House of R - ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Episode 4 Deep Dive

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Mal and Jo take a stroll through Moan Manor and mourn the death of Wayde in the latest episode of 'Obi-Wan Kenobi', looking at the details of the episode and the critical mission he undertakes (06:22). Joanna also questions Obi-Wan's personal journey with the Force (63:05). Later they are joined by Jomi to answer your questions (01:49:11) before being joined by series head writer and executive producer Joby Harold to talk about the challenges of bringing this series to life. (01:55:26). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Joby Harold Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna, do you ever wish you could definitively prove that you have the right opinions about movies? Uh, yeah, Neil, because I do have the right opinions about movies and television, right, Dave? No, because I'm more right about those things, and I demand trial by content. Oh boy, what is trial by content? Each week, we'll take on a huge question. Each of us will bring a choice and combine with listener submissions and your votes, we will come to a decision. It's trial by content every Tuesday on Spotify, the ringer.com, wherever you're listening right now. Don't let Neil win.

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Right behind you. And welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer podcast network. I'm Mallory Rubin and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to heal in our soothing back to tank, but also to join us on the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things. Fandom joining me today. Now that she's finished telling me that my body's not the only thing that needs to heal, it's my house of our working, working title. Co-host, Joanna Robinson. Welcome back, Joe.

Oh, my God, thrilled to be here, first of all. Secondly, huge thank you to Ben Lindberg for covering for me last week. What a gem. I have unfortunately been forced to, shove Ben into a tank of resin. He is now chilling in my basement with other podcast hosts who would presume to take my throne. No, Ben's amazing. It's so great. Love listening to you guys talk about last week's

episode. So yeah, but thrilled to be back as well. Ben is a jam and I look forward to visiting him in your trophy tomb room at some point in the future. And it's a It's a delight to be here. It's a delight to be here with you again, Joe, and missed you terribly. We are, of course, here to once again talk about Obi-1 Canobi. And later today, we will be doing that with Obi-1 head writer and executive producer Jobi Harold. He will be joining us to discuss our favorite bearded Jedi, the specter of Darth Vader,

who is feeding a certain loyal pet and mount? And more. Stay tuned for those insights. But before then, some programming reminders. There are currently four pods a week at a minimum on the ringer verse. Beat on Wednesdays and Fridays. We've got the double Obi-1 Kenobi goodness, the Midnight Boys, with the Wednesday instant reaction.

Keep-Pew! House of R! The Friday deep dive, let me just say. Van's freaky fandom idea on the Midnight Boys this week. I'm in, Charles, you just let me know when you want to begin. I would say every pod we do here is freaky fandom. But if we want to formalize it, I'm in, music to my ears, the kind of music that plays while Obi-Wan and the Duchess Sotene are making passionate love.

Is that like a like a bow to like a wow-wow sort of? music or is it like... No, I don't know if that's really Or is it like... Swoony strings. Yeah, that. Should we make a Spotify playlist, Obi-1's...

Yes. Sex sounds. Oh my God. On Mondays, the boys. The boys breakdowns here on the Ringerverse. What a wonderful show that we all love. The Midnight Boys had the breakdown of the triple premiere.

It's going to be House of Midnight. Joe, join in the gang this coming week. And then Thursdays, Miss Marvel, a show that we are all absolutely loving. What an absolute jam. Joe, who's joining you for episode two? Oh, the junior mince better get in line for some minty fresh content from Steve and Jomey. I love it.

I love it. More Mint Edition coming soon, by the way, and lots of other, lots of other content coming on the feed. We've got Lightyear coming soon, Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things, Season 4, Volume 2. there are as many pods in the ring ofverse as questionable security protocols at Fortress Inquisitorious, basically. That's the summation. It's a leaky ship over there in many ways. Follow all of that by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and by following the ringer versus myriad social feeds. Check out the TikTok if you haven't yet.

And of course, as always, bear in mind our friendly neighborhood. Spoiler. Warning, today's podcast will feature plot details from Obi-1-Kadobie part four, the entire Obi-1-Kadobie series to date and all of Star Wars Canon. So proceed with more caution than our guy Wade did when taking his T-47 for a little spin to NER. Okay, so here's my question. These, these Obi-1 episodes don't have titles, but if they did, like, what would, be a fitting title for this one because I feel like the saga of Wade or the ballot of Wade Wade's world. Yeah, Wade's world. Oh, any which Wade but lose. So, yeah, we're here, we're here to honor and memorialize our dear friend Wade. I think we're going to talk about

Wade a lot today, honestly. Are we? Great. I feel like he's going to come up a lot to say. Oh, my goodness. episode four, part four, directed by Deborah Chow, written by Joby Harold. Again, stay tuned for our chat with Joby later today and Hannah Friedman. Runtime, a tight, crisp 38 minutes when you deduct the previously on the opening logo, which had a few new droid pals in it, by the way. Hello, hello. And the end credits, we're looking at a half hour episode here. So we are going to get into it.

We're going to go chronologically through our deep dive as always. And before we do, opening snapshot time. But before we get to the opening snapshot for episode four, Joe, quickly, anything that you want to share with our dear cherished listeners about episode three since you weren't here to chat about it last week? Zach Braff was not on my bingo card of folks to see in the Star Wars universe, number one. Number two, I really did love listening to you, Mal talk about that episode, listening to you talk about it. And this is just like, I just want to take like a real real sentimental moment and say, listening to you talk about things helps me love them more.

And that's a huge part of why I love doing this with you. And so it's true. It's true. It's what it's like your superpower. So I think listening to you talk about hopelessness and darkness and light and fear and all these like themes coursing throughout an episode made me really like it. much more. I was never on the, I will, for the record, I was never on the, why isn't Vader just simply walking across that fire to grab Obi-Man? It's like, it seems pretty clear to me that

he was playing with his food. But, yeah, I, I thought your breakdown was extraordinary. That was really extraordinary work last week. And I'm, I want to know what you think of episode for this week. Thanks, pal. That's really nice. It makes me smile. It makes my heart sore. I hope. that my, my analysis of Wade can live up to it this week. I'm not sure I have quite as many insights to provide this week as last week.

Profound material. Oh, God. Wade. Something about that choice to name him Wade. I don't know. It's wonderful. Wade and Sully,

I forget what Ben said in his breakdowns. Oh, yeah. I got to get this exact quote. Hold on. This was just. Roken and his colleagues, Wade and Sully, who were probably

recruited from the Fenway Park bleachers. Just great stuff for Ben, really combining all of his passions there. Those are real baseball vibe names. They are. I mean, it's no snaps Wexley. That's, that's what I will say right now. Oh, my God.

No Wedge and Tilly's. Wet. Yeah. Our Guy Wedge. Episode four, part four. What does you think? Do you want to start? Do you want me to start?

What's your preference? For the opening snapshot, the quick taste. before we dive deeply into the waters of horror. To the lower levels of a bafflingly constructed fortress. I think that listening to Joby talked to us at the end of this episode about some of the themes that they were exploring here, again, helped me like it even more. And I think where we are now,

which is two-thirds of the way through a story, is always a tough spot to be in and usually makes more sense once you've got the full picture. So some questions about some tactics in this episode but I'm hoping that when we see the full

arc it'll all sort of snap into place. What do you think? Do they have enough time to land it? Anxiety that typically sets in around this point for a sixth episode Disney Plus run setting in for you? No, to the contrary,

it feels like maybe they had four strong episodes stretched over a six-episode season. What do you think? Yeah. So overall, I still thought that the episode was fun. You know, I had fun watching it. But this was my least favorite episode of the season by a comfortable margin, I would say. And I think part of that is just it coming on the heels of the third episode, which was momentous and monumental.

and I thought thrilling and I just really, really loved both for the action and the pacing and the surprise and the thematic residence. So this just fell a little flat as the installment that followed that. I certainly don't mind a rescue. You know, there was a fun debate about this on the Midnight Boys and I definitely agree that rescues are kind of part and parcel of the Star Wars experience and especially in Star Wars TV. We get them routinely. That's not the issue to me. Like, in particular here, I think the part four episode four, and I'm saying episode four here in terms of the movie title,

not this being the fourth episode of this television show. You know, The Fortress Inquisitorious, A New Hope, Death Star infiltration parallels, which we'll discuss, you know, at length as we go through today, we're really quite fun. You know, I, like George Lucas, I enjoy a rhyme. I enjoy an echo in Star Wars.

That stuff's always a treat, right? And I'm really enjoying watching the Leah Obi-1 Bond build because of how that just more deeply enriches and informs the way I think about their arcs and their story across all of Star Wars. But because of how invested I am in the Obi-1 Anakin of it all, the Obi-1 Vader confrontations in particular, I did feel that this episode was just like a bit halting. in terms of the overall story. And then like, while again, I don't mind the rescue in a vacuum, I think because episode two was a rescue episode,

two of a three episode stretch and a six episode season felt like, again, we were replaying some of the rhythms across episode two and four rather than doing something like totally fresh there. And I think, I think mostly for me, though, it was just like a pacing issue in the episode.

because there were some scenes, like I'll tease it here, and we'll talk about it more later, the Roken Jabeem intro sequence that just felt really hurried and rushed. Like, I love a rescue, I love an action sequence, I love meeting new characters, I love with different threads of a story stitched together. But I think this episode more than any yet,

even more so than episode two, which again was structured as a rescue. It gave me that, oh, you can see. see that this was once supposed to be a movie feel. And I mentioned that not because that is in any way inherently an ill. That's completely fine. But the thing that I have loved most about this show so far is the very TV-centric nature of it in certain stretches. Like episodes one and three have really been my favorites because they're slower, they're more leisurely,

they're more methodical, like specifically when it comes to how deeply introspective. they are. You know, they're centered on Obi-1, needing to look inward, like, needing to think about the past, needing to reflect on the choices that he made or that he didn't make. And so this was a fun, zippy episode of TV, but it's the one I think where I learned the fewest new things overall and most crucially learn the fewest new things

about Obi-1-Kadobie as a character and the journey that he's on. So that was just why it didn't quite meet the highs of the other episode. for me. Also, the Quigon mentioned streak ended. Very sad. I will push back on that and say the thing that I did like a lot. I thought this was Riva's best episode. And I thought the Riva-Leyas dynamic, how Moses Ingram was playing those scenes, that was my favorite stuff from her so far. And if she is an important figure for us to know and care about, they need to have some more of that in here before we get to the end. in two short episodes, do you know?

So that's, if you only care about... No, I agree, but like, did you not feel that the... We got a lot of time with her, but did we learn anything new? Either about her history with Anakin, her history with Kenobi and the Jedi. We got a lot of echoes of the same beats from the first few episodes in terms of, like, the clues, right? Building the mystery, but not answering it yet. No, there are two episodes to go.

I do feel like we learned some new things. mostly character-driven. And I could either talk about it now or I can talk about it when we get to it. But, like, I mean, what I feel like I see is a slight cracking of the tight fist that we've seen from her, which is, you know,

similar to a Vader arc or a Kylo arc. You know, like, with Kylo and Ray in The Last Jedi, you start to see this cracking open of this person. And then I feel like we start, you know, we've seen her anger and her frustration and like what I'm owed and what I deserve. But when she's relating to Leah, yeah, we could have pieced together some of this information, like, that perhaps she was a youngling in the temple and perhaps she felt abandoned by the Jedi and perhaps, you know, all of that sort of stuff. But whether it was just an interrogation tactic or not, seeing her soften and talk about her childhood that way, I think, maybe could indicate that we could see a heel turn from her.

We only have two more episodes with her here. But like, you know, if she is going to do the classic Kylo Vader, you know, I'm going to turn right when you need me to to help you sort of thing, we need some groundwork for that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I do agree that there was a distinction or an evolution maybe in her disposition. And so that is an important.

distinction to draw from just the sheer mystery of her origin, which is not obviously the entirety of a character arc. So I think that's a good point, and that's definitely true. I think also, like, we do have, the one kind of weird inverted thing coming out of it was that even though the episode wasn't one that I enjoyed as much as the first three, it made me feel really confident that the final two were going to be, like, loaded and tight and,

full in a really good way. Like I didn't actually leave this episode feeling worried about their ability to land it. It felt like they may be held back here because they're going to save everything that we that we're waiting for for those final two stretches. I'm eager to talk later

about how we think the remaining answers and action might divide across those two episodes. But I think that that Riva point is going. Ben mentioned last week, even just with the way that Riva reached out to the Jedi crust etching in the safe house, which returns here when, you know, we see her, but put the plank of wood down on the table in front of Leah,

that he was reading potentially some longing or like an inkling of something other than rage and the pursuit of vengeance, which, you know, who knows? We certainly don't. Star Wars loves a redemption arc. I mean, yeah, we'll get to this later. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess.

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which is E. McGregor in a back to the tank. Let's do it. Let's dive. Let's dive into the episode. Let's dive into the back to tank. Tala. Ned B. Our guy, Ned B.

Didn't see as much Ned B in this app as I was hoping for. Love the sounds that he makes when he moves his head. There's like a very soothing. Wush. Wur. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. A whir. That's exactly what it is. It's a were. they get him to Jabeem. And in these opening moments, like through the haze of Obi-1's pain, we get these really interesting little glimpses of the setting.

There are a lot of people around. Who are all of these people? Will we see them again? What clues might there be that could connect to other aspects of the canon? That kind of stuff is always fun. But we don't linger long because just as we suspected, they're taking them to those healing back to waters.

Now, we were, I'll just say it, robbed, cheated out of the disrobing sequence. But fine, maybe one day in the director's cut. I'm so glad he said that and not like, why is Ewe McGregor in loose swimming trunks and not the horrible diaper that Luke has to wear in the original trilogy? We all like to spend a lot of our time on podcasts on the internet arguing about what's okay to change over the course of Star Wars history and what must remain forever intact. I can't tell you how glad I am that the back to tank sequences have shifted to the boxer brief swim trunk as opposed to the Luke diaper.

Do you feel like you and was like absolutely not? I simply will not. But I'm nearing a diaper. He's not that Scottish. But in my mind, he rolled the R on diaper, not wearing the diaper. Oh my God. I don't know if he said I'm not wearing a diaper. But what I do know and what I would like to spend a moment talking about with you, Joe, is that he.

spent the first couple minutes of this episode moaning. I, we're not going to have Theory Corner today. We're not going to have Lower Corner today. No. We are going to, we are going to have Mone Corner. I'd like you to join me on Mone Corner for a moment right now. Please. So I, okay.

I understand. Mone Manor. Just our producer Steve. Take me to Mone Manor, Obi-One Canobi. Stately Moaner. You're my only boner. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to make a text tone. Uh-huh.

And it's just going to be the great endear of Arma saying, your buddy about you McGregor. Like, and that's, that's going to be your text tone. Because I know that she was speaking for you when she said it. I would love for you to do that. I'd love for you to set it to me as soon as you do. I'd love to have that with me at all times. Um, here's the thing. Yeah, I know.

of course, that Obi-Wan Kenobi, old Ben Kenobi, is badly burned and is in a great deal of pain. And of course, as a kind, thoughtful, sensitive person. Yeah. Who believes in empathy. You're a peach. And nurturing others. Right. I am focused on that, on his pain and on his healing.

But also. Yeah. But first and foremost. I know. I just have to say that I rewashed these couple minutes like 500 times just to listen to this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Joanna, but I did. And I have to tell you that I did.

And I got to say, like, you know, if you had said, hey, we're going to get a couple minutes of Obi-1 Canobi just softly, gently moaning. What do you think that would accompany? I would have said my. my desperately desired setine sex flashbacks or perhaps future sex with Tala. But alas, that's not what happened. Did you see the subtitles during this sequence? Breathing heavily, grunting softly. Uh-huh.

It's just really something here. Any, any, uh, stranger things descending wetly? Sadly not. Okay. Okay. Incredible. Any other thoughts on Mone Corner? I mean, like, now I'm, now I'm like wondering why this isn't your favorite.

episode of anything ever. I suppose if you got, I did enjoy. I did enjoy. If you got soft grunts from you and McGregor. You know, as I said to you, when we were chatting a bit the other day, I do. I loved this part, but I did feel like we were cheated out of a longer back to sequence in multiple respects, including this one. But we got what we got.

Well, I think, in addition to Mone Manor, I loved this juxtaposition of not just like, how they're connected or whether or not Anakin is literally sensing Obi-Wi-Wi-W-Wi-1, they're literally sensing each other as they're in the tank. But the perusal of their bodies was not just to serve as Mallory's enjoyment,

but also for us to look at the wounds that they've inflicted on each other, right? These are not just two wounded men, two men wounded in similar ways, blah, blah. These are men who have disfigured each other and brothers who have done this to each other. And I thought that stuff was really powerful. Yeah, I love that.

And the way that, you know, not only the episode, but the series as a whole has been really interested. We hear this later in an exchange between Tala and Obi-Won. In asking Obi-1 to confront and reminding us as viewers the fact that those wounds and those marks that they've left on each other are not just on the surface, right? They go soul deep. And when you see those parallels in those intercuts, you know, the burn scanning down,

the burn on the arm and the side to Vader's scarred skin. And I love that moment where we go to, I don't know why I'm doing things with my arms. You can see me on Zoom, but this is a, I saw you this is an audio experience. I did do some stretches. It's true. You did some stretches and this is why. So you could show me where on the arm. I loved the camera panning down to the, to Vader's severed arm and then to like Obi-1's twitching hand. I just loved that. And we hear, again, like these echoing lines. I thought this was so interesting because the lines that we hear here,

you know, we're seeing the flashes of the confrontation from episode three, but the lines we hear also from episode three, you know, we hear the years have made you weak. We hear you should have killed me when you had the chance. And if we think back to episode one and the dream in the cave,

those were relics and echoes from 10 years ago, from a decade prior. And the ghosts that are haunting him now are in the present. They are re-traumatizing him. Yeah. Right here. And I also just love the way that they were both so unsettled.

Like they're both kind of twitching and flailing about their, you know, the back to tank. It's supposed to be healing and it's supposed to be meditative. But they are both so disturbed. I love, as you said, thinking about the way that they've done that to each other. I was curious to ask you, like, what do you think about, you know, you mentioned whether they're sharing this or not? Do you think, like, was your read on that that they're, in fact, seeing and hearing the same thing that they are actually conducting through the force and sharing those visions,

or are we seeing Obi-Wan's visions as we have been previously, and Vader is experiencing his own meditative ones. No, I think they're seeing the same thing. Me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

I agree. I have a follow-up question that's like equally thematically important. How quickly do you think Tala volunteered for back-to-babysitting duty, you know, and how many people did she have to shove out of the way? Aren't you? Get that job. Standing guard by the Bacta tank as Obi-Wan Kenobi gently bobs in the water. Just wonderful.

One of the best jobs that you can have in the galaxy, Joe. I loved when he bobs too soon. He emerges too soon and she tries to tell him that he needs more time to heal. And he only has one question. Where's Leia? He is so focused, not on his own well-being, but on her. which is very sweet. I'm curious,

especially on the heels of boba and the deployment of the flashbackta and knowing how that can be used across Star Wars, did you want more of a boba-esque flashback to a sequence here? Like, would some longer stretch in the tank have been more thematically richer illuminating for you than the episode that we got or have the tiny little bursts that we've seen felt sufficient?

I mean, as we know, like, what we definitely don't want is an over-reliance on this. Like, we don't want to feel like we're repeating the beats of boba, right? But I think there's still, she says multiple times you still need to heal. So he's not done. Right. He popped out of there prematurely. So if they have time to breathe while Riva is tracking them while Lola is betraying them in next week's episode.

I just want to say, I don't think Obi-1 is a premature pauper, but I just refuse to believe it. But that's, it's okay if he is. I think he could go back in for a second round if he needs more time to heal. And in that case, I think that I think we could get a flashback to, but I just want one. One juicy, why do we hire Hayden Christensen for this show flashback? Yes. I agree with this. I think there's a chance we head back into the tank in episode five.

Also think that there's a chance. And maybe the tank is what spawns this. maybe this comes completely independent of any sort of back to sequence, but we'll talk about this more later. I think that broadly I am hoping that episode five is the episode of reflection and force ghost quagon time, this feels like the spot for it. Whatever meditative and communicative reflection and progress is necessary, I think has to happen in the penultimate episode before we get to the showdown in the finale. And I would love, I would love some more time in the past

whether it's with Obi-1 in Quigon, whether it's with Obi-1 in Anakin, whether it's Obi-1 watching over Luke, anything. I agree with you. I don't want to go there too long and disrupt the forward momentum of the story, but I'm up for it for a stretch at least. Can we tell...

I mean, like, I don't even want to, like, wait to talk about this interesting movie-to-episode mapping. Go for it. Can we, like, bring three-corner all the way. Do it. Okay, so we got... I brought Mone Corner all the way up here.

You can do Theory Corner wherever you want. We got a listener tweet thread about this. I saw it on Reddit starting last week, but it was really enforced by this week. This idea that each episode of this Obi-Wan Kenobi series is mapping directly to a film from the Skywalker Saga. In that the first episode feels like the Phantom Menace in that it's like set on Tatouine and, you know, we're dealing. like Luke and Anakin and all this or stuff like that. Multiple characters say, are you an angel? No, that's sorry.

That didn't. Only my dreams. I said that when I saw you and McGregor. So it tracks. All right. I'm sorry. I'm not talking. No, you never apologize for who you are, Mallory and Rubin.

The second episode of Obi-1 Canobi maps on to attack the clones in that we get sort of, We get the neon city scape, all that sort of stuff and some other connections, that there's mass between episode three and Revenge of the Sith. And then this one is just chocka block of a New Hope, episode four connections. Just, just choking on it, right? And so, you know, like, so episode three, dragging Obi-1 through the fire, Mustafar duel, like, all of that's there. So that's fascinating.

I love to you. What an interesting idea. Yeah. What that means is that we can then think about whether or not it's true. I think it might be, but whether or not it's intentionally true. Do you think that's why they named the episodes this way? Going with the part one, part two, part three, part four to align with episode one, episode one, two episodes. But you could have named them anything, as you said earlier.

Exactly. Yeah. She should have just called them by the titles. Could have them after Wade, but they didn't. Why not? This one would be called a new Wade. So then, well, what that means is. makes me think is exactly what you're saying here. I think we solved it. Revenge of the Wade.

Oh, boy. The weight of Skywalker. So I think when you're thinking about what are we going to see in episodes five and six, thinking about Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as like goalposts to think about, I love this idea of next week's episode, episode five. Empire Strike of back episode, you think of maybe, I don't know, three, three major things, right? Like, there's Cloud City, there's Daigoba, and there's Hoth, like, not just location-wise, but sort of action-wise.

You could have, we could have a battle episode. We saw a lot of people in Jabeem with their head back there, like, is there going to be some sort of, like, Battle of Debeam, there has been in non-canon lore, like, there could be another Battle of Debeam sort of thing. But I think that training thing, that Yoda aspect is something we could focus on. And could we see, as you say, Quigon or training in the flashback with Anakin, like something training based to get him ready for what we presume is the Return of the Jedi episode six final showdown between Vader and Obi-Wan, you know?

Yeah. I find this entire parallel that you just outlined incredibly compelling. And I think I find, even though we haven't actually seen it yet, that possibility most compelling of all. The Dagaba training, reflection, mapping. Like, what is the episode five version of Obi-1 going into the cave on Dagaba? And, like, not just that, right? Not just the counsel from Yoda, potentially the counsel from Quigon, really staring his fears in the face or in the helmet. but also like one of the things that's kind of interesting to think about is you you reflect,

you level up, and then maybe you engage in an act of defiance. Like I think that's interesting to consider with Empire as a cop because Luke chooses to leave when Yoda and Obi-Wan are telling him not to, right? And this is always so central to all of our discussions in our time together podcasting about Obi-Wan and Star Wars and the Jedi, like when can your heart and your love and your desire to protect and help guide you and when are other people going to tell you

that that's dangerous and that that might lead you astray? And when do you realize that they're wrong? You know, and I feel like so much of the impact that Tala and Leah have had on Obi-1 is in that respect specifically. Like allowing him to rediscover and channel his strength through the attachment and affection that he's forging. So I really like that.

I'm interested. And then I assume we'll get, we'll get Ewox and Yubb in Park Six. If we don't get EWox and write it. But, I mean, well, two things I want to say about that. One is, of course, also, like, in terms of the echoing, rhyming sort of stuff, there was a huge critique of the sequel trilogy in that people thought Force Awakens was just a new hope. again, that bothered me 0%. Let me tell you so about Force Awakens.

I love that movie. It's fun. It's great. I love that movie. I think it's fantastic. And then, you know, similarly with the Last Jedi, I love the Force works. Great stuff.

A piece of junk will do. So, like, I think that in The Last Jedi, right, Ray goes to train with Luke and she goes in her own cave and she has her own active defiance when she goes off, you know, this is not going to go how you think. It goes off after Kylo and stuff like that. So I think that those are the beats that I would be really interested in seeing in episode five. It better be a long episode is what I have to say, the calm before the storm.

But it's also thinking about episode six, thinking about what is so key to return the Jedi, it is that Vader turn, right? Which is what makes me think that we might get a Riva turn in episode six. Because we're not going to get it from Vader, right? that's he's our, he's on a different. Unlikely. Yeah. You know?

So if Riva is sort of like the Vader comp in this situation, might get like a little mini, mini Vader turn there. Unfortunately, we know that she's not going to kill fifth brother, which is sad because he remains with us for years to come. The wars. How did that guy make it to sell away into the end of season two of rebels?

It's just an incredible that he lasted that long. What a dude. His hat choices alone should have disqualify him. But, like, to go back to actually talking about this episode and not theories and looking forward, the DeBeam stuff, because like what follows after this, right, is a very brisk, you know, intros. I won't help you. Okay, I will help you, like, in the same breath without changing your tone of voice.

you know, Wade and Sully, obviously, key core members of the canon and then the plan. And these are characters, you know, to piggyback what you were off

what you were talking about last week so eloquently, this idea of Obi-1 seeing that people who haven't given up hope is so key to cracking him back open to the force

and to getting back into the fight. And so I think there was tremendous opportunity here for him to connect with these, this rebel cell. And, you know, I just kept thinking about all these various little Game of Thrones conversations, calm before the battle, just like quiet conversations between people who

have been in the fight and who haven't been in the fight and how if you take the time to have those conversations, then something like the death of Wade later has so much more weight. If maybe we took some time to meet Wade and knew why he was fighting and maybe his story would fill Obi-Wan with some sense of purpose. You know, I think there was real opportunity there that they just sped through for reasons I don't fully understand because this is such a short episode. I agree.

I found this Obi-1 meets Roken and the gang sequence to be the weakest part of the episode and the most confounding overall. And I think what you're identifying about, not just what felt like it was... missing, but what there was, thus, of course, the possibility to include and feature is really strange. I'm like, I almost wonder, I mean, we asked, we'll tease that we asked Joby about this later, and he gave a really interesting answer about the role of the rebellion

in this story and elsewhere in Star Wars. So I won't step on that too much, but I do wonder if just knowing from a Lucasfilm perspective that Andor is coming, like on the, one hand, there's a compulsion and a tendency to give us these glimpses of like nascent, fledgling rebel cells. Maybe they don't even really know that they're going to be rebel cells, right? They aren't even thinking in those terms because one of the things that we hear these characters

say is like, we're not soldiers. And then later on the heels of Wade's death, Tala saying, well, I guess now you are soldiers, right? And like really grappling with what that means. But, and that's a, that's a thematically really. rich story choice to mine. Like, these characters are helping. They are fighting.

They are putting their lives in jeopardy. It's part of the reason that this baffling exchange between Obi-1 and Roken about the empire was so weird because Obi-1 knows that. He knows that they are fighting the empire, that they are working to lead Jedi and force-sensitive beings to safety because of the peril that those characters are in. So they are aware of the danger. working to help. They are part of the fight, but maybe they don't think of it in the language, like the vernacular of war. I think that's fascinating to assess the way that that evolves over

the course of Star Wars, but it was just so like whiplash-inducing, honestly, here, with Roken in particular to go from, and honestly, like, even the very first, the very first moment of their greeting when he's like, he shouldn't be here and says, you know, too many people are looking for you, you'll put us all in danger. But on the one hand, And okay, I get it. He's explaining the distinction between the overall mission to help and the threat that Obi-1 specifically poses. Like there's too much heat on him. He's putting them all at risk.

Fine. But I couldn't right away, I was just like, what? Because their whole thing with the path is to help, is to help people. So why would he be separate from that? I mean, to help, like, unknown force users versus, like, you know, public. Public Enemy Number 1, Obi-1 Canobi. I have a quick question for you about the use of General Canobi here, right? Yeah, I want to talk about this.

Yeah. General Connobey, right? Which is fun because, like, it invokes clone wars and we're talking about strategy here. So thinking about, like, Obi-1 in that regard, blah, blah. Another side of me was, like, is this another way to skirt someone calling him Obi-1-Kanoi? Like, not even, like, setting aside the Leia thing because... Well, that worried... Yeah, that worry was sure.

We moved later in the episode. We just straight up calls him Obi-Wan to Leia. So, like, that's off the table, right? But I just mean, like, when Tala, you know, when he says in a new hope, Obi-Won-Kin-Kin-Oby, I haven't gone by that since, you know, before you were born, right? And so, like, technically. So, like, technically, you know, when Tala last week is like, oh, and he's like, it's just bed now, right? And so when he says, General Konobe, he doesn't have to be like, it's just been now.

He's like, yeah, Ben Kenobi. Right. General Ben Kenobi, that's me. I don't know. What do you think about the general Kenobi usage here? So it struck me as well. It followed, first of all, it followed Obi-1 saying someone very important to me has been taken, and I need your help to get her back, which I love because, and then he immediately says,

General, I'm sorry, but that's not my problem. So I thought that was interesting because it shows us a lot of different. aspects of Obi-1's personhood in one glimpse there. When he's the general and the clone wars, we are confronting constantly as fans and viewers, and so are the characters, whether the Jedi are engaging in affairs in a way that they should not be.

That was never the intention of that order, right? And the kind of conflation of the various aspects of their roles and when is protection fighting and when is fighting actually like totally anathema to the core idea of protection. right? So there's like a lot of that just right there in that exchange. Also, you already just mentioned this, but the distinction really stood out from the exchange with Tala in episode three where he really like, he really balks at hearing somebody like invoke the legacy, the lore,

the mythology of Obi-1 Canobi. And he doesn't do that at all here because he, first of all, is just really laser focus on the task at hand, on Leah. Like, that is the priority. And I love that because that speaks to, you know, his progress overall in the way that he is moving through this arc of like real reluctance and resistance, this passivity to this now of a very active pursuit. It didn't seem to unsettle him hearing that here,

the way that hearing that last episode did. And I think that that helps to highlight that, he's pushing now. Like he's not being pulled. He's pushing. And that feels like a really big notable change. So that was actually one of the moments that I liked in this, in this exchange. I also liked, I should say the, even though it was very quick, the, you know, so does every kid making a rock float from here to Corrassant line from Roken.

Because while it was in the middle of this largely confounding seesaw exchange, it made me think a little bit of like broomboy all those years later. I just always like. moments like that in Star Wars stories where we get to think about how big the galaxy is and how many people the force touches. I always I always love that. I'm still waiting on the Broom Boy trilogy, by the way. Same. Same. I have another wish for something that we could have seen in this sequence, which is in the mission planning phase of everything. When they're talking about Fortress Inquisitorious, it's on Nour. And then they say it's the Mustafa system. And that's Vader system. And Obi-Wan Kenobi, who knows that he nearly killed Anakin on Mustafa, does not have any kind of reaction to learning that the Mustafa system is where Vader has made. You know, you and Ben talked eloquently about why Vader is camped there. But, like, you know, if you nearly murdered your brother in Paris and then you found out 10 years later

that he's still kicking around in Paris. I don't know why I picked Paris. It's the opposite of Mustafa. You know, you'd be like, oh, fuck. He's holding on to that. You know, like, fuck. You know what I mean? And we didn't get that.

Yeah. It's interesting because he does react. He does kind of like move and look and says, is Vader there? And I was curious to know if you read that as fearing that he might be or hoping that he is or a confusing mix of both, which is I think how I read it, but maybe it didn't feel like

enough of a response at all. Too muted? Well, I think that feels more connected to me to will I have to go through Vader to get to Leia? Right. Unless I'm returning to the seat of the great horror of my life.

Yeah. Holy shit, Anakin is still kicking around this far. Okay, not that this is an excuse or an explanation, but let me ask if, do you think that our guy is just And, you know, one of the things of this episode is that we see him make a lot of progress and really, like, get back into the flow of tapping into the force, using the saber, etc. Right here, a little foggy still, you know, maybe he really did get out of the Bacta tank too soon.

So got some, like, back to water in his ear? I don't know. Because. Drip drying? Okay. Can I, can I go back for one second to that, to the wife exchange with Rokker? because I, there are different points, but it's like a little bit of a piece in the sense that I was genuinely, I was baffled by a thing Obi-1 did here, like, actually confused by it. I'm hoping you can help me understand it. Why does he say to these people, you've no idea what the empire is capable of? Like, why? I mean, again, it's part of what is confusing about this sequence is that we go from the refusal to help to look, if you want my help, you got it in literally mere seconds, right?

A swing for a character who we don't know, who we don't understand. And so that prompt from Obi-1 leads him to saying, I had a wife once. I knew exactly what she was before we got married. We tried to hide it, and the Inquisitors found her anyway, so I know exactly what the empire can do. It serves that function, but that was what I found frustrating about it, because, like, I'm interested in Rocaken. I'm interested in the path.

I'm interested in learning more about these characters. all those little rock floaters on Currassant and elsewhere that they are helping, right? How they will eventually connect to that larger rebellion. But like it felt like that line, that line from Obi-One felt like this very, it just felt like a blunder that was only there to serve to set up that wife line, which is kind of like a tell-don't show moment that really does feel distinct from a lot of the rest of the season where we've gotten to linger on those facial expressions or the state of mind that a character is experiencing.

It was just a real contrast to those like quiet stretches of reflection, which I think is of a piece with what you're identifying with the Moustafar thing. Like that, that should lead to a longer

bit of reflection on what returning to that might mean. And maybe he's just on the clock, you know? Gotta find him. Well, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like, in terms of what I want,

which is like an overnight in Jabeem where they're like, have a meal and they sit and they sing Jenny's song. Absolutely. Same. Every single episode, they need to do that, right? But like, you know, you could definitely argue, like,

they don't have time to do that. Leah's in peril. And I'm just sort of like, yeah, but like if they did that, you know, the Leah would, anyway, whatever. If I'm being generous, I would definitely say what that line reveals about Obi-1 is how sheltered he has been in the desert. Like when he's talking to Nari and stuff like that, when Nari comes to find in the desert and he's just like,

hide, stay hidden. And not thinking to your earlier point, about all the ways in which these ordinary people, these non-force sensitive people are fighting. So for him to say, you don't know what the empire is capable of, is the height of ignorance from someone who's just been hiding in a hole for, you know, nine years.

Who has imposed this, like, sheltered life and isolation on himself. And they're like, fuck you, dude, we've been out here. Right, it's a luxury to be able to say that to somebody else at that point, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that really. But the question you asked earlier about, like,

do we think that he's, longing for Vader to be there, if it's fear, I still think he's in the fierce space. I think this is the journey to the bottom for Obi-1, quite literally down to the bottom of the fortress, to see the most horrifying thing he could possibly see there. Like, you thought maybe Vader-forced choking a kid would be the bottom for Obi-One,

but I think it's seeing the youngling in Amber is the bottom for him. And so I think that fear, you know, the fear that fuels the power of the Sith, that thing they feed off of. Or if you go back to that, Obi-1, Leah exchange when she's asking about the force, right? That dark light, part of the exchange when he says, have you been afraid of the dark? How does it feel when you turn on the light?

And she says, I feel safe. Yes, it feels like that. The dark light is important, but like the fear and safety versus safety. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I think he has like a longing still to understand and a small part of him still hoping to like for this not to all be true,

but every single thing he glimpses makes that I think he also knows he's not, I think he also knows he's not ready, right? Because like what do we see soon after is him like barely able to move a tiny... And they say even here, like, dude, you could barely stand. You know, he is, he is weak

and trying to regain his strength. So do you think that they have another spy, like very close to Vader? because when he asks if Vader's there, they say our intel shows he's still on his ship, but he's close. How do they know that? Yeah.

Also, Vader, taking a much longer back to bath than Obi-1. Because, listen, he's got more to heal. It's true. It's true. By the way, yeah, we got an impregnable here when they're talking about Fortress inquisitorious. They call it impregnable. hysterical in like 50 respects.

Top of the list, of course, made me think of our guy, Braun from Thrones, you know? Give Bron 10 men, he'll impregnate the bitch. But of course, it makes us think of Calcestis

and Jedi fall in order and we know that this is not true, that it is quite possible to breach this fortress. And just like the lax empire security across the board, it always makes me chuckle and there's a moment like this in Star Wars

is just one of my favorite recurring bits. All you need is a uniform and some moxie, honestly. It's great. If you can, you know, to bluff your way through. If you could just really, like, really commit to dunking on the guard that you're going to meet at the security checkpoint, you will be fine. You know, on the timeline front, by the way, like, connecting to what you were saying earlier about just the way we think about the cell here that we meet, there were a couple interesting,

like little timeline. moments that I liked and thought were effective, like where, um, Obi-Wan asked why there are no shields around the fortress. And Rokin says, because no one would be stupid enough to attack them. And you really, like, feel where you are in the story there, you know? Like, of course, some early rebel action is afoot. I mean, just what the, the path is doing. But bail, Osoka, et cetera. And it's not like nobody is active. But still, we're a few years away from the events of rebels. We're a few years away from the events of Andor. And, you know, you feel it again, too, with like Obi-Wan asking if they can use the speeders,

if they can use the T-47s, and they're like, we use those to haul sewage because they are doing so much more. They are working to bring people into that light, into that safe harbor, but they're not thinking of their work in those terms. Like they're not thinking of themselves as soldiers and just the fight and the phraseology

and the framing around it. That subtle distinction in that nuance, I think is really a fascinating way to kind of orient us here at this mark or 10 years after Sith, but still nine years away from Yavin. I also love that idea that the T-47s that they're using there

are eventually the ships that they use to win in Hoth. And the idea that that is Ben Kenobi's idea, why don't you take these sewage haulers and turn them into something for war? Why don't we remake all this stuff we have? Whatever we have, scraps, junk, whatever we have, let's reconstitute,

it and make it something that we can use to win a battle. And I think the T-47, that's real general Kenobi vibes. And the T-47, I loved that detail. So then when we watch Empire, we can be like, hey, that was Ben's idea. That's great stuff. No functional fixing this for our guy, Obi-One Canobi. I'd like to think that all of his time with Tika, the Java, back on Tatsu-Ean, really helped in this respect.

Any scrap you find you can do something with, even if it's selling it back to the person you stole it from. But I wanted to go back to the Calcestis thing because Jedi Fallen Order, whether or not people have played the video game, like there's so many beats from that. This is the most Jedi Fall in Order episode that we've seen. And Kathy Kennedy, I think, said something recently to Entertainment Weekly about how the video games definitely are informing their TV and film. And so I think that that we've talked about little like droids here or troop.

there and stuff like that. But I think like the way in which this is so directly, the way which is so directly engaging in a Cal mission, you know, people are like, oh, does that mean we're going to get a Cal cameo? I don't think we should be thinking about it that way. I think we should be thinking about it the way that we think about, like, Empire or Jedi or Force Awakens or whatever,

sort of echoing and rhyming. This rhymes with a video game because it's all, you know, know, Lucasfilm story group. It's all lower to them. So I think that's really interesting. I love that point, too, because not only do you establish

the parallels between an episode like this and the fallen order canon, but through that, you get more parallels between Obi-1 and Vader, because Vader is a huge figure in the Fallen Order game. And even something like,

I mean, obviously the Inquisitors are a big part of the game. There's a lot of stuff at Fortress Inquisitorious, including the infiltration, the perj troopers, etc. But like, the torture chamber, specifically I was just thinking of the sequence where

Obi-1 has to keep the breach, the water, at bay, which is something that Vader is in the position of needing to do in the game. So that's, that's, that's, that's all really interesting. It's almost the exact same framing. Yeah. It's like Deb, Deb Chow had to look at that, at the frames from the video game when she framed the sequence there. I have some real notes for the construction crew and engineers

that are just inquisitorious. I mean, it looks cool. You can't, like, you can't fault their style and their design. I'm assuming that this is the, Ben put this in his recap. Like, this must be transparent steel. This can't actually just be glass. It should be able to hold up. But this is like, this is pretty grim.

You know, if you're going to build your fortress underwater, you need it to actually be able to keep the water out. Just I'm not a professional engineer. Or maybe like, no blasters on the lower level. That's the other thing. You're filling the fortress with troopers who were carrying blasts. It's a deflected blaster bolt. Yeah.

It's a baffling stuff as usual from the fucking empire. Won't be the last time we mock the empire's security and tactics in this episode. One of the characters who knows best what their weaknesses are is, of course, Tala, who is a legend. Just like kind of an instant, this is a character I love and want to spend a lot of time with, Riser in the recent history of Star Wars. when Obi-1 says, you know, again, I don't really know

what the offer of help means because they were all like, actually, no, we're not going to go with you. Now, I guess it just met showing him the hollow of Fortress and Quistorius and offering up the NUR-Intel,

and then they'll go there later. Anyway, back to Tala, when Obi-1's like, she's 10 years old, I won't leave her, I'll go on my own. We get this look, you know,

this little, a little, A little Enderavara. Aida. From Obi-Wan's perspective there, it's great because it is just such a long way from the My Dudius to the boy, episode one, energy.

From Tala's perspective, this was so cool because once again, we already have so many examples. And once again here, she's putting her claims from episode three into action. You know, when Leah said, is it scary?

having to pretend. And she said, yes, sometimes, but it's worth it if I can help people. Like, she uses her, the fact that her cover might still be intact. Might, of course it is. It's the fucking empire. No one's paying attention ever.

They update none of their records. But she has to know that it won't be after this. Like, this is it. Right? The decision to go is a decision to compromise her cover in full, to give up her ability to work that way because Obi-1 and Leah are important enough to risk it all.

And I think like the lesson once again that she is teaching Obi-Wan, not only through her words, but through her actions is such a powerful example. Like, it is worth it if you were helping others. It makes me think of the Rose Last Jedi idea, you know, saving what we love. Like, that's how we win. Yeah. It sort of makes me emotional. Yeah. They take the flight to NER and you mentioned that he's trying to use the force to move this, this small object to him.

And it's a struggle. Like, it's taxing. He's laboring. He's weak from the duel. He hasn't fully healed. But it's not just that physical injury. It's the emotional, mental, spiritual trauma. And her counsel, her lessons for him are still continuing in this sequence.

She sees this. She can recognize this. And she's really trying to guide him. She says, your body's not the only thing that needs to heal Ben. But if you need help healing your body, no, that's not part of the quote. says the past is wrong with me. I just said, what is wrong with me? Nothing.

You're precious, you're the jewel of the empire. Mallory Rubin. The past is a hard thing to forget. You just need time. That's all. And she says something, and he says, excuse me, he says some things can't be forgotten. And I love this because she's telling him what we've been saying all season. Like all podcasts long, he has to confront.

the past so that he can move beyond it. Now, yes, I will acknowledge that she then immediately says to him, you care about Leah, then you're going to have to try. So there's a little bit of a you need to compartmentalize temporarily footnote that was... I'm like, I think Tala's advice, much love. She looks great in uniform. She's fantastic. But I think her advice of you need to forget the past is not the advice.

Right. You need to confront and engage and deal with the past. Exactly. He needs to embrace it. Yeah. Not repressive. But I do like this, you care about Leah sort of thing. Obi-One's relationship that he's building with Leah here, especially when you think about

the way in which he has sort of been longing to have a connection to Luke and been shut off by Owen, like that all he knows of Luke is what he's able to see when he snoops on him in the desert, right? So, but this connection with Leah and his ability to talk about. Padme in the past and all this sort of stuff, like how she's helping him unlock and reopen up to happier memories of, like, who Padme was and all this sort of stuff like that. And something that he longs to do with Luke,

that we get to see him do with Luke at the beginning of a new hope, finally. Yeah. But sort of this, yeah, you care about Leah. He's had this opportunity to connect with one of Aniken's kids here. And it's so, like, whatever you're feeling. about the RETCON and I have so many. And whatever your feelings about they're just doing Grogu again, which occasionally I have those feelings too,

there's a lot of value in this L-B-1 relationship. Yeah. It's poignant. It's really potent. Yeah, I agree. I'm with you completely here. Like, he needs to accept the things that have happened and process them so that he can understand them and learn to forgive himself,

but also balance that with the appropriate contrition in certain spots. And, like, he did seem just so forlorn and, again, like, broken in this sequence. But I will once again identify here the distinction that stood out because I think the shift is so telling, like, earlier in the season when we talked about moments where he seemed like broken or hopeless or like he had given up, it's when he's saying even balanced with the subsequent he needs to be trained, Luke of it all, you know, the fight is over. we lost. And here, this like despondence, all of the pain that he still has to process and work through is now being channeled forward. And, you know, we see that later really with like the physicality of it, with the lightsaber sequences and the force because these connections, these abilities are coming back to him, are things that he is able to channel again because he has allowed himself to connect to the force, to really connect to it again. And to, and,

decide to fight. 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. This episode is brought to you by Two Good and Company coffee creamers. How'd you take your coffee, piping hot, ice, strong, frothy. But if you love rich, creamy goodness and delicious flavor in every sip, try Two Good and Company creamers. They're made with farm fresh cream and real milk.

Each serving has just three grams of sugar, 40% less than the leading coffee creamers. Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roasted vanilla and lavender. So which one are you trying first? find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle. I have a quick question for you. So we all agree, we and I agree that the first time Obi-1 uses the force in a long time is to stop Leah's fall in episode two. So my question is, when he's reaching out to Quigon in the cave, what is he doing there? So I think that, I guess the distinction that I would draw in the way that I've tried to

think about it to answer that question is that there's like a again kind of a passive active quality like when he's reaching out to save lea he is channeling the force and and allowing the force to course through him and he is embracing this idea of the energy between all things in a way that is akin to the you know don't trust your eyes speech to luke in a new hope that you have to let go of just the trappings of the regular rhythm of life all around you and like open yourself to something fundamentally larger and bigger than just to who you are and where you are in that moment. And so yeah, of course he has to be using the force on some level to try to commune with Quigon.

There is no other way to do that. But he is he is at war with himself. He is at odds with himself. And so he is trying to walk down a road that he has put a barrier on. And so he can't, he can't get through. That's interesting. Like, of course, yes. Like, narratively, like, we know that there's a block there that we presume will become unblocked and we will see Quigone and Liam Neeson will be like, I just got done filming Dairy Girls in Atlanta.

I'm here for my triple crown of TV. But, like, I just think that's an interesting, like, again, these contradictions in Obi-1, which I'm not mad about, but these contradictions of like, let me bury the sabers in the desert. Let me go by Ben. But also I'm still going to be working on this training that Yoda set to me, which is to reach out to Quigon. You can't do that without the force, buddy. Anyway, let's talk about more about what a bad ass talla is, right? Infiltrating the base.

What did you think of the sequence where she just absolutely posterized this poor guard? I loved this. This fucking guy. I'm saying, yes, sir. And then her saying, why am I wasting my breath on you? That was a real, like, Darth Vader voice most important. impressive kind of moment from her. Just iconic stuff.

I loved it. Of all the pathetic things that we saw from Empire Security here, like he does say this isn't your sector, I can't let you through. Why is his line there not, I can't let you through because your troopers were all gunned down in the back by your own blaster fire at your checkpoint on your planet?

And then you vanished at the exact moment that a known Jedi was confirmed to have escaped. not been updated in the system. All it says is like... Neither is the Grand Inquisitor's heavy air quotes death, by the way. I actually thought that was interesting that she uses the Grand Inquisitor

as kind of a threat here and it's effective. So the guard and the troop we can presume the collective at large there, they don't know that he's off the board. What did you make of that? I think they've seen rebels and they're like, we know he's not dead.

Love this. I love this. They've time traveled into the future. and have seen the Poloneverse. And they know that Jason Isaacs will be coming in to voice the grand inquisitor with pistons in his gut. On the screen, when her image pops up on the screen, the Arabic reads her name and that is region unknown. That's all the information that's up there. Great stuff from the empire. But even worse, as you and I have texted and slacked about, is the absolute baffling move.

of Tala getting through security, Queen shit, great stuff, and then just sits down right next to someone with other people all around her and just starts openly talking Obi-Wan through his infiltration plan. Now, this is like shocking. I have to say, even for,

there are a few, like, this is shocking moments in the episode, many of which connect to Tala, including later when she disarms and shoots to New York Storm Trojublj. Vaping them on the helmets, which is just an all time. I think he said, wow, Star Wars sequence. Slapin and boppin. Slaping and bopping.

Slap and bop and the classic tala move. The fact that nobody in this command center hears her. The guy next to her gives her like a little look. Like he's maybe five feet away. Also, there are like seven people in the room. And then the one guy, the one officer does come over to, you know, he's fishy. He senses something amiss and you're like, hey, great, one guy paying attention. She takes him out.

She's awesome. Never doubted her for a minute. But and we get, you know, the com link is left there, which is great because it's another a new hope call back to the C3Po moment. Love it. But nobody hears everyone's voice coming out of it. I'm like, does everyone have AirPods in? I just don't get it.

She doesn't even bother to hide the body that she is just like, it's just half. That was the other thing. It was up there with the complete and total visibility of Anakin and Padmae kissing behind the pillar and sick. It's like, anyone can see you. Anyone can see the body. He's just right there on the floor. Astonishing stuff, Joe, really was.

But we had to get Obi-1 in this building somehow. And he swims in. phantom menace callback with the Obi-1 Quigon re-breather. I just don't know why she couldn't have like C-3-3PO and R2 found in like an abandoned because she needed the she needed the computer and maybe that's the only one there was room for because every other nook and cranny was taken up by a Jedi corpse trophy that's maybe there for other purposes which we'll talk about in a few minutes. I don't know. It's puzzling. Were you puzzled? Speaking of puzzling by Obi-1 not taking, because he has to knock out this

stormtrooper to after he gets in his little water duct. Were you like, were you wondering why he didn't take the armor? Because again, of all the of all the death star New Hope parallels that you could draw, taking the armor and wearing it to pursue your rescue would have been. I mean, it's just right there. Does it feel like that was won a New Hope beat too many? Or do you think that this is just yet another no one wants to cover you in McGregor's face and we can't blame them decision? I think that one. I think the beard has to shine through. Oh my God. So him swimming down is, as many people have noted, a phantom menace callback.

He's wearing the same sort of equipment. And that's how Cal gets in. And it's a Cal Custis thing, blah, blah, but I don't know about you, but I felt some loss through the looking glass. I knew it. Yes. I knew. And also, I mean, sadly, I thought of looking glass again later when the wall. break and the water floods in.

I thought you were going to say when Wade died and it was just as sad as when Charlie Pace died. Yeah, when Wade put his hand up on the glass of his cockpit and it said, not sully ship. And I went and felt the emotional connection. Yeah. And then the Michael Jenkins of scores kicked in. Yeah. Yeah.

I felt it. Oh, my God. Wade. Oh, Wade. We apologize to your memory, which is just, you know. Yeah, it's podcast fodder. What can we say? On the Comlink, a New Hope parallel front, we got another one because when Taller returns,

Obi-1 is hiding from these two troopers. A great proud Star Wars tradition. If you have your subtitles on, your close captioning on, you can see the things that the stormtroopers are muttering to each other. One of them here says, this place gives me the creeps, which I loved. Like, same. And I hope we're not stationed here very long. Great stuff.

I love disgruntled Disgrantle stormtroopers are my favorite. This job sucks. Obi-1 uses the force to lead them away with the sound, which of course he does in a new hope. And this is like a real baby step

for our force-wielding Bubba kind of moment. Like, he's easing back in and it's going to all start happen rapidly as he gets his mojo back. But that was a nice little moment. And then you know, we get this real, like, shift into, from action to horror when he enters this Hall of Faces-esque tomb. You know, he's found the secure sector. Shout out code cylinders in

Star Wars. Always love to see them. And it's this chamber, as you noted earlier, filled with amber, frozen in amber, body upon body. There's more than one level. There's chamber after chamber. Force users, certainly. Perhaps they're allies. I think I've just found out what they're hiding down here. Now, we had gotten a couple Chekhovs. God, what's down there mentions earlier in the episode. So we knew we were going to find something and he says, this place isn't a fortress. It's a tomb.

I thought you were going to do your border mirror impression there. Oh. This isn't a mine. It's a tomb. Oh, God. It is actually, I'm laughing here, but it is quite heart-wrenching the way that Obi-1's voice cracks when he says tomb. It's a very sad moment. And, you know,

we only recognize we, the collective Star Wars Internet, a couple faces. Like, definitively, we recognize Tara Sanubei. Shout out his lovely Clone Wars run with Asoka. What a jam.

So that was very sad. But like, what a figure to pick, right? This character from the Clone Wars who was just like completely, like elderly and lovable. Yes.

Helping the Patoons, helping the younglings. Yeah. Like, all that's, yeah. Yes. And also, like, even though we only recognize the couple faces, I think you can presume that Obi-1 recognizes more and that even if he doesn't, it's this this hellscape and this reminder of all that was lost. I love what you said earlier about what crystallizes for him. You know, we linger on a couple different women. And it's like, will we learn who those characters are? Or are we just, you know, seeing various faces. And then we get to that youngling with this little youngling cap. And like, and then you and McGregor goes, not the younglings. yelling younglings. Yeah. No, the not the younglings moment.

To me, you know, we saw him like use the force a little bit to distract the stormtroopers. But to me, this is why he's able to sort of, you know, I think I saw some people complaining that they wanted more of a training montage for Obi-1, like that he advanced a little too much in this episode in terms of skills. I disagree. And I feel like this moment is just sort of like, well, fuck it then. the sabres coming out. Like if they're doing this, if Anakin's doing this, you know, again,

not the younglings. Not the younglings is what prompted him to, you know, fight Anakin on Mustafa on the first place. Exactly. Yeah.

And so the other, the other theory, like, you know, every single person who talks about Star Wars on the internet has tried to identify who these people in the,

in Amber are. The only, unlike wild claims, less wild claims, The only theory that I want to float here is that there's that figure who has like, who's like swathed in red robes. And I like the theory that that's one of the witches of Dathamere in the amber there. Do you not like that theory? I saw, I'll have to go back and zoom in again.

I didn't think that the, the facial, like, tattoos seemed right. Lined up? Yeah. But I'll have to go look again. I mean, in general, I'm interested in getting the witches of Dathamere into the story as often as possible. Mace Windu, absolutely not. But a witch of Daphimir, possibly. But anyway, the youngling is the real important.

Yeah, I agree. In general, with the training montage stuff, I... The women and the children, too. I mean, Obi-Wunkinobi is one of the great Jedi in the history of the galaxy. And also he's like, even as he levels up throughout this episode and he does get the mojo back, like, we're not at rapidly swinging my saber prequel pace here still.

I mean, he definitely has more to go. We got one rapid's twirl. One little twirl. I love the force three twirl. That was a delight. But yeah, that that youngling moment just to take him back to Anakin's fault, to take him back to Musafar, that we keep talking about what rungs we need to get to the only a master of evil, Darth moment. And like, that's a pretty important one right there. I did have this as a powerful as that was.

I did have a like, there was a little piece of me that was like, this makes it hard for me to accept him going back. back to Tatouine and becoming a hermit again, knowing what the Inquisitors are out there doing because the Inquisitors are active for years after this. Years. Now, that shouldn't all fall on Obi-Wan, but like... It's tough. It's a tough look.

I'll just say, here's the deal. I've heard rumblings that they're thinking of doing a second season of Obi-Wan because the numbers are so popular. I can't fucking wait already. I'm in. That sounds great. I love it. in order to make again,

they're not out here to break any canon, but you could figure out a way to do like a sort of Scarlet Pimpernel Batman thing where you're just sort of like Hermit in the desert is his cover and he's out there running missions for the rebellion, you know.

It's great. If I find out in a future episode of Obi-1 Canobi season 7 then he was hiding in the shadows on Malacor during Twilight of the Apprentice aiding in the long overdue destruction of brother, I'll be overjoyed. Can't wait. Thorey Corner. Yeah.

You know, could it just be a trophy room full of corpses? It could. But I feel strongly, as do many other people on the internet, that this is a Palpatine cloning. Listen, why else preserve them this way? I think you know that Palpatine isn't going to somehow return all by himself, right? So now. It does feel like now. I mean, somehow Palpatine returns.

Just an Alzheimer's. The stupidest line in all of Star Wars, maybe. But now it feels like all of the Mandalorian and all of, like, it's all sort of here to shore that up in a way that I don't mind, but it feels like, not a retcon, but they're just sort of like, okay, the story group at Lucasum was like, let's back, backseat some of this stuff in here to make this all feel a little less somehow. Palpatine return. Yeah, I definitely, like, don't want everything to be about Palpatine all the time,

as I think many people agree. But especially stories that are set in this era of the canon, actually helping to explain some of this stuff and establish it more would be great. I live in fear of learning how he's using, learning more about how he's using our beloved Grogo in this respect. But, yeah, just even the visual similarities, like, not identical, but the visual similarities to the, like, the lab casings that we've seen in Mando, Rise of Skywalker, Bad Batch, etc.

And also I was thinking about, you know, Luminara in Rebels and the way that her, Ben wrote about this in his piece, actually, the way that her corpse in this casing was used to lure Canaan out of hiding, which is like this really hideous, terrible, the appalling thing that the empire does. And it's like really harrowing to think about maybe, like, Do each of those casings come out of the wall? And could they go and use them in any number of places to lure Jedi with attachments to those particular characters out into the open? It's just like so, it gives me like chills to think about.

It's really, boy. I had a lot of people ask if, I saw a lot of people ask if, like, Rokin's wife could be in there. And it's like, sure, possibly it would help make that baffling line feel a little bit more useful. but, yeah, time we'll tell. Maybe in episode five, Obi-Wan will debrief on everyone he saw and Broken. He was like, Rogan, your wife was,

there was a hat chick with some really, like, beautiful hair, and he's like, damn it, that's my wife. Anyway. We haven't gone, like, literally, literally chronologically authoring these scenes because there are so many sequences that cut between the Rivalea

interrogation sequences and all of the Obi Talah action. But let's talk about the Fortress Inquisitorious torture time for a bit here before our plot lines all converge. I love this. When Leia is when we initially see her as the prisoner. Yeah. Another new hope, you know, we get the I'm a princess.

My dad's a senator. Line another New Hope nod there. Do you know who my father is? She's crazy stuff. My Princess Leia just did. But I love that. I love it not just because it's a New Hope parallel. But when Riva comes in and she says, that's cute, you have no rights here.

princess. That's cute. It was an incredible line. It feels like some class stuff, especially because we got that line from the Grand Inquisitor of, we found you in the gutter, in the gutter. And there's a couple options here for Riva as far as I see it. There's two options. One, her bitterness, or it might be both, but her bitterness comes from feeling like feeling abandoned on Correscent, feeling like Obi-1 should have come and rescue. the surviving younglings, feeling abandoned by the Jedi, etc. That would explain a lot of things. But there's also this possibility.

And I think especially because we got that really intriguing sequence where Obi-Wan in last episode was talking about being taken from his family as a young man and his brother and all this or stuff like that, is that like maybe Riva is also angry about if she were a youngling being taken from her family by the Jedi. Do you know what I mean? Like, and then abandoned. Where was the gutter and which she was found? Probably post Order 66, right?

Because, you know, but like that idea of the Jedi order stealing her from her family and then abandoning her at, you know, in her hour of need. And to contrast that with this precious little princess who people will cross galaxies for. Yeah. Yeah. I found that really powerful. Yeah, I agree with that. That really struck me in this episode as well.

And I was thinking about it too because given, you know, we've talked a lot over the first few episodes about Riva's obsession. We've used the word obsession, seeming obsession with finding Obi-One. And how much of that is about wanting to please Vader, how much of that is about her own history with him, history with the Jedi Order, et cetera. One of the things that was so interesting in these sequences with Leah is that she's just as focused here.

She's not only using Leah, the lore Canobe. she wants to learn about the path. She wants to learn about all of these other people who are working to help other force users, who, as you just said, like didn't do that for her, right? And I loved, you know, like the hope that Leia has at the beginning with the He Will Come for Me.

And the way that some of that is just maybe inherent to who she is. We've heard a lot about how she believes in trust and helping others. And that's been at a point of contrast. between her and Obi-Won, but also, of course, speaks to the bond they've built. And then the way that that leads us

through not only the Obi-1 is dead, nobody's coming idea. And we, of course, have to talk for a minute about what that means for the new hope, hollow moment, which we'll circle back to in a second.

But all of the lines that we get in their subsequent sequences about Riva's own life and her own past. You know, I thought it was so interesting that even, like, moments like, um, the people I'm looking for left him there to die.

Like even her lies are rooted in something that seems deeply personal, like this projection. Right. But also were those the lies that Vader, whoever told her. Right. The Jedi left you there to die. Right. And that's a lie. Right.

You know. I saw a lot of people mentioning in this last week across Yield interwebs the message that Obi-Wan specifically, the transmission. that he sent out, like telling people not to return to the temple and whether that might be part of why she, you know, blames him specifically so much. But like she says, there's the Lola moment. You know, she says, I had a droid when I was younger too. It was taken from me like everything else. That makes me think of what you were saying a minute ago about how much of this is actually what the Jedi do when they take you away from your own life and your own existence and strip you off that

attachment and make you feel ashamed if it's something that you crave or that you want. I think you're, I think you're really on to something with that. I know what it's like being alone. Same idea. And I think that I think it was our friend Eric Voss who pointed out that the youngling

that we see you trapped in Amber is one of the younglings from the opening scene. Right. So like those children were hunted. Right. And whether some of them were hunted and put in Amber

and some of them were hunted and turned into Inquisitors, I think, you know, that's what's your face? Well, it's just one of those things where it's like this is kind of a classic like Star Wars conundrum, whether it's Vado or Vado, Vater or Kylo, Vado, it works, I guess,

or anyone else who undergoes this redemption arc and it's like, well, how much do we embrace and how much can we like not let ourselves off the hook for remembering all of the horrors that they've inflicted on others? And with like, you know, with your theory about whether we could see a face turn coming for Riva, like, if that student was her class, and her friend and the youngling who she fought side by side to escape the temple with and she spends her days working for the people who did that to him walking by his body. It's like, that's grim. That's like how twisted and gaslit and manipulated she was, you know, and I have a lot of,

a lot of questions about it. I think it's, I think her performance here, again, as I mentioned, I think is so good. it's important for us to remember. She's the one who figured out that Obi-One has a connection to bail because she was just like, she just spends a lot of her time, apparently, assessively going through the Jedi archives. I think.

And then so then she has this moment where she's trying to crack Leah. It's not working. And then she tries to probe her, you know, the way that we've seen many other folks do. And then... And it worked when she did it to Haja in episode two. You know, we know that she's adept. Yeah.

Leah Sassas is a Cisterian contest, great stuff. She says, you're strong. And there's, to me, there's a look of recognition there to me where, I mean, how could even not know that this is a force-sensitive child? But that doesn't make sense. Like, that was actually something I got really hung up on, unless you're saying that she's protecting her and will, that will be part of her turn at the end. Like, she takes her to a torture chamber as this, this 10-year-old child is.

screaming in terror and anguish. And she's lowering the probe needles into her fucking face until Tala begins to enact a distraction. That's the only reason she stops. And when Leah's like, why are you doing this? She's like, I do this to anyone who's a threat to the empire. So I don't read any empathy or tenderness there. Maybe. I don't know.

There was just like, you're strong sort of moment to me. But one of the things about the end up. And I think you're right, it's indoctrination. And we shouldn't forget that. But one of the things about the indoctrination of the Sith and the Inquisitors and their army, it's like anyone else who's strong is a threat to you, especially if you're pursuing a place by Vader's side. But we don't know what our ultimate goal is. No, we don't.

So then is that like, are we four episodes in? Are we too late? Like, when do we get to learn? Very possibly. Very possibly. That's a big thing to not know about the second most prominent antagonist in the show, four episodes. And again, a show I've largely, like, loved. But that, I, and I find Riva really compelling.

But if we don't find that out really soon, I worry that it's going to be too late. I would like it to not be a late Act 3 reveal. Absolutely. I agree with you. I completely agree with you. But, like, I think that, I don't know. I see some sort of, like, kinship that she feels with Leah here. You're strong, like, you know, and it's, it's similar to, you know, a new hope.

Vader saying the force is strong with this one in Luke, right? Like, we're looking for as many a new hope parallels as we can find. But, like, you make some compelling points. How do you go from feeling kinship to putting needles in a child? Great, great question. Great question. I'll be thinking on it. It's very possible that Riva, that we don't have enough time for all this.

...tolda droid into a tracker. You know, the reasons why I realize I like Lola so much? I love Lola. She looks like a little... She looks like a little disc man. Yeah, that's true. It really does. Yeah.

Takes you into that, like, back into the stranger things, kind of. I mean, those are Walkman, but still, you know, let's get some tunes going. I love it. But here's what, here's what was so amazing about a disc man. I'm speaking to the children who are listening to us right now. Walkmen are useful in that you can just like clip them to do yourself and just walk around listening. With a disc man, you have to hold it preciously horizontally or else it doesn't work at all. That's true.

It must be on flat table top. at all times. Completely ridiculous technology. Oh my God. Wildly unportable, portable, portable technology. Incredible stuff. How are you feeling about the New Hope Leah call to old Ben Kenobi in light of her, in fact, hearing Obi-1 is dead here, and that's the end of the, maybe she just never heard his name. Are you feeling at peace? Are you hung up on this somewhere in between? I never fully, okay, I was never, maybe she just didn't know who that was, team. So I can accept the explanation that Leah sent that message.

You fought alongside my father in the Comores, et cetera, because she was afraid of it being intercepted. And so she was sort of masking. Yeah, masking it in case she was intercepted. Also just in a rush. There's a lot going on. I mean, I would feel like, hey, Ben, remember that time? Like, if I ever really need you, you know,

I'm about to be tortured by Darth Vader and his Legion. and I need to send you a message quickly. I'm not going to be like, Joe, what's good? Remember all those amazing pods? Yeah, you're going to be like, you're going to be like, you're like, it's me, Mal.

It's me, Mal, come home. Not like Joanna Robinson. Yeah, I'm going to be, I'm going to send you a coded message so you know for sure to me. I'm going to be like, you served with Steve Allman in the Zoom wars. And then you'll know. that it's really me. You think maybe there was an earlier part of the message that we didn't see, you know,

that like they didn't rewind. Or to, yeah, maybe, well, maybe it keeps going. Maybe it keeps going. And she's like, also that time that Zach Braff was a moment, that was crazy, right? Remember that? And like, how's your girlfriend Tala doing? She's the best. I love it.

Yeah, more personal preamble or post script. I'm into, I'm into that. So that, I mean, that I can hang with. It's still always, like, if we're going to accept Obi-Wan of this series is Cherish Canon, it is still always then going to bother me that we don't get to see Leah react to his death. You know what I mean? And a lot of people have pointed out, well, she barely reacts when Alderon explodes. But there's a difference between putting up a brave face for Vader and then Luke coming to you and saying,

I wish Ben was here. And her not being like, I know, Ben was always there for me in my darkest. By the way, are you my brother? I'm incredibly poor sensitive. Or should we make out? I'm not sure. I'm confused. Like we've said, we said over and over again, retcons have always been a part of Star Wars.

I'm fine with it. I agree with you about the morning point, but it's like I keep coming back to, I don't want to not get new Star Wars stories because George Lucas didn't have 45 years of canon figured out when he made his first movie. Like, it's just... Completely. But at the same time, I do understand why certain people are stressed about it. Like, I can see people size.

of it. And, like, it's a precious, precious thing, of course. Someone on Twitter. But I think if you honor the intention and the spirit of it, like, yeah, we can assess some of the words. No good sentence ever started with someone on Twitter, but someone on Twitter was responding to me about this. And they said something about, I'm not going to deprive myself of enjoying this just because of some obscure line from 1977. And I'm like, I think Leah's message is one of the most famous lines in all of them. of Star Wars, as is Obi-1 Canobi, that's a name I haven't in a long time. Those are famous lines.

So if people are stressed about it, I get it. Totally. I'm not trying to talk anyone else out of feeling that way. It's just for me, I've made my piece, I think. And as long as nothing truly sacred is shattered in terms of the essence of the characters and their journeys,

I'll be glad we had the show. I will. I'm loving the show so far. Some, you know, some wobbles in this. episode, but episode three was amazing. Back to it, we have a couple scenes to hit still. So we get the distraction that Ben requires. It is Tala herself. Any shred of hope that she had of maintaining the cover officially, she knows will be gone after this, but she does it anyway, right? Does it anyway. For Obie and Leah, she rules. I cackled aloud when she said I was stationed on Mapuso when the hump began ranking officer and Riva replied qualifications for discharge.

it's like honestly, good note. She's right. She's right to observe that. The, again, we're going kind of a tad out of order here, so we're not, we're not seesawing back and forth between the two character sets too fully.

But when, when Talas says that she discovered that the path goes to Florem, it's like Honda, love anything that connects to my guy, Honda, always a thrill. This was fun because she's using

a lot of the language that does actually connect to what we know they're doing, like a lot of truth embedded in the lie, right? But kind of leading them into this, hoping to lead them into this den of piracy. Admiral Act pirates. I love a pirate trap. Great stuff.

Also, another new hope connection. And of course, the, you know, the torture, the tortured droid stuff in the, that harrowing sequence is another new hope echo. But here, you know, it makes us think, of course, of Leah's fake out attempt with Tarkin. The doomed Dantuin misdirect, uh, one trying to spare. Alderon, but I loved the way that Riva said it makes sense the path would have people among us. Like that language, that phrasing, it sounds like she's using the path not just as like a portal or a road, but a collection of people. Mm-hmm.

I thought that was cool and interesting. I think it's similar to how you think about like, you know, the Underground Railroad. Like Underground Railroad is a place and people at the same time. Yeah. Tala, what did you think of this whole? Yeah, I am a spy. Yeah, I am. Listen, in a lesser actress, this scene does not play very well.

But honestly, I can buy that Indira Varma could sell someone on anything. She's looking sharp in her uniform. She's got mocks, she's got confidence. I loved it. She's being fueled by her burning love for Obi-1 Canobey to save him. It would not have worked, certainly, if Riva had bought it. But she didn't. She was, you know, intrigued to have such a capable or a confident liar in front of her.

But before she could be fully convinced, she's pulled away by the it's him call because Obie has found Leia. We get this, again, darkness and light, right? Here it is once again. When he turns the lights off in this room. This is so beautiful. Lovely. Last week on Mapuso in the darkness and the horror of the darkness, the light was the flash

of the red that illuminated the monster, and it's the inverse here, this flash of blue, this beacon of hope. He's there. He came to save her just like she knew that he would. Now, on the one hand,

our guy is using the saber a grand great sign, right? On the other hand, he needed four slashes to kill this first stormtrooper, which candidly is worrying.

Only two to kill the second one, though. So, you know, not in peak form yet, which from a storytelling perspective he shouldn't be, but he's working and working back, building up the strength

and the confidence alike. And his breath control. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of labored breathing. I love the labored breathing, not just in the scene, but the whole episode. He should be tired. He's got to build it back brick by brick. It's also another like Vader-O-B-1 connect, you know. But I love Jim McGregor's delivery of an Obi-1 Kenobi, and I'm here to rescue you.

He didn't say that. But he should have. What did you think of him saying, I know? But he does say I know. Wonder. stuff. Wonderful stuff. It's just, you know, obviously different than the Han Solo moment, but still delightful to make us think of that. Also, like, the color, the heavy, like, bathing their faces in red in this sequence. It made me think of Mustafa and Obi-1 going back to Padme

after the horror of his interaction with Anakin. And obviously, like, that doesn't have a very happy ending. And we know that Leia, dirty here will, but that was interesting, I thought. And then they flee. There's the seeker droid, IDing them in the hallway. The troopers are descending. It's time for our guy to fight. And he's blocking plaster bolts. He's redirecting the fire. He breaks out in this really truly thrilling moment, the Form 3 Sabre twirl. I love that. I clapped. That was fun. He's very slowly returning to the rhythms of a Jedi life. There's even a moment where he's holding Leah's hand with one hand and just with his, with the other hand, using the same

to block all of their shots. Like, there's no prequel pace swirling and twirling. He's not there yet, but he's regaining some of his form and some of his confidence. And I think most crucially of all, some of his swagger. That was the fun thing to see because he's going to need, he's going to need that. Like, that's the signal that, you know, only when the eyes are closed, can you truly see what the way moment from last episode where you feel here that he is like really embracing that, that he is internalizing

that message again. Yeah. I also want to talk about this hallway with the water. Like you already mentioned, you already mentioned like the Fallen Order Visual Comp, but I think also so, you know, there's very obviously like fire last week, water this week, red and this is in the Moosephar system. So you have the

fire water adjacency of Naur and Musafir. Absolutely. But I think there's also, when people talk about the force, you know, you talk about it as nature. It's all around you. It connects every living thing, all this sort of stuff. And you think about the way in which Darth used an element to wound and hurt Obi-Wan in last week's episode, and the way in which Obi-Wan waterbends essentially uses an element to save himself. And, you know, his connection to the force,

to the elements around him versus in conflict with, in conflict with the sands of Tatouin, in conflict with all this other stuff. I love that. I thought that was really powerful. I love that so much. It's so funny, I had a powerful water bending feeling there, too. And it's cool, too, not only the way that he is, he's using such strength to block and hold and keep it at bay, but then that moment when he channels the force to shatter the rest of the barrier

and direct the water to them. I mean, will we get some earth bending or some air bending in the next couple episodes? One can only help. Let's talk about this final escape. and because Tala after the slap and boop has reunited with our other heroes, and she's told Obie to pick up a trench coat, and he does. And Leah barely concealed beneath it. I mean, Joe, we thought the lightsaber on the hip that was visible with a shift

of the cloak in episode one was tough stuff. Discussed. You've never used a trench coat to smuggle Halo into, like, a movie theater or something like that? Halo doesn't like to travel. That's why I stay home with him as often as possible. What do you think about this? It's ridiculous. whatever it's ridiculous

but as I was like sort of defending I think Steve and Joe we were trying to talk to me about this earlier as I was sort of half defending where I was just sort of like listen in a new hope you're just scuttling all around like that Death Star you know like honestly he could have instead of using the Tragode he could

have just been like lay a walk close to my side you know what I mean and it would have been as of what are they going to do put her in a trash droid like you know like what are they going to do that would have been the parallel with the trash compactor So they could have. They could have.

I don't know. The thing I was most offended by is all of this old man talk directed. Oh, yeah. Not only from inside the house, but I was listening to like a wonderful YouTuber, and he was like, like all elderly people. I was like, what? Are you saying? To me, he's in the bloom of youth.

Again, labored breathing and all. One of the things that really struck me in the sequence when Riva arrives is how focus she is on Tala, you know, shouting out traitor and, you know, then you die for nothing. Like that pursuit of Obi-Wan, which is so sacred and this, this like myopic focus is not the only thing that she is paying attention to here. As noted earlier, very focused on the path. Here, very focused on Tala. That was just really interesting to me. And then is that Sulean?

No indication that they were coming, that they changed their minds. What do you think Sillian Wade? If they're drafted from the bleachers of Fenway, is there, is there music like the dropkick Murphy's? Like, what plays with Sully and Wade sort of hove into view? It's so funny because, like, this scene, as silly as all of the Sillian Wade stuff is. I do get emotional anytime fighter pilots, like, sweep in to, like, save people. Yeah. I mean, they know what they're doing here.

You know, the Falcon in episode one, of course. But, like, my favorite version of that is actually in the Force Awakens when Poe and the other rebels, like, calm and save. Chewy and Han and Takadana like that. And the music is like, and you got it so excited. So I was like, oh, I love a swoop, a Rebel Pilot swoop moment. Oh, man. We had a slap a boop. We just needs to.

Yeah. It's all happening. Rebel swoop. But we just needs to learn, you know, time to fold him. Time to walk away. Time to run. You need the reps. Like, we see this with Obi-1 because he breaks out the blaster here and his, it's landed every shot.

We're only a couple episodes removed from him. like being in full Bull Durham, Nucle-Lush, you know, can't hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat blaster territory to land in every shot. So, we just needed a couple more, a couple more flights, but unfortunately he didn't get that chance

because Riva force fuel cells, a bomb, in essence, and explodes a ship. Tough way to go. RIP, Wade, we quite literally, hardly knew you. Wait, no. That is a,

God. That is a great badass move. I'd love to just chuck something. Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Fifth Brother Grunts, one of my favorite subtitles that we've gotten so far.

Just another series of elves for Fifth Brother who cannot stop catching the owls. And then we cut to the heavy breathing, the angry breathing. Dad's mad. He has rushed in at a hurry pace. Does this count as a run?

Is this a run? He's not running, but he is moving as fast as we have ever seen him. Like, We were used to such a... Striding. Yes, striding is a good one. Striding is a good one. I like it. He moves to

force lift and force stroke Riva right away. Very pissed. You were warned what defeat would bring. I will tolerate your weakness no longer. But wait, despite pursuing them with blasters and a full deployment of troops, she'd let them go on purpose.

Track her on the ship. As soon as we hear this, we know, because she says it's going to be with him wherever he goes, that it's Lola, who she had in her hands. earlier. Devastating. The disc man betrays you once again. Vader, like, you know, king of the tracking play,

shocked by this, but pleased, I seem, it seems I have underestimated you, he says, as Fifth Brother watches and wiltz, weeping, grunting and crying.

I love the idea that Vader learned this trick from Riva, maybe. Good, good on. Fun fact, I learned extra-cricularly. I don't want to ruin the movie magic for

So if you want to skip ahead, you can. But Vader has always been a thing cobbled together, right? James Earl Jones's voice, someone in the suit, someone else playing, you know, Humpty Dumpty Anakin at the end, like all that sort of stuff. There are three Vader performers at play here, right? There's the stunt Vader. There is the holy shit he's tall Vader. And then there's Hayden Christensen.

So for this scene where we see Riva sort of flung up in the air, that is the double in the suit who is tall enough to look imposing, which I think is interesting. Hayden's not tall enough to do it. Also imposing the flash of red in Lola's eye as she activates, but this is not the only closing image that we get in these final moments. as our heroes make their way back to Roken Ship and they confront the fact that they are soldiers now, after all, we get like a truly moving, really emotional and sweet moment when Leah reaches over and takes Obi-Wan's hand. And I just thought this was, I loved this.

I thought this was so sweet and like heart-melting. He looks at her with such tenderness, and he's using his thumb to like rub her hand and comfort her and she's smiling at him. And there's just this like soothing desire to protect and care that is resonating between them. And this was just a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful closing note before the pop of red for evil Lola.

I know, we, you know, we have the man himself, Joby Juan, Joby Herald here to talk to us about some themes. It's going to be really fun to listen to that. But I want to say before we go that, like, thematically, mythologically, this idea, as many quibbles as I have about the saga of Wayne, the tragedy. Have you heard about the tragedy of Darth Wayne? This idea of Obi-1-Kinobi journeying into hell, down into the depths of something, down into seeing the worst, you know, seeing the dead around him, to snatch up this one bright

piece of hope, which is Leah, and bring her back to... to the surface with him. That's, you know, that's some mythological orpheus shit. Like, that is, that is, like, beautiful in concept. And whether or not it always worked in execution, I think we might say that it didn't, but I think conceptually, that's a brilliant idea. I love that. I really do.

Okay. I think we've hit all of our Easter eggs, actually. Are there any other eggs in the Dune Sea that we haven't mentioned that you wanted to shout out? I think so. I think so. I think so. Mousstroid. Love to see a Mousstroid.

Always a delight. Purge troopers. I think we got them all. Secret Scroll. I think maybe it's, I don't know. Have we just decided that scrolls are dummies? I don't know what we've decided. But anyway, I'm going to say it's the officer who was so easily bluffed at the Imperial Metal Detector.

Oh, interesting. Who says, yes, yes, sir. Tatala. Okay, the guard. I'm going with Wade. Yeah, Wade. Of course. I have to go with Wade.

Oh, God. Okay. before we get to our interview, quick mailback time. Guys, again, always happy to join you. Let me tell you something. I don't think I could work at Inquisitor HQ

because I would have seen Leah in the trench coat. I would have been like, hey, guys, we should maybe take a look over here. That looks suspicious. But the fifth brother just walked right past it. Well, maybe A, maybe that would make you employee of the month.

so maybe you should work there. B, maybe you're a stormtrooper who just does not give a shit. And you're like, that's probably true. I don't care. That's probably true.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like who's in charge of polishing the like creepy dead people in amber cabinets? Whose job is that? I just feel like you probably make a minimum wage. And at that point,

like it's a life. It's literally life or death. If you start snitching, people go start shooting, lightsaber is going to start sabering. You just really, Someone else's problem. I want to go home to my family tonight.

So I'm going to just let him slide. And hopefully that all works out for me. I understand. I get it. All right. Our first question comes from Vang. Sick name. Number one character that would change your mind on helping them after saying no 10 seconds ago.

Like, I think the obvious answer is Obi-1-Kanobi, but I think the real answer for me here it might be Tala. Well, my answer is Obi-1. I feel like, yes, sir. Either way, it's like we basically have to retract the pod and everything we said about Roken because it's like, same, I guess.

My answer is, Obi-Wan. No, I won't help you. My wife died. Yes, I will. No, I've got all this stuff here. But, like, you ask, then you're Obi-1. And you're Obi-1. How about you, Jomey?

Yeah. I mean, it's probably, Is it Kate Bishop? I would always say yes. It's probably Vader. They'd be like, hey, I need your help. I'd be like, no, I'm good off that. Be like, excuse me, he'll snap somebody's neck in the corner and be like,

that's what happens to people who don't help me. I'm like, hey, my fault. What I meant to say was absolutely, sir. You know, I was just, I was tripping. I thought you was somebody else. And I thought she was my uncle. I didn't really realize that she was Darth Vader. That's on me.

I need to be better. I'm just keeping pushing. I feel like that would actually go like this. You going, no. and then going, I mean, yes. Exactly. Exactly.

So that goes. Just instantaneously be like, oh, my fault. I had you confused with somebody else. That's all me. That's my bad. I need to be better. Yeah. So Fader would be my choice easily.

All right. Our next question comes from Austin. On a scale of one to five, with five being the most likely, how likely is it that we get a cameo from each of the following characters in the final two episodes. Quigon Jin, Yoda,

Cal Kestis, Sotin, Kriis, Canaan Jaris, Emperor Palpatine. Do you want to assign a number to each or just pick the most likely? It's Quigon. I mean, it has to be Quigon is the most likely.

And I just don't think. I think we're probably not getting at anyone else. Yeah. Okay, let's do this. If you had to, I agree at this point, sadly, on the Sotteen front. If you had to pick one other. a character. Quagons of the five, he's the

sure thing, or the closest to a sure thing. Who would be next on your list? Would it be Yoda? It's Yoda. Yeah, it's Yoda. I think so, too. It's a little self-contained little thing. They're not, like, you know, we're not I know a lot of discussion was like, oh, who are we going to get? Like, you know, could we get, you know, we talked about

getting Anakin, like actual Anakin and Obi-Wan in, in like the series together. Two episodes left. We haven't even seen our homeboy with the long hair and the robot arm and the saber. Like, it's nuts. Well, he saw him as a mirage out in the Mepuzzo deck, you know. I still, I think we'll see.

I think we're going to see as Anakin. Yeah. That almost feels like ineligible for the prompt because that's like embedded in the text, I think. And listen, I want Cameron Monaghan to stay working. So if there's room for Calcastas somewhere, I want that for Camerononahan. Some of no expectations, guys. But I don't think we're getting in here. I don't think it's happening here.

No. Agreed. It would be fun though. Our last question kills from Adam. What was your favorite thing about Wade? This is my favorite question we've ever gotten. It's just unbelievable stuff. I started cry laughing when I saw this.

Oh, my gosh. I think mine is that his dying words were behind you. It's just positive and full of hope and belief until the end. For me, I think it's going to be that breakaway pop hit that he wrote you all, everybody will always stay with me. Shout out Charlie Page. Fly shaft.

Was that the name of the band? Yeah. FlyShft. Yeah. I loved their work. Loved it. Yeah, yeah. My favorite.

Remember when Wade said, so that's it, Fortress Inquisitorious. It's good. I think it was like five lines total, right? Thank you, Wade. Thanks for your service. My favorite thing was when he led the heat to that 2006 championship. That was really special. He shot a lot of free throws.

Even I got that joke. Good kid. Good kid. I mean, my airskin when he plays silly is great, fantastic. I would love to see her again, you know, barely used. I'd love to see more of her if she wants to carry the memory of Wade forward in the franchise. I'm for it. I'm for it. We'll still be talking about Wade and his sacrifice when we get to Andor. I can't wait. All right. From remembering Wade to chatting with the man who brought Wade to life, it is time to speak with Obi-1 Canobi, head writer and executive producer, Joby Harold.

So we have, of course, the barrage of questions for you. We also know that there are things you can't say. And I know that you're really good at not answering questions you can't. We're old friends at this point. Yeah. Now that we're four episodes into the series, is there anything more that you can share with us and our listeners about how the show was updated and reshape before it launched? Yeah, I think tonally,

Star Wars threads the needle when it works so well by having the lightness of touch and having the weight of the drama live so close to each other successfully. And that's obviously a hard thing to do, but I think the teams, as we sort of came together and started thinking about what it could be, it became quite clear that it should have a weight to it, because it's a weighty story and the characters

in a very specific time in the timeline, but also in Herons and Star Wars is finding the ways to find liberty when they're justified and when they're needed from a character point of view. So Tika became a part of that conversation early on. Tika being like, it's tough living in a cave by yourself, but when you have Tika walk into that situation, you can give it a slight moment of lightness. It's still from a character point of view, reinforcing

that the only person that Obi-Wan's really talking to is a Java. Now, that kind of speaks to where he is in the universe at that point, but it also allows you an opportunity to bring it up again, as does the layer of it all in the tonality of that sometimes. And the time when you get to, like, Haja does that as well. And they're all rhythmically there at moments when they can lift things, when things have been quite dramatic for a while.

So it's all, it's quite systematic in the way it's timed out tonally. You mentioned that everything that you brought to this sort of informed how Obi-1 winds up in this show, particularly. Is there anything he brought to, like, when you talk to you and about this character? Are there any insights he had or questions that he had about Obi-1 that surprised you or made you think about the character from, I don't know, a different point of view? When I spoke to him about the character, those brief times that I did, his instincts are always so profound just simply because it's part of, you know, it's part of his DNA.

Like he gets the character in a very deep way and it's been with him for so long. You can't not. So, but yeah, you know, Dev is our fearless leader and just an extraordinary job and was very much sort of on the ground with you and figuring it out.

You were an original trilogy guy, you know, speaking of being there on the ground, right? The foundation of Star Wars. You've chatted about this many times. This is part of your fandom, part of your history with the, of the wider Star Wars story.

Yeah. The way that this television show, this current series, connects to a new hope, has been a big talking point on the internet for the last few weeks. And one of the things that, you know, Joanna and I have most enjoyed about the series and frankly we're most excited about before it even started was this likelihood and then the way that it has fleshed out

our understanding of these key largely missing crucial. years for one of our shared favorite characters. So did anything about a new hope from the nature of the Vader-O-B-1 exchange and their decisive duel to, of course, the precise language of the much-discussed Leah Hollow greeting to Obi-Wan, to anything else, feel like a guardrail or a limitation or a canon cohesion conundrum? Or did the series just feel like pure possibility for you? Yeah, for sure.

And there's a lot of certain point of view stuff that goes into it. I think we all, you know, Star Wars fans first and foremost, so you have the original ideas that you hope there's room to explore. And then there's, you know, there's a group of creative people and we all work together at Lucasfilm and Dad, me, and the other writers, and we all just trying to sort of figure out what the best story is to tell. And then the trick is, when you get to the point where you're sort of in a gray area, can we fit this in and still adhere to Canon vis-a-vis-vee where everything's going?

and then that becomes a very big internal conversation of when the whole show is complete all things will come together and you'll see does that hold water and is that okay and is it the right thing for the show to swing for that? Is it the right thing for Obi-One story to swing for that because of the fruit it bears if it works? And then you're going to risk-reward territory

and all those conversations. And that's where people like Pablo are so invaluable because the depth of understanding is profound and you really lean into that within Lucas' film and their understanding of these characters and their understanding of canon and their understanding of the priorities. And then you get a green light

to explore something when it's felt like it's okay to do so. And then you just try and do the right thing for Obi-Wan in history. One of my favorite, we talked about this a lot when we were sort of gearing up for the season, we talked a lot about these little moments

in a new hope that... Okay, so Star Wars is always reconding itself, right? From the beginning, Lucas is like, oh, Luke and Lair, brother and sister, sure. or, you know...

She's beautiful. Or from a certain point of view is the ultimate retcon phrase of all time, right? So a question, speaking from a certain point of view, a big question we had was like, so how does Obi-1 go from in episode two of this TV series learning Anakin's alive? This is a big, shocking moment from episode two of this series for him.

And then in A New Hope, he tells Luke that Anakin is killed by Vader. So it feels like this is important. emotional journey for Ben to go on to feel like, no, I need, I learned that Anakin's alive. No, I've decided he is actually dead. How much is that a core thing that you want to explore in these next few episodes? As you know, and a beautifully articulated question, I can't speak to an answer in any kind of as articulated away. But yeah, it's a lovely question because it speaks to the best of trying to make cannon fit together. And for every time it's a challenge, there's also an opportunity.

And that's one of them. So I look forward to them all being out. And then we get to have this conversation with everything out there in the world. But yeah, yeah, it's, you know, he hears the word Vader. He realizes Vader's alive. What does that mean? And, you know, what happens next is part of the discovery of the development that we found when we were all kind of like, you know, leaving no stone on.

heard. No one gives them more eloquent no comment than you. That's all I have to say about that. It's pretty good situations. Just going to parse everything about exactly how the clauses are ordered. I have, my house is surrounded by stormtroopers who will crash through the door. Yeah, it's just very, very flimsy armor on the stormtroopers. You'll be, you'll be fine.

You'll be fine. Poor aim. You'll be fine. I have a somewhat related question. You know, we're chatting a lot in general about the original trilogies, the prequels when we're talking about that relationship and the connections between Obi-1 and Anakin, Obi-1 and Vader. I'm curious to ask about the animated Philoniverse in this respect. And the other elements, though, the wider canon, just in general, beyond the primary films, whether it's the comics, the novelizations, anything. A Lego set, if you're a member of my household, whatever the case may be.

So just speaking personally, so much of... of my attachment to an understanding of Obi-1 individually and the Obi-One-Anken relationship more broadly comes from those realms of the canon, the way that the Clone Wars and the Darth Vader comic run really fleshed out my ability to understand what they actually did share with each other, where they connected,

where they were just that one degree away from being able to really unlock something seismic for each other. I'm wondering how those stories, in addition to the primary films, shaped the way you thought about what Vader and Obi-1 would bring to a moment as monumental as their part three meeting. Yeah, that's a great question. So my exposure to it was I had some understanding of the breadth of that part of canon. I have three boys, so they are a great part of that. Shout out for Lego Star Wars. I have a Lego desktop in my house.

And I was video games. Same. So yeah, so the aspects are sort of twofold. One is what you know going in. The other is how you get educated once this becomes your life. And the other part of that puzzle is obviously, when I speak about Pablo and the internal, the mechanism of Lucas von being so effective

in understanding their own canon, the education comes through that too, which is very specific in regards to many of the things you're talking about. And then I get to read certain comics that feel relevant to whatever story we're telling in that episode. and then so becomes quite nuanced as you put forward that research, becomes more specific because it's tailored

to the story idea. So, you know, as a process, it's a fascinating one because there's so much meat on the bone, there's so much you can look to. And what's great about it is that, you know, you get told where to look some of the time if you don't have that knowledge going in. But I had a pretty good standing going in,

like, as just somebody who has a Lego desktop on their house already. So, I even have it on a pedestal, by the way. It's not on a table. I bought like a, it's like in the corner of a living room, like displayed like art because it's a Lego. Wow.

I mean, it has to be. Yeah. Anyone who's watched the MCU, we've seen Ned and Peter drop their Lego Death Star enough. You know, you have to place it in a safe spot. It's a disaster otherwise. You need a plint? Okay.

I had a son spent a year and a half earning that Lego Death Star. So when it was constructed, it was, you know, inspired and canonized in our home. I love that. Speaking of the Dave Faloni verse, something that Dave Foloni has said about Obi-Wan and Anakin that I love is this idea. Mallory and I don't necessarily agree on this, but that's okay. Is this idea that in that final battle on Mustafa, Obi-Wan says, like, you were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.

And Dave Flonius said sort of like, that was a mistake Obi-1 made in that. Anakin didn't need a brother. He needed a father figure. He needed a mentor. My favorite Star Wars quote, anyone listening already knows, is from The Last Jedi, which is the greatest teacher failure is. And so I'm just wondering, you know, when you think about Obi-Wan sitting in the desert, marinating in his failures and trying to learn from them, like, what do you think is the fundamental error that Obi-1 made as a mentor figure to Anakin? Me personally, what he's carrying is, yeah, he, you know, it was quite gone's charge. and then he sort of inherited this, you know,

the notion of pathetic life forms, but to all the way to what it means to let somebody down. And Faloni's so eloquent when he talks about it, really, he should just earn the lane. So I'm very cautious to go anywhere near it. But the amount of guilt is profound to me because you can't not carry the weight of that because of the due of the face

and because of everything, that's where phantom menace exists so importantly. and where Ewan is so good because he's so great in the feeling of the end of that movie, you are experiencing everything that will follow through the eyes of Obi-Wan to me. And that's where I think the answers are buried in performance for Ewan, because right at that moment, when he's, you know, I've talked about that a lot, the bounce, when he's bouncing, he wants to get in, it's all. And I would say when he's bouncing, he's not.

he's not our guy in a new hope who's ready and calm he is the beginning of that journey and this is a part of that story that's a part of that character and that's what appealed to me in such a big way which deliberately doesn't answer your question specific listen but I can listen to you not answer a question all day long the twin question of that for me is like I feel like Mallory and I have a pretty solid understanding of like the emotional intellectual journey that Obi-1 needs to go on to become

Alec Guinness and by the end of all of this. But my question is, how do you view Vader at this time? How do you view what we need to, or what we're interested in learning about Vader or Anakin, for that matter, at this time? And look at it as what's great about the show as it takes place halfway between then and now, between prequels and original trilogy, and I don't think anyone should be the finished article halfway through the story.

So that applies to all the legacy characters that we get to weave in. if you're seeing them as a finished article then we're probably not telling the right part of the timeline so I don't see why that shouldn't apply on the other side of the coin to the Anna Clinton slash Vader of it all because they're coming off the back of Revenge of the Sith and there's a lot that comes out of that

and the rubber meets the road within the show as you've seen and when Vader's walking down the street in three or when he's putting at Obi-1 to the fire, like those are personal choices. Those are, those are, you could say, emotional choices. I'm curious about exactly that.

Like, one of the things that we've been discussing on the pod, and this is very present in part three, it's very present in the series. How do you show in a sequence like Vader coming through the village in Mapuzo and force-choking a father, and then force neck snapping a child who walks out, you know, trying to leverage that idea that we've heard about from the beginning of the series, the Jedi hunt themselves, right?

The compassion. Use it. Weaponize it. This thing that is good and sacred about his past life and his mentor and turn it against him, right? Lovely. How do you really lean in and show that horror and the terror that that needs to inspire and other people while still maintaining just that that little tiny ember of Anakin that like needs to remain lit within. It reminds me of, I don't know if you ever watch Survivor, Joe, I can't help it. I can't get through a single pod without mentioning Survivor. I love how you bear with me with this. You know, the firemaking challenge at the end and like sometimes someone has a big fire building, but the person who had that tiny little ember that actually took root is the one who wins. So how do you maintain that little ember of

Anakin, which we know needs to always remain present because of where we're eventually going with the ultimate redemption arc, not just in a new hope, but empire, but where we get in return the Jedi when you're in the midst of all of that savagery? I think you do it actually before. I think you, it's important that when we first see him, we see him without the helmet. We see Hayden in the back to the end of two. And then it was important in three to see Obi-1 visualize him on the hillside. So you could actually see him underneath. Sonifying him as Anakin before you're seeing him as Vader in that way. And that allows you hopefully to have some resonance of Anakin beneath the helmet when you're basically inferring

character. As soon as you, as soon as he's the silhouette, it's all inside the audience's imagination, why he's doing his things, because you have no connection to the actor. So once those seeds are planted earlier on, hopefully then when the choices are being made, you used to feel the echo of the back to moment and the hillside, which is in the same episode. And those things have residual benefits. So that's kind of the less is more with Vader always in all things. And so the, you know, trying to consistently bring it down. And then it's, you know, fundamentally Deb's vision and it's a result of many hours of conversations within the team of how to sort of articulate these moments. But that's why I think it's key that you need to see Anakin on that hell side for me.

I think that's why him walking down the street, the village is a different scene otherwise. Hayden's being there and being present and everything about him and his performance is a, it changes the room. I can't describe how crazy it is to be in that room when he's there and he is in the garb and you just, it informs what everybody's doing. Performance-wise, everyone lifts, because there's a real sense of Vader's in the building. It's pretty, like, nuts. As amazing as it is when Ewan's there,

you get that sort of feeling of like he's here. That's so interesting. It makes me think of something else I wanted to ask, actually, about the Inquisitors, but in relation to Vader, I'm curious when you're incorporating the Inquisitors, each of the individual characters, but the collective as well into the story.

How challenging it was on the whole to present this group of antagonists who are really central to this series and who need to unmoor and engage and intrigue viewers when the other antagonist is quite literally Darth Vader, one of the most iconic characters in the history of stories as you just outlined and has that effect on the people in the room,

on the people watching at home, etc. Like, did that make it more imperative to, and I will tease that we have a couple more inquisitor questions coming for you, but did that make it more imperative to establish the link between a character like the third sister and Vader? Did it actually indicate the opposite that you had to work even harder to establish a character like Reva on her own independent of any link that might emerge with Vader? Yeah, it's a good question.

There were things that existed when I came on and things that didn't exist, and there are things that I felt strongly about and there were things that I loved that was that before Reva was a pre-existing character and as was Vader but the notion of like when is the timing

and the rhythm is everything right I said that before and it was just the most important thing to me is that I didn't want Vader on walking down the street on page 2 I wanted to bed up I wanted to bury that and wait for it and the expectation to build for that And like, when is it coming and when is it coming? When is it coming?

Because that speaks to the raising of the stakes to show progressors, but you can't just have an antagonist free situation because you're articulating that time of Jedi hunting. So you want to see the ultimate Jedi hunters hunting until that moment arrives. So everything Faloni built was so, fit so beautifully into that in telling the Obi-One story. And then having those two things come into close proximity at the beginning just felt like the right thing to do.

And so for me, like you keep very, Vader very much in the abstract for as long as you can, you give a face to the villainy of the show in a sort of a multifaceted way. And then where can we zig and zag and surprising ways along the way? When do we introduce Vader? How do we bring Reva up? When does Vader literally walk into the show with a lightsaber in his hand earlier than you probably imagine he would do to keep you off your feet again?

Just all those, the mechanism of that, and it's a great question because it speaks to how you parcel that antagonism in the show of what's basically a character arc because those things all mean something to everyone. Somebody is the face of the death of all Jedi. Somebody is the face of guilt. You know what I'm saying? They're all, it will continue as a show evolves

to each represent something else. Speaking of, and I do not mean to pepper you with questions that you can't answer, but we're in the middle of, a little past the middle of this season. What can you tell us so far about the arc that Riva's on, about her motivations,

about her desires in terms of what we know. I know that there's more to come that you can't speak to, but in terms of what we've seen, what can you tell us? You want me to articulately say nothing again? I love the challenge, so I will try. Here's all right. In a show where so much is known,

where we know where we're going, where these characters are ending up, part of the fun of it is having a mystery box in the middle of it where we don't know, and where the sort of peeling back of the onion is part of the pleasure of the character because you don't really get that really with a lot of these legacy characters.

So she'll remain a mystery box in my not responding directly to the question. But one of the things that was fun about her when I came on was that she was an opportunity to do that and to kind of stress test everything around her that is not. And that'll pay dividends

as the episodes continue. How do I do. Great. Wonderful. Great. Got one more for you. So stay sharp. We got one more in this mold, then some more thematic questions that we'll switch for after that.

Let's do it. Let's talk about our pal the Grand Inquisitor for a second here. So many Star Wars fans know the Inquisitors from Rebels. This is actually a bigger question. I promise. This is not just the Grand Inquisitor. Many fans who are watching the show know the Inquisitors from the comics, etc. But for some viewers, they're entirely new.

So when you're incorporating them into this story, how are you, balancing that. Like, how are you balancing the existing familiarity that some viewers are going to be bringing to this viewing experience with the fact that there's a swath of the viewership that doesn't know who these characters are at all and needs to be introduced to them and isn't bringing expectations? So, like, I'm assuming that you're not going to flat out tell us if the Grand Inquisitor from this show, who was stabbed through the gut, is the same Grand Inquisitor from years later in the canon, who is alive and well. I don't know if he's well, but he's alive in rebels. But what can you tell us about that overall question of audience awareness of a certain character set

and how that creatively impacts the decisions that you make when you're plotting out this particular story? And you can answer that about the Grand Inquisitor, the Fifth Brother. Like, we know that this guy is wrong about basically everything, right? Some viewers are going to bring that to this story and some aren't. So how are you incorporating and balancing that when you're structuring this story? Yeah. Right at the beginning, it's for the whole way. It has to be. It's for us fans and it's for people who don't know canon and don't know anything about

souls and how can it be enjoyable for them. On that level, you know, starting with the horror of what happened in the past and then cutting 10 years forward and seeing how that's, you know, the ripple effect of that being personified by Inquisitors walking down the street hunting, lets you know the tone of where you are and the timeline of where you are for everybody. You know, someone says we run and 10 minutes later people are hunting. That tells all audience members, okay, that's the language of the show and the tone of where we are. Then when everything

is Flonny built, it fits so elegantly into that idea with the Inquisitors and they are open to us to interpret live action. That's an amazing gift and an opportunity to do that. And then how that story unfolds in regards to Reaver and the Grand Inquisitor

and that journey being surprising and fun and the interpretation of characters belonging to Deb and to the act and then bringing those talents forward, so we're contributing something new, is all, you know, from a team effort point of view, really, really, really important. And then as the, but it is done within the collective

and the team at Lucasfilm, and me and Deb, and the writers and everybody together, and everyone is very aware of who these characters are, where they come from, where they're going, within canon. So no choices are made without being very aware of the context of the choice, which is what I'll say without being able to speak to anything further. But I say it, and I don't say it, I say it, you know, the decisions are made consciously

and they aren't made in isolation and they're made responsibly. So it's one of the, it's one of the frustrating parts about it being a six part, week by week experience versus you sit down in a movie theater and the movie ends and you walk out and you talk about the car on the way home because you're sort of talking, like if you're watching a movie and you stopped off the first acts and everyone went outside even got another thing of popcorn and chat it's a different relationship to the material. And sometimes it's great. And sometimes we have these conversations. So, but it's a, it's, you know, it's a great part of it because it allows people like us to debate and get passionate. And

that's what it's all about. So, yeah. But also urge everyone to just like wait and see, you know, let's just see how it all, how it all rolls out. So what I always like to say. I think I have a question that you can answer, I think, which is this. Something we love about Little Leia here is her ability to read people, sometimes uncannily. Should we consider that a force power? A good question. I would say that the goal with crafting Leia and everything Deb did when working Vivian was to try to create a character that felt authentic to the layer we all know,

and the Carrie Fisher that we all know, and to see that spirit and that intelligence and that fortitude and that resilience, and to recognize the beginnings of that in a child and its nascent form. And to the degree that you could look back at, you know, everything Carrie Fisher did in episode four, and before we know who that character is and who that, you know, that she is false sensitive and you could look back and say, oh, yeah, I can see the backgrounds of that.

I can see within the storytelling where that perception was actually something more on force sensitivity. you could look back if you wanted to interpret the character in the same way here. But to me, what was important was that she was spirited, she was smart, she was resilient, and that she could see her way out of a situation and through people, because she's intelligent in that way. And then anything else, you know, if people want to interpret that way, it's certainly she isn't aware of that and no one else is around her at that point.

Intriguing. Okay. I would like to ask you about one of my... Great passions in this life. Uh-huh. Obi-1 Canobie's love life. What you're going to say Survivor again? I was like, I can't talk about Survivor. If Malibu Buhin loves two things, it's Survivor and Obi-1 Kenobi's love life.

The reason Anakin is Anakin is because of Padmae and because of the ways he tested and attachment was explored post-his childhood. And part of what's interesting about testing a Jedi narratively is, you know, putting them through the ringer and putting their emotions through the ringer. So I understand. where the inclination came from to test everyone in another way emotionally. But I, first of all, how good an actress is she?

And there is like, just like crazy. She's so, um, and so, and it was really, as an actor, is also really committed to the whole process, which is really wonderful to get to see and work with. And she, and I like what she said about the character. When she said, regardless of what's happening on screen, she has a subtext that she's exploring how she feels. And it's lovely to watch the,

the scenes knowing where she's finding herself in the scenes and what's informing the scenes for her. So what you want is existing beneath the surface for at least one of the actors in that scene, which can give you, which can inform the scenes in a way if you want them to. I just like seeing, you know, you've got to be careful how you introduce Hope into a Star Wars story and I think she's a really interesting vehicle for that theme, both in what she's bringing to as an actor, but also just conceptually it's a fun way into that character. you know, the uniform and the kind of the juxtaposition of what she's saying with how she looks and all stuff. It's just sort of fun. Before Mallory gets to her most important question, actually,

I just want to slide in here and just ask you, can you expound a little bit more on what you mean by you have to be careful how you introduced hope into a Star Wars story? Within a Star Wars story, so often hope is that guiding principle. And you can look to, obviously, so many chapters in the storytelling and see it where, you know, the importance of it. And I was very aware of with an Obi-One, which starts off in a place of a man hiding in a cave because things are so bleak, and then takes him all the way to where he goes on Nurt and sees those Jedi down in the depths and the bowels, frozen, you know, the butterfly display, that is, you know, a helpless, hopeless place. But then that means from a storytelling point of you, okay, well, now we can introduce hope

and the kernel of that and the fire, speaking of the survivor at all the little glimmer of fire that stays alive, like, where does that come from? is do you have it in yourself? Do you find it from a little girl? Do you find it from somebody in an officer's uniform? Like, where are the things that contribute to that journey of hope being born, especially when there's a faith and a sort of a Zen spiritual warrior monk and an Alec Guinness on the horizon?

And that's where hope becomes a necessary part of this story and not just adding a Star Wars theme to the story. And that's what I mean by kind of looking. I love that. Yeah. That's beautiful. As badly as I want to ask my Duchess Sotene Fleming. flashback question, Joe, I do think you should ask about Quigon on the heels of that.

Okay. I was thinking, Quigon fits here better than Sotene. No, so like, obviously, again, you're not speaking to anything that happens in episode five or six of this series, but I think the bigger question is, what does a Quigon have that Obi-1 is missing in this moment? When Obi-1 is reaching out, waking up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, whatever, reaching out for Quigon, is he reaching out for absolution or forgiveness?

I would say, I would define it as what do you need in order to define those things that you're talking about in that question. What is it he needs? Fundamentally. Right. And the answers to that question is, that's a question we asked ourselves over and over and over again. And then the answer, there's many answers to that. And you pick a lane and we'll get to talk at the end of all this about the lane's picked, but what do you need to become the warrior monk? What do you have to let go of? What do you have

to face? What is absolution? Where does it come from? They're all really good, juicy, muting, character-based questions. Why I love the question. It's a really good one. But those answers hopefully are inherent in five and six. I love that because I think one of the things that Joe and I just, one of the reasons we remained so endlessly fascinated by Obi-Wa-Wan, but particularly interested in this moment in his arc is because while it feels like he eventually is he needs that absolution, he can't admit it to himself. He actually currently feels like he thinks he needs to be punished and he's just wallowing in his guilt and his sorrow. And that's why I think the last couple episodes we've really loved seeing him confront how many other people didn't give up and the idea

that maybe he gave up too soon. And that connects to what you were just discussing about hope as well. And so, you know, interested as we know we have a few minutes left here with the, the, the, the, Jubim plot and the new characters who we met, RIP Wade, we barely knew you. Sorry, Wade. Roken and Sully, and obviously we already talked about Tala. So we're introducing, you know, we have this idea on the one hand of them saying like that they're not soldiers. And then we watch them have to become soldiers. Another budding cell in the rebellion and people who are very much involved in the fight

and have to really like grapple with what that means and what that looks like and how that evolves. Obviously, that's a large part of what Star Wars Rebel set feature in the canon is a New Hope, Rogue One, et cetera. We know that we're getting Andor soon. When you're thinking about introducing a Rebel Cell, like, how much are you thinking about who these characters are exclusively inside of this show and this universe? How much are you thinking about the events to come in Andor or the events elsewhere in the canon? And I think this is like a theme more broadly in the insights you've provided because so much of this is specific to this six episode run, right? And the the time, the TV allows that we get to spend really focusing on theme and character,

but you're operating in this vast sandbox where everything connects eventually. Yeah, and a very small part of a much bigger machine, both on this show and then the machine beyond it. And what it really adds up to is that it was very important to Deb, this never feel like a proto-rebellion or resistance in timeline-wise. That's not where we are, and it's not where we should be doing or exploring. And I don't think we wanted to say this is the first candle that was lit, because I don't think that that puts a weight of responsibility on where we are that isn't what the show is about.

Where I find a comp historically in Star Wars works when it points to common shared history, I always feel like is the occupied France and hiding under a floorboard and the notion of regular people helping and doing what they could because there was a moral imperative to do so. And I think if these guys represent anything,

it's average people just trying to do the right thing because it's the right thing. more than an organized sort of militaristic effort to fight back. It's just like, we'll do what we can. And then how far will you go when you're just trying to do what you can is part of that question, within a bigger question. But I was very aware of the fact that all the other shows are out there and that the rebellion and the resistance is its own massive.

We wanted to find our own tiny little mini-lane that speak to everyone's story, as I said, speaks to hope. It speaks to relationships and all that. I just want to say, we have very little time left. So I'm ceding the last question of Mallory for the most important question of the entire conversation. You've been so generous with your time.

We wanted to ask you about Quinlan. We wanted to ask you about Seteen flashbacks. We could have gone on forever. We hope to chat with you again. But we can only end in one spot in its year. Everyone needs to know. Who is feeding the EOB with OBO no longer on Tatouin? Who is smuggling the binary.

unbaked meat to this beautiful, loyal creature. Oh, my goodness. Well, what we didn't see, by the way, there's a rabbit out the window as I answered this question, which is... There you go. And so that probably is informing this answer in some way. But before, one of the cutscenes was Obi-1

leaving an enormous bucket of meat for making this up. That's not true. Just a trough. Just a trough of... That's canon to me now. Much is a camel concerned. survive for many days because of the water. It's a very similar situation.

Turns out in the OPE, my imagination can survive for a long time on one meal. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I love it. Thank you so much for saying as much as you could here in the middle of this season. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, guys. It's really fun talking to you.

Well, friends, you were warned what defeat would bring. And so that's a wrap on today's episode. Thank you, as always, to our. Jedi Masters, Steve Allman for producing this episode, our Jinaram Gapal for his additional production work on this episode, and Jomi Adoneron for his work on the social for this episode. And thank you to Joby Herald for joining us today. Please tune back in next week for our Obi-1 Canobi Part 5 Instant Reaction and Deep Dive pods as well as our coverage of The Boys. That'll be on the feed on Monday. Miss Marvel, that'll be on the feed on Thursday and more.

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