safe for travel. And so that is where you get, characters doing exactly this, which is you have to pay the toll to go through here. And really what they are is, like, legalized bandits. Yep. Where they're flying up, like the mining gold, the mining guild in the sequence, you get the sense.

therefore, are more concerned with extorting a bribe than they are figuring out what these people are up to. Or even more than that, getting some cool slaves and some ships. Hey, man, the best outcome for us is that you fuck around and find out that we get to take your ships, that we get to send you off to our labor camp. That would be ideal for them, you know. And but okay, we'll take the toll instead. And importantly, not just the toll, but they specifically say, exactly, registration.

Yeah, the registration with that. Empire, which I thought was really fascinating, that they're facilitating, like, identity collection, uh, for, for the empire as well, not just, you know, cold hard credits, but that they're, like, but I wonder if they'd been offered cold, hard credits, a certain number, would they have been like, all right, yeah, we'll take your credits. That's what I was curious about. I thought, I thought for a second, because Honda was on the ship that there might have been a negotiation at some like yeah some sort of like oh i'll give you an extra you know whatever amount of credits you just let us sneak by but they seem

the fact that they didn't try to do that makes me think that they that this that they're not going to that they're getting so much from the empire that whatever you have to offer them as like a tip or whatever isn't going to be isn't going to be enough way. It's a bribe. It's a bribe. It's a bribe tip, you know. Right. Right. I think, yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I feel like that's one of those things that in an arc that was three or four episodes, you maybe get some space for that. But here in the two-episode version, it's so, you have to be so efficient, you know. Now, they fend them off and Ezra's like, we got to kill them all. And everyone's like, no, Ezra, dummy. We need to get out with the mission. They probably already called it in. And I'm I'm like maybe, but actually these guys are corrupt. I think there's a decent chance. You kill them all. There's no alert that goes out.

Worth a shot. But like there's a little bit of, there's little calls that show up throughout these episodes where it's like, Ezra, you, you dumbass. Like, no, we got to stay on mission. And I'm like, is Ezra the only one here who's seen like a World War II Commando movie? Where it's like, you got to cut the Nazi patrol's throat. Sorry, none of these guys. Did they manage to sound the alarm anyway? Okay, I guess we killed them for nothing.

But if there's a chance, they got to go. Yeah, this is the, you know, the famous clerk's death star contractor scene. Have you all seen? No, I don't think so. Okay, so clerks, the 1994, Kevin Smith film, famously has a scene in it where Dante and Randall, the two main characters are debating the morality of Luke blowing up the second Death Star, specifically,

the Return of the Jedi Death Star. Randall's argument is, the first Death Star, okay, that's an operational battle, you know, a station. It's been completed. It's housed, or it's operated by Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers. The second one is still in construction. It's operational, but it's still in construction, which means you have a bunch of, like, guys just working, you know, on, basically you have contractors building it out trying to put money or trying to put food on the table for their families those guys weren't like you know died in the wool imperial sympathizers

they're just the local they got you know they got hired from the home depot down the road to come and do the work you know right and everyone remembers that part of it but the end of that scene is actually there's a guy who's overhearing the this the debate who is a contractor and he is like no actually my politics come into what jobs i take all the time. Just the other day, you know, just two months ago, this guy who I heard was connected to the mob was trying to hire people to come do a job and come do a build. And right in the middle of the build, a hit got put on this guy. And some of the contractors got killed during the hit. And I didn't get killed because I didn't take that job. A contractor's, you know,

morals go into what jobs they take. And so fuck those guys, basically. They knew what they were getting into. They knew the risks. You got to know the risks. You got to take a job. And I'm just going to say that's true for these guys, too. These mining guild tie fighter pilots, the guys on the transport, you know you're working with the empire. You know, you could go work for another third part. You know, you know there's worst paying jobs out there that you could have taken that wouldn't have put you in harm's way with the empire. You know, I agree. Some points are made, yeah. So I think Ezra was probably right here. Also, it wouldn't have taken that long. It's an unguarded transport

You already killed its guards If they weren't the fact The problem was that they weren't in Like their guns weren't Already aimed at them If they could just like If they if they were already in the firefight It would have just happened

But because they were like Driving away and they would have to like They were rear facing turret in that fight True true Just hit the brakes for a second Cross them off man Just full Full white

And like yeah and they did call it in this is the evidence that thron uses to put the thing together now maybe maybe the minute it went bad yes they called it in and all but i think it was worth a shot to just kill them all especially because the reason like we're going outside the text now the reason i don't think they called it in is because these guys are inherently corrupt this is the problem of the empire outsourcing the stuff the same reason tax farming schemes historically cause all kinds of problems and this sort of like, you know, again, like pre-administrative state, like, oh, the state has to raise funds will basically hire someone to do extortion for us

because we don't have like administration to do taxes. The problem is the people are willing to do that, you're going to be like, you're hiring people who are going to be professionally corrupt. These guys are like trying to get the best deal they can out of this whole bargain, which is either steal a bribe and then take slaves. take a big bribe, let people go and not call it in. They're not calling it in until they know which way this is going down. Yeah. They're only calling it in, you know, maybe they had, like you're saying,

they hadn't already called it in because they're still a way out for them where they get more than what they would get from simply calling it in until they slip through the net. And at that point, they'd better call it in because if they don't, they're in trouble. Right. Also, because they got killed. You know, they killed two of the Thai fighters. you know, they've got to order

some replacement tie fighters now you know, they're going to have to call it in May as well just take them all out I'm surprised that was the whole patrol a transport and two ties, come on anyway Can't be ever at once and so with that they

they had to reclamation episode two the reconnaissance commences um they or actually no it's the end of the first episode they get to reclum choppers they pull up on their scans chopper sees the white wings are being destroyed yet again everyone's like well we got to go reported it to to hera and ezra's like

no we got to go and recover the why wings before they're destroyed is he wrong i could go either way on this one i think it's risky to do the thing he does it pays off in the end but i don't know that he was, I don't know that he made the decision with a good understanding of the risks in this case. For instance, he didn't realize that you might have to fuel these things that were about to be scrapped.

And he did, and he thought that they would have hyperdrives that worked. They wouldn't have already pulled those out. Both of those are mistakes. It did work out in the end. But I think like, everyone's like, we just got to run and tell Hera. yeah but it's like well then the white wings are gone we're making our decision that we're just

going to lose the white right that's like we don't like we don't have time the reason we are here and you're right awesome to the point it's badly prepped you do not you not get the sense this is a judicious decision from him he just doesn't want to fail but also everyone is on board with we need Y wings it's one of those things where like I've been um Obviously, we've had some feedback about how we've been talking about it. So a lot of this episode, I was spent thinking about this. And, like, obviously, this is, like, a frustrating performance. And it's like, you know, to see him just stonewall his way into situations and be like,

I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to put everybody in danger. I'm going to be evil-coded. I'm going to do what it takes to win. It has a matter of frustration. I think what is difficult is that, like, When you see, we haven't had, like, a cast that's so ensemble and that, like, is willing to support each other and can work together that you could, like, imagine if they had called it into Hera and Hera had understood that it was time sensitive, she would have been like, okay, shut down the whatever, we'll meet you there, we'll see what enemies are there, we'll do this together, it'll be okay. And the fact that, like, Ezra has this around him and isn't willing to lean on it is, like, interesting character development. but it's also really frustrating to watch.

Yeah, why doesn't he just pick up the damn phone? Call it in. When the phone works and when it doesn't is really variable in these fucking stories. They weren't able to call Hara for help when they were blocked in. She just shows up with the fleet in a little bit. We'll get to that.

But like there are moments when people are carrying on, like in the chopper makes a new friend episode, people are carrying on conversations instantaneously from multiple systems. It's three-way conversations. with people in different systems. And then there's times where a simple point-to-point, like, hey, what you want me to do about this is beyond the reach of Star Wars technology?

Your signal strength depends on the story in Star Wars. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's a tough one. You have to ask the question, were these 14 or however many they end up getting away, because they're probably not 14, were this handful of Y-Wings, was this the thing that was make or break? Well, it's more valuable. The 14 Y wings or these members of the rebellion, these five people. Because sometimes the answer is going to be the Y wings, right? Sometimes the answer is going to be, you know what? We might take some losses doing this. They almost lose Ezra here. You know, they don't. It comes through. But if Canaan hadn't happened to have wandered out into the wilderness today, Ezra's dead here. And then the question is, was Ezra's like? worth the 14 Y-wings. Let's give them all 14. And I think the answer is no. And I think that's

where you have to make that judgment call of like, did he make the right call here? I think it's no, even though I think I get where you're coming from that in the moment you have to make the call. And part of it is like there's probably a better version of it, to Ali's point. Even without the calling it in Tehara, there's probably a version where he talks it out with the crew and says, all right, let's try to steal three of them or let's try to like what's the play here that it still gets us something

I'm leaving here with something we actually do know he's completely out of pocket for not talking to Hara because she calls him on his phone mid-fight you're right and she's like I'm on my way

he should have called her you need to pick up the fucking phone pick up the phone Ezra yeah no like I was thinking of it like but it is because he doesn't he doesn't believe that they trust him to do it so he's like I'm gonna show them then it's the classic this is why

this kid logic. This is why they don't trust you. And this is Anakin logic. This is the stuff that this is the Anakin Jedi Council relationship, which is why I'm catching some of those vibes here where it's like, all right, they haven't shown that they've trusted him. So he's not going to tell them. He's just going to go do the thing. But that's why they don't trust him. And that cycle continues, right? And so the stakes of Ezra for me right now are like, can he pull out of that dissent? And again, by the end of this episode, we get the big symbolic, you know, rejoining reunion and maybe that means we're going to pull out of that but like those are the

ongoing stakes i'm interested in those stakes uh i love another another clear like as we're as a little out of pocket moment here they land they descend into this kind of like gaseous this gas giant where this uh this uh scrapping scrap yard has been set up and they they land and they go to like get deeper into the facility and they run the three agnot like uh laborers and he's like get out of the way if you don't want to get hurt. Full Anakin voice. Full Anakin voice. I don't want to hurt you.

Yeah. And Hondo is there. And once again, but in this thing, like Uncle Hondo. Uncle Hondo. He jumps in. He's like, wait, wait, wait. Every situation has the potential to be profitable. And that's a Hondo scumbagism.

But I think he's also trying to get across to Ezra. There's always a better play. There's always a thing. Like, make it so everyone. wins. And by the way, that's going to be the logic, like, if the rebellion's going to succeed, it's going to have to be, and here's what's in it for you. Like, you're going to have to bring people on side. And Ezra's in this fall, I could just brute force this. I got to tell you. Plus one on the uncle scale. You know what? Plus two points for

Hondo. Plus two. Five hundred bucks off the debt of the Hondo German debt. I'm giving points to Hondo for this one. Hondo, good appearance. Hondo. This is great. This is a great line. I, I loved this, this, uh, imparting of this wisdom. Yep. We can all win. I like that he steals the shuttles and gets out with the laborers in the end. Yes, that's, it's extremely funny for him to set up to, to start this episode being like, every situation has the potential to be profitable. Everyone can win. And as Ezra's like hurling, about to hurl to his death, he's taking off. Like, I, I thought, I thought Honda would, like, turn around and go pick up Ezra. Nope. He's out. He's out with the Ugnots and they're probably chilling on a beach somewhere. Yeah. Well, Ezra's

a little bit, too. There's a little bit of, like, he runs in there, like, and he's not, I don't think he's wrong. I think he senses that, like, there's a little bit of Joe Pesci and Goodfellas with Ezra right now, where it's like, you might just be, like, if you are second late, you might be burying a body. Yeah. You know, that's, that's just how this might go.

And so I do, I do suspect there's one reason maybe he doesn't keep the car running for Ezra is there's a little bit like, I don't know if I want to ride with this guy. God, going to Honda's mom's house after they buried the body for the big meal. Oh, please, I need it.

Really fun action stuff throughout this episode. Like, we're not probably going to know beat by beat, but a thing that we haven't mentioned is the scrapyard has these giant, like, uh, droids, these giant scrap droids that are kind of similar in shape to the sisters, the fourth, fifth sister, fourth sister's little, um, seven sister, seven sister. But they have big little helmet domes. But these are big domes at the top and then little like crabby legs and then, and then like, uh, big arms that have like industrial tools, claws and drills and stuff for the scrapping. And then even the whole facility, we eventually get a

wide shot of it. And it almost looks like one of them. It has the big dome up at the top and then the little dangly bits underneath. And that's a really fun sort of doubling of the imagery there. And I just love them. They're really fun like droids to fight. We get a lot of fun sequences where Rex is fighting them and Sabine is dealing with them. And the action choreography in this episode remains really good. So one of them gets one of them picks up chopper and electrocutes him and fucking just throws him across the whole thing on top of one of the Y wings. Do you remember

in Wally, they're sort of the droid with the big hulking forearms that like floats around and can just like beat the shit out of other droids? These kind of have that energy of like that they are droids that are their wrecking yard droids, right? Like they live just like

bust shit up and break up metal and that comes through the way they fight. It's fun. Other thing that's fun. Commander Titus is here. The guy used to commanding Imperial Interdictor is now commanding the Imperial Scrapyard. Pro got demoted. And Ezra is kind of a dick about it. Aser's like, oh, last time I saw you, you had like a cool spaceship. And now you're in the trash yard. Huh. I'm here for Ezra just serving this man, his tea piping hot. I love it. I love it. I think in that scene I really love is the lightsaber point is really sharp. He has the green

lightsaber and he's like holding it at the commander's neck and it feels like a sword. It has it feels like a laser sword. He's going to cut this man's neck, you know? Well, he cuts out, again, he cuts down the stormtrovers without a beat. Like they're just dead the second they open fire. And then, yeah, he, there's sort of that snide interaction, but there is also, again, like, fully anachined. Titus says there's no way he can remove the mess. on the ships without cutting the station power and he's like great I'll do that and he says wait that's going to cause the station to crash would you doom us and your friends for a few old ships and Ezra just smirks at me he's like I believe in my friends they're going to be fine you

I don't care yeah and cuts the you know cuts the safeties on the on the ship and like lets the guy sound the evacuation but a real like cool moment of swagger where it's like my crew's got this this is not even this isn't dangerous to us dangerous to you but we're going to be fine he's just unfortunately writing big checks big checks are going out there's also unfortunately wrong but uh there's also um some luke here right not only just because of the green lightsaber though partly that the image he cuts as he walks into the control room here with the green lightsaber feels like early return of the Jedi Luke. But it's also that it's the expertise with which he handles

the lightsaber and drops these guys. And the way he, you know, he's wielding the force here. He pulls the gun or whatever also away from the commander here and cuts it apart. And again, the faith in his friends and the sort of like, there's a little bit of Luke arriving at Jabba's palace and being this like powerful embodiment of the righteous force here, which we shouldn't leave out because we know that in a real way, Ezra is also as supposed to be an echo of Luke. They're the same age. They're going to go through a very similar journey, though it seems like Ezra, Ezra was doing it a few years before Luke.

He could have, uh, he could have maybe given Luke some pointers if they had gotten to meet up, you know? Can you imagine like the fact that Ezra is older than Luke? Like, can you just imagine Ezra giving Luke advice? Just some, just a few tips, you know? It's wild to me. I just love, like, Canaan, Obi-Wan, Yoda sitting there, like, Team Scouts being like, so Canaan's like, you know, what we got here is a three-tool Jedi. And you would have like, I don't know, like, Luke Skywalker, though, it's a Skywalker.

I'd be pissed if I was if I was as a good prospect yeah but like that's the there's a little nepotism here there's a little bit of name recognition you know I'm getting I'm getting some like you know Ezra as the Tim Duncan you know like not necessarily flashy enough to to get the big shoe deal and to like get butts and seats when you have someone who's a lot you know a lot more exciting and flashy to watch in the same era you know so I think it's a shame. If I was Ezra, I'd be a little ticked off. If I didn't get the, I don't know, we'll see where it all goes. Yeah, yeah. What Star Wars definitely is a big old schism, right? Like, they need a breakaway Jedi group where it's like, you're just wrong about how you're wrong about how to train these guys.

You're wrong about how to wield the force. Like, sorry, Luke, we're not making the big Jedi Academy. We're not rebuilding the Jedi Council. We're going to be over here doing our own thing. Part of that thing is getting married and being normal. We need this so badly. Why can't we have? We don't know.

We don't know. That's not what Assoca is about. That is not what Assoca is going to be about. It's not. Open your heart for the possibility of. She was like, Mando, give me that kid and stop your crying. But she's schism coded. She could.

Right now she is. Yeah, she can bring us there. I don't know. Oh, my heart. Anyway. Hey, did you know that you could just link up for, or 14 Yowings or whatever and drive them all at once, the way Chopper does here? Well, if you're chomper, you can.

So, if we remember the heir to the Empire trilogy and the story of the Catana fleet, uh, yeah, you can do that. That was the thing in the experimented with the in the Republic era. There we go. Apparently. Oh, do you think that this is like a reference that they were like,

this is the Thrawn episode. We're going to, we're going to bring back one of those. But we're not going to call a slave circuit. But, uh, yeah, like, it kind of makes, sense that like especially you know yeah one astromac can like convoy these things around the galaxy that seems that seems smart um it's it's neat that neat the chopper can do it but yeah the the series

of things that like Ezra did not think about Sabine's contemptuous like they have to be fueled you didn't think about that did you uh the fact that they don't have hyper drives the sheer number of things that begin to break bad here because he didn't do his due diligence is bad that he's like, I'll cut power to the station. I'll get away clean. And seconds later sees Honda fly away. It all begins to go so bad for, for Ezra. He's like, I'll just take the phantom.

The station begins to fall. Crane knocks the phantom off the station. And then, again, giving a little bit of Luke. Canaan, where are you? Oh, yeah. The way his voice cracks during that, too. It's Luke pleading for Leia at the, you know, the base of Cloud City. Mm-hmm.

And, you know, they're going to come save him. I have to say, I've seen so much Star Wars in my life, you know what still hits is when a fleet arrives from hyperspace and it does that super speed and then like full stop thing. It just looks sick. It's just really cool. Oh, when the Y wings are like flying to what looks like certain death and then the huge, like, opening of the carrier is there and hair comes out shooting

and blowing up tie fighters. It's awesome. It's awesome. It's good. Also, big space stations beginning to plummet toward their death. Incredible. Like this is strong falling ship level in Jedi night in Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight as they go to rescue Ezra.

And now the shoe is on the other foot. We have Price now saying the awful thing. The callus was doing last year, he's like, ha, ha, their desire to be not evil will be there undoing, these dumbasses. And now it is Price saying they fight so hard to gain so little. I love that line. That line rules. That is so much better than the callous line to me, because it's still evil-coded, but it's like it's looking down on them for what feels like

fighting against inevitability, which is a believable position for her to have versus the stuff Callas was saying last season where it was just like, wait, no, dude, you think you're doing the right thing. You need to believe you're doing the right thing. I do think that she believes they are fighting too hard. That's part of what is, part of the strength of the empire is its efficiency, is that like the tie fighters don't need to have hyper drives, right? The tie fighters are an efficient machine that deploys from a space, from a star destroyer and, you know, mops up the enemy and then and then lands. And like that is kind of the picture of imperial efficiency.

And here are these fucking rebels like trying to squeeze water from a stone. And it doesn't matter because they're not, not only are they never going to get water from a stone, it doesn't matter if they get some water out of the stone. They're still going to lose. And that's a believable perspective from, for her, for me, you know. And I like that she's making the observation to callus. Yeah.

Not realizing that he is beginning to be on that journey where he's hearing things. They're hitting different. They're hitting wrong for him now, right? like the look at the futility here why are they fighting so why are they doing all this especially now that we know that callus

is a real like the nobility of a warrior yeah type of dude he's damn yeah they are kind of they are kind of warrior poets over there aren't they they are really

giving themselves to the good fight yeah so that that's a cool cool little beat and then I just love harrigant and do awesome pilot shit Like flying down the storm It all looks great

It looks so good Lighting looks incredible The sense of speed And like the danger of the storm It all looks incredible Like the rescue looks Looks fantastic Also that we skip this beat

But like Canaan's already on the ship When Harrah gets there And he's like seating in the co-pilot chair That's a great That's a fun moment You know He's bad More Canaan and Harry

please. I'm begging you. There's that book or comic, right? There's something with them too, just them too? Haven't people told us about that? They have. Apparently they meet in that book, so there's juice there. I also have been thinking about it.

I know we were talking about this later or earlier, but like with Canaan like his forced journey coming closer to like what ezra's was with the like I have compassion for all things I could speak to animals or whatever like the you know we haven't seen canaan's I'm super confident I could be darksided I can kill people because I'm really powerful and I like wonder if that's a story that's ever going to come into in rebels or was it already sort of like covered in that in the like early cadence stuff that that it feels like a plot beat that philony doesn't have to get to yeah maybe like that we've ever seen

him struggle with power with the power of the risk of giving himself to the dark side because da-da-da-da right well now he's got this new this new teacher who's saying like yeah well you know i'd be so funny if he comes back and that thing's been completely corrupted by the Holocron, though. Oh, God. There's like red stalactites coming out of the dude's back. The way that he just leaves it with him, he's like. It's so funny.

Force math won't hurt me. Oh, you have the red stuff? Yes, please. Gimmy, gimme. I think that guy is going to continue to be like the sage. Here's my real hope Now that we got this guy Can we get rid of Yoda from the show?

Yoda can stick around And obviously Yoda sticks around But like what if we just go to this guy for this for rebels For rebels We don't need a Yoda anymore Because the thing is the reason this guy exposes Yoda is the fraudulent sage Is Yoda's an exiled ruler plotting revenge

He plays the part of a hermit sage for Luke of the wars do not make one great he does all the shit he looks like i've renounced power i just commune with the force but actually he's like tell me obiwan how comes the skywalker project like it's it's shit like that whereas this guy legitimately is like what's the empire to me and by the way that's a deeply frustrating position where it's like yeah it's great it's cool that you can like withdraw from the world and be like you'll just have internal people But we're out here in the world We're fighting for our lives

But I do like That we have this character who's like No, I'm really committed to this idea That like there's just kind of a oneness And you know You don't really wield power You just sort of like a You know part of a phenomenon

That binds all things That's cool. Love that it's here I don't like when we try to play it both ways With Yoda where it's like Yeah he's just this like wise old sage Who's just like here to impart wisdom And it's like the guy wielded every form of power he acquired as aggressively as possible.

Yeah. I also just like that this guy doesn't have any state. Like, he's not a stakeholder in this outside of being a force wielder, but he doesn't, he's not, he doesn't have a side really. He's just. Tom Bombadil. He's just, he is Bobbidil coated. He is Tom Bobadil coded.

Who's Tom Bobadil? Bombadil In the Lord of the Rings There is a character Who lives in I don't know what part of the world He lives in Rob. You have that on the top of your head

One of these magical forests You know Where our heroes go And have a mirthful Sublime time Connecting to this dude Who's like Ancient and powerful

But also whimsical and weird And beautiful and strange and famously considered to be unfilmable an unfilmable section of the books

And they filmed it No, well, no But he's supposed to show up No, Jackson like completely avoided it explicitly But this new show The Rings of Power Apparently, he has been cast

For that, so Yeah Ooh, interesting I've never watched But he's like an outside of the conflict type of dude, you know? Yeah. Like, he does not show up in the end to, like, help the good guys, you know?

That's who we need. We need someone whose investment is in the force itself. Like, in a way, in a way, we kind of, like, need Mortis. I don't know. We need to go back to Mortis. I'm so mad at you. We need to go talk to some people who just, like, care about the force. force and not about

politics. I mean, I like that stuff too. But like I, it's fun for there to be a non- Jedi-oriented force-wielding wise. He's played by

Tom Baker, who was the fourth doctor from Doctor Who, the one with the big long scarf. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is very funny to me, because that is kind of, I could see how you get there. I'm going to show y'all a picture. Y'all who have not come from the world of Doctor Who.

I want you to imagine that you were watching British television, and then this guy shows up, and he's going to take you on a weird... That's who the giant guy is? Yeah, this guy voices him. I mean, he doesn't look like this these days because he's old, but Charles, Tom Baker. Very funny, too. Shout outs. They didn't...

No, no, it's. They didn't sell Doctor Who, did they? The BBC? No, I think they still produce it. I think that they're still making this current stuff. Pretty sure. Right, but now it was on Disney. Okay, okay.

I don't, I don't think they sold it. I think it's just licensed, right? Yeah. Because that would be like, that's like one of those things where it's like, no one's, that's not yours to sell, but that again, like the nature of Tori, government is things that are not theirs to sell, they will sell. They will sell it. That

should come, they'll sell the copper pipes in the hospital. Let me tell you. Anyway. Yeah. More bendu, please. I'm curious to see where we go with this guy. It could break bad for me with him if it gets corny, but, um, it's in, it's in the, it's, it's, it's balanced on a knife's edge currently. Much like the force. Well, so true. the force. So true. So true. So, I just want to say really quick, because we didn't go over the production side of this at all, but these episodes were written by people who have written a lot of our long-running kind of like hit list of good episodes over the years, Stephen Melching and Matt Michnevitz. Melching was the early malevolence arc and some of the

Clone War stuff that we've liked like Relics of the Old Republic and the more importantly Mitch Nevitz was the Umbara arc that whole arc was him and then Legend of LaSotte last year in the Lost Command or last season

and Lost Commanders the the Rex the clone return episode and then the directors of this were Bosco-Ing and Mel Zwire Mel I think it only started with Rebels, but started all the way back at the legacy, which is like the mid-season

one, maybe that's season two. That's the, it's the, it's the force, it's the force vision. Ezra sees his parents and goes to rescue it. But Bosco had been, has been directing stuff all the way back to like brothers, the Savage and Darth Mall connection episode in, in Clone Wars. maybe even before that, maybe going back to one of the undercover Obi-Wan episodes in Clone Wars. So a thing that I think is interesting to continue tracking here is like, hey, this crew has been making Star Wars stories now for years and years and years. How are they getting better at it? What are becoming kind of, how is the machine getting built?

You know, I think going back to all the way to the early Clone War stuff, there's people trying on some of these story ideas and characters and setting ideas for the first. time. And sometimes that ended up producing really interesting and dynamic things. And sometimes it was really sloppy. And so I'm just kind of curious to see how this kind of the production side of things continues to develop as we as we go. I think things like the big dramatic dive into the into the clouds sequence here is so well shot and so well directed. And I think that we've had a lot of really efficient writing throughout these two episodes that I think go to show developing talent and familiarity with these types of stories.

So as long as that part of the machine continues to function, you know, as long as the kind of that stuff continues to stay sharp, I think my hope is that we're going to continue to see a show that gets smarter and better and leaner as we go forward as the development side continues to get better. last thing before the end so when they bring Ezra home he gets chewed out by hera and i do like this bit where zeb makes the grand gesture like you should suspend all of us because we all went along with the plan and she's not hearing like he there's a different version of the show where that works right where it's like hey we all we stood with you know

i am sparticus we all stood with ezra we all knew the risks we all and And Heron and Commander Sato are basically pretty clear like, nope, nope, that's not going to work here. This is Ezra Blewett, risks too much for too little, you know, time to be suspended. And I think the count we get is they got five Y-Wings out of that deal, which by my count, they had seven when they flew out. Maybe they lost a couple during the, during the retreat. But crucially, the Y-wings aren't for them. They're for General Dodona's unit. Hmm

Now where have I heard that name before? Should I not look this up right now? No, it's, it's a, it's a original trilogy. It's, it's, I want to say it's the Yavin IV crew, right? General De Nona is the guy who is in overall command of the strike on the Death Star. Right. Now, this would all hit a little bit better if the Y-winks had actually done anything on that raid. Yeah.

Regrettably. Yeah. Gold Squadron, despite being a bomber squadron, fails to bomb the target. Yeah. Well, they didn't use the force is the problem there. They trust their targeting computers. Their targeting computers are clearly not working, right,

or the data was wrong. You had to use the force, which they didn't have. You need old Luke Skywalker for that one. Gail and also should have made that vent bigger. That's right. Maybe a little straighter, too. Yeah. And again, this is also the other side of this.

the gestures at that existing is, you know, when, when Thron calls in, he says, hey, break off your attack, let them have this little reward. This isn't anything. And the, is it Constantine? Who's like, wait a second, we're just going to let them get away. The rejoinder to that is like, this is not the rebel fleet. You know, this is not what we've been looking for, you know? So. Well, yeah. And it sets up something that's always, so. So, you know, so. open question is, does Thron know something we don't? Which is that actually there is a now large rebel fleet that is unknown to us, but actually like ghost squadron isn't even aware of it. But like there is a full like ready to fight military machine now behind the rebellion. And it just hasn't made its appearance. Or is this one of those things where you're going to end up accidentally creating it? Making it. Yeah. Because the because the thing that Thrawn is doing here, it's sort of always the undoing of the empire, which is we are going to try to solve

this all in one fell swoop. We're going to lure them out and we're going to get them all at once. And that temptation is what lures them again and again into all or nothing debacles, right? The Death Star is going to blow them up yavon. Oh, we'll put the Emperor

on the Second Death Star. They won't be able to resist that. They'll come right out to fight the Second Death Star. What could go wrong? It's not like the Emperor is going to get killed. so like I do kind of wonder if already we've seen the first like taste of the undoing of Thrawn which is right he could just kill Ghost Squadron today right now boom done he should have done that probably yeah yeah he watched the wire he's like gotta get I just want to I want to get the wire stood up on on Ghost Squadron yeah yeah I like it a lot I think it's a fun I think it's a fun, like, power shift in the sense that he, he, that there's something that the rebel squadron doesn't know either. Like, the rebel squadron, like, we're going to come, they're coming away with this thinking that they got a, they barely got a win out of this, right? Like that even despite kind of the catastrophe that in which it, in how it happened, at least they came away with a few Y wings that they're going to be able to do.

you know bring to this other other um faction but the fact that that yeah that the that the that the the rebels are going to like celebrate this win and kind of be like yay like we're moving forward and meanwhile on the opposite end they're like that you know this this means nothing in the grand scheme of things is a fun shift in kind of power dynamic rather than it always kind of be just like toe to toe one to one. Like it feels fun that there's sort of a mix up happening here. Agreed. All right.

Well, with that, we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. For our next episode, I think we're doing the next three, right? We are. That is correct. We are doing the holocrons of fate, the antilles extraction. And Harrah's Heroes.

Fun names. Love these names. Better be a Hara episode. And it better be a loving one-to-one parallel for a Hogan's Heroes episode. Or I'm going to be pissed. Well, and the Antilles extraction better be like a cool spy episode. That has such like pot boiler airport, like the Antilles extraction. Yeah, fantastic.

Love it. Yeah. And Holochrons of fate. some shit without holocron better happen That's who's dark-sighted as hell now Oh shit Turns out of objects can totally make you evil It's actually just again

They have to run a raid against dark bendew Oh my god It's a shadow of the Colossus episode Oh that'd be fun yeah God what if the holocaud made him bigger What if the holocron turns him into his planet-sized Now he's yeah exactly Yeah well we'll find out

Enjoy these weeks before this turns into a Mandalorian lore uh series i feel like i feel like that it's always lurking around the corner with with feloni where it's like man it's just i don't know the original trilogy is so locked up there's nothing you can do with it but nobody can tell me anything about what happened with the mandoloreans yeah some of the stuff we saw in the trailer suggests we'll get back to that so yep but until next time please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice and remember Sometimes Ezra just wants to get things done And people don't understand

Let them cook Holocron understands Yeah They should let you cook They should They should That's what the Sytholokron's telling him right now You know

Thank you.