House of R - 'Ahsoka' Episodes 1 and 2 Deep Dive

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Perhaps it is time to begin again! Join Mal and Jo as they dive deep—DEEP—into the much-anticipated two-part 'Ahsoka' series premiere, parsing what we learn about Ahsoka and Sabine's past as Master and Apprentice, praising Baylan and Shin as new arrivals in the 'Star Wars' canon, and, of course, gushing over the smash-hit Loth-Cat. Later, Ben Lindbergh joins for a lore look into what might await beyond the Pathway to Peridea. Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Ben Lindbergh Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And together we host The Big Picture, The Ringers Film Podcast for new releases, career retrospectives, director interviews, movie drafts, top fives, and so much more. Twice a week, we break down the latest releases,

argue about whether movies are doomed, and debate our modern film canon. Listen to The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals. With Fandul Predict,

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See terms at fanduel.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners. the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping, then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. I bet you were a master found you difficult at times. Anakin never got to finish my training. Before the end of the Clone Wars, I walk. walked away from him and the Jedi. Just like I walked away from Sabine. Sometimes even the right reasons have the wrong consequences.

What do we do then? And welcome to House of Ar, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only back to Ezra's Tower, but also to our new House of Our podcast feed. joining me today fresh off a cuddle and feeding session with our beloved

loath cat bumba it's my house of our working title I don't know permanent title co-host Joanna Robinson

What's up bad babies? I'm floating that as a catchphrase and I've decided it's a no But bad babies are here to say. Yeah. I think you should stick with it. Yeah.

Steve, can you add that to the soundboard? Yeah. So we have the actual bad baby clip, but then just Joe saying that. Perfect. Done and done. Yeah. Joanna, my dearest, we're here today to dive deep. Deep.

Profoundly deep. We are making no runtime promises. We are diving deep. We've cleared our schedule. Cleared our evenings. Yeah. Into the two-part Osoka premiere. But before we climb into the Phantom,

some quick programming reminders, you probably know this if you're here, but just in case, House of R is now twice a week on this feed. So follow this new feed. Please give us the five stars. And thank you to everyone who are. already has. It's very meaningful to us. It's wonderful. It's tremendous. Come back on Tuesday,

because we're going to have our next episode for you at the top of next week. That's how this is going to work, this new schedule. And our next pod is one of our favorite seasonal traditions. It's the hype meter. We're going to call this one the 2003 fall slash winter height meter. And no, we will not be bound by the actual definition of either of those seasons. We can't wait to talk about what we're excited about for the rest of the year. One of our seasonal favorites, depending on your definition of season, is the hype meter. We found out today, tragedy has struck the fall height meter because Dune 2 has been pushed to March 2024. Not even we can stretch the definition of the remainder of 2023 to March 24.

So we have to find something else to fill the Dune slot. I know. I think it's safe to say that would have been number one. But there's a lot that we're looking forward to. So that'll be a fun pot, a fun pot. We will be back here at the end of next week for our deep dive into Asoka episode three, of course. And you can get the instant reaction

to Asoka episode three on the ring reverse with The Midnight Boys. Piu-Pew! Junior Mintz, we have great news. There's also going to be a Mint edition next week. Top of the week. Topic pending. Something.

Inspiration is stewing. They're brainstorming now. They are brainstorming. I've been witnessing it and it is it's going to be a fun pod. I have absolutely no doubt. Joe, that's a lot. How can the people follow all of it? I love how you said that's a lot as if like I'm not going to add one more thing on top of that. I just want to float this out into the ether because we've had some questions. When are you guys doing your next Doctor Who podcast? And if all goes according to plan and it may not because things shift and change all the time here in House of R? Two weeks from two. Two weeks from two. So, like, I think around the 5th of September is when we are perhaps a week from Tuesday. Yeah. A week from Tuesday.

Is we going to perhaps, oh boy. Be covering. Perhaps. Yeah. Be covering Matt Smith's entire era, entire era. And this is the slight change we've made to our Doctor Who coverage plans. Because we are now twice a week, because we have a little bit more time on the schedule to have fun and experiment, et cetera. we will be doing episodes for every single doctor now.

That's right. Kapaldi heads and Whitaker stands. We will be doing entire episodes based on those doctors' runs. So now the question of like, what do I have to watch? The answer is everything. And when do I have to watch it by? Pending. But Matt Smith, all of Matt Smith's entire run,

including the anniversary special and the special that comes after that is what we will be talking about. potentially in a week and a half thereabouts. Amazing. How do people, how do you keep track of all that? Great question. Follow the podcast. That's the easiest thing to do.

Would you like to subscribe to this podcast? We would love it if you would. So, yeah, if you've been subscribed to the Ringervverse, we would love it if you would also subscribe here. That would be tremendous. You can follow us on social. We are still, you know, under the loving embrace of the Ringervverse umbrella. So you can find us on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter.

Twitter where Jomi is just crushing it constantly with his social media coverage of he had a great, did you see the Quagon tweet that he did this week? Yeah. Smashing. Simply smashing, Jomey. And then if you want to email us, and boy did you this week, Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. We got many Asoka emails, Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. not Pergels and Loithcats at gmail.com.

Still happens at Dragons at gmail.com. Not Ewan McGregor's Obi-1 chest hair at gmail.com, despite Mallory Rubin's reference. That's just what we used to communicate with each other. That's our own secret communication channel. Oh, God. All right. Last programming note at the top. It's the same one as always.

It's our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. Today's podcast will feature plot points from the episodes of of television that you have come to hear us discuss. The first two episodes of Asoka. In addition to that, anything that's ever happened in Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Tales of the Jedi, Bad Batch, Mando, Boba, the Zan Thrawn novels, some legends canon, anything that has ever happened in Star Wars could come up today, certainly anything that connects to Asoka's canon and the ghost crew, Rebels canon is on the table.

Okay. Grab your lightsabers. It is time to begin again. There's no perhaps about it. It is definitively time to begin again. Two episodes in question today. Part one, Master and Apprentice, written by Dave Faloni of your own of a blood.

Faloni, the scribe of all eight episodes in this season of television. He also directed the first episode, part one, and he will be directing one other episode during the run. He's directing episode five as well. This part one checks in at a hefty 57 minutes. Shunky.

Yeah, this was a media one. Part two. And if you're wondering, will Joanna be talking about the significance of this title at some point in today's episode? Just put your mind at ease right now. The answer is yes. You will be heading to Willie Shakes Corner with Jo Robb. Toil and Trouble.

Written by Filoni, directed by Steph Green. Watchman, Boba Chapter 5, etc., etc. 44 minutes. And of course those runtimes include credits. Okay.

We have so much to get to today. Ben Lindberg will be joining us a little bit later for a lower look. We're going to dive deep in chronological order through both episodes. We're going to hit some Easter eggs. We're going to hit some theories.

Of course, we will be spending some time in Wigwatch with Joanna Robinson. But before any of that, just like old times, we have to begin with the opening snapshot. The soundboard is back. I love the soundboard. Steve. You're the best, Steve. Joanna Robinson, you'll expand on all of these feelings, all of these thoughts as we go.

Give us a little taste, a little amuse-bush. We're not going to linger long hair. We have a lot to do. How did you feel about these episodes? I had a great time. I had a great time with these episodes. I had a great time. I got to watch them with you.

That was a thrill of a lifetime. And we got to watch them on the big screen. That was also incredible. And yeah, I had a tremendous time with the episodes. We're going to be talking about all the, like, different tastes that people have. And I've been really curious to interact with people who didn't enjoy it as much. And I'm hoping that, like, the kind of coverage that we do will only enhance people's enjoyment of the show. and then maybe everyone can enjoy it as much as we did.

Mallory Rubin, how did you feel about these two episodes of Asoka? Oh, I absolutely loved them. I had such a truly special and wonderful time watching these with you up at Lucasfilm. It was a real, like, genuine treat and memorable experience that I will think back on fondly for the rest of my life. I loved the episodes. It's Rebel Season 5, you know, Rebels live action with one of my favorite. characters in Star Wars history at the center of it, I found the pace, the clip at which it moved, to be to my liking. I think that, you know, we'll chat more about like the question of how

effectively this double premiere picked up for people who have spent a lot of time in the animated canon in the Faloniverse, but also like welcomed people who maybe don't. have that history with the characters. I will not presume to speak on behalf of people who don't have the Clone Wars and Rebels connections to the characters that we do. As someone who loves those characters, I thought this was like genuinely a pleasure to be back with them. And I can't wait. It's so exciting to think about how like everything that comes next is unknown to us.

Yes, we know that in the distance we are building that bridge to the first order and to the sequel trilogies, but for the bulk of these characters, like, what happens next is a complete unknown to us? And that is so exciting to be with people who are attached to and not know what's next for them. And I thought that, I thought that the episodes deftly handled the exposition and the, like, let us tell you who these people are and what their relationships to each other are aspect of prior canon considerably better than Mando season three, which I thought often skewed too heavily either into, wait, they're just like literally never going to mention in this season of television that Boca Tan was a terrorist in multiple seasons of animated shows. That's just bizarre. Or let us

repeatedly mention inside of one episode all the stuff you might have missed off screen. This just felt like much more carefully and successfully calibrated on that front. What did you think about that? does this work as well as an initial offering for people who haven't watched a couple hundred episodes of animation? It's kind of in top of mind for me, honestly, because we want to make sure that our coverage of the show is as friendly to everyone, like entering at all levels of knowledge. And I believe very strongly that the show should be friendly to people who haven't watched a single frame of the animated series. And when we walked out of it, you know, you and I talked to a pal of my mic who was at the screening who hadn't seen any of the animated shows.

And he was like, I loved it. I had no problem. You know, that was his anecdotal response. I've heard from plenty of people that they had, you know, without that background that they enjoyed it. And then I've heard from a lot of people who felt alienated. And also from people who have seen the animated series, but we're sort of preoccupied with this question of like, are the non-animated fans going to enjoy it? We got a really lengthy email. I better cut down a little, but it's still kind of long from listener Natalie.

And I'm including this much of it just because I thought she did really good job sort of summarizing some of the pros and cons of being kind of an outside, feeling like an outsider looking in on this. She writes, my initial thoughts were generally, I enjoyed it, although it felt a little slow and it required me to keep reorienting myself to the fact that it happened after episode six. I felt like the vibe I got somewhat helped by knowing names. And that was that the war victories were won, but those that fought them are scarred by it and fissures have occurred. Clearly Sabina's younger, misses a friend lost in the war, Ezra, and she and her mentor had a falling out. Asoka struck me as a warrior who doesn't know how to settle and also has become super hardened and built up walls. Hera was the general involved in the actual rebuilding, trying to bridge the gap between the disillusion and resistant members of a former group of fighters. My assumption at the end was this is going to be a story about redemption and growth as told between a master and apprentice, but not in the Jedi way, but in a more old guard, young guard way that may mirror challenges of rebuilding an empire. Spoiler alert, doesn't end well. Everything felt like it hit the right beats, even if I didn't have a ton of emotional resonance, but why would I? I'm still in the setting up the character stage. Definitely fell in love with the cat thing with its little chicken legs. Star Wars can definitely do a critter. Also enjoyed Hera and choppers banter immensely. Okay, so that's part one.

And that's Natalie saying, this is how she felt coming out, not having any animated series context. And this is sort of, I think, what I would hope for people is to know that it's okay that you don't know everything. But let what is there wash over you in the way that Star Wars is often accessible because it treads familiar archetypes and storytelling trips. Okay. But then Natalie writes, Then I listened to The Midnight Boys and saw other reviews and I realized just how meat there is to the story. And while it didn't affect how I felt about it, I think I have a new appreciation for how much our discourse around fandom can confuse or annoy the hell out of others. I felt like a hundred-level student and a graduate thesis listening to them talk about it all.

That's not a criticism of them as much as it feels like a sign, just a sign of how unique and precarious of a place the show sits in the fandom landscape. Usually, when a beloved property makes it to the screen, it's all of us who know and love it introducing it to the general population for the first time. You expect the show to onboard people and satisfy yourself with Easter eggs and the anticipation of what's coming. Maybe it's also a reboot, so even as characters you have experience with, you know it's a new story or starting over in a way that you expect the slow build. Asoka is different because not only does it take characters that already exist and have existed for years on television, it's telling a story that is a continuation of their journey. It's new material for their closest fans who want to dive right into the meet, but also needs to set the stage. I can't comment on how much it resonates with closer fans, but I can see how, if you're a newbie, you're just someone who knows that these are supposed to be established well-beloved characters.

You may be impatient or feel, and this is key, I think, feel left out of the journey that you are not on the same engagement or emotional level of the other fans as they see this. You're not, quote, starting at the beginning. You're coming in in the middle in many ways and want to swim in the deep end with the rest of the fandom, but that will take time. I don't know if there's anything that could have been done to avoid this. It might be on us, our perception, or just what happens now in these large universes that now have really well established online spaces around them, but I'm looking forward to watching more. So thank you so much for this email Natalie, Natalie, who's a long-time listener or someone I have enjoyed interacting with over the years. And I think that point, one thing I want to say to people who are feeling

like confused or frustrated or any of those emotions is that I actually think you know you're not missing as much as you think you are. We're going to talk about a lot of the ways in which these episodes actually leave gaps and mysteries and questions for the animated fans as well. And I really think that I don't want to tell someone to just like, just relax. But like, I really think if you just sort of, I think you know what's going on. And I think what you don't know the show is going to fill in for you. And we're going to talk about the very specific moments in which the episodes do take a pause to try to wrap their arms around people and bring them in.

But if you are feeling frustrated and alienated, hopefully this podcast can help you bring you in to enjoy everything. Mal, what do you think about what Natalie wrote here or this general sort of sentiment? May this podcast be the pathway to Peridia for all of you. Yeah, I really, I mean, so I have a couple thoughts. wonderful email, thank you for sharing these feelings with us. I think sort of always feel a compulsion in these moments to like maybe more than is strictly necessary, emphasize and then repeat time and time again that I never want to feel like I'm like speaking on behalf of other people

because I genuinely think that people can feel however they want to feel about this stuff and that it's okay at the end of the day if each show or movie or book doesn't work. equally well for every single person in the fandom. I think in some ways, Star Wars in particular has aired trying to make something and then losing itself in that back and forth seesaw of like, wait, is this what this group wants? Is this what this group wants?

Right, that's part among other many other things that's cataloged. That length, part of what went wrong in the sequel trilogy. That said, I agree with you, obviously, strongly that my hope is that everybody feels like this can be a show that they enjoy and that it's like the barrier to entry is not prohibitive. habitively high to opt in or see if it feels like something, like a slice of the universe where

you'd enjoy spending time. So I think the show had, I think what Natalie is identifying is correct that like obviously there are myriad examples of adaptations of books that people bring a lot of knowledge to or connection to. But I think specifically what Natalie is citing about the continuation of the journey and like feeling like, okay, there's all the stuff that happened before that people have spent time watching that I didn't. Maybe people are feeling a heftier sense of like, I'm behind or I miss something than in some other stories. And I agree with what you were saying near the end there that like from a plot perspective, and again, it's not for me to like convince you or talk you into this if this isn't how you felt. I think if this isn't how you felt,

that's completely valid and fine. I thought that the episode plot wise did a good job of giving us these snapshots of this is this person's history. You need to understand that Asoko is Anakin's Paduan. You need to understand that Assoca left the order. You need to understand that Sabine was a Mandalorian. You need to understand Sabine's emotional attachment to Ezra, etc, etc, etc, right? These like larger looming things, where are Theron and Ezra? What went wrong between Asoka and Sabine? We don't know. We do not know. We don't know. And so we're all in that journey together. what I think is maybe more difficult to account for than the plot catch up is the emotional attachment.

Like some people are just coming to the show with... Like, why should I care about Ezra? Who is he? And yeah, and then some people are coming to it with a like, it is like one of the most important things in my life that I get to be back with this character. So I don't think the show needs to try to force like a bridging of that gap.

I think people can either forge, forge those bonds with the characters in a new way now, you know, hopefully that will happen. I think, like, that's the thing more so than the plot elements that feel like they will just take time. It's going to take time if you've never seen Sabine before to, like, grow to love her, right? I completely agree. I was trying to make an analogy on Twitter, probably fruitlessly, to, like, being a book reader,

not only outlines in her email a distinction between, like, being a book reader for something like Thrones or Harry Potter or whatever, but I do think there is some similarity there to, like, When you're watching Game of Thrones and you see Pedro Pascal walk out as Oberyn Martel, there were a bunch of us who were like immediately emotionally engaged with Ober and Martel as a character. And there are some people who are like, that guy looks hot in a saffron robe. He seems kind of cool. But those people eventually catch up because that's the job.

That's the show's job to get those people who are like, I don't know who the fuck he is, but okay. And then they catch up to the book reader. So it's not one to one, but I do think that. emotional gap or emotional investment in a character is kind of similar between an adaptation and whatever this is, which is a new thing. And the other thing to zoom back to that plot question is what I found anecdotally in a one-to-one basis talking to friends of mine who are watching the show but haven't watched any of the animation or like listen to our pods but like didn't

watch the episodes is they don't know what we don't know. And so the mystery of Sabine and Asoka, which is still a mystery to us, us, they're like, wait, what did I miss? They would, they would, like, text me like, wait, what did I mean? You didn't explain this. What did I miss about this? And I'm like, oh, no, no, we don't know either. So they don't know what we don't know.

And so then it all seems like, wait on, I'm so lost what happened. And so while I do think the show is very smart in establishing these new mysteries for all of us to puzzle out together, if you're a newcomer watching the show and you don't know that that's a shared mystery, then maybe you feel, again, left out. So, again, hopefully this is something that we can. hang out together and enjoy together and grow in our love for these characters. Yes. I also do think, like, I think this is an important thing to discuss, but I do think a lot of people really liked the show, and this isn't like necessarily like 95% of the response to into this bucket. So yeah, this will be an interesting thing to track, though, over the course of the season. I mean, we've been talking about this since we started seeing posters and trailers and even here and that they were just.

doing the show. This was always going to be a particular challenge. I don't want to, it is, and I don't want to dwell on it forever. We're going to move on in a second, but I just want to say that, like, I do want to say the bottom line. I feel like this is what you and I and our various podcasting partners before this have always done, which is try to make these dense genre properties as friendly and welcoming for whomever. That's what we do. So we're going to do it again. on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. We'll be here every week. Queens of context to steal a title from our pals of blank checks.

So, yeah. I love it. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with Internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business.

So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. As Morgan would say, nothing can prevent our journey. It is time for the episode one and episode two, a deep dive. I really forgot. I forgot about that. It's been a minute since we heard that.

Wild times. Oh, boy. This really is a trip down memory lane this whole pod here. Okay. Truly everyone, yeah. The opening scroll. We get an opening scroll,

like a tethered O.G. Star Wars canon here, Joe. How did seeing this make you feel? This is sort of like the first note that's going to pull on something for you emotionally as a Star Wars fan. Did you dig it? Were you happy to see it? Yeah, I was thrilled and excited.

excited. I liked that it was a little different. Yeah. Were you alarmed by the red? Yeah. Ominous? Yeah. Troubling. And also, you know, in the, in the opening flashes, we usually get blue and red and we do in episode two, but in episode one, it's all red lights. So, you know, yeah, I'm feeling and chilling the bone. I do want to say that we did get an email from our listener, Greg, who had sort of like gone through and marked and underlined the scroll, not to be confused with the scroll for us. And I just want to say There's a misplaced There's a dangling modifier

It can't get around it There's a dangling modifier But I just love the way that Greg phrases He says I nearly had an aneurysm at the beginning Because there's a dangling modifier in the opening crawl That never would have happened on Carrie Fisher's watch So shout out Grammar Queen Carrie Fisher

There is alas a dangling modifier in this opening crawl But but um Very tough once presumed dead Rumors are spreading of Thrawn's return Terrible. Presume dead rumors. Oh, no. Anyway, but I'm not getting caught up on it.

I thought it was funny more than anything else. And here we are. What about you? Mel, what do you want to say? Do you think that instead of being a text scroll, this should have been a Clone Wars-esque Tom Kane opening narrative? Base! The evil galactic empire has fallen.

It's risen to take its place. No? Isn't that how we really bring the Poloniverse live action? Anytime I hear that, I always think of, because on Cora, they did the Republic City voice. It was like, and our friend Dave Gonzalez is a really good impression about,

hello, bend is a non-bendez-alike. This is what happened previously on Gora. Wonderful. We are actually going to talk about the plot of these episodes momentarily, we promise. but I do think before we dive in, based on the setup of the scroll and then the first sequence we see, which is Morgan-centric, it's worth talking about like the timeline clues and the placement of this episode. And we should say, kind of as the initial caveat here, we don't know when these episodes are set exactly. And in fact, the episode kind of go out of their way to like not specifically orient us in time.

And we get that several years ago from our guy, Governor Ozadi on LaFal. But, you know, a couple things for sure. We will build toward the Rebels epilogue in the second episode, which we'll obviously chat about it length later today. And we are after season two of the Mandalorian's fifth episode, which is Chapter 13, The Jedi. That is the episode where Osoka interacts with Din and Grogu. That is the episode where Asoka is hunting down Morgan to try to find Thrawn.

But my question is, did it strike you as likely that this is right after that episode? Meaning potentially even before Asoka's appearance in the book of Boba Fett and season three of the Mandalorian? Because this is a new republic. How long can you transport someone? Yeah. Well, it's the new republic. I mean, unless.

Unless, yeah, fair enough. I mean, they're constantly moving and losing prisoners. It literally anything is possible, right? It's amazing they knew that she was on the ship, frankly. Run on time. Yeah, exactly. I guess it depends how long Asoka was interrogating, Morgan, to get all this information. Interrogating is carrying a lot of weight there.

Possibility. Did not follow her standard Jedi protocol. Her braid was quite must when we first see her in her prisoner jumpsuit. But I don't know how it could possibly be. after the book of Boba Fett appearance, right? It feels like it's in between, but I feel like they're trying not to confuse us. So they're just trying to be like,

don't think about it too hard. I agree. It just feels like, you know, so much of the vibe of what we are seeing from Asoka in this episode, it is a very somber period. We talked a lot in our preview pods about shaken faith. The Asoka, who we see with Luke,

in from the desert comes a stranger, chapter six of the book of Boba Fett, even though she wasn't like, actually, yeah, I changed my mind, I want her to train Krogu now, sign me up, Luke, do you have an opening at the school? As we talked about, like, there was a note of hope

and possibility when looking at the school, when talking about the future, when guiding Luke, and it just feels like what we're seeing here is ahead of that. I think the other clue that we have to parse is the Shadow Council exchange

in episode 6, seven of season three of the Mandalorian about Thrawn. Because we get that Gideon line talking to Pelly. Ben's not here to yell at me for saying Pelly. He's not on yet. So I'm rocking with it. You always speak with much authority. And yet I see once again that Grand Admiral Thrawn is missing from your delegation.

Any word on when he will be able to participate in the Shadow Council? And the Pellion says, with respect, our one hope for success relies upon the secrecy of his return. Now, Ben wrote about this in his piece and called it inconclusive. ultimately, I agree. I think you could make the logic work either way. It's like you can find the stat on a baseball reference page that you need to make your case. If Morgan does succeed in bringing Thron back,

then would he like just be sitting out zooms still by season three? If I'm being really honest with you, with love and respect and I know you love a timeline, I don't think we should get bogged down on this until we have more information. Because they're doing such a, they're working so hard to make it nebulous. that like, I think if we try to nail it down,

they're reserving the right to change their minds about what's going on. Several years ago, it's just a declaration. Yeah. And like I think, I think, like, if Asoka gets stranded in another galaxy and at the end of the season, like, are we like, oh, don't worry, she'll be back for that episode of the book of that. That's kind of one of the cases for all of this happening after that, though, I guess. Again, you can kind of make the logic work either way.

Whispers before and I mean My interpretation Whispers let Ossoca to Morgan in the first place So those whispers in the shadow council chat Could have been From that. My interpretation of the shadow council stuff Is always like, oh yeah

Oh you just missed him. Oh, he's in the show. Oh, Thron's in the shower. Oh, oh, he was just here. He just ran out for groceries. Like that's the way you cover for someone Who was absolutely not in the same galaxy as you. Went to the gallery.

Went to the gallery. Yeah. Picking up some new art. Okay. Yeah. Let's get to. the first scene of this episode where we say hello

and then instantly goodbye to one of the most remarkable figures we have had the pleasure of spending time with inside of a Star Wars show. Captain Hale, we hardly knew you, but we do know that you were a fucking idiot. This is an astonishing... We were cracking up watching this.

This was just so funny. Joanna. We get that classic overhead starship, shot and then Baylon and Shin arrive. Unlike us, Captain Hale has not been studying the season preview trailers for Asoka. And so he does not know what is about to go down on this prison transport vessel. But we do. Do you have any notes in general before we break down on the scene on the New Republic Prison Transport success rate? You know, episode six of the first scene of the Mandalorian, they sprung quim. Obviously, as you know, as you know, is you're...

familiar with what happened to Moff Gideon aboard his transport vessel. Yeah, there was a shard of Bescar, but other than that, he got up. I know you think about the shard of Besscar every day. Nightly. Nightly, honestly. They don't have a great track record here. No, it's not great. It's not great. But, I mean, that's what I like is that that is like a feature, not a bug in terms of showing us what a fucking mess the New Republic is. Yeah. Well, a lot of ample fodder in these two episodes. I mean, by the way, watching this was such a joy, watching this with you was such a joy that I'm kind of actively mad that I don't get to watch the rest of the season by your side. But we were just like, yeah, giggling and shaking our heads at everything Captain Hale said. Every single thing he said, we were like, you fucking moron.

Should we just trade like trade weeks? You'll come down here. I'll go up there. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. I love it. Yeah. It's only another month and a half.

We can do it. I think the thing that got the biggest chuckle out of us was you were no Jedi. some overconfident, confident imperial trash who just pushed their luck too far. Baylon tried so hard to warn this guy, telling him he was making a mistake. But Captain Hale is on the power trip heat check. I have to assume that things were going well for him at work before this. And he was just feeling it and hurling up shots from, from mid court at this point. What was Bailin's reply?

You're right about one thing, Captain. We are no Jedi. And this, of course, is when, yes, Rebels fans got really excited because So Katano has this very famous line in Mallory's favorite episode, Twilight of the Apprentice, when she says, I am no Jedi to Darth Vader. So to hear, we are no Jedi, got us really, got us really excited because it puts us exactly where. we want to be, which is where Mallory. We talked about this kind of in an anticipatory way, heading into the show, like really when we saw the orange lightsabers for the first time in the trailer,

he was like, that's new. And the thrill of seeing those activated here. Exactly. Like, we're not the only ones typed about Gunner Henderson this season, Palin and Chin, they're in the bird bath, they're in the splash zone. Look at you. You're making Orioles jokes on podcast now.

We also went to a game together. We went to Azo's and the Orioles won, and we shared it together, and it was beautiful. Just as it was beautiful to see these orange lightsigers activated. Until that guy right in front of me was like, she's being really patient with you. No, I loved all, I loved getting to talk with you about baseball. It was so fun. I loved it. It was a great night.

It was a beautiful night. Allow me to show you our identification as an instant entry into the Hall of Fame. It was just perfect. Iconic. We should say we both adore. Ray Stevenson, longtime favorite of ours. It was like so sad to see him as Baylon. He's absolutely wonderful. And he, uh, he passed away after production and before the show. I felt kind of uplifted because I was like, I'm so excited to see him do this as like his curtain call, you know.

It was wonderful. Extra great. And the episode was dedicated to him, of course. That was very moving as well. So, yeah, that we are no Jedi, I Am No Jedi Connection, like this premiere really succeeded in cementing this connection across the character set. We talk often about Asoka and her singular white lightsaber blades and the bold decision to leave the Jedi Order and how unique that makes her. Well, a lot of the characters in the show, including the foils and how compelling is that for the foils to be these mirrors. that's something that we obviously always love to talk about, are operating outside of these traditional rigid Star Wars binaries or Star Wars power, bodies of power and structures of power. She's not a Jedi.

Our orange-bladed antagonists are not Sith, they're mercenaries. Morgan, we'll talk about this more later because this was a fun one, that Knight's sister lineage, but when the question, are you a witch's pose, she says, I'm a survivor. Maruk, former inquisitor, still wielding the blade, but he's out working on his own, too. We're going to talk about him a lot. So you take a character in Asoko who, like, represents this rebuke of the constraints.

Yes, of systems. And you craft all of your characters in that image. How wonderful. Yeah, the fact that thus far we don't have a single person in the show who is using the force, the way that we are used to seeing it used, is astonishing and incredible. And I think also we talked about this a little bit on our last Asoka prep pod, but that line that Asoka has to Ezra in Rebels, you don't need to know who Ezra is, just know that this is one of Asoka's philosophies about the force.

She says, my experience, just when you think you understand the force, you find how little you actually know. So the opportunity for this show to give us all of these people operating outside, of the rigid systems of power, the rigid systems of the force, allowing us to break open the possibilities of the force is tremendously exciting. Incredible. We also broke open a cell.

It was tough, I will say, not to think of Ezra then. Just very used to seeing Ezra sprung from some sort of cell that he made his way into. To give some credit, to make the New Republic not seem so bad, like we this all start with starts with the jailbreak of Princess Leib, right?

So like it's not like the empire was holding out to their prisoners either. So jail breaks are are in the in the water here. It's a great point, though in drawing that parallel, it's just one more way that the new republic is ultimately like the empire. Fair. Disaster. Their outfits are not as good. But other than that, yeah.

When Morgan tells Baylon that he's a man of his word, right? He followed through. He showed up. He got her. What does he say? Well paid for it. So this idea of these characters working as mercenaries using their abilities to act in this fashion. Really interesting. Like, what are his motives? We'll talk a little bit about the power quote later on. What's his history? We learned something about Order 66 from Huying. We'll talk about that more. But at the end of the day, what does his character like want? What is he seeking in why? Good example of something where we're all on. equal footing here. We're going to find that out together. Don't know. Can't wait. Yeah. Can't wait to learn. But first we have to get a map. Joanna, please take us down into the

ruined temple. The Knights Sisters of Dathamere on Arcana. Great planet name. Love the direct tie to Arcane. Fantastic. Oh, I think every planet name that we get here is sea toss. Tossed by the

See, C-Toss? Love it. We're in these ruins. It's an ancient death of Mirian Nightcester Enclave on Arcana, as you mentioned. And as you point out in our notes, it's a ton of trailer footage here.

This is something that we had theorized that most of the stuff we had seen in the trailer was probably going to be in these first few episodes. And I would say, like, what, 75% we've already seen? Maybe even like 80. A lot. A lot of it is in these first two episodes, yeah. And we talked on our,

Osoka Prep Pods about the first Osuka Prep Pod a lot about temples in Star Wars and Dave Faloni's fascination with temples specifically. But I just wanted to talk for a second about temples and ruins in Star Wars and how it connects to sort of

the larger way in which we use these things in specifically I would say fantastical genre storytelling. This is a tradition that goes way, way back to like Beowulf and like Tolkien's translation of Sir Gowan and the Green Knight, like, the Green Chapel is actually like a barrow mound,

and then Tolkien himself was like the king of this, obviously. I was reading this great, I was trying to find this letter that Tolkien wrote about this and I couldn't find it, but I did find this great academic paper called Archaeology and the Sense of History of J. and J.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth by Deborah Sabo. A great read. I really recommend it. But she talks about when the fellowship or Bilbo and the dwarves travel through Middle Earth, they are constantly encountering broken down ruins and just relics of the past along the way. Deborah writes about a landscape which carries tangible relics of the past. Here and there, this highly realized, imaginary landscape is punctuated with the material leavings of more ancient inhabitants,

of lost and ruined kingdoms, which are remembered by the rustic and the learned. among the book's characters through superstition, legend, poetry, and oral and written history. These memories contextualize the story's present events simultaneously for the reader and for the characters, end quote. And we're going to talk a little bit later about legends and oral history and all of that, which is also touched upon really beautifully here. But to use the Thrones example, because you and I spent so long covering Thrones, when you think of things like the Black and Towers of Harenhall or the ruins of Old Valeria or the decaner. of Summerhall, like these are physical reminders of previous cycles of these same fights, or it just deepens the world to have these decayed ruins around you. And that cyclical idea, I think, was like really interesting when you think about Tolkien and when you think about Star Wars,

because, like, Tolkien is writing Lord of the Rings during the Second World War, Second World War of his lifetime. So he's like, Saurin's just going to keep coming back. That's just the nature of the world we live in. Evil just keeps returning and keeps returning. So Tolkien wants these characters to pass through like a scarred landscape full of all these reminders of what came before that this is not a new battle that they're fighting. This is an old recurring battle that and Tolkien, basically Tolkien when he writes Lord of the Rings, dreams of like centuries and centuries and centuries, of kingdoms and history and all this stuff, just to collapse them into ruins

for his heroes to wander around. I just think that that's incredible. And I want to, to go back to the cyclical idea, which is where we are with Star Wars. I want to finish this little mini segment by quoting the great prophet, Freddie Prince Jr.

in one of the most iconic Star Wars rants of all time that I know most of you, hope most of you have seen, but you haven't just Google Freddie Prince Jr. Star Wars rant. I'm going to, I've allied it a little bit of it for the time. But he says, I know more about the force than most people because Dave Falunni taught me and George Lucas taught him. All these video games have fucked people up on what the

forces. Luke's skill doesn't dictate whether he wins or lose. The emperor doesn't dictate whether he wins or loses. The force dictates who wins and loses based on balance. These are George Lucas's words, not mine. So fuck you if you think you disagree with me. And if you look the movie through just that simple perspective, you will not only know why every single bad guy loses and every single good guy loses, you'll know who's going to win and lose in the next fucking movies, I can tell you I just don't want to wreck it. So I think, thinking of that, I mean, genuinely iconic stuff from Freddie Prince Jr. Tremendous, right? I mean, truly could not disagree more, but love it.

Even if you disagree, it's true. I mean, it's like poetry it rhymes. Star Wars is a cyclical story of evil. rising and falling, et cetera. And so I think, and we know that Dave Filoni is a huge Tolkien fan and thinks about Tolkien and Lord of the Rings all the time. It's not necessarily what George Lucas cites as a primary example. He talks about Dune and stuff like that, but Faloni loves Tolkien. And so I think his fascinations with ruins of which we get two phenomenal ruins in these

first two episodes is part of that idea of leaving a physical reminder to go along with the oral tradition of what came before and how you're just in the same old fight that the heroes before you were in. Right. And all this is after you were in will happen again. All this is very battle starian. The best.

I love that. That was awesome. When Asoka first finds the crest on the ground and has to run her hand over the gravel and the soot and the ash that has, obscured it from view over the years. And like we build toward this vaporization and character standing there, talking about everything that is crumbled, and it barely looks any different than the state she founded in, you know?

This first moment with our titular protagonist, Asoka herself, we get this really fancy badass, like, lightsaber maneuver to slice into the, the cavern below, thought it looked extremely dope. I do think that if you're trying to make your way into a secret chamber, who knows what you might crush beneath it? What if the star map had been right there? Maybe she used the force to sense that it was a safe landing spot.

I also feel like every archaeologist cringed when they saw that. They're like, that's not how you treat an ancient ruin. Listen, again, it's just a clear Indiana Jones homage and our guy was just constantly like knocking over graves and hurling precious skeletons to the side to advance in his journey. So part of another proud Lucas film tradition here as well. Joanna, inside, Osoka finds three mysterious carvings, these etchings and gravings in the wall. Now, this was what we thought based on the trailer. This was what we referenced.

We thought, okay, maybe this is the daughter, one of the ones, the mortis gods. Now, I think that is seeming, it's not a. complete impossibility. And Ben will explain why a little bit later when he joins us for our lore segment. But it is seeming less likely, I think, for a couple clear reasons, most of which have to do with past history. Asoka would have recognized these figures as the Mortis gods, given her time on Mortis, her death and resurrection by the daughter. I think similarly Sabine, you know, we get that three figures, three faces lie, but she's not like, hey, wait a minute, these look familiar to me, like another version of the figures I saw in the mural on the Jedi Temple on LaFal and Wolf and Adore and Wolves and Adore and World Between Worlds. So we're dealing probably with something else, maybe something that is connected deep in that history as you're noting and leads to another rendering and another cycle. We will theorize with Ben later. This was one of the scenes, similar to the Sabine puzzle-solving sequence with the map itself later, that moved quite slowly.

Now, I really, like, admired the pacing of the stretch. It was so methodical and deliberate as the tension built and mounted. And I also enjoy more broadly the mystery box element. Like, we have to solve something. We're on a quest that requires answering questions. And then those answers will just give us more questions, right? Which happens here as well. Like, we have the map in Asoka's hand at the end.

But we're wondering, like, okay, we know that Asoka's there, because Morgan's information led her there, how did Morgan find this place? Is it the Knight's Sister Ty? Is it those whispers, those mysterious whispers? She thinks Thron is calling to her. Is that what's happening? Is somebody else leading her there? We'll talk about that more later. I really dug the piece. What about you? I have a mini theory about that. That I am going to drop here. And I should say, we're going to do like our main theory section at the end of the pod, but we will have little like mini. What ifs? here and there, of course. The pacing was when you and I got out of watching these two episodes back to back, and I had the best time with you, I thought the show did a really good job of telling you who the people were. I did think all of that would be welcoming.

I thought the pacing was like the one thing that I was a little worried about for other people. It didn't bother me, but I was just sort of like rewatching the Jedi, the Dayfalonie episode of The Mandalorian where we meet Asoka. It is very much like this. It is very slow and methodical. It is very samurai film-esque, samurai cinema. And so, you know, the Midnight Boys... We have our cub there.

Here we only have our lone wolf, you know? Yeah, the Midnight Boys, you know, Van specifically was talking about, like, how he misses, like, rollicking Star Wars. And I would just say in general, I don't think any live action Star Wars that we've gotten so far has been, like, rollicking the way that some of the films can feel. I feel like, we talked about this a bit with the Mandalorian where Manalorian is a stoic character, and the way that the Mandalorian bounces off of Grogu is adorable, but when it's like the Mandalorian and Boca Tan, sometimes you're like, oh, two Stoics walk into a room, and they take their time saying what they need to say,

you know? And so I think that that is something that, like, is across all of our Star Wars live action, you know, the Obi-Wan we meet in Obi-Wan is like a somber dude. Like, we're in somber territory with a lot, you know, and obviously Andor has similar vibes. So, yeah, I mean, it worked for me, but I can see why people are flagging it as something. And then to get to my, like, little theory about this map, which we're going to continue to talk about, we got this email from my pal Seth, so I'm going to read it because Seth's a long-time listener who says, I have a question about the star map business.

I get that Ezra and Theron got zapped away by the hyper speed whale, a space whale thingies at the end of rebels, and that's why they're quote unquote missing. But how could there be a star map to where the space Mobu Dix fucked off to? Who made it, et cetera? Am I missing key canon info? Or is this just an open question for everyone that we expect the show to get into? So here's my theory is that if Thron is calling to Morgan as she sort of says later. My theory is that this is not a map of like, this is the map to Thron or this is the map to Eserun. Or this is the map to Eser's. It's this is the map to where the pergels like to hang out and, you know, spawn or whatever. And so in my imagined scenario, Thron through the Whisper Network is like, Morgan, there's a bunch of space whales here. And they're spawning constantly. Come find me where the space whales spawn. And, you know, shout out chapter 94 of Moby Dick. And I think that I'm... I think that's what we're looking at is sort of pergill-based information and not necessarily, like, Thron-specific information.

Because I have a lot of people ask me about, like, how could something so ancient be used to pinpoint Thron who only disappeared, you know, several years ago to quote Clancy Brown? And I would say, I think it's pergill-based rather than Thron-based. Yeah, I mean, I guess we can talk about this more when we get to the CETOS scenes where they're talking about the pathway, and we'll talk about it more with Ben after that. But it's the pathway in these two galaxies, like that all obviously well and long predates. That's what Thron and Ezra traveled along. That's where the pergels took them. But there would, in theory, be a marker, a map left to how to travel between these by those beings long ago. But how does Morgan know that that's the path is the question we are all asking ourselves?

I am wondering, I'll throw my little theory out here, which is, I think clearly they're going to find Thron. We know Thrones in the show. That's not a mystery. I think that Baylon, there have been a number of times in these couple episodes where he seems very wary of the course that she's setting. And I think that is priming us for a surprise that she is not anticipating on the other. end. Will Thron be there? Yes. Will Ezra be there? Who knows? But perhaps whatever these ancient beings are, whomever they are, whatever else is there in the Pergill Pathway Network, what if this is like a, like the beast from Doctor Who or like the dweller in darkness from Shang Chi and something needs someone to open the door? I'm not sure that whisper is Thrawn.

It's a trap. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. let's spend some time in one of our happiest places. Let's go hang out. You just invoked after who. Yeah, that's perfect. Joanna. David Tennant is a main character in this show. Hu Yang is his main character in this show.

We were shocked. Delighted, but shocked. Was there a single scenario where you considered that Hu Yang would have this prominent of a role? I thought he was going to be in like three scenes tops. I thought we were getting like, he's just going to like, come, give us a little lightsaber lord download and then leave. I had no idea. Because we were talking about it and we were like, we think he's, I would say he's the third lead of the first episode and the fourth lead. Like he and Harris sort of flip and he's like the fourth lead of the second episode.

But that's still way higher than I thought David Tennant was going to be on the list. So we're thrilled. What a time to be us. Voice this droid when he appeared in Clone Wars. But yeah, hot David Tennant Summer rolls on. So you mentioned the Clone Wars. So Asoka and Hu Yang have this history. We watch them together in the gathering arc of season five of the Clone Wars.

Huying was, he is an architect, Professor Droid, but his role during the heyday of the Jedi Order was to help younglings forge their blades after they had found their khyber crystals. So Asoka has this history forging her blade herself, her initial saber. but also she, and we got to see this in the Clone Wars, took younglings to Hu Yang to find their crystals to forge their blades. So I'm so, it's really fun to see them back together again,

even though we only got like a little bit. That's a four-episode arc, and I think Hu Yang is in three of those episodes. When did they reunite? Like, which of them sought the other out? How long have they been together? I'm so interested to find out, clearly, from the context clues in these episodes, specifically the way that Sabine and Hu Yang

you're interacting, he was around during the master and apprentice stretch where she was training. He's very familiar with everything that happened there. But how did he come to be in their lives again? We don't know about the initial Sabine and Asoka training. We don't know about that. If you're watching the show, you might think we do. No, no, definitely. But I just want to make it clear that, like, there was a time when Asoka trained Sabine in the past,

We've never seen it. It didn't happen in the animated shows. So this is all new for us as well. So we don't know when she got a hot Scottish droid sidekick. But here, I mean, actually, he's using his British accent. But like, here we are. All right. His English accent is happening.

He should go full Scots, I think. But that's fine. Here we are. I love this. I think it's phenomenal. I think it's a great way to, like, it's not convenient that this droid can identify the hilt of a lightsaber. this is literally what this specific droid does.

This was our theory that he would be like, this is how I'm going to tell you that Baylon. Yeah, it was ours. I'd like to get credit. We're credits too. So he's piloting the T6, the old T6 shuttle, Asoka, loyal to her ride. And this is another stretch where we get a little bit of like,

let's clarify. some relationships to things you know in Star Wars, like the Jedi Order, right? So we get to hear Hu Yang talk about following Jedi mission protocol. That's why he was keeping the ship at a distance to put it out of Coms Rage. She's reminding him that the order doesn't exist anymore. So I also thought that was like a maybe a, oh, this is before the Luke scene in Boba kind of vibe. But again, who knows? You're right.

Shouldn't harp on it. Can't help it, but shouldn't. And we'll try not to. But you're you and I love you. You know I love to try to put together a timeline just so I could be utterly dismayed when the show is violated. You're just like itching to type B-B-B-Y into the notes somewhere and yet you cannot. So here we are. The, that is the job of a Jedi Padawan learner, which I am not line, was a great one because she's like, just have my back.

Just be there. Just watch. And this is going to be a through line of these two episodes where Hu Yang and Hara both, are trying to push Asoka and Sabine back together. And when we were talking in our Asoka prep, our last Assoca prep pod, we were talking about her as like in isolation as the wanderer as alone. And I mean, turns out she has a droid psychic, which is not, I don't want to leave him out of it. Like she's got a droid psychic.

But this idea that like- This podcast is on the record. Sorry, two of the three members of this Zoom are on the record. that droids are people. And eventually Joanna sort of conceded the point after an impassioned and beautiful speech from Steve. Catch up on our Mando Pots. I mean, the thing about Star Wars is that droids are people

until they're not until like the needs to explode when happens. Anyway. But he's, I mean, he's basically saying like, I'm just a droid on the spectrum who knows every like hilt of a lightsaber that ever happened. You need someone who's going to like engage with you a bit more. you need a Padawan. You need a trainer. Someone to train.

You need someone to interact with. So you shouldn't travel in the TARDIS alone just with me. Get a Padawan. You need a companion. Before you can really push the point, they receive a summons from Home 1, and they receive it. Folkrum call sign.

I need to read this email from Courtney, though, because this is astonishing. Courtney let us know that in the recent novel, the canon novel Brotherhood, in describing this character that David Tammett voices Hu Yang it says

Professor Hu Yang was so old the ancient droid supposedly arrived at the Jedi Temple in a big blue box thousands of years ago which is just a dorky Doctor Who reference that they put into

a canon Star Wars novel love it all right absolutely tremendous do you think that Hu Yang wants to join us for one of our Doctor Whoopods Huyang yes

David Tennant less so, probably. So we'll see. Oh, yes. Oh. Cross promoing via soundboard. Incredible stuff, Steve. I would not have been my guess for first deployment of the soundboard, but I'm overjoyed that it was. To Home 1 we go.

Folkrum call signs still in use. You love to see it. Nice to know that some people never change their cell phone numbers, Joe. My sister still has a Brooklyn area code. She hasn't lived there for like 20 years. Morgan. It's just a big pod today for Morgan's. Yeah.

When they land, Hera is there to greet Asok up. This was wonderful. It's just great. Hera, Spector 2 from the ghost crew from Rebels, top tier pilot, one of the best in the biz, Republic General. The kind of mom of the crew,

as we talked about on our primer pods. She and Asoka worked together. They have a long history in the rebellion. Hera was the one interacting with Asoka as fulcrum in the early stretch of rebels. Very fun to see them together. And, like, again, kind of wonder, well, they seem really happy to see each other. How long has it been? We're going to talk about some things in a minute that clearly they are not aware of and have not shared with each other that indicates, hey, maybe it's been a minute.

That's kind of sad. We get a fun little wink to us with the, and this is specifically about somebody being busted out of prison and something going wrong and the mission completely falling apart. But we get that fun little just like old times, slime. Followed by and unfortunately, you know, not unfortunate for us. Very fortunate, Joe. This was wonderful. When Hara shows Asoka, the hollow of Baylon and Shin, who are not yet identified here,

Hera observes that they have abilities, that they seem like Asoka. And Asoka says, and she's very, there's a lot of despair in her. voice as she says this. These days, there are few who can wield the force. Back in that episode of Cisa to Amanda, the Jedi, she told Din at the end when she was telling him, let Grogu choose his path. He can reach out. Maybe a Jedi will come. Then again, there aren't many Jedi left. So this idea is very top of mind for Asoka. How could it not be? How many force users are, how many force sensitives are out there. How many people are out there who would be fighting for the light. And it's extra fascinating for us to hold on.

And every new story, a couple more than you realized we're there before. Then you thought when you watched the original trilogy, but that's okay. But it's so, this is like so interesting to me in the context of knowing now, which we learned in this episode that she walked away from training Sabine and in knowing she refused to train Grogu because she is, and how could she not? She's very focused on the fact that this is a dwindling total, but is incredibly reluctant and resistant to being the one who is directly helping to fuel those ranks again. Now that we know a bit more about Assoca and Sabine's past, we can go back to that interaction

in that episode, The Jedi, when she says she does not want to train Groguu. as we discussed on one of our primer pods, like she's talking about Anakin when she says, you know, I've seen the best of us. I've seen this go badly for them. But is that, is her reluctance to train Grogu

flavored by her attempt to train Sabine, which went poorly? It has to have flavored that. So that's fun little information, that new information for all of us, about Asoka's journey from Paduan to Jedi to not a Jedi, to a master force wielder, even though she's not a Jedi, technically.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So a fascinating exchange after this. Asoka's like, it wasn't a total waste of a day. I found this star map. This one holds the secret Morgan's after, she says, which is, Hera asks, the location of the last missing Imperial Grand Admiral.

Then she pauses really dramatically. Silence on the other hand. Throne. Thron. Now, I, this was one of the most interesting little things in the episode to me. Realizing that Asoka has not told Hera or Sabine that she is on Throns and thus Ezra's trail, like that they might be out there. Now you could say maybe she's just waiting until she had like enough to go to them with. And that would be, I think, valid, right? You don't want to get their hopes up until you have a way. But I was thinking back again to that moment.

earlier in Chapter 13, The Jedi, that initial interaction between Asoka and Morgan, when Morgan says, I've been expecting you, and Asoka says, then you know what I want, which sort of indicates to us that her search for Thron had reached the level that people in his orbit would have been aware of it. So, like, she's been doing this for a while and never told them. One wolf indeed. I, yeah, I guess, I mean, that's a good character analysis of it. To me, it feels like a slight fudge. in order to, you know, see it a little exposition in, right? To have this interaction with Hara informs us the audience of, like,

someone named Thron is missing. Right. Someone named Ezra is also missing. Remember when I was telling you about Thron? Yeah, that's what I told. I was talking to you about Thron? I mean, that's so dumb. Yeah, so Harrah says that's not possible.

That's not possible. Anyway, she says, that's not possible. Thorn. He died in the Battle of... Tashi Station, because of power converters. Thrawn died at the Battle of Lothal. And his death was never confirmed. And so...

What did you make of this? Something that... So, yeah, something that we are asking ourselves is, you know, at the end of rebels, a character named Ezra sets up a scenario where a bunch of space whales called Pergles take him and Grand Admiral Thrawn to another galaxy.

see, sacrificing himself to take Thron off the board, right? Whatever happens to me happens to you now. That's what I'm counting on. Takes him off the board to give his pals a victory. Takes him off the board so that we can understand why Ezra is not in the original trilogy of films, but never confirmed dead. And so I like the idea, you know, that you floated this idea that like enough time has passed that they're like, well.

they're probably dead. You have to fill out the death certificate paperwork at some point. So at this point, they've been gone so long. They might as well be dead. I've decided that they're dead. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, this did strike me as odd just because in the immediate moments after Ezra

and Thrawn and the Pergles poured away, Hera's like, Rex, bring up every star chart. As for his last note trajectory, like they are intending to look. Now we know, of course, from the Rebels epilogue that we've, that they haven't found him and that they're setting out, right? But Hara, herr found out she was pregnant.

She had a baby. She has a kid to raise. In these, in these episodes, you think our guy is like, at, is he with the babysitter? Where is he?

What's he up to? When will we see him? Is that Chappas job? No, Chopper is too busy yelling at her for going through his stuff. Hillary Rubin, I would never promise you.

I would never. I would never. I would never promise you that you would see a character not after you promise me that I would see Cobbant and I didn't never anyway

Jason Sundula I hope we see before this season is over I'm a little worried I'm a little worried that Hera isn't going on this journey to the other galaxy and that Mary Elizabeth Winston is only going to be in like the first half of the season I have no evidence for that I'm just a little worried

because, like, she's got a job to do and a kid. Like, is she going to go on that adventure? I don't know. Maybe he's with a really good babysitter. Okay. Maybe that's where Zeb is. Here's what I will tell you right now.

I told Lindberg this when we were working on his column. I'm telling you this now. Steve, I'm telling us to you too. You know, Ezra, everything we've already said about not getting too hung up on the exact time frame, it's been at a minimum a decade since Ezra disappeared. Ezra disappears close to but before the Battle of Yavin,

I think that this idea of this hope that he could be found, that he's okay, mixed in with this guilt, that if he is, oh my God, he's been out there waiting all this time. And he said to us in his farewell message, I can't wait to come home. And we didn't find him. Like, how would that, God, how would that haunt you? I will not wait.

10, let's just say somewhere between 10 to 12 years, 10 to 11 years, 9 to 11. I will not wait around a decade to go look for you, Joanna. And I don't want you to wait that long to look for me. I would never would. I'd be confirmed dead. That's the thing. You won't have to wonder. I'll just be like, oops, I didn't get out of the dome in time before we blew it up.

I'd be like, fuck the Battle of Yavin. Fuck rebuilding a new empire. I don't care about my kid that I had with the love of my life. I got to go find Mallory Rubin. It's very important. Does that, wait, I'm not the love of your life. Okay, tough way to find out. Wow.

We all have boundaries, I guess. Here we are. Bad, baby. When Asoka reveals to Hara that they can't unlock the map, Hara has an idea. Sabine, she'll be able to figure it out. Guess what? Hara was right.

However, there is some emotional weight that is standing in the way of making this a smooth journey. I'm not sure she'll want to help, Asoka says. She'll do it, Harrow replies for Ezra. And so it is time to go back to Lothal. Live action Lothal. I thought this was like one of the more emotional moments of the of the double premiere as a rebel's head.

Just being just being in Lothal. And like being there, but like in all the little things, you know, the, the, the helmets in Ezra's room, the Lothcats. Obviously, the new Lothcat who we'll talk about it. Like, in general, the Lothcats out in the grass. Like, Sabine riding her speeder down that road that we'd seen. Ezra and our specters travel down so many times before the Comstower, the mural. But, like, also, especially toward the end of rebels, the imperial presence is so oppressive.

The shipyards, the factories, the fuel centers, there are troopers everywhere. There are star destroyers. blotting out the sun, their smoke clogging the air. And, like, Lafal looked beautiful. And they did that. And that was just like, really. Yeah, I thought amazingly emotional. As was realizing that we were at the reveal of the mural, the mural from the epilogue.

This is like the dedication of the mural. So we are, this is another, okay, definitively, we are before the Rebel's epilogue in these episodes and build toward that inside of the second episode. Joanna, who do we see up there? lead in the ceremony. So exciting. But, okay, like, I feel you on your emotional reaction to this, and I love that, and I support it. I also, I just don't, like, all these things are true.

At the same time, I feel like if you're seeing with his fresh eyes, it doesn't, you don't need to know that Governor Ryder Azadi is a character that we met in Rebels. You can just be like, fucking Clancy Brown is here. How exciting. I love Clancy Brown. I love when he does literally anything, whether it be Unlost or Carnival or Who Cares. I'm a big Clancy Brownhead. Like, or Jicel, who's played by, I believe it's Vinnie Thomas,

who I know from like literally TikTok sketches. So I was like, good job, Vinny. You're in a Star War. He has a great aliens coming to Earth for the first time. TikTok. You've never seen it. But all this talk about how there are hardly any force wielders and everyone's just letting Jickel's force powers wither on the fucking vine, Joe.

Our guy sprung by Ezra back in the day from the Imperial. Academy put into hiding. But this is my, I mean, that's great context, but like you don't need to know that in order to like know where you are is I think the point I'm trying to make. And like, I think that I love seeing Lothal, it reminds me of Gondor, like the beautiful white sparkling city. Like, it's just absolutely beautiful. But I also love this introduction.

I love this introduction of Sabine so much. This was amazing. The fact that like- She ditches. She doesn't show and then we cut to her. It's like, Bueller. Like, it's very. like, you know, sub-y, not again.

And we just get like, we get, first of all, we get punk rock music, which we like never get in Star Wars. And first of all, it sounds like it belongs versus like some of the shit we got in, you know, a book of Boba-Fet. And then she's just speeding down the road, fucking with space cops. She's got chip nails.

She's got her incredible hair longer than we've ever seen it before. Yeah, it's just like reminded me of like meeting Marty McFly. I love this intro for her. And again, I just don't think you need to know who she is to be excited to meet her because she's someone who's like, you know, ditches important ceremonies, has no respect for the cops, listens to cool music. I loved her. Thrilled. Chart in her own course. It was really fun to see the signature Sabine paintings, the doodles on the helmet. Got some Ewing action here. They're using the specular. call sign, Specter 2-1, like the idea that the Specter call sign is still in use and more and more

people are adopting it and the ranks of the spectres have kind of like swollen in this way. Did you get a, these two have fucked before vibe from Sabine and Porter? When you literally said that to me when we were watching it, then yes. Did you agree? Felt some energy between those two. Sabine gets such an interesting, I mean, yes, there's definitely like a history of like they know each other. And I just, I hope so. I know that Sabine gets like, she gets an iconic lonely girl intro and we'll talk about that in a second. It's a Star Wars staple. But like, I think that I don't like

the idea of her just like being in the tower with her cat all the time, maybe like most of the time. And then sometimes she goes down to a lethal bar and just like picks up a space cop for a night or whatever. So yeah. Let's talk about that cat. It is time to discuss. Or she knew him before he was a cop. And then she was like, too bad you're a cop now. Okay. Um, let's fall. Lothcats, let's do it. This is just absolutely sensational.

Not only is the loath cat who is in Ezra's tower where Sabine has made a home a main primary figure in these two episodes. And absolutely wonderful. The puppet work is sensational. The chirps, the meows,

the purrs, the hisses, the arched back, all of it, wanting to knock around the star map like a ball. This is just a full-on cat person scene. Like there is petting and scratching and affectionate exchanges. There is a feeding session, a bowl of food rubbing the loathe cats back as he eats.

We don't have a name for the cat. And I will also say we do not have the merch that we show. This is just like, I don't know if you went to the like, hey, scan your QR code for exclusive merch thing on Disney Plus, like I immediately did. Nothing on the Loath Cat plushy fun. But I know this because my friend, my friend Lana told me this. But like, I don't, I was actually gratified to see that because in the THR review of this episode, which was not as favorable as ours, there was this very snarky comment about the Loith

cat written by my friend Dan Feiberg. I love him. But like a very snarky comment about the Loath cat just being there for merch. And I was like, I mean, like, we talked about this when we watch this. We are diehard cat people. And watching every single thing that this Lothcat does, we're like, this was made by a cat person, which caused me to Google Dave Faloni cat person. What'd you find? And find out that he is a massive cat person, that in fact, Boca Tancries is named after his wife's cat, that he has named things after other cats in his life.

If you go to Wikipedia, it is just littered with references to Dave Faloni's cats, both living and deceased. This man loves cats. This, I believe, solidifies once and for all that Grogu is cat-coded, not dog-coded, because Dave Flonio. I mean, we already know. Canonical cat guy. And it comes through. We got so many emails about the loath cats because people know how we feel about cats, but I'm just going to read this one from Rebecca because it made me laugh. Rebecca writes, does the loath cat know how to use the elevator?

because Sabine kind of seems like she's holding that cat hostage 200 feet in the air, not feeding it after coming home from an unknown number of days away getting repaired, just saying it might be better off frolicing the tall grass with its other LC buddies catching food and whatnot. And I kind of agree. I feel sure this cat comes and goes, definitely. But like in a mysterious like T.S. Eliot kind of way where it's just sort of like you don't really know like macavity.

I mean, the loath wolves could create a portal that goes halfway across the planet in an instant. So who knows what's possible? These are magical creatures. But also, you know, cats can climb. They can scale. They can certainly jump and press buttons. I refuse to believe this loath cat. Can I use the elevator?

I simply refuse. And when the merch that I covet and crave arrives, I bet one of the phone go to popp's will be the cat in the fucking elevator. I want you to have the merch. I don't want the merch to not exist. I just want it to be proven that it's like not there just for merch. I love that you said cats can climb when we're talking about the like Lafal equivalent of the Burge Khalifa. Like the cat is not Tom Cruise.

It cannot scale that tower. No. Maybe there's like a system that they've set up. Yeah. Of pulleys. I like that. Yeah. Like a little basket that the cat can move.

I'm here for the whole chicken feet move up and down. The portal theory works for me. Okay. Okay. It's time to talk about Ezra, a character who had quite a connection to the loathcats, that forced power, that animal bond. Because as Sabine is making her way through this room, again, this is where Ezra, after his parents were imprisoned and he was on his own before he joined the Spectres, this was where this tower was where Ezra lived. This was his hideout. So Sabine has chosen very deliberately to make her home in this place that on the one hand is surrounded by memories, but also kind of, kind of. kind of surrounded by ghosts. It was very, very sad. And she's going through a box of stuff. We get to see when she's petting sweet bubba.

I'm just going to call the Lothcats sweet bupah because we don't have a name yet. We see her Mandalorian helmet kind of tucked away underneath on the lower shelf of a table. And she pulls out this disc, boots up the hologram. We had seen this in the trailers. I had assumed that she was watching over and over again the final transmission. the message Ezra had left to all of them. But we learn that this is a message just for her. Steve, can we hear this?

Hey, Sabine. I'm sorry for disappearing on you. I made this recording because more than the others, I need you to understand. As a Jedi, sometimes you have to make the decision no one else can. So that's what I did to defeat Thron. We've been through a lot.

grew up together in this rebellion and we're not really family but you're like a sister to me I know your fight isn't over and now I won't be there to help you and I'm counting on you to see this through may the force be with you Joanna this made me weepy

this was extremely emotional for me I did have inside of the incredible tenderness and despair a I believe I turned to you and said, a sister you want to fuck? Like, when he says you're like a sister to me, does he mean in the Targaryen, Jamie Sorsi-Lanister way? Shoebe clear.

Ezra spent at least the first two years on the ghost, like, with a hard on for Sabine, like, 100%. Yes. Like, so when he says, you're like a sister to me? Okay, but on a, on a writing front, this is a brand new. this is a brand new little hollow that we're all seeing on a writing front. Let's take off the exposition information that they put into this little speech that Faloni wrote here, right? As a Jedi.

All right. This guy's a Jedi. He's disappeared. Sabina's more important to him than anyone else is. I did something to defeat Thrawn. We grew up together in the rebellion. We're not literally family, but you're like a sister to me. A sister I want to fuck.

But also found family is beautiful. You know, so like I'm a Jedi. We're close, but not blood related. I'm not going to admit on this hollow that I want to fuck you, but, you know, hopefully people. But you know what I mean when people are like, I don't know who Ezra is? I'm like, this hollow just told you who Ezra. That's all you really need to know about Ezra, honestly, at this point. And let me just say this.

I do have a question about verb tenses. So that's what I did to defeat Thron. When did he, did he make this hollow with a tremendous amount of confidence that he was going to defeat Thron? Because we assume he made those hollows before he had to have before his showdown with Thron. So here's my assumption. Because Chopper plays the message to the group in the rebels finale. I think he left Chop with the instructions, hey, if this goes well. If I get him at it, I think Chopper knew his plan.

And he's like, if this, if I did it, play this for the team. It's like on that episode of, it's like on that episode of full. house where they get Joey a cake. And if he does well, it says, congrats Joey. And if he's not going to do well, it's just going to say rats, Joey. Exactly. Maybe it knows how many other messages chopper has. Like maybe he's got a Tony Stark, sorry, I got myself killed. And it didn't help at all whatsoever. I always wanted to fuck you and I never got a chance to tell you that. XOXO Ezra. X. X-O. Ezra. You knew. Let's be honest. You knew. I just want to say this about if you don't, if you, like, I heard, the number one complaint I heard for people was, why should I

give a fuck about Ezra? I don't know who he is. And I'm like, well, he matters to this character Sabine, and the point of these two episodes is to get you to care about Sabine. If you don't care about Sabine, that's a different issue. But I don't think you really need to know or care about Ezra yet. And in that function, he is very much this, like, very classic trope, except we usually see women play it, and I'm, it's the dead wife trope, right? So, like, like, Momento, fugitive,

the crow, John Wick, gladiator, Braithor, The Revitner, the Revit, every Nolan film ever.

It's the, it's the like, she's standing on a beach, she's playing with the kids, she's under the sheets laughing. It's the dead wife, but it's Ezra, and he loves her like a sister,

but also not like a sister. So I think that's all you need to know. This, he's the McGuffin, essentially. And really, like, I genuinely think the big mystery

of this show, at least for the first half, is not, where are Ezra and Thrawn? I mean, that's a literal mystery, I suppose. But it's like, what the fuck happened with Assoca and Sabine? That's the real mystery. And in that respect, we are all on the same page.

So, yeah. Beautifully said. Overjoyed to see Ezra, who I love dearly. I loved when he did the little, like, neck rub thing. Like, that was, like, a classic Ezra. He was just very special. Very special. Yeah. I can't wait to see him more.

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Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Borshead committed to craft since 1905. Let's go back to Knight's Sisters HQ for a minute. Let's talk about some magic. Baylon and Shin, the Padawan braid, very visible here. I liked this, that Baylon has kept this tradition intact. Ask Morgan what this place is.

And Joanna, she says, an ancient temple built by my ancestors, the knight sisters of Dathamir. This is where we get that, you're a witch, a survivor line. Tell us about the knight sisters of Dathamere. Gladly, because I have heard from much people like, what? L.O.L. Their witches in Star Wars now, guess what? They've been here since 1994, created by, so we talk a lot about, like, legends versus canon. So they have their origins and

legends in this truly demented book, courtship of Princess Leia, written by Dave Wolverton, 1994. But he creates the Witches of Dathamere. George Lucas liked them and then ported them over for Maul's backstory. Very much simplified the Witches of Dathamere. And in the canon, most of the Night Sisters were massacred on Dathamere during the Clone Wars. Like that's the canon story of them. Quite a bit.

And they're in this, yeah, the Clone Wars TV series. But Dathamere itself in Legends is a long history of the fourth. There's a Sith Academy there. They are part of like the founding of the Jedi. I never know how to say Jedi in that way

that makes it sound yeoldy-timey. Jedi. Jadai. The founding of the Jedi. But what I think is interesting is that in the Legends version and we know how much that Dave Filoni loves porting over legend stuff that is not

canon yet. The Knight Sisters are just one of many tribes within the Witches of Dathamere. There are much more like Northern California hippie sounding tribes of the witches of Dathamere singing mountain, dreaming

river, misty falls. Those aren't dark side users. In fact, they had a book of law they followed. The main law was never conceived to evil. And if you did, you got kicked out. And all the people got kicked out were like, guess what? There are enough of us to form our own clan, and we're the night sisters. We got a badass name. We wear red. We are extremely hot. And we use the dark side of the forest. And it manifests as like green fire,

which you see Morgan use a little bit later in episode two. As recently, though, as 2020s Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark Anthology, there's a story in there called Bug where there's a witch not to be confused in my cat's name, where there is a witch of Dathamere who is not a knight sister. So that does establish

in canon that it's not just the knight sisters who are witches a Dathomere, re-expanding the concept of what a witch of Dathamere could be. This woman,

like very much like in Greek mythology has created a daughter for herself out of like the very earth that is a very like light side one with the force

kind of thing to do. But even if you're like, okay, I don't know anything about these witches. I've never seen witches in Star Wars before. Cities himself is like fairly witchy to be clear. Like blue lightning is one thing, but I will say that in both Clone Wars and Rebels,

we have seen him use a literal cauldron with like blue flames coming out of it. Like there has been some very witchy stuff from good old palpi as well. I think else you want to say about the Knight Sisters? They're very hot. I love all of the Knight Sisters action and Clone Wars. There's a fun mall comics arc that has a lot of good Mother Talson.

Knight Sisters action in their mall is the son of Mother Talson, who was the leader of the clan that we spend time with in Clone Wars. Love a Knight Brother, you know? There's a lot of great characters across canon associated with the Knights Sisters and with Dathmere. I guess the only other thing I would mention is just that

Asoka and Sabine both have direct history with these magic wielders. In Sabine's case, she found the Dark Sabre in Maul's like fucked up Sabine, the Satine altar layer on Dathamere and there was like a possession. And so the fact that Morgan extends from this lineage is something that will be meaningful to those characters.

There's also the mention of Survivor. We did get an email from a listener, George, who mentioned that just, I love that the cause back earlier this year. There's a Jedi Survivor video game, and one of the main characters was a Knight sister named Marin, main character of both Survivor and Fallen Order. And so when Morgan Ellspeth essentially looks at the camera and says, I'm a survivor, George says he and his brother did like the Leo pointing meme of like, Oh my God. Anyway. Night sisters, they're out here. I have to play that still. I haven't played that yet. I did enjoy Fallen Order, but I still have to get to Survivor. In George's email, he's like, Mallory might have played this game?

Joanna, I know that you have not. And I was like, factually true. I wanted to mention to you, Joe, because this is something that we both really love talking about and that you drew particular attention to in the preview pods. When they're here like, oh, okay, is the map here? She got it, what happened? Oh, wait, this place blew up. Good.

She got out of here with it. And Baylon says, like, they're lucky if she left with it. And Morgan says, luck has nothing to do with it. Fate has decided our next move. So a character here, driven by that idea of fate in a guiding hand, always something that we like to track. I'm going to have more to say about that a little bit later. But she says the threads of fate also later.

Yes. Yes. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. She sends, this is, we won't spend much time on this because this is just total speculation of no idea with the answers, but I did think this was intriguing. Morgan tells Shin to go to Lothal and when she asks Bailin, like, hey, what's up with this? Also, why is she ordering me around? Aren't you my, aren't you my guy? He says, Assocato's former apprentices on Lothal, you're looking for Sabine Wren.

How does he know that? the number of people who would know that Sabine, that Assoca had taken Sabine as an apprentice would be exceedingly small. So is this meant to tell us something about we do get that great scene later where he's like reaching out to kind of censor

through the force. Like he is, maybe this is an insight into his power. Maybe he's just like us. He's like a big prepper. You know, does a lot of research before a pod. And he's like, I think my work is like, on mic mercenary seriously. Wickeying.

Yeah, exactly. Can I put a completely baseless theory question? I mean, absolutely. Do you think, do you think Shin is his daughter? Because the Jedi wouldn't do that, but they're not Jedi. I like it. I like it. I kind of like it.

I don't know why not? I just can. Yeah. I dig it. Let's do it. I like this idea that he's like, he's like, order 66 happens. He's traumatized by it or whatever. Then he has a daughter and she's.

He's a, is, you know. And he has connection to the force. He's like, I'm going to train you and we're going to make a bunch of money while we do it. Let's go. You and me, babe. I love this. I love this. The idea of her also having the orange blade, like kind of, I mean, you could pass down and have an inheritance, regardless of a bloodline.

But that would be, that would be really great, too. I thought you were going to say, order 66 happened. He went out and just started having a ton of sex. Wouldn't you? The backstory. I'm sorry. That baby. I'll just do it for Steve.

Okay. Steve's getting dinner. You know, we're going into the evening hours. No, he's... I'm not. Joanna, one thing that we love in a Star Wars episode of television is a title that applies to many different characters inside of the episode of television. Master and Apprentice is no exception. Valen and Shim.

Soak on Anakin. Asoka and Sanchez. Sabine, and it is time for them to reunite on LaFalle. This is where we get the first but not the last Sabine's sleeping and fretfully dreaming sequence. Twitching and muttering, the old force twitching and force muttering. Very active sleeper, Sabine Wren. And she's dreaming about Ezra. And as she wakes, she says his name.

And then the ding of the motion sensor indicating that the, uh, that her ship is flying overhead, activates. And it seems to indicate to us, like there is a tether to the force. These are force streams in some capacity. She sensed something before it activated. This is just like one more little data point to kind of keep in mind as we get to a discussion later about the question of Sabine Rand's force sensitivity. When she sees the T6.

If you could put force in front of any other word and that was be your special power, what would you like to force do? Let me think about it. What's your answer? We're running long. Cut this out, Steve. Let's move on. I'm going to think about it.

Next time you ask, I'll be ready. Okay. So she sees Asoka ship. Obviously, she recognizes it. She heads out to meet them. Very sad little moment where when Governor Azadi is like, you were missed, you know, everyone was there. What does she say? Not everyone.

And she's just this grief is heavy in her heart. Missing Ezra. Missing Canaan. Didn't feel right to be there. without them there too. We see this little shorthand, these injokes, the charm, the affection between Hu Yang and Sabine, still in one piece. Oh, yes, and still 75% original parts.

But the tension with Asoka is palpable. They both have the body language indicators, the crossed arms, kind of leaning back away from each other. And Asoka does not lead with Thron, which is what she does. with Hara. She leads with Ezra. She's making the appeal to Sabine that she knows will get Sabine in the door. I think

I know how to find Ezra. And so they go back to the T6. What does Sabine look at? Where does she go right away, Joe? To her bunk. She goes to her bunk and she sees these little like doodles and you know, those of us who know Sabine's artwork, we are something of art

appreciate ourselves. Like the context clue there, again, we're just guessing because we're all in the same page is that this is where Sabine slept when she lived on this ship at one point as the apprentice of Asoka Tano. And this is like brand new information for us, but it is like an exciting little context clue. Yeah.

Sabine can like whip up a doodle very quickly, but it definitely seemed to be like, okay, this was where I spent time. This was where I slept. Lay down at the end of the day to sleep. I'm curious, like, what do you think is most likely for how we fill in? some of these gaps, like the question of what went wrong between them what happened. Do you think that we will learn that through the course of conversations, through them telling us and discussing it? Do you think we will get actual flashbacks? Do you think we will get kind of pseudo flashbacks in the

form of like dreams or force meditations? How do you think we will get this information and fill in these gaps? I think, you know, Obi-One, I think used flashbacks. I mean, I liked those Anakin Obi-Won training flashbacks. But like, It's so funny, I'm still, like, I'm still trained off of Thrones where they were like, we don't do flashbacks ever. I think it's, I think it could easily do some flashback, especially since we track Asoka by her hair so fully that like there could just be a new wig. It enters the mix and we know we're in a flashback. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I think we'll get some flashbacks too. I guess the meditation thing could achieve the same thing. But I feel, I feel like we'll see this. I'm excited. Assoca tells Sabine about Arcana, about the Knight Sisters, about the possibility that they might be out there. Nothing is certain, she says, when Sabine asks, like, you really think that Ezra's still out there? Our enemy is actively seeking Thron. That's the one thing that they know to be true.

And they can kind of expand and expound from there. So, it's so interesting to hear Asoka use a word like enemy. that sounds so black and white to me. Do you know? Like, Asoka, who seems such a balanced or seeking balance or seeking the gray sort of character. I don't know. Enemy sort of made me bristle, even though, of course, yes, space fascists are at the enemy, but, you know.

Yeah, it's a good point. It did feel like a very firm and extreme term. I think, though, like, when we talk about Osoka. defying some sort of convention and charting her own course. It's much more in how it relates to the light side and to the Jedi. I think at the end of the day, like fighting.

And yes, of course, like you, you know, you sketched out everything with Lux and the separatists. And that was more about like, I think, learning how people can mislead you, right? I don't know, but when Osco's faced challenging an inquisitor, she's not reluctant to cut that person down. True. I just thinking

like, I just think Star Wars gets this message a little muddled because like in a post, Luke takes Anakin's mask off and like, Anakin is redeemed at the end of like Return to the Jedi. Is it really, are we really thinking of these people? You know, and, and Ray's whole quest is to bring Kylo back to Ben. Like, is this idea of like that person is the enemy and there's no redemption. Yeah.

Well, maybe this is like a marker for us inside of the show with her so that if a character like Baylon, for example, who gives us some very interesting, I'm living in the gray, assessment of the idea of hunting Asoka, which we'll talk about later. Like, what if having to face him, she has to confront the fact, like, he doesn't want to, he does not, this guy does not, I am calling him my enemy. And that's not how he's thinking about me. And then she can kind of work her way back toward this place. That's interesting.

And that could be really cool. That would be fun. That could be great. Articide, Joe. Assoca hands over that map. Asoka says, is Sabine. You have the artist I. And when I heard in my head is, what do your elf I see?

Like, that's what I always hear when someone says. Like, Alas, what do your elf I see? And this is why Hara was like, oh, you got a puzzle box? You got something with some designs on it? You know who's great with puzzles? You know, he's got an artist eye. Good old Sabine Wren. And I just want to shout out.

We were talking about this a little bit when we saw this in person because we loved the closing credits. We thought they were so beautiful. This idea and like all of the. design work in the show, this idea that Dave Faloni is an artist. Like, was an artist before he was a writer, was hired to be a storyboard artist for the Clone Wars, and has become one of our most important storytellers. And art is storytelling. But so when you have, when he has taken Sabine Ren, who was not maybe in season three, but largely not the lead of rebels and made her the lead of this, the co-lead of this show, the artist, Sabine.

Thron, the art lover, is our villain, right? And we are using our artistic skills and know-how to crack this puzzle. He loves art, he loves cats, and I love him. So that's where we are. And the pathway hinges to the idea of a fairy tale on the stories we tell each other. This is like extremely our shit. Love it. There's this kind of sheepish Sabine,

moment where she pauses from the map examination to ask Asoka where she calls home. And Asoka says, this ship. And Sabine says, still, don't you ever get tired of moving from one place to another? And I thought this was like a very striking moment for both of them, how they think about permanence and how they think about belonging and how they think about home. Because for Sabine, like she has put down roots, right? She's honoring Ezra. She's staying there to, protect Lafall for him, but also because this is the place that all of the specters, as we talked about with that Canaan and Hara exchange that we discussed in her primor pod, had been drawn to and had felt had become home for them. But she's stuck. She's not moving forward in her life.

Asoka, who we talked about already today as a wanderer, this idea of kind of the nomad is free to roam. She's journeying and also not just like journeying. She's seeking. actively seeking, right? But there is also this restlessness that is ever present with her. So she has no tether anymore. And she kind of hasn't since she left the order. So this conversation, this little line and whether they can kind of help each, both of them push the other one into a more comfortable place. That's one of the things that I'm excited to watch as they journey forward. It's almost like birds and droids are not enough and you need more connection in your lifetime. Love both of those things, though.

Osuka says, I go where I'm needed, kind of to defend the idea of living this way. And Sabine says not always. So this was interesting in telling because it's not just that they split, that they went their separate ways. It is that seemingly from this line, at some point, Sabine Ren needed Assookano and Osoka was not there for her. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a couple minutes when we get to this Asoka-Hara conversation about being an apprentice.

this. But I think also it, yes, and it's possible that this circles back to your theory that you were floating in. You touched on a little earlier in this episode of this idea of a split motivation for Hara and Sabina, for Asoka and Sabine that like Asoka is focused on Thron and Sabine is focused on Ezra. And their focus happens to align in this particular moment. But maybe in the past when Sabine is like, I need you to be on this Ezra beat with you. me and she's like, I'm going to be on the Thron beat. They're the same beat, actually, but, you know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk for a minute about Sabine Ren force wielder, because obviously we're in this conversation here about just clarifying for us

definitively that Asoka took Sabine as an apprentice. Sabine was training to be a Jedi. There's nothing easy about being a Jedi. Asoka says, well, then I should have made a good one. Yes, you should have. There's a great Hu Yang line in the second episode about how in all of his years he has never seen a Padawan less adept at the force than Sabine, which was quite rude but very funny. I want to ask you, what is your read two episodes in on that question of Sabine Ren? Force user question mark? We talked about this so much in the lead up to the show and what we were hoping for anticipating. Where are you on this right now?

Well, you dropped in our notes like two of my favorite words in all of Star Wars history, which is a broom boy. Yeah, same. From The Last Jedi. We loved that idea that Ryan was going for that JJ absolutely obliterated and Wise of Skywalker that Ryan was going for in The Last Jedi, which is like anyone can top into the force. I want to cite one of my favorite exchanges from The Last Jedi, a divisive and yet perfect film, where Luke says... That movie. Luke says to Ray, breathe, reach out with your feelings. What do you see?

Ray says the island, life, death and decay that feeds new life, warmth, cold, peace, violence. Luke says, in between it all? And Ray says, balance and energy, a force. And Luke says, and inside you, Ray says, inside me the same force. And Luke says, this is crucial. And this is the lesson. The force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanquence.

Can you feel that? Right? Yes. The force does not belong to the Jedi. So you, and you definitely don't have to be a Skywalker or a goddamn Palpatine in order to have it. And you don't have to be deeply strong in it. You can be light, you can be weak in the force, but still have a connection to the force. Yes.

And this idea that anyone can use the force, that the force connects us all, like, this is something that, George Lucas himself has been talking about for quite a long time. If you Google Huffington Post excerpt making of Star Wars Return to the Jedi, you can read this. This is an off-sighted exchange, but they have it compiled in one place here where Lawrence Kazden is asking Lucas, this was back in 81. The force was available to anyone who could hook into it. And Lucas says, yes, everybody can do it. Not just the Jedi.

It's just the Jedi who take the time to do it. And then he goes on to compare it to yoga, which is the thing that people always cite. But the quote, I love that you cited that last Jedi quote, which I think sums it up perfectly. The thing that popped into mind for me, I think in part because it gets it at that idea, but in part because it is in a Sabine episode

and is about Sabine is a Canaan line from the possibly episode of this guy, to be the episode of rebels we've talked about more than any other. It might not be by the end of the season, but to this point, season three, episode 15, trials with a dark saber. Steve, can we hear this? Maybe I'm trying to do things differently this time. Or maybe because she doesn't have the force,

you don't believe she can do this? No. The force resides in all living things, but you have to be open to it. Sabine is blocked. Her mind is conflicted. That's Canaan and Hera. And Canaan says later in that episode,

she can't or won't find balance within herself. So I, you know, I said a lot heading in. I really hope they don't make sense. We were resistant to it. Yeah. Like I really loved the idea that Asoka would say you don't need to have at any point shown any aptitude for wielding the force. I think that's still on the table here, especially because of that Hu Yang line.

And I actually think this is like maybe the best of both worlds where Asoka's saying, like, you're not mid-chlorian Jesus and that's okay. Like, I will train you and teach you how to unblock yourself, how to find that balance, because anybody can if they decide that they want to. Like, that's a beautiful idea. Unblock your cheat. No, and I think that I, you and I both were like, we don't want Sabine to be force sensitive. But I don't want it.

I don't want it. But like, let's say, let's say good old Middichlorian Jesus, Anakin himself. Let's say, I don't know what, I don't remember what his memory is. I don't know if we know it, but it's like, let's say it's 100. And then like let's say Sabine is five, I think that's fine. I think that's still, are you Googling what Anacin's Emerite is? I was going to say 20,000 is my memory, but let me check. Over 20,000.

Oh, great. Okay. Who Yang makes it sound like Sabine? I think you're still right with the five for Sabine based on. Between five and 100. In the, under 100 is probably where Sabine is. There have been some fan theories that she was force sensitive, like before this. There one was, and I found these like going way back.

And one was in Trials of the Dark Saber, when Canaan and Azra and Sabine are training, you see three convor birds, the, you know, the bird most associated with Soca, with, you know, the mortis gods, three of them are like sitting above and you get a shot sort of like from high above looking down. So this idea that there are like three birds for three, fours. Love this. Weilders question mark. There's also the mural in the temple.

Yes. Yeah. As we're saying, it takes a master and an apprentice. Yes, it takes two. And then also that she's descendant, she's part of House Vizla. So like long descended from Tarvisla, who was the... Tough moment for Joe. Me, if Housebred was coming back into it.

Mandalorian Jedi. She's the descendant. So I know that I said you don't have to be... I know. No. I don't want to talk about it, but I know that you don't have to be a Skywalker and a Palpatine, and you don't have to be a Visla,

but she is in some degree, maybe 5% of her of Isla. So, you know, it's there. Could there be a tension point with Thron v. Ezra? We get some fodder for it, and this isn't just about finding Ezra. It's about preventing another war. You think I don't know that exchange.

Okay, like, will there come a point where that tension proves decisive? This is also a line that is here to remind us yet again, much as an ample chunk of Mando season three did, about the Mandoverses' interest, this slice of the canon and timeline's interest, in telling us how the First Order rose and how the New Republic failed.

So it's in the scroll for a reason, like this reminder here that war is just, we're on the brink at any minute. And if Thron returns and rises, it's that era to the empire idea, right? So we got a number of moments like that across these episodes. Do you want to tell us what space olivander has discovered? Well, don't remember.

Don't worry. He remembers everyone he's ever sold. And that this hilt, there's two hiltz in question, right? Shin and Bailen. Baylon's hilt is recognizable. It gave one other feather, just one other? They have twin cores. Bailens is Jedi Temple.

The other one is a little slapdash, but this is Jedi Temple quality construction. Yeah, Hugh Vienk was like, I don't know what the fuck this one is. This homemade bullshit over here, I don't know. But this one, Jedi Temple quality. So this is a former Jedi, like that escaped Order 66 is what we brave.

Sorry. Did you take this to mean because of how like Hu Yang said, in the last 500 years, I've only known one student who built a saber such as this, that it was always orange? Because we had kind of speculated, was this about bleeding the crystal, but only to a point,

maybe not like full Sith territory? Or do you think that it was always orange? I like the idea that it was... I like the idea that the orange is special. Like, we've been harping on the orange being really special because we haven't seen it before, and we've been harping on it as like a sort of slightly off-red sort of color. But if this is just like another purple,

situation, like, it's not as special to me. So I think, I hope that he's just talking about the hilt and not the color of the crystal. So it can't hair a debrief because Sabine has left. She has left. She's absconded with the map. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? What do you think when she's like, I want this? And you're like, no rebellious former Padawan of mine.

But I'm just going to go back here. Close the door. You stay here with the thing that I don't want you to have. Great stuff. like that Sabine put the table away. Like, thoughtful. That was thoughtful. Yeah.

Yeah. In case Asoka wants to like angrily pace around the living room, you know, ample space now, plenty of room. I thought that Asoka seemed, obviously, she's annoyed that Sabine didn't listen about this specific thing. But certainly seemed like this was more about a general reminder of how difficult Sabine can be in Asoka's mind. And Hera, classic Hera here. She's just like the picture of patience that she's running through all of the reasons

that Asoka should not be surprised. This is your history. Sabine is a Mandalorian, et cetera, et cetera. And then we get that opening clip what we started today's episode with. That's the conversation they have here. And when Hera says the thing about your master to spark that exchange,

she's got this big smile on her face. And Asoka turns and looks over her shoulder and that smile melts away. Because this is serious shit for Asoka. All of the trauma has brought up here. And this is when she talks about walking away from Anakin, walking away from Sabine, she uses that just like language to cement the parallel, the parallel that she feels in her heart and mind. And then says sometimes even the right reasons have the wrong consequences.

What do we do then? We talked a lot in our top most essential Asoka moments primer about would she, where is she on this decision to leave the oral? And I thought this idea got to this nicely, like, leaving the order was the right thing for her, and that's true. But she's carrying this immense blame and guilt for what happened to Anakin when she wasn't there. Now, that's not fair to put that on her, but it clearly is something that she's carrying. So how do we reconcile this idea of Asoka as this like fiercely loyal person? This is something we talked about. We talked about it through the lens of Rex, but we talked about this a lot on our primer pods. With this reality that Asoka's character, to be clear, who we love, but Asoka's a character, and we love her in part because she's flawed, it makes mistakes, right? We talked about that for a while, too. Who left her master and then left her Padawan. This is a top of mind struggle for her. Clearly, this is something that she is wrestling with. Well, what's the same about those things? What's different? If you're the learner and you're branching out, you're on your journey of discovery. If you leave behind the person

you're guiding, does that sit with you in a different way? Like, it's hard to think that anything could the Anakin shaped guilt. But this Sabine thing clearly has a hold on her in a seismic and consequential way. I think this is a good opportunity to talk about Rosario Dawson's depiction of Assocato because, you know, for some people, they see a big gulf between animated Asoka and live action Asoka. But I just want to like remind us all of the timeline,

which is that Asoka finds out for real Z's, Once and for all for certain that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader in Twilight of The Apprentice. We see her pulled into the World Between Worlds in season four of Rebels and dealing with Ezra there, but she's still very much in the immediate aftermath of that. And then we see her silently, perhaps Somerly, in the epilogue of rebels. that's all we see. And then after that, all we have of her are these two previous live action appearances. So what we are seeing is this is Asoko who has had to sit with the fact that Anakin is Vader and sit with, again, I think, misaligned guilt.

I don't think it's her faults. I don't think we should blame her. you and I absolutely agree on that, but that doesn't change the fact that she feels guilty or she feels personally responsible because she decided to walk away from the Jedi Order. So if you're meeting an Asoka who is much more somber than the bright and chipper Ashley X-Steen version that you knew in the animated series, I think there is a plot reason why that would be the case. And I will say, I do think there's a difference between having recently rewatched her live action introduction in the Jedi, she is a bit less stoic and a bit

more warm in that episode. But of course, she's bumping up against Grogu, the world's, like, strongest defroster. Like, who could possibly be frosty in the face of Groku, right? But I think that that stoicism from her makes a lot of character sense. I don't think it's like, Rosario Dawson watched the animated or Dave Faloni was like, do whatever you want Rosario. I don't care about continuity. I think they had a lot of discussions about where Asoka would be all these years later working with a lot of solitude, a lot of like on the run, like all this sort of stuff that happened to her in that time period. What did you want to say about it? Yeah. I mean, I don't I think this has been a, I completely agree. Like I think a very steady progression. I don't think of

Asoka and rebels as like boisterous at all. And I think that she's not. started at this as the... But it's always been a journey of evolution, right? From the beginning. Like the Snips era is day one. And then she grows out of that into another thing and out of that into another thing. And I... Yeah, I think that like

not only is she processing everything that has happened and everything that she's lost and everything that she's learned inside of these particular episodes, she's then confronting, facing again, for the first time and some time we can glean this person who brings all of this back

up for her, right? Like, who was going to make her think about Anakin more than Sabine? The Padawan she took on, no one. So, I mean, so I agree that I think there's potential for tremendous cracking of these walls that she has built around herself. And that is something I'm eagerly anticipating and looking forward to. I do think that if a character is just stoic start to finish, you know, and we talk about this with Din Jaran, we're like, it's important that we see the moments in Din,

where his facade cracks. Like, that is extremely important to feeling connected to that character. And if someone is just a stoic, then... It makes sense to me right now that she's in this place, though, for sure. Yeah. I think, like, it's also interesting to think in terms of the Grogu element. As you noted, she and Sabine split before she decided not to train Groguu. So did she see something similar in Sabine to what she says about Grogu?

You know, that fear, that anger. Oh, the Anakin cop. I don't want to lead him down that path. Did she see something in Sabine that made her walk away? Or does she see something in her self? I would say a Sabine's attachment to Ezra, would you not? Yeah. That seems like the most likely thing.

And so, like, again, that's a, I think, incredibly rich text. If, like, Asoka was one of the characters who understood that I know line from Clone War season 5 finale, what Padme meant to Anakin, if the character who could have maybe like unlocked something, thing for him there is like repeating some of these mistakes. You know, we talked about this idea a lot in our primer pods. I just think that's like very, very rich dramatically. It would be like quite, quite tragic and sad, but also totally understandable. Like people, people constantly repeat the patterns in their lives. That beautiful point you made earlier about the temples around us, that's also in an individual, yeah, an individual way emotionally. Speaking of temples and that map and cycles,

We've got a little circular puzzle to solve here. The star map. Incredible. Waiting with the chirp behavior. Great stuff. When he like batted at the... And he was sitting there being like, do it. Do it.

Knock it around. That's what the cat would do. That's what the cat would do. I loved it. Do you want to talk for a hot second here about the Rise of Skywalker map fatigue that has popped up a few times? The map guffin. I love a map. Same.

Same. I think it was used very poorly in Rises Skywalker. I think it's also not quite right. Perfectly used in Force Awakens either. So like, but I feel like that's more of a JJ problem

than it is a map or a star map problem. I don't have an issue with a map. I'm a big fan. Also, like, Thrawn and Ezra have been gone for a really long time and it actually makes sense that the characters would have to quest to find them. If they were just suddenly there,

that would be extremely weird to me. So you have this cool visual template and, you know, mystery solve that allows us to think in this really exciting way about the size of the universe and what mysteries are out there for us to find?

Like, that's kind of Star Wars at its best. We'll talk about that stuff a little bit more when we get to the mysteries later. It's so cool, but I will say one, I will shout out one thing that I have a note about, which is like when Sabine just, like, ran out to her balcony

and got her binoculars out. I was like, what do you think you're going to see? Going to take a trip. What are your artist I sees? What are your elf I see? And through your fucking binoculars. Oh, man. Just always looking to solve a problem.

I respect it. I think as long as a palpi clone is not at the end of the path to Peridia, I'm fine with this. I'm good. Oh, my God. I'm good. The binocular stargazing is interrupted. First, by a hiss from sweep up with a loath cat and then by the HK assassins and then eventually by shin.

What does Sabine reach for, Joe? When a fight is afoot, not her Mandalorian armor, not yet. And what I love about her finding that hollow disk earlier is we already saw it, the sabers in that same like pin, you know, that says like Ezra stuff on it or whatever. Yeah, she goes for the saber, not the armor. Saber, to be fair, saber easier to use than like, hold up, please hold. I need to all of my armor and put my paltrons on. Good note.

That's a good point. Good point. There's a mighty duel. Yeah. Sabine, taking a wound. This is where Jomey's quagon tweet comes in. This is very silly. This is so silly.

Because, like, of course she's not dead. I'm glad they showed the episodes back to back. It was just, like, I thought, extremely silly to, like, do a kind of, like, dun, dun, done, done, like her body prone at the end of the episode. Do you think it was to make us think she was in mortal peril or just to show us that she's outmatched? like that she has lapsed in her training and stopped practicing at all. I definitely think,

I definitely think if there had been a week between those episodes, there would have been a million. Of course. Is she still alive? Crucial email from listener Tim. Yeah. Is this from Timothy Liffon? Is this from Timothy Liffon?

I don't know. Listener Tim writes in. With the Asoka premiere, where are we at with the official Cobb Vant count? Look how fast the bean got healed up from a goddamn lightsaber. Are we just to believe that our guy Cobb is soaking still? Lerubin, it has been 561 days since we last saw Cobb man. That's a long time.

It's a long time. I'm sorry. I feel truly sorry about this. It's dismaying. We get the end credits, Joe. You mentioned the beautiful visuals. Gorgeous score here. Shout out Kevin Kiner in the score in the episode.

I thought the end credit score in particular was very ringsian. It had a ringsian. Yeah. Yeah. It was absolutely beautiful. Okay, Joe. Let's get to the second episode. Part two, toil and trouble. Let's just talk about the title of it right now before we get to the actual first scene.

Take us to Willie Shakes Corner. Oh, yeah. We are here in Macbeth with the three witches. Toil in trouble. I was so giddy to see this. And I do want to talk about witches really quickly. The witches in Macbeth who show up a few times to tell Macbeth his future in cryptic terms are a core literary device. And I already mentioned earlier that Morgan later uses the threads of fate.

and I think it's really interesting to think about that idea of the fates which in mythology the fates are three women who are in almost any mythology you'll find this in in Norse mythology though they're called the Norns you might remember them from age of Ultron and in Greek mythology

they're called wait for it the Mori which is the name of the bird that follows Asoka around, the mori. And the more eye are often depicted as a young girl who's the spinner, an older woman who's the measure, and an elderly woman who is the cutter. Or, as you might have heard, more pithily said, a mother maiden crone, these like trilogy of Trinity of Women. And I was just thinking a lot about our like three core characters in the show. And like with love and respect to Asoka, who I would never call a crone. I think we could put Sabine in the maiden and Hera in the mother, literal mother,

and then Asoka in the elder, let's say elder role of those three women. And what's important about the more I, the fates, the spinners and cutters and weavers of the threads of life and death and all that sort of stuff, is that they are the personification of destiny, which is that question that we were discussing earlier, and we've been discussing throughout our prep up to Asoka, which is choice versus destinies, this idea of like, your thread is as long as it's going to be. And not even the gods themselves in Greek mythology can tell the fates not to cut a thread if the fates are going to cut your thread, which is to cut your life short. Also, I want to shout out, while we're talking about like the Power 3 and Trinities and witches and all that

sort of stuff. I want to shout out that the symbol that Sabine reveals at the bottom of that star map when she, she's like three faces dot, dot, dot, dot, and like everything melds away. And there's just, there's just a three-pointed shape that's called a triquetra. And it is not necessarily an occult shape. It is more, it's, you see it in like illuminated manuscripts. And it stands, it is associated often with the, the Holy Trinity. The, the Father of the Son, the Holy Ghost. You see it in like the the book of Kells and stuff like that. However, if you are around my age or a little younger

and a WB watcher, you might recognize it as the symbol of the power of three or the book of shadows logo from the TV show Charmed, which was about what? Yes. Three witches. So... I thought you were going to say from

dark. It's a very prominent symbol in dark, which is about choice and destiny. There you go. Oh, TV. Isn't it great? It is great. Willie Shakes, wasn't he great? Good old Bill. Bard.

Good old Billy. Okay, we have a couple scenes at the beginning of episode two that set us up, that put us in our new locations and then position us for some of the more emotionally fraught conversations to come. One of them is in the medical bay where Sabine is dreaming. Asoka seems to be like force peeping on the dreams. Maybe Sabine's just really palpably forced. emanating, but it made me think of the Simpsons Halloween special and Willie being like a lots of Willie time. Like, his stay.

And there was just some almost unbearable disappointed dad energy from Bosoka here with Sabine when she's like, um, they got the map. It took, oh, uh, I unlocked it. Uh, there was a second galaxy in a pathway between them. I, no, thanks for asking. I did not successfully identify the origin planet in our galaxy and the droids. destroyed all my records. The you've done enough from Asoka was just so brutal.

Yeah. She goes to the tower and kind of like senses the force echoes of the duel between Shin and Asoka that took place. And then of course, Sweet Bubba loyal companion is waiting on the precipice with a warning. You could tell that he's like, there's an HK assassin droid in there. And I need you to know. I think in addition to issuing that warning. he is presenting his cheek and chin for a scratch, Joanna.

Okay, we were really disappointed that Asoka did not. Scrashed the loath cat. This is my actual one note. That's my main note for Asoka. No scritches for the low cat. Did you get Prince Humperdink in the Princess Bride vibes from Asoka when she was wandering around? There was a mighty duel.

Like, sort of, this is what happened here? Yeah. Lots of vibes to many different pop culture touchstones across this beginning of part two because we're on Cidos with Bailin and Shin. They put the map that they have successfully retrieved on one of the pillars. There's an activation. It's clear they're in the right place. He mentions the reflex point that he wants Shin to tell Morgan about.

I love this shit. Do you think they went home early when they came out with a reflex point? They're like, we're done for the day. Yeah, absolutely. The color of the leaves. it seems like we were in like a wherewood, like a godswood in a Song of Ice and Fire. The fact that this looks so visually similar to Stonehenge

made me think of actual Stonehenge, of course, but forgive me for a moment, Thor the Dark World and that idea of Stonehenge is like a focal point for the convergence. Have we just invoked these Age of Ultron and Thor the Dark World to have famously the best Marvel movies? That's the anti-referferfer. Coming up with reflex points.

It's like we're done for the day because we're ashamed of ourselves. Steve is cutting our mics. Mad, maybe. Oh, boy. While Sweet Buba did not receive a scratch, Asoka did find the HK. Astridroid that was waiting in the rafters and cut off its head and brain to Sabine. I just need to say really quickly that like when we were watching this show,

we weren't like talking to each other. It was almost like a psychic link. And when the assassin droid, like, lunges at Sabine and the cat was, like, right nearby, you, like, grabbed me because we did not see the cat again for a little while. And I was, like, sort of trying to make reassuring noises at you. Like, no way do they, does the cat die dot com? Like, no way the cat is dying here. So when the cat showed up here, we were disappointed that Assook didn't give scrites. But you finally visibly relaxed because you were, like, confirmation that the cat is alive.

I knew peace at last. Yeah. stressful viewing. And listen, it's a stressful story because Sabine is pretty sure that she can use the backup systems in the memory core to figure out which planet this droid came from. There is one problem and it's that everything might explode. Now, for Rebels Watchers, this is just vintage Sabine. It's like, our gal loves an explosion. She's finding the comfort of home here. This was, I think, the laugh of the episode. This definitely got the biggest chuckle in the theater when Hara's like, go for it.

By far. because you're a hologram? No, biggest laugh in art theater. I confirmed with the Midnight Boys was by far the biggest laugh in their theater. I think Tenet got all the best lines, honestly. Great stuff. Absolutely delightful.

The origin point is Corellia. Avianna of it, Lod. This is not only the shipyard for the New Republic and where Morgan's operation used to be based, and I'm using used to quite liberally there, folks, as we'll get to in a second. of course this makes us think of Han. How could it not?

I enjoyed when Hera observed that Morgan's operation should have been shut down, and Asoka said, anyone check on that? This is just again, like, it wasn't just like, oh, here in the middle of episode three

of season three of the Mandalorian, we're going on a big, like, divergent plot point to show you that the New Republic is incompetent. Half sentences here. Questions and moments there. And then we do get this big stretch on Karelia,

at the shipyard, but constant little reminders that they are falling short, that they're not on top of the things that they need to be on top of. Unlike Hara. Who knows when someone needs to pep talk. Did you feel like going back to Karelia was like, they were like, we know that Mallory and Ben, the only two people who like solo a Star Wars story are watching. Hashtag make solo two happen. Thank you for the opportunity to say that. You're welcome. That's why you're about. Hera asks Hu Yang to bounce, gives Sabine a little pap talk, says you're both difficult.

I always thought that made it work. I loved that. And then Sabine said it till it didn't. And Harrah is trying to convince her that they still need each other. Sabine doesn't think Assoca wants that, but Harah is trying to convince her that she does, just as we've seen her trying to convince Asoka and we'll continue to. And this was like so reminiscent of so many Hera scenes from rebels,

often with Canaan, but with many characters where she is trying to give here's what Ezra can be. Here's why you're not being fair to Sabine. Here's why you shouldn't bring your Order 66 trauma and put it on top of Rex over and over and over again. Like, Hara has this ingrained commitment to helping people find their way toward each other. It's really one of the lovely things about her character.

So I was glad that we got this little moment here. I don't feel like she would call people her enemy. That being said, perhaps the problem with the New Republic is that they stopped thinking about the empire as their enemy. So maybe Assoca has a point. Our girl was also like, I'm a general. Nothing's classified to me. And I was like, should we, should we, should we be quite this bold in a moment such

as this where everyone around you is shouting for the empire and attacking you in real time? Before we get to that scene. That was before they started doing that. But they were making shifty eyes at her. No one noticed the shifty eyes. The volume of side eye in the control room. bombastic, honestly. Frankly, shocking.

Before we get to the control room, we've got to talk about this pathway to peridia scene, though we should say we're going to keep this very quick here because this is what we're going to be talking about with Ben when he joins us for his lore look later, and he's going to be speculating about this. But we do want to chat about it for just a minute here because it was so compelling and intriguing.

Joanna, what does Morgan say? What does she reveal? What do we see here? She only says an ancient people from a distant galaxy. Whose work is it? He says, an ancient people from a distant, you know, you know that like meme of the guy when it's like aliens? Like, this is what this is what this moment is to me.

And I think the Stonehenge thing that you mentioned earlier is good because like a lot of people are like aliens built Stonehenge or the pyramids or whatever. This is sort of what we're talking about here. And we'll, Ben will go into far more detail about this. But we did get an email from our listener, Sean. I don't need to read it in full necessarily. but Sean is as excited as we are. But, like, I just don't think that people who don't spend day and night thinking about this,

I understand what a big fucking deal it is for there to be a galaxy further and further away. Like, because we've talked about the outer rim before, and we've talked about far-flung planets, but this is another galaxy. Right. Right. And we are important to stress that. When we talk about, like, the unknown regions and Thron and the Chis the Sestis,

that's all in this galaxy still. This is a different, we are like stargating to another entire system. So this has the potential to just crack open the world that Star Wars is a galaxy. It's not Star Wars anymore, it's Galaxy Wars. Like it's a huge, huge moment. Ancient people from a fucking distant galaxy is one of the most important lines anyone has ever spoken in a Star War. This is very exciting and very bold.

It was wonderful to see the pergul and circling that faraway galaxy. I also loved the way that the actual language here is invoked and like how Baylon and Morgan discuss it, Steve. Can we actually, can we hear this exchange? Pathway to Peridia. Some call it that. The children at the Jedi Temple call it that. It comes from old stories.

Fairy tales. Tales which are based on truths. You're certain of this? I feel the path forward is clouded. Thrawn calls to me across time and space. Wow. You speak of dreams, vague and fractured hopes. The threats of fate do not lie.

Very chill, mysterious voice. I'm sure it will all be fine. Totally not evil. Definitely not an evil voice calling you across. I mean, but she seems down with evil, so that's okay. That's true. When she says, when he says you speak of dreams, Mm-hmm.

Like, do you think we're meant to be connecting Morgan's powers with Sabine's force streaming? I think it's like, it's a good question. I think, like, this larger idea of recontextualizing how we think about using the force and wielding the force and connecting to the force and showing us these through lines across the character sets, even though they all have a different relationship to it. I was so, I mean, we love, one of the things we love talking about, like, across all of stories we cover is this when do characters take something that's a, oh, oh, that's just a fairy tale. That's for kids.

The old Voldemort, right? With the tale of three brothers. But also, like, I will be now mentioning the Thor franchise for a second time in mere moments. Like, Selvig finding the book of myths, of Norse myths at the library. And his reaction is like, right, that's where this guy got this. Not like, oh, yeah, this could actually be the chronicle of this real thing in the world. But I suppose is as big as hell. There's truth and legends, Mallory.

Exactly. The children at the Jedi Temple call it that. So there's the role of myth. There's the role of fairy tale. There's the question of which characters take that seriously and heated in which dismiss it as being beneath their consideration. Why is this something that the children at the Jedi Temple in particular talk about? Could there be a connection to... I was thinking about our wonderful conversation on our Dial of Destiny, great movie podcast, our chat with James

Mangold who shocked us by answering a Star Wars question. And one of the things he told us was that, like, he was really drawn to the idea and making us movie about the origin of the force of, like, not being boxed in by any. And then when I had a little bit of worry for him watching this, but other than that was like, titillated. I agree with Eric. To make me go back really quickly. Yes, obviously.

I'm always thinking about Thor the Dark World. No, can I go back quickly to, I now have a vision in a far-flung galaxy of like a sort of octo, like a, like a, they're on a cliff and Ezra's on one cliff and Thrawn's on another. And they're both sort of sitting there cross-legged, meditating like Don Draper at the end of Mad Men. And Thron is going like, Morgan, Morgan, Margin, Ezra's going, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine. And they're trying to see who can call their person. to them through the force faster. And they each have a Coke? Yeah.

They want to buy the galaxy of Coke. Yeah. And they had like competing huts on each different cliff face. And they just like watch the pergels frolic and fuck around them. And that is what they've been doing this whole time. I mean, I'm excited for episode three. Oh, boy. Nothing canonically established here about pergill fucking, though.

We do get bail in talking about power. Yeah. When Morgan says the I. Sion is on its way. We'll talk more about the I. Of Sion with Ben. Did you say the I of Sauron? It's,

we will slip up no fewer than 5,000 times over the course of this season, without question. This is like some of the trailer material that we had heard. Shin is asking him, what awaits when they find Thron? And he says, for some war,

for others a new beginning. And for us, power, such as you've never dreamed. It is a power. What is his motivation? What does he want that power for? Can't wait to find out. Absolutely no idea. I hope he doesn't have a wife who's in danger of dying of sadness and he needs that power to keep her a laugh.

The prequels. As you know, I unapologetically love revenge of the Sith, but it makes me laugh every time you say that, every single time. It's never missed not once. Joanna, can you please take us to the Correllian Shipyard? Can you introduce us to Min Weaver Regional Supervisor? Oh, my God. Assistant to the Regional Manager? I loved this.

Peter Jacobson is a character actor that you and I were both sort of thrilled to see. I think a lot of people know him from House, but he's been in a million different things. But my joy to see a character actor that I enjoy was seriously overpowered by my thrill to see my favorite psychopathic trident yours. I know. Chop. Good old Chopper. And I feel like Chop was a hit with like even people who are like grouchy about

feeling like they don't get it. I think you get Chop, right? Chop has arms, his little head wobbles. He's the most expressive droid we've ever met in our life, voiced by Dave Filoni. And you and I both noted this. In the anime series, Chopp is like,

wah, wah, wah, here it's like barely concealed human words coming out of chop. You know exactly what he's

saying all the time. It's pretty great. It was, you could, yeah, like, did you go through my stuff?

You could just hear the sentence. Yeah. Why don't you shoot it down? I loved it. Absolutely fantastic. Great to be back with chop.

He's so special. Did you get a Jora Mormon vibe? You know, the common people pray for rain, health in a summer that never ends. They don't care what games the High Lords play when our guy Min Weaver was like, the average worker doesn't care about the nuances of galactic

politics. They have loyalty so long as they're paid. But he was lying. New Republic amnesty, he was because they were all like hardcore, hardcore, fervent fascists in that room. For the empire, you know? Joe, this is another tethered Amanda season three, the New Republic Amnesty program. There's a discussion here about, well, you can't, you can't keep the operation going. If you fire everybody who, like, loved the empire, you got to keep them, you got to give them active. How else can we strip down the old imperial vessels and then let this is a thing he says, our board members and top investors get first dibs on the most proprietary technology. Like, what could go wrong with any of this?

Absolutely, absolutely. Wonderful. there was one key I thought it was quite strange that this conversation happened with Min Weaver sitting there listening but there was a key Hara Asoka

conversation here another push rectify be together embrace some structure in your life and when Asoka says she's not ready

Hera pushes right I'm curious what makes someone ready you just know so do they and it was interesting because in the moment, you could kind of be like, well, much like Hu Yang will say to Sabine, like, that's like an excuse

and like not a very good one. But I think the episode kind of embraced this idea for both of them because we get a literal, I'm ready, hollow hail from Sabine to Asoka later in the episode. And then Asoka has to have her version of that too. And she says, when she calls Sabine Paduan and tells her to take them away, they are both. I, yeah, saying that they're open to something that they weren't before.

I love this. Because I fucking love complicated. Like, you know, the fact that like the majority of the main character so far in the show are women is something that I don't need to harp on. I think it is a cool thing that we don't always get in Star Wars. And I think it is a very cool thing. But I think in general, I love when women are allowed to have really complicated relationships with each other, which is not always the case in our storytelling. And I think this idea that these women are both. you know, mouth tendrils yearning for each other on one level, but too stubborn or, you know,

sort of walled away in order to take the first step. So someone has to take the first step. Into a larger world. You know. Yeah, there you go. Mouth tendrils. Wonderful. That was a great television program.

Wasn't it? That was the last of us in case you guys didn't listen to our coverage and you were like, why did you just say mouth tendrils? That could have been concerning. of context. Good point of clarity for everyone. It's not just Rebels canon that we need to we need to clarify. It's it's House of Arbors

and Steve Canon. That wasn't even on Hase of R. Oh, that's right. Classic. Great stuff. Harris given Asoka that nudge, Joe. And in tandem, Hu Yang is giving that to Sabine. This was one of my favorite scenes in the premiere. I thought this was

wonderful. There's some humor. Have you kept up with your training? Obviously not. Obviously not. It's just hilarious. I loved their discussion about the saber when Sabine calls it Ezra's. And Hu Yang says that he passed it on to her, but then crucially, you modified it, you changed it, you made it yours. Like we've been talking a lot in our primer pods about this idea of like, what is the force

for you? How do you connect to it? And Hu Yang, in the gathering arc, like, how does the force feel in your hand? This is like a really wonderful, special thing that he can unlock for these characters. I also remember, like, I like when Lucas' film does its very specific thing about, like, renaming sabers, which is just like a very specific thing that they have to, like, have a whole board meeting discussion about doing, like, when they were like, no, this is Ray's lightsaber now. It was like a whole announcement that I got to write in Vanity Fair. And it was like, and the internet loss is mine. They're like, what do you mean? It's Ray's Lightaber now. So anyway, since it's Sabine's Lightaber now. Who Yang said so? So, you know, there you go. It just means that if Ezra does come back at some point, he'll get to have his third lightsaber. So that's exciting.

Maybe he's already forged a new one over in the secret galaxy now. Maybe he's ascended and he can just shoot lightsabers from his eyeballs or something like that, new force powers. I don't want that. I don't know why I said it. No one wants Cyclops on this show. Let's move on. We're in the same headspace as Hu Yang, because we get the trailer line here, perhaps it is

time to begin again. and we had wondered if this was like a pep talk to Assoca about opting into like helping to rebuild the order. It was about Sabine. And I loved that because like that idea that it's about one person and one relationship and one decision and one life. And then like you build a build and build from there. I thought that was that was a fun little.

I mean, there's always trailer Mr. X. But I thought that was like a fun little surprise. Passes the past move forward. This guy's got great advice. Yeah. And I love how he's just like not like he's. holding her feet over the fire, right? He's not letting her get away with anything.

Yes, that is an excuse. He's not indulging. He's very firm. Yeah. Yeah. That's what Steve says to us when we're like, here's why we can't keep this south of three hours today. And he's like, that is an excuse and a poor one.

This is lies. I don't accept this. Oh, God. It's true. Every pod, I have like a meltdown at the beginning. And then Steve's like, it's fine. It's true. Dual action back on Corellia.

Hera and Chop trying to get that tracker on the transport And they fucking do it It's so good I mean you're right Being with Chop Wonderful I loved just being with the Phantom again too I can't wait to see the ghost in full

Asoka Facing off with Maruk And an HK I loved the I am ducking slightly to the side Very casually and coolly As your Inquisitor Blade

Boomerang's back to you moment I thought that was great. We talked about Assocato the Banff, badass motherfucker. That was the Banffiest. This was So cool. Pure Banff.

Pure Banff. I loved that. Sabine is not battling. She's been healing. But she does have important work to do. And it is on the wig watch front. There's a haircut. Please take us through it.

Yeah. She kneels in front of her helmet. She takes a blade. And she hacks off. her hair. I just need you guys, if you're thinking about doing this at home, I just need you to know that what she winds up with

was not cut by a knife. It was a skilled professional with scissors. You can't do that with, you can't give yourself an adorable little pixie cut by sawing at your hair with a knife. I have to promise you that, okay? This is very like, you know, it's giving us like samurai ceremony vibes,

but also we should say that Canaan Jaris, voiced by the icon, Friday Prince Jr., Jedi Knight who dies in Rebels, does a similar thing right before he goes off to die. He gives himself, I don't know, is it a mullet? I'm very confused by what happens to his hair,

but he does it with a knife. I mean, listen, put it this way, one of the last things, Tara says to him while he's live as I hate your hair. So, that could have been cut with a knife. That is what happens when you cut your hair with a knife and you are literally blind. That is true.

Caden Jaris, a blind man cut his air with a knife and the results is what he died in. So there you go. Is that what you wanted from winged? I can barely breathe right now. This is just remarkable. I loved every second of it. Did you think of Thanos when Sabine was balancing the blade back and forth? I did.

Thanos must be a huge Star Wars guy. balance. All things must be. Where's that bring you? Back to Star Wars. Back to the rebels epilogue. Back to the rebels epilogue. I thought it was moving,

genuinely moving to see Sabine lay out each plate for armor. Like you spoke so beautifully in the primer pods about like, well, what does it mean that we're not really seeing her in that armor in the trailers? What might that like point us toward in terms of, of her current life and preoccupations and state and identity. And seeing her like forge, we're always like, you know, we talk about most with Grogo, I think, but you can live in more than one world. And to have the saber on her hip and the Mandalorian armor on her body, it's like,

this is the stuff, Lionel. Yeah, and we should say, like, she's been disconnected from her Mandalorian identity and it seems like her force-wielder identity. she's hiding out in her brother who wanted to fuck her's old hideout on Lothal. She's not from Lothal. There are no Mandalorians on Lothal. There are no force-wielders on Lothal. She's just been like hiding out.

Other than poor Jai Kel who no one will t-shore guide. You know, so she's like, you know, it's a, you know, a Mandalorian alone in the world is a terrible thing. Like she's just been out here without her connections to her various. or families. And so this is her rejoining the force wielder side, rejoining the ghost family side, rejoining the Mandalorian side all at once. And it's something we've talked about a lot with Grogu

is this idea of being able to be both Mandalorian and Forcewielder. Like at the same time, it's the Fizzla way to be. It's just such welcome news that Asoka never sat being down. Or at least, I mean, I shouldn't say never, but not here. and said he's made her pick between this paldron or your brother who wants to fuck use lightsaber. The armor. You found the armor.

Maybe we'll get that next week. Who can say? So what we do get here is the live action. When Sabine force jumps herself into Esther's arms. I mean, I'm here for it. I would melt. that would cease to be. Joe, live action version of the Rebels epilogue.

There are some differences. Ben wrote about how he was, Ben was very focused on how the lightsaber is here in live action and not in the animated version. The cloak color on Asoka is different. Lost track a number of times over the course of ringer pause that I've said, the journey of Osoka to the gray to Osaka the white. Well, guess what?

Put a pin in that because it hasn't happened in the live action. and she's still Osoka the Grey. There's a piece about the way Gandalf has influenced Asoka on EW from Devin Kogan. And here's a quote from Rosario Dawson. In the animation, you saw her go to the White. But what I loved is the idea that there was even another level to her. Dave and I talked a lot about Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White talking about that transition and how she's someone very capable and excellent and looked up to his leader,

but she still has levels of development to go to. And of course, there's the clarity that this interview was conducted before the strike. So I'm going to be real with you. When I rewatch Rebels, this is how I know I've been like internet pilled. This is like the product of like we're about to go there, but like all our time on Theory Corner. I've talked so much about a Soco the White. I've rewatched the Rebels epilogue in the finale and I was like, did they change the color of this? This looks great to me.

and it didn't before. I was always certain this was white. And then like, is this just my mind? I mean, they would. They totally would. Has it happened? It looks, it's still much lighter than the live action color, but I was like, did they change this?

Anyway, regardless, here's where I am with this. Sometimes I get very hung up on retcons and tweaks. Ben wrote about this beautifully in his column. This is where I am, too. It's just going to be more fulfilling for us as viewers if we get to now watch that journey to her becoming a soak in a white, right? If she's Assoca the white, she's arced out, right? She's not on an arc.

And we want to see her still in the gray struggling and figuring anything else. Character on an arc. And if you're wearing a white cloak, you're done. You have no more growing to do. Those are the rules. I don't make them. Tolkien makes them. Don't think about Saramon.

It's fine. Okay. We get the little chikra up, the Ezra chikra up here of the mural. Steve, can we hear, this is actually from rebels, what Sabine says to us in the epilogue. I used to think that Ezra was counting on me to protect Lothal. The planet and the people he cared for so much. But one day, I realized there was more to it.

There was something else I was meant to do. Yeah. Chels. Oh, my God. And it's time to bring him home. Now we know, Joe. now we know what sparked that moment and that decision. We were talking about this in real time after we watched,

and you made a beautiful point about how building toward this felt and how it felt like a bridge and a welcome for everyone. Can you run us through that? I thought that was really insightful. I thought so. Definitely plenty of people disagree with me. But I feel like if this has been the end of episode two, Yeah.

You know, it would have hit with a very like overpowering aroma of member berries of like, this is significant. And you've seen it before in animation if you've been committed to the cause. Love a member berry. But I really liked that it wasn't the final, that there was more to the episode after that. So then it's just like a thing that happens. And like, yeah, it's a significant moment. And yeah, probably if you're watching it, you're watching her like rub her Ezra's cheek and you're like, I still, this is just a dead wife to me.

I don't really know what to tell you. I don't understand that it doesn't hit the same way for you. But what it follows is something that is like immediately resonant for all of us having spent the last two hours of these women, which is take us out, Padawan. Right? Like that's the emotional pal, not this thing we've seen before in animation. it's the payoff of the last two hours these women trying to reconnect with each other. Absolutely.

And then the immediate debilitating anxiety wondering who is caring for sweep-u-bubba. Which we were freaking out about it in real life. What's my number one question? And she was like, who is taking care of the cat? Is it that space? Very concerned. Is it Jackal?

He's just a senator. What else he's doing? I will say. I will say, Porter has been in that room. I'm sure. I am sure of it. Final scene of episode two. In the eye of Sion.

In this golden deck. And then we stop, because you're going to make me think that's actually what it is. They did this to you, not me. You're right. You're right. Going to mention a thing from the trailer quickly. If you don't want to hear this, hit the fast forward 15 second button twice. You'll be fine after that.

We have seen Thron on this deck. flat out. We see it at the 55 second mark in the teaser trailer, the 22 second mark in the official trailer. They would not, I think, prepared to be wrong, that they would not show us him on a, location that is now instantly recognizable to us as the ship and portal they are using to go find him unless he's back soon. That makes me think he's back like by episode four. Because why show us that otherwise? We know they, we know it works. They get him. And a end of four at the latest, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. beginning of five maybe, but end of four. End of four.

The gold plating was not the only visually striking thing, Joe. Some new holograms. Oh, my God, I love their holograms. So, like, we've had this, like, blue, glitchy holograms since the dawn of time with Star Wars. And Dave Faluny's like, what if the witches do this cool, like, particle misty green? Because green is the color of their force power. like, you know, magic hologram and it's higher resolution is better than the, than the HoloTech that they've got over.

Yeah. And I mean, I think overall, I think it's really fun to track that, you know, Lucas, inspired by Dune, inspired by Buck Rogers, inspired by all the sci-fi, but also like a lot of mysticism, gave us Star Wars. You've had Stars are so long. Faloni's playing in that pool for so long, this is such a Tolkien lovers Star War, fairy tale, witches, our holograms are spells now. Like, I just think we should continue to track the way in which this is like such a cool fantasy folklore kind of journey into Star Wars, you know?

Delighted to. Yeah. We had a couple lines from Baylon at the end of this scene and the end of this episode. the end of this premiere that gave me chills. The first one is the one we alluded to earlier. When he's expressing his concern, it's not a good sign that she was on Karelia. I'm worried.

Let's see some hustle people, much like Steve to us on recording zooms. Not true. Morgan asks him, like, what do you see? And he says of Asoka after closing his eyes and TV in deep back, Do you realize? Oh, God. Her presence in the force is elusive.

Yet her determination is vivid. She is coming. I love this. This idea of Asoka as a shadow on the wind, a shadow in the force, not a conventional typical figure, but also a shadow that can wrap itself around you at any moment.

And that Baylon sees that and respects it, which gets to that next line. nothing can prevent our journey, Morgan says. To kill her will be a shame. There are so few Jedi left, Baylon replies. Sentimental, truth. Really showing us again how different he is from the flavor of dark side adept

that we might be accustomed to seeing. He thinks it would be tragic to cut her down. This is not something that he is longing for or seeking. This is going to be a burden and a matter of necessity, not power or longing. But then how do we reconcile that with his power line? Fascinating character.

I'm really into Bailey. I like him a lot. I'm all in on Bailey and Shin. I think they're great. I skip ahead 15 seconds twice if you don't want to hear another trailer mention. But we've seen in the trailer, Asoka, Baylon, fight at that witchy Stonehenge. So that must be episode three, right? We're not hanging out there for a really long.

time. They have the tracker. They've got to be like, we're here. And he's like, let me, I've got a lot of lamps around me. I'll be with you in a moment. So many lamps. No shots. So many lamps. You don't love, you don't love like putting up like fairy lights when you're camping. It's very nice. God, I haven't been camping since maybe fifth grade, but I had lost. I love a smear. Here's a thing I love a smear. I knew I had made an error when I said when you go camping. That's not true. That's not true. because I went, we went, we would go on overnight camping trips, sleepaway camp. So 13 years old would be the last time I went camping, I think. I think.

Yeah. So we bring in Ben? Should we talk to Ben Lindberg? Let's do it. Joining us now, that is the job of a Jedi, Paduan learner, which we are not. It is Ben Limburg. Ben can't believe you made the time to be with us today. I assume that you had been spending your evenings reading through the comments on your Thron Explaner video on the Ringerverse, Instagram, and TikToks.

Here's my favorite, because there are no fewer than 100 that we could read. A whole lot of people down bad for Ben after this. Runner up for my favorite. Oh, God. I thought Ben was my mama's age. I'm 41. I thought Ben was there when Yoda was born. That was my favorite also. People are just astounded, Ben. How does it feel?

It feels nice. I'm glad the public appreciates me. Clearly, I need to be on camera more often. You get the pleasure of zooming with me often, but other people, I haven't shown my face. Shouldn't I be reading those comments? Shouldn't this be like when Pedro Pescal reads tweets about people calling him daddy? But you did it for me. Do you want to? I know you don't have Instagram, but I assumed Jesse showed this to you. She did.

Yeah. She considered leaving one as well. Incredible. Oh, my gosh. Let's give the people what they want. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Read us some. I don't have them up right now. But they were flattering. Yes, you don't have them printed out to sort of paste it all around you. A document on my desktop. No. Ben, tell us what you're going. talk about today.

I'm here to talk about Star Wars lore. I can't imagine why people drew certain conclusions about my appearance from just hearing me talk about the nerdiest aspects of Star Wars. Just really just hurtful stereotypes. But I'm excited that it's Asoka season, thrilled to be back on House of our pretty pumped for the prospect of intergalactic travel in Star Wars, which is a real rarity. We're going to the galaxy far, far, far away. So we are used to ships in Star Wars just kind of crisscrossing the galaxy, lickety split.

Mostly there's no real concept of how far anything is from anything else or how long it takes to get there. You just go to hyperspace and you see the stars blur, and then next thing you know, you're there's, you're there. So you might wonder if these ships can travel faster than light, what's so hard about going to another galaxy? But we're not talking about the 12 parsec Kessel Run here. This is intergalactic travel. It's a whole different deal. if we put this in our universe terms, we're in the Milky Way, big galaxy, but the closest neighboring galaxy Andromeda is more than 20 Milky Ways away. So the farthest point in the same

galaxy is next door compared to the closest point in another galaxy. You haven't had dinner yet. You can't say 20 Milky Way. We're starving. Sorry. I know you've been recording for a while. But in Star Wars, you sometimes hear about the unknown regions, which is what women were to me in high school. So in Thron's species, the chis. See, now I'm playing into the stereotypes here, but that was not true. But Thron's species, the chis, they're in the unknown regions, right, and their enemies, the grisk. And who knows what else, they're all going about their business, far from the core worlds, even far from the outer rim. But as far as they are, they are way, way closer than where Thron and Ezra evidently ended up, which is why you need the Eye of Scion.

and it's daisy-chained hyperdrives to get there. So there's just not a lot of precedent for this, which is why it's pretty fresh and exciting. There's a quote in a 2016 novel called Catalyst where a smuggler says to Tarkin, the empire won't stop until it reaches the edges of the galaxy. Is that it? And Tarkin says, why stop there? But basically, exploration has stopped there. There is that one shot at the end of empire where Luke and Leah and the droids are on the medical frigate,

staring out the window at what looks like a galaxy from far away, but it's sort of disputed what that is or where they are, so we'll just sweep that under the rug. Because in current canon, anything outside the galaxy is essentially unreachable. It's like Valeria after the doom in Thrones. You know, it's like here be dragons or here there used to be dragons in Valeria's case. There's another 2016 novel called Aftermath Life Debt, where unknown space is described as the uncharted end of the galaxy beyond which lurk terrible nebula storms and gravity wells. Those who have tried to traverse the space outside the galaxy have never returned, though distorted half-missing communications have come back. Messages warning of geomagnetic

anomalies and slashing plasma winds sounds hazardous. So you really have to go to the old expanded universe that non-canon legends material to find anything relevant to what we're seeing in Asoka. And usually in these lore segments, I stay away from that. But I think it makes sense to briefly dip into it here, both because there's just so little to go on in the current canon and because we know Faloni loves salvaging stuff from legends and making it canon as he did with Thrawn in rebels. And as Asoka says in rebels, there's always a bit of truth in legends.

So in legends, there was a barrier that surrounded the known galaxy. The known galaxy was called the Sky River. and that barrier was a region of hyperspace turbulence that prevented most travel in and out. But dating back to Marvel's Star Wars comics in the 80s, there were various visitors and invaders from outside the galaxy, most notably the Uzan Vang,

who were the adversary at the center of the New Jedi Order books that came out about 20 years ago. So they and some other species traveled from a distant galaxy and world ships that took generations to make the journey. There were also some attempts to leave the galaxy, including the outbound flight project from the Timothy Zahn books. So that was a Jedi-led expedition to pierce that force barrier, that galactic barrier using the force, which was ultimately thwarted by Thron at Darth Sidious's direction. That hyperspace barrier is relevant to Asoka

because of the mention of an ancient people from a distant galaxy. So you could do a good Troops course episode on this probably, but it's a sci-fi staple, right? The ancient alien species that engineered everything and then disappeared for some reason. So if you've ever seen the history channels, ancient aliens, you know what I'm talking about. Or basically any sci-fi show, right? I referenced that earlier, Ben. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, great. So you have the first born in 2001, Space Odyssey or the first ones in Babylon 5 or the ancients in Stargate or the engineers in Alien or the Proteins in Mass Effect or the precursors in Halo. I could go on there, many of them, and Star Wars Legends has that too.

So you have the Ricotta or the builders in ancient species that sort of settled the galaxy. They originated in the video game Night to the Old Republic, which Jessica Clemens and I discussed on Buttonash recently. But they've also been mentioned in the current canon, including Andor. of all places. However, supposedly some even more ancient entities put the galactic barrier in place to stop the expansion of the ricottans. And that takes us to our final bit of lore here, the celestials, right? So the entities that put this galactic barrier in place, and I know I'm dropping a lot of proper nouns in this segment, but the celestial's, not the celestials from Marvel,

although sort of the same idea. So the celestial's, existed in the force and they controlled the light side, dark side balance, and they assembled and populated some star systems and structures. So they were also known as the architects, and nobody really knows what happened to them, but they disappeared aeons ago. Now, in the Clone Wars, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Asoka go to Mortis, where they encounter these ancient force beings known as the ones or the Mortis gods. And in legend, in the old EU, the Mortis' gods were supposedly surviving Celestials. They were members of that ancient race, but not in the current canon.

That connection has not been drawn. But you have to figure with Bologna's fondness for legends and with the Clone Wars Celestials connection and the Thron outbound flight connection, there might be something that he is bringing back into canon here, right, that was sort of hinted at or described in the old EU. I mean, why go to the trouble of expanding outside the galaxy that this entire saga has taken place in unless you have some reason to do that, unless there's some bit of lore or mythology, that you really want to resurrect? So I don't know how much screen time there is. I don't know if there's time to introduce an alien species and have invaders from another galaxy.

I mean, we've only got eight episodes here, right, at least in this season. but I'm excited to see what, if anything, from all the lore I just described, ends up sort of seeping into Asoka. I mean, the point is it's just so thrilling that this is even a possibility. Right. You know, it's incredible. Yeah. It's not like we were running out of real estate in the known galaxy. It's a pretty big place.

There's a lot of those unknown regions that we could explore. But I think people have criticized Star Wars. for being a little too stuck in its ways, right? At least temporarily speaking, when we talk about the Star Wars timeline. Stuck on Tatooine. Stuck on Tatooine. Stuck with the Skywalker's. Exactly, right.

So now we're leaving the galaxy entirely. So no constraints anymore. Just unlimited power, unlimited possibilities. Unlimited power. The I have Scion, Ben. Yeah. Do you, as a big coder head, maybe a big go-door two-head too.

Do you think this has been a buzzing topic on the internet? Do you think that this is a Darth Zion connection? Could be. Yeah, you never know. I mean, when there is some name that recurs, then you always assume that it's probably not a coincidence. Now, there are just so many names and so many Wikipedia pages out there that inevitably you do get some duplication that's just kind of.

kind of a coincidence, but I don't know, Quigon said nothing happens by accident, right? There's no such thing as a coincidence. Filoni certainly is aware of all the Wikipedia pages too. So if he's choosing the same name as an existing thing, then that might mean something. I feel like the close encounters like this means something, but it might. Do you think the eye of cyan is named that so that we will confuse it for the I of Sauron every time that we say it on this podcast? That's definitely a downside too. Yeah. Thanks, Ben.

It's fantastic. Wonderful. We can't wait to have you back next week. I'm so glad we're back in Star Wars so we get to hang out with you. Me too. Yeah. Happy to discuss this galaxy or any other with you. Bye, pal.

Okay, Joe. We just heard this quote. There's always a bit of truth in legends. And that means it's time for Theory Corner. We've done some theorizing today. You had one that you wanted to talk about. We met a helmeted individual who we had seen in trailers, and people have had questions about this helmeted individual ever since they premiered in the trailers.

I'm going to do my best to pronounce the name correctly. It's spelled M-A-R-R-O-K and is pronounced, I believe, Maruk. And it is the individual who battles Asoka in episode two who wields an inquisitor blade. Yes. Is that person an inquisitor? we don't know, probably. We'll find out. Former.

And here's the question. Do you want there to be someone, before we get into the three main theories about who it is? Do you want it to be someone or would you rather this just be someone and we never see under the helmet and it doesn't matter and they just have a cool lightsaber and who cares? My preference would be, as always, I'll try to be open mind and a new character. I think also just like we've met so many inquisitors across the canon. Across now the live action, the animated, the video games, the comics, etc. It doesn't feel like this needs to be anything other than a continuation of that where we learned this was brother X or sister Y, whatever number we're on by then. And it's working as a mercenary now after the Inquisitors crumbled.

And it's Maruk. And that's just it. Just Maruk. And that's enough, damn it. That's enough. Marock, you're enough. You haven't seen the Barbie movie yet, but I kind of feel like you have in that sense. You've, like, really digested the Ken sentiment for Mara.

I agree. I can't wait. Oh, I know. It's circumstances has kept you way. But, like, I tried to make Malawi go see the Barbie with me. We'll get there eventually. Maruk, I agree. I think it is completely unlike me needing to know who the spy was on Middle East Season 3 or where Cobbant is, I am completely.

I completely content. If Mark is exactly what he seems to be, which is a helmeted person who once was an inquisitor or picked up an inquisitor, belayed somewhere. Here are the three main theories. The internet is hopping. Yeah. What do we got? A light. Okay.

First of all, we should note that one of the piece of evidence we have is that Bailen said he, him. He said he, right? So the pronoun says this is probably a male. But just in case, I will engage with this theory about Barris Offi, a character that we talked about in our Asoka prep pods, someone from Asoka's past. Yeah. And we got this email from Olivia who identifies as Honeycrisp, who says Dave Faloni stated that Barris is Rhycrisps lately. I'll just throw that out there. I saw you're not reading all the emails and I am and I've seen some granny Smith lovers.

It happens. Dan Polone has stated, many people are saying that Granite Smiths are fine, Mallory. Anyway, Olivia writes, Dave Filoni has stated that Barris was originally supposed to die at the end of the wrong Jedi. But he decided to keep the character alive knowing Dave, Poloni. There has to be a reason for that. A final showdown between those two characters feels inevitable to me, but I could just be looking at it through. rose-colored glasses. So Barrasoff, he is a character who framed Asokitano is responsible in a way for Asokato leading the Jedi Order. I just simply do not buy that Asoka wouldn't sense

that it was Barris and that Barris wouldn't take the helmet off and be like, remember when you got expelled from the Jedi Order and Mark Tartner put your trial because of me and Flex. There's just too much history between them for it to not be acknowledged. I also just don't think that's a character, like when they like whip the helmet off and it's like, Tizai, Barris Offey. And like 85% of the audience, Mockshay at home is like, literally who? Like, I just don't think that's going to be a satisfying moment. I would like to see Barris again at some point. But yeah, fair.

Okay. What are the other possibilities then? The other one that I think is somehow worse is that it is Ezra under the helmet. And I'm just like, I'm rarely like, like, I rarely refuse. to consider a theory, but that's absolutely not for me. No. It's a hard no. No.

Here's my favorite, and you knew it would be. Okay. There is a character. Speaking of like, as Ben was, of like, looking up adjacent names on Wikipedia, right? Yeah. There's a character from the video games called names. You definitely said that, like, a person who plays a lot of video games. I said that intentionally, like I was 900 years old.

That was the joke, man. I loved it. It was funny. I laughed. Video games. Anyway, Galen Merrick is the name of this character, aka Star Killer, not to be confused, with the base. And who is your voice by, Halerman?

He was pulling the transport back with the force before it was cool, Joe. It's your boyfriend, Sam Whitwer. It is Sam Whitwer, not my boyfriend, but the voice of my boyfriend who was the animated at Darth Mall. I don't know Sam. He's a real person. Let's be cool. Okay. I don't know him. The voice of your boyfriend, Darth Mall. Good. Yes. Okay. Sam Whitwer, voice that character in the video games. And as our producer Steve pointed out to us before we started recording, Sam Whitwer actually has a deeply, deeply buried on like page 12 of the closing credits of episode two and additional voices credit for. this episode. Now, could it have been him whispering indistinctly?

Morgan, maybe. Like, there's a million things he could have done in this episode. Was he chirping for the loath cat? Maybe, possibly. But I love the idea that perhaps he was voicing the, I don't know, does Maruk say anything, grunts and groans of this helmeted individual? Yeah. Strong silent type.

Take the helmet off. Yeah. And it'll be Sam Whitwer. And then the entire viewing public would be like, but if you're Sam Whitwer, why did you have a helmet on? I like that. That's a fun one. I still say this is just a new character, but that is a fun one. It could be a new character.

To have Sam in Star Wars, always. Played by Sam Whitwer. It would be nice to have Sam Whittwer in live action. A great person who I don't have weird feelings about. It is an animated character that I have weird feelings about. Okay. One of my favorite. One of my favorite points of clarity ever.

I don't have weird feelings about that person. I have feelings. Would you say you have a crush on the voice of animated Obi-1 Canobi? No, you're in love with animated- Voice, yes. You're in love with the animated. It is, yeah, it's a hot cartoon that I want to fuck you, right? It's weird to be weird about real people who you might meet something.

Like, let's be cool. All right. That's all I say about Theory Corner. We love hot cartoons. I went in a direction I did not anticipate that it would go in. But we're done. Bad baby. Oh, yes.

All right. Wonderful stuff. Okay. Rapid fire here to close. Still 75% original parts. Easter eggs. I'm not sure if it was 75% original parts and 25% Easter eggs in this episode, but it felt right for the title of this segment. Joe, there are too many to go through.

We've talked about a ton of them already. Pick a couple favorites. I'm just going to pick one for the sake of time. And it is the fact that we got a clone trooper helmet in the opening credit helmet montage, which keeps the dream of Rex having a little moment in this show alive for us. I love it. Can I get you on board with the Star Wars Lego building if I give you the Rex helmet? Is that the one you would build?

No. Oh, boy. That was a no. That was a long pause. and then a no, fine, more for me. That's okay. My real answer is every single thing on Lafal, as I already said. But to shake it up, I'll mention something else.

We've also talked about a ton. The pergill in the circling the new galaxy from the pathway to Peridia. Pergill's spawning grounds. We gasped and grabbed each other's arms. It was so exciting. It's just, and then more pergill in the, in the, in the, And credit, I love a pergall. I can't wait to be with our beloved space whales.

Okay. Nice haircut. It's more me. It's time for wig watch trademark with Joanna Robinson. The trademark should have gone after your name. Do you wear weeks? I love, okay, by the way, this is just a good opportunity for me to gush over Natasha Lou, Bordizzo, who I just thought was incredible as Sabine.

I loved her. She's absolutely like captivating. and intriguing and gorgeous and I loved her like chipped nail polish and I just thought she was just incredibly cool I thought her hair looked really cool I loved it

I loved the hair on her I did not I mean like it looks I don't know it looks fried but that's what hair that is constantly dyed which is what we know Sabine does would look so I love that realism for it like you watch

it's still not my favorite in live action. I'm still going to keep thinking about how I feel about it. How do you feel? I liked it. I think they've improved something about the Asoka Laku since the initial live action debut. It was fun to see Hera's headtails. Enjoyed that. It still feels a little like made of foamy for me.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. are we going to wear our Asoka Laku to the next recording like we promised each other? I can't believe we have matching lightsabers and

Lakeos now. It's a lot. You can't? Is it or is it just the beginning? This has been a wig-washed trademark with Jonah Rumson trademark. It is time for our last segment of the day. It is a house of our tradition. Born

during these Stranger Things podcasting run. If this show had Netflix subtitles. Hell yeah. Steve, you're the best. Thank you. Here's what I'm really, here's what feels really true is that we're probably not going to see the Lothcat again. I can't bear to think about it.

The Lothcats not coming to Galaxy further and further way. Hopefully we get like a someone to check in on him. I need to know if he's okay. genuinely if they just like every episode said meanwhile back in loathal and it's just like it's clancy brown it's it's it's a rider isotti and like speeding the cat yeah and then he's scratching his chin and then jickel is like will anyone teach me how to wield the force and then we move on to the rest of the episode it would be great just in case perish the thought but just in case we don't see sweet boba again i i do feel compelled to dedicate this award to him today and so the short

version is chin extends expectantly, but I will instead be going with the long version. Fluffy baby lovingly presents darling chin and cheek for tender embrace, chirps expectantly. Faith shaken former Jedi, still a house of our favorite, but earning a formal demerit in this moment refuses to issue soothing scratch. I was like, is Mallor going to go long on this one or short? I feel like we're never on the same page on that because mine is sprightly and it goes like this Mandelorian viscera sizzles and then instantly

and miraculously cauterizes. Beautiful. Short and sweet. You're ready to be a medical droid. You know, good old sizzling viscera. You love to see it. Anything else? Is that how we're ending with sizzling viscera?

I can say it's not so. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I think it is. Did Ben get any comments about how is sizzling viscera on Instagram or TikTok? Oh boy. Well, friends, it's never a straight line with us podcasters, is it? And yet we have still somehow managed at last to reach the conclusion of today's podcast. Thank you for joining us for this first Asoka deep dive.

We're so excited to talk about the show all season. Join us again next week. Thank you to our favorite force-wielders, Steve Allman, for producing this podcast. Great to have you back on the soundboard, Steve. Good luck with this edit. Arjuna Ram Kapal for his additional production work on this episode and Jomi Adoneron for his work on the social for this episode. Until next time, remember, the past is the past.

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