A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 90: The Holocrons of Fate, The Antilles Extraction, and Hera's Heroes (Rebels 40 - 42)
Episode Date: July 10, 2024Rebels season 3 is in full swing. How can you tell? Well, first of all, Uncle Maul is back and he's leading Ezra (and his collection of holocrons) closer to the dark side. And Hera once again shows ou...t, with a killer episode that brings us closer into contact with emerging season villain Admiral Thrawn. And... well... We've got another crack at a Sabine episode. Maybe this time we'll learn something about her, or how she relates to others, or what her past is, or... anything at all. Maybe? Please? Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! NEXT TIME: The Last Battle, Imperial Supercommandos, and Iron Squadron Show Notes RIC-1200 Droids | SW Clone Wars & Rebels 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)
Transcript
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Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast.
I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson.
We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners, via patreon.com slash civilized,
so head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes or special editions.
In this case, I think already over there, once it finishes its run,
we'll be doing another episode
we'll be having our final takeaways
from the Acolyte over
on Patreon so we've got one episode there already
and then I think by the time you're listening to this
the reaction to the end of
season one, end of the series
The Acolyte, who can say?
But we'll have that reaction
we'll have that reaction up
I'm super excited at a time of recording
to see what the end of episode four
looks like
I'm still not really
The end of episode four is going to be episode five.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, sorry, I was going to say you mean the end of episode three, but you're right.
It was episode four, the one that got super short.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Right.
Yes.
Sometimes, sometimes the cutting room floor can just be an episode.
Yeah.
Which is probably the, as a little glimpse of our chief, I think, objection to how the acolyte is coming across.
But I think in happier, in happier news and happier stuff, this week, season three is,
It seems to be finding a stride, setting a bit of direction.
It sets some new Jedi stuff in motion before digging into what appears to be the season's main plot line around the growing rebellion and the increasingly dangerous and serious pushback it receives from the empire.
They are all standalone episodes for the most part, so we'll get into them one by one.
Our first episode, the holocrons of fate, kind of picks up where we left off both with our previous episodes and our previous season.
Canaan and Ezra are lured to investigate a distress signal, and while they are there,
Maul kidnaps the crew of the ghost and demands they turn over the Sith Holocron.
Ezra and Canaan go and pick it up from Bendu, who reveals that the Jedi and Sith
holocrans will produce a powerful and maybe cursed vision of the future when brought into contact
with one another.
Kane and Ezra go back to a space station to have their rendezvous and showdown with Maul,
A lot of, a lot of stuff happens as they, as they sort of carry out the rescue of the crew of the ghosts and take on Mall.
But the big, the, the major thing is that Ezra and Maul together open the two holocrons and receive the answers to their questions.
And ironically, it is the same answer to two very different questions.
mall leaves in delight saying he's on tattooing he's on tattooing and gremlins off toward his ship
while Ezra asks the holocrons how to defeat the Sith and sees twin sons twin sons
now that's a little nod to the events of Star Wars episode 4 a new hope what's that
I don't know that's in the future we haven't seen that yet right we're watching there's
twin there's twins oh
and the twins
it's actually foreshadowing
Ackleight
right
those twin sons
not twin daughters it's different
what if Ezra came away
being like there's just two young
boys somewhere
they're children
he didn't see the letter
you how could he know
I guess if you live in space you just
jump to space stuff all the time
right right it's probably you know you probably saw you know it looks bright the whole vision
is bright that's that's that's true as well uh but yeah so we can get into it um like overall
it feels like um this feels a little bit like mall being there's times i get like it is a children's
cartoon. There's times it looks Batman the animated series vibes from this. And it's like, oh,
Maul is now one of the rogues gallery that our heroes on the ghost have to occasionally take
on. And so here he's back, uh, you know, doing doing dastardly stuff. I still think maybe
turning in a more complicated performance from Sam Whitwer than is necessarily there on the page,
but I do like it. Like mall, I always feel like there's more going on with mall than necessarily
the plot is bringing out.
When he delivers a line like, no, I betrayed your friends, but I would have remained loyal to you.
So good.
It's like, oh, yeah, I believe you.
I don't believe you, but I believe that you're the character.
Maybe I believe you.
And that's a hard line to deliver because it's kind of cartoonishly evil manipulator character.
But we're saying, what we're doing it?
He's doing the work.
Yeah, when he drops the line, our apprentice, I was like, that's crazy.
That's crazy.
It's so good.
It's so good.
Our apprentice and I
And I was like
You what?
You just said that
Like it was like
He was like
You know what
I'll take him on weekend
This is what you'll say
That's the thing that I came to
Feeling when that happened
I was like oh no
Maybe he's not an uncle
Maybe he's the second dad
Maybe it's like
Divorced Dad's energy
Between Cana
But it's not
They don't have that history
But like
You know
This is mom's new boyfriend
It's mom's like
The mom is the force
The mom is the force
Yeah
But the new boy's not
But the new boyfriend is, like, cool.
Yeah, has a motorcycle.
Yes, I was literally going to say drives a motorcycle.
Yeah, uh-huh.
Does have tattoo?
Like, what are we talking about?
He does.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
He's cool.
The dangerous bad boy.
He's got an earring.
He has a fucking earrings.
He's a cannon earring.
He's a cannon ear piercing.
And I think part of the thing that works for me with their relationship with the Ezra and
and Mal, but even Ezra and Canaan and Mall is like a,
as a, you know, a trio working off of each other.
Ezra is not fully taken, he grew up between these two seasons to some degree.
He's not fully taken in by malls like, I wasn't going to betray you.
But he is willing to play the game.
He is willing to like, all right, I'm going to sit down with him and do the Holocron thing
and see what I can get out of this.
And Canaan's learned that he can't hold the leash too tight or else it risks breaking.
And so he has to let Ezra go do some of this stuff.
Even if he knows, like, we all know that, like, we all know that mall is.
going to be using you in some way, Ezra. And Ezra's like, yeah, okay, but like, how do I use him
back? How do I? How do we get something out of this? And that's a much more fun relationship than
like if the Ezra and Canaan relationship became extra super strained every time. You know what I
mean? I mean, obviously this episode, like you said, Rob, a lot happens here that involves the two
of them kind of mending that relationship a little bit.
But it doesn't mend on the mall thing.
It mends on feelings of guilt that Ezra has, not on, hey, I'm mad at you for trying to trust
this other guy, you know, so, which is interesting.
I also, I do like that the tension is still there, even though Ezra is chastened.
He is still, like, his eyes squarely on the prize.
I want to beat the Seth.
I want to beat the empire.
And it's this interesting line they're walking.
He knows he knows he screwed up both with Maul in the previous season and then like in the way he was handling the Seth Holocron.
But he hasn't totally backed off from his position that like, hey, anything we learn to defeat the greater enemy is worth putting into play.
Like it is worth a certain measure of risk.
And he just like straight up does not agree with Canaan's.
This stuff is so dangerous, we basically have to handle it.
Like, it's, like, lethally radioactive.
That's just not where Ezra has ended up.
The apologies, the reconciliation are a little more, it is about, like, more of the relationship and the way they were about this conflict with each other, rather than the conflict itself, where Ezra is still, like, no, we need to beat these guys.
Right.
And so they haven't, and I'm pleased to see this, it doesn't feel like they're quite still playing up the, like,
Maybe Ezra is like getting a little darksided.
It's not quite that heavy, but the stuff is still there.
The things that are going to push him maybe toward into the gray areas of this,
the canon's afraid of, those are still there.
Well, and I think the thing that's interesting about how this is shaking out right now,
and I suspect long term, we will probably see Ezra be like, you know,
not need the Sith holocron.
You know, I don't think, I don't think, as we're going to end,
show with a red lightsaber or even an Asoka white lightsaber, though maybe, right? Or maybe
no lightsaber at all, who could say? I truly don't know now that Bendu is here. There's
like other opportunities for forced stuff happening. But I do think that the show has this
sort of posture that because of the way things have been working out suggests that you
might not find balance in one person, although obviously Bendu seems like that, but that balance
in the force or balance might be a thing that a unit has.
It's a team show.
It's a show about an ensemble.
And it might be that fixing the relationship between Canaan and Ezra isn't about making
them the same person.
It's about, it's about Ezra getting to be a little rambunctious and a little rash and a little,
you know, headstrong and dedicated to eliminating the empire.
And Canaan maturing into the kind of sage-like hand on the shoulder, I'm going to temper
that that rage or temper that direction not to nil but to the best possible version of it right
and I think that that's a much more interesting position than a Jedi is one good thing you know and
obviously again Bendu is the guy telling them is the person leading him down this journey now not
Yoda Yoda would I think Yoda would not be the guy to be like well you know maybe it's
useful to have someone like Ezra who is headstrong but Bendu can kind of like be like hey
the real problem here is your trust issues, not your philosophy on how to fight the empire, you know?
I think that's, Yoda could fucking never.
Yoda could never identify that interpersonal relationship issues could actually undermine political or revolutionary action, you know.
Moving away from like the absolutes of like repression, suppression, you know, you must, you must avoid.
anything dark-sided whatsoever, just looking at it will make you evil, run away from
the dark side, move away from attachments, et cetera, is so refreshing to have this other
version that's like more understanding of how humans interact and engage with each other and
how especially in times of crisis how like emotions are going are high and are and how do you
mitigate emotion rather than suppress emotion how do you channel it towards something productive
it's like Bendu is like the couples therapy that we needed and in a weird way I think you'd
argue maybe mall is also functioning as sort of a dark foil. Yes, 100%. It's also in a let's
cut the shit about these relationships mode. And we get a great scene. And I think by the way,
I don't know whether they're going to go with mall. I do feel there is a, there's a dangerous
temptation here. Like if I were in that writer's room and like I'm getting these performances back
and I'm seeing them, seeing them like this, the temptation to overuse this character and this
performance is really strong.
This is how you end up having face turns where it's like, what if actually
mall, I thought they might go there in this scene.
Because there's this moment, just a fantastic scene.
Nothing two major happens in it.
And this is the stuff, you know, going to our conversation about the acolyte, how everything
in the acolyte has to serve a plot purpose or it just doesn't exist.
There's no texture to it.
That's the thing that comes up in the first episode we recorded on that.
And I think this is this moment aboard the ghost.
between Maul and the crew of the ghost and then Maul and Harry is actually a really good example of the stuff that is missing from a show like the Acolyde at times, where what happens in this entire sequence is basically he finds the Jedi Holocron that he's been looking for.
Yeah.
We spend a few minutes of screen time on him not really even seeming to hunt for that.
There is no moment he even establishes the stakes of what the scene is.
Instead, the scene is about him pulling apart their lives and sort of just reading the, doing cold read on the crew of the ghost and like picking them apart a little bit.
But also there's a moan this where I was like, is he about to join the crew of the ghost?
Is he about to be like, you guys, you guys roll.
Because also a thing that comes through Woodward's performance a lot of times is his profound loneliness.
His henchmen are these janky-ass CRT droids.
Like they are just, you know where they're from.
I looked up
We've seen them one other time before
I'm going to link you to the video
Jabu Jabo hoods
They're not from Jabohood
Okay
They have that this
I don't know if it's just like this shade
They seem like home care droids
They do
They're tourism droids
We see them for
Literally we see one of them for three seconds
In one of the
Mandelor episodes
He goes, welcome to Mandelor
And then gets his head shot
Oh, they're Mandalorian tourism droids.
They're from the last place he had a home.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, and they're so well, they're really good because, like, they are just little, like,
they're like on little Wally Rollers, and they have malfunctioning what looked like CRT
monitor heads.
And some of them are cracked, and they're just, like, fluorescing rather than, like,
displaying a face or an image.
and they are all clearly
just sort of like
hacked together
to turn them into gunmen
Yes
They've added the obvious
That's exactly what it is
Looking at the concept art
They explicitly says
Source from Clone Wars
Torguide droid hands are new geometry
Pleases see included Maya sketch file
For ortho and scale information
But it's like it's literally
The original tourism droid
But with new different hand units
That can hold guns
Which is like
It's perfect
And who knows if like the writer
gave that prompt to like the art team or whether it came up with like wouldn't it be affecting if mall like you know where could he have gotten like droid gunman from from you know it's the last of his stash from from when he briefly ruled mandler which is going to come up here in a minute but uh you know you know the scene sort kicks off when he's staring at uh the art that sabine has has put on the wall and he makes the remark he thought you know this was just a ship but obviously it's their home
And his back is to them when he says this.
And you see a really complicated range of emotions before, like, his...
Was this the grumpy cat?
I'm sorry, I just can't.
Is this a grumpy cat here?
Was grumpy cat happening at this time?
I think we're post grumpy cat, but I also think memes live in culture for a while,
especially for people who are making Disney TV shows.
You know, there's a little bit of a long tail.
on some stuff.
He is a little bit of a grumpy cat.
He does have a little grumpy cat vibe.
Does the legs get the big dark eyes?
Like, not even eye shadow, but just like the painted black around his eyes.
So it really exaggerates like unimpressed faces.
And so he's like constantly making a show of like kind of being disgusted or contemptuous of all the like signs of like warmth and family that he finds.
But also he's trying his best to be very courtly.
It keeps backfooting them, but also the audience throughout the scene, right?
Where, like, on the one hand, they're being held hostage, but then he's going to play
the gentleman rogue here.
As he says, Captain, may I request a tour of your ship?
And, again, he's not really here for a tour.
He's looking for one particular thing, but so much comes across, including a really exciting
new piece of information.
Which part?
I really what, which is the...
When he takes when they go to Canaan's room.
Not the part where Zephyr-Rue smells.
Oh, yeah, the name reveal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which we knew that we knew that Canaan had a different name in the past because the
Grand Inquisitor once said, so that's what you're calling yourself now, right?
Or something like that.
Is that what he told you his name was?
Something like that to Ezra in the first season, which now, of course, we know that the
Grand Inquisitor knew who he was because he probably, like, taught him how to do a
lightsaber strike once.
You know what I mean?
because he was one of the guards.
He was one of the temple guards.
He knew that kid's name, which is wild.
One, and like, there's a bit of, it's Caleb.
Caleb, Doom, D-U-M-E.
Oh, okay.
Well, it being Star Wars, that probably isn't resonant.
It's probably fine.
And there's the bit where Harris trying to say, like, well, that's Canaan's Holocron.
And Mall let it, like, you know, showing you, maybe he knows.
way more than we do
or even they do
says no no
he stole this
and again we always come back
to like we've had those moments where it's like
Canaan we've got a couple episodes of like
Canaan makes his peace with the force
with being a Jedi Knight with all this
stuff but they've never
really gotten that I thought they were kind of
dealing with those episodes
maybe just kind of an underwhelming handling of it
but early on it did feel like
Canaan was ashamed
of something. And I just assumed it was like that he didn't go down with the Jedi Order, right? They didn't go down fighting with the rest of the Padawans or alongside his master. But now there is a bit of like, you know, in the space Western thing, it's like, no, no, ma'am, your man is a coward.
So I think you may, I think we have read the scene differently. I think the thing that's being referenced here is that is that the boy stole the Holocron.
stole the holocron from from canaan's stuff the but it's the exact delivery isn't it in jennon's
room though it's back in canaan's it's when he finds canes yeah he says he says yes it was
your idea to to recruit the apprentice and it was from here that the boy found dot dot dot no he stole
the holocron which i think is going back to the the recruitment episode remember they brought
Ezra on board and then he stole something
and ran away. I think it may have been
the holocron. I don't
remember exactly because it's been a little
while. And then it's
gotten and now it's back
because he returned it after he joined
the crew.
So Mal is just doing
like Batman, I'm walking into a room
and I know what happened in here.
He forced, no, he forced Red Herra.
He used the force to rehearse mine.
He makes the little Kylo Ren
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess this is
useful information to maul because it's something that he can exploit out of Ezra in terms of
okay learning that Ezra is someone that has a slight you know mischievousness to him and yeah yeah
this is capable of stealing and obviously he these are like little kind of character seeds that he
could uh could uh act act on in future interactions with Ezra Ezra um quote this is
this is the Wikipedia on Spark of the Rebellion, the, the, sees the show opener, two-parter.
Ezra returns to the ghost, and while sitting outside the ship, he sends it something to the force
that leads him to Jaris' quarters on the ship.
After breaking to Jarus's quarter, he finds and steals a holocron as well as a lightsaber,
which he activates to reveal the blue blade.
And then he goes away.
Jaris lets him keep the holocron, however, knowing that if Ezra can open it, the boy can
use the force and could be trained as a Jedi.
So that was like, obviously, the thing that has,
happened here is we recorded Rebels season one and then had to take a break for Cotor and the
strike. And so it's been a little while since we watched that. But that's what's being
referenced here. There is a canon answer to where Canaan got this holocron. And it's from
the Canaan comics that we have not yet read. But it's from his master. And I don't know the
full context of it, but it's about him having big questions about things, and Deppabalaba gave
him a holocron so that, quote, he could study the role of questions and peaceful dissent
in the Jedi order.
Listen, kid.
We have to read those comics.
We should read those comics.
Here's a book.
Go read it.
Stop asking questions.
Go read about peaceful protest, kid.
I'm sure.
I'm sure she's better than that.
that but i also just like we had the brief like they opened sabine's room and ma's like how
colorful it's so fun rolls his eyes it's like we are now with the other characters dunking on
the concept for sabine oh you got a little art thing going oh i mean we're gonna have to talk about
that this episode it's a big way but alley go ahead i i i this was this was ball's roast tour
zep got it too that was smelly that was smelly that was smelly
And Canaan, what does he say when he walks in?
Ah, yes, this is it, a dull and dour chamber.
These are the quarters of a Jedi.
Damn, bitch, you live like this?
The only man whose life is as empty as mine.
There is a sideways glance from Hera, as he says,
these are the quarters of a Jedi.
And she kind of looks down and off to the side
before, like, making a big exaggerated roll of her eyes.
But there is, again, like a, no one lives here.
No one lives here.
Hey, where's Kainan actually sleep?
He's not in here.
He's not in there.
He meditates in here sometimes.
Yeah, yeah.
He keeps his hologrons in here.
Some extra t-shirts.
That's right.
But.
Nothing in the fridge.
He's not saying here.
No.
No.
All of this is, again, he's doing this.
while having kidnapped them and having threatened, hey, you have to bring me to Sith Holocron to Canaan and Ezra, or else I'll kill them, or else I'll have my cool, funny droid shoot them.
Most whimsical massacre in Star Wars history.
God would be very funny.
And so, if we want to wrap up the on the ship stuff here before they get to the big base, actually, the only other thing that happens is their attempt to break out.
I attempt to break out and Maul is a real one.
And Maul's like, nah.
I am main character material.
Like, I know my legs are metal.
You're going to have to do better.
Yeah.
I love that we get the two, like, the, not, I'm sure there are more ways than just two, but two of the big ways that Maul is a formidable enemy.
And one is that he is extremely powerful in, like,
dark side persuasion and enforce usage and being able to extract information from
Harris' mind instantaneously and like so much of what's sinister about him is that sort
of the dance between the him being like gentlemanly and kind of and in very like
cordial and and that sort of thing while also being
being able to kind of flip a switch and, and, you know, do some evil shit.
And then also he is just goaded at being, like, strong and, and physical.
And, like, it's amazing to see.
Like, I love that we have a character who's not just, oh, you're the evil genius or, oh, you're the evil strong man.
It's like, oh, no, this is like, this is where the dark side of the force is consolidated
into a holistic approach, you know?
I feel like she've maybe made a mistake.
I think you should have stayed chips in.
Mall is great.
Yeah, Vader's not up to here being gentlemanly.
Vader is like, I mean, I need Vader.
Vader's great.
I like Vader.
Listen, don't get me wrong.
10 out of 10.
Maybe the goat.
But Mall's making a case.
Mall's out here doing stuff, Vader could never do on the court.
But it's too shivy now.
It's too shivy.
It's too, like, I know what the,
that's the thing. That maybe is the thing is that actually this was the first time I'm like,
you know what, Mall could have inherited the throne. Moll could have done it. Moll did have these
skills. I didn't know he had. I think Moll getting sliced in half was just a permanent L on the
record. Like you just never get over that. But would he even become this mall if he hadn't
been sliced half? He would only ever been double lightsaber, kill a motherfucker guy. He wouldn't
have been the manipulative gentlemanly we don't know career trajectory we don't we don't but we can
say part of the reason he's like this now is the trouble he went through early in his career
but he couldn't you know he could have went back to palpatine with like the confidence of like
ikely gone i did that i'm him but like you're right you're right yeah but the thing is like i think
with palpatine like you know partly is just a complete different conception of the character that he
He's like in the film, he's just like character of pure force and violence, malevolous.
But there is also a bit of like, he was like what she needed was like really intense hired muscle.
And that is all he needs from an apprentice.
Well, except that he does take another apprentice who we haven't mentioned here, who I'm missing.
And maybe that's why the gentlemanly villain mall here is hidden.
I miss Count Duku.
I miss you know.
Yeah.
Why couldn't Duku come back to life mysteriously?
Yeah, but he uses Duku because he needs somebody who stand up as a figure of a different, like, you're right.
You're right. He's like the public, yeah, he's the public facing.
He's the personality hire, you know, not personality hired.
Moll could have never been, but Malt could have never been the leader of the confederacy, right, of the separacies.
No, no, no, no.
They would have never followed.
Senate.
Duku could go to the Galactic Senate and make an appeal and can politic and used to
move in those spaces.
They could have had it all, though, right?
Because like if he just get over this rule of tool to bullshit.
Get to power of three.
You get the power of three and you get sheave in the republic.
You get Duku in the separatists and you get mall in the crime world.
Yeah.
And leave Anakin alone.
Yeah.
Let Anakin rock.
Anakin can just kick it
He's rocking on
On Nabu
Let's let Nabu chill
Yeah
Because true
If Palpatine would have been like
Listen
I'm gonna let you and Padma
Just go back to Naboo
And chill
There's not gonna be an imperial presence
A heavy imperial presence on Naboo
We're not gonna like starve the people
We'll even let the Gungans chill
I think I'll tell you what I honestly think of that outcome
Yeah what
Anakin gets bored
I think you're right
Yeah, I think you're right
Yeah
And like
Oh, it's sad
It's sad
It's sad
But I don't think
So Padme would never say yes to this
And Padmae would be furious
Yeah
But you can play it up
Isn't the whole thing is that
Like he wants to be a master
manipulator of Nabu
Via Padma
Like you could just be like
Oh Padma
There's something wrong with the tax forms
Or whatever
Distract her for a little bit
Or like send somebody to Naboo
to, like, do a little civilian uprising.
That's what you should have done.
It's like playing with a cat.
Like, you have to, like,
you just like the enrichment.
Inrichment.
Fuck.
Just make Anika feel like there's a little bit of danger sometimes.
Like, you gotta make sure you take your Anakin on walkies.
You gotta make sure you get that.
Somehow these,
somehow these, like, insurgents got hold of a bunch of starfighters.
I don't know.
They seem really good.
We don't have a military on,
On the boo, Anakin, remember?
If only he had like a good pilot.
If we had one good guy who can help us here.
And you all those leftover droids?
Oh, he would jump.
He would jump at the chance.
He'd be so happy.
Wag in his tail at the door.
He would be so fulfilled.
Oh.
Oh.
He needs his smell walks or whatever.
My boy has a Pablombian response to violence.
It's not good.
It's not good.
Oh, my God.
I do wonder if there's a bit of also powerful.
Palpatine is boxed in by the fact that the people are going to help him consolidate his rule of the republic are all fascists.
He has to deliver to the Tarkins of his of his side a militaristic like authoritarian order because really what does that get him that a thoroughly corrupted Vinal Republic did not get him.
Yeah.
Like then you could you could have left Padman place.
And she would have been fighting to reform and improve the republic all the time.
And it would have been, you know, the work of a lifetime, you know, bouncing between Corrassant and Nabu,
Anakin leading a toothless Jedi order.
I'm sorry.
I'm remembering Fred of the show Sullivan's co-host, Sheave Pivot, Sheev's Plan post.
Have you seen this?
Oh, my God.
Yes.
Yes.
Sheves Plan.
Get elected.
I'm just going to read the whole thing.
It needs to be on, this is shout-outs to user Sullivan over on co-host.
Sheep's plan.
Get elected to Senate for Naboo.
Start Sith order.
Work Republican separatists against each other.
Recruit evil guy to lead separatist.
This Jedi kid is wicked strong.
Get Jedi in deep with Clone Army.
Save some clone jars for later.
Just in case.
Pivot.
Make the Jedi kid evil.
Don't need Sephardist guy anymore.
Got a new evil guy.
Make my evil guy kill his Jedi pals when they come to arrest me.
I'll finish him off with my lightning attack
Fucking guy used his sword
To bounce my lightning back at me
Honestly my fault
Takes a minute for the lightning to wind down
And he got my ass on that bounce
Fair play
Now I look like a leather couch
But it's fine
Can blame the Jedi for that too
Use the clones to kill the Jedi
Have my evil guy kill the separatists
Keep the army spin into empire
Galaxy now under my control
Chill as Emperor for a little while
Humiliate Vader for a laugh
make Death Star, End Game Achieve.
Vader's kid blows up my Death Star.
Pivot, get a new young apprentice by turning him evil once he kills his dad,
or maybe make Vader cool by making him kill his gay son.
Either way, it's a win-win for me, thrown down hole and killed.
Pivot, good thing I kept those clone jars, make new clone body to inhabit.
Takes time to get right.
Need something to do until then.
Build enormous fleet of big spaceships, each with their own super Death Star laser.
Keep them on the down low.
Why use them?
They lose half the value as soon as you fly him off the lot.
Clone Sun betrays me, but it's no biggie.
It's fine.
Have loads of clones at this point.
What's one clone's son?
Create a decoy fascist empire.
But one of my weirder clones in charge, not giving them any of my ships, though, can build
his own shit.
Don't look at me.
Get a bank loan.
Let failed clone recruit Vader's grandson.
We'll explain why later.
Let those guys take over the galaxy with a different Super Death Star.
Assume they built this one themselves.
Very cute.
galaxy now under my control only via proxy though not done yet let vader's grandson ben okay you serve failed clone and rule galaxy wants to kill the past but whatever can still make this work need to keep this kid in the mix will make sense when we get there drop the big news i'm not dead fortnight awesome moment lead kilo rend to my base using complex scavenger hunt puzzle knife tell him it's always actually he's i
Tell him he's actually always worked for me.
Big reveal, big moment.
He's my lacking now.
A little traitorous and unreliable, but this will pay off later.
Trust me.
Use death starships to take over the galaxy even more.
Galaxy now under my control.
Awesome, but not enough.
Something missing.
Let Kylo Ren lead clone granddaughter to home base using complex scavenger hunt.
Puzzle knife cool idea to use it twice, I think.
Taunt granddaughter into killing me so I can possess her.
unjanked body, all part of my grand scheme.
End game achieved.
Kylo Ren betrays me.
Pivot.
Possession's stupid plan anyway.
Instead, use Benin Ray's horny essence to make me my nasty old body normal again.
Throw Benin whole.
Grandson purpose revealed.
Destroy resistance with lightning powers.
Shooting spaceships down with magic lightning.
Basically a solved problem at this point.
Galaxy now under my control.
Kill the granddaughter, actually.
Don't need her anymore.
Lightning power is classic for a reason.
I've got this thing in the bag
as long as she was in bounce the lightning back
off me off her fucking laser sword
end game achieved
shout out to soul again
that's a gift to you my man
anyway sheev is the best
shout out to she
and I think you could have worked
more more in there somewhere
that feels like it's built on the strong
foundations of Steve Martin's Christmas wish
on SNL
which if the only
show the abridged version now
as they do like Christmas highlights, but the
original like fireside
of Christmas wish from Steve Martin is
an all-time SNL staff. I think you can get
I think I've seen the full one, but maybe I haven't.
I'll see if I can dig up the full one to make sure I put
in the episode description.
Anyway, thank you
for my, for that divergence.
It's that post lives in my brain.
I can't believe that
that Fortnite is a canon, is a canon
part of
of the sequel trilogy. I,
I just found this out a couple days ago for what it's worth.
I didn't know about the palpiting speech in Fortnite that is referenced in the movies.
Imagine if you had not.
What if you had been someone who's like, I'm not going to watch any trailers for this movie.
I'm going to go in blind.
I don't want to know anything.
I've gone to go with no idea what that movie's going to be about.
I know what I'll do to make sure I miss all the spoilers.
I'm going to log in and play Fortnite.
I need a battle royale, victory royale to keep my eye, my, my, my, my, my prying eyes away from these spoilers.
We have another sequel connection in this episode, which we should get back to, but we're not quite there yet.
We have to go back to Canaan and Ezra.
I don't think the scene has the juice.
The Ben-DU one.
We're basically, we're rerunning Canaan's big journey from the previous episode, which was good.
But now we're running it back with Ezra
and we're going back in the spider holes.
It's a note from Sheave.
Worked first time.
That's right.
Puzzle knife good enough to use again.
Exactly.
Spider tunnels, may as well double dip.
It's kind of a triple dip on the spider tunnels.
They've been, yeah, we've been in those tunnels a few times at this point.
I feel like they just, they still got something to give.
I don't know.
Also, I don't quite have the metaphor they're going.
with these spiders unraveled.
I don't understand it at fucking all.
What is the point of the,
because they're force,
they're creatures that are sensitive
to your anxiety.
They're like anxiety.
Spiders. They're empath creatures.
But like spider. But you can't reach them
with the force. No, you can't.
So, yeah, horses, I guess.
Can you not reach horses with the force?
No. I don't know. I feel like horses are hard
to commune with. I don't know.
Commune with. I don't know.
But if you if you can't reach them with the force,
why does he can do the hand out force things?
That's what I'm saying.
Just like that's his like pose.
That's how he locks into being calm.
Yeah.
It's I think so if I was going to try to like push some like logic on to it,
it is that they're like a highly reflective surface.
It is so easy to perceive what you are carrying in yourself when you reach out and touch them.
they'll pit like what they will show back to you is like the fear and aggression that you feel toward them
and you will be convinced that like that is the read you're getting off them and it takes a real
like squarely in the middle not like wielding the force but just like letting things be broadcast to you
then you see their true nature which is they're just vibing they're just little bugs in their holes
right and and so the thing that Ezra was running into the problem with at the end of last season was
I'm trying too hard to master you.
I'm trying too hard to connect to you even.
That's not going to work.
They're still going to be hostile for that.
Yeah, you have to be like brain empty.
Right.
At peace.
Head empty, peace, just vibes.
Can I throw it?
No, go ahead.
Just I was going to throw it throughout life.
I think I've mentioned it before, but this is actually something that in the last, like, novels that he wrote for the old Ewe, Timothy Zahn.
uh there is he sends mara jade and luke off on adventures they can finally like uh you know realize
they're in love uh in e u he's not gay uh despite the chanel boots in the in the movies uh old e u
uh luke not gay movie luke probably gay uh but uh the thing that they're solving is like
by this point the story looks kind of gotten too powerful like there's just too many stories
where it's like he's been a jettine master now for like 10 years like it's getting increasingly
hard to like get good adversaries for him or like have his powers feel consistent book to
book.
But the other thing that I think they start to tap into that's actually really good like circling
back toward critique of the Jedi.
What sets Luke off on a, on the journey that's going to take him to like try to find Marjade
is he goes to do like peace talk negotiation stuff.
It's like a Jedi is going to help be in the room.
And he gets there and the people are like this, this species that's having this like dispute
is like we don't want any Jedi involved with this
and he's like what
that's okay but why
and it's like well it's super awkward basically
they think every time a Jedi's gotten
as powerful as you it's all gone bad
there's just a matter of time before
like you go evil you might even know it but like
just anyone who is this powerful and uses it
this readily
they're gonna go bad they're a huge threat
whether they know or not
and later in the in the book
the thing that sort of Mara brings out with Luke
is that he's been
wielding the force like this as a tool, like using it to pull in information, using it to sense
things and all this. But the analogy she uses, and I think there's a bit of this here, is that
when you're using the force, it's like you've turned on heavy machinery. You're using the force
to just like, you know, move mountains effectively. But it's only when you stop doing that,
they're able to do the other half of what makes all the Jedi ship powerful, which is the ability
to take in your surroundings, take in what the force is trying to tell you. And so, you know,
They kind of get at this thing where you can either be really actively powerful with the force or you can be like powerfully guided by the force.
But the two are kind of mutually exclusive.
And I think there's a bit of that happening here with the spiders.
Like what we're driving at with Bendu's trying to teach them is like, you know, you can.
And I think this is like why you can't exactly say Bendu is a completely satisfying answer to like how ought one be in this universe to use the Tom Bombadil and
Right. Yes. He's so in the he's so at peace. He's so it like I'm just being here in the universe that the battle with the Sith is not relevant to him. Yeah. He wishes you well. Love to be a sage on a mountain. He's not going to help. Many of us have rent to pay and many of us have like families with people in prison or you know what I mean like the world is is not the mountain. You know the mountains in the world, but the world is not the mountain. Um, and this thing like Tom Bombadale is like, oh yeah, you're getting that. You're working on the rent. You're working on the
ring, huh?
Neat.
Anyway, like, here's some instructions.
Here's some MapQuest stuff, but, like, good luck with that.
You guys want breakfast?
Do you guys, are you hungry?
You're so powerful.
Can you just help us?
Like, you just, like, chased all the Barrowites off.
Like, it was nothing.
I'll, but you'd fuck up those Nazgoyle.
Like, could you, like, could you give us a hand?
No.
No.
No, I'm in the hang with Goldberry.
Just my weird wife.
Yeah, maybe he's just too wife guide.
It got me a hippie.
Yeah.
What universe?
This is Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil, Lord of the Rings guy.
We've talked about this guy.
I think maybe, maybe we talked about this guy recently.
We talked about him like when we first saw him about Bendu.
Like, where's this guy fit?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a Tom Bombadil character in this.
Yeah, I didn't clock it.
I think there's a bit of that.
Yeah.
On the first stuff that's interesting is like, one of the things that we were able to pull
from the Acolytes, first four episodes that is, was like, okay, this is,
there's something here.
It's like the force, which is of that planet or who were run to that planet,
I have this completely different relationship with the force and different terminology and stuff.
And, you know, they contrast themselves as not like, like Bendu, as not being force wielders, but, you know, pulling on the thread sometimes or just like, like living in the thread.
And that sort of active, passive thing is kind of there, too.
I'd love to see, I'd love to see more characters play with that sort of thing that you talked about as being in that Luke book.
So, I wish it was going to be a little more clear here.
Ali, Bonaugel, you had something.
I was going to say something much less insightful, which was, speaking of brains, was anyone else afraid when the Holocron was sitting on the big spider head?
They were maybe evil now.
Oh, the holocaum.
They were absorbing evil power from the holocron on the big spider brain.
That's smart.
That's wow.
Yeah.
Could be.
I do think it's funny that Bendu was like, where should I put this?
Boop right on top of this, this resting spider.
He has such a fun.
The minute Ezra puts down his little, like, spider repelling stick, and they're like, where's Bendu?
And you see the big hand come in and yoink it away?
It's real good.
I love you, Bendu.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought for a second, Bendu got evil because he, like, just hung out with the Sith
Holocron for too long.
For a quick second, I was like, oh, shit, they norted Bendu by leaving him with this fucking
holocawn.
This won't affect me.
This is so funny.
If they just walked all that shit back.
They were like, well, actually, no, evil is extremely real and will corrupt you.
This evil cube will make Bendu evil.
I'm a little, I was curious because it felt like they walked.
This isn't really a walk back.
But the fact that he first, he was like, the force is just the force, you know, everything is everything.
And then now he's like, you can't put these hologrons together.
You're going to see the world.
They're powerful and their opposites.
What he says is not that he doesn't say, you.
You know, it's wrong to do it.
What he says is it's dangerous.
He basically says, like, you can't do it.
You can't handle it.
Sure. Okay.
Yeah, you're not a Bedou level.
Yeah, a clarity of vision beyond your kind, which is like, you're not ready for this.
Bendu is the potion seller.
And he is saying, you're not ready for my strongest potions.
And Ezra just wants every potion.
He wants the strongest potion, 100%.
A hundred percent.
Who amongst us is intempted by the strongest potion at times?
That's true.
This is true.
It is weird.
I do think the thing here, though, is like, is this true for any two holocrons, any Sith
Holocron, and any Jedi Holocron?
Because he hasn't even seen the Jedi Holocron.
He doesn't know what Jedi Holocron this is.
This is the Jedi Helicon that has fucking Anakin being like, to do a lightsaber hit, hit triangle,
triangle square like but it's but it's now also the holocrod that we know was given to him
because his teacher didn't want to I mean we should go read those comments to get the full
context we don't know what else is in there the problem just every time we hear about the holocron
huge repositories of like Jedi knowledge every time they show us a holocron doing something
uh hey guys obi won here um temple uh temple's down temple down
Dad, do not go back there.
You do not want to see what's going on at the temple.
Don't try to call me.
Good luck.
Peace.
I'm going to change the channel a little bit.
Don't listen to the Younglings.
That's the Anakin version of that is the classic.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, is it any possible?
I guess that's the application here.
Yeah, maybe the process of making a holocron.
you're right you're right
there's aren't many Sith holokrons out there
yeah yeah yeah we see a lot of
there is a limited
limited resource right we see them because we are
watching and playing Star Wars stuff and so like
that's but if you're on if you're playing
if you're living in the Knights of the Old Republic
world and living on Taurus what the fuck
is a Sith holocron
I'm trying to go put money on this Bendach star
killer fight uh oh
the imperial ship is shooting we're all dead now
right that's what life is like for you
you never heard of us of a holocron
you try to get the rackgoor serum
you know what I mean it's different for you
anyway they get
the holocron and they take off back to space
and I guess actually the thing
the important thing is while they're in the caves they have
the big they have their big
moment which is an apology
and then hey you didn't need to apologize
for that right
which is
but since it feels I've kind of covered some of the
reconciliation
ground earlier.
It's nice.
Like it's always like,
you know,
Kane and Ezra
have good scenes together
but it's just
kind of like
nothing with the Bendu stuff
even though I dig
the character and all that
like just the whole
getting this from the planet
feels like
there's maybe
they think there's more meat
on this bone
than there is
as far as talking to Bendu
and reclaiming that Holocron.
They hug.
There's a big hug.
There's a big Ezra Canaan
hug and he hug
back and he passed him in the back. Again, we're talking about different types of ways to have
Jedi, you know, relationships and master and apprenticeships and stuff. And it's like, I don't know.
Obi-Wan ever hug Anakin? Probably not. He probably said, Anakin, I'm glad you're okay. Now let's go.
And that's it, you know? Those boys never, never let themselves hug each other. So.
Obi-Wan felt too English. You're right. Like, he felt too much like I was
boarded at age eight.
Right.
What do you mean?
What do you mean you need?
What do you mean you need Papa's hug?
What do you?
I was fine.
We already did.
We already both force pushed someone at the same time.
That's about as physically close as I'm allowed to be to another person.
Uh, so they go to the handoff.
Have we seen the space station before?
We, in the comic, in the son of that son of Dathamere comic.
and that's it.
This is, I think, two issues of that comic.
It was revealed that this is kind of one of the former mall-era death watch-like bases,
because this is called Vizla Keep O'9.
This is one of the Vizla Mandalorian outposts.
Interesting.
So, yeah, when the Shadow Collective took this over and used it during the late Clone Wars era, basically.
But other than that, this is the...
first time we're seeing it visually in a show.
Yeah.
Partially smashed up.
It's a ring base, but part of it's been knocked out.
Well, it's a ring base, like, built into it already, like, a ring asteroid.
It's a big ring asteroid.
It has, like, a rocky exterior except for the docking bay.
So presumably either they built a ring and then put, like, a half ring and then put
asteroid stuff on it, or more likely, they, like, mind down.
down an asteroid and turned it into this cool ring base?
I don't know.
It's neat.
I like it.
It's really cool.
I can imagine this being like kind of like this,
this camouflaging motivated design or something like that.
But it's, it's very, very cool.
Super into it.
Yeah.
That's good.
And it's like it's time for Mall to be going more mask off than he's been.
Uh, you know, he, they've been brought here to do the prisoner exchange and there's a bit of misdirection as he, uh, sends Ezra off, uh, to, to await him with the, with the holocron.
Uh, he's going to take Canaan to the crew of the ghost. Uh, as they're walking through the base, he tells Canaan, rather, ravish shame face at least, like, I didn't mean to blind you. And he got me. He got me. Yeah, he did. He got me with that one. I was like, oh, are we really going to get.
Well, maybe Canaan set him up too well.
That's the problem.
Maybe he was actually trying to have a genuine moment, but sometimes you see a really good
dunk there where it's like, I could, this would be the funniest thing possible to do.
And you shouldn't do it.
You shouldn't do it.
But like, it's just so funny.
It'd be so funny if Canaan said, no, you were just trying to kill me.
And then it's like, you know what?
Mall says, well, first you don't succeed.
And you're standing right near this airlock.
Yeah, and Canaan gets fucking airlock sent out into space.
and then does the thing that people were pissed at Leia for in Last Jedi
and uses the force to fling himself forward in vacuum
towards the entry point.
And I've rewatched it like three times.
Like, oh, well, is there a difference here?
Not that this fucking matters,
because that's not why they didn't like that movie.
You know what I mean?
The reason that people were mad.
No, but it was a piece of leverage.
Right.
And I know you can't argue with these people by going point by point,
but it still gets under my skin.
skin and he reaches out
and like he's using the fucking force
to pull himself towards the ship in zero G
it's not a big deal
of course it's a thing a powerful Jedi could do
what are we talking about
and I know Leah is not
we don't think of Leah as someone
who's gone through the training that
that Canaan has
but there's a big time gap there
like and she's a Skywalker
and that's how this stupid thing works
she's one she's of the chosen one
lineage. Let it fucking go. Let it go. She's super. If you tested her midaclorians, they'd be
off the charts. I don't think it looked that bad. I don't think it looks much worse than this.
I don't remember. I don't feel like the entire like the bridge being ruptured. I don't think any,
like I think that was probably one of the weaker effects of the movie. Sure.
Was just the, it didn't, it did not look super. I think kind of the problem is like.
Like, I don't think it landed as like, oh, yeah, you forgot, you forgot Leia is a fucking Skywalker.
I always felt like it just kind of was like, eh, we're going to, we're going to kill off this ship.
And she's going to, she's going to float back.
The thing that is always confusing to me is that did land in the theater I saw the movie in, right?
Her eyes opened back up in the middle of space and she begins to pull herself forward back in.
And obviously there's a context here because of Carrie Fisher.
but like it landed the audience fucking loved it where I saw it and as always then it became
this thing that's like that reality just doesn't exist for the world because a lot of people
were yelling about it online right so yeah anyway well there was a weird like how could you
kill off admiral acbar and it's like all right now I love me some admiral act bar from like
the EU but like let's let's be real here yeah yeah I think if this conversation
is hitting a particular note for you
the listener, you should go listen to our
most recent Q&A in which
we talk about the fandom.
Yes, agreed.
But...
Agreed. Anyway.
The force works in mysterious ways.
Get over it. And Cainin uses it to
zip back in and go rescue his buds.
While Ezra and Moll sit down to do some work
with some holocaiths.
Yep.
I'm just looking at Cain in here.
he's force jumping
like he's platforming
he's platforming
once he's moving
he does begin to bounce and stuff
but he launches himself
with the force
the force
creates the inertia
to get him
he's reaching forward
and pulling himself with the force
maybe I'm wrong
I'm gonna go back
I'll rewatch it
like there's no moment
where he appears to have
unassisted
like he is always
bouncing off something
he's always jumping
I mean he's on the thing
at the end
but that's not
enough to produce.
Okay, you know what?
I did not see the leg movement.
I was so focused on the reach out and the like pull that I was not focused.
Sure.
But the leg movement is like, it's like, you know.
Yeah, I obviously saw him bouncing later, but.
I think the leg movement is more like.
This is stupid.
It's just the way that the body.
The Jedi triple jump all the time.
Anyway.
It's like swimming, you know.
Yes, yes.
We, I do like the frost on his, as, as he was.
That shit's really cool.
Don't go into a vacuum.
It's bad out there.
It's cool.
I was like, oh, that's scary.
And he's holding his breath.
Uh-huh.
It's scary.
It's scary.
But he survives it.
Shows up.
Kills the best droids in the universe, unfortunately.
After Maul tells them to kill the prisoners.
Like, he's going like.
Oh, yeah.
Nope, full treachery.
Now is the moment.
Yeah.
Total scorping.
In his eyes.
this is his chance to get to get Ezra on his team and he's got to cut off Ezra's other options.
So I don't know.
If Ezra had no family left, who would Ezra go?
Probably a misread of how Ezra would handle that.
But yeah, I think he probably's just like, oh, wow, we got a good to tattooing right now together if that's how it goes, right?
If they, if, if, if, uh, can leave a note for your mom and dad.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, let's go.
They'll tell them to meet up with us.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway.
Anyhow.
They get their cool holocron moment.
Yep.
They gaze into the, to the, not an orb, but a cube and a pyramid.
Uh-huh.
And.
I wish I bought the pyramid when I had the chance.
Damn.
You want me to send you one, Rob?
Next time I go.
Yeah, maybe.
Get you one.
Maybe a couple extra crystals, too.
I could have.
I feel like I didn't live.
I didn't get the most holocron I could have.
Sure.
I'd be happy too.
The effect here is really cool.
Big pink and white and kind of purple blue lighting from the middle here.
We kind of skipped that they both stay out loud what they want.
Like they're like teens doing a seance together, you know, they're like.
It's so good.
It's very sleep overcoated.
because what Ezra wants is a way to stop the Sith permanently,
which Maul thinks is ambitious, as always.
And he's like, I want something a little more mundane, hope.
And of course, what he means is, as we learn,
I hope I get to kill Ben Kenobi.
As he doesn't know his name's Ben yet, right?
Or his new name is Ben.
But that's what he's hoping for, apparently, as they begin to see in it.
And we get this really cool, like, photo-negative inverted.
color thing where like the the skin tones and hair tones are like reversed and with maul's
face it's like the i believe it's like the parts that are normally red are black instead of
the other way around um yeah in this in this this you know um cool light it's really really cool
i also i i love that uh mall refers to esra again as my apprentice and i love that like nobody's
like I'm pushing back like it's kind of just like flowing over everyone like nobody is like
he's not your blah blah blah it's just like he he just the confidence in which he says it
everyone is just kind of moving along with the conversation with it's either it's either it's right
and like well we can't knock you you did teach him a little bit there is sort of an apprentice thing
or there's like a yeah we're just not going to argue with him about yeah let's just keep it
moving, that doesn't matter.
You know, choose your battle.
Choose your battle. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go into it with you on this one, but.
That's right.
This is not the dinner table conversation I want to have tonight.
We will talk about that at a later date when my friends aren't over, you know?
Exactly.
Exactly.
But, yeah, this was like, I love when Star Wars does weird, cool visual effects.
I feel like it's a rare thing.
But this was really, this was rad.
And then Canaan is rescuing Hara and the rest of the crew.
He slices off all the heads and he bursts in with Hara and everyone into Ezra and Mal mind melding.
And Canaan removes his mask and is able to see through the force,
Maul and Ezra kneeling on the floor, which I thought was really cool.
It was like a really cool visual.
Yeah.
Matrix Revolution's underrated.
Oh, it does have a Matrix Revolutions vibe.
You're right.
The blinded hero.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Able to now see the pure energy.
To me, it felt like, yeah, we were able, we were looking at what, looking through kind of
Canaan's new sort of force perception ability rather than like his literal
eyesight being able to perceive this like it felt like this is of a it was cool to see kind of
canaan's new foresight um through his own perspective yeah well and it's only because the
holocrons were doing this in this moment right like they're very quick to i think it's harris like
you can see maybe it's azra you can see again and he's like just when the hologrons were doing
that thing right like yeah he's not i i i don't i don't
The way they're handling it so far, I suspect we will not get a Canaan gets his vision healed arc, you know?
No, I don't think so.
But we will get a, he's, we will get a blind swordsman.
The connection to the world around him serves in some ways to that function, right?
Like we often see, for instance, Ezra helping him in and out of cockpits or in and out of ships and stuff like that.
And I think that that's going to probably continue.
But I think we're going to be Al Pacino and scent of a woman.
To Ezra Bridgers, Chris O'Donnell.
You're so right.
He's, if I were 10 years younger, I would, I would have burned this place down.
To the Imperial Senate.
I would have brought a flamethrower.
Yeah, I would run a flame thrower to this, to this motherfucker or whatever he says.
Yeah.
That's Azar, that's Canaan.
People should see Saddle Woman.
I don't know if it holds up, but people should see it.
I haven't seen it in two years.
I mean, it's very easy to see it as a deeply misogynistic movie.
I don't think it is.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
But I think it is easy to read that way just because the way the Pacino character is.
Sometimes you have a character who's deeply misogynistic and also played by Al Pacino.
And then the power of the performances in the way that we're all compelled by not that Darth
Mal's a misogynist, but he's an evil character.
But we're like, yeah, but he's cooking.
Sometimes.
He's got that heat.
Sometimes.
Anyway, in the middle of this, I think importantly, a thing that we should say out loud is
that, like, Maul doesn't see shit at first.
Maul sees oblivion. He sees the truth of reality. Like Bendu, Ben-Du said, you know, again, that, you know, a clarity of vision beyond your kind. And for Maul, that is, there is nothing at the root of it all. I looked into the universe and the universe was empty, right? Classic.
I thought it might have been his, him perceiving his eventual demise. Could be. Like, yeah.
No, but like, you know, you joke, like, he's saying, I hope that.
I can kill Obi-Won.
It might be actual.
But he might have actually said, like,
show me a vision of hope,
and there's no hope for him.
But what he gets is, like,
the, like, bleed over from Ezra's vision
of, like, Star Wars, a new hope.
And, like, Obi-Won says a part of that story.
He does see a new hope.
Right.
But, like, that's interesting.
So he goes looking for hope,
and he's served yet again.
There's no hope for you, but we do have revenge.
Right.
Well, and important.
Certainly, coming back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode, I was positioning this idea of like, what if balance isn't one, I think one part inside of one person, but it's a, it's a dialectical or relational thing.
The idea that, like, oh, they were able to get something from this holocron because all three of them were there in the exact right way they needed to be.
Maul and Ezra needed to open it together.
They needed to stare into it together.
If any one of them had done it by themselves, it wouldn't have worked.
and then Kain and get in there to, like, cut it the fuck off before it went too bad, right?
Before they, like, were completely consumed by their vision.
And they got something out of it.
And that something is going to lead us to fucking Luke Skywalker.
I know it is.
Luke Skywalker is going to be in this show.
They've now opened that door.
How old is he again at this point?
He's the same age as Ezra.
He's like one year younger than Ezra.
Oh, that's right.
Right, right, right.
We saw Leia.
Yeah, he's Leia's age.
They're twins.
Right, right, right, right.
Sorry.
I will, I groaned at the idea that that Obi-Wan will end up in this show, but I was like,
but it makes sense if Mall is such a big character, that, you know, we will end up with an
Obi-Wan.
Maybe this is how, you know, they, they kind of meet up again.
But I don't, I don't want to see.
I don't want to hear, food.
I don't want to take the bold, talented Mr. Ripley direction, though.
Oh, my God.
What's that direction?
They replace Luke with a fake Luke
And our Luke
The Luke that we know from a new hope
Isn't a Skywalker at all
He's some sort of body double
It's Ezra Bridger
It's Ezra Bridger
It's Ezra Bridger
I should be living your life
It's very funny
They're not going to do that
I should be a poor, broke moisture farmer
I would go Darth Ball
In trying to find Dave Poloni
To yell at him about that
I would, I would move the ends of the earth.
If he was like, I'm going to undo decades of Star Wars lore to put my special boy in the place of the real special boy.
So funny.
This is how.
Imagine if we were innocently watching the Mandalorian and Luke Skywalker was like, I have to tell you something.
Yeah.
I'm Ezra, Bridger.
And we were all like, what the fuck just happened?
What are we watching?
I bleached my skin.
Oh my.
They're not going to do this, thankfully.
But, you know.
Well, anyway, that's the holocrons of fate.
That's where we sort of, we sort of leave things.
And then we are on to some rebels business with the Antilles extraction.
Great name.
It is, that does feel like air, I think we're talking about this.
That is airport pot boilers.
like naming that is a that is a like uh frederick forsyfe ass like spy novel um i wish the episode
lived up to it well we'll get into it we'll think about how how this how this all
is tell me about this episode rob so the bottom line is the rebels have a big problem which is the
apparently phoenix squadron is full of fucking scrubs uh this is this is the sort of lineup that jimmy butler
going to go like 1V5 on in practice and just unload on them.
We open on them trying to escort a transport ship full of food supplies for a planet
that is starving under like imperial blockade or misrule.
And they're ambushed by an imperial light cruiser and a couple of Thai interceptors for a change.
I love the design of this ship, the imperial.
ship that has the three tie interceptors in the front of it, it's like there's a missing
gap in the kind of nose of the imperial ship, sort of like the way you might think of
the Melanian Falcon missing the little front slot, and in that slot are three
tie interceptors, and they kind of like twirl down balletically into space when they get
deployed.
And like, you know, I said, I don't necessarily love this episode for other reasons, but
all of the space shit in it, all the way through.
is sick as hell.
The egg, the egg ship is so cool.
That is a Mon Calamari.
Oh, the transport, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
From Empire Strikes Back.
Yep.
But point is, the rebels get washed.
Like absolutely.
They have like five or six A-wings out there?
And they just get-
And all just like completely gobbled up by these, you know, two or three interceptors.
And then the interceptors dastardly after, after disabling the,
the rebel transport, they blow it up.
They don't accept its surrender.
We say it a lot, but this is some tie fighter for the PC type shit, is your official order
is to not destroy the ship, but then Thron or the secret or the emperor's secret
society or whatever has given you a little secret side objective, which is to ignore
that order and blow up the food supply, or are you really willing to join our dark cult of
evil piefighter pilots?
It's meant to read, like, these bastards are doing war crimes.
there is a little bit of like these rubble left it pretty late to uh strike their colors if
if you will like this is a pretty like well not we completely lost that battle uh this isn't
a fight anymore uh right i feel it just like the imperial the imperial policy must be should be
well that's good food we should get that food for us why not bring that food on board there's a few
there are a few different thing they get they get to this actually in the academy section so
Anyway, this whole group gets wiped out.
That triggers a crisis of we are losing pilots at just a staggering rate.
But good news, the new fulcrum, fulcrum's not just a person.
Fulcrum is like all the rebel handlers out there.
Folkrum is an idea.
This fulcrum has a peculiar diction that sounds instantly familiar.
Yeah, I was wondering everybody else had this feeling.
Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
Like 100% this fulcrum sounds like callous scrambling.
And Fulcrum has the news, there are Imperial pilots who wish to defect at the
Sky, Skyhammer, I don't know, something, some sort of academy, it's really cool.
It looks like the floating Star Destroyer Bridge, just like hovering there in the clouds,
like in Bespin, but it's their Top Gun School.
Yeah.
And Sabine's like, I'll do this one.
I was at the Imperial Academy for years, I'll remember.
And so we're trying to make Sabine happen.
No, wait a second, because the first thing that happens is Ezra goes, this should be my episode.
And everyone, and Sabine has to state her case.
She has to argue for why she should get to go do something.
Go sit the fuck down.
Get out of here.
Go away.
Where, I mean, it is so classic, like, teen, teen, like, a, like, a,
just like overconfident, like entitled.
He has done this before.
I'm okay with this.
Like, I'm okay that this is like a little piece.
Yeah, it's a good characterization.
I think even at one point, doesn't somebody kind of like put him, put it like, oh, it's
something about like the solo missions.
Yeah, yeah.
He's like, he tells Canaan later, he's like, I just don't think solo missions are a good
idea.
And then I'm just not a fan of these solo missions.
And Canaan's like, unless it's you.
Yeah, but you like it when it's, when you're going solo, actually.
So I like that this was like a bit, like a, there's a short-sightedness and like a little self-centeredness that Ezra has that I think is really true to like where he's at in his like emotional maturity character development, you know, general arc.
And it's like true to his age and him being kind of like an overconfident teen.
The funny thing is.
I just, it's funny that Sabine has to fucking tell him why.
Herra puts Sabine on the mission.
And then he's like, wait, wait, wait, shouldn't this be me?
I've done this before.
I've gone undercover before.
And Sabine's like, I went to the Imperial Academy.
I was an Imperial cadet.
Like, that makes me the person.
And Harrah's rejoinder to that is not Sabine's right.
It's, we should focus on Sabine.
Sabine's the right pick for this.
The actual argument that Hera ends up making is, you're too famous, Ezra.
I know.
Any of the rest of us.
would be under would they would know who we are because they keep making episodes about us so sabine
doesn't get good episodes as well so we could send her undercover for this one um she's perfect for
this one no one knows who the fuck she is no one knows what her deal is um we forgot what her deal
was too because it's not going to be art or explosives in this episode it's just going to be that
part where she's impaired she went to the imperial academy and then like briefly is there going to be
another episode about art and explosions this at this arc or this set uh yeah don't worry about
that. I'm not going to bring that one up right now. We'll talk about that later. I will say I like
this episode more before I watch the next episode. Anyway. So, yeah, I'll also say like,
I actually think Sabine and Calas have like kind of the same problem to agree with their
characters, which is they've thrown so much weird like random backstory shit in there where it's
like the equivalent of Callis being like, hey, and I killed all your people too, is the equivalent
of of uh sabine being like and then i was a bounty on her for years me and my buddy just like run
just living on the run she was a bounty hunter for approximately like nine months in a weird teen
stage before she became a rebel but don't worry like that but no the imperial academy stuff was
like super real and serious like i basically like i'm ready to go to imperial top gun uh but also
we're going to increasingly not talk about that bounty hunter phase much the way we're going
increasingly not talk about calluses uh just delaying jace phase yeah yeah it's it's you know we can talk
more about this next episode because i think it's both of them together but the watching this and then
the next episode which is very hair focused episode made me really remember that concept art that i think
we all looked at briefly um a few during a q and a recently of the um the the the the the the early
pre, like, early development version of the show where Hara and Sabine were sort of swapped.
I don't know if y'all remember that art.
I'm going to send a very blurry version of it through right now where Hara is the child.
And literally in the first image, the child running around with an arm, arms full of explosives.
And Sabine is like the older, like, cool double blaster wielding, like shipmom.
And it's like, oh, things.
There's stuff that just didn't map over to that switch, you know?
They kind of like somehow, some of that stuff just stuck on Hera, even after Hera, you know, a lot of this stuff feels like it could have gone differently if those characters had stayed in their different slots.
But we'll talk more about that in the next episode.
So, Sabine is sent to the Imperial Academy.
Skystrike is what it's called.
Yeah, the Skystrike Academy.
It is where they are taking their best Thai fighter pilots and train them to be elite combat pilots.
And while there, we meet Wedge Antilles, Hobby from Rogue Squadron.
Rake?
Wait, Wrake?
We'll come back to that.
While there, Sabine overhears, after doing some missions where it's like simulated war crimes and they sort of hesitate.
Sabine overhears Wedge being like, we got to get out of here.
They're onto his. Agent Callis and Governor Price have just shown up to investigate treason at the academy.
We're in deep trouble. And Sabine goes up to wedge and is like, I can help get you out. They try to escape during a train exercise in space. It goes wrong, horribly wrong.
Their escape attempt is foiled before they can reach Ezra and Canaan ship. And they are taken in for, they're taken in for questioning.
Sabine breaks loose and gets in a fist fight with Governor Price who has hands,
but does manage to get the better of her.
They make off in a Thai bomber with the surprising help of Agent Callas,
who gives them a safe passage to the Thai bomber.
And they're chased through the clouds by a vaguely familiar, honestly,
like Imperial Pilot.
I thought it was Wolf Yalarin when he first got rid of him.
He looks so much what he was not Wuf Yalarin.
It's a different guy.
Huh?
Is it soon to your foul?
It is not soon to your foul.
This is a new guy named Volt Scaris, the most fascist name that's ever existed.
He's here to be our like imperial ace, our like evil imperial ace pilot, which I, that's fun.
That to me is great.
I actually hope that that becomes like a running, I would love a running rivalry between him.
and subpoena or something, you know?
Yeah.
And, you know, just what looks like their number is up,
Ezra shows up at the exact right moment,
having sense that they were in danger,
pulls them out, and they fly back to chopper base,
and the new pilots join the rebellion.
So, first things,
did you notice one of the rebel pilots is wearing a minister toa hat?
I did.
That's right.
I don't know what it means, but I...
That's Tua.
The Tua lived conspiracy continues.
Well, except she might have died again, but...
Okay, well...
Maybe she's like shitty Highlander, where it's like...
Oh, my God.
She'll always just, like, be getting wrecked in a rebel mission.
That's so funny.
That's very funny.
Just getting reborn to get reowned.
Let me write another Star Wars story.
how many Shatua lived and
secretly had a cool life
after Rebels. Don't worry about it.
She's running a juice shop. No.
She's running a juice shop, yeah, exactly.
Oh, she would so
be into wellness Instagram.
She sells her art
at the juice shop.
Oh, do you like this?
Yeah.
Okay, this is jumping to the literal
end of the episode, but you said that
hobby was from Rogue Squadron.
Are we supposed to know who that is?
Does that have like emotional depth?
Because when Sabine was like,
does to me.
Okay.
Well,
when Sabine was like,
we got Wedge Antilles.
Somebody,
everybody knows.
And then it was like,
and Hobby,
I guess.
I was like,
they couldn't even,
they couldn't give this other fuck out a last name.
She stumbles over the last name because,
canonical we don't know his last name.
Okay.
In the EU,
I believe they gave him Hobby Clivian.
Okay.
But.
Yeah,
leave that one in the EU.
That's fine.
I would make y'all read the Raith Squadron books.
Please, please talk to us.
You're going to a hobby pill.
Allie, you would actually love these books.
Tell us about Rogue Squadron or Raith Squadron, just a high level, Rob.
Well, I mean, it's the goof as and gallant of the Star Wars, like Mill Sci-Fi.
So Michael Stackball, who's a prolific battle tech writer as well, wrote, and Delta Latin
License Properties, wrote a series called The X-Wing Series, starring his OC, Coran,
Horn, who is basically, he's also, he's also Luke, in so many words, he's a, he's a really good
X-wing pilot. And he joins up as they are sort of reforming Roak Squadron. And it's just a straight
up, like, military procedural of like Wedg Antilles is rebuilding Rogue Squadron, only the best
pilots. And, but, you know, they're also going to go on little, like, adventures behind enemy
lines. They're going to be like a little special forces unit. And a lot of stuff happens.
Raith Squadron books pick up from where those left off. And those are written by the late Aaron Alston. And Raith Squadron is a little bit more like, what if we recruited bad kids for this? Like what if we recruited like a bunch of just a bunch of misfits? This squadron is never going to come together. And they are more for rogue squadrons like mostly pilots and then doing a little bit of like commando shit. These are commandos first who can also pilot. But also like they're there to do more.
like the dirty work, right?
They got the explosives guy.
They got, what they got is a squadron full of people
with massive personal trauma.
There we go.
And so the Raid Squadron books are about PTSD.
They are about combat fatigue.
They are like, it's legitimately a really good series
about characters like increasingly pushed to the edge
in a war where like the odds are not in their favor.
the Raid Squadron books the Roar Squadron books like never kill a major character really like they just don't do it the Raith Squadron books you're like all right here's our main cast of characters or someone could die at any moment it's like it's real good I feel like yeah I I I that's have they re-canonize any of that stuff nope because I feel like that would be a really good candidate for new content
new, new shows.
Raid Squadron
cries out for a show.
A Raith Squadron show
would hit, could really hit.
I think, you know, if I was making,
if I was Kathleen Kennedy
or whoever is now in charge of the Lucas Art,
or LucasArts, she's Lucasfilm stuff in Disney,
that part of the Disney portfolio.
And I was thinking, what will fill
the Andor-shaped hole?
What do we sell as Andor 2?
Picking up from where Rogue 1 stops
and continuing to tell stories like that,
a Raith Squadron show would actually be pretty
interesting. I'll be saying it might be more actiony than what Andor is, but you could very
easily do a season of three or four Raid Squadron type stories, um, in a row that are like,
have a similar sort of intrusion and dirty work style thing for the rebellion set during the
original trilogy, you know? I can kind of think it, like the series, it's a bunch of, it's like
three or four books. It does have more action overall, but like it follows a sort of similar
structure where, like, it's always the
Aldani raid, basically. He's the structure.
It's like, putting the crew together,
crew having a lot of fractious stuff
happening, and then
it's game day, big explosive
raid. Real, real
good series. Anyway,
I'm just saying
why didn't they get pilots who could fly?
Like, that is just my first reaction
to this is like,
because this is them doing that.
I think that's part of the thing that's weird about this, right?
Is like, we open the season on, we need better ships.
Let's go get these Y-wings.
And then this episode is we need better pilots.
Let's get these two guys.
And like, that's the 16 Y-wings or whatever suddenly it looked like a good.
I'm going to go back and reevaluate my previous math on the Ezra thing.
If we're at the point we're getting two good pilots, not even good pilots, two cadets.
Now, they're pop-gun cadets.
I take this back.
There's a really good book about the Battle of Britain, the most dangerous enemy.
And one of the things, I think the guy who wrote it was, like, in his other life beyond being historian, he's, like, a biz school guy who does, like, large-scale case studies and, like, does a lot of statistical analysis of things.
And one of the things he unpacked there is in air-to-air combat, 80, 85% of kills.
are inflicted by like 5% of the pilots.
Like the air combat is there's like 5% of people
who are actually good at it.
And everyone else is just up there
and they are fodder for the killers.
Aces really are aces in that way
or aces aren't aces in the
I'm really good at this and everyone else is mid.
Aces are actually the backbone
in terms of production.
But it's a hard thing to select for.
Like the thing like Top Gun and combatomies
try to identify.
who are your aces.
But one of the other things that emerges is it's not the best pilots.
They, like, going into the war, they thought it would be.
Huh.
But it is, like, the only way you can put it is, like, no, there's just people who are really
good at killing people with airplanes.
Right.
And how they do it, it's like, it's different than, like, maneuvering.
It's different than, like, it is a different skill set.
But that is kind of the difference is, like, what made this guy a great pilot?
I don't know.
just kind of was good at shooting the shit out of another plane and then moving on.
And so I guess, like, as much as I'm sitting here being like, those guys got completely
washed by a handful of tie interceptors, that's actually aerial combat math.
Sure.
If, like, you have two or three good pilots take on a big squadron, the big squadron is going
to get worked, especially because numbers don't work that way.
Like, the more friendlies you have, the more confusing it gets, the more you have to watch
friendly fire, whereas, like, the outnumbered squadron can go full predator mode.
Which is, like, the joy of the Thai interceptor historically in the EU and in the games
and stuff was like, oh, wow, the Thai interceptor is in a way the imperial answer to the X-wing.
It is an elite, really rapid, agile fighter that can keep up with anything that the rebels
can throw at them, and there's this, there's like a shark in the water, you know, and you
could outnumber the shark, but the shark is a fucking shark.
This was growing up
Probably my favorite ship design
Oh yeah
Really fun to see it
Most fun to fly in the game too
Like when they start
They kept trying to top it
By being like
What have it had shields
And tons of missiles
And it's like
What if we made the thing unbalanced
No
Just give me
Give me the interceptor
Uh huh
Yes
Uh anyway
She's in there
She has a little trouble
With her ID at first
But it works out
Which is fun
And then
And then we get into like
Her doing
Sabine's doing all sorts of
simulation stuff.
Did she distract them with, like, being hot?
Is that what happened when she takes off the helmet?
I didn't know there were hot tie fighter pilots.
You can, yeah, go ahead.
You can try your idea again, I guess.
Or just being a girl.
Like, I was just trying to figure out, like, what the use of taking off the helmet.
And then the guy's like, oh.
I don't know.
I think maybe just that's our Sabine.
supposed to focus I don't know maybe the helmet thing was so distracting for me in this episode because
like I know it's a cartooning thing it's like oh we have to see her face so we know the character
she don't have to do she could have had an armband she could have had like anything she has
her voice she has her character she's her it's her we hear her she doesn't have like a voice
modulator on like it just kept looking increasingly weird when she was the only person the
scene with her helmet off it's like you're supposed to know what you're doing um
Also, there's a moment when her and Wedge are having, like, a secret talk, and they're both holding their helmets.
And I'm like, why are you doing this in front of a live mic?
Like, what the fuck is the whole?
Yeah, those helmets are miced.
You're not wrong.
Oh, what do we think of dark hair Sabine?
I do like dark hair Sabine.
I think it looks great on her.
I think it looks good.
I think it looks good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is she, I like her, I like her design.
It gives her protagonist energy instead of side character energy.
Yes, it does.
It does.
Which is a shame, which is like...
Time to put away childish things.
Yeah, and I understand that this is me.
This is, I have revealed some dark judgmental part of my soul, which is like, which is not
what I mean.
I don't mean that people...
This is not your soul.
No, no, Austin, no.
Austin is out of himself as like, oh, blue hair.
Blue hair.
Yeah, just check it, check through his Twitter.
He's on that all the time.
This is Star Wars, a woman brunette.
There's something inherit in you.
That's like, oh, I should be focused on her.
And it's a Brunette and a Star Wars thing.
That's right.
That is it.
That is exactly it.
It's like, oh, yeah, that is.
And I think it's like broad.
I think it's like animation coded.
It's TV coded.
It's like, oh, protagonist is the normal looking one.
And then the protagonist gets surrounded by weirdos.
And like, if Ezra still had big floppy hair, he would actually be less protagonist
coded, standing next to dark hair Sabine.
He would be weird side boy, you know.
So there's, it's kind of a need to fix.
Because, like, the series is getting darker.
And so there's a little bit of the concept of, like, I do art bombs.
Doesn't work as well.
It never really did.
This is why we're here with Sabine.
But having it now be like, no, like, we're in a war here.
Like, the stakes are, like, people are getting killed.
But wait.
She still got, she still got the purple hair.
It's just dark purple.
Well, it's different than the bright.
Yeah, it's different than the purple white that she has in the previous episode.
The next, she's undercover with dark hair right now, right?
Also, I need to know what hair mask she's using because the fact that she is not like, her hair is maintaining these rapid, this black box dye.
Right.
And then going back to bleach.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's very funny.
I remember now last episode, I was like, what if she grows it out by the end of the, no, she's going to be dying at every other.
every other episode based on the needs of the mission.
We don't think wig.
We don't think helmet wig.
Maybe she does.
I suspected wig.
I suspected wig last episode or last podcast episode.
And maybe it may be wig, which that's fun.
I want to see her wig collection.
A little nod to like he's inspired like, you know, shoutouts to the to the goat.
Sabine.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think that I think is fascinating that is
at first I didn't know if it was intentional
and then the ghost showed up in the training module
and killed them is the idea that at the top gun school
at the best of the best for imperial pilots
their training simulations are about fighting rebels now
and I know we didn't see what the season one version of this was
but I bet it wasn't fighting rebels
I bet it was fighting pirates or separatist
remnants or something else because there wasn't a rebellion yet in that way.
Or they maybe would have said insurgents instead of rebels, but the rebel alliance seems
like it's, I mean, I don't think the rebel alliance exists yet as it stands in the way
that we think of it.
I think that that is a, I believe that that's an upcoming thing.
I think we are pre the rebel alliance, just like in Andor, we are pre the rebel alliance
at this point.
But the ghost is now like public enemy.
The ghost is public enemy.
the idea that there are rebels out there running missions and these are the types of fighters that
they use Y-Wing's, right?
Like, that's what we know they use.
They just stole a bunch of them.
That to me is interesting.
And likewise, this is, you know, the more we get of the Imperial internal stuff, the more I like the show.
I don't dislike this episode, I should say.
We'll talk about the Sabine stuff.
Because the stuff that is juicy for me here.
Is that stuff and the ISB, there's a line in here about what the ISB, the ISB has fed us
this information.
da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And like, as we start to see those different moving pieces, which again, having callus be a dueragonist for us is getting, is letting us have some of those internal conversations inside of the empire is fun. I'm happy to have that stuff a lot.
And I like what they're getting at here of, hey, not every pilot goes to the school. Like they have this sort of Martinette officers training them. And he's a bit of a prick, but there's a scene later where he's also very protective of his institution.
that like hey you don't get to mess with like my my academy here like we're doing important work uh but this
this notion that the empire at least facets of it are like we need to really raise our competence now
like the raw numbers aren't going to do it we need to actually have like a core of elite troops we can
rely on because this war is getting serious like these this this combat is is getting serious the simulator
is very funny because it is so tie fight like it is it is the game tie fighter even the way the why wing
up. And if you played that game back in the day, this is about how well they maneuver. If you're
in a tie fighter, they are, like, they are the game's early enemies. They take a lot of hits,
but they are just chum. Like, you burn through Y-wings right and left. The only thing you have to
watch out for is running into them when they explode, because you don't have shields. You can
be killed by the debris. But just the notion that, like, their elite forces trying to blow up
Y wings is kind of funny, but the real point of the module is, are you willing to massacre
surrendering transports? And there's a thing that Sabine gets at, which is like, is this part of
the test? Are you going to do it or not? And the answer is not black and white because she's like
imperial protocols to board it, which would be the smart thing to do, because if you board, you can
interrogate and figure out what's going on. Get supplies, yeah. But there's this like move toward, well,
what if we just like use like terror tactics basically like just no no quarter given and it's
unclear to what degree this is like a policy shift versus like things going it's it's weird it strikes
some of the cadets is weird it's not like clear what is what is meant by it but either way the test is
is are you willing to to do it um and they fail the test and then we meet the imperial ace
uh who comes out and gives them the other other small detail in this scene uh
That is another kind of long running thing we have been focused on on this show is who gets to have a name.
Imperial pilots don't get to have a name.
They're 3-6 and 2-5.
They try to exchange their names and the instructor shuts them down.
And it's like, use your numbers.
That is it, which is an echo of, an echo of clones not being allowed to use or clones being allowed to use names,
but also needing to have those, the numbers assigned.
And, like, the shift from, was it in Embara where the Embara guy was really big on numbers and not all the names, right?
General.
Never the names.
And then, and then importantly, like, the thing that has swapped here is, like, the empire does not believe, at least in the cadets that you're allowed to have fucking names to give you some sense of humanity.
No, no, no, no, no.
You are 25, you were 3, 6, blow up the food transport.
Do what we said.
I feel like that that also lends itself to.
not forming close bonds with each other.
So, like, when you're talking about earlier, you know,
certain pilots being essentially fodder for the ace pilots,
like maybe detaching some of that or interfering with those kind of like bonds forming
creates like a detachment from sentiment when you see a fellow pilot go down.
When your commander calls in and says,
let 2.5 fly ahead, even though they're flying into danger. You need to say, yeah, okay. And it's
harder to say, yeah, okay, if you know that 2.5 is your buddy wedge. You know, it might be your
buddy, 25, but there's a difference, right? Mm-hmm.
Robbie, you were saying, instructor comes out and shoes them out. Yeah. And, you know,
it's just like, it's neat to, like, again, we're having this move toward, we're meeting the
varsity of the empire now.
Like in season one, the Inquisitor
is the only one who has
like a real sense of menace and
competence, maybe beyond callous, but even callous
so often he's
stuck in the Javert role
that he doesn't
feel like, ah, this is an
opponent. Now we're getting
like, we got an array of opponents
that occupy different spaces, right? So now
we've got to, they have an ace.
It's not the sort of
skill thing that always favors the rebels where it's
Like, they're the heroes.
They have names.
They have, like, heroic abilities.
Well, it turns out, you know, there's a counterpart here.
Yeah.
So we're going to get that.
Like, in lieu of Asian callus, we're going to get Governor Price showing up here saying, hey, ISB has learned there's pilots.
There's pilots thinking of defecting here.
Kind of giving the game away.
Like, it's clear, like, this intelligence hit the ISB.
Fulcrum is like, hey, there's guys thinking about.
defecting you should get over there and here's callus sort of like bobbing along in
in price's way but she's very smart like she's uh there's sort of wheels within wheels to
the traps she is laying god i i feel like she's going to smoke them out i feel like she's
going to figure out who it is because she seems she's they seem like they want to depict her
as being kind of um competent yeah fundamentally yeah it's the varsity team stuff exactly
that rob would say definitely competent exactly and i think
that there's something really fun happening in these episodes, this episode and the next
episode, but even this is the season in general, which is the ghost crew is getting wins,
you know, but it does feel like those wins don't matter in the face of it all, that
they're getting wins against a team that's going to, they're winning battles, but they're
not going to win the war at this rate. You can't win by getting two guys at a time. You can't
win by escaping, even if the escape was a win and beating some local governor or whatever.
Like, that's not nothing, but it ain't winning the war.
You're going to need to see something bigger happen to get us to meaningful wins.
And that's such a hard knife to knife edge to walk on in terms of letting your crew, your main characters feel, you know, make it feel like they are competent and getting successes, but that that success is dwarfed by the situation without it feeling fundamentally hopeless.
And I find like they're kind of hitting that in these episodes in a way that I think is, um,
a good prelude to what I suspect is the big, you know, rebellion kind of glomming together
and becoming a real counter threat to the empire.
So before we get to the escape, we should take a quick break here and, and deal with the
escape attempt and then the successful one for again in our final episode.
So take a quick break here.
So yeah, with the knowledge that.
Now, Price and Calh are there, trying to ferret out who these Imperial pilots are, who are, you know, thinking about defecting.
Wedge and his friends are going to panic.
Sabine reveals who she is and she has a plan to get them out.
They will, they will escape on the next training mission, which will be in space.
She will call on her friends and those fly their ship and make a break for it.
Easy peasy.
And so it seems until Price hits the button to detach the wings and engines from their tie fighters and leave them dead in space as little as little cockpit balls.
It's fun.
Is that before after they kill Rake?
Rake doesn't make it.
They shoot Rake down.
No, the homie.
Who is this guy?
I don't know this guy.
I think it's after, right?
Because they, I think that he's just a sitting duck.
I think he's just floating in space and they kill him to, because the, what, uh, governor,
what's her price says is captain destroy one of the pods, which is to say, there are just
pods.
They're just floating in space.
It's not even a, it's no fight.
There's no attempt.
He couldn't possibly try to escape.
Um, so yeah, rip to rake.
Um, uh, apparently the inspiration for the way the, the wings pop off.
is the Kenner Tie Fighter toy
which had a button to pop the wings off the side
of the tie fighter
they are so toy-pilled on this show
it's very funny
I get it like the micro machine
machine's tie fighter getting the wings to stay on those
was a bastard like that's not to snap apart
those tie interceptors tear this transport
apart also
the one that Ezra and Canaan are in
Was Canaan even in it?
Canaan's in there
They're bored of this criminal
Corvette, and I got to say, like, we need to stop using Crillion Corvats on, like,
common missions.
That's just...
I love the design.
I really do.
The hammerhead type five.
It ain't working.
Three tie interceptors are tearing you up.
What are we doing?
Like, the first pass in Canaan's like, we can't take a hit like that.
Then I'm sorry, this is not a warship.
Yeah.
This is not, this can't be out here.
This is the only thing on Mothma and the other one can put on their credit card.
You're probably right.
Is the other one?
Leah?
Who's the other one?
No, who's Leah's dad?
I forget his name.
Oh,
Bail.
Bail.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
That's so funny.
We mentioned it once already, but just truly all of the shots of the Skystrike Academy on this, like, sunset, permanent sunset planet that's like Cloud City, or sorry, like Bespin, except more sunsets is so pretty.
It's, again, has the concept.
art like vibe it has the the the ralph mccary mccary concept art energy and it's just the show
looks good um we didn't say it last episode either but when bendu stands up and gets and like
gets all dust dusty in the air like the show looks good they found a really great visual
identity i think so um yeah and so like the you know they go under interrogation wedge and hobby
are like we got to get out of here how do we escape and and fix this they don't
Uh, but it's funny.
Price makes the mistake of she, she is alone with the prisoner for the, for the interrogation, uh, and how does it go bad?
I forget this part.
Like, how does she end up like in a fist fight with Sabine here?
Sabine just breaks out of the, the thing, right?
Yeah.
She, like, distracts, I think, or when she's about to get put into the torture chamber, the torture device.
And yeah, Sabine just gets out of the cuffs and it beats up the Stormtroopers.
Like, there's not a play.
There's no, like, she doesn't secretly have, like, a paper clip.
We don't see how she does it.
She just does it, I think.
Which is a part of what I'm frustrated with with this episode is not her competence, which is great.
Big thumbs up.
But it's competence in place of character.
This is an episode where the thing I can tell you about Sabine is, she's,
good at this stuff.
She's good at, she's better at piloting than I thought she'd be.
She's better at hand-to-hand fighting than we've seen her be in the past.
She's able to do all the intrusion stuff.
You know, her plan goes bad because of the ISB intel, but otherwise probably would have
worked.
She beats, she, she has a good little fist fight here with Governor Price.
For whatever reason they release the cuffs.
To put her in the machine.
The machine.
That's not her opening them.
That's them opening.
No, they pop the cuffs.
Well, that's stupid.
Why would they do that?
Maybe you have to assume a different position, but like...
Maybe she's just better at fighting with her hands behind her back than they thought she would be.
You know, they thought they'd be able to grab her or something.
They just take her too lightly.
But anyway, the bigger thing here is just like, I didn't learn anything about Sabine.
Sabine didn't have an arc.
Sabine didn't begin this episode in one place and end in another place.
The word Mandalorian is said briefly.
Governor Price is like, oh, you know, um, um, um, um,
My Little Mandalorian or whatever.
She doesn't say, my little Mandalorian.
What does she say?
She says, so proud and tough, like, she refers to the cutest thing.
She does say, okay, so yeah, that is the energy.
Yeah.
And she does say, oh, she says, and now you've come home, Little Mandalorian,
because they found her permanent record that revealed that she used to be an imperial,
you know, cadet or whatever, which, by the way, the Faloni zone for this,
they someone asks like oh would she have been at a at an academy like this and gilroy says no she
would have been like an even higher ranking academy for people who are like making experimental
weapons technology they uh described it she was like she saw the interdictor thing yeah right uh he used
the word mit and i don't know if he meant our mit or the imperial if there's like an imperial
mit but that was what he said uh and so like this is a lower ranking instance
institution than what she would be used to.
And that's like, the thing that I keep coming back to is like, that's what they have for Sabine
right now is like, okay, she's good.
She's quality.
She does the missions right.
And like, that's fine.
But what she care about?
What she believe in?
What's she moved by?
Who matters to her in her life?
Yeah, we got like the snippet of, I thought because we got the bit in the last episode where
mall references having ruled Mandelor and like saying, like, saying, like,
Like, I thought Sabine you would be like more, you'd be happier, like following me based on the fact.
Yeah, I used to rule your people.
Wild thing to say.
Wild out of pocket.
So wild.
So wild.
And she like is understandably pissed off by that.
But yeah, I think we're still chasing the Sabine arc.
Like it's great to see her as the main character of this episode.
It's great to see her fight well, get herself out of it.
Is it?
I think it's fine.
It's like I'm happy that she's not just like throwing grenades from the sideline.
Like I'm glad to see her having her own mission.
I don't really see it like it, I know it technically plays on her strengths as, and technically
she is the best one suited to this mission because she was a, you know, had been a,
cadet in a place like
this, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not
feeling it. Like, there's
like a disconnect between, I
know on paper that
this should
If an episode had started, that's
that was Sabine came in with Wedge and
what is his fucking name?
I keep on this, it's hobby, hobby, hobby.
I don't want to say hobby. I'm like, that's fucking wrong.
That's the guy from Star Fox.
If they'd come in and she'd be like, I just rescued these two guys, we would have all been like, why didn't you show us that episode?
That would have been a great place to learn more about Sabine and tell us more about her character and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
I've already now seen that episode and like they just don't.
She's persistent, I guess.
What have we learned new about who Sabine is?
And I say this in contrast with the next episode we're going to talk about, which is Hera, which is a great Hera episode.
Not to get ahead of myself again.
Allie, you look like you're on the verge
of saying something. Yeah, I
I'm like surprised that the thing
that you just said from the Rebel Recon was
not in the episode. Like it would have
taken one rewrite of one line
for Price to be like, you're too
good to be here or like say anything
about her like actual
you know
a hint to why she left
perhaps. Something like that.
Like I went into this episode
with the full chrome drop.
I was like, this is going to turn into
callous episode. This is going to be our
one Sabine episode. It's going to actually be
a callous episode. And I feel like
that's maybe still true.
It's still kind of true.
Yeah. Because the Calaschap is
the moment. Like when he shows up
at the end, so
she escapes the torture, she doesn't get tortured,
she goes and rescues
Wedge and Hobby and then
they run into... We're like sitting in their cell
being like, how are we going to rescue Sabine?
We need to rescue her. She saved us.
Which again,
It feels like a team of writers.
It feels like writers.
I should double check who wrote this episode before I say anything stupid.
So, because I'm going to say it feels like two dudes writing being like, let's make sure she doesn't get rescued by the boys.
But in, and so there's like, it's a big, definitely written by a guy.
Gary Witter wrote this episode after he wrote Rogue One.
This is post-Rogue 1 now.
But it does feel like you go, I want to make sure our women, our woman protagonist doesn't get rescued by the boys, which is good, an important pitfall dude to dodge.
But then, like, who the fuck is she?
What does she?
Who is she?
She's just girl action figure.
And this is the thing where I'm like, it's good to see Sabine to get these episodes.
And I'm like, actually, like, is this episode better if it's, because a lot of series do something like this where like, what other thing was shot through the eyes of like, wed?
and hobby and then the connection with like rebels is that at the end one of them
Sabina or something shows up and pulls them out but it is about two guys who are like
you came here to get away from driving truck like being a long haul trucker basically
and why don't you do combat piloting for the empire and realize like you're in the war crimes
factory and you're just a number and they gave that guy more fucking meat they gave the
fucking wedge more like emotional motivation than they gave sabine like i i can tell you about this
about this guy that he was that you know that he dreamed of more i guess like we've gotten
glimpses of that from sabine where she's talked about like but there's such one off lines and
there's very little follow through on them that it it ends up falling to the wayside and it's
hard to retain these like little quips about, or not quips, but like little
characterizations that we've gotten along the way because we so rarely get to see
them in effect.
They're just like kind of throw away lines that we've gone over the course of the past
two seasons.
Even the part, the thing you just pointed out, the trucking part, right?
When Wedge is like, I used to haul cargo, the empire wanted to recruit me, I thought it would
be more exciting to see the galaxy.
than hauling cargo around, you know, whatever.
Or I thought it would be more exciting to do this than to haul cargo around.
She could have had a response to that was like, damn, I know what you mean.
You know, I joined because I was from Mandelor originally, and the Republic destroyed my, whatever her art, whatever it was, whatever did bring her.
Why the fuck did she join the Imperial Academy to begin with?
Maybe she, or maybe she says it felt like the only option I had.
Maybe she said she could say anything in response.
What she says is, the plot of this episode is that I'm here to rescue you.
What she says is, have you ever thought about getting out?
And that's it.
Like, there's no attempt to actually build rapport between these two characters.
And here's another thing that is like a wild, this was, I think from, this might have also been from the Rebel's Recon episode that is really fun, but it doesn't live in the episode, which is, Rob, can you tell me what is on Wedge's helmet in A New Hope?
what Wedge's helmet design is?
I can't remember.
It's the yellow and black
checkerboard pattern.
And they were like,
you know who has that
on her shoulder in the first season?
Is Sabine?
What if Sabine is the one
who detailed Wedge's helmet
later in life?
And that's cute.
That's a fun connection
between these two characters
and it's not in the episode.
And I don't need her
to do the helmet design in the episode.
But like,
it's clear some thought
went into like her relationship
with this character and like ways that they have overlaps and da da da da da da none of it's here so the problem
the other thing is just the way she keeps being deployed to try to make this happen try to make
this work is that you first you always end up having to start these episodes from a position of like
justifying why it's a Sabine episode because otherwise like we don't yet have enough there to explain
like what there's no there's not of interiority that we're like there are any stakes for her character
that we're invested in so she's always being like you know
like putting the starting lineup
because oh like you're a perfect fit for this one
and so what we end up with
is someone who like we keep being told is hot shit
and she was at the hot shit Imperial Academy
and she was a hot shit bounty hunter
with her friend and
it turns out like she's a hot shit explosives
technician but also like a hot shit
pilot
grade at everything
and yet
we don't know anything about her.
There's no sense increasingly that like all those competencies are adding up to like a consistent vision of the character and like her role in all this.
And so we just keep end up having these episodes where it's like Sabine's here because like you're the best at us, you know, when it comes to this.
And that is yes, in lieu of creating a character who is on a journey that we have any stakes for.
I think part of the problem is
some of what they're doing is boxing them in
because it's like we have to keep showing how awesome Sabina is
and why she's an important part of the crew.
And what makes characters interesting
is their frailty and vulnerabilities.
We do love when they have the like go off,
you know, going off moment where it's like,
you know, you're about to see some shit.
We love that stuff.
But it does need to be like, first of all,
it's better as a surprising reveal
where it's like you weren't,
you weren't familiar with their game.
But also that stuff hits harder
when they're doing that in the face of their fears,
their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses,
their frailties, their guilt, their shame.
And we don't get a sense that there's any of that for Sabine.
And the Mandelor stuff makes it worse
because we know so much about Mandelor at this point.
And it's like she doesn't.
Like when she had the Fenrao thing,
Canaan ends up having
the good character moment with Fenrow
and then it's like
I invoke the Mandalorian ritual of
but we don't get sense like
Sabine were you was your family like pro
death watch were they down with
Satine's like pacifist
mandolore how do you
like which faction were you teased her being
named Sabine when Satine was
on the throne
there's so much root like
and also it's she comes
from a place that we know a lot
about. So why, it's, it's not just like, oh, to even get into Sabine's, or Seteen's, oh my God,
to Sabine's story that we'd have to like, oh, we'd have to like introduce you to all of the
stuff that you, like, that you haven't seen yet. We were there. We, you know what happened.
My dread is to fix this, they're just going to go and they're going to do what they always do,
which is like, and now this show is about Mandalorian lore. Yep. Which will be the way they saw.
Well, we saw the dark saber in the trailer, right, for the season.
She's going to be important because we're doing a bunch of Mandalorian shit.
Yeah.
But the thing is that still doesn't solve the core problem of you have repeatedly and maybe
the Mandalar stuff will fix it because we'll finally get things that she's interacting with
that she has a relationship with that are interesting.
But right now what we've got is a character who has no like ideological motivation for being
there has like no real strong sense of this is where.
they fit but also these are the things that they're sort of running from in all this she's just
there to fill like mechanical plot purposes and it's a bummer because like she's surrounded
by a cast of characters that all bring things to the table and like layering complexity and set
like there is more done in this episode with like you know a couple sideways glances from callus
where you realize, like, oh, he's already crossed over.
He's already, he's already out on the empire.
We don't know what Sabine was ever in on.
Right.
I'm losing my mind currently because you've raised this idea of doing the episode
from the perspective of Wedge and the other, the other cadets.
And at the time of this episode came out, there, so there are characters, there are
rebel pilots in Return of the Jedi.
There are rebel pilot women in Return of the Jedi.
who did not have backstories filled in at that point,
including one who, when the movies first came out,
was a woman who then got dubbed over by a guy.
What?
In the current, I believe, releases of this.
Yeah.
And she now has, you know, she has a story written about her in 2020,
in the return of a certain point of view,
sorry, it was 2020, last year that she got a story written about her.
In the 2023, from a certain point of view,
a return of the Jedi book.
so she now has backstory
but like what a good character
that would have been
this is S-L-L-A-K-O-T-T-T
what a great
character that would have been
to be like oh and like she came up with Wedge
she came up alongside Wedge she's here
so if you wanted to have your episode that's like
you know not just
here's here's here's a here's and like
here's a woman who's
da-da-da-da-da-da
there are characters who could have fit that bill
and could have filled in that gap
without it being just like the boys
club. And imagining that
version of it, you're kind of like, it's not quite
lower decks the next generation
episode, Rob, but that style of
let's tell the story from the
secondary or tertiary character's perspective
would have killed. That would
have been, I would have eaten that shit up.
That's like one of my favorite things that happens inside
of fiction, genre fiction
especially. I'm mad that we didn't get
that now, but
instead we got this. So,
you know. Well, maybe
this is, it feels kind of
But maybe the next episode introducing the idea that, like, you know, multiple members of the crew are going to have to contend with emotional attachments to things and personal relationships.
Like, and you reminding us of the fact that the Dark Sabre was in the trailer, like, maybe that, like, that for Sabine is to come.
Um, it's weird that we get absolutely no glimpses at it in this in this
I feel like I'm eavesdropping on the writer's room like the next, the next Savine episode,
that's gonna fix it. I just I can't imagine a single thing that would be big enough to hide
it for this long though, right? Like it just feels like they haven't yeah figured it out yet.
Especially when you have every like, you know, the, the Canaan like name change drop was so casual, so quick.
it's it's it's it's tough to think that like you know there's there's something you know so big and
something she would be so ashamed of she couldn't you know tell one member of the crew about it um or that
it's like such a such a monumentous like lower thing attached to the main of maloreans and it's like
we really do have to keep this in bed before two seasons before we could like unleash it on the audience
because Sabine is really, like, goaded and cool and mysterious.
It's like, that is not what we're getting.
Yeah, like, what are, we've had multiple encounters with people from Sabine's past
or in and around Sabine's, like, history as a character, and yet we have not actually explored any of it.
So would it be better if we just didn't do, like, if she just was the Grenadier, like, in the back?
Like, I don't, I really, it's...
We're going to get another sub-
Well, I actually don't know this is true.
What could we be dancing around?
We are gonna have...
A better TV series has killed her off by now.
Damn, brutal.
You know.
But where's the Sabine Mall episode?
Like, just, it's there.
Like, just do it.
It's there.
Yeah, that would be great.
Let them talk to each other at least more than...
I don't know if she even really...
Also, like, the fact that they came home from dealing with Mall and I don't
know like and they were like yeah
it was this guy with like red
he was red with black tattoos
and he's got horns and she was like
you mean mall
the guy who is like our king
for three weeks we already know
that conversations like this don't happen to start
you're right you're right you're right
nobody talks about anything
maybe it's a force power that he has
and he's like I've clouded your
memory I don't mean shit to you
we have a Fenrow episode coming up
in our next set.
So we will see.
And that's our chance to Tashi-R her.
Fingers crossed.
These people, they don't know who Tashi-R is.
Don't do this.
Who's Tashi-Y-R?
She was a character in the first season of Star Trek the next generation.
Oh.
Who got done dirty.
Well, you know, Star Trek is a really funny world, isn't it?
With alternate dimensions, there's an evil zone in Star Trek.
And the evil zone, Tashian.
Are lived.
Okay.
You know this about Star Trek?
Well, they liked the actor.
Yes, this is exactly what it was.
But the character, it was just a like this, the chemistry, because ensemble like crews
taking on challenges, these things like kind of do depend on chemistry and not just like
chemistry of the poromers, but also like what do the different like things the character
stand in for bring out in the storytelling.
And Tashiar was their like hard nose security chief.
It didn't really work.
think because they realized Michael Dorn was a way more compelling figure as like the security
chief and like way more interesting things happening there where it's like, you know,
not that we don't love, well, we probably don't love which lady cops, but maybe in the
night, maybe in like the 90s we did. But that was kind of the pitch is like here's kind of
a hard nose, like she's the hard nose cop of the group. And,
then it's like, but then Wharf is a noble warrior who has massively conflicted identity
issues by being a federation officer, but also a cling on. And it's like, just saying that,
I'm like, the story prompts right themselves. Like one is like, tough cop, child of two,
two worlds thrust into the middle of an old enmity. And she was the one who wanted to leave the show
famously, because she could feel that they didn't know what to do with her character, right? And they
left on good terms. Everything was cool. She eventually comes back in a, again, there's like an alternate
dimension of the world where famously everyone in Star Trek has like a mirror self. This is like
a mirror universe. And her mirror universe self is like an evil space pirate lady. And she crushes
that role. It's really fun. It's not like a, it's not an every, it's not a permanent.
role. But like when she guests is that version, it's awesome. So yeah, maybe we could get
a mirror universe Sabine and she'd rule who can say. We'll find out about if we get more
Sabine. Maybe we're getting set up and next time's the time. You know, over on the
acolyte pod, you can go listen to. Again, hopefully both of those are out now. I think the timing
is right on that. But we said, I said at the end of the first set of four, hey, you know,
they cut this episode in half. It's a shitty. I don't like that to see.
decision maybe it'll pay off
maybe they're going to pay off Sabine
I would love to end the show Big Sabine
Booster I would love to be a Subbin booster
I actually think I know where this went wrong
Because I think they did have an
A feel for the character
It's where she and
Hera go off on their mission
To have the like
Hera gives her the like get in fucking line
You're a fucking child
Like you don't get to know everything right now
Yeah I remember that
And the mistake they make is that backs her off
That puts like Sabine back in her lane
becomes like a good soldier in the lineup.
But if they leaned in fully to a,
I'm sorry,
I went to the such and such academy.
I am like the best trained,
you know,
military,
like person you have here.
And if it was a,
like legitimately she doesn't fit
because she wants to run this thing
and she's budding,
and also she wants to run a different way,
but she's too useful to get rid of.
Now that's an interesting,
like if she's constantly budding heads.
And then it wouldn't just be,
Like, imagine how interesting that gets where you have her being like, you know, we need to get fucking real about this war.
Yeah.
And Ezra being like, yeah.
We need to like use the holocron and just like use whatever weapons.
Those two characters I can imagine going off stealing some Thai fighters and painting them together.
Yeah.
Like that actually works.
You need like, I think they were so afraid of like the, maybe we don't want the audience to dislike her, which happens with email characters.
Right.
Where it's like she doesn't, you don't want to make her a bitch, do you?
But the thing is, she'd be so much better if she got to be a bitch.
That would have been the move.
Oh, it would be cool as hell if she got to be.
Well, and again, look at that concept art I posted.
Look at older Sabine.
Look at the character.
She looks so cool.
And you know what makes more sense with this character design?
She went to, she was a Mandalorian.
She went to the Imperial Academy.
She spent some time as a bounty hunter, and then she joined the rebels.
Older Sabine, it has the time for it.
That's what I was thinking when you posted this was like, the bounty hunter thing was a holdover
from this character design and they couldn't they they were too attached to it to cut it out and they
were just like oh well i guess it only happened for about a year or whatever also her friend is 30
right and they just kept there was more different sabine concept art and again in all of these
that's a grown woman that's an adult woman that was the play the thing that's like upsetting
about the the thing that rob just laid out too is that like you know the the fact that ezra is the
you know, um, I want to break out.
I'm the mean one.
I'm the one who has to be disciplined or whatever.
Like this episode, I feel like Ezra is the one that Wedge walks away being like,
that's a cool kid.
Like, does Sabine really, I guess she like, Isis Price or whatever and gets them out.
But like the win of the episode is Caden and Ezra.
I mean, Price doesn't die here, right?
I want, did she got really zapped though.
She got zapped.
She got torn up.
We're not done with price off this.
Yeah, I would have
I would have preferred if she died
She should have shot her in the hands.
Yeah.
She does, you do, you do, you do.
It's very goofy.
I would rather her, if she'd shot Price on the ground,
I'd be like, damn, okay, we've learned something.
Yeah, uh-huh, like the rock from Fast Five.
Right, uh-huh.
And then you'll be like, you know what?
I am willing to kill defenseless targets, just the right one.
This is every writer's room.
needs somebody to ask like
does this scene need a yo homie
is that my briefcase moment for this character
like do is it time for so-and-so's yo-holy
is that my briefcase I feel like yeah
she should be a killer you're right
she should be well imagine like she's a contemporary
of Harris or maybe even a little older
and like it starts out as like she's a member of Harris crew
and now this is turning to a war
and you start having me like
hey you're the captain of the ship
but I went to the Imperial Academy, and I've, like, done wet work for years.
Like, you're, like, Hara, I love you.
You're out of your depth.
That's better, like, this, than the whole thing hangs.
Well, you just put some, like, poison in my brain now, because I feel like, it doesn't,
going back to that first moment of Hara and Sabine on their own mission, it,
everything about Sabine's
backstory, it doesn't make sense
why she's not volunteering
suggestions more or like
coming or going
head, like, budding heads with
some of the direction she's getting.
Like it doesn't, why is she such a
like obedient
backseat soldier?
It doesn't make,
the other.
They flirted with it with it.
Just for a brief moment, she wasn't.
And then they were like, well,
the heart to heart is going to be
women supporting women.
And that's where we're going to go with it is like, hey, like, you just, I know it may not
always seem like, but it's not your time, sweetie.
Feminism ruined, ruined Star Wars.
Oh, my God, but not for the reasons you think.
But not for the reasons you think.
We need bad.
You got to go past the introductory course.
Sabine.
Conflict is not abuse.
Let's go to 102.
Anyway, we're allowed to learn that.
Hera is actually fucking super competent and badass and willing to kill the past.
I will,
I will blow up my whole life with explosives moment.
Maybe that should have gone to the bomber.
That's what I'm saying.
All right.
Let's talk about this episode.
Let's talk about Harris heroes.
Harris heroes.
Again, also, this is one of the first, like, each of these episodes I could imagine the Clone Wars version, where it's like an arc of two or three episodes.
Yep.
But each time here, I do feel like they're economic.
And it would not necessarily be improved.
If we had to do three episodes of that Sabine arc and it was that quality, we wouldn't have survived.
Unless you got way more Imperial Academy and people like realizing like what their boundaries are.
They would have been forced to write anything about Sabine if we had done that.
Maybe they could have gotten somewhere though.
Maybe like a little more time with it.
I don't know.
This is yeah, I minimum word count on the Sabine fan fiction, please.
This episode starts with the, do your big, do your, do your, yeah, all right, Harris
Heroes, we like basically, she's got to go back and save her dad because the rebellion on Ryloth is not going well.
We open on, like, Cham and, sorry, what's, uh, the girl from Clone Wars?
Numa and you and a, Numa.
Numa.
They're fleeing, they're being pursued across, uh, the, the high desert by Imperial troops.
We learn as, uh, they're, uh, they're,
rescued by Hara and the crew of the ghost that basically
Chams' entire resistance is being rolled up.
And he remarks that the guy in charge of the Rilof, you know,
occupation from the Imperials always seem like, you know,
a bit of a fool, but now like he's just getting dub after dub.
And crucially, their home province and their hometown fell in new imperial hands.
And they lost the home the hair grew up in.
plus a treasured family heirloom that charts the lineage of a Twilic family through the years.
And maybe the only memento they have of Harrah's mother.
And he says, I'm getting that thing back.
And everyone is on board with Operation sneak into like the Imperial Occupation Capitol.
Steal this heirloom and get out.
crucially
it is an artistic
artifact
it is an
artistic artifact with
heavy cultural import
and if you know
about the Grand Admiral
character they introduced
basically like you could not have
more danger signs
around this mission
because I literally
had a moment where like
as they're grabbing the thing
I said out loud to MK
oh fuck it's art
And she was like, what?
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Is he an art guy?
He's a big art guy?
That is what makes him powerful as a strategist, is that he studies the art, a culture
puts out.
And from the art, he learns their entire psychological makeup, their worldview, and
their vulnerabilities, and uses it to unravel every opponent.
They seem to have broadened that here, because he gives a big,
speech about this.
Or he's like, you have to understand their art, their philosophy, their history.
You know, he wants to study people and study their culture.
I think it's probably smarter than just I can look at a painting and decipher how they're
going to fight in the war.
It gives him a little more to play with.
But it still foregrounds art.
It's not like it doesn't foreground art.
But continue because we get drawn this episode.
So the whole thing has, it feels like it has been a trap.
And he goes full Sherlock Holmes unraveling.
He knows exactly who they have captured,
even though they try to bluff their way out as even though
Hare tries to bluff her way out is like just a just a peasant servant
trying to steal something for, you know, to pawn it.
Theron immediately knows who he's caught.
But then it is like I have to go check on the rest of an experiment.
You take it from here to the Imperial officer that it is clear by now.
He hates and thinks as an idiot.
Yeah.
and the Imperial officer arranges a prisoner transfer.
He will return Ezra and Hera to the rebels if Cham turns himself in.
Chopper rescues them from an Imperial cell.
Hera realizes what the exchange is going to be and tells Chopper to lay explosives.
They are going to plan to escape this obvious, like obviously bogus prisoner transfer.
and escape with everyone intact.
Prisoner transfer goes down.
As they are doing the whole, like,
have the two sides walk toward each other,
Ezra has Chopper trigger the explosives
and basically dissolves her home,
her childhood home in what feels like a nuclear fireball.
It's a wild explosion.
This moment ricks.
And we see it from Thron's point of view
miles away in a command ship
and we just see like the top of the mountain
just blown off in the middle
of this. Maybe there will be a reveal later of some other
sort of experiment going on
but I think this is the experiment.
The experiment is now how will Herra respond
to this? What can I learn
from about who these people really are?
He knows there are explosives
in that base if they could probably, you know what I mean?
Like what will the response be? Will she
burn her own cast? He's getting the download.
Yes. And also he's trying to roll up
everything. He wants to bag the entire rebellion.
He doesn't want to just like make an arrest.
Yep.
What are we dealing with here?
And also fuck this little imperial governor who, by the way, he snaps at by when he says
we should just throw away the Twilic art.
Do you remember in, it's one of my favorite moments in Mask of the Fantasim, the Batman
animated film, where the Abe Vigoda character is like Salvalestra, I think, is begging
Joker for help.
And he makes the mistake of like, he tries to.
get Joker to take this threat seriously
and he grabs him by the collar
and you see like
Joker just like leans in on
and it's like don't touch me old man
and you realize for a moment like
it's one of the most menacing things that were happening
for the character it's like oh this guy's a killer
like there is like behind all the
jokes and all the clowning shit like
it is pure evil. We've talked
about the the Marlow Stanfield
reveal right that my name is my name
reveal in the fifth season
of the wire where this
character who has, Marlowe is the kind of up-and-coming kind of crime lord in Baltimore,
who's coming to kind of replace, kind of fill the power vacuum after some other big characters
have left the show. And he has this really placid, unflappable, almost indifferent attitude.
And he's surrounded by people who are like, are killers. You see them do the dirt. You see
them do the work. They are willing to do like horrible things.
to help the growing Stanfield, you know, drug empire, expand.
And the whole thing is almost a misdirection.
Because finally he's separated from them in the final couple episodes.
And there's a sequence where he finds out, he has it all.
He has it. It's done.
He's won the situation, right?
He's ready to be the next guy effectively.
But people are shit-talking him in the streets.
People are saying that he isn't going to defend his corners anymore, that he's kind of gone
soft, and he has this incredible moment where he's yelling, my name is my name, because he's
been pushed.
And what you realize is like, oh, they're there to contain him.
He is this explosive force that he's barely holding back.
And it's an incredible moment.
And there's a little bit of that here where you get Thron's facade fall.
And I don't think it's just about, and I'm really jumping ahead here, but it's not
just about, hey, I like art a lot. I like Twylic art a lot. It's the stuff we talked about a little
bit last time, which is, I'm an alien in a human-centric empire, and this guy does not think I
belong here. In the depths of his heart, he says, throw that Twilock shit away, you know,
and Thron jumps down his throat because it means more than just that, right? It means only our
culture is the good culture. And I, you know, Throne wants to win for the empire. But he is,
he, but he also wants to put this in a museum. He also wants to study this stuff. He's a different
sort of simmering pot of hatred. A hundred percent. Like, I'm surrounded by people who are my
inferior. Yes. How can you not understand what I understand? How can you not see why this is
valuable? Even in an instrumental, instrumentalizing way, you're a fucking idiot. How,
die. I'd rather you be dead. You know? I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
fully thought by the end of the episode he was going to be like just like well that didn't go well
uh your execution is now like i genuinely that guy lived did that guy make it out of this he did
because he calls in he calls for help well i was i was really looking forward to this thron moment
because like with that with that sort of moment of you know aggression i was wondering is that like
something in thron's history that we should be like popping for or is this like a rebels thing
of like, oh, we're going to put the front in this, but he's going to be, you know, he's a
villain that people know, but we're going to, like, add this to his character.
That's like explosive anger.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't remember this from, I haven't read those books in 25 years, but I don't remember
that style of like just under the surface, explosive anger as being part of his character.
Well, he has a dark alter ego in the books.
He has a.
Stop.
So he has a no gregor parted.
Stop.
no gree assassin rook who is always with him and so whenever thron like there is a moment where like
something pisses him off and he just points at it and says rook and rook proceeds to like
destroy a building right but sorry you said alter ego and i think you i think both alley and
natalie thought you oh like an alternate personality yeah like you know i mean like more of a narrative
I thought you meant he had like, oh.
No, he has like a narrative twin, who's like sort of always by his side to do like the explosively violent stuff.
Yeah, he's like a cool lizard guy.
That's a little different than like not being able to contain yourself at this like flippant comment that like this like that's so mask off of being like, oh, I'm a violent person actually.
I hold a lot of angered me and I think that I'm better than you and I will hurt you because I deeply want to.
But then that's sort of like, oh, I'm sorry.
I just got mad.
It's really interesting.
I'm having a lot of fun with him.
How are we feeling about his little pocket squares, his four pens?
How are we feeling about this, you know?
Well, I mean, Imperial Rank Cillan has always been kind of a weird thing.
They're weird, but I remember.
What's her face got some of those in Indoor.
What does her name?
Dadra ends up getting at least one of those things from ranking up.
They're not pens.
are rank. That is like her. That is like insignia.
It just looks like pens. It just looks like
he's about to like. I thought I was like
this guy is so research. He always has to
write something down. He's taking
multicolored notes. He's like
on it. He's just like me.
I do think across this though, I do go
like I think I might be all in on the performance now.
Like the just like
the the act of like
soft spoken
thoughtful delivery.
Like
chillingly even, right?
Like just like so emotionally modulated, it's not even come across as like cool, but it's like just, it is unnatural, right?
The entire thing is just kind of unsettling because it's like nobody is this soft spoken.
It is a, it is a thing that he's like cultivated and it's a little it's a little unnerving.
I'm coming around now, like I think this is a pretty cool portrayal of the character.
It gets across the sense of like a villain cut from.
different cloth than we typically say and so far we haven't seen things really go wrong for him yet
necessarily like I I love the fact that we're not getting like he's he's still holding his cards
pretty close to his chest even even in these kind of entanglements with the rebels we he's zoomed out
to a much bigger picture than these kind of localized encounters.
And he's just, he's such an entertaining villain.
I really like that he's in the show now.
I'm really happy we finally got a scene for him to like chew the scenery on.
Yeah.
Because that was like what we needed to know if he was going to land or not really for us.
And he does.
I think that the stuff here is great, which we should get to.
We should, we kind of jumped ahead.
head because he's exciting. I mean, he's not even the focus of the episode, really. Hara is.
I think Hara's stuff here is all really good, too. I think actually the best thing in the
episode is right away, and it's the incredible funny gags that start this episode. It's a really
funny chase between speeder bikes and these dinosaur horse guys who do get names. They're called
like Blurgs, I think, because they get scooped up by the ghost, and they make such funny
faces as they get scooped up by the ghost.
Cham, who by the way, all the cham,
any cham tension, done.
That shit's dead.
It is, the beef is squashed.
It's like, it never happened.
We are BFFs now.
Yeah, he was, yeah.
But as, as the ghost descends to kind of scooped them up the front thing,
Cham is like,
Cham is like, what are we supposed to do?
And, and Harrah's like, just come on, like, get on board the ship.
And, and he's like, what about the blubes?
And she's like, the blurgs are allowed or something like that.
The expression of the blurgs.
Blurgs are welcome to.
And they come on board and the visual, like the way that their face, they look so confused,
concerned.
And then the bang is like, this is it.
Best joke in the show ever so far.
Speed, the Imperial speeder, speed trooper, zooms forward on the hover bike and like cuts in front,
slams on the brakes, goes up the scoop before it can close.
and he turns around and rips out his gun he's like ha and he's surrounded by people with guns he's like ah
and zeb is like you didn't think that one through huh and he's like uh and then zeb checks with ezer's like
do you have this one yet and clobbers the guy to give him the helmet it's like 15 seconds
of perfect punchline material it's just good television it's this is the show like they made a good
like I don't come to the show expecting good punchlines
and sort of get like three
to get three or four off in
in this kind of quick proximity
is not what I expect from Rebels
and so I was like oh okay I'm in for like popcorn mode
and then we also just got a good episode
we got like a genuine
we learn about Hera we get all the other stuff
so I was I was feasting this one
if there's anything that I could have asked for
it would have been
more
Canaan
like I feel like the Canaan
Cham stuff
we lost
Like so true
But I feel like Kayden's in a different place
In his life right now
Like he's he's not as
Concerned with impressing
His girlfriend's dad
Yeah
He's got he's like thinking about shit
Really deeply right now
He's like he's in another
In another zone
But I do wish we would have gotten
a little bit of that, but I feel like
Canaan is in a pretty serious
state of mind these days.
Yeah. I had a
very quick, I had like a visceral reaction
and then immediately changed it once I thought about it for a second
because the, the Numa character
not only has the clone arm, but she has like the embroidery
of her plushy on her V-neck.
And first I was like, that's a little much.
Like you have to, like, this is, the attachment that you have
It was a little weird.
To, like, the thing that happened when you were seven or whatever.
Right.
Yeah.
But then I was like, she is the custom Hello Kitty V-neck.
She has.
She has.
She has the drip.
Like, that's actually really.
I also hadn't really read it this way when she first showed up.
But her, like, she has, for her leku, her head tail, she has, like, a head covering that
reads like a headscarf, right?
Like, it's not a hijab.
It's not, like, that's not, a job is a particular thing in a particular cultural context.
but it reads inspired in that, you know, from, like, Arabic and Muslim headscarves.
And then you get to the Sundula estate.
And it's like, oh, like, this is all like, you know, Middle Eastern architecture,
Islamic geometrical art, all of that stuff.
And you're like, oh, like, this is part of what they're pulling on for what, at least
this subculture of Rilov is like.
And that was fun.
It was like a fun little added detail.
Again, thinking about this in relation to the last episode, in relation to some
Sabine. I've learned nothing about Mandalorian culture. I've learned very little about what her experience was in the Imperial Academies. I left this episode being like, oh, wow, like I have like different thoughts about Twilix than I did before. And like Harris specific relationship to it. They even hit you with an out of nowhere left cross about Chopper. What was the Chopper one? I missed this. By the Crater was, yeah. Oh, yeah. He has this moment. He goes into kind of a fugue. He doesn't respond like when they when they break into town.
Right.
Chopper's already been inserted in his imperial outfit.
And he's like remembering.
But he's in a few staring at the crashed Y wing.
And Hara explains that that's the Y wing we took him out of and he has feelings about it.
And it's unclear like whether it's just like a bad memory of the crash or like, is there a pilot he remembers?
Like it's left unsaid.
But it's like chopper is carrying weight.
And they give him the time.
Yeah.
Process.
They don't say.
Chopper, come on.
Yeah.
Harris says we'll give him, you know, he'll be along.
Exactly.
Oh, we skip something important.
last episode, who generated the fake ID for Sabine off screen that we didn't get to see him,
but he's there in the narrative, in the plot.
Hondo?
AP5, Chopper's husband.
Wait, how do we know this?
They say AP5 generated us, generated identification.
That's the husband droid.
So, exists.
You know who, you know who had to have a sassy sass off with ball?
AP5.
Oh my God.
They should have AB5 on the ship.
Please, please, please, please.
Please, I need to see it
Yeah, should have complained about like
Mall should have complained about a room being
Too colorful or disorganized or something
And AP5 should have been like, I agree
You know?
Wait, how did that not happen?
Because he's not on the ship.
He's back at the base.
He's at Chopper.
Oh, right, right, right, right.
He should be on the ship, Chopper needs his bestie.
Yeah, yeah.
Bestie boyfriend on the ship.
Yeah, agreed.
But that's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah, great looking episode.
Also, we haven't said this, but, like, again, really beautiful desert scenery.
You mentioned the high desert.
It really does feel like that.
Also, I don't know if they've done this consistently, but, like, as we're watching,
MK pointed this out.
And so, again, this is actually relevant here that we're watching on the Blu-Rays.
She was like, I think there is more, like, film grain in the low-light shots that is visible
the way, like, you see when you're pushing film stock or.
Yeah, like that when you're in low light conditions, you're pushing a little harder and you start seeing a little more, a little more like granular breakup of the image.
And it kind of does look like they've done that a little bit with like the visual style of the show.
They're not going full like, you know, cinema of very taste style.
It's just not that kind of show, but that little, that little note of like, how do things look when you're doing night location shooting versus like day?
Yeah.
And it's just kind of a neat thing that you see in those night sequences, the way that, like, it feels like the texture of the show is different.
Yeah.
And we get a lot of Hera here, right?
Because the plan ends up being Ezra's going to take the speed trooper outfit uniform, pretend that he's captured this, this Twilic, bring her in for questioning or whatever.
she puts on the French accent to really seem like a local, and they go into the base
and begin to sneak around to try to find the missing.
I keep forgetting what it's actually called.
It's called a colliquary.
What's it actually called?
Oh, it is a calicori.
Calicori, a calicori, which is like a sort of like a scepter with like little
side. It's like, imagine the scepter that you're holding. At the top, it has a T shape. And on each
side of the T, there's almost like, almost like descending wind chimes or something that are made of these
little cubes and, like, other little washers and stuff, except each one of them is a piece of art,
right? Each one is like a carved, maybe it's like a piece of wood or something that has been
connected. And the whole idea is it's sort of like a patchwork quilt, like a generational quilt,
or every, every new generation, there's something gets added to it, basically, to be like,
oh, this is from our generation of the family, et cetera.
And right now it's asymmetrical, which I think is interesting.
It's only, like, three pieces on one side and four pieces on the other side.
So it's like, it's ready to get a fourth piece added.
I don't know if that's Harris piece.
I don't know.
I don't know how it works, but I think that's fun.
Well, they call it her mothers.
Yeah.
Like, did Sindu, the Cham never, like, add a link to it?
Or, like, there's just, like, going back to the sense of, this is, to some extent, a broken family.
Like, even though, like, things are patched, like, you have the sense of, this is my mother's, like, heirloom.
It's not our families.
Yeah.
It's my mom's.
But it does feel like, in some ways, it's like both Hara and Cham didn't bring it with either of them when they left, right?
It's like, yeah, that's moms.
And now they're both like, well, we've fucked out.
in time.
Yeah.
We should have both been more attuned to that part of what was us, you know.
I'm going to make a long-term prediction.
I came in thinking I was going to make two long-term predictions today,
but we've all seemingly agreed that call-term, so I don't get to make that call shot.
Call shot number two, I think there's going to be a little baby syndula by the end of this show.
And they're going to add another little thing to this for the next.
generation. Well, they're going to have to find her a boyfriend then because they're not
going to acknowledge Kane, like that there's a... Oh, yeah, you're right. Sorry, yeah. Oh,
this is, and, and this season, Hara finds romance. Maybe it'll just be a time jump and, and no one
will say where the baby came from. You know? Oh, like a shm-mea situation. Like a shmee situation.
A shmituation.
something of a
smithuation going on here
yeah
it felt to me like
Hera wasn't supposed to actually inherit
her it until Chambola died
which is why
it was still sort of in the weeds
like he was supposed to hand it down to her
because it's like a generational
thing right that makes sense
that makes me feel like it's
there's something about like
it
being
like something about it not being confronted
or like with losing Harrah's mother
that they like couldn't
maybe this is like a total assumption
but I could imagine a world in which there's like
a certain passing on that needs to happen
if she's calling it her mother's
like maybe it was supposed to be meant for Hera now
but she can't confront it
because it holds this you know
this significance to her mother
I don't know.
It's interesting that it feels like an object that's kind of gone untended to since,
and that being related to her mother somehow.
Yeah.
Because like it without making a, I mean, they do make a big deal with it's the precipitating, like, object in the episode.
But this is not necessarily a, like the previous Hera Chan episode is about like family dynamics and all this.
This in the background, it is like there was a traumatic death in this family.
And this, like, that the normal cycle of these things was broken here.
And this thing's important, but like to this point, it's like it does feel like nobody quite knew what to do with it.
And broader than that, we do know that the relationship broke down in part stemming from that moment where Chamb, like, sort of throws himself fully into the work of being a revolutionary,
loses sight
of his daughter
in all of this
like there is just the
like I'm a sucker
for episodes where it's like
a character you never meet
can haunt a family
just by their absence
and like
I mean shit like
you know I think I'm talking about this
like my family's history
I'm pretty sure like
the more I've sort of come
to understand my grandparents
it is oh there's somebody
who like my dad never knew
like there's there's somebody like
their death
altered the trajectory of every relationship that existed, and, like, that would knock on.
Well, I think one of the things that's so good about this is in the thing that a lot of you all
are hitting on here or one other aspect of it is it wasn't important to them in, they couldn't
imagine losing it in some ways because it's just this thing that we've had forever, right?
And, like, yes, we've had war on our planet.
Yes, Hare grew up in war, but it was so important that it wasn't important. It was a column
holding up a room that just disappears into the every day. And now under new contexts,
under occupation, where their home city, their hometown, their home, their house has come under
occupation. Suddenly, it comes into relief as this really valuable foundational thing for who they
are, which is Thron's point. And that's how, that's what Thron's perspective.
is like, ah, you don't understand. In fact, some of these cultures don't even understand. Art
tells you something about who they are, even if they don't understand it, right? Like, that actually
helps support that part of who Thron is. And it makes this episode kind of hang together really
well, because, like, Hara is saying it's important, and Cham is saying it's important, and
they should have held onto it, and they want to go get it back, they want to do this risky thing,
this thing that Hara struggles with because she thinks it's selfish. We need Ezra to talk her
into saying like throughout the episode like it's okay that we're here like it's good that we're
here we care about each other but also we're you know she ends up wrapping around to say you know
my family is all of us it's more important that my my house isn't important the family's
important and all of that in relation to thron being like how the art people make the art people
hold dear tells you something about them it all just works this episode was written by
And Nicole Dubuque, who has been writing animation for 20 years now, started writing on Kim Possible in 2003, grew up as a voice actor, an actor, inside of a lot of, like, children's television or, like, family sitcoms that no one cares about.
She was, she was in a show called Our House.
She was at a show called, I guess she was in, she was in a major.
she was the kid in
Major Dad, the
CVS sitcom that seems
to have run for
like a year, I guess.
No, it ran for four seasons.
So she was like the little girl in that
and then goes on to be a little bit of a voice actor
and then has written, has been like the lead writer
on some recent very kids-focused TV,
Transformers Rescue Bots and
Lego Elves, Secrets of Elvindale
and my friends, Tigger and Pooh,
and some
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic
stuff.
Maybe those all hit harder than we think.
Well, like, I actually think that you probably have to think
a lot about what children's television
that's good at if you've been writing children's television
for 20 plus years, right?
And if you grew up inside of it to some degree.
And I don't know.
She's unfortunately writes this episode,
and it looks like two more episodes of Rebels.
And then some, like, digital shorts.
there's a there's a digital shorts series uh called um we've seen star wars forces of destiny
which are like little micro you know two minute long web short episodes basically she wrote a handful
of those but now i'm very excited to see what the other two rebels episodes she wrote were because
all of this character work is just excellent so got it's i love just this entire it is fun
And a hard thing to bring across
is showing intelligence
in TV shows.
Like I was thinking about this the other day,
who is like the greatest,
like the greatest of all time thinker,
like of an actor.
I think it's Johnny Lee Miller.
Like, you know, he plays Holmes
in the TV series.
Yeah.
The modern sort of reinvention.
Not the shit in one,
the shitty overtime one
that the BBC put together.
This is the home solves crimes
in Williamsburg.
It's good trust me. It's good. It's actually good. I love him a lot. Yeah. Brooklyn Williamsburg, not Colonial Williamsburg. That'd be really weird. But the point is, Johnny Lee Miller is really good at like, portraying a character is like seeing things and taking them in and then putting them together. It's weird to see when we watch the Emma thing. I was going to say, Natalie, you might remember him as the 2009, Mr. Knightley in the, for Emma, which we watched. Did we watch that Emma?
Yeah, the BBC series. Natalie was not on that one.
So I don't know if Natalie went back and watched it
If you haven't, you were in for a treat
Okay, yeah, I love that Emma.
Yeah.
I don't think I have.
We have to go back, but with Natalie this time.
We have to re-rack, run it back.
We need to talk about.
We watch new Emma together, okay, yeah.
We watched new Emma, yeah.
Showing how characters like see a thing
and then like dig a little further at it
and begin to like follow the thread
pull it apart.
Sorry, for people who don't know, which is some people, I'm just realizing this, you know,
there was a time on Waypoint, there was a website called Waypoint, now Remap Radio.
Rob, you started a, like a, I guess it was you and Daniel started to be good and rewatch it,
a like broader television and film podcast, and there was a unit on Jane Austen stuff.
So if you want to hear like me, Rob, and Natalie, Ali, sorry,
You were not a part of this at the time.
But if you want to hear the three of us, along with Danielle Riendo for some of it,
I think it was just us, right?
I don't think anybody else ever.
Cato never came on.
I think it was it.
I think it was it.
Talk about the Pride and Prejudice series.
Talk about the BBC 2009.
Emma, talk about, I guess you all talked about Clueless before I was on.
Yeah.
Talk about the more modern, Emma, a remake, or not remake, but adaptation.
We talked for fucking three hours.
about 2009 Emma Rob,
but I think it was just you and me.
We were fucking casting pods back then.
Not that this short episode,
not that we've gotten any shorter or more concise.
But people don't know that.
You should go look up,
be good and rewatch it.
Really, some bangers on there.
I guess Patrick was on that show generally
for when y'all did like horror movies and stuff.
Yeah.
But the Jane Austen stuff is a high point.
And the Evangelian stuff was pretty good.
So I have,
you know, I have mixed feelings about needing to talk about that show in a critical public, you know, I think it's, that show's hard to talk about sometimes. You end up talking in circles, but, um, yeah, actually, maybe that wasn't on that feed. Maybe that was just on the Waypoint radio feed, but anyway, uh, but anyway, I love this bit where they catch her trying to leave, uh, with the, uh, calicory. And, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the shit off.
officer who is with Thron is just like, I told you people to stay in the kitchen. You're not to be
on this level. And Thron sees her holding it. And he knows what they're, he knows they're in the
Sindula house. And immediately, like, you sense the game is either up or it's about to be up.
Because he's just like, bring her back here. And then just starts talking through, like, do you know
what this is, Captain? And the, it's very important. It's passed down from generation to generation.
and the reveal of like, you know,
you should be more gracious to our host.
Like, do you not realize who this is?
And just the, it almost feels like he's been staking this out.
Like, it feels like the moment he realized that they'd taken over the Sindula house and this was in it,
there was a very good chance someone was going to show up trying to recover this thing.
And so the minute he sees a young Twilik woman holding it in that house, he's like,
We got them.
That's it.
And Ezra tries to, you know, once he does the big reveal, shows, like, shows her picture on the wall, basically of her as a child.
Ezra tries to bail, bail him out by pulling, pulling his gun.
And Thron immediately.
Stuns him.
Immediately stuns him.
Like, without a single beat between it.
It's like, he was ready for it.
It's so good.
He's locked and loaded.
You know, he's not ready for chopper.
Or maybe he is ready for chopper.
The other guy's not ready for chopper.
He's running an experiment.
I really hope this is an experiment.
I could imagine it being the, we eventually kind of like, he keeps saying he has to go for an experiment.
And eventually we learn that the experiment is super soldiers or I guess we saw.
No, no, like literally he says, I'm running an experiment.
And then we see him basically like the entire thing is like him being on the Oppenheimer test range.
That is how it looks.
That is how it is shot.
I agree with you.
I'm thinking about the part of the trailer,
which is why we don't watch trailers normally,
but we watch this trailer on the advice of listeners.
And there's a moment where we see the, like,
they're not dark troopers,
but they're the,
they look,
they remind me of the Mandalorian's take on dark troopers,
which are those like droid,
the like super battle droids that are in all black.
And we saw those in the trailer,
and I keep thinking,
oh are we going to get those
is Thrawn working on some sort of heavy
droid thing that he's going to deploy
later this season? That is where my head is going. This is why you shouldn't
show me fucking trailers ever, because it's going to distract me
constantly.
Another like kind of small moment in this episode, but that
really landed for me was
Harris' escape plan of being like,
oh, we should go through the basement because there's no reason to go down there.
There's no reason anyone would be down there.
And then she walks into this, like, they've turned it into the control room, this, like, moment of, like, you know.
I love it.
Not only is this not her house anymore, but, like, it's been repurposed in a way that she can't contextualize because she has this, like, other attachment to it was neat to be.
A very, very tiny detail, but fun character.
characterization. Yeah. Well, and in some ways, it's what opens up the idea that she might blow up
her own house, right? It's like, oh, they, it's not my house anymore. It's not where my home is.
My home is with you, which is like classic kids TV stuff, classic genre storytelling stuff,
right? My home is my, she says, my, my crew and my family or whatever, right? Like, it's not,
um it's not just this place and uh that is in some ways a response to everything that's been
done here um uh which i think is is pretty good hey real quick so the the dumb ass imperial
officer is commander slovin there's no chance this is a lucky number sloven reference is it no
there's not produced by chris roberts there's no way the thing
I think about, talk about a movie I've not thought about in 20 years.
Stanley Tucci, Bruce Willis, Michael C. Williams?
I don't think this movie's any good.
I remember seeing this movie in theaters and being disappointed.
Absurd.
Should be criminal to have a cast like this and have it blow up.
Maybe it's secretly good.
I, you know, I just don't remember thinking it was.
I also had a bad, like, Cinevison's moment in the, the era getting, um, caught.
thing where it's like oh go back to the kitchen she's dressed like a fighter pilot she
smells like exhaust fuel there is no guessing what's going on here yeah they did not give her
she's pretending to be like a maid or something she does not have servants clothes on she's dressed
yeah it's just a her with the yeah with the proto rebel uniform also in the last episode
Hara was like, we will all be spotted.
They know who we are.
Well, I think that's that that actually is something that we're coming out of these episodes with
is that almost everyone at this point has had a direct encounter with intelligence officers
that will render them incapable of being in the sky,
Like, or not being detected in future, like, everyone's getting, like, found out, basically.
Like, now, in last episode, Sabine was identified as Sabine Red, rebel agent.
And in this episode, Harris, you know, identified as Harrison Dula, daughter of cham and rebel leader.
So I think that is like a I wonder if that is a meaningful like they're, you know, they won't be able to walk around on on like enemy planets without being like immediately or like imperial planets without immediately being recognized if they have to put more effort into disguising themselves in the future because of this.
I would love for there to be a more greater focus on fun disguises for our characters.
That sounds good to me.
More Mission Impossible Energy.
Always welcome.
So, yeah, so they, while they are stuck in this jam, she does send chopper out to access the explosives that are lying around.
And, you know, we cut back to the fights in the canyons between the rebels and the Imperial
ground troops and they call
a truce to project the demand
for hostage exchange, quite
detail. Like, I'm sure we've noticed this
before, but I do love that
the, the
Tuelek fighters are all wearing
clone armor. Yeah. That they're
using, you know, stuff they've
had in operation since
the old days. Basically, I think, I think
Chams still literally has the paint job
from
screwball
and
waxer and boil
Oh yeah
Japer
I'm sorry
Japer
The Joker's already
Taken Batman
I'm the
The japer
I'm going to do jakes
Who ho he
The japer
Has struck again
Batman
There have been
gestures
There have been
Joker
it is the time
of the japer
I'm not jaking you
I'm not joshing you
I'm japing you
I'm japing you
bad
well anyway
he still got there
the paint job
from that unit
on there
but he you know
immediately
you know agrees to do
the exchange
we get the great moment
of as she's
approaching her father
she says
father I'm sorry
and I love
of his reaction, even I've been captured
before. Cham is, he is a stone
cold revolutionary at this point. He's like
whether he'd do, so many of the gulag,
the possibility he's going to get firing squadded
immediately. It doesn't even occur to him. He's just like
there's no prison I haven't broken
out of. Right.
Is Cham and Uncle? Do we
miss Cham in the uncle's list?
I think he's grandpa.
He's on there.
Is he? I don't know. I don't think he made the cut.
No, I think he was low on the list.
we had we definitely had him there but I think he's under this moment this moment is uncle dad
and that is uncle dad is like when like your relationship with a parent particularly a father had a lot
of like friends parents were divorced and they had an uncle dad uncle dad not a great parent
a bit of a messy fuck up in a lot of ways but also kind of related to you is like I'm just hey we're all
trying to figure it out. You're a young person trying to figure out life. I'm also a young
person, maybe not that young anymore, but anyway, it's all confusing. But hey, have some cool
permissions. I'll let you do stuff that your mom won't. And this is, so I think this is the
moment where it's like, even I've been captured before. He can relate to this part. This is where he,
this is where he can show up where it's like, oh, no, you're getting booked by the empire. Man,
that's, I remember my first time being booked. Well, and then she does the, the,
the cool moment.
No, I'm sorry about the house.
Sorry about the house.
Boom.
This moment rips.
Yeah.
This goes.
This moment is, you know, it's not, again, it's not Andor, but it's, we're getting in that space of, of end of arc, cool, you know,
revolutionary, badass maneuver.
Is it possible explosions are cooler when they aren't mixed with pestiles?
We get one of those.
in this episode. Did you notice that? That happens again in this episode. Sometime in the like
canyon chase like B plot that's kind of not even a B plot. Sabine blows something up and we
get the big pastel explosion. So they haven't given up on it yet. That's neat. But it's not
not quite as good as the shot of the interior of the hallway. No. And the explosions going
off. That's what it is. In sequence. And like shit flying everywhere looks great.
Show comes close to showing Stormtrooper is getting blown the fuck apart. Not quite.
but they vanish in a fireball.
You're right, though, the shot of the house interior
when right before the explosion goes off,
seeing the bombs, and then we get the chain reaction explosion, right?
We get the like, okay, first you see the crates
where the detonators have been first placed, like, in the basement.
And then we get another cut of the Imperial, like,
the Imperial Command Center in the empty basement that Hara talked about.
Then we get the wide shot,
of the big receiving hall where there's all of the geometric tile work
and the beautiful blue windows and all that.
And all just gets like blown in.
And then we get the outside shot of the Stormtroopers getting blown to shit.
And then we get the final big shot or the second to final big shot
of outside the Imperial Commander getting blown up like from the kinetic force of the explosion.
And then we get the wide shot of Thrawn looking in the distance at the explosion on the mountain.
And like that sequence is just well made visual.
storytelling. That's just those are good cuts. That's classic. I'll want to show a cool chain
explosion in cinema. And early Clone Wars did not have the juice on that. They slowly started
getting it. It is well developed here. They know how to tell a story well. And I would say like this is
even stronger than some of the similar stuff we've seen in Rebels so far, which is again
exciting because it's like they're sharpening their tools. They know how to tell stories visually.
sometimes a TV show is a thing you watch with your eyes and it has to like communicate big exciting
things in compelling visual ways and it's doing that so big hell yeah moment when that happened
and a big hell yeah moment when canaan does the um the reverse the missile back at the the guy
shoots a rocket at him in the ship and he uses the forest to toss it back at the ATST later he taught that
to Calcutta. That's who taught it to Calcest. What if Calcestis shows up in this show?
I love it. It would be bad. I would love it. I would be so here for it. This would be fantastic.
A little red hair. Oh, it'd be funny.
I'm scared of that. I don't think it'll happen. I think the timing is not right, but.
So the Imperial Commander is like calling for help and Thron just lets them go. And he's like, oh, no,
this is quite successful. His experience was very enlightening, he says.
Yeah. He got what he wanted.
I do think like, and I'm curious how they're going to handle this.
Thron is being forced to work through people who are not bringing it.
And that's going to be like, this is the problem of the empire is there's a lot of like competency issues where.
And we pick this up when Tarkin shows up on Lothol, where it's like you, the, the, uh, whatever the hell their names were.
at this point, but the two guys who get decapitated
by the Inquisitor. Just this sense
of like, there are so many people like
that you have to have them like plug
these gaps and fill these roles, but they're not
additive. They're not, they're not competent.
Like if Thrawn isn't there, they're never
making any progress on Rilov. This guy
clearly is in over his head.
But Thron can't just shoot
this guy out of a cannon for some reason.
He has to, he still has to work
with this guy and try to like figure out
like, okay, how can I, like
how are we going to use you in this situation?
And I'm still kind of surprised that like he's not like finding a way to be like,
now we can discard this guy.
He found use for this guy already, right?
Maybe he'll, you know, there is to be a patsy.
To be a patsy, but to be a test for Hara, right?
And the ghost crew.
And like that's more use than trying to use him.
You know, I suspect that there are like 10 of 10 guys like this, right,
who are like mid-tier or whatever's.
And I bet Thrawn has a couple of them doing the job for real somewhere else.
But for this guy, he has set up a situation now to be like, all right, let's learn about the, let's take, let's, this is one we're going to lose on purpose.
But we're going to learn something from this exchange that, that I don't want to waste someone who I actually trust on this.
They might die.
They might have their confidence ruined.
Let's let this guy get his confidence chipped down over a few missions.
And then we'll deal.
I'm going to squeeze him for what he has, which is the potential to lose in a way that I learn from.
We'll see.
We'll see if we get – I don't know if we ever get this guy again, but it would be great.
I would love to have Thron let this guy be his guinea pig to learn more and more about how the ghosts do things.
And to your point, Rob, one of my big questions is, how do you leave this show with Thron?
I don't know if Thron lives or dies in this show.
One of the things I realized while watching this was like, when I think about
Thron in the old of you, I don't think about him so much in this era, right?
I think about him after the movies.
And I don't know that he, does he live through rebels?
He doesn't show up in a new hope through Return of the Jedi.
I guess he does because Assoc is looking for him in when she pops up in Lovacian.
Candelorian or whatever. You're right. So he must survive, which is maybe a shame that maybe he doesn't because like she's also looking for him as if like she knows he's out there, but maybe no one else does. So like it's possible that like he stages his death or something like a Moriarty type thing. Totally. But what are we going to get stage his death? He died. Well, or did he? Isn't that the question? Isn't he getting his own show though? He was in the Asoka show, I think. Right. But I don't know if that's flashbacks. I don't know if that's. I do think he's alive for the reason. The.
fact that Ossoca was looking for him in Book of Boba Fett, I think that's where she says
she's looking for. Maybe it is a Mandalorian. That tells me that he's out there and that's a part
of what that story is, right? Unfortunately, though we've been spoiled for that, but we have
and we've already talked about that stuff. But is the story they're going to tell us the empire
would have won if not for those people who meddled underneath Thron, or if not for the fact
that Thron wasn't taken seriously? Or if only Throne had been around, this could have all gone
differently, right? It's kind of a classic thing you get from hyper-competent stories about
hyper-competent, like villains in general, doubly so when you have like a fascist, a fictional
fascist, you know, antagonist force that has someone who is really compelling as a villain,
that you, especially if it's like fill in the gaps later, you know, Allie, how many Gundam side
stories in the UC are there where there's like a really great Zeon commander who like was
ignored or their project blew up in their faces before it could turn the tide of war or
that's what happens in all of these sorts of stories and it's very easy to imagine the like
if not for the way the final three episodes of rebels go, Thrawn would have been around to
turn the war the different way you know and I and my my instinct is at least for this first
for now, season three, we're going to see a lot of Thrawn losing because people under him
fuck up. And that lets him stay strong in the booking, in these wrestling terminology. That lets him
look like a strong villain for us because it's not him losing specifically. It's his underlings
or it's his allies or whatever, right? That's my gut from seeing just this episode. But maybe
I'm wrong. And maybe we'll run into the problem we ran into with the Inquisitors where like he starts
taking ls but it feels like they learned from that mistake here so we'll see does that do it
are we done did we make it through a fucking episode i think it does that that is where we end on the
scene where she's like i don't need my house my my family is here my home is here right uh and i do
like she she goes i've got you to canaan and like a clear again this is a family like the show being
Like, nope, this is their mom and dad to the ghost, but like that is, that's the score, even if for whatever reason they're not, like, just saying it. I do, I do wonder if they're tiptoeing around like, well, Jeddah, I can't do this. I do feel like that. I think you might be right. I don't know.
Which feels so, it feels super bad. Like, it's, it's very silly. It does. It is silly. I agree.
but it's it's a great episode and a great a great uh like you know the first time we see him like
thron's introduced we see him do like i have a plan this is the first time we see like how quickly
it just all snaps into place and it's so important to establish that where it's like this character
you're not going to buy five minutes of time with him by being like i'm java that shit's done
That period of reliance.
Yeah.
Woo-hoo!
Well, you know.
To connect this with the previous episode,
one thing that he's going to have to contend with is Callis being a traitor, right?
Right.
And ways that we could imagine him continuing to look powerful without needing to,
or ways for him to lose without needing to lose to Jabba, I'm Jabba and him hadn't
to take that fucking seriously is that he really does have leaks in the system. And they're not
just leaks of incompetency. We have callous as our character who could be trying to undermine
him from the inside out. And I don't know. You know, I possibly was finally moved to open
treason by Thron. Like that is the other part of this is, so what's going to be his undoing is,
like, is he going to be outthought on the battlefield? Probably not. Is the way he operates or the tactics
he uses just the way he like handles you know the the costs of war is that going to be stuff
that in the case of calis is going to be critically undermining because it is like he you know
he removes that place of like plausible deniability where you're going to have people who are
like war is hell yes it does not need to be this hellish and thron is fully in the you know war is war
victory at all costs, but Callas
now was just like openly colluding with
the rebels rather than
serve underthron. At the time,
what he said was tell, we didn't
say this explicitly, so I'm saying it now.
When Callis told Sabine,
Wedge, and Hobby were to go,
he said
tell Garib Zarelios
that were even
or whatever. So it's really all about
Zab for him. I think
it's very toxic. I think
it's bad. We've already gone over how bad
it is. But I'm ready to just let us shift into the, into the, uh, the toxic
gaii moment of this relationship. That's what I, that's what I forgot. Actually, from this
first episode, Zeb is looking for an evil boyfriend because he says to Maul, you look at
move in when Maul is like, you're right. Menacing them. He is on the prow for an evil
boyfriend. This is coming from Zeb. He saw with Chopper God. I'm convinced now. He saw us. He saw a
He's all a chopper guy if you want some, too.
Damn, you're right.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
I'm ready to just hit the ship.
You know what I mean?
Let's just shift it to overdrive.
Yeah, let's go ahead.
We've set our peace.
I'm not happy about it.
I don't like how we got here,
but my heart is open to where we're going.
It has to be where else we're fucked because it's going to happen.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's like, you sat down at the meal and you were like,
oh, so what's on the, what are we doing?
And then it was like, someone said the thing you hate,
but you're like at an event that they don't have other options.
It's like you're at your partners.
You got a ride with it.
You got a ride with it.
You know what I mean?
Like your partner's family is about to come out and serve you cow tongue.
And you're like, that is not what I signed up for.
Mmm, all right.
Let me eat some of that cow tongue.
I'm ready for it.
To some, it is a delicacy.
Of course.
Of course.
And with immense flavor payoff.
Exactly.
So let's see, let's see where this takes us.
Tell me that language.
Exactly.
And if it, you know, it ain't real.
It's a cartoon on my screen.
I can hold my nose for the setup, and we're just in it now.
So here we go.
You know, pedal to the floor, you know?
And as Zeb and Callis go over the cliff and a landspeeder together, we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age.
Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by our listeners at
patreon.com slash civilized where again they're also going to get to hear us talk also at length
about the acolyte and discuss our reactions to that next next time up what have we got here
the last battle oh imperial supercommandos and iron squadron we skipped right over imperial
commandos we just went straight to imperial supercommandos yeah there's no imperial commandos
just Super Commandos.
They decided we need Super Commandos.
We need them now.
Let's go.
And that seems to be a Concord-Dong, Fenrault.
What's the distinction?
I don't know.
We're going to find out.
Oh, we're going to find out.
Yeah.
Sorry.
No, no, we were not referencing.
We were bantering.
Okay.
So that, it's hard to do.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, until, until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice.
and remember the admonishment that Herod gave
that is not just a treasure for him to collect as a prize
and that's something we can all remember
when we think about people who talk about art this way
you're right that does
my favorite my favorite observation MK made
during the episode is like oh so Thron is basically like you're fighting
the British Museum oh yeah and I never thought of it that way
but yeah actually it's a pretty decent like
summary of like what's what's thron's whole deal yeah imagine the british british museum was like
a general yep let's burn it down yeah but get the stuff out first yeah yeah please let's
recover as much as we can repatriate yeah i thought that they were going to intercept the box
going to the thron's base i was like this episode has to end with them getting it back no
sorry this is right i just realized we didn't say this out loud they
don't get it back. That's why I think
it's going to end with adding another thing
to it. Because she's going to fucking get it
back. Yes.
Yes. I subscribe to this.
Now we have like
Hera v. Thron as a
major antagonistic
angle here. We talked last time about how
like Thrawn means we can talk about this in terms of
rebellion instead of there's Jedi versus Sith
stuff. And like the fact that the
for the entryway on this is
Thrawn versus Hera is really
fun. And I bet we end up getting.
What if they put off this payoff until the live action era?
And we can see that entire sequence.
Shut up.
We're definitely going to see it in his office and be like, no, fuck you.
He's going to hold it up.
Yeah, and consider her and consider what her maneuver will be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.
But also, thinking about it, I know we need to end this podcast, but I'm glad we got this one.
I wonder if we're going to get one of these for everybody.
Is he going to learn about, is he going to learn about what is.
What is Zebs, what are Zebs genocided, fake genet, not genocide?
Lassot.
They were genocide.
Now they're not.
Don't worry about it.
They have a planet of them out there.
LaSot art.
Is he going to learn about, is he going to study Sabine's art?
Is this the only way we're going to get fucking Sabine back story?
100%.
Yeah.
He gets the darksaber.
He's going to, is he going to put, is he going to look at traditional Mandalorian art and then look at her graffiti and be like to an untrained eye, these two things seem like they're in common.
but to one who studied the history of the Mandalorians, you can see the throughline,
aggression, anger, violence.
Owls.
She loves owls.
Yeah, wings.
We're going to see the dark saber behind his desk, like a mall katana.
You're right.
Well, a mall katana or a mall katana?
Because it's kind of both.
M-A-U-L or M-A-L-L-L.
True.
I met M-A-L-L-L, but.
They put the Dark Sabre in, spoiler, sure, the Elden Ring DLC,
but the Dark Sabre's in there now, just saying that out loud,
and that's all saying.
Okay, DM me after this.
We have to have this much.
This Mall Catana is the prize totem of our people.
That's right.
Who wields the Maulkatana has the right to rule, Mandelor.
That's right.
God, I love, he's going over Sabine's art, though.
And, like, the, you know, Imperial Captain with him is like,
I don't know, I don't see it, Grand Ammer.
we're like, one of these just kind of look shitty.
Oh, no.
Oh, no, Captain.
It's definitely shitty.
But it still teaches us much about our adversary.
We can learn from it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I am really curious.
This is it.
We have a good villain.
Listen to us talk.
Thron trying to make sense of like,
what do you think Bridger sees in all these helmets?
This is the, I totally.
Right.
Why do you love all these helmets so much?
This is the thing.
is, and this is what's fucked up, is
it's not much
more than what Sabine has
as like sets of character traits
but it just hangs together
a little bit more and he's talked about it.
Sabine hasn't said shit about why art
is valuable to her or what
or like, it hasn't come up really
in any, she hasn't really talked about
explosions and like he's better
than this. Why does she like graffiti? I just do art.
I don't know. I just do art.
I'm just a quirky girl like that.
It's my thing. It's just my thing.
It's like, it's so sad that we got Thron talking about it so much, though.
I know.
And that we're talking about it because it works.
But it could be like, it could be a connection between those characters, right?
Like, we could all be like, oh, I can't wait for Thron and Sabine to have it out intellectually or whatever.
They believe different things about art, whatever it is, right?
No, we don't have that.
Again, we could still get that.
I want to hold out hope for it.
But we didn't get it.
Instead, we got that episode, again.
Say it again, where the episode is about someone coming to terms with their past
and their relationship to art and then burning it all down with a very exciting moment
of high explosives, and it isn't Sabine, it's Hera.
So, at least it was Hera and not like, at least this whole thing wasn't a chopper episode
or something.
That would be worse.
The art and explosions episode, it would be very funny.
Anyway.
And that's a show.
Good episode, good Bill, and that's a show.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.