House of R - 'The Acolyte' Episode 5 Deep Dive

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

A stranger approaches, and it's time for a deep dive on 'The Acolyte' Episode 5. They give you everything you need to know about the latest episode of the 'Star Wars' action spectacle (17:36). Later on, they are joined by Ben Lindbergh to discuss the lore of a mysterious metal that can defeat lightsabers (01:26:21).  Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Ben Lindbergh Produced By: Steve Ahlman and John Richter Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Predict the spread, total points, and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25 bonus. Offered by Fandual prediction markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Bonus is non-withdrawable and expires seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions applies.

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

You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello. You really didn't know this me. Not even deep down. Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me stepping over the fallen bodies of our colleagues that we're not going to bother to transport off the planet with us.

It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, no. And let you read my thoughts? No, no, no. Hello. We are here on the newish House of Our Feed to talk to you. I think we can retire it. Great. It's done.

It's done. Hello. You got the last one. We're here on the absolutely ancient. The veteran. The veteran. House of our feed. To talk to you today, oh, guess what?

As old and weary as our bones and souls. Pretty good episode of television. Episode 5 of the Acolyte, Night. That's one. You get five. No. You get five. You get five.

You don't tell me that before we started. I don't know what I've chosen to use. Do I get five more after now that is told me? Okay, you can have five more. All right. Yeah. Use them wisely. Oh, man.

Program reminders. Yeah. Over on the ringerverse, the men I boys, peep, pew. Poo! They're covering House the Dragon. Yes. They're covering Ackolite. and they're covering the boys.

That's right. So you get them twice a week. What a joy. What a delight. Oh, are you saying that if you use a different word in the same cadence, it doesn't count? Okay. Fascinating. Over here, of course.

Yeah. You get us three times a week. You get us. Yeah, four this week if you came to our live show. Absolutely. You get us. on Thursdays for the Ackleight Deep Dive.

You get us on Sundays The Minute. The Moment. House of the Dragon ends. Give or take a minute or two. Just an instant. Being a second.

Just a moment. Being an Iota. On YouTube, on Spotify, you can watch Talk the Thrones. You can watch any of this. We're all on video. Yeah.

It's great. Yeah. But you can watch Talk the Thrones on Sunday. And then the House of Our, of course, deep dive of, House of the Dragon, which is clocking in around over three hours. So you think we can get under three for this next one? Nope. Okay. So that's what's happening elsewhere. Yeah. That's a lot of

going on. How can folks keep track of that, Mallory Rubin? Thanks for asking. Here's what I would recommend. Follow the pods. Great. Follow the pod, House of our, Ringervverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and follow the new Ringervorverse YouTube channel. Hit subscribe, hit follow, hit like, give us the five stars. And then you've got your phone in your hand. You've got computer, your fingertips, send us emails. Hobbins and Dragons at gmail.com. I'm going to hit you with a spoiler warning, which is everything in all of Star Wars ever, except anything beyond Ackleight episode five.

Everything up through Acolyte, episode five that has ever happened in Star Wars is on the table. But on the spoiler front, I just want to say that to take you behind the curtain, Mallory and I were backstage at the live show. When this episode dropped, we had not received screened. so we hadn't watched it. Right. Jomey comes up, he's like, Joanna. The internet's going wild for this episode of The Acolyte.

And I, like, burn with curiosity, have to know. I opened up Hoppets and Dragons at Gmail.com just to see what was going on. Dozens of emails already, like the episode hadn't even quite ended about Mani Jacinto's arms. Genuinely, the bad babies were horny for this episode of Star Wars. And who can blame them? Who can blame them? Who can blame them? Speaking of Talk the Thrones and live shows and all of that, we're not done with the live shows.

We did Talk the Thrones. Yeah. You will be able to watch that live show? I think so. Okay. Yeah. Great. Believe so.

Wonderful. In mere days. And mere days. But more importantly, maybe, ringerverse, a whole fam. The crew. It's going to be back at the L. Ray on July 17th. That's right. At 8 p.m.

That's the day after the Ackleight finale. So we'll have that to talk about. It'll be hit like a week before Deadpool. will be well into hot D season two. It's just, you know, the boys. It's hot nerd summer, man. The Minibos will be there. Housefire will be there.

If you want to go to the ringer.com slash events. Yeah, get those tickets. Get those tickets. Coming out with us. We had a great time this past week. We'll have a great time in July. Oh, my God. The show was amazing.

Thank you to everyone who came out. I heard there was cosplay. I didn't see it. I still need to be tagged in those photos. Tag me in your cosplay photos, please. Okay. Today, quick facts. Mm-hmm.

It's called Night, as we expected it might be. Yes. And I'm still really wish that Day and Night had been condensed into one all-killer, no-filler episode. This is one of my questions for you because on the one hand, I agree, I think if this had been the mid-season point, the conclusion of this episode, it just would have been a state of, like, bliss and euphoria. But if Day had been present in night, it's just not as good as it. of an episode. Possibly, but I think the highs of this episode might have just sort of like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like made us be more gentle on some of the lows of the day episode. You potentially move the flashback episode. You combine day and night. Take out maybe those Jedi Temple planning chats. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Just like Kofar Day into Kofar night. We are at the three or four episode mark of the season. Nothing but possibility ahead. Cooking with gas. Nothing but possibility and arm rippling tendons ahead. This episode was written by

Cori Donna, who wrote who co-wrote Day as well, and Cameron Squires who wrote on Wanda Vision, a show that we love, and directed by Alex Garcia-Lopez,

who also directed Day. And clocked in at 34 minutes, seven more minutes than last week, so that's fun to know. Let's just go right, too. our opening snapshot.

I'm looking at this figurine, which John moved right before we started, and I'm, like, remembering that I brought that in shortly after my dear friend, who I will allow to remain anonymous for the purposes of this anecdote, gave it to me. We were meeting for dinner, and he said, I have some stuff. Do you mind taking it? I'm moving it with my girlfriend, and I don't want to bring it. It was a bunch of Star Wars merch. Yeah, and I said, I'll probably take it.

I love it. I mean, that's wonderful of what also I encourage all of those. of you who are... Bring your merch with you. Yeah. When you're going to go cohabitate... Yeah. Share your love and your merch.

Yeah. Your love, your merch, and your love for things and stories. Speaking of love for things and stories, Mallet are your overall thoughts on episode five of The Acolate? I've four left. I couldn't resist. I have four left. I thought this was a dynamite.

I had an absolute blast. I watched this. We got out from a live show. Had to watch my dragon screener. Had to watch this. It was like the wee hours of the morning. but I felt so alive. Yeah.

This was fun, riveting, stimulating, compelling, thematically, the action. It was the show that I thought we were going to get. And I'm trying, we talked about this a little bit last week. I'm trying to, like, interrogate why I am so hung up on what I thought we were going to get versus what we actually have gotten so far. And last week, I was attempting to work through that and talk myself out of it a little bit. And now that we got this episode, I'm, I'm really back feeling actually like more frustrated in some ways by episodes three and four

because this is what the show was capable of doing the whole time. Like I thought this was sensational. I think that if the show is like this, the rest of the way that the season overall will be a success, the tone, the nature of the action, the physical intimacy and savagery of the combat. Are you clutching your arms in memory of memory? of manny's arms of the muscles the magnetism and charisma on display the darkness yeah forget the red shirts i mean r ip but forget the red shirts jockey dies in this episode yorg dies in this episode pip thank god basil is in the process currently of restoring him praise the all gods and the new new like but piqu got to captated it

He got decapitated and sacrificed. This was the dark and distinct Star Wars from, crucially, the Sith point of view that we were promising and anticipating. And so this felt like not only seeing the vision brought to life, but like genuinely a different kind of thing than what we had gotten to watch, not just inside of the series so far, but really like more broadly. And so I loved it. I thought this was sensational.

I can't wait to talk about it. I can't wait to see more like this. I don't know why it took quite so long to get here, but I'm thrilled. But here we are. Yeah. There are a few things that in our beginning of season chat with Leslie Headland, there are just like a few little morsels that she dropped that we cut out because she was like, and then later in the season, someone will say, you know, what are you done with your darkness? Or, you know, like, not a ton of spoilers, but she indicated to me that there would be these like sithy speeches. We cut that out because I didn't want to like, you know.

spoil anyone who didn't want to know that, but I was just like, I've been waiting. I've been waiting, and I've been saying this another pause, but I've been waiting for the Sith monologues. Yeah. The, you know, the Sith point of view, but like, just absolutely delectable. Scrummy. So good. Mani just into who we've been, like, praising throughout.

We just think he's been phenomenal throughout. Is really on another level here. This is an instant pantheon performance to me. It really is. I was telling someone I know who works in the industry yesterday. I was like, do you guys know how high Mani Jacinto's stock just rose within the span of 34 minutes of television? Like, keep your eye out, please. If your eye wasn't already on him.

Okay, so. Bortals! You get as many of those as you want. Thank you. A couple quick emails just here at the top. Our listener, Angelica, says, please say you're calling this official, let's do a parrot trap week. on House of R. That's a reference, of course,

to House of the Dragon where we got a twin swap and we got a twin swap in this very episode. One soul and two bodies? Yeah. Would you say? I would.

I would. Lauren wrote it and said, just wanted to write it and shout out the lighting this week on the Acolyte. Despite being largely at night, everything was bright enough to be visible, which was refreshing.

We've talked about this a lot on House of the Dragon as well, which is this idea of like, if you're going to set something entirely at night, in the dark forest, with like lightsabers and the occasional head of your droid to light the way

will we be able to see everything? The answer is yes. And then they took advantage of it in a bunch of different ways. Like when we first see the lightsabers like kick off, it's like inside a copse of trees and you're just seeing like flashes

of multicolored lightsabers going. Wonderful. Fantastic. But the amount of times that we got like working your light braid in a dark room when you're a kid. Exactly.

But the number of times we got I'm just going to call him Chimir for the episode. That's why I've decided. Okay, I meant to ask you this before we started. What are we doing? Are we doing Chimir? Are we doing The Stranger? Are we doing Manny? Are we doing just a dude, just a guy has no name? No, I think I'm just going to call him Kimeer until I hear otherwise. I think, but you can make your own decision. So you're not compelled by the subtitling him calling him the stranger. Well, that's what they've been calling him throughout. Since the dream speech. I just think that sounds a little silly to say over and over and over again, the Stranger. stranger, you know? We could pretend that we're talking about the stranger from Game of Thrones. We could pretend that we're talking about the stranger from Rings of Power. Some of our favorite properties. Maybe it's just a nice...

La Trojie from Camus. Is that what you want to talking about? A favorite of mine, actually, genuinely. I'm going to stick with Kimer. You can do whatever you want. I'll probably weave in and out of Stranger, Chimer, and Manny. But the number of times that Chimier's red Sabre was reflected on the grin of the mask. So you just got this like splash of red glow on the various different metals that were involved in the mask.

Like you'd been chewing sour leaf. Duncan A's. I got you. I got you. I also want to shout out Juncheng Lu, I think I pronounced that correctly, who did the stunts in this episode, who worked on Shangchi, who worked on Mulan, who worked on Bullet Train, all of which I have incredible fights. sequences, and this is just, I mean, just astonishing. Exquisite. The upshot here is that, you know, similar to watching Carrie Ann Moss fight in episode

one, we have Daphne Keene here who has done a lot of stunt work in her short career. I mean, she's unbelievable. But, like, having you started so early with Logan, like, she's someone who is, you know, a history with this. And then Mani Jacinto is a dancer. And so, like, and according to their interviews, did most, even when the helmet's on, did most of the stunts in this episode. The one stretch where he and Seoul are like gliding back and forth on the forest floor,

felt like a dance. And yeah, and then Li Zhong-Jay, who also has martial arts background. Like, it was just... It's sensational. Incredible. On the, like, we knew Mae Gisinto was playing the bad guy front, which we've been on for a very long time. Since the minute the first trailer. came out and actually, I guess, before.

I don't need us to take a victory lap there because we were certainly not alone in that prediction. But I do want to, I just want to play this clip from Star Wars Celebration last year, which was one of my hints that this is for sure going down. This is Daphne Keene, who plays Jackie. Charlie Barnett, who plays Yorne and Manny Jacinto, who plays a Sith. Steve Lee played this clip. And I was about to lose it because I couldn't do a backflip and, you know, a kickflip. in with my lightsaber

like Manny can legitimately. Manny's stunt god. Like, Mannie's the father of stunts. I didn't get to do any like super fun stuff.

No. It's like, no lightsaber too. But you're like, anyways, we can't talk about this. This is very forbidden. It's great,

great stuff. The look on all of their faces when that happened. Shear terror. Yeah. And Mani being like, I didn't do much stunts. What are you talking about?

Just a guy. I'm just an apothecate. A guy who killed an apothecary. It's fine. Just a guy who knows how to make a potent Bonta cocktail. Yeah. And loves a nap, you know?

So we'll talk a little bit more about this reveal and sort of like how it worked despite the fact that many people knew it was coming. Leslie Hadlin talked about this in an entertainment weekly interview. But last but not least in the snapshot section, I just want to say in honor of horny Star Wars. I just want to say a favorite of mine, as you know, there are many ways to enjoy Star Wars. And I feel like sometimes the way in which some people, mostly like women, love to enjoy horny Star Wars. Though men have been enjoying horny Star Wars since Leia was in a metal bikini, if not earlier than that, you know. But like...

Since they first saw a Sarlock pit. The way that the Kylo Ray Raylo shipping thing emerged from the sequels, I just remember there being a lot of like pushback from some corner saying that's not the right way to enjoy Star Wars. I say there's no real wrong way to enjoy Star Wars as long as you're not sort of messing with someone else's good time with Star Wars. And I think horny Star Wars, where Leslie Hedlin comes out of the world of like, not just enjoying the novels and the movies and the video games like she does, but enjoying fan fiction, having written fan fiction. So the fact that she gave us an incredibly horny episode of Star Wars is just a gift. And I would like to thank her personally. A treasure. Thank you.

Anyone who is still trying to warm to horny Star Wars, I would just recommend that you Google or go to YouTube and look for a cut of every scene that animated Obi-1 and Ventrists ever shared. Get back to us. Thank you. We'll be waiting for your call. Let's go now to the deep dive. Okay, we start almost immediately from where we left off. Yes. Ocean's been knocked out for, you know, a minute or so, but, you know. Pipp is scared. Pipp is scared, chirping and warbling. Pipp. Mallory. Pip. Malay. I'm going to say it the way John said it. Oh, Pip. Pip.

Some. Given our shared love of lost, were you two reminded of the opening of loss? I'm going to explain this for people who haven't seen the incredible television series lost. Famously, lost in its opening moments. And then again, later in the show, we get a pan down on Dr. Jack Shepherd on the floor of a jungle, an overview look at him while there's a very nice good boy golden retriever next to him. And so instead of a golden retriever, we've got PIP. But this OSHA, was it not giving Jack Shepard to you? Totally. And like not the only place where we get Jack. Because we have

more than one. We have to go back, which we had already gotten previously. Yeah, yeah. Jack is present in many respects here. Yeah. We start with a dead Jedi. We're out of the gate. We didn't We didn't see him go. He might have just, like, not survived the initial push. Yeah, the initial push. But we're already one red shirt down. And something I did love in this Entertainment Weekly piece that Dalton Ross put together with interviews with, like, everyone in the cast, including Leslie Adlin as well.

She talks about the reveal. She's like, I knew a lot of people already figured out who Kimer was. She was like, I did hope to fool people with the red shirts thing. And I think she did because we were all like, all those, duh, no duh, all those red shirts are going to die. And then she's like, and Jackie and you're too. Yeah, you definitely thought they were there to spare the primary figures. Exactly. They were not.

They were not. It was everyone expense. Our first glimpse into the trees of this saber fight, later we'll hear Yord say, quote, he doesn't follow the rules of combat. There's no method to his movements. It doesn't make sense. And with that in mind, rewatching that sequence and the, like, we have, have not, I believe,

seen saber fighting like this. Not just stabbing one person in the torso, then pulling another person onto the end of that blade. Incredible work. But just the way in which his moves do strike me as quite unpredictable.

And then according to I believe Star Wars.com, he's using a method called tricata, which is, if you have a saber and you're fighting, you turn your saber on and off sporadically to catch your opponent off guard because if they're going to clash with a saber blade and all of a sudden there's nothing there's just air and you're stumbling off your guard. But that's just like a really cunning way to fight and it's interesting because both the Jedi and the

Sith do not like this method of fighting. The Jedi are like it's dishonorable and the Sith are like it's cowardly and Argy Khymer is like it's effective. So I'm going to use it. Tracks completely, like so much of this episode and what we'll hear the stranger and Saul. It's tough. Talk about leaders. The rules. Who are the rules for? If you don't follow them, you never have to worry about breaking them.

And to position him as somebody who is thinking not just about the Jedi that way, but maybe any sort of faction, any sort of order is like very compelling. He wants freedom. Freedom in totality. But this initial glimpse of the fighting, and we're off balance because we start with OSHA, who falls. I like that parallel. It's like the same exact stumble that we got from May last week, right, plopping down into those red spores. And you're like, is this just supposed to remind us how similar they are? They're falling in the same way.

You start to wonder because of that conversation we had last week about night in the forest and, like, what are these spores maybe going to do to you? You're on edge and on your heels right away. And then you watch this fight where, okay, right away, death, a stab in the back, a gut slice. And then we get the stab, the force pull to double stack, and then the decapitation slice. Yeah. Which we're in the first minute of the episode. We've seen the initial dead red shirt. We have just watched Chimer kill four.

Jedi in the span of a moment. Yeah. So we're five down. We understand the skill level and the ability here, and we understand that we are in for something uncommon on the violence front in a Star Wars installment. And it was just like electric. It was an electric way to begin the episode. It reminds me of the opening of Infinity War when we see Thanos kill Loki.

like establishing the threat of a villain. And that comes later, of course, also with Jackie and with Yord and stuff like that. But like, just right away we're like, shit. Yeah. This is so scary. And we're seeing the shorted out lightsabers. We're seeing the cortosis. The headbutt.

Okay. Unbelievable. The cortosis and our beloved Ben will be on to talk more about cortosis, which is the substance on the helmet and on the van brace. But like the vambraise use and the helmet, we're both just so good. But the vambraise is one thing. And the way that the saber didn't impact the helmet is one thing. But actually head budding the hilt of someone's saber to short it out. Animalistic.

Wonderful. Just tremendous. Would you say that we did get the animalistic kernel put this week? Just not where we thought we would. Just not a house of dragon like you wanted. So, yeah. Also, I liked this initial introduction inside this group of trees. We've talked a lot on other Star Wars shows about how kind of restrained.

some of the saber fighting has been because of their use of the volume. We talked about this a lot on Obi-One. We talked about it a bit on Asoka where they don't have a lot of room to move around. There was only, like, so much space for Maruk's fart plume. Right. And you wanted to go everywhere. That's what you're hoping for. Just like the red spores here on Kofar.

So, like, I love that we do get this contained fight. And then later we'll be roaming all over. We'll be jumping over rocks. people doing all sorts of stuff because they're not using the volume on this show. And this has been a big sticking point where people are like, this show doesn't look good. It's using the volume. It's not using the volume. We get clear examples of that in this episode.

But we start in a contained space, but it feels more natural because of the trees are like hemming them in. And so the action's all like tight and chaotic, but in this like naturally hemmed in space versus like the arbitrary borders that the volume can provide. Yeah. And the way that the space comes into play literally in the next sequence with the, I can't decide what I want to call him. The stranger sending his laid like a propeller. The boomerang, yeah. After OSHA, which is interesting because there are so many moments with both OSHA and

May in this episode where it is irrefutable and apparent that he is willing and ready to kill them, right? Which is fascinating to track. Amazing. Because it's not, like, we had spent a lot of the first half of the season, okay, is he going to decide? No, you're the better candidate to. Yeah, I'm protecting OSHA because I actually want to, like, rumor to my side. I need a pupil. I'm about to tell you, I need a people.

He takes a hack and slashing her neck. Ready to be done with everybody in this farce. Absolutely. Everybody. And so, like, we see the blade follow her. And then when soul comes in and parries and sends it back, that trailer shot of the blade slicing the trees. Yeah. And then the, like, felling, the way they fall and the raw glowing wound on those trunks, it was such a brilliant way to simultaneously.

easily show us the confinement, right? There's nowhere to go. Yeah. There's nowhere to, except for, unless your chimery, you can, like, vanish and hover in the way that he comes in and out of the various. The leggy jump. The set pieces was obviously just disturbing. You turn and he's gone.

You turn and he's there. On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, in both, like, Saul I can forgive because he got kind of like knocked, he got his bell rung. He was knocked down on the ground. Jackie was like, let me look for a moment at this. I was like, girl, you do not have time to contemplate anything. keep your head up, but he was gone.

So, yeah. I know I loved that. I wrote in our notes, like the trunk slide down, like the top half of Snoke when he meets the business end of Ray Sabre. Exactly. That's what I was thinking of is just like Snoke toppling off his throne in the background of the throne room fight. And I was thinking about that last Jedi fight a lot because I genuinely, you know, I think

the Midnight Boy said something similar. Like, I think that's the last time I've been this thrilled by a live action lightsaber fight. And which is too bad because, like, you know, We were hoping for similar from Obi-Wan. We were hoping for similar from Asoka. But I just don't think I have been this like breathlessly captivated by not just the action, but the storytelling that's going with the action since The Last Jedi.

I think Ben wrote a little bit about this in his column and I was thinking about this a lot, watching it and then reflecting on what was what they were able to achieve. And, you know, you remove the previously on the opening intro or the credits. It's still 27 minutes of story. Like this is a zippet, right? the podcast about it will be four times as long as the episode itself. And the characters, because I think you're right, it was the action and the storytelling working in harmony to wow us.

That's actually even more impressive when you consider how little time we've spent with the characters and how I think uneven that time was to this point. It's hard to think of fictional characters you're more invested in than Anakin and Obi-1 by the time you're with them on Mustafa. Oh, for sure. Right? And so you... No.

But and then even in fights that are maybe less successful, like I really loved the episode three interaction between them and Obi-1. We had a very long discussion about the flaws and the finale showdown in that series. But even when some of the storytelling logic or mechanics of the fight fell short in that series, the emotion and the depth of our connection to the characters, we are bringing something to that that is difficult to match. We just simply, I mean, we really love, we're like very swept up with soul and chimier to this point. I'd say we don't have quite the same attachment to any of the other characters on the show. Jackie. Jackie was like pretty high on the power rankings, actually.

I was re-listened to last week's episode and I was like, Jackie's my favorite. And you're like, you love Jackie. I was like, I do love Jackie. This was an amazing, an amazing showing from Jackie. Oh, yeah. I've enjoyed to this point. But this episode, what we saw from Jackie, it was anguish then. Anguish. to lose her. Yeah. Oh, so it's impressive because they achieved a lot in a very short span. So all of that happens.

I've titled that whole section, Rumble in the Jungle, Part 1. We will get many more. But I do like the way that we are pacing the fights. It's in one ongoing fight, you know. Again, Dalton Ross over at Entertainment Weekly is like, this is the Fury Road. It's just one long fight. It's not quite one long fight. It's broken up.

But like, I love the pace, like, where we're just like, we take a brief. either, then we're back at it, and this person's lightsaber shorted out, or they're both shorted out, so now they're punching each other. You know, there's just this, like, incredible combination. Because I love a great lightsaber fight, but we love maybe some, we've seen a lot of lightsaber fights, some variety. It's not just two people, like, parrying and twirling and all of that sort of stuff. You get, like, you know, punching or you've got a blaster in the action or all of that. Multiple punches right to the face was just actually like, it's amazing how riveting that was to watch. I agree. And that was something that was intriguing just from the beginning, like the initial May and Dara fight. And so to see that at scale, there's so many participants. And in such, because that's a moment of intrigue when the series starts. And this is, this is desperation. Dyer, dire, dire circumstances. To watch someone like Saul,

go from, like, you have the weapon of a Jedi, but you are no Jedi, or Yord saying, like, he doesn't fight, you know, he doesn't use the rules like you should. So to watch the lightsiders go from, like, there's a way to do this and he's not doing this, to matching his chaos, matching his brutality, matching his desperation. And it's just like, pulled into the dark. The Scythiness just infects them quickly in this episode. And that is killing the dream, right? Like that is the mission. We are watching that in real time. Like the, you carry a Jedi weapon, but you are no Jedi.

Of course, it like pings fabled Star Wars moments like Asoka to Vader and rebels, right? I am no Jedi. When you kind of like have a really iconic signature line like that, but you reposition the framing or the point of view or how it's being deployed, when Asoka says it, it's a victory. Yeah. She has unlocked some level of opiosis that. that other people never felt like they could attain. And here, it's meant, of course, as a diminishment from soul, but that's not how it's received.

Like to Chimer, that's not going to be an insult. That's going to be a compliment because we know what he thinks of the Jedi. Now, maybe there was a time in his history where he held the Jedi in esteem. We'll talk about that. Which is interesting to talk about. But in the episode two speech, the Jedi live in a dream, a dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail. steal or laser into a threat to them.

I mean, these guns, however. But an acolyte, an acolyte kills without weapon, an acolyte kills the dream. Like a moment before that with the head tilt. Oh, my God. The head tilt for that first exchange looking and saying is incredible. Master soul.

Who are you? You don't remember me? Right. Okay. Before we get there, let me just go back really quickly. I know. We're going to talk about that in a second. I just want to say, I just need us to take a moment to go back to OSHA.

Before we get to that moment, I just want to say, so OSHA gets yanked out of the fight, literally yanked out of the fight. And I love this moment when Seoul's like civilian to the ship. Yeah. And Yorre repeats it. Yes. And it's this great efficient storytelling moment of like it doesn't seem like some bullshit reason to sort of like take someone out of a fight or whatever. I'm just like, yes, he would be protective. And yes, Yord would be rule following.

And he's like, this is what we do. This is the protocol. When there's danger and someone's wearing their civilian whites, you get them to the ship. But I just want to point out, as we continue to track OSHA. And he ends further by his past trauma of feeling like he wasn't able to save May. Yeah. For Soul, yes, absolutely. But I think I want to track.

I think they're doing a better job with OSHA than they have with May and giving me a character on an arc that I understand. And I think it's worth tracking all the time. times in which OSHA has just been like pushed around, pulled around. Like, so physically flicked away by Kymir at the end of last week's episode and physically pushed away by Saul in this episode. And so sort of when when we think about the idea of OSHA being someone who might be vulnerable to seduction by the dark side, and Kymir in his speech we'll get to a little bit later is talking about how he wants freedom.

Yes. Then it's worth tracking all the ways in which OSHA has felt just sort of like the Push and pull, you know, all of that around it. Absolutely. I mean, because we are fans of Jack Shepard, let's just, can we just hear this line, Steve, please. George! We have to go back. We have to go back!

Just wanted to put a little Jack Shepard on the podcast. And Basil has been scooped in. Basil's running around sniffing and squeaking in the, you know, in the, you know, meantime. I have a lot of gratitude for Basil for multiple reasons at the end of this episode, all of which we'll get to. Do an important work. The pen-saving is very important. To take you behind the curtain of our prep for this episode, I just want to let folks know that there are a lot of Mani Jacinto from The Good Place. Jason Mendoza GIFs in our outline today. As many as you want. But the only gift I put in from the episode is the head tilt. Because the head tilt in the mask is so

spooky and iconic and wonderful. It's wild. And it's very like ghost face and scream. Well, you're not a horror person. But trust me when I say, it's very ghost face. Like, mask acting is an underrated art. And Manny just really crushes it here. So sinister.

Khymir. He's just like us. He would like to know why Saul is so shitty in the force and can't recognize him. as the same guy he met in episode two. I love the episode, but I'll be having, I'll have another question about this later. Oh, yeah. A much bigger one later.

Yeah. Maybe we can let us all off the hook here and say that the Cortosa's helmet is blocking him. But to your point, perhaps his own repressed trauma. He calls him Master Saul. He does. So when he's like, you don't recognize, like, you know, you don't recognize me. Is he referring to episode two when they met in the apothecary shop? Or is he referring to the fact that he says, he does he referring to the fact that,

that he was once a Padawan at the Jedi Academy. So this is just delightful stuff for Theory Corner. And this is how the slow burn and delicate peeling of the mystery onion over the course of the season is still working. I was thinking back to the moment that we were quite struck by last week when Kymer said to May, That one Jedi master, what was his name again? Saul? And it was just so obvious. Yes.

That there was something behind that. And it was a question of whether it was just about the manipulation and the deal and the mission and the guidance. And now to have this moment, you don't remember me? I sense something familiar. So was he a youngling at the temple? And they would have crossed paths. We see, you know, those series opens with us, why? watching Soul teach, talking about what teaching means to him.

So even if there wasn't a direct master Padawan relationship, he could have been in his, in his tutelage at some point, right? Calling him master, you'd call any master that you encountered at the temple master. Is there any chance so that the relationship was more direct? Like either that he was a, maybe how many Padawan says, I mean, this is part of our introduction to Sol if he's had more than one. I just, I would just really hope he was not Seoul's actual Patowan. Same. Okay, I got one more for you then. But someone that he like taught.

What if it's someone he took? Yeah, for sure. It doesn't have to be his paduan, but if he's another kid who he like scooped up out of his home. On one of these away missions. Yeah. For sure. Absolutely. I do you think there's a time. We can talk about this later when we get to the, my mother. My mother. My mother. But do you think there's like a coven? I want to talk about that later. Let's save it for later. For sure. I want to address one thing. I love a theory corner, as you know. I love to run wild in the theory corner. I just want to say for people who are like, are they related?

I just want to say, Mae Jocinto is of Filipino Chinese descent and Li Zhong J is of Korean descent. And I just do not think that the folks who are making Star Wars now are going to say, it's okay, they're both Asian. They can be related. I don't think that that is what we're going for at all. So I would just encourage people to move away from. from that one. But some sort of history that goes beyond episode two of this show feels potential. And that is just like really fun.

Because just like May is on her course because of some deeply personal resentment of and bitterness toward the Jedi, a specific blame. Like what is Chimer's version of that? How did the Jedi fail him? Is it that he was in the order and then he wasn't? He was kicked out. Whatever. darkness he felt the pull toward, it was another, like this kid, and got to get him out. Kicked out like OSHA was kicked out. Yeah. Do you know? Yes. And so, like, yeah, the question I have about that is like, is this whole mission that

May is on, which seems like her personal mission, these four Jedi who personally wounded her, is it actually he's like, I need to kill Seoul specifically? Or maybe Indara and Saul. I don't think Torben was necessarily on his hit list. Poor Torben. But like, I want this Jedi done. Yeah. Done.

And I want him done in by something that will hurt him more than me just driving a saber through his heart. Yes. I want to take his favorite. Take his goodness. Take his everything. Yeah. Absolutely. What if in the master soul part does make it seem like he was at the temple?

But what if it was that they didn't think he was worth bringing it? Oh, they didn't take him. Yeah. They didn't take him. Yeah. They didn't take him. I just think that I want to enter one more possibility, because I love this, and it's very juicy and fun. One more possibility is that Master Soul exists as sort of this ironic, like, oh, Master Soul, like, if they don't have a history.

If he's just sort of like using the honorific, you know, sarcastically. He's being sarcastic no matter what. But, you know, I just want to introduce that as a possibility. I think if you don't remember me is there just about the apothecary showdown, that's weird. I think there has to be a deeper history than that. Jackie, Rumble and Jungle, round three is Jackie versus May. Incredible. Wonderful.

Electric. Unbelievable. Really, really good. Just raw physicality. Flying into the action with the, like, the double-footed kick, I don't know what the technical term for is. That was great. I'm not a stunt person.

That was great. But also just like the way in which, again, we have to add. ask how force strong is May, how strong is OSHA, how far strong are they together? But to watch Jackie use the force to just like push and pull May around to put her into half the cuffs for May, of course, to be fighting all along, but really start fighting when she gets read her rights

and she's accused of starting the fire. And she's like, oh, you're not going to get me for that. Right. I didn't kill my family. Yeah, I killed Indara. I killed Torben, but I didn't do this. You've only seen one perspective for the flashback. She's also using her knives a lot, which is, I mean, she grabbed Kelnaka Sabre,

but she's using her knives a lot, and I just feel like it's been too long since we've seen her use those knives. So it's good to see them back in action. Rumble and Jungle, round four, Chimir v. Soul still, again, yet some more. Just fantastic stuff. Let's get to a metaphorical moment in this episode, one of a few. people who play this clip, please. Show your face and let you read my thoughts. No.

What master hides his face from his pupil? You tell me. This gave me a chill. No, no, no, no. And you tell me. I thought this was amazing. The You Tell Me was fantastic. So on a practical level, we get this bit of

lore that the cortosis helmet, which again, Ben will talk about more, blocks his mind from this very specific skill that soul has, which is not all Jedi can read your mind the way that soul can. So this very like magneto wearing a helmet to protect himself from Professor X moment that we have here. That's all true. But this idea of the mask, which we've gotten again and again and again in Star Wars, and this idea of like Saul masking his true nature from OSHA. From himself? From himself? Yeah.

From Chimier in the past? Who's to say? Yeah. I wonder this quote from Adam Driver to GQ on Kylo Ren's mask because obviously Kylo is very prevalent in this episode. We'll talk about that a bit more. But Kylo's mask, unlike Vader's, which he needs to survive, and chimeras, which he needs to head butt lightsabers and block, you know, psychic Jedi.

Kylo's mask serves no function. It's... Vives only. It's aesthetics. But I'm never said to GQ, I remember the initial conversations about having things, quote, skinned and peeling away layers to evolve into other people. And the person Kylo's pretending to be on the outside is not who he is. He's a vulnerable kid who doesn't know where to put his energy. But when he puts his mask on, suddenly he's playing a role.

And all the times we've seen, like, cracked masks, Twilight of the Apprentice, Obi-Wan, or under a mask, obviously, Return of the Jedi, et cetera. this idea of masking in Star Wars is been something we've been talking about for a long time. This idea of duality and performance is something we've been talking about all season with Chimir. But I just love tracking. Once the mask comes off, Chimir.

And we heard the start of the episode. Obviously he like pops on the old Chimir voice when he's like, hello. But then the next line read is like his most, his most gravelly Christian Bail line read. Like he swings it. intentionally. And then throughout he's just sort of like modulating all over the place in terms of how scary, how, you know, irreverent, how it's just an incredible performance. But do I feel like I understand and philosophical at the end when he's like basically reciting Shakespeare to incapacitated OSHA? Do I feel like I understand the heart of Chimer yet? No.

because he's performing for May's benefit, for O'S benefit, for soul's benefit, but I am so desperate to get to the core of who this person is. Yeah, absolutely. Under all the masking that he does. That's beautifully laid out. I think, too, like, you can make the mask for the Kylo, like, this is my persona. This is how I'm ready for the role I'm about to play. You can make the mask for the cortosis practicality of the edge that you will have out of the. the field, you choose to do the venom teeth for a specific reason. Like, the way that that looks,

and it has the kind of like rivulets and fractures that are, again, like, very chylacoded. And it tells us, like, thematically, that pings something about being like, you're piecing together the life that you want to live, right? Yeah. And if something is broken, you are ready to repair it, and maybe you think that the people who let you down, like, didn't want to give you that chance. I love that. I just think it's perfection. And I cannot wait to have it in my home, and I need these 2,025 estimates to be wrong. Wrong. But, like, also, the no, no, no, as we try to theorize about what this past history might be.

And whether it involves them directly or not, like, his past history has driven him to this point. That's the case. That's certain. Did you get the sense that maybe it's not just that he knows that this is a threat that someone could read his mind, that soul could read his mind, but that this is, in fact, happened to him before. and it went bad. Have you read my mind again? Maybe this is why I got kicked out of the Jedi. 100%.

Right? Absolutely. You saw what was in there. You didn't like it. You told me I couldn't stay. So no more. This is my space. Maybe I was one of those pupils in your class who was like, I see fire everywhere, consuming everything.

I see fire and blood. I see a. And it's not just because I'm watching House of the Dragon. Gritting mask. On the mask front, I want to say that the costume designer told Polygon that the mask. that the mask, the grin on the mask is inspired by Frank's Bunny Mask and Donnie Darko, which I love. And Leslie Hudlin told Entertainment Weekly that the helmet's like not that different from the classic Star Wars. We get the little like sort of samurai-esque sort of flip in the back that Vader has, etc.

But she said the grin is like this smile that lasts too long and was meant to be really unsettling to the Jedi. It's not that they're afraid of him. It's that they find him unsettling. Even his intro when he, this is so killer. Even his intro, when he floats down in the end of episode four, we shot that in reverse because we just wanted the audience to be like, what is this? 100%. Yeah, absolutely. So scary. Oh, man.

That's just sensational. Absolutely. Deeply disturbing and upsetting. They killed that part of it. They did. Okay. So to go back to... You tell me.

Yord saying he gets into your head and he stays there. And OSHA says, my mother could do that. get inside a Jedi's head. I saw it once. And we see it later in this episode when May is running and we get the like sort of camera shot of him inside of her head. All right. So this is, okay, here's the question.

Is this just here to remind us of something that we've been thinking about a lot, which is in another flashback episode, are we going to see Mother Anasea or another one of the witches take over the mind of another Jedi? Is that just here to remind us that that's something that the witches can do? So we are, it's on our mind. lines when we get to another flashback episode. Right. Like, or does this imply a more concrete connection between chimera and the witches?

Was he there that night? Right. Was this part of the deal the witches made to get May and OSHA? Like, I'll teach you how to slip inside someone's mind if you give me some, a forced dyad, you know? Yeah. Your question before was, like, was he the one who scooped May up from whatever, you know, cavern that she fell into?

and what else might he have been up to there? So here's my question. This is all theory fodder, but like, storytelling-wise, is it a better story for you if Chimer was there and concretely connected to the witches or not? He knows a lot about what happened there. Yeah. Is it just because he's taking what May told him as canon? Or what do you think?

I'm open to any number of outcomes here. I'm not necessarily attached to him having a direct tie to the coven. I mean, there are no men at the coven that we saw. That we saw. I guess I would prefer for his backstory to be different and for that to then enhance the point, right? That people from different backgrounds and different circumstances, other groups. Their child snatching all over the galaxy. like just one boy or one family unit or an entire coven that anybody who tries to exhibit and display that freedom to live their life their own way would be not just made to feel but actively policed by the Jedi Order and the Republic.

Here's a question I have. Yeah. I have no real evidence for this. But we know that like OSHA's kicked out of the Jedi Order. Chose to leave a foreign free accord. Sure. No one's decision. We have been speculating that a reason she left war was kicked out was because her force powers weren't working that well.

But what if as she gets kicked out, the Jedi have a way of putting like a padlock on your force powers? If you're not going to be trained by us, this is a power you no longer have access to. You're blocked from it. Well, I do think the idea of a block or a control is still – that feels very likely to me. I'm I'm I whether that's the Jedi after she left the order That feels more like a your your powers just with her on the vine If they're not being tended to like stretch of life sure

But you know when we The way that we see The stranger flash in to May's face as she's running and he's calling her a coward The the just the he gets in your head and he he stays there Yord line It made me think back to like the visions Even when we hear

you know, the little, the young May say Osha's name in this episode. That doesn't appear to be May doing that. It kind of does. Does it? More than it's him. He's busy. He's very busy in that moment. Yeah.

She's like in distress. It's a close-up of her face in distress. And then we hear it through the force bond. Yeah. If it were coming from him, I feel like. But maybe it's not him. Because we still think maybe he has a master. So maybe there's some larger plan here.

I just feel like with three more episodes. like, and we're going to have an entire episode that's like a flashback to what really happened in Brendok, how much room do we have for like that many more layers of a conspiracy? It could be definitely a stinger, definitely a stinger, but I don't think we're going to get like a big master reveal that's going to be a huge part of the plot in the remainder. If May is the one saying Osh's name there, even still though, like this idea of the visions and the snow and this connection and what you're seeing and when, like that that has been from the moment on Brendok, from the moment of parting.

from the moment of the fire, that whether it is Chimir or his master or Anasea or Coral or anyone, that there is somebody who is guiding and in some way confining what one or both of them has access to and can see. I was much more on board. I was so on board with your theory that, like, chimier or someone was sending OSHA these visions in order to position her somewhere because they need the force diet or they want to. like groom and train OSHA. It's Kimer's willingness to kill Mayor OSHA at any turn in this episode. But that doesn't to me

eliminate the possibility that was what he was doing before that. Possibly. He's like, you fucked up our plan, May. Like one of the, there are a lot of chill-inducing moments in this episode, but one of them is when he's standing over Jackie and he's like,

this is a loyal people. Oh my God. You can learn something from her. It was let down. He's disappointed. Naging on its finest. Yeah. He's disappointed.

He's like, I chose you and you're always a bad at this. When he says you've always been weak, how long has he known her? Exactly. What does that mean? It was, you mentioned Thanos earlier. There's a little bit of a like, you know, they're like, I didn't teach you to lie. Like, that's why you're so bad at it aspect of this. Like, okay, at the end of the day, I groomed you, I trained you.

I thought you were going to be my heir parent, my pupil, my accolite. But you don't have it. And that's part of why I was impersonating this buffoon to really take the measure of who you were. Yeah. And then in any moment of consequence, when you're able to assess it through a different, a different lens, the lens of your cortosis mask, the lens of your fake apothecary, bro, whatever the case may be, like, you see something true.

And he doesn't like it. So maybe he's just like, this is my plan, but it's not anymore. Well, I feel like I was surprised how willing he was to kill OSHA. Yes, same. That was surprising to me. Maybe it's just like I need to reset. Jackie, tremendous. Tremendous. Tremendous stuff from Jackie.

The, like, feral scream with the knife slice of the leg. Mm-hmm. It reminded me a little bit of when we were doing our Winter Soldier retrospective and talking about part of the many, many, many things that make that movie so thrilling. You're in a superhero story, right? And you're in the finger reach of violence, like, that there's just something so grounding and anchoring about that kind of combat. In the Jackie and May stretch year, you just really, really, really feel that.

Jackie and Jackie versus Kymir and then Kymir versus Seoul when they both, again, when they both lose their sabers and they're just like punching at each other. But Jackie sort of like jumping in to save. And Jackie and Soul both trying to save May, even though Jackie was just trying to arrest May. You know, like they're both trying to protect her against whatever it is, Chimer is up to. Love that Chimer can Luigi jump. Like, that is tremendous.

His, like, floating flying jump is so good. Oh, man. And Jackie has her own hops that are just incredible. Yeah, Jackie's got some moves. This was, like, ferocious. The one point where she's spinning the sabers, like, she looked like fucking general grievous for a second with four arms. I mean, this was an amazing level. And I was thinking back to how we get the, you know, the torment.

light little combat training sequence at the temple. Very calm, very measured, very like you were learning the formal, officially sanctioned way to engage only if you must. And then you see like Jackie, Jackie is ready to unleash something ferocious inside of her. And it was just like absolutely incredible to watch. Keep each movement tight yet subtle, diminish areas of vulnerability, maximize your defenses without need to strike. The way, that Saul at one point is just swinging wildly with his saber. It's just the exact opposite of that advice that we heard in last week's episode. It's so good. Soul is very uncomposed throughout the fight in a way that I found incredibly dramatically satisfying. Because he should be. He should

be unraveling. Yeah. So good. All right. So... Oh, you know what? Little thing in that stretch that was amazing. It reminded me of when we talked about the first poster, the hilt and the smear of blood. Like when we see the Kalnaka's massive hilt has been sliced in half, right? And it's like planted in the ground. In the spores. Yeah. And it just looked like this, which it is, this remnant on a battlefield in this bloody ash. All I could think of, and spoiler for trailer spoiler, I suppose, for people who don't want to know, so skip ahead.

We've already mentioned that we know that Vern is going to show up on Khafar because we've seen her and her lightsaber whip. in the jungle there. So just imagine... She's going to collect all the bodies that they left behind? This is the crime scene. These are the clues. And so Kilnaca's saber in the spores there is like a clue. What happened here?

Did we get another, a berserker rage from our wookie Jedi? Yeah. Why is the saber here cut in half, you know? Can't wait for the next three episodes. I have to be honest that I do not... I can't say I'm looking forward to just a ton of time with Detective Vern. Did I say? I was. I didn't say I was. I just said we're going to get it.

I cannot say I'm like, I've heard of that. Okay. But it's better than a temple meeting, I guess. The, we get some, you know, Yord and OSHA. The moths from last week's episode are going to come back into play as we expected that they would. I was hoping that Jackie would use them to save herself, but that is not what happens here. Jackie, incredible move. I really love the elbowing the mask off his face. Like brutal blows from the elbow. to get the mask on his face because the saber's not going to you can't use her saber so you have to use her elbow the mask cracks off

the staging of this is incredible because the mask is off and we're like, finally we're going to see and we don't see his face yet and we get the reveal after he has punched three holes

in my favorite, my new favorite character, Jackie. This was so brutal. So brutal. I watched this so many times. I believe these are the mechanics of Chimer's weapon

that he has one long blade and there's a Shoto blade that's like sort of tucked inside of his long blade. Yeah, he separates it and he pulls it out. And then later he flips it and reconnects them end to end to make it more of like a mall-esque double saber. But that idea of like a saber hiding inside

of another saber looks really cool. There's some Calcestis stuff going on here. It's like really incredible. I just loved it. Fantastic stuff. The Jekke death was brutal and shocking. Like, I was not expecting her to die.

It was incredibly effective storytelling. The actual physicality of it, harrowing, thinking, like, seeing souls grief and mourning in real time and just, like, the way that, I don't know, it was, again, we saw him, five characters are off the board in the first minute of the episode, but it was easy, right? Not in terms of she put up a fight. Like, she actually did really hold her own. but it was without hesitation. Bam, bam, bam. And it was absolutely harrowing. And then I was thinking back to like last week,

now we look back at last week's episode and we think like we heard Jackie talk about death, right? We heard Jackie say it's always an honor to get to witness anything or anyone transform into the force. Is it Jackie? That's what I liked about it. And then you see the horror of this. Like what's, what's an honor?

What do you mean? in that, in the way that that happened there. So we 100% knew that it was going to be chimera under that mask. We knew it. And it doesn't matter that we knew it. The reveal is sick as hell. You get it with her body sliding away and the reveal of his face. Leslie in the interview with Entertainment Weekly says,

I think a good twist is not about hiding everything from the audience and then throwing it on them like, hey, this is what you didn't see. We hit it so well that you didn't see this. think a good twist is telegraphing what's going to happen. And then once it does, executing it without an ounce of pity or sentimentality. And that is what we got here. Like, Leslie, from the jump, was pretty sure that people would figure out. Yeah. So it's not, it's not meant to be a big stunning, what the hell?

Right. But the way it's done is just, I think, wonderful. I also think the fact that, like, we are ahead of the characters, sometimes in other stories is frustrating, but actually really worked here. Oh, yeah. Because it helps to then, like, heighten and amplify the fact that whether, and he'll, he will have a fascinating exchange with May about her not realizing who he was, right? The Jedi can't figure it out. Like, when part of the mission of the show is that how did we get to Phantom Menace? How did we get to the rise of Palpatine?

It actually is important to show us how slow and off and incompetent. Damn. So many of the Jedi are. Yeah. I think that's interesting. I agree, and it is why. We got an email to this effect. I did put it in the notes today,

but we got an email to this effect that one of our listeners is like, I actually really wish we had started with knowing exactly what happened on Brenda. And then we're ahead of the characters. And so OSHA, knowing what Saul is hiding, knowing what is left to be revealed for OSHA, knowing what May knows to be true,

all of that wouldn't hinder our experience, and holding that as a mystery is actually not helping the story. Similar to us being a step of the head of the characters with chimera, I just feel like I kind of agree with that. Yeah, I'll withhold like my final judgment on the structure until we see the full season. But I am inclined toward either give us what we need at the beginning or save it. Yeah. Maybe until the end, but the slow drip coffee approach here has been.

Yeah. I would say the two most brutal moments, the two most chilling moments of this episode for me are number one head tilt in the mask. Number two, was that its name? Unbelievable. Yeah. The next part of that exchange is, I think, even more. Of course. It's incredible. When Sol says she was such a child and he says you brought her. This. And he's not wrong. And this again is the Sith point of view that we've been talking about that we've been asking for. Yes. Whenever he says something in this episode and it happens many times where he is not wrong. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the Sith point of view we've been asking for. Yes. I thought that you brought her here. Like, was that its name is it? Harrowing. But there's like the kind of what is that, not who is that last week. So that's kind of effective. You like, I liked that. That, while I thought it was absolutely harrowing and incredible. I'm like, I have chills watching that. That's more like, this is the villain. This is evil. you brought her here is the sword. Yeah.

That's the knife in the heart of your heroes. You train child soldiers. You put her in this position. You endangered those twin girls all those years ago on Brenda. Yeah. This is what you've been doing over and over again your entire career. Exactly. Like I thought that not only the performance is exceptional, but the idea.

Oh, yeah. To hear that idea conveyed is like it's an instant Hall of Fame Star Wars moment. moment to me. Because it's important. And like you said it a few minutes ago, you do have to just sort of right. You're not wrong. There's this indictment of the core Jedi approach. Yeah. You take the children, you train them, but what are you training them for if you're not even aware of or ready to acknowledge what is out there? What awaits? And like we at the beginning of the season, I like kind of making us complicit in this too. Because at the beginning of the season, we were like, Saul wanted awesome master. Took his Padawan. What a sweet kind. Took his Padawan on the mission. They don't know they're going to confront Chimer here. They don't know that they're going to learn that there's a Sith.

But they went to find May to stop Kelnaka's murder. They knew that Jedi were being killed. And they took a kid. Like that's, I think that this is just even in a time of peace at this stretch, which we've talked about a lot, at this stretch of galactic history, it's... By the way, I still don't know how old she's supposed to be. Because you could say she's just a... child about like a young teenager or something like that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, she's not like 11.

But yeah, she's probably not seasoned in combat enough to be out on the mission. And the question is are any of them? Despite the fact that she is very good in combat. She is quite good at it. And I like to like when we try to track this idea of the past and how it is fueling everything that's happening here in this episode. So we had that you tell me moment earlier. And it's like, is this about who soul is now, the truth he's keeping from OSHA. both shared history, et cetera, and then like you get to, you brought her here and you think back to his past again, right? Like, was he put in some sort of position of just like a lack of, like failing your duty of care, right? Absolutely. Is that something that he carries,

like personal trauma or resentment? This is what you do. You train child soldiers. This is what you've always done. And then I thought equally like scintillating was soldiers. response, which is unvarnished rage. He is to have his... To have his... It's pulsating off the screen. Just completely questioned. And especially in light of, not only are we like, oh my God, Saul, he's such a good guy,

he's such a good master, blah, blah. This is like the whole interaction with Vern where she's like, you're so tender-hearted. You know, you're so calm. You're so good with them. And, yeah, to have this completely undermined... Sorry, it makes me think of, we've been talking about this a lot on presumed innocent, where it's just sort of like, what have you crafted as your identity? My identity is that I am the kind, good, gentle Jedi master who is great with kids and whatever. And it's like, guess what you do with the kids that you train? You put them in this position. A quick revisit of this, she's just a child moment because it did. When I read, when I heard that, I thought immediately of you last week in the podcast being like, how old is Jackie? Should we be talking about her having a crush on? OSHA, what age is she?

Is she a child? Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimfaya, guselcomab,

taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaques psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis.

Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. 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 by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here.

celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. We did get an email from Liv,

who found an interview that Daphne Keen did with Decider, where she says Jackie, that she loves being asked about Jackie and OSHA as like a potential crush situation. And she says Jackie does in fact find herself experiencing some, quote, magnetism towards OSHA. So I say that's canon queer Jedi, and I love that for all of us. Yes.

So as you say, soul is completely out of control, swinging wildly, and then we get this sort of rhetorical out-of-control moment. Can we hear this clip, please? What are you? I have no name, but a Jedi like you might call me Sith. Why risk discovery? Well, I did wear a mask. What do you want? Freedom.

The freedom to wield my power the way I like. Without having an answer to Jedi like you. I want a pupil, an acolyte. But this one. Why back on our deal? She exposed me. So now I have to kill every single last one of you. I don't make the rules.

The Jedi do. And the Jedi say I can't exist. They see my face. They all die. Oh, look at you too. Right back where you started. This is juicy. Juicy.

Great stuff. As is our want in general, we love to pour over like every single word of something like this, right, to parse for meaning. So initially when he says, but the Jedi like you might call me Sith, I was like, that means he's not owning his identity as a Sith. What would he call himself? Is he his own thing? That's sort of seemingly the implication here. I do want to say that Manny Jacinto in that Entertainment Weekly interview, when talking about his own character, he says it's very subtle and it's just like this uncomfortable. that people experience, and that's what we want to hone in on for this Sith Lord.

So Manny is calling him a Sith Lord, whether or not that matters. I just wanted to put that on the record. I think the I have no name thing. Obviously, it does ping very faceless man for us, right? But it to me could be just as – it could be about the Sith part of it, but it could be just as much about his specific identity inside of that. Right. He's like, I'm not Darth Kymier. I'm forging that still.

Like, I am still on that journey and that path of discovery and, like, whatever my role is inside of that. That's part of why he's like, I need a pupil. Can it possibly... You really didn't know it was me. I picked a pupil who you really didn't know was me. Well, I did wear a mask. Well, I did wear a mask. It was so funny.

So good. Did wear a mask. Can't possibly be a coincidence that Chimer wants exactly what the witches wanted. Freedom, pupils, acolytes. I just think that that is, I mean... Yeah. I think, again, it's like maybe that implies some sort of more direct tie. Or maybe it's just like, this is what everyone who wields a force wants, you know?

Yeah, it could be an indictment of the Jedi instinct toward control more broadly. Like when we think of some of the stuff we heard from Mother Anisea in episode three, some called a force and claimed to use it. Or then later, we were hunted, persecuted, forced into hiding all because some would consider our power dark unnatural. And this question, this speech mostly... I mean, a lot of the episode gave us the Sith point of view promise, but this most of all, right? This monologue, this speech, most of all, like the idea that the Jedi get to decide who can, not just wield the power and how, but who can access it? Who has the right to access it? And are you allowed to pass the way that you use it down to another generation?

Yeah, yeah. Or is it only the Jedi who get to train their child soldiers? Right, exactly. Only the Jedi can conscript and train the children. And then the idea that the rules. I don't make the rules the Jedi do. Jedi order. Order, structure, rule, law, process, procedure.

And like, the idea that shows interest in interrogating and critiquing that, the idea that the order, the heart and soul of the order, the spine and bones and tendons of the order, that that's the limitation. that that's the thing specifically that incites the challenge that undoes them is just so dramatically compelling. The promise of this entire show. It absolutely is. Absolutely is. And then the right back part, like playing on that guilt, like takes you right back. You're right back to when you failed her last time. How does he know?

And the fact that he's doing all of this with the hilt of his saber to her head like a pistol. Yeah. It's just incredible. Disturbing. Maybe she just told him. Maybe he was there. We see him. We do get to, like, again, the view of him in her mind.

So he obviously is able to penetrate her mind in a way that like any number of ways that he could have access to that account. But again, what is it most interesting to me about that because of the Rashman thing we've been discussing and the nature of the perspective in episode three is like if he does just have May's perspective, then he doesn't have the full story either. Well, my wonder is episode seven is being directed by Kogonata who directed the initial Brandoak episode. So this is episode five. I do not think we're going to get a flashback in episode six. I think we're getting it all in episode seven, which... If they're devoting the penultimate episode to revisiting Brandock, they have to crush it.

They have to crush it. So what we have right now, and I'm not saying it's going to stay this way, what we have right now is we've got the acolytes have switched places, maize with Seoul, OSHA's with Kymir. Will we get competing stories of what happened there? Will we get a true Roshman? Are we just going to get this is actually what happened, or are we going to get May's like, this is what I think happened? And Seoul's like, this is what I think happened.

And Kymir's like, this is what I think happened, etc., etc. So OSHA will wake up. It seems that Kimer, unlike Seoul, realized who was, in front of him. Oh, definitely. 100%. First of all, arm tat, no forehead tap, but also he could just tell. And also just, Sol, we have so many questions and notes. Yes. And I know we're jumping a little out of order, but since we're talking about it, I assume that because OSHA and Seoul in their parting, she was like, what was he talking about?

What did he mean? And once again, Sol does the Nets dark promise. Eventually, I'll tell you. So my assumption is that OSHA will wake up and be like, can you tell me what you were talking about? Yeah. And Pimer will, and then she will make her decision. But what happens in the episode in between those things is my question. On the other side, I do, we can talk about this more where we get there, but Sol not immediately clocking who that is is like very confounding to me. Basil going on the ship.

Oh, no, Basil knows. Basil going on the ship and immediately sniffing. I'm like, the jig is going to be up, like, pretty quickly. Which I think is necessary. But I don't think it's going to be immediately. And, like, that's, it's upsetting to me the inconsistency of force use throughout this. Not upsetting, but, like, it's confusing to me. Yeah. Master's soul having, again, his bell rung once again and waking up sort of days and confused and being taken to the ship, like, I can understand, maybe in that moment.

But if he doesn't realize right away, even without Basel, if he doesn't realize right away that that's not OSHA. When did you get that forehead tattoo? Or also, I can sense you through the force. Now, the only like force explanation, especially in this episode where like our attention is being called to somebody saying to him, you don't recognize me, you can't tell who I am, you can't feel it, you can't sense it, even otter. But if they are a dyad, like perhaps they are more difficult to distinguish in the force than other beings would be, that's kind of the only explanation I can wrap my mind around. Let's zoom through a few of these other things that happens here, right? Yord Yord gets his head snapped. Holy shit. but went out like we're not kind of brave went out kind of sad but kind of brave um the way that chimers says

oh shah this is your master bone chilling you trust him even after everything he did to you and then he says and then soul says his mind is twisted by darkness and then he says i've accepted my darkness what have you done with yours this was this is the line that leslie told me earlier that i cut out of the podcast but like another like spine tingle so like bars and a half full Like we've had so many conversations about how unnatural and inhuman it is for the Jedi to stifle their emotions, to ask people to stifle their emotion. And so what do you do when you like tamp down the darkness again and again? We have to remember of the exchange in episode two when Soul says, I wanted to save you both. Yeah.

And Oshah says, what happened that night wasn't your fault, soul. I've told you that. And he says, you did. And I have made my peace with what happened on Bredoc. Have you? Certainly not. No. She says, I know you have. That was a lesson you tried to teach me many times to accept what I'd lost. And I wasn't a very good student. He says, perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. Right. This goes back to, so something that Leslie said in that interview that you and I both were really struck by is like how personal in exchange that was for her and how it related to her own relationship with her father. But before she talked about that, she talked about this idea of like the Sith and the Jedi and their relationship to emotion. And she says, you know, the Sith may be wrong. The Jedi may be wrong. But I think.

writing a story from the Sith's perspective, a character like Soul, is the perfect culmination example of the incongruity of avoiding attachment or resisting attachment in order to circumvent suffering, in order to stay away from being seduced by the dark side. And I think this is so evident in JJ's performance. He's a light-sighted person. He's a glass of clear water. And there's this drop of food coloring. Let's just say that's dropped in that clear glass of water and that drop is OSHA. Soul's starting point is Anakin's ending point. I mean, fascinating to me. But I'm so compelled throughout this series by Soul and Kynir that they have been

absolutely sensational hits for me. And watching them face off was like it was just stomach clenching and spine tingling. And so that his mind is twisted by darkness. I've accepted my darkness. What have you done with yours? Like in the moment of that exchange, soul is shaking. He's barely able to choke out the words. His rage is like.

He is not able to contain it. And so what a perfect moment to ask him that question. Oh. To make him think about that. Throughout, he's like pressing on bruises. Oh, absolutely. Pressing the perfect time of the perfect bruise. And we've like felt that there was something lurking there, right?

We have, but I feel like we've been more focused on like OSHA and her inability to reconcile what happened in her past and the potential anger that's waiting to explode in her. This episode more than any other that we had before, we knew that soul was not resolved. on things, but the anger, the regret, the guilt, yes, the anger. Well, this is the Star Wars tale as whole is time. Is that the path? How do these things build, right? The fear and the anger and the hate. So, like, that progression feels right to me.

Oh, totally. And I like, you know, we talked about this earlier in the season, but like it calls to mind that rings of power. Sometimes we cannot know until we have touched the darkness idea. And so what I still like thinking about with soul and I'm really eager to discover and understand better over the remaining three episodes is, has he touched the darkness? Did that happen already? Was Brendak his sometimes you cannot know until he touched the darkness moment?

And maybe he didn't like what he discovered. And he's been suppressing that and stifling it and afraid of it, afraid of what he knows is inside of him since then. Or is this the moment where he'll touch the darkness? Because it's been burbling to the fore. I feel like it's definitely coming. I feel like what we used to see now is like sort of the lid rattling on the boiling pot of water. And it's going to boil over at some point before all it. said and done. Because to go back to what

Khymir said in the larger proposition of this show, which is that no one can know that the Sith are here. And he said, you call me a Sith. That means soul can't survive this show. That means... Devastating. Right? It's devastating.

He definitely cannot. Or... Or he gets his mind wiped. Or? He goes to the dark side. Yes. That is the in some ways most dismaying possibility that we have to come on. That's more painful. I actually kind of love this. Like, what if it's just soul and Kymir and OSHA as like Darkside Baddies?

You're happy to keep your secret if I'm one of you. That sounds really fun. Now that would be a hell of a season too. Right? What to watch? The Moss pay off. And I just have one, just one solitary note. I love you, Pamp.

I have one solitary note for Kimer. Yeah. Fit tremendous. The thing he does with his like cape wrap poncho thing where he like throws it as a distraction. Incredible. The arms, we might return to in a second. The like, you know, the whole like jumpsuit fit, incredible.

It's great. On the back, there's these cross-hash metal detailing. Yeah. Very easy to stick Pips. Just white bulb head onto that. Asking to have something hooked to it. It looks great. The wave of those thin bars of like sort of gleaming silver on the black, very Kylo

red to me. But I was just like, I would remove that. from your costume going forward. I'm sure he probably will. I actually, I mean, like, I think they hit the moth thing a few too many times for it to be like a cool, but I thought it looked cool. I thought it was a cool way to take him out of the action without having, like, Obi-1 walk away from Anakin and be like, well, I tried, but here we go.

Yeah, I was a little mixed on it. You didn't like it? I liked, I almost wanted more elements of the forest to come into play, like more of that lurking, wading dark. That rot, which obviously the rot is manifesting in a different form here. It's present. Yeah. He annihilated almost the entire fellowship with ease.

And so, like, I'm like, you have your saber. You can use the force and you can fly. He does defeat the mons. He does, but like the... It just takes him a minute. There's a lot of them, but he takes them down. Yeah. It just takes them a minute.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't really want to dwell on this Mayanosha thing because it just really is does not work very well. Easily the weakest part of it, otherwise excellent episode. May's flip-flopping

continues to be confounding and tough. And I just, it's too bad. But we do get a twin swap. Soul's PR team has been working overtime online to justify the fact that Sol just goes with May and doesn't recognize that it's May

and leaves all the bodies there. They're like, oh, he for sure knows. He definitely knows. He said, sister. He didn't say which name or like whatever. He definitely knows. And I'm like... And then he, so he just left OSHA with... Absolutely not. There's

no way that Sol knows. Hopefully, again, to your point, hopefully he figures out very quickly, but there's no way he knows. Basil's on the case. Sniffin away. With Pip's head. Sniffin away. Okay. Last thing we get. Dawn is breaking

in Kofar, right? It's golden hour. Beautiful. And then we get this moment where... OSHA on the jungle floor and another Jack Shepard moment as far as I'm concerned. And Chimer Force heals her to Kylo Ren's theme. Like this. Like a little stitching. A little stitching in an instant.

Kylo Ren theme plays as Chimir Force heals her. Good stuff. Some nice fury fodder there. I'm not going to read this whole. quote, but I would encourage you to go back and listen to Leslie talking about the word seduced, seduced to the dark side. And, you know, again, to the tune of how many emails we got, just simply about how hot managed Jacinto is, that is so intentional that I think she's really, she's really responding. She brings up Kylo in that quote when she was talking to us about seduced and that word seduced to the dark side. And she says when Kyle's, Kylo says, join me. And then Adam Driver says, please, in that really beautiful, you know, distinctive, intimate way. I feel like it had ended the movie there, to be quite honest.

It felt like the I love you, I know moment to me. He's saying, I can't exist without you. And if you don't come with me, I'm not sure I can do it. So obviously, like, Kimer, who once again, when the moths attack him, swings his saber directly at OSHA's neck. So he is not before that, like, mock moment is not. like being delicate with OSHA's life. No. Throughout the episode, happy to kill either of them at any point. But in this moment.

Yes. And then he says, will you hear this final clip, please, Steve? What extraordinary beings we are. And the revelation of our triumph, you see the depth of our despair. Beautiful. It genuinely made me think of Shakespeare. What a piece of work is man. It genuinely made me think of Yoda, luminous beings are warm.

Oh, yeah. Like, this is just this beautiful, tender, dawn is breaking moment. Mani was asked directly what this quote means and gave, frankly, word salad to entertainment weekly and I don't blame him because, like, whatever. So I don't think it's worth reading his answer here. But, like, I'm waiting for, like, more of a breakdown of, like, why we ended this episode with, like, such poetry. Time to learn more about his philosophy. and his history.

Can't wait. Can't believe we only have three episodes left. Can't believe one of them is going to be a flashback. But more manny. Should we go now to Lore Corner with Jedi Master Ben Lindbergh. Ben, you are here today to talk to us about some, is it heavy metal?

Not so heavy metal? It's pretty heavy. Yeah. That's part of why it works so well. we are here to talk about cortosis today. And I always appreciate when lore can be incorporated into something in a way that isn't too heavy-handed or distracting, which I guess is ironic given that I do a dedicated lore segment on the show that isn't subtle at all. But when you're watching a show, it's great if these things can show up in a way where if you know, you know, and if you don't know, you won't know what you don't know or you won't mind what you're missing. So I thought the cortosis introduction was one of the many excellent aspects of this week's acolyte.

The episode goes live at 9-Eastern. At 9-13, I get a text from my Star Wars fan friend from high school, Matt, that just says, in all caps, cortosis, I am losing it. We were the cool kids in high school in case you couldn't tell. But if you weren't one of the cool kids in high school, you might not have clocked the cortosis as quickly as Matt. And you might have just thought, oh, this mysterious darksider has a mysterious ability that looks cool. And if that's all you needed to know, then I'm sorry because I'm here to tell you much more than that. So I love the lore of Cortosis because I think it speaks to something universal about storytelling, which is that invulnerability is boring, right?

So Superman comes along in 1938 by 1943 on the radio and 49 in the comics, Kryptonite appears. And Dorothy Wolfo, the first female editor at DC who worked on Superman comics in the 40s, said many years later, the problem with Superman was that he was too invulnerable. So in fiction, whenever you invent something invulnerable, you inevitably have to invent a vulnerability because invulnerability isn't that interesting. It's like, I like to show my flaws from time to time so people don't think he's too perfect. He's not interesting, you know? That's what we're always saying over here. Exactly.

Classic. So you need conflict to create drama and you need vulnerability to create conflict. So if, for instance... This is about you filing 5,000 words at 3 a.m., right? For 10 years? Is that... Is that a vulnerability or an invulnerability? I'm not sure.

I guess it depends. From a certain point of view. Yeah, from an editor's point of view. My editor's workload, potentially. It's great for traffic, I guess, time on the page, you know? Anyway, if you have an energy sword that can cut through anything, eventually, someone's going to say, well, what if there were something it couldn't cut through? Eureka. So in gaming parlance, you might say lightsabers were O.P.

Overpowered. And they needed to be nerved or made weaker. And all you have to do is invent some substance, some vibranium or unobtainium or pretty tough to obtainium, that possesses that trait. It's kind of cheap, but it's a tried and true formula. Jedi are essentially superheroes too. So there's a long legacy of force-resistant or forced disabling or lightsaber-resistant creatures. And it didn't take long after the expanded universe, what we now know is legends really got going for authors to come up with lightsaber blockers.

So Bescar, which was first just called Mandalorian Iron, was introduced in the Tales of the Jedi Comics in 1994. Great rebrand. Yeah, I was going to say. Great rebrand with Bessar. Better name. Yeah. I guess Mandalorian ironed just the generic brand equivalent of Baskar.

That's the brand name. You pay more for Besscar, but it's the same material. An ancient Sith Lord's tomb surrounded by Mandalorian iron that just can't be cut by lightsabers. The following year, the great game Dark Forces introduced a similar substance called Frick, P-H-R-I-K, not as great branding. Later, there's another name Nuranium, not Uranium, but Nuranium. All these metals are just dense and impetrable. They didn't do anything to the lightsaber except block it. So if you want to not just block a lightsaber but temporarily disable it, your best bet is cortosis.

So cortosis comes along May of 1998 in a great book called I Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole, the rare Star Wars novel told from a first person perspective. It's narrated by a Jedi named Corin Horn, and there's a scene where he fights a member of the Gen. Surai, an order of force users who are separate from the Jedi and the Sith. A brief reading from I Jedi. He's describing a fight scene here. I parried her hard and to the right, then shifted my wrist and came up through a slash that should have cut right through her bracer and taken her left hand off. I felt a jolt run through my lightsaber, numbing my hands as the blade flickered and died. After the fight, Luke Skywalker asks Corinne, what happened to your blade? Answer, I don't know. I picked it up and hit the button.

The blade sprang to life again with no shock and no sputtering. I felt a lot of feedback. Something in the armor shorted it? Cortosis or maybe? So there are just three brief mentions of Cortosis in that book. It's not a major plot point. But you can see how powerful the appeal is. Something that disables lightsabers, whoa, just literal plot armor.

Once you've introduced something like that, it's there to stay. So just a few months later, Cortosis makes the leap to one of Timothy Zanz Thron books, Vision of the Future. So here's a brief scene where Luke and his lovely future wife, Marajade, encounter a wall they can't cut through. There must be cortosis in this rock, he told her. He held his glow rod up to the rock face, the light dancing off tiny sparkles. Mara shook her head. Never heard of it.

It's apparently fairly rare, Luke said. This is just to catch all the readers who didn't read Eye Jedi up to. What's this cortosis thing that we invented a few months ago? All I really know. Are you saying that you are sad that Khymer didn't turn to the camera and say cortosis? Apparently is pretty rare. Yeah, that's the thing, right? One of the Jedi red shirts isn't like,

he must have cortosis in his armor. It's a substance that shorts out lightsabers. You know, that would have been the less subtle way to do it. So Luke says it's apparently fairly rare. All I really know about it is that it shuts down lightsabers. Corin and I ran into some force users once who'd made a set of body armor out of woven cortosis fibers. It was quite a surprise. I'll bet, Mara said.

Great dialogue, just natural, you know. It's how people talk. Genuinely. A memory of her own drifting up. So that's what the slab of rock was Palpatine had between the double walls of his private residence. Luke lifted an eyebrow. He had cortosis ore. Yeah, somehow Palpatine got cortosis ore.

But apparently it's pretty rare. Yeah, fairly rare. And around some of his other offices and throne rooms, too, I think, Mara said, I never knew the proper name for this stuff. Oh, now we know. So this is like Mandalorian iron? No, it's Besscar. No, it's cortosis.

from what he told me, if you're wondering, how does this stuff work? Here was the legends explanation. I gather that if your lightsaber has dimetrous circuits anywhere in the activation loop, hitting the rock starts a feedback crash running through the system that takes only a fraction of a second to shut the whole thing down, a little something extra to slow down any stray Jedi who might come after him. So it's those pesky dimetrous circuits in the activation loop. So over the years, Cortosa shows up all over in trooper armor in battlejublj, droid armor, sometimes in starship holes. Sometimes it's just called cortosis, sometimes cortosis

alloy, cortosis weave. It's often associated with Sith or Darksiders because they're sneaky. They need to defend themselves against Jedi. It comes up in the 2012 Darth Plagas novel. He and his master, Darth Tenebris, in the tradition of using sinister adjectives as Sith names, Darth Tenebris are mining it as they're plotting to take down the Jedi, which could be relevant to the acolyte, because one or both of those, darts could be connected to this story somehow. Like a lot of things in the old legends timeline, the portrayal of cortosis is kind of inconsistent. So one common thread is that it has to be mined and refined, and it's difficult to mine because, again, you can't cut it, which presents a problem when you want to mine it.

But a lot of other aspects are inconsistent, like how dangerous and fragile, pure, unrefined cortosis is, whether it merely blocks the saber or also shorts it out. Does it short it out for a second or for a few minutes? You know, what's the recovery period here? That varies. Is it effective against everything or just lightsabers, et cetera? So one reason for that inconsistency, I think, is that it often showed up in video games, including the classic Cotor games that Leslie Huddlin is fond of.

And it would have been more work to make lightsabers shored out in games. So sometimes it was just super strong armor that really didn't do anything else. And in accordance with our principle that every invulnerable, thing needs of vulnerability. There was also a specific type of khyber crystal that could cut through cortosis. Oh, anti-cortosis. Tusha. The tables have turned. I don't know if there's a cortosis that's resistant chybro. I'm not sure if they got that far. Anyway, none of that is strictly canon because it's all in the legends timeline, but no time was wasted in making Cortosis canon after the Disney reset. Literally the first novel of the new canon, the 12th

2014 Rebels prequel book, A New Dawn, mentions Cortosis. And it's been with us in the canon ever since. It's a big plot point in a more recent Zan Thron book, 2018's Thron Alliances, which I think we've talked about before, in which during the Clone Wars, Theron explains the material is called Cortosis. It's very rare. So we have another of these catching everyone up on what this thing is called. I've heard stories about it, but never seen any. It's rumored to have unusually high energy absorption and transmission coefficients to the point where many energy weapon blasts will be dissipated along the fibers without damaging the fibers themselves. You always have to have that techno babble involved in the cortosis reintroduction. As far as I know, the implication in this

episode that Cortosis maybe can block Jedi mind probes, that it doesn't just block lightsabers, but also you can't read your mind or do Jedi mind tricks or implant memories or anything if you have your cortosis helmet on. It's like a Magneto's, helmet sort of situation. That's new as far as I know, although there are just so many mentions of this stuff over the years. So like Thron said, I've heard stories about it, but never seen any. We had never really seen cortosis on screen until this episode of the Acolyte. And it's quite possible that these poor Jedi red shirts who got Sith kebab had never encountered cortosis either. And maybe that's one reason why they go down without much of a fight.

Great stuff. Incredible. Thank you, Ben. Sith kebab is, yeah. Wonderful. Almost as good as I parried her hard. I parried her so hard. Now you can text all your friends. I held my glow stick and I parried her so hard.

And what's the refractory period on a lifesaver that's in short enough? Text all your friends in all caps about cortosis and impress them with your new family. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Ben. You're the best. Do you love how I use my chimera force powers to teleport? fork from that side of the table back to this side of the table?

Yes. That's great. Didn't Umbra Moth assist? Let's hit theory corner. Let's do it. Okay. So, friend of the pod, Dave Gonzalez, who's like my main person that I text about Star Wars? When this episode ended, I was like, that fucking ruled.

It was so good. And his very first response is like, do you think chimera is the original Ren? This is the Knights of Red theory. It rules. It slaps. I love this. Yeah. Here's, let's just break it down really briefly.

Um, the title is, the episode title is night. Mm-hmm. Night with no K'Kha, but K'nites of Wren, the Knights of Ren. Okay. The Kylo Ren light motif is used twice, once during fighting, once during force healing. Yeah. A Ren, not the original Wren from the comics, bears more than a passing resemblance to Chimair.

This is a visual moment. I'm sorry, even on video, I can't really show it to you, but there's this, you know, moment from the comics where we see this guy, very muscular guy with a cloak and a helmet and one van brace, and he looks not dissimilar. The timing is quite off for Kimer to be that guy in the comics. Because we are far away from Ben Solo and his journey into taking on the title of Ren. But Ren, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, is a title.

So is this the original Wren? His look is very Knights of Ren. Knights of Ren was a huge missed opportunity in the Star Wars sequel. They look so sick. And we've gotten some lore in the comics. And the comics lore is amazing. It's so good. But the time of the character is sensational.

But it was just like a miss on screen. And I just think that I would love. I mean, I love this. I love this way more than. like Darth Plague is, like all the other theories that are flying around. And it's obviously with what you were just saying earlier about this. You know,

maybe you're working to create a faction of your own. A splinter faction. Could it be. I like it a lot. I think the comics Knights of Rand Cannon has been sensational. And to the like misfire on screen point, we've talked about this a lot with other Star Wars series, but part of the opportunity on offer with a television series

is to. rework and revisit something that didn't land elsewhere. Yeah. Force diads. Do a better job. Let's just take forced diets on nights of rent and make it work. I love this for us. We did get an email from Liv. I'm not going to read the whole thing out, Liv, tremendous email.

But she was bringing up forced diet. The fact that Kylo Ren's theme is being used during the healing, the idea that, again, we've seen force healing elsewhere. Little Groves can force hail, et cetera. But the idea that they could use force healing. seemed to be connected to their dyad strength. That makes them more powerful

force healers. Yeah. Yes. But we had not seen force healing until Grogu and Kylo and Ray. And that's

that was of course back-to-back days. Yes. It really felt like one was warming us up for the other. We got Grogu and grief and then built toward

yeah. Well, what a time that was. What a time that was. Remember Rise of Skywalker? Should we go now to Wig Watch? Yeah, I'm excited for you. Will you wear wigs? I mean, RIPC Charlie Vickers' hair and Daphty Keen's hair, I will miss those particular phenomenal eccentric wigs.

We got a lightsaber-assisted haircut here, and this is just a, I know, they wanted to do it from the start. They, like, designed all of the wigs around. this idea that someone could just slice their hair off. I knew the slicing the hair was coming. I felt like that was coming. Yeah. With the saber, just seems like something that feels like such a fun idea that in execution, I'm not sure, worked as well as they were hoping. Yeah.

That's just where I am with that. Yes. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's been wig watch. But if we get a flashback, here's a question. Mm-hmm. If Chimir is in Bren Dock or if we get some other flashback to Chimir at the Jedi Academy or whatever, will he also have flashback bangs?

That's an exciting thing to consider. The flashback hair has been so astonishing that, I mean, the possibilities are boundless, truly boundless. Excellent. Can't wait. And I guess, because we still have the question of, this isn't about hair, but like of why they were all in Brandock in the first place. It does seem like they were there for some other reason. then realize the kids were there. So that maybe widens the possibility of, like, Chimer being there outside of the coven. Is there other Sith activity on the planet, et cetera? Maybe. Perhaps.

Okay. One final segment. Ready for some more mind magic. One final segment. This is not our usual segment. But we got so many emails about this. I thought we should. Thank you.

A truly astounding number of emails about this. I thought we should do a special dedicated. So we didn't spend the whole episode talking about it. Thirst trap corner here on House of Ar. It's necessary. Let's do it. Oh, my. And I'm just going to say, if this is not your speed, if you don't like this, now it's time to go.

Because after this, there's nothing. So this is the end of the episode. Here we go. I, actually, will you read this email? Because it's directed in me, and I feel weird reading it myself. Will you read, will you read? We got it. It's not one email.

It's just from multiple people. Multiple people sent versions of this email. Joey, Brian, Pete. Joanna, I have to know. Is Cartoon Mall, your husband, cartoon mall, still your choice? Or did Chimir move up your rankings as sexiest Sith? Because whoever decided Kymer needed to reveal his biceps before his face deserves a race. Am I abandoning Cartoon Mall?

Yeah. I simply don't have enough information. I simply think it's unfair to throw over animated mall who I've spent years with. Lusting after, yeah. For 34 minutes with Crimea and all his glory. It's not even 34 minutes. But what minutes they were? My goodness.

Why not both? Why do you have to pick? I will just say, oh, a Sith diet? Yeah, I'm not making you pick. Okay. This can be a different kind of Sith kebab, to quote Ben. I don't like it. Okay. And then we have...

Wow. Can't believe I didn't get a bad baby from... Or a dear me from Steve on that one. Orna. I don't want it. I don't want it. Thank you. Okay. We close now with a smattering of emails. We don't have to read all of these. I think you do need to read the first one, though. It's just sensational. All caps from Lizzy.

Oh, no. He's hot. Chimer's been awake since before the breaking of the first silence. Sauron, have you out of him, won. The deceiver, the dark lord whose dominion is torment, would be so proud. Oh, my God. Yes, he did unforgivable crimes, but I'm giggling and kicking my feet. This is just, this is... Kimer's been awakes before the first...

Breaking of the first silence is so good. It's so funny, and I heard it so clearly in Charlie Vickers' voice. Danielle just simply wrote, Mani Jacinto's arms, his arms. That was the full email. Yep. Correct. And then the rest are just variations on a theme. Here's the thing.

He looked great. He looked fantastic. And it was worth the wait. It was. It was. Yeah. Wonderful stuff. Worth the weight if we're going to get...

I will just say this. Episode 7, fully prepared for that to be a flashback episode. Yeah. I'm going to need still a decent amount of chimery in that flashback episode somehow. It's one way or another. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want an entire stranger-less episode with only three to go.

That would be unacceptable. Though I can't wait to learn more about soul, so. I have really good news for you. Tell me. You have three Dave Matthews band Acolytes that you have not used. Would you like to use them in a row? I'm proud of myself. I am really proud of it too.

Can I bank them for future pods? You can roll over one. Okay. Echolite. No? Now I'm regretting some of the moments of restraint earlier. I know. You could have been, it could have been Acolyden this whole time.

All right. There it is. And one to spare. Do you want to keep that one? I'm rolling over it. Okay, you're rolling over the one. So I enter next pod with six. Correct.

This has been House of Our's Deep Dive on the Acklelight episode five, just inside your head. No, no, no. Had a great time with this episode of television. What a joy. Fantastic. What a treat. We'll be back on Sunday night. The Minute-ish House of the Dragon ends to talk about episode three of House of the Dragon.

Very exciting. Can't wait. And then, you know, the content gauntlet rolls on from there. Thank you. A million things. To John Richter, who does our video editing. Incredible, incredible stuff from John Richter. Steve Allman, who gathered clips and then gathered them again because of a miscommunication this morning.

That was my fault. Thank you, Steve Allman. Our Juno Rangipal for always making sure that everything is just so. He's the best. Jomey had dinner on the social. Jomey is also the best. We work with the best. Great team.

Malloribin. I love you dearly. And if you were stabbed or beheaded or had your neck snack. You would take my body. By a hot Sith in the woods, I would take your body with me. Oh, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, bye.