A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 92: The Wynkahthu Job, An Inside Man, and Visions and Voices (Rebels 46 - 48)

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Have three episodes ever more represented the breadth of Rebels than this set? The Wynkahthu Job is a one-off, Ohnaka-driven heist story that retreads old ground, but stuns visually. An Inside Man gives us new angles on Imperial power and control, and gives Thrawn (and Lars Mikkelsen) scene-stealing material. And Visions and Voices returns to some Clone Wars material to mixed, but intriguing, results.    Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Ricardo Contreras (@a_cado_appears) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Aliaqampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you are listening by patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to our Q&A episodes and our evolving impressions, ever-evolving impressions of the acolyte. you're currently catching me on an up day. I think the entire series should have been like the most recent one. Yeah.

It was the best episode so far, right? Yeah, yeah. Foregrounding maybe different characters, which maybe highlights some of the issues. I mean, yeah, they should have just made half of the show, the half that has the good characters in it. Yeah. Yep. But that and the rest of the, why don't they build

the entire plane out of the black box impressions we have of the Akelyte. we'll wait until Well, we probably are heard it by the time this episode airs Yeah, I honestly don't know what our release Yeah, that might be right We might be done, Acolyte

By the time this is out So I hope you enjoyed it People are like living in the future They're hearing this and be like, wow, Were they in for a surprise, pleasant or otherwise? We'll see. Who knows? I would love to come out the other side of Akelet

Being like... A complete stand. You know what? Feeling like the way we feel about the prequels Where we're like Just let them cook. Was it good filmmaking? No.

Is it some of the best Star Wars we've ever seen? Absolutely. You know? Like, you know, like we're like the ingredients for like going forward are so good that it's okay that the actual that we have like qualms about people feeling like cardboard cut out sometimes or just how I feel about the prequels too, you know? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how we feel. So this week we have three one-offs that advantage.

a few of the parallel plot threads running through Rebels this season. Ezra has to reckon with whether Hondo is really the kind of uncle he should have in his life. The ghosts are confronted with the fact that Callus is, whether they want him or not, their man in Thrawn's camp. And finally, Moll returns to handle the unfinished business between him and Ezra. Let's start out with the Wincathu job. Ezra has set up a sketchy salvage mission with Hondo and as Morgan out of nowhere.

The ghosts want the proton bombs from an abandoned Imperial freighter. Honda wants the treasure. Zab is put in charge the mission, annoying Ezra, but Heron and Canaan are hoping that at some point, Ezra sees who Honda really is. Sure enough, he's kept key details about the job as a secret, and he is transparently trying to screw his partner as Morgan out of his share of the loot. But the mission goes sideways as the ship is guarded by Imperial sentry droids,

leading to a tense evacuation of the ship as it is being pulled down into a planetary superstorm. The gang escaped with their proton bombs while against his will, Hondo and as Morgan, they only managed to rescue one of Hondo's crew of Agnoughts, which he previously marooned

aboard this freighter. So, what do we think of the Winkathoo job? Can we skip this one? AP5 siting. I love it. I'm here for the Wincathieu. I'm with you, Natalie.

Go ahead, Rob. Why do you love it? It's got some, like, I think, first of all, I think it looks incredible. Like, just the series, again, like the presentation, the things it does with scale and, like, eerieness of, like, these daring rescues that ghosts go on sometimes. It looks really cool. Like, the set piece elements of it, of them trying to evacuate the ship as it's collapsing. It all looks cool. It's a good, it's a good little heist story.

Yeah. in the space of like 20 minutes. I also think it's actually very funny. It is like the, the bit with the door that they keep building on throughout the episode. It has like funny bits. It's not, like there's not a lot here, right?

Like the stuff that we do, the way we engage with like rebels in the Clone Wars, this is a really thin episode. This is a Honda Adventure of the Week. By the standards of a Honda Adventure of the Week, it's a pretty well executed one. It moves along and there's very little on it that I find like actively annoying. I think it's an important episode because it's the first episode of the three-part uncle arc.

And that's what we experience this week. Three episodes about uncles. Yeah, the three uncles. Yeah. Ezra is changing his relationship with some uncles. I think that you're right. You can draw a line. This is about how Ezra feels about various uncles in his life.

I do not care for Hondo, Anaka. I do not care for Asim of Oregon. I do not I do like AP5 and we get some good AP5 this week in general AP5 has a lot of snark I'm a big fan of that Ezra is so unlikable in this episode that it's which like I can I can respect from a from a I don't know that I can actually because it feels aimless like it feels like I don't know what to week what I'm supposed to think about Ezra why is he beefing so hard with Zeb over

Zab being the point Because this is continuation of his little promotion thing No but that was before we had his like

his his like come to the force moment with Canaan a few episodes ago. Like this feels like it belongs

at the beginning of the season You go to the force and you go back Well they they keep doing these ping pong things with Ezra

where it's like oh the situation is resolved he's matured emotionally and the next episode it's a direct reference to how he didn't do that. That is what is throwing me with him, right? Is like, if this had come in the first

third of the season where he was still like forced mind controlling people and was generally like being a little shit, then I think I'd be in a much better place with it. But we've already had him go through his big, like, talk to Bendu and realize that he has to like let go. It wasn't his fault and da-da-da-da. And, you know, I guess it's not the same thing as him being a little shit about his promotion but it felt like we already went through him being a little shit about his promotion and coming out the other side being more chill about it and like I don't know what it really feels like is the episode writers got a kind of here are the big ideas of this season and one of them is Ezra it needs to learn to mature and lead to like let go of his attachment to

this promotion and unfortunately it sometimes feels like that was a resolved plot line because previous episodes just hit it better. So, and also it's weird that Zeb is catching strays over this. Like, yeah. They shared a beer. Like, I thought they were like, it just feels, I think what you said earlier, Austin about, I do feel like it feels out of place. Like this, the, the, the episode order is like slightly off here where I feel like the

when Kathy Job episode should have come a few episodes ago and it would maybe fit in a little bit better with just the general arc of Ezra's sort of maturity. Teenagers can be inconsistent. This is true. You're 100% right. This is true. This is true. I just like, it's such a nothing episode.

to come now. I don't know. I expect these episodes to carry a little bit more weight. Like, the two following episodes, I feel like, have considerably more to dig into. The next one, especially episode 11. But with episode nine, I just thought,

I have to agree with Rob that it looked good. Like, the actual, the actual, visual of the ghost kind of being towed behind the big cargo ship and that kind of in it battling the maelstrom around it and that the tension of the of the uh ropes is like pulling on um you know you could feel all that physicality really well and that that's it's like well executed it just doesn't have a lot to sink your teeth into for the type of stuff that we like to to talk about. I mean, even without that, I think I'm running into the limits of what I, how much I enjoy

spending time with these characters. You know what I was thinking about? You know what I was thinking about? Super well. What's that? I was thinking about that Shaq meme, um, where he's asleep. Oh, the sleep. Where he's sleep and when he's awake.

And I was thinking of like the entire ghost crew, I'm asleep. Yeah. But AP5, mall. Yeah. Thrawn? Thrawn. Awake. I am up and awake and here and present and seated and here to watch the show.

Because they're just so much more interesting characters to watch than Ezra. This is me watching The Legend of Cora, the Avatar follow-up show, and being like, whenever one of these adults is on the screen, for some reason, it speaks to me. They have more complex storytelling going on. The burdens they carry, you know, the references to the previous show I watched with them that have built a long-running, you know, sense of care and interest, compared to these new youngsters that, you know, are the clear, you know, characters that the kids are supposed to, you know, respond to, da-da-da-da-da. So it's like, it's, it's, we're watching children's television. I think, Rob, you're right. There's a strong premise on this episode.

The set pieces are good. I'm just running into a limit of how much I can care about as. how much I can care about. I, like, truly am over, Hondao. Like, I've given this motherfucker as much time as I can, and the gag just doesn't land with me. And so there's just going to be, it's just an uphill battle.

And, like, doubly so when it's him bouncing off of, you know, we made it nine episodes into season three before we started getting some fat jokes. But here we are, like, it's, it is just boring shit. The blind, like, three blind. I can't believe, and that's actually my actual notice. My notice, wow, we made it nine episodes without blind jokes. Then later I had to go in and hit end fat jokes because the blind jokes is the thing that was wild, which is like, almost a compliment to the show that we did somehow make it this far into the season without someone starting to be like.

Cool. Yeah, the jokes for people who aren't watching a long, Honda like stumbles into saying like, you see what I did there or whatever, you know, or like, I hope you can see my perspective. Oh, whoops. Oh, whoops. Because you're blind. And it's like, okay. And it's not even like there's some. we did see Honda without the hat on that was fascinating to me we did we did but canaan doesn't

even have like a a a reaction in a way that would like give any sort of justification for keeping the joke in it just felt so cheap um and i don't know i feel like we've done this bit we've like learned this hondo lesson already in terms of uh hondo is going to to cheat whoever is around him to get to the most advantageous outcome for himself. Like I have. Ezra hasn't. I get that. So, okay, but that actually is one of my issues with this is that.

So, Hondo is, like, by design, the created a character who's never going to change. Like, he is, he is just fixed. Like, Hondo's just going to be there. And Hondo will be Hondo at the end of an episode. He'll do whatever the plot requires of him in the next episode. You know, it was typifying that Clone Wars episode where it's like some weeks, I feel like kidnapping kids. Other weeks I don't.

And it's like, yeah, character, he's just going to show up to like move whatever plot needs moving along. And he's not going to have like the moments. It's like, oh, there's a little bit of like lonesomeness to Hondo. But that's never going to become like a defining feature of his character. It's just going to be a little

thing they put in as an undertone, you know, beneath the color of Hondo. Which is shame because I would take a big, tragic, finale art with Honda where he dies and like we get some like close feelings for him but we know he lived because we've been on his ride in in Disney world I was thinking about that a lot actually over the course of this so it was like well we know yeah he's he's still out there you know at 30 years later or whatever you know but the thing the other thing is it did

kind of come out of nowhere for me where it was like Ezra needs to see who Honda really is I think he's seen that Like he's made his piece Like early on he has made his piece with that And so we don't really have a Is them trying to sort of layer onto this A notion of like You know kids can look up to bad people

And not really see like there's an episode of Like one of the best I've seen The tackle this is the Andy Griffith show At one point Opie meets this like Cool charismatic like stranger in town he's a bit of a drifter but he's got all these

like cool little magic tricks and shows like Opie all these little ways to like get stuff for nothing you know here's and what he's what he's showing Opie really is like various ways to cheat people various ways to like steal stuff without getting caught and through it all you see why like

he's great with kids and you see why the kid immediately gravitates towards him and you also see like why this is not someone that a kid should be spending a ton of time around And so, like, it's sort of the hangover at all of it is like, you know, it's going to be sort of, you know, the child character, OPE's first understanding of, like, sometimes people can be really nice and really, like, lovable, but, like, be bad. And you can't, like, you can't blind yourself to that. And the thing is, Honda's never going to bury that way.

Like, Honda was not a load-bearing character in that way. And trying to have it as, like, oh, we really need to, something needs to. to get through to Ezra about who this guy really is. That's just not going to work well with Hondo because the ground isn't ever going to be prepared in that way because like he's just Hondo. I will. And we've had episodes where like he got a load of who Hondo is. It's all good.

Well, and that's the, there's actually in the Rebels recon for this week, which none of these I think are worth like going to watch. But Taylor Gray, Ezra's voice actor actually has a really strong response to a question about this where he says like, you know, basically someone says like, Like, why does, why does, I think Andy asks him, why does Ezra keep kind of like going back to Hondo, even though his plans keep, you know, kind of messing up? And my paraphrase of this is a thing that we've hit on before a little bit, but it's that like, it's the Ezra sees himself in Hondo. And in Hondo sees someone who's more grounded than the rest of the crew, he lives, he's lived in the world of Hondo before, right? He's lived in the criminal world a little bit more than the rest of this crew.

Even though they are criminals, they're not people who do con, who do traditional cons for personal profit. And Ezra responds positively to that because he's, it's like a little taste of home for him. And the rest of the ghost crew will never really understand that because that's not where they are from. And I think that that is a much more interesting angle. And I actually wish that's what the episode had been where it's like, you know, this episode is about, by the end of it, Ezra sees that Hondo has betrayed as Morgan and has betrayed his crew member, and he's supposed to have this slightly more skeptical position on Hondo. And in the same way that maybe he'll continue to sometimes

work with Moll, because it will give him something that he needs. This is not going to be the end of Hondo and Ezra's relationship, but it feels like they're setting up that next time Ezra will go into it with clearer eyes or something. But it may have been better to just do an episode where it was about how he always goes into it with clear eyes. He knows Hondo screws over his people, but it's going to be useful for us. And there's even something kind of fun in playing the game with him sometimes. And he could have spent this episode trying to bring Hara and Canaan and the rest on board with that idea instead of, you know, as we're saying, listen, sometimes the people we work with aren't going to be trustworthy.

And we got to roll with that, you know, and we got to try to get through it the best we can would give him actually a much stronger character arc in this episode instead of the thing that we've kind of described. Which, again, to me, that's like, that's not, oh, that's, AMCA wants everything to be Andor. This is just like, I think there's a better television episode in here about a, about a character who we know and what their actual position should be. You know, there's other stuff here that's cool. The fucking dark forces, dark troopers are in here as just century droids. And that's what they are that I can confirm that they explicitly pulled them out of dark forces to put in here, which, yeah, they're cool. I like their design.

They're fun. And again, the bit where they saw the door open with the lightsaber just before a chopper just opens it by turning on the ship. And then later that pays off when it's like, quick, seal the blast door. And the blast door slide shut with the giant. Full that's still in it. Yeah. The lightsaber gouge in it. is great it's it's terrific uh again i think it's a weirdly good looking episode uh everything

about like yeah i don't know sometimes an episode really pops just like in terms of like lighting and motion this one did i don't fully know why uh it just seems like one of those episodes where uh the presentation had had leveled up a bit i will say this are we sure that the bombs were more valuable than the piles of credits was up with that there's like ancient twilic treasure on this ship. The Ark of the Covenant is on this ship, apparently. You know, money can buy proton bombs, guys. You can go and, like, buy, you see goods and services with money.

You get them. Now I don't know. It was very funny. Like, they're walking through a ship. There's just got literal stacks of credits, the likes of which we see in the Aldani raid almost. Not quite. But, like, it seems, it seems a lot.

And it's like, no, we got to. got to move these giant artillery shells out of here. It's like I might take the thing that can be easily ported and turn it to larger amounts of money. But a lot of the resources. It was cool though.

I also did like the fact that Dark Forces robots did the smart thing, which was they blew the cable rather than trying to shoot the guys dangling from it. That was neat. But yeah, for me it's like this episode does what it

does what the front of the tin implies, right? It's it's like fun heist times with Honda cool yeah what do we feel about the thing that lets you pick up a bunch of

bombs as if they have no weight I feel like we've seen the magnet the giant super magnet yeah that thing's cool I need one of those just to have just to do stuff for me yeah I can just do I can just do I could just move stuff around with that. That sounds cool.

It was extremely like video game physics where it was like warehouse operator 2024 or something like that. Did anyone else feel like a physical anxiety when they were in the tiny ghost with all the bombs in it? Yeah. I knew it wasn't going to blow up. I knew it was the end of the episode, but I still felt really uncomfortable. Agreed. It's a lot of bombs are put in one place, and it's small.

You can bump into stuff. I don't know if they're armed or not, you know. I will also say I do like the sort of soft continuity here, which has become a staple of the series, which is that in the one of the previous episodes and in, was it the last battle, the last battle with the battle droids and the tactical droid, they were there trying to find these types of bombs, but they had to use them on the. walkers to get away. And so the idea of like, yeah, they still need those. That's something that I think has been become a sort of staple of the series where like the material concerns of the rebellion or their little part of the rebellion remain the material concerns until they get addressed. Hey, we need fighters. Hey, we need a base. Hey, we need pilots. Hey, we need blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It will sometimes be a plot point and sometimes it won't be. It'll just be

part of a conversation or something. And then we come back around to it and then it gets delivered on. And, like, I don't know that that's, it's, it's not like a special secret super trick or anything, but it does help the sense of continuity in single episode focused seasons like what we have, you know, it brings, it does connect to those two things together. And in the Clone Wars era, sometimes that would be enough for an arc. Hey, we need a bomb is, can sometimes hang together three wildly different episodes. And although in the Clone Wars era, we would have called that shit an arc. So here, we don't, we don't need to go all the way that. far but we can still tie it tie together the season that way which is fun yeah i bet we end up seeing these again being used in a big battle somewhere do you know what i mean well we have those

bombs you know and then they use those bombs yeah or these are the proton well so those are proton torpedoes in the film but like they become the warhead on luke's fighter yeah uh all right so we can move on to inside man uh and inside man which has the gang going back to lethal to investigate a secret program at the Imperial Weapons Factory. The mission goes bad as Thron shows up to ruthlessly suppress a wave of sabotage that's run through the

factory's output. And he quickly divines that the ghosts are on site and trying to get info about his secret Starfighter program. Ezra and Canaan are almost caught before they are rescued by Calus who reveals he's fulcrum.

The gang escape with plans for a new Imperial Starfighter, but the episode also ends with Thrawn hinting to Callis that he basically already knows the ISB agent as a turncoat. I need this show. I need that show. I need Callis and Thrawn as like Hannibal and the other guy from Hannibal whose name I'm blanking on right now. Well, of course, I will, Graham, right?

You know, I'm the Hannibal guy in it. Here, here we go. I need that. I need it. I need the whole show to just be them playing cat and mouse. And maybe we kind of get a little bit of that next season and Addoor, maybe we'll see. We'll see how that goes, but, like, I need the interior ISB drama. I know that Thrawn is an ISB, but still, you know.

So, opening the episode, like, hey, it's Ryder again. Yeah, he's back. These collar's so big. Every don't look at that character. He looks at a tiny head. And just the biggest collar I've ever seen. It's swag. It's his swag. Yeah, and he's got the speeder. He's, he's, he's, You know, he's doing work out here on Lothal.

Has Lothal always been this, like, bright and neon? There's, like, all these new imperial red signs. Those are new, I feel like. I feel like that's new. Because Ezra makes a comment at the very beginning of the episode about, like, Lothal not looking different or something like, look what's happened to Lothal. It looks like it's more urban, right? Well, yeah.

It's built up more around that highway now. You're right. That's a huge part of it. There weren't the same sort of like, there's, lights, but they almost look like they've caged in the highway, which is interesting. Yeah, it just, it just feels overall, like, it's still recognizably the same, like, like, market, market squares that we saw, like, in the opening of the series, but it does feel like they've almost, like, put a roof over it.

Yeah. And, like, everything just feels more built up. And then, yeah, the, the giant, like, imperial propaganda hollow banners do cast everything in this, like, really oppressive, like, red, orange. light that makes it feel very, very hostile. The Rebels Recon points out that they, you know, obviously this is the plot of the episode too, but like they did work to try to really communicate that this place has been turned into an industrial hub, like this sort of production hub.

This is a place where ties and walkers and stuff are being churned out for the empire. And so a lot of the changes were towards that end, the idea that this was like a logistical production facility now for them. Obviously, one node in a larger web, but that's what this place is turned into versus what it used to be. And I think that's a really fun. Again, one of my favorite things about Rebel so far has been the idea of having Lothal is like a key place we keep coming back to.

In some ways, in contrast to the way the rest of Star Wars will come back to a place over and over again, because Lothal's changed, right? Lothal is built on the idea that it changed, even from before we saw it, that it was in the middle of change, and now here it's changed more. and that, to me, is really fun. Imagine if in the book of Boba Fett, something had happened on Tatouin to, like, make it feel like something happened to there,

like something changed because of Boba Fett being this big hot shot. You know, I don't know what that would be, but, you know, I don't know. Imagine if you saw Moss Isley look different because of policy change. That would be neat. We get that here.

Yeah. I'm curious how. How they, oh, I was going to say, uh, uh, go ahead, Rob. It's a different, different. I was just going to say, just the idea of applying things are changing on Tatouin is the pike train. I know, you're right. As if by asmosis. Uh-huh. You know?

I'm never going to get over it. It's so silly. They're running the spice train through here. There's spice in our abandoned desert. It's, sir. This used to be a good wasteland and now look at it. Those great dragons are smoking that spice over there in their cave. Ridiculous.

And they're doing it on purpose. They don't even, they're landing it at one part of the planet, putting on a train and running into a different part of the planet. Ugh. Anyway. Natalie, what were you going to say? I was going to say, how the fuck did they get on La Thal? Like, isn't it, wouldn't, isn't there like an imperial blockade? They're good.

They know what to do. They got the. I think for me it's like, rider being there means that they have people on the planet probably doing stuff like feeding them imperial access codes and doing spy work, you know? Sure. Yeah, this was actually, like there's a tidbit in the very, the first 30 seconds of the next episode in which Hara details like, oh, what kind of intel is important to get out of a recon mission. and I wrote it all down. So, yeah, there's probably, they study, like, the patrol routes or whatever and have some information about that. Also, callous, right?

Callis is probably being like, we're moving the blockade at, sorry, Folkrum is probably like the blockade will be, you know, switching out the tie fighters from, you know, 1900 to 1905, you can sneak in really quick then and outrun them and get to the planet, you know. I would be all in, unlike if this were a different show. and the fact that like Calus is there in the ISB looking to be a turncoat it just went full fully into like spy trade craft shit in Star Wars universe I would be

all the way in Bridger Do you still have any identities that are good on Lothal Exactly We may need to burn one It'd be great All I got is Java and

And Lando He tries Lando this episode Which is so funny So goopy So we also circle back to remember that farmer who got put in that toy set Transport I had to go look it up But yeah He's there he's like oh is my boy

Your parents would be so proud to see you with this Okay look the camp scene is like not good It is like NPCs in a lesser MMO Where it's like look bridge is here He's going to help us liberate the planet it. Woo! Everyone goes,

woo. Yeah. Exactly. There was like a two second delay as well. It was like. Yeah. What they reveal though is that they're doing industrial sabotage, which I think is very fun. I guess it comes out in the opening like escape sequence where rider is like we can get away from these speeder bikes if we can just reach a certain speed.

There's like 90 miles an hour, 90 units an hour. He says 90. What's the unit? It's 190. 190 but what is it what he just says 190 he doesn't say like 190 whatever parsec points whatever yeah okay um uh that is really cool yeah they get there and they blow up because they've been sabotaged to blow up if they reach that speed which is sick some galen urso shit i wonder if this is like planning some seeds i mean that comes out so rogue one comes out after these episodes but before the next episode so so wild Rogue One comes out in between the next episode, Visions and Voices, and I think the one after that or the one out, like somewhere in that space, basically, because Vision of Voices is December 10th, and then December 10th, 2016, and Rogue 1 is also December 16th, 2016. So we are like right there. The ads are on TV.

You know, we are cutting to commercial here and then seeing a Rogue One ad. That's really cool. We're in peak Star Wars. You're about to get Rogue One and, like, solos just around the corner, folks. My favorite movie that stars my favorite character, Darth Mall, is in it. Yeah. Do you remember what part? Yeah, at the end, he is there.

We got it. We got it. I know it now. He's never going to leave me. Yeah. Uh-huh. I did think it was interesting that they mentioned there's another rebel cell that is going to be. aiding with the attack on the weapons factory on Lothal.

I was curious, like, if that's going to be someone significant or if it's just like, yeah, we'll have backup. Yeah, it feels like just Ryder has been setting some stuff up, but, but I don't know. Like, I've been thinking of Ryder sell, I don't, I may have missed, I may have missed the way he was talking about that, though, so. Because we don't see that, right? I thought it was Hara who said that. Oh, interesting.

Okay. Maybe I'm mixing up my thing. No, no, no, you might be totally right. I may have just totally missed that. Maybe it's when they're talking about. Maybe. I mean, I'm curious who they are. They say, oh no, I don't think it is Hara.

I'm going to, I'll double check right now. But they're also talking around the fact that their source fulcrum, has said that there is a new type of weapon being built and the farmer guy is like, oh, that makes sense because like a bunch of us have been recruited into the labor force to build this new weapon. There's like some, you know, reconcertive efforts into hiring the locals

into working at this particular weapons factory. Right. Well, it's got a bit of the, like the stuff that does feel a little Andorish is it seems like this rebel sells or just watching the scene again. they're talking about they're going to have to get the other cells on board with the plan to help strike at the factory which does highlight something that I do like at the stage of the rebellion which you know there is no rebellion with a central command that is saying like we're going to go strike at the imperial factory it is group A is like hey you want to like we're going to attack this factory but we'll only do it if you're like everyone has to hold hands and jump together uh if they're if they're going to commit to it uh which is Which is kind of neat to see them sort of talk about the, just the friction of trying to organize a grassroots insurgency like this.

It's actually Ezra that says that there's another rebel cell that is going to help out on this eventual. I like the fact that this episode and the next episode are talking towards this larger goal of taking out the weapons factory on Lethal. Like it's nice to have some sort of anchoring goal that we're working towards as we're kind of doing these auxiliary missions that are helping that, I like knowing

that we're going somewhere. This is something Clone Wars couldn't do because their release order was so fucked up but the fact that you, like this series has like narrative signposting around it that like helps you locate what is the meaning of this thing you are seeing in relation to the story

is so helpful. Like you get past it with the Clone Wars, but like I feel like even deep into that series. It's like, on the Planet Christophis, the evil separatist. It's like, god, damn, we're still in Cresths. Wait, I missed the narrator. Oh, the thing we didn't mention was last episode, last recording, rather, for our episode,

the last battle, the battle droid episode ends with the Clone Wars music. And the Rebel's icon, the Rebel's logo has the yellow Clone Wars treatment instead of the traditional Rebels one. So, unfortunately, we didn't shout that out. But it was very good. Yeah, they should have had the narrator just because. They should have brought narrator voice back. That would have been really fun.

Just for that. Just for that. That would have been a blast. So I hope you all enjoy Mr. Sumar and seeing him again. Because it turns out that sabotage is awesome until someone basically shows up and it's like, I know what you're doing. Yeah. And this is wild. This is wild.

You want to describe what goes down here? Yes. Rebels got cool. Rebels got cool Rebels got a little We're all fascists now So Ezra and Caden go undercover as workers In this factory

This imperial You know weapons factory Vehicle factory And they are with Sumar Who again is this guy from like the first episode of Rebels The first like movie or whatever that they rescue And they're in the facility where they're building

Speeder bikes And guess who shows up Thrawn, Governor Price, and is Callas in this? Yeah, Calus is here, importantly, because he has to see this happen, right? And Thron has immediately recognized something. Hey, there's a higher failure rate than there should be here. Someone's not doing their testing. Or it's not that there is a negligence.

It is, in fact, open malfeasance. And so he has a speeder set up. on like a speeder test platform, like, so it doesn't go anywhere, but you can still rub the engine up. And he eventually pulls Sumar over and is like, hey, did you build this one? Who built this one? And Sumar goes... Do you stand by your work?

Yeah, stand by your work. And he makes him get on it. And he goes, I want you to test it. I want you to move it up to full speed. And he does, he puts the pedal down. The engine speeds up. You get the little RPM meter fill up and start to go red and the whole engine starts to get hot and Sumar's like something's wrong. It's overheating.

I'm going to have to shut this down. And Thron is like, no, the demonstration isn't over yet. And he turns the engine back on remotely. And so Sumar just sits on it. He can't turn it off and it blows up killing him. We see like the classic, the helmet fall to the ground empty and ripped apart. scorch marks on it. They just killed that guy, like, just off screen, but they killed that guy.

Yeah, he is dead. He literally got exploded in front of everyone. And Thron is like, you're going to test everything you build. So get ready. I love having an intelligent enemy. Like an intelligent villain. Like he sees through their shit immediately. Yeah, like it's just, it's fun to actually have a challenge in front of us.

Like, Thron is going to see through the baby plots. Right. And I'm appreciative of that. Like, I thought it was cool. The fact that the laborers were, the local laborers were doing these kind of like internal sabotage, that's cool. That's like a cool way to resist from within and be able to feed that information outwards to the rebels was really, was really, was really neat. I like that that wasn't

like a forever solution and that that was found out and I don't like that the farm guy died but you know, um... It just adds stakes. Like, I feel like so often... I want a main character to die. I'd love to leave this season with someone dead.

And like... Who should it be? We know who's expendable. Zeb? Ezra? Sabine. No, but no, Sabine, it's not Sabine. But Sabine, just, Sabine next episode gets the first, the point of Sabine being here, so.

Someone will sacrifice themselves for Sabine. No, the movement needs you. I'm expendable. Yeah, this is the problem is we don't have enough, like, this weirdo side character is to get, you know, Sato could die, right? I'm like, I don't know. That's like, that's like a likely. though it would be like hit like a ton of bricks. It would be like that would be like, yes, yes.

Your comic reliefy character, you know, the, the tough, uh, just as the one that eats shit, that'd be great. Uh, I also, like, look, now I don't approve a summary execution, but Thron has these guys dead to rights, unfortunately. Oh, yeah. It's not like, it's not like he's just like, capricions, like, I don't know who did this. This is a very much like, so. you signed the thing saying, I sabotage the speeder bike.

Can you get on that, please? Yeah, like, it's to Natalie's point, the thing that's so good here is because of that pushback, it justifies why you need the rebellion, right? The empire can't be simply beaten by a little local industrial sabotage. Like, they have it together a little more than that, unfortunately. They have the bureaucracy necessary to, you know, track everything and who all the workers are. They have finally someone in command enough to look at some of the files and be like, oh, I see what's happening here. They have those resources, right?

And it's not enough to simply blow up a few speeder bikes. Like, that's not going to do it. And the thing that's nice about that is it justifies the entire premise of the show. Hey, we need a real rebellion. We need a group that's unified. We're going to need to move from a war of position to a war of maneuver. We need to punch their noses in. At some point, we need outright, you know, civil war and not just little local acts of rebellion.

And it's a great story for communicating that. And then the hijinks are pretty good as Canaan and Ezra have to like go hitman and start stealing, you know, different disguises and use a shopper to make distractions and shit. Canaan being blinded, flew out the fucking window for this episode. Just whoosh. Yeah, no more. That is not relevant to help him, you know. He's looking at things during Thron's whole, like, pointed execution of people, like, catching them in the act.

Ezra keeps being like, I got to do something. And Canaan keeps, like, looking at him and, like, and yes, I'm sure he sends through the force that Ezra was, like, in his feelings. But they're whipping around corners just at a dead. run throughout this. It is so funny that agree to which, like, no. They put him in a helmet and they

thought they could just kind of like fudge it for an episode. His first helmet has glass. You can see his whole ass face. It's less than his normal hiding his eyes thing. It's incredible. Like until now they've played it kind of like, you know, through the

force, he's still like a great swordsman. He's still a great fighter. This is the first time they're like, Look, it'd just be more convenient for the purposes of the scene if he can just see everything going on around. Yeah. We're just going to roll with it. There's the moment where he like kneels down and hands a card to chopper. And it's like, you know, we know the droids don't put out the force.

That's like a whole thing in this universe. The droids are invisible to the force. Not to Canaan. Canaan is good with it. Hear the wheels. Uh-huh. That's okay. Yeah, this is, this is getting like.

Al Pacino's scent of a woman levels of like, okay, so we're not even trying to cover this. But the hijinks are very funny. The bit where only droids get access to the space immediately sending, you know, we always love chopper, sort of shiving or bonking. Like the droid blackjack thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just zap them. Yep. Knock them unconscious.

go in there. Also, interesting thing in this as they're trying to get the intel. Thrawn choose out Governor Price for impressing the workers in the first place. He was like, this is a very sensitive facility. It was a mistake

to force local laborers to work in this factory. Yeah. And it was just interesting, like, front of house, he's like, I will execute you for just the mere thought of disobedience. Back of house, what are you doing impressing workers? Like, this isn't, this isn't going to work for the facility I'm trying to build.

Right. You could, you know, I think he'd be fine with impressing them to put them in the, you know, uh, flower refinery or some of the flowers. Right. No, this isn't Thrawn being like fair pay for fair, like, Thrawn is not like, Thrawn ain't getting a little red. No, he's like, um, we're building the Tide Defender here. Yeah.

They can't fucking be here. You can't put these people here, you know? Which is right, like this is, this is a highly secretive facility. It's very important. They're building expensive equipment. You know, you put these people on the license plate duty. That's what we do here in our empire. And they're farmers.

Exactly. Exactly. It's, they're not, like, this is not a, this is not a factory labor force. Right. They're not even engineers. Yeah, correct. Right. But Governor Price is like, we've got quotas, which I think also highlights that

agree to which Thron can be the biggest genius he wants, but you're still working within the empire, which is going to be. be like, yeah, but could we do it cheap and cruel, right, rather than like smart and effective. And so, you know, he's building, yeah, he's building the tie defender in this. We get the blueprints and like, you know, anyone played tie fighter where Thron is a major character, like knows what that, knows what that ship looks like. Well, and that is the, another thing from the Rebels recon for either this week or the question from the next one was about this ship and the tie defender.

is the Thai defender, which again is from Thai Fighter. Last week, I was like, the interceptor's kind of the X-wing equivalent. That's not really true. The defender is really the X-wing equivalent because it's the one with the hyperdrive. It's the one with shields. It's something that is like literally just that. And what they explained was like, that hadn't worked its way back into the new canon yet because they hadn't quite found a way to justify it. And their justification is Thron's different. Thron is the one who is seeing the future and is seeing that a rebellion is growing and that they will be up against a higher class of fighter. And so we should start producing our own ones in anticipation of that.

And it's not Thrawn's design, but it's his project officially, which is interesting. Yeah. Because what's in the two is like, for all his bluster and bravado about like, I'm going to kill the entire rebellion in one go. Is that just a brave face he's putting on from people around him? And like, actually he's like skipping the bottom of the page here. This ship is going down. Right. We're going to be at war.

very soon. It's not going to be just this little shit. Let's think about what they've been doing. They've been stealing Y wings. You know, Y wings can jump to hyperspace. Why wings have shields. We need to prep for that. And not just, you know, local pirates who we can take care of with our tie fighters, you know, which is fun. We also get the big art scene that we saw on the trailer. Yes. Looking at picture of Ezra in an imperial uniform, the most. mosaic twilic work, or like Harris, Harris family, various Mandalorian pieces from the episodes, the Sabine, nope, setteen episodes. Speaking of Satine, look at a Satine moment in the next episode, which is wild.

Some of the graffiti from Sabine, just looking at it, looking at it all, pouring over it, thinking about what it all means. Uh, yeah. And he, and what it all means is that the ghosts are attached to this planet. He's like, this is where they're from. Yeah. And so he's, this is what leads him to suspect. Like, not only is the rebellion active here, literally the ghosts are here, uh, that, that they're going to be drawn to this facility.

If I were callous, the way that I describe the phoenix would be different because what he says is, he says, it's a creature of flight rising in the flames, a symbol of their commitment to victory. And then I would have been like, it's their dirty evil symbol, which we must stop out their loathsome symbols. Yeah. Our proud banner. Exactly.

100%. Yeah, he was fucking with that a little too much. I feel like he kind of, he gave the plot away a little bit with that. Yeah. Where is his, oh, they're evil because they think they're doing the right thing energy. Right? Like play with the team that you're on. The undercover.

One cold night on that moon. It's all it took. Which, which, the way they mentioned that movie. We'll get to that in a second. Okay, yeah, okay. But yeah, no, like, I would probably not have been like, tell me, what do these, what does this art say to you, Agent Kals? That they're awesome would not have been my response to that. I probably would have, yeah, tried to play it a little cooler.

So, drawn no. those, they're there. They send up stormtroopers. Yeah. Yeah, he sends out stormtroopers, like, go find them. They're going to look like stormtroopers or, like, supervisors, whatever. Just go get them. They get caught.

They run to Calus. He takes them up on an elevator. And they beat the shit out of him, which is the best, my favorite thing about this episode. We know that, and like, this is the thing that brought me on board, the Calus redemption arc, is we're not going to get Zeb being mad at Calus for the whole genocide thing. But we are going to get Ezra and Canaan and hopefully everybody else being like, yo, fuck that guy? Actually, fuck him.

You know, towards the end of the episode, Ezra is like, Callis set us up. That's 100% the read he should have on this. When they first see him and they decide that they have to like make sure that it looks good, right? You have to make it look like I was trying to stop you. Like, Ezra beats his ass and, like, throws him through a big window or a big, like, glass, uh, screen. And, and he ragdolls.

It looks awesome. Yes. It looks sick. He gets owned. And Canaan's mad that he didn't get to do it. And it's like, yeah, dude, absolutely. You know, like, take, take the, the chance you get. This guy sucked.

This guy has been on your tail for a while. Get his ass. Everyone deserved a chance to go up on the turnbuckle. That's right. And just come down hard. Yeah. Do whatever movie you want up there. You want to do a frog splash.

Go for it, buddy. You know, I'm ready. Hit that elbow. It is funny when they do ask Zab about this, this change of heart. The degree to which it just sounds that they're talking around an affair they had is incredible, including, you know, recruit can mean many things. Yeah. You know, there's various, you know, the recruitment conspiracy theory, like, oh, man. like, where are these gay people coming from?

Recruitment. And you have, you have Zeb sort of sheepishly being like, oh, well, or is that one, I guess I, I guess I kind of recruited him by accident. That's what he says, I must have recruited him, you know, accidentally. And the follow-up line is, you mean when you were on that ice moon with him? Delivered like that. Delivered with all of the subtext in the world. Like, a hundred percent.

It's tasty. It is. It is. I like that they're not running from it, where it's, it's basically like, callous developed a crush. Yeah. And then from Matt came a double agent. Yep. He got, he got honeypotted by Zebarilios.

By the fuzziest man in the rebellion. That's right. But he gives them advice on how to escape. I love the entire sequence. This is just the shit the series is really good at. Again, scale. Every time the series has been like, let's have walkers fight each other. Yeah.

It's always different. And it always rules. Like every single time, like, walkers are doing shit. It's cool in this series. Here we see them do something new. They try to crush their little AT. It's ADDT or DP? They're tiny little sub-ATST walk.

Yeah, yeah. They just try to crush it beneath the belly of an ATAT. And it's like, it looks awesome. They just like it, like just hit it with a giant trash compactor. It's great. Of course, the Jedi inside, which was they can just cut their way up and out and into the ATAT body, which is really fun. But then immediately take a like crippling hit from the rocket launcher that the brave Mujahideen have, have brought. brought to the fight.

We, you know, I think I'm very curious to see as we continue how this show leverages certain pieces of iconography for insurgency. This is the second time in like three weeks that we've had a character who has like a headscarf on and this one has a rocket launcher. And like you're doing a thing with that. Like there's a particular, with the audience that you're showing this to at the time that you're showing it, you're communicating something about what insurgency looks like. This is not me criticizing the show at this point.

It's why I'm saying I want to take the whole thing and see like what sorts of signs and symbols are being deployed in what ways. Because you can contrast this with the original series where like by the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks and the full body all green like capes and camouflage that the rebels wear. Very clearly, you know, George has talked about the way that this connects to Vietnam and the Viet Cong and stuff like that. It's like, those are the references being placed. That's what guerrilla warfare looks like. That's what, quote, unquote, insurgency, which wasn't the term being used then. But, like, that's what that looks like, right?

Maybe it was being used on. But now those signifiers have changed, and so they're playing in a different space. We already talked a lot at the time about the Anderon arc and the way that was pulling on specifically Soviet, you know, war in Afghanistan, stuff like that. And so, you know, very curious to see how it continues. Very curious to see when we start getting to that bigger rebellion stuff. Can't wait to see what Saul's fighters look like. How much do they look like the Rogue One version? How much do they look like, you know, what we've seen in Andor, et cetera?

Oh, that's one thing I wanted to call just the look at the Imperial Factory. This is a moment where I'm like, oh, there is a connective tissue and a thrill in this and and and or, right? Like that factory is so antiseptically like bright and the uniforms they're wearing are so prison garb like. It's just big orange jumpsuits, right? Yeah, it does feel like it's of a. piece of design with what we're seeing and or which is good um and then yeah front action sequence

right yeah they do the thing they make their escape and then thron is like it's all good buddy because i've learned there's a there's a turncoat in our midst and boy i can't wait to find out who that guy because once i do well i'm to fuck his shit up wouldn't you agree agent callous that a guy like that should really get his shit fucked up i quite Agree, sir. Yeah, great. Awesome. He's like, you have, your, your strategy is, is, uh, precisely like, on point as, as always.

Yeah. Or something. I have to find it. Well, and Governor Price is like, we got to start interrogating people. And Thon's like, no, I don't think we need to do all that. I think we can just, we just wait and walk. The degree to which he's like a, let's see how it plays out though. He's so chaotic.

It's like, it is like they appointed a. a cat to like defend the empire this is the most sheave part of him actually right yes yes he kind of just wants to kick back and be like oh let's see how it goes let's see how this you know what would happen if I injected a big bouncy pinball into this situation let's just see let's see what we can learn from that he has to know it's callous right I think so I think he full or at least has really strong yeah yeah yeah or yeah is at least extremely suspicious um but this is the hannibal part where like i think he kind of wants it to be callous because he thinks it would be fun to have that sort of like that the kind of war on two fronts

this sort of like rival interior you know internally that he can play against yeah the fact that he can he can now like uh potentially put callous in a position where you know he he would jeopardize his you know perhaps a newfound friends um The fact that Thron is so excited to be able to use this informant as an asset, and it's not immediately like, oh, yeah, on kind of with Governor Price's response, it's just so much, it's so much more compelling as like a villain perspective. Yeah. I do have to shout out chopper and calluses, like, getting along so well in the kind of last few sequence. It feels like there's a point where callus, like, compliments, or I think callous compliments chopper and is like, oh, your droid is, like, exceptionally good at hacking or whatever, you know, like, he was going to give him the, the, code to

buy pat to get the information that they were looking for or whatever and chopper's like I don't need it and then Calus is like yeah wow what what an impressive droid and it feels like Chopper says like finally someone recognizes my talent or something like that 100% I also heard

finally somebody yeah like sees me I loved that I loved it I'm not sure why Ezra's like of course Chopper would get along with Callas like I'm not like are you Are you, what are you implying by saying that Chaucer-

He's firing wildly in these three episodes. Right, like, why are you beefing with everyone around you? I guess, I feel like he's, like, going through some sort of weird, like, uh, mall, because of the, the next episode in which he starts having mall visions at the beginning of the episode. Maybe it's like a, like, dark side, angsty thing where he's just being, you know, the dark side is hovering around him and just turning into him a little shit.

He's your number when chopper threw all those milk cartons at him on top of that ship and was like, yeah, you would do this. He's still holding it against him. He's, I hold it against him forever. Fair enough. He's in his hater era. He is.

That's a teen thing. Teens get into hater eras. I mean, this is the thing about being a teenager with a lot of uncles. It's like, you know what? Sometimes you learn to hate those uncles. True. They fall in and out of favor,

which is the good uncle this week. You know? I don't think there is a good uncle for Ezra right now. Like he kind of is, he's throwing hands at every, I guess mall. He like lets him. No, but even there he's not like pro mall. He's being hunted by him. He's like he stands, he like can tolerate mall.

Yeah, yeah. In some ways. Let's get into that. So visions and voices begins with Ezra having some truly creepy flashes of mall, menacing him at chopper base while they are essentially getting ready for a raid on this imperial factory those visions proved to kind of be the herald of mall's arrival on the planet saying that he and ezra because they didn't finish the vision session properly both like have half the answer that they were supposed to get but they need to go do some magic to get the rest

of the answer and if they don't if ezra won't help him out he'll just die him chopper base to the empire and that'll be that so azure goes off of them and they go to dathamere and mall shows of a bunch of stuff tells them a bunch of the backstory a selected backstory of him and dathamere and then they go do a ritual they drink magic potions and receive receive their vision and then the the ghosts of the force witches come out and they need payment They need flesh. They need physical forms. And right on cue, Sabine and Canaan, who've been following them, show up and are

immediately possessed by the witches. Maul and Ezra make their escape. Maul pieces out. This is nothing to him. You and Ezra have an argument. We'll get to that in more detail a bit. But he leaves. And Ezra is left with the question of how to free his friends.

Proof to be surprising easy. One of them, he's just got to, he's got to not. Bean into the light outside the force witch cave, boom, possession over. Like a mini boss fight in a game. It's not even a full, she didn't even get a full health bar. You know what I mean? They had to come back to take one.

The exorcist wants to get home and catch the game and he's just going to be like, boom, Satan be gone. Boom, over. And then Kane has a little trickier. He's like, he has been possessed. He's like guarding the altar of all the

force witches but in true force witch of dafamere form their vulnerability appears to be that they're always anchored to something with the durability of something you'd find an ikea store i'm it keeps happening ma'am it keeps happening they had to come back to take one one final l we thought we thought you know uh after after grievous came and killed everyone that that was their last L, no. After Asage was put in the death waters or whatever I really didn't think it was going to wear some other Talson like just brother Talson comes back

the big delicate glass ball of horse juice just like Or when she dies to sustain Maul's life in the comic for some fucking reason None of these were the final L this truly what I don't You can't I think this is it I think we can't go back from

breaking the altar that for some reason maybe they have a second altar somewhere basically by kicking it back up altar yeah it's this is also listen this is why it's so important to have multiple backups offside data that's right you want to have

multiple hard drives in yeah exactly in multiple hard drives physical media etc etc man maybe they do we don't know maybe there is another altar somewhere else I mean it's a big planet we know it's a big planet you know yeah I'm gonna say this is also an L for Ezra a little bit, like you could just run, you could just gotten out of here

and maybe not destroyed the last remaining altar of one of the only other peoples in the world or in the universe who studies the force and uses magic and shit. They're kind of dickheads, though. I know that they're dickheads, but there are dickheads. I know, but like, you know, I'm going to rep them over Ezra? Over this motherfucker? I'm just saying they shouldn't have forced the issue quite so hard right by their little force altar.

I agree. But also, I would be higher. I would give Ezra a little more leeway here if after saving Sabine, he didn't leave the scene with the Dark Sabre in hand. If he had just said to her, by the way, I found this. I heard this was important to you. Anything to build a little goodwill for him right then would have gone a long way. This is not a Sabine episode. It wasn't meant to be a Sabine episode. But it is the first Dark Saber episode. And somehow. It's Ezra gets to use it before Sabine does. It's wild. It's, it, it, it, I said I wasn't going to get mad anymore about it. I said, I made a promise, I made a promise. Is it not all love? It's not because how are you going to get the holy Mandalorian fucking relic sword because of, because of not you.

Because of everyone, because of anyone else. That's the thing, isn't it? That's the thing that's pissing me off is that, like, it just, it, and she just, like, walks over. She's like, hmm, like picks it up and, and, huh. And this is, of course, and walks out, there's no, like. I'll just knock this out right now because we're already talking about it. We'll talk about it.

We'll talk about the rest of the episode. When Maul takes Ezra to his little stash of goodies, one of the things that's there is, is, yeah, little treats is the Dark Saber, which she still has. Portrait of Sabine A Satine sorry Not Sabine Which is a wild thing to have

Something's going on there Something's going on It's also like Beauty and the Beast Like mangled Like he was really upset Like I don't understand The

Yeah it's like he's carved out her eyes And shit Like it's wild Like there's like scratch marks on it He hates Kenobi still Right And he knew He knew

He knew What if What if And he killed her What if he loved her, too? He didn't. I mean, that would be wild. Because he couldn't have her, he had to kill her because she loved Obi-Wan.

I'm writing my fan. He doesn't give a shit about Mandalorian shit. I mean, that's something that's so wild about it, right? It's like, earlier in the previous episode, he was like, you should have, to Sabine, he was like, you know, you would think that you would have my, you know, you would respect me because I used to lead your people or whatever. and so yeah he like he points out the dark saber and uh it ends up coming up in the fight with with the possessed uh folks with the possessed with maybe canaan actually uses it first is that true does somebody else use it first or just as just end up with it in that sequence uh he just kind of ends up with it yeah i don't quite remember but the point being we get all that

shit and it ends up being um uh i guess sabine does actually draw it first because she uses it in the duel with Ezra. Well, but no, but yeah, the possessed version. The possessed version. And he uses it to beat Canaan and then destroy the altar. And the thing that's so fucked up is we know from the rest of the, from Mandalorian and Book of Buffett and all that shit that the Dark Sabre and from Clone Wars, the Dark Sabres is a thing you have to win in combat.

Like that's like the whole thing with it. Well, that almost feels like a mall is implying it where he's like, don't touch it. Right. Right. Like that's the thing about it. You need to have won it in a trial. You have to have bested someone. There's the whole thing in Mando season three where he, like, concocks away around.

Like, you beat a guy who beat me, therefore you want it or whatever. If you don't remember that. It's supposed to be so hard to wield. Like, it's so. I forgot about that part. It's supposed to be, like, so hard. It's supposed to be so heavy and so hard to wheel. Maybe it's not so bad for a Jedi to do for some reason.

I don't know. Because Ezra has no problem with it at all. But so the fact that Sabine just picks it up is, like, in some ways, oh, this isn't going to mean shit, huh? Because you didn't win it from anybody. You didn't, you didn't, this can't possibly cash in to anything. And also because we've seen Mandalorian, unfortunately. We know it ain't like she keeps it for the intervening years. She's going to lose it somehow.

Maybe she'll get it back in Asoka. I did a little bit think that I was going to break my TV today. when Ezra waved it in her face and walked away with it. I was like, if this is the last time we see this in this episode I'm quitting the show

I'm like can't talk about this. Because he brings her out into the light and it's like oh he's going to wake her up and then hand it to her and that doesn't happen. He takes it

and she's not even like wait, how did you get the dark like there's no like he picks it up from her. It's at her leg. I don't believe it anymore. She was

using it. It's unbelievable. There's a lot of like she's a Mandalorian but she's like a diplomat's kid. We're like, have you ever been to Mandelor? Like do you know like the more the more you hang out is like man like Mandelor is so important to me like I'm

those Mandalorian person you ever met you keep seeing all these things where it's like are you though? I don't know this doesn't feel quite right. I don't know. Yeah. Also notably she I don't think she has the jetpack in any of these episodes right? Just double checking on that from last

No jetpack That would be sick If she like fought with the jetpack In this sequence or something That would be cool She does crawl on the wall like Like she's in a moon posthum She does like a skitter skitter

Skinner skitter you know It's because she's possessed obviously Yeah yeah That did look fucked up Again episode looks good Episode looks great Yeah This is by one big complaint with it

Is they don't handle it well They don't handle it It's wild The other problem is this so you got these sort of like no cell moments juxtaposed with Sam Whitwer putting in that or every time like to the point where like he gets a Shakespearean monologue here and like is in full like the tragedy of mall unfolding here as he tries to get Ezra to join him one last time and it becomes clear that like from all like all really mall wants beyond just the revenge he needs this to not all be meaningless like you know That is how it feels. The thing that haunts him is that he's become aware, like a Rosencranton-Gildenstern are dead type, like self-awareness.

That, like, ultimately, his role in the story is episode one. He is an apprentice who shows up. He fights one duel where he appears to be, like, you know, tougher than they expect. And then he kills Quigon and is slain as part of Obi-Wan's journey. Right. To becoming the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, master of Anakin Skywax. Walker and future teacher of Luke Skywalker. Right. Like, he is.

He's a character who knows that without his specific actions, he's only going to have two paragraphs in the Wikipedia. Yeah. And he's like, I ain't going out like that. I'm a main character. I'm going to show you my main character energy. Yeah. Everyone he's ever known has been wiped out.

Like, it is, like, Dathimir is gone. He had a brother, wiped out. Like, everything he's ever attempted is crushed and erased from history. It's like, okay, you want, it's, you want, it's, you want, some more paragraphs. Okay, each one's going to be a tragedy. And he's like, give me another one. I want another one. I'm going to have as many paragraphs as any of these other motherfuckers. I'll take the tragedy. I want them. I want it all. Which is a great character. I really enjoy him. He's, and Sam Whitworth, I mean, to that point of Whitworth just killing it,

I think part of last episode, part of the reason why the Callas and Thrawn stuff is that those two guys are also just killing it. They have consistently been, some of the best voice acting in the series. Lars Mikkelson as Thrawn, obviously, he's only had a couple of episodes, but has immediately kind of, like, found it in that way. And David Oiyalo has been great with Casas, basically, the whole show. And it turns out that that could just lift a character really high.

They just have the voice and just have the... And Whittwer is such a treat because it feels like the longer a performer plays a character. the more they can dial it like you see a really good connection between a performer and a character the way that performance can get dialed in and nuance is shaded in like it's a thing that i return to a lot you return to it a lot austin but like uh the mentalist um sure baker uh uh the guy who plays patrick yeah simon baker yeah it's like it's not it's a it's a case of the weak procedural but like it's an interesting character that the actor keeps drawing things out of for like

five years. And you get stuff out of that that you can't get in a movie just because you never see a performer inhabit a character that long. Weaver's in a similar zone here with like finding different things to draw out of mall in different places. If it's like to, and it feels like

inspires good things in the script writing too. The way they complicate and layer together his motivations and his his doubts and fears it all works out really well like we've seen like clone wars and rebels generally they tend to return to the well too often they they think characters have juice that just don't and they keep going back to it give it one more try uh i've never thought them all like here once again the episode's even extraneous there's nothing we get out of

this episode we basically didn't cover in the holocron vision yeah basically like i thought that we all knew, and they knew that tattooing was in a place. But he leaves say he's on tattooing. I don't understand. Like, it's, the, the episode is so needless. This doesn't need to exist. All of this information was covered in the previous episode. Don't care because we get Maul sort of trying to just unpack and reckon with himself

as a character to Ezra. It's great. Yeah. Why doesn't he accept the ghosts? couldn't he become a witch and then just leave I think he would give up himself I think he'd become one of the witches

I think he's like I think the I mean because you see them in Canaan and I think it would work out though Sabine don't skitter like that yeah Sabine don't skitter like that normally

and truly the witches don't skitter like that normal that was kind of weird yeah they've been getting a little fucked up in the altar we've been getting a little a little bit more

I sure I was doing the most favor, really. Yeah. It's not, you guys remember that altar too long. Gotta let this, gotta let this juice out. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like you said, kind of a, an episode that the plot didn't necessarily need. My instinct is that we maybe all mapped the words tattooing onto the episode because we knew what they were talking about and maybe they didn't actually say those words. Yeah, what he says is he's still alive.

He's still alive. That's what he says. Doesn't he say two sons? Yeah. And he talks about the sons. He definitely says two sons or something like that. Yeah. I think Ezra does.

Yeah. Interesting. So maybe they each got, maybe that's the thing. I mean, that is the thing. Well, then Ezra could have just been like,

yeah, I saw like two sons or something like that. Yeah. But, and what Ezra doesn't know and what Ezra doesn't know is Ben Kenobi. That's the thing that he doesn't know.

He just knows two sons. So now they both know both of those pieces of information. And yes, you're right. It is a field trip. It literally is. Like, hey, I want to show you my hometown. Yeah, 100%.

Kind of miserable. Kind of bad uncle vibes still. Yeah. Well, when it's like we can be brothers, that's when you know the same place. That was really tough. That's not a good uncle talk. That is bad trauma uncle talk. Yeah.

Yeah. We can walk that path together as friends, as brothers. It's really It's painful You know It's like well you know Your Uncle Mall His brother

Savaja Press Like You got him Killing the gas station hold up Actually no They were They were trying to hold up The entire planet of Mandelor

I should give them credit They captured Mandelor Yeah You know That ain't nothing Did it Previsla is the sort of person gets killed in the gas station,

although he also made it to the finals on Mandel War. He did. And then he got beat by Mall. Pretty bad. Maybe the only super clear dub for Mall. I mean,

like, against a named character because we know he beat up all the other, like crime lords and shit, but they ain't nothing. And I guess Quigon. Ask Quigon about my records. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's Quigon, it's pre-visla. Those are the big ones. Those are the big ones. And then those, those I guess blinds Canaan but that's kind of a watch because canaan ends up

coming back in the I feel like he ends up being a bigger L because like you just blinded the guy and he's like you had your chance and then kicks your fucking ass like that's not great yeah you're not wrong yeah he's going through it

yeah I there was a pause when he says forget your past forget your memories I think he's projecting a little are you kidding healthy if he you know listen to yourself my man took that to heart yeah it's great it's yeah forget the past forget your memories forget your attachments you were the most attached man in the world and you were attached to Obi-Wan Kenobi oh the only person who he is the only person who he is only one who witnessed him at at his peak at every stage in a way right yeah true true

true like he's bound to this guy What would you all want? I said both. What would you all want from an Obi-Wan-Kinobie mall reunion? Just like, I don't even know at this point. Ripping with like repressed, like, feelings for each other. Okay, yeah. Okay.

Just like saturated with just withheld back emotion. Oh, uh-huh. Basically, like, yeah, just some really a physical fight sequence. Then they both are brought to their knees and they cry at some point. Yeah, I don't think that happened. They both have a lot of trauma. They both hate the emperor. They do.

Maybe they would be bros. I don't know. They could just be gross. Well, I just feel like, you know, as much as I like, like, mall in the clone wars and in rebels. When Obi-1 kills him in the Phantom Menace, it's really good. So, like, to think that it's like, oh, we have to go back to Tatooine, and now we're going to find Old Man-O-W-W-W-W-W-Wan.

Like, can we, do we really have to? Do we really actually have to do that? It seems like that's where he's going right now. I think. Yeah. What were you going to say, Allie? I was going to say every time somebody says Tattooine on the show, I get really bad about it. Me too.

It was just a few episodes of going. that I think I said if Obi-Wan is in this show I'm gonna be mad and I still stand I'll be okay with it if like no one else if it's just if it's like a Mandalorian episode inside of Book of Boba-Fet

if like if I see what you're saying if Obi-Wan and Ball have their own episode together and no one from the ghost is there like Phoenix Squadron is not present I'm okay with that I will I will accept that but if If Ezra is there and is like,

Obi-Wan, you got to come with us. We're doing a rebellion. I will just, oh, no, please. As a reminder, at this point, we've already talked about this. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the TV show, has already happened. He's already met Leah. He's already, he knows about bail.

He knows about whatever the little resistance cell. I forget what they were called was. But nobody else knows who's live. but nobody else knows just Leah and bail because Leah needs to know so that she can send Artu to try to find Obi-Wan right right in New Hope right right she could have learned that any number of ways

but we now know the way that she knows we know that the brother whatever the fifth brother is dead but first he fought Obi-Wan a couple of times or ran into him a couple of times we know you know he knows about the Inquisitors already you know it's like he already met the Grand Inquisitor when the Grand Inquisitor was still

shit. Yeah, all that has already happened. He's already been in the show, basically. He's just been, like, out of frame. Right. In some ways, Obi-Wan already, it's part of rebels. Obi-Wan is Rebel Season Zero in a real way. Yeah. If people, if you were watching Star Wars chronologically, you would have already watched Obi-Wan Kenobi like us. So in this one instance, we did watch it chronologically. That's so fucked up. It's very funny. I keep in hearing this, like, what would you want from their show now eventually? I think, like I'm a sucker for like the like the late like the postmodern Western right where it's like you're not going to need closure off this like it's going to be a deeply emotionally unsatisfying but will in his way be very much really satisfying because it'll be about like the hollowness of this form of revenge right because it is two gold gunfighters from a different age right out in the world that has no use for them anymore or has has has marked

They've lost their wars. Right. Their wars have both ended bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fun. I think it'd be very interesting. I think my preferred version would be it ends up not being the battle you quite expect. And they go their separate ways.

That's fine. And that leaves open the possibility that Sam Whitworth Mall shows up in other fun locations. But my suspicion is they're going to kill him for real. Interesting. Like we're going to get the big final showdown. It's going to be like, and this matters a super bunch to the ghost. because like this is mall and it's Obi-Wan Kenobi

and you know remember Quigon and it'll be because like we remember Quigon and all this shit. What if Quigon shows up? It won't really make a ton of sense for the ghosts to be like oh no, Obi-Wan quick, use your jump. Use your jump.

Who's that Irish Jedi that just showed up? Do you think, sorry, when you were talking before, I was thinking, Do you think when Vader's helmet gets smashed open and it reveals to Asoka that it's Anakin in there, that internally he goes, shit, not again. The same thing happened eight years ago with Obi-Wan Kenobi. I got to get a better mask. I got to get a lightsaber.

Give me the Cortosis helmet. So much science was lost. That's your right. So much knowledge was lost. from the High Republic. Yeah. All right, well, with that, we've reached the end of another episode

of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by our listeners at patreon.com. I almost said patreon.com. And it's like, patreon. Got com. It's got the commerce.

It's got the commerce. Patreon. It's all happening. It's like 90 degrees in my office. I'm getting loopy. But also subscribers at patreon.com slash civilized. We'll also, again, be able to hear our thoughts on the acolyte and our discussion of what a game changer,

Cortosis armor, would have done for any number of Jedi we've met so far. Or Sith. If Maul had just had a cortosis belt on in Phantom Menace. So, so. It's all different. He would have been set. Yeah. But then if Cortosis ends up everywhere,

the lightsaber really starts to suck. weapon. Well, yeah, true. Suddenly, it's funny. I should just shoot that guy. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, Mandalorian introduced Bescar as like a lightsaber-resistant material. And now it feels like we've turned the dial up.

And I cortosis is not a new thing. We've talked about cortosis weave on this program in the past. It's an old EU thing. We all know about cortosis. However, it has not been in the direct shows until now of this modern Disney Star Wars. And so it feels like we've done the. power creep thing of like a TV show or an anime or something where it's like well first there was Baskar and that could like that could like bounce a lightsaber away but now we

got cortosis which straights up deactivate straight up deactivates it that's a whole new ball game you know well and then of course you did have in the sequel trilogy now stormtroopers just have like right the electro staffs yeah just like well the prequels had that with the with the um the droids that uh what's what's his name had the grievous had right those like big staff droids the electro staff droids that's established that's maybe just an extension that's true it just hits different when just like a rando stormtrooper is like because it's like if a cop just like took a nightstick off his belt and like suddenly had a lightsaber that pisses me off it's like no you can't you can't do that

I agree. So next week, we got two for, right? That's right. Ghosts of Geonosis, Parts 1 and Parts in Part 2. I believe we just do this as a two-parter and then basically do three-parters from there on out. That seems to be a way to do this. It means our final episode of the season will be a three-parter, even though there's a two-parter inside of that three-parter. But I think that's going to be the way to do it.

It's like a club sandwich of an episode. It sure will. because that's the one I said this before we started recording but that's the one that I've seen a scene from so that's a good scene

well also we know the the ghost of Gianosis it's that ghost that's like haunting callus and Zab the memory of their the memory of their battle

with the giant bird yeah they can just get stuck on Gianosis and that is a whole new thing yeah God I'm really curious about this genosis

this is like a thing that I I want to say we talked about this episode five years ago when we first started this episode or this show, it's not been five years, but it was like three years. Because we're like, whatever happens to Geonosis,

and I think I spoiled something here, but I don't remember what it was exactly. I have like a broad memory idea, but like really tight way we had to Cotor too. Because it just lets us reset our entire brain. You're right about Star Wars stuff. I agree. Like we can approach it with like the eyes

of newborn children almost. A friend of mine is playing through Cotor 2 right now, so I've been getting updates, and they're all about how good Cotor 2 is, and I want to go back. Might be the fall of Cotor 2, who knows? Might be. We shall see. We shall see.

Either way, next time we'll see about them ghosts of G&O says, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Generally, please do that. That means a lot. It does things for us. It does. Agreed. It helps us.

It makes us smile. It puts us in front of other people's faces. Mm-hmm. Because that's like how that works. It can only do great things. So be the positivity and the light you spread in the world and leave us a good review on Apple podcast. Light the spark or whatever. Light the spark in our reviews.

We have a 4.9 on Apple right now. That's really good. How many? Well, we could have a five. And I got to tell you, it's a lot of five stars. And then it's one guy who says we're two blackfilled about the Jedi who gave us one star. Wow. He starts good pod, two blackfield about Jedi.

One star, Bertiozo? You could give us three for that. You could have to go to one because we don't love the Jedi that much. We were at good pod. And you went all the way. You went minus four for blackfield about the Jedi. Also, I feel like you got to really talk about. like how people define blackpilt.

Like I'm just saying. We have particular critiques of the Jedi as an organization that line up with our broader critiques of, for instance, the police or certain types of organized religion. I think they're all alive. You know? Like the most, see, the thing, the critique I've agreed with when people are like, their analysis of the Jedi is a little wanting is when people are like, man, they really see the Jedi through a Catholic lens. And it's like, got me. You got me, buddy. I was like, sorry.

That's just, yeah, here's a great review from Big Red Lobster who says, Natalie Watson is me. Episode 82, trying to describe a specific TikTok but recast the Star Wars characters by not being able to remember a single word from the TikTok, but knowing that it's going to be a hilarious joke if you can just find the right video, I was crying, laughing by the end. And let's just say that's not an uncommon occurrence with the show. Y'all are at the best. Wow. Thank you so much. You are seen and heard with me and everyone else on the show. You, the listener.

We see you. You big red lobster. Yeah. But we can only see you through those reviews. So leave them. Let us see you. Light the spark. I got one for you, Rob.

This is from Glimney Alchemist. I know it's hot in your studio and you want to go. But this one, the subject is ups to duffs. been following this group for a long time and them consistently, consistently brought to teary-eyed laughter. Star Wars is a foundational, both globally and personally, and listen to this crew of thoughtful, funny people, turn up

their cultural object in their hands, I think would deepen anybody's joint appreciation of what Star Wars could be, keep the good work, and shout out to Cato on that audio editing grind question. What position would Vader play and for what franchise in the NBA? Center, right?

So first of all, Vader is a player from the 70s or 80s. Right. That's the thing. Vader isn't in the league anymore. No. Vader is, Vader does not have the shot making potential that you need today to be a player. But maybe if he'd been born into a different age, he would be. Although Dreyman loves choking people.

So no, who knows? You're right. The Dramon Green and Darth Vader is very funny. This guy whose bit is to like, and then I choked him. And then I choked him. And you're kind of like sometimes you're like, no, he shouldn't have done that. Like Shaq watching it. He shouldn't have done that.

But if that moth hadn't been, that moth hadn't spoken, if that moth hadn't spoken to the words he said, he wouldn't have gotten choked. I can hear Shack right now defending Tards Vader. We only got one more year of Shack and Chuck. God damn it. Anyway, that will do it for today's episode.

Like the spark, leave a review. Peace. I don't know. Oh! I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't know. Oh!