House of R - ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Deep Dive

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

‘Star Wars’ is back in theaters and Mal and Jo are here to dive deep into the newest installment of the franchise, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu!’ They break down what worked, what didn’t work, and—of course—all things Grogu! Plus, they try some of Grogu’s favorite blue cookies!(00:00) Intro(07:25) Opening Snapshot(43:35) Deep Dive(01:23:09) Blue Cookie Taste TestHosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory RubinProducers: Carlos Chiriboga and Scott LeeStudio Production: Jacob CornettSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to House of R. It is still Friend of the Pod Month. My friend Mallory Rubin is here. I'm Jordan Robinson, but more importantly, Friend of the Pod Supreme, Grogu. Grogo's here. We have a star in the studio to there, folks. Cookie enthusiasts, wow. And we're here today to talk about his film. Yes. The Mandalorian and Grohl. Star Wars, Colon, the Mandeloreen and Groke. Yes, that's right. And don't worry, we're ethical journalists, so we will not hold back simply because Grogo is here. If we have things to say, we will say them to Grogu's adorable face. We have some notes coming, but also some coos, babbles, harumphs and purrs.

And Grogo will be here with us for it all. And we're going to do all of that right after this. This episode of Hasavar is presented to you by Target. Call it all trainers. The Pokemon and Target collection celebrating 30 years of Pokemon is almost here. And the lineup is kind of incredible. A few are sure to be fan faves, Pokemon starter jackets, mystery water-type Pokemon bottles, and even kaboodles. Which feels perfect, because Pokemon has always been about sharing the adventure.

And Target is bringing fans together to celebrate that spirit. The first drop is in store May 2nd, online, May 3rd, with the second June 6th. Explore now at Target.com. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Quick programming reminders. Friend of the Pod Month continues apace. We've got a summer hype episode that we're playing to do.

Hype Meter. Yep. Some Spider-N-War. That's right. Some Tenet. That's right. And we've got a couple pals lined up for those shows. Am I going to say who they are?

No, because we haven't recorded them yet. And anything could happen. This is Hollywood. June is almost upon us. Sure is. The Vampire Listat, most importantly. Yeah. House of the Dragon.

Can't wait. A little show that we've heard of. Can't wait. A film that I'm hotly anticipating and definitely know the name of Disclosure Day. I can't wait. I'm really excited. Yeah. Odyssey.

Around the corner. Supergirl. San Diego Comic Con we will be there. And all the rest. Yes. Okay. I'm just like, I'm looking forward to getting sick once again. I really don't want to get sick after Comic Con last year and it's a busy summer.

So I've got to strategize how to stay healthy and well. But they did have fun at Comic Con. So are you tipping your height meter? Willis Stappi, number one for you? You're revealing that now? Or should people stay? Stay tuned. Yeah, who's to say?

Okay. I can surprise you. Sure. Yeah, I bet. Follow us on our new House of our Instagram and TikTok at House of our Pod. Yeah, maybe you'll get some behind the scenes action there. You know, some of Grogu's takes that didn't make the final edit. Ooh, too hot.

That was saved for social. For live. And Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. That's right. The inbox is always open. Always. You got a couple emails we're going to read today. Speaking of which.

Yes. We got a response. to our friend of the pod, Damon Lindelof, came on. Wonderful. Yes, fantastic. Mallory. Mm-hmm.

Who won the draft on that episode? You did. I did. You did. Handily. Congrats. Thank you so much. I like to be gracious in defeat.

And I've tried to be gracious in victory over the years as I've aged and matured. Wasn't always the case. But people loved that Damon episode, as did we. We had a great time recording with Damon. So fun. So fun. And one of our listeners, though, Mariah, wanted to push back on something that Damon said.

And he's not here to defend himself. He can text us later. Damon was trying to push back on my grogo as an accessory argument by shouting out a few other characters who he, beloved Star Wars characters who he felt didn't really have an arc either. And he mentioned C3PO. And this is what our listener, Mariah said. C3PO absolutely has an arc.

Of course. And a new hope. C3PO is disheveled, tells R2 to give up on finding Obi-Wan, and doesn't see himself as fit for the adventure. An empire, he's literally broken into pieces, a symbolic death. But by the end of return, he too becomes a hero. He steps into being a god to save the team from death and being eaten, enables them to befriend the Ewaks and holds the Ewox captive with his recounting of their journey. C-3-P-O. What a guy.

How pissed do you think C-3 would be to learn that Hutz speak in? English speak basic. Oh, yeah. Interesting. There is a lot of Hutz speak and basic action from both Rada and one of the twins, of course, in this movie. You know, I think 3PO, the question is when you ask him that, is he coming off a memory wipe and would it really resonate in that moment in time, which is just something

to consider? It's a great question. I have no comment because for, I was thinking about this, third Star Wars draft in a row, 3PO in some way was my undoing. Years ago. It wasn't years. It could have been months. I don't know.

What is time? We invited Van on the pod to do a Star Wars droids draft, remember? And as is often the case, I think, was Star Wars drafts. It was a little too hipster, right?

Tried to say it was ball no, or as CR likes to say, but really it was hipster. Van kicked our asses. And he went with some classic characters. We did not. I learned some lessons. And it was a takeaway.

Some lessons were learned. On the big pick, Star Wars draft recently, and I stand by the take, but 3PO was really central to a crucial moment in how that draft unfolded. And then, of course, you selected, I think I had some 3PO R2 PTSD from that experience. And you were able to select them right after I should have taken them. So I'm taking a break from thinking about 3PO. And I really only have eyes for Grogo and the Anzellens. And that's just where we are with it. Anthony Daniels in this movie, a voice in this movie, ever present.

Always. Thanks so much. Always. Our hearts and minds just not always in my draft. But in my draft and thank you all for voting and making sure that I won by a landslide. I really appreciate you all. Spoiler warning, all of Star Wars actually. If it has happened in canon, in legends, in comics, in cartoons, in live action on Disney Plus, back in the day when it was Lucasfilm, whatever the case.

it is eligible for us to talk about. But guess what? This movie doesn't connect to a lot, a ton of lore. No. So I don't know that we will be diving that deep into lore in this podcast. No, I do think we will talk about the clone of the, yeah, things that were chosen to be included and then maybe as more crucially not selected for inclusion in terms of the overall stretch of time we've spent with these characters. But yeah, this will be very little happens in the movie on the story advancement front. So not quite as much to dive into, but we do have a lot of Grogu Delights to talk about.

So it's a deep dive on the Grogu feelings front, if nothing else. Deep diving into those blue cookies. It's a feelings dive. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. All right, so we were recording this on Friday. It's quite early, of course, in the run of this movie. It just opened last night. So we're about to throw some numbers at you, but there are early numbers,

and the story may change by Monday or Tuesday. This is a holiday weekend. That's right. So anything could happen. Rotten Tomatoes currently, an imperfect metric. 63 for critics. Tough. Yeah.

89, creeping upwards on the audience score on the popcorn meter. 89 on the old popcorn meter. 63.89 is a big gap. Interesting. Metacritic 53, 3.2 on letterbox when I checked last night. So that is where we are. Box office tracking. So just like, again, we don't know.

Friday, who knows what's going to happen. But 80 to 100 million is sort of like, and that was the initial expectation. And then based on the Thursday night box office, that's sort of where it's holding. For domestic. For domestic. I talked to a couple people anecdotally who went to see it last night and their theaters were not full. So that's just, you know, even here in L.A.

where oftentimes an opening weekend theaters are full. Right. That's just anecdotal evidence. IMAX seemed pretty full, scanning, but maybe not the non-IMAX screens. Right. And, but it's a Memorial Day weekend. Yep. This is a kind of scary but fairly kid-friendly movie.

And, you know, if people, families are looking to do something with their kids this weekend, like, you know, we might see a bigger box office and that. We will see. The 80 Club has a write-up on this. I've been seeing this narrative go around that $80 million is quite good for a movie that came out of a TV show. Right. You know, so if your comps are like the Simpsons movie or the J.J. Abram Star Trek movie, those made $74 million, $75 million.

So $80 million would be the highest grossing movie to come out of a TV show ever. However, really dismal return for a Star Wars movie, and especially the first Star Wars movies after seven years of no Star Wars movies in the theater. Yeah, it's solo territory, right? That's hashtag makes solo to happen, of course, but also it's not really the comp you want. And we'd been talking in our primer pod and, you know, the last little stretch of time here about how the narrative had sort of been shaped to like prepare for this outcome. But that doesn't mean that it's what they were initially hoping when they selected this to be the first Star Wars cinematic event since 2019's Rise of Star Walker. Did we like this movie?

I, did it meet your hype? where your hype was. Like what, you know, we talked to Damon about sort of what we were expecting. Yeah. Did this meet you where you expected it to meet you? I got to sit next to you. You did. Yeah.

And I will say, I'll just say this before you say your answer. Yeah. Sitting next to you boosted my experience like a hundredfold. Hearing you react to the movie caused me so much joy. So I liked it much more than if I had been watching it. Yeah. In San Francisco. Yeah, yeah.

in like a half of D-critic screening. I got to hear your Anzellan delight in person as well, so that was a thrill. Yeah. I love them. They're fucking great. They roll. You know, as we often say here, inside of each of us, there are two wolves. And I think a couple things are true at the same time, genuinely.

Right. I had fun watching the movie. We went, like a huge group of us, went with 15 people, ringerverse and pals. It was like a night out on the town. Your husband on one side of you, the most important person in your life, me on the other side of you. Exactly. My two greatest loves. And then my actual greatest love, Grogo, in front of me on the screen. Before the movie started, because we saw it in an IMAX screen before they had the like sort of poster or display card.

And it was just Grogo. Contemplative meditative state. Very moving. And Mallory is just like, we were there early. Smooth to tears. And she was just, like, crying before the movie started. Genuinely. And so on the, like, pros side here, I, this will not surprise you.

It won't surprise anyone who, any of the bad babies, you know, the namesake, the bad babies. Like, what a time to be the bad babies. I just find Grogu to be genuinely and sincerely, non-hyperbolically, an exquisite and powerful force. I love, I love Grogu. He moves me so deeply, and he brings me such joy and happiness. When he's having fun, when he's sneezing through a little snow cloud, he makes me laugh in a really pure way. And he makes me feel deeply.

The Grogu deployment in the film brought me a lot of joy. Specifically, Grogu and the Anzellans, which is, I think, undeniably, if that had been a more central part of the movie, we have, like, a historic achievement on our hands here. have just been the movie. If it had been 90 minutes of Grogu and the Anzellans try to rescue Din it's a no-node situation on the pod, basically. Fantastic. And it does make you think back, actually, to like the decision to, after separating Grogu and Din, reunite them very quickly in another character show and then pick up in season three with them back together,

instead of maybe mining that really rich... Grogu alone. ...territory, because the Grogu alone stretch, that 20-ish, 25-ish-minute stretch of the movie where Dinn is poisoned and out and Groga was doing all sorts of things that we'll talk about you know, going for filling his canteen with water, hunting to steal a fish and nibble on a fish, making a friend who could have been an enemy,

building a mud hut, covering Dinn with leaves. I guess we just talked about it all right there. Walking with his little Yoda cane, I thought to myself like this is what it means to be alive and a person who is capable of feeling love. It was that high of a high. Genuinely.

When you, like when people talk about nostalgia as a negative, and certainly they talk about it a lot around Star Wars. Yes. I find I usually don't fall too easily into a nostalgia trap, but I will say the stretch of this movie that was the Inzellins and Grogu gave me such strong Jim Henson, dark crystal labyrinth energy. As you know, I fucking love a puppet stuff. And the puppet stuff go. And the puppet stuff in this movie, 10 out of 10. Like, amazing.

It's sensational. The, there's so much of this movie that I find cowardly and horrible. Yeah. We'll get to the cons in a second. We'll get to it. But I think it's somewhat brave.

I mean, Grogu is an absolute star and a killer. So, like, it's not brave to put Grogu on your screen, but it's brave to have a, a nonverbal stretch of your blockbuster. Pooze and Bavils and Herops and Purrs. Yeah, just for grottin around. And it's, it was beautiful.

It was fantastic. It actually was wonderful, genuinely. Yeah. I, it also even just like watching Grogo on the press store because they're trotting him out in real life. And it is this kind of amazing thing we were talking about. I was like with the guys before the recording, there's something is so nakedly manipulative about it. And it's one of those things from like, I don't give a shit. Manipulate me.

I fucking love it. He is just, you know, the Warner thing, right? Like in the show, I would like to see the baby. You had in our notes the reminder of the callback to the nuggets that came out of filming season one where he had to say to Furner her dog. Yeah. But who played the client, of course, in season one. It is a filmmaker who pursues all sorts of deep and introspective assessments about humanity in the world.

And he looked at Grogo and he was like, let the puppet do his thing. Right. Because they were cowards. Right. They had the puppet, but they were thinking of replacing him with CGI, and he was like, you cowards. Yes. And he was right. He was so right.

It's just the best. The expressions, what he is able to emboat is incredible. So I loved all that. And just like him being in the physical space. Like you can tell the difference when Dinn lifts him up. When like the ears wobble. The way he, we've gone from the kind of slow moving to like this rapid little, the rapid shuffle. The rapid little shuffle.

It's just sensational. That said, and I do think overall the movie felt like, again, entertaining and fun. and fun. Did you, because you went to go see it yesterday? I did. I saw it again yesterday. Did you time, you time? Did you time it?

Because I don't, I don't like to take my phone out and I didn't, I don't have the cinema, cinema mode on the Apple Watch. That feels right to me. It has to be around. Around 20ish minutes. The movie is two hours and 12 minutes long. Yes. So 20-ish minutes of it, we love. Yes.

And there's stuff outside of that 20 minutes with Janzellans and Grogu, you know, when they team up. And other moments with Grogu and Din, you know, Dyn teaching Grogu how to tighten his armor, for example, which comes earlier in the film, I thought was delightful. However, correct.

I think the movie lacks story and significant story advancement in such a surprising way. You know, it was interesting because I'm like, is it surprising? Because I was thinking back to the primer pod we did

where we were like, let's make predictions, what do we think is going to happen? And it was kind of like crickets. And I think maybe just because of the trailers and everything, there was a little bit of a, oh, wait, like how much is going to happen? But still, I was very surprised because I think a couple things. One, it is a real overcorrection to a correct impulse, but just taken to too far of an extreme of like, season three did not work. We broadened the scope of what this story was assessing and lost the focus on the central duo that people love.

Right. Which was a flaw of season three. Dark Sabre stuff, the Boca Tan stuff. Became more about, yes. And I like Boca Tan. I like the Mandalorian lore, but the show lost the heart of what it was. No question. Let's discover the Dinn, Grogu, R2 surprising pals, and the spirit of adventure.

And even the way that season three ended with the adoption and the armor saying, like, take him out on his journeys, you know, like your teacher did for you. That's, I think, a direction that makes sense. sense, but we find the characters, I think Grogu made some progress, Din, almost none, and the lack of connection to the larger, like, do we want more stuff about how somehow Palpatina turned in terms of the cloning arc? No. Do we really want to spend all of our time with, like, how the New Republic failed to get, allow the first order to rise? No, but this is a problem with the mandoverse and where we have landed on the story front then, because absent that, what you end up with is 75-ish percent of the movie is just action sequence setpiece fights.

And like some of them work and some of them don't. But in the totality of it, it's just way too much in the movie. Someone, I will not name them in case they did not want this take on a microphone, but someone messaged me and was like, I think that movie was 10 minutes of ships landing and taking off. And that is emblematic of like a large problem of the whole movie. It's just like 10 full minutes of footage of ships landing and taking off. and not to mention just a bunch of fights with CGI creatures.

And like the way that the puppets work so well to me highlights what a failure most of the CGI is for me in this movie. Not all. The dragon snake, the albino dragon snake, I thought looked amazing. And I actually think Martin Scorsese's character is like quite fun and works very well. Good old Hugo. But the gladiator pit with all the fighting there, which looked terrible. in the trailers to me and like even worse and protracted in the movie itself. And then all the hut stuff just like did not.

The hot stuff is tough. Really did not work for me. And this is a hut-centric movie. We're in Nalhuda for a significant portion of the movie. We got huts just like rolling, riding around like on the floor together. And it's just like I am baffled that they put this together and they're like, this is what people want. And I know that there are people who've seen this movie and they enjoyed it. Oh, yeah, no question.

And we love that for you. But, like, the proposition of making a Star Wars movie should feel big. An event. An undeniable event. It should feel big. And, like, even when we were making Solo or Rogue One, which, you know, outside of this sort of, like, trilogy sagas felt like a little bit more minor. But Rogue One is only grown in estimation and Solo as its own sort of, like, curiosity. But, like, those felt bigger.

than this movie does. And, you know, Rogue One especially. And I think that, like, you know, the question of, like, is this going to feel like a movie or does it just feel like a TV show? I mean, all of us walking out of the theater, talking to each other, talking to, like, friends we saw at the screening, every single person on the same take, which is just like, this is just four episodes of the television show, maybe five, you know,

something like that. It's half a season. And, you know, my main review was one of those episodes is incredible. And the rest, yeah, it's you, it's you, buddy. Incredible. Like, genuinely incredible. Not just Grogu, but like, gatory or gatorie, I'm not sure how you pronounce Stephen McKinley Henderson's like rock and chair character.

Yeah, with the smoking fish. Great. Loved him. Embo I quite liked, too. And Embbo's in the mix here. Like, that's smashing. And then there's like three or four episodes of the Mandalorian that I think are quite bad and boring.

Okay, so I've been thinking about the is it a movie or a TV show and does that matter thing a little bit more because obviously this is something that people have been talking about since this was announced. But way before we even saw it and got to assess that on its actual merits, right? Especially given like the conversation which like Favreau largely denies that this is like a reconfiguring of what season four was going to be. There was a script for season four. Maybe we will still get a season four. I really hope so because I would like the character journeys to keep moving forward. I'm very invested in Din and Grogo in their journey.

Okay, I think that the reason the TV movie thing holds as an argument is what you already said, which is like that kind of the rarity, even as we are now into a dozen Star Wars movies, it's still, we're talking about 50 years, right? So it is still one of the most, holy shit, the entire viewing populace has been animated to anticipate, go share, and then discuss a thing because we have a Star Wars movie and it's just not something we get a lot of. And like, as we've talked about before,

you know, I love Star Wars. It is genuinely one of my favorite fictional universes in the world. Pretty hit and miss in terms of Star Wars movies and how many of them are, some of them are the best movies ever made. Some of them are... The Rises Comic-Gar. Quite bad.

Okay. So I think for all of those reasons, it is really fair. And of course, because these characters are making the jump from the small screen to the silver screen, from Disney Plus in the streaming wars era, we're doing a Star Wars movie, and it's the first one since 19. Okay, so all that's really fair.

I will posit to you and the bad babies that there has never been a four-episode stretch of the Mandalorian where this little happened. Never. Yeah. And so I think it's actually an indictment. It's bad Mandalorian. It's not even like... It's just like the thing that the movie TV thing, the thing that I think we kind of

collectively sometimes lose when we're like, okay, the movie needs to feel big and it's true. It needs to feel like an event, the scope, the scale, the skeptical of spectacle. We talked about all this with Damon. and all of which I think we agree about. Like, the thing that TV does best, though, is allow you to feel the movement of the journey and the arc and the life that the characters are living together. You've sunk time in with these relationships and with these characters.

You spent all this time with them. And that's something that, like, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe did a really good job of translating that TV feeling into a film franchise, right? By the time we get to Civil War into Infinity War, into endgame, we have spent, we have sunk time with these characters and we are emotionally invested in them. That is the TV magic, right? And so to attempt to translate that here is not a terrible idea. You know, you've already got this investment. And they were trying to make a movie that

you could go into Fresh not having seen the Mandalorian. Yeah. That's a, that's a tough proposition. This is the constant struggle that both Marvel and Star Wars are facing, you know, right now just sort of like, you know, how much homework are we going to ask people to do in their trying to make you do no homework, and it's not really working. The problem also, the other thing that made us feel small to me is small like you, buddy. Sweet baby, Grogo. Small like the Ansel in spaceship. That was great. And his head was touching the ceiling. It's the best. And Dyn's like, I'm not going to fit in that shit. Buddy. That was one of my favorite moments when the little ship took off and Dins like, see a kid and you turned to me and said,

has he never, has you never seen a movie or a TV show? Made me chuckle. Grogu didn't leave. Bye, Grogu. I didn't actually physically see you get on the spaceship, but you're definitely gone. You're definitely not staying to heal me. Anyway, they use the same sets. A lot of the same, you know, like, you know, the Adelphi base, like same sets.

That makes it feel small. You know, TV sets in a movie setting. And then the Pedro Pascal thing, which is the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is the question we were asking ourselves when Damon was here is how much of the movie will we see Pedro Pascal, one of our movie stars, despite his like fairly patchy movie star run right now, but still just like so charming and so good at what he does when he does it, that like that's a way to make this feel big. If on the show The Mandalorian, we are deprived of Pedro Pascal's face. show us a ton of the movie star's face in the movie and we're going to be like, we got to see so much of Dan Jarn's face. He had to kill everyone who saw him. But we got to watch him.

I did have my watch on cinema mode. I timed it. It was less than 10 minutes that he had the helmet off. Right, because it was just the throne room de-helmeting into the water fight. I think it's no coincidence at the water fight. And I'm sure, and Brendan Wade and Latif Crowder, who got their names at the top of, of the cast list in the opening credits, which I cheered for.

Like, I was so excited for. Like, they deserve their flowers. They do so much work to make the Medallorean inaction, helmeted, feel like a character, feel like a person. But having Petra's face exposed inside of that dragon snake fight just lend so much more emotional investment. First of all, that creature looked the best out of all the CGI creatures. But, like, you know, I don't understand how his best gar arm.

or didn't sink him to the bottom of that, that watery grave. We talked about that after. Given the living waters, Mandelor. But like, Clever Crayor. But, like, leaving that aside. Pulled himself up via the roots.

Yeah, he did. But, like, Pedro's face was important to making that sequence work so well. And then we just, and then they just, like, toss the helmet down. And we never saw his face again. And I just think that was a huge misfire

of an opportunity to make this feel special and distinct from the TV show. Yeah. You've got your movie star. And I don't know what the negotiation are behind the screen if like Pedro's just like, guys, I'll give you 10 minutes, but that's it. Like my whole contract says, I don't have to show up to set. So I'm not going to show up to set. Oh, you want me to give me a wet bump? I got to do water work. Like, no, thank you. So anyway, I just,

that was tough. And then also, and I was skeptical of this when Damon was pitching to us, like, all of the characters he thought was going to be in the movie. And I said, I did say this to you a couple times. I was like, don't you think they would have advertised these characters in their trailers if all these characters were in the movie? Yeah. But so I, you know, Cobb Vant, yes, I would love to see him. Now we get to keep the bit going, though. But I was not shocked and surprised to not see those other characters.

But did that matter to you that we got none of the like Luke or Asoka or Thrawn or Caradoon, God forbid, or Cobbantz, etc. in this movie. Do that matter? So, yeah, I think it does matter. And I think it's, the Faloniverse just feels to me as like a long time genuine fan and admirer of his work. Like it's in a real tough, unsure place. Like lacking a confidence in terms of how to incorporate these threads. And I don't necessarily mind that we didn't get Asoka, Luke, and Thrawn. because I think that it's very important that when Osoka and Thrawn return, given...

In Book of Boba Fett, season two. Exactly. Yeah, given Asoka Season 1 and how that ended, I think it's really important that when we return after a bazillion years of waiting for Assoca season 2, that we do so from a position of, like, assured strength that that story has been figured out. That said, this intention of the Mandoverse to build a... this connected universe. Like, I'm old enough to remember when we were talking about this, like, cinematic crossover event we were building toward because it was the publicly articulated

intention and plan. Right. And so much like, yeah, it's a little bit, it's a second version of the season four becomes a movie thing where we're like, and, you know, we do, to be fair, we talk about the opposite, like the universe of this a lot, which is being nimble enough to adjust in real time when something isn't working. Thron didn't hit the way that they wanted Thron to hit. Exactly. So it is important, I think, to be able to adapt and say, okay, maybe we were going to do something, but we need to retool, we need to re-center. That's not a flawed instinct. I think that's actually appropriate. The question is where do we then go after doing that and is the reset taking us to a better place? I think when we look at the characters we got, okay, so let's use Navarro's example. The return, I don't mind that this isn't cluttered and full of crossover connections, even though, like Asoka showing up in season two of the Mandalorian, which is a we talked about on our primer pod, is like one of my favorite things that's ever happened in Star Wars. It was my favorite Mandalorian moment. Like it's the, I think because it's centered Grogu and Grogo and Din while also in a way that made actual like organic, authentic sense incorporating a character like that.

I look at like going to Navarro and we don't see. I mean, the And Zellans are there and that's fun. But like we don't see IG. A character who we have spent seasons of television reassessing. establishing. It's just like, do you need IG in the movie? No. But to me, the only explanation for why IG is not there is what you said already, which is we don't want people to feel like they had to watch three seasons of television to understand the movie. Now, I'm torn on this because it does feel in this era of the IP machines that it is prohibitive to keep up with this stuff

for people. I think we've talked about that a lot. You just said it. Like, I think that's true. So making the story universes that people love more accessible. and the barriers to entry for each new installment, like, manageable is, I think, good. However, this was a, like, the place that they struggled with this the most was the first season of Asoka. This was a conversation we had again and again and again of, like, do you have to have seen rebels to enjoy Asoka? Exactly. And we kept trying to say you didn't, but I feel like they never proved that to people who hadn't seen rebels. Yes.

And so, like, I think there, again, it's this like a little bit of what feels to me like a limbo phase where, like, the fact that the movie is completely accessible is as a premise and a proposition good and right. And I do not want to, like, advocate for these movies and seasons feeling like you have got to spend 30 hours of your life in order to go sit at the movies for two hours. Or you just listen to a refresher podcast. You sure could. You sure could. You sure could facts. You sure could. But, like, at the end of the day, I do think there's a real risk of once again,

over-correcting where the investment in the characters to that point, if it's not necessary at all, then you run the risk of it not being meaningful. Right. I think there's a reverse. There's the, we don't want to make people feel like they had to watch three seasons of the Mandalorian to enjoy this movie. There's that. But unfortunately, the result of that is that for people who watch three seasons of the

Mandalorian TV show, if we get a fourth season, you do not have to have seen this movie. No. Because you're going to leave these characters in the exact same place you found them. Exactly. And why would we not want to see the movie in order to go see the season, especially when you had to watch three episodes

of the book of Boba Fett? Again, it feels like a response to the response to that versus like a decision that makes sense in its creative merits. So we look at the characters who aren't there, but then what we have to do in tandem with that is look at the characters who are here. Right?

Because you can't assess these things in a vacuum. They're enthrined. They're inextricable. Zeb. This is a tough one. one. It doesn't work. I love Zeb. Like when Zeb showed up in The Mandalorian, the television series, I'm like, Jomi and I are

freaking out. We're talking about it on the pot. I'm doing a breakout for social. I'm like, this is just here we go. It's happening. These characters, I love rebels. These characters who we care about so deeply are being brought, not like brought from animation to live action, though that is, of course, what is happening, brought to more people

to enjoy. That makes me glad. However, I just don't, I am not capable as like one of the world's chief Zeb enthusiasts of articulating a case for his presence in the movie. And in a couple ways, right? What is he adding for Din and Grogo, like our primary figures? He's there to pick them up a couple times and we get a joke about what took you so long. Okay. That could be literally anyone.

You certainly could have been is Carson Teva, the character who basically is in the movie for 30 seconds. A footnote. when his conversation with Dinn is the reason this movie's plot is possible. I also have to wonder, you know, you mentioned this a couple times on the, on the primer pod that Favro has talked about, like, creatures being such a focus of this movie.

And again, we love the Anzellin Groooghust. So there's an argument to be made there. Puppets rule. At the same time, you know, and my pal Dave Gonzalez brought this up to me. It's like, once we meet coin, we don't meet a single other human after that. Like there are no humans after that in the movie.

And that's not the end of the world. But it feels like John Favro is like, I made the jungle book and people loved the jungle book. And I made the Lion King and people felt however they did about the Lion King or whatever. But he's like, can I do that in a Star Wars world and just have a lot of creatures and a helmeted guy and no human faces at all and just be a post-human kind of story? And I just don't think that's what Star Wars is.

So I don't, I think that's completely fair and valid. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who would agree. I don't agree with that as like a core thesis. But I think as is always the case, it's about what you do with the figures when you present them. Like I don't really need ward. Sigourney Weaver's ward is like just a complete whiff, right, in every respect. So like having a human being with a human face adds nothing. No, a character.

Yeah. Like a real character. Yes. So to go back to the Zeb thing, it's like you run the risk of people being like, I don't know who this is. Now they don't need to, but that becomes then a demerit because it's like, what did we learn about Zeb? When I see Zeb on the story again, I want to know what happened to Calis. Right. Because I have four seasons deep in caring about that relationship. And it's two returns now where I got nothing. Nothing on that front. I personally also think that animation, that CGI, you don't like the way it looks.

Yeah, I think it looks like. I don't mind it. Just because, like, Zeb, by, you just cannot translate every single animated character into live action. Humanoid, it is easier. But for Zeb, who has this interesting physiognomy that is fun to watch the animation, I think looked really awkward and terrible inside of this movie. Similarly, like, if this had been an animated adventure, the hut stuff would have, like, felt way less weird than it did to try to watch this CGI version of. of it, you know. And I remember, I'm old enough to remember, yeah, when we were mad about CGI Job of the Hut in the specialized editions of the original trilogy. So now we're just got, like, we're just swarming with CGI huts. Like, I think it looks so bad. Well, I mean,

I'm excited, genuinely excited to talk about the Hutt stuff more because it is such a true puzzler. In general, though, I think everything you just said about, like, Favs and his creature and toyetic relationship to Star Wars, which, like, is actually something I share, so I don't really mind it, but I think the critiques are very valid. I think the thing that it pairs with that here that is sort of like a negative amplifier, because if it were just that, that's one thing. But then we have the Faloni part of it,

which is the... I created this whole animated world, and I want everyone to know about these wonderful characters. And he is a tremendous animation storyteller. I fucking love those shows. He's a tremendous animation storyteller. It's not working. the way he is trying to wrestle that world into live action.

And not only that, but now with like the transfer power of whatever happening is like making that. Well, that's my concern. That's my concern. What Star Wars is? Yeah. His obsession with making his animated world the world of Star Wars. Yeah.

I'm worried about it because it's like I really love those shows. I'm really invested in those characters. So I'm like, man, if this is not like, like a complete hit for me, than like, oh boy. And like I think, you know, you mentioned Embo and how that actually like was kind of fun and cool. And when we see Kaibu, his, his, his wolf pop, like, pick up the Anzellon and the Inzel and screech narts like, damn, like this is actually like, scary fucking cool.

It was really cool. There were aspects of it that worked. You don't need to have seen a second of Clone Wars to be like, that's a cool bounty hunter. You don't need to know about the Cadbane connections. Perfect deployment. Yeah. And Embo is.

Barada the high. Yeah, Embbo is, no, Embo is like a character design, though, that works perfectly because we're seeing him a lot. Like, you love that hat? I love the hat and the ship that looks like the hat. It's so good. Which I, like, leaned over. I don't talk that much in the theaters, but we did talk about the hat and the ship looking identical. Embo is a character design.

Very good. Like, can translate over from animation. Much more successfully, I think, than Cadbane. Like, Cadbane, like, the Cadbane face did not, like, work perfectly well for me. Cadbane from a distance looked great. But once Cadvan got up close, it was kind of tough. You know? But Embo was a perfect use of a minor Clone Wars character with a cool design.

You're scary, you look neat, you're mysterious. I'm afraid for my friends because you were here to hunt them. It's effective. And so the choice to pull that out of Clone Wars does not make me think, boy, we can't stop trying to pull things forward out of Clone Wars or rebels. But again, just to say it, like for the 90th time, two shows I love. But the Rod of the Hut thing, like we talked about us on the primer. Yeah.

This is, so for people who don't know, will you explain what the plot of the original Clone Wars movie is? Yes. And so like, let's go back just one wrinkle even further than that, which was like, the first trailer came out and I was like, you know what? I think this trailer looks pretty good. I'm really hyped for this movie. Let's let's go. As the trailers continued to come out, though. Yes.

And the marketing kind of continued to unfold. And then we got these little like, you know, on the Disney Plus, the special look on the Star Wars YouTube channel and Instagram, like official releases of these like one-minute clips. A lot of them are very Hutt-centric and Colonel Ward-centric. I grew concerned because one of the clips was just, it was one of the early scenes in the movie where Ward gives Mando the mission, right? Yeah. And I was like, wait, oh, no.

That is literally the plot of the 2008 animated cinematic film, The Clone Wars, which is, we need our heroes to go rescue a hut. And by the way, and it's rod of a hut. It's the same hut. He's a hutlet. He's a baby. He's a little baby. So the plot of that movie...

It's Anakin and Osoka. It's Anakin and Osoka. Obi-1 is there. Duku is there. Ventress is there. Rada is a little... He's sick. They call him stinky because he smells bad.

But it's like, we need our heroes to go, meet with the huts. It's Jabba in that case, right? Because he's still slithering. He's still rolling. Rescue the hut. There's this stretch on Teth. There's some interesting action.

That movie's like pretty bad, but it sets up a lot of great stuff that follows. Well, that's what I was going to say. People didn't like that movie. Exactly. It's not even that, like, this is the same movie. It's the same movie.

That movie is like one of the single worst stretches of the overall Clone Wars experience. It's the same story from a movie that did not work. And I understand the impulse to have a do-over on a story that you did that didn't work and can I do it again and can I crush it this time? The answer was no. Right.

It's not just, even though the doing over of Center and Rada, he needs to be rescued. Our heroes are going to go rescue him. The huts and a power in the galaxy, but then the idea of the reveal of like who was actually working for whom, you know, a Duku plot in this movie. The, frankly, I think like borderline embarrassing, like we've built up to a scene where Ward says, turns out we couldn't trust the Huts. It's like, no shit.

Everyone who's watching your movie has watched Star Wars for their entire lives. So they know that even if you don't. And so it's like an incredibly inert storytelling choice. But to the point you just made the like, I'm going to get a do-over, I don't know, that's what makes me nervous because it's like, Star Wars can't be guided by one person's desire to center their personal favorites and or make sure that the people who missed why it was a good and right thing that people should love didn't feel that way about it the first time. That can't be what Star Wars is.

Now, I would like to say once again that I think Grogo is just like magical. Maybe the most impactful creation of the century. I'm being sincere. Yeah, I don't agree with you, but I do believe you're being sincere. I find the hold that he has over me to be like pretty unmatched. Again. So there was a lot of the movie that I enjoyed and had fun watching.

I'm very concerned about the things, the things that don't work in it aren't just worrying inside of the movie. They become worrying for where we are in the mandibverse. I will say, and I've said this before, and I'll just reiterate it, sitting next to you and hearing your delight at every single babble and coo and earwiggle and shuffle and all, and like, every little hair that just got. hold on his head and stuff like that. It looks great. You loved it. And I loved hearing your joy. So like genuinely, that did matter to me.

We've gotten a little out of hand, but let's like just arbitrarily now go into our deep dive, which we kind of already did. We've already done it. We'll just keep doing it. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim. to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool.

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in case we have other things to say. So the first section I'm naming Thessly. Let's just start not by fighting what we hate but saving what we love. Puppets. Great. Yeah, I'm going out of order. Deal with it.

Okay. Go ahead in the Inzellons. We've already mentioned. Knock out stars of this. They're puppets. It's an incredible year for puppets. Let's talk about it. Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

That's right. Project Hail Mary. Oh, Rocky. Stah. Grogu and the Anzellons. The best. Fantastic. Are there going to be puppets in the Odyssey?

One can only hope. Dare to dream. Dare to dream. Dare to dream. We've seen Skila, but what does Cherptus look like? I don't know. Great question. Maybe it'll be a puppet.

I think this was really truly excellent. I do think that there's like a lack of, again, even, I think Grogu had the most, Grogo with most character beats, more so certainly than Din as we talked about. I think even still, while we got to see Grogo move into the next phase of maturation in a way that I found really cool to watch, you know, he's doing things on his own, he's making decisions on his own. He is communicating in like a much more advanced way. He's always had the coups and babbles, but he's responding. He almost said, thank you. He's like, his harrumps and his babbles are like syllable matched to the words he would be saying.

He's nodding. Yeah. When I got plenty of pushback as I knew I would on my like, Grogo is an accessory take, right? A lot of our listeners were like- That's a scandalous take. Are like, fuck you die in hell, right? Okay, fine.

Oh no. Well, that's not okay. Don't say that. But, you know, don't say that. In the comments and the emails or whatever, people are like, what about Chewbacca? What about R2, you know, et cetera? Like these are like nonverbal characters, you know, but like, beeps and boobs.

Here's the difference. Han can understand Chewy. And so I can understand Grogo. Great. Din needs to understand Grobo. He does understand him. Not really. I think Dennis had been a bad dad over there.

And I got to say, I actually. So two things. Let me finish. Please. Han can talk to Chewy. And so we know what Chewy saying because Han's like, yeah, I agree with you, buddy. Like, blah, blah, blah. The beeps and boops.

Yeah. See, 3PO can respond to. You know what I mean? Like, you need to have, if the babbles and coos are what we're getting, if the grunts and the groans, stuff like that, as expressive as he is, I need in to be like, you're right, this is dangerous, or like, you're right, blah, blah, blah. Like, use that old Star Wars trick to get this nonverbal character to have more of a presence inside of the storytelling.

I do think they carry on, like, conversations. I do. That we don't see. No, that we witness on the screen as we watch their story. I mean, I think that they're communicating, I think especially in this film, but to this point, Like when Grogu is doing things and didn't respond, like they're feeling out. It's mostly don't. Not that switch.

Not that switch. There is a lot of the not that switch. Not that button. But that's because he's a baby. Like he's learning. Also, I will say, I just. And I, even Damon Lindelof agreed with me for a lot of this movie. Yeah.

Grogo is an accessory. He is a backpack. He is a parrot on a pirate shoulder. He is just like being aligned for the ride. Also, why does Dinger not have like a baby Bjorn? There's no like harness. I guess you're sort of like holding on for like your life to a shoulder. It's tough for me to watch.

Anyway, that being said, I did lean over to you. Yeah. During the Grogo alone stretch and said, you win this one. Yeah. He is a character. In that stretch. Yeah. He's a character.

He's the main character. He's maybe the only character. He is the star. It reminded both Jomi and I were reminded of, of a couple Avatar, The Last Airbender episodes, Op is Last Days, or Zucro alone was like when we were released. So we've been calling this section Grogu Alone, you know? It's fantastic.

Great cost. Really good. I mentioned the dark crystal. I was also reminded of the bear, which is a movie I keep bringing up on podcasts, but it's like a fairly obscure 80s movie that just followed this bear. It was like shot like a nature documentary, but it was the story of a bear who loses his mom. that's just to adventure through the world. And he is nonveral.

And it was just like, you know, there's no like voiceover. It's just you're watching this young cub explorer in the world. And it is like extremely powerful and extremely good until he tries shrooms. And then it's very upsetting. But like it almost makes me angry at the rest of the movie how good this Grogu alone stretch is. Yeah. I could have, I honestly could have done without the Yoda stick. I did not think we needed it.

I thought that was like a bridge too far. But like the physical comedy of him trying to like jam din into the mud hut that he built. Wonderful. Incredible. The relationship, the near verbal relationship that he builds with Gatorier, Gatorie or Gatorie, however this person chooses to pronounce his name. Loved when he called him Little Traveler. That was great stuff. Stephen McKinley Henderson, great vocal performance in this.

I like, I saw his name in the opening credits. I was like, I didn't know he was in this movie. And then I was like, and then I heard his voice. I was like, there you are. Great, like really good. Fearing for him when Embo is hunting him. Yes. Like, all of that stuff was just so tremendous.

And, yeah, it just made me so much more disappointed in the rest of the movie. Yeah, I think Grogu deserves a better movie around him, no question. I think Din certainly does. Grogu routinely throughout this movie, in little ways and big ways, is making decisions. And that was a really fun and cool thing to watch because he is like sometimes he is behaving. and doing something because Dinn sends him forward, right? Crawl up through the vent and open the door and let me in. Because it's a character, Pedro Pascow is playing, though, certainly not in that moment.

It's fun to think of, like, him hoisting, you know, Joel hoisting Ellie up and stuff like that, right? All our favorite lone wolf and Cobb pairings. Grogu learning on the job from Dinn. This is where, again, like, there's cohesion, but a lack of forward momentum because you have, it tracks that they're out doing this thing. They're hunting imperial remnants, which is where we like. left them, right? Like, DIN going to Carson Tava and saying, you know, I've got the little one now. I need to be more selective in my assignments. Let me do this work for the New Republic.

I thought Limburg made a really interesting point in his write-up for the ringer.com with a great website, which was basically like too much maybe of like sliding Dinn into what the Carad Dune Ranger of the New Republic role is supposed to be. Because like, I didn't ending season three saying, I want to go hunt these Imperial. remnants because fuck the empire, that makes sense. Din taking the assignments, that makes sense. But the leap toward where we are at the end of like, well, kind of you are just like working for the New Republic, which Din was like really critical of as a governing body and a force for good or for better, right?

There's like a little bit of story missing there. And it feels like, again, a little bit of the product of like, well, we're, we don't know what to do about the like Mandalorian Creed. This is the way aspect of this anymore. But part of what's so interesting and cool about Grogu overall and the story overall, them choosing each other, Grogu saying, fuck you to Luke

and going back to Dinn, the shirt, you've got the shirt, wonderful. But just the fact that Grogu is a Jedi and a Mandalorian and rejects the idea that he can only be one or the other. He's going to be both in his own way is amazing.

I don't know that we really felt any of that in the movie. Any of that. Right. And like, Favreau's been talking about that in the promo. He's like, he's a Mandalorian and a Jedi, which makes him so unique. And I'm like, it does,

but we didn't get it. get that. He could have, like, the breastplate is, you know, like the, like, the fact that he is a Mandalorian or the fact that he is a Jedi, like, how is that involved in anything we've seen? And how is that any different from where we met him, you know, at the beginning of the show? Yeah. And so I think the fact that, like, he has all of his armor because we saw him in the armor form his rondel. And he has his wrist racket because of the dart training with, you know, with the, with the, the covert. Like, all of that is there. And we understand why. They're out on these adventures and, and Grover was, like, in the face of...

In the face of the physical action. Because he's on his journeys and supposed to go learn and do these things, but we're not moving forward actively in terms of, like, them really talking about that with each other and, like, what it means. And I think we... Because Grogo had these opportunities when Din was taken, to basically team up with the Anzellans and decide to go. He suits up. He puts on his wrist rocket, puts his bombs in his satchel. He tightens his armor just like Daddy taught him.

And he heads out to go find his dad. The Anzellans leave. He decides to stay. Like he makes all these decisions. He goes to hunt for fish. Right. He builds the hut to protect Dinn. Like, but Dinn, I think one of the most dramatically compelling things about the show to date has been Dyn grappling with the different aspects of his identity, right?

Like the rigidity of the creed, but then the pull that Grogh has on his heart. And so you have something that is so rich. And I was intrigued from the trailers because we have these lines and these ideas, you know, And we hear it in the movie, like the old protect the young and then the young protect the old. This is the way. And that exchange about how Grogu was going to live for centuries and centuries and centuries, we hope, protect him at all costs. And so he will be without him. And so you have this opportunity.

We see that. We glimps what it will look. Can I read this quote from Favro, right? So this to Favro is the thesis of this movie, right? It's time for Grogo to go out in the field and for dad to show him the ropes. As a dad, it taps into the sense of the hero as a protector. you're trying to create a safe world that you're leaving behind

for the next generation. He won't always be there to protect the kid so he's got to prepare him to make sure he's going to be okay. I do not feel it's incidental, right? Mando gets poisoned

and because he's poisoned and incapacitated and like healing the flesh wound does not heal him. Right. Grogo is left alone. Yes. So it's incidental that Grogo is left alone.

I do not feel that that thesis is fulfilled at all, even though there are nods to it in the things that people are saying, but I do not feel like the thesis of this movie is that. And it feels to me like, because we're talking about there's no stakes, no plot, no all of this in this movie, Favreau has concocted a reason for this movie to exist when really what he just made was like a rip-worn adventure movie with a lot of like CGI fighting and like, you know, ships and stop motion animation and all this sort of stuff like that. And but he's trying to, he's trying to.

trying to give it a heft that the movie itself does not carry. Well, I think there is like a kind of undeniable aspect of fear here because we've now had it happen a couple times. And it's like a safe, it almost feels like maybe safer inside of a movie where you don't even have the passage of one week in a streaming series to wonder if they'll be reunited and to wonder how long you'll have to watch them apart. And it's, you know, there's a dissonance because like the thing, the single thing people love most about the Mandalorian and Grogu is the Mandalorian and Grogu is the Mandalorian and

Grogu together. It's Din and Grogu together. It's that bond and that duo. However, in terms of dramatic tension, right? And the idea of putting your characters in new situations, seeing them apart in real time because it primes us for the inevitable, which is that no matter what, no matter what their story brings when Din is alive, the bulk of Grogu's life will be them apart. Like, it's so interesting to allow us to glimpse that. I think when Din wakes up, Grogu wakes up, he's alone, right? He nestled in his little, Kirk of his arm. Incredible.

Like my cat does. And that's like part of why I love it. It's just so halo-coded. It's like I just can't. I can't even talk about it. But like, it just makes me think of him. But Grogu goes out. And Dan is like, what's up, kid?

Says the line that we'd heard in the trailer. And then that's it. There's like, that's such an incredible opportunity to like have him come sit down. Bring him on his lap. and like talk to him about the fact that he's going to die. Guess what also? I love you.

You're so beautiful and I'm sorry. I really think a lot of this would be accomplished because Petro Pascale is a tremendous actor if we could see his face. And then touch his little face again. When Grogo was lifting up his helmet to feed him the little the poison healing balm, the little of the goose thinking of Alice Rivers,

you know, and her little, her little, her heron hall mashups, there's an opportunity there for a conversation between them that could have been so meaningful, just like the ones we had seen with, like, Asoka and Grogo when they're communicating. Or, like, you raised Ellie and Joel. Like, you know, the stuff that we have seen

Petro Pescal do as a gruff caretaker of a small vulnerable being. I love you in a way you can't understand. Like, there's not, it's not just those dialogue moments that are very important to us. It's the glances. It's the nonverbal acting that Petter Pascal is very good at that we don't get to see because he's got that fucking helmet on. And I do love the helmet. It looks iconic, but we need those moments where we see his face.

He can slap it on when he needs to fight. The cricketing style. But we need to see him like worried about, you know, we need to see his fucking base. Yeah. We just do. And we're not going to. Like that's just not going to happen. It's a bummer.

But a lot of what they're hoping to accomplish that. depth cannot be communicated merely in a head tilt. And it needs to, we need to see someone's face reacting to something. That is what human storytelling is about. So I think it's very important. The baby, the baby is expressive. I mean, his eyes, his cheeks, his ear flaps. And there are things Din does sometimes with the helmet on that give us that the voice, you know, because Pedro's voice is so expressive. He's doing as much as he can. Even when just the arm, Din's arm kind of scoops up, not only Grogu from the water, but all the Anzellans. It's like there are, there are ways. Oh yeah, that's here. It's a, so much of this is the balance. Like we go,

we don't have time for those moments because we have to go right to the next fight and the next chase sequence, etc. So, yeah, I also, um, in addition to wanting to see Dinn, like, struggle a little bit more, you know, even like the helmet coming off, I mean, it's such a familiar beat now at this point to like, well, now, okay, well, I got to kill you because you've seen my face. But I'm like, do we need to go back to season three of the Mandalorian in this respect, which was such a miss? No. However, like, the entire plot of season three of the Mandalorian hinged on him needing to go bathe in the living waters to redeem himself because of violating the creed. And yeah, like we get to the point toward the end where the armor says to Bocatan,

like Boketana walks between worlds and you have more than one way to be a Mandalorian. And finally, at last, our characters make some progress in accepting that people can choose to live their lives differently, but Dyn still believes in the creed. So, like, it weirdly was too, chill of a reaction actually for somebody pulling off his helmet, given like how central that has been previously to his arc. I don't want the like the same exact rep, but it didn't totally track either. Can I talk about my most frustrating inconsistency in this movie? Absolutely. That's a great one, the like his reaction to the helmet coming off. Um, Grogo and the Force. Okay. So we get force healing, which we always love to see. Uh, animal impurities.

right? He takes over the mind of the wolf dog, which is something that you predicted what happened, but it was very short-lived, which is something you sort of commented on at the time. Hoist rot of the hut up out of the pit. That seems like it took a lot of energy, right? You didn't even have to take a nap afterwards, but it was just a lot, right? Yeah. In a flimsy little brass bird cage cannot bend the bars to get out of containment when the gladiator pit fight is happening. Like, I was so shocked to see Grogu so easily damseled and then later, like, revealed to be a strong force user. What are we doing there? I was confused in real time in the Dejerk, like, Holochus Gladiator scene as well, because it certainly is a moment where he can and should use the force.

However, I guess, like, the only thing I can toss out is, one, he's still learning, right? He's 53-ish, so he's like five. You could say that. I don't think that really holds because he's basically on instinct using the force. To grab some snacks. Sometimes very much. Yes, of course.

Fucking Colonel Ward stopping Grogu from eating a snack is just an outrage. I would put that number two on the list of outrageous things, though. Number one, Dinn needs to stop saying heal. Oh, my God. To Grogu, what the fuck is that? I actually find that like galling and gross. This is my version of Joe on Survivor. saying, it wasn't appropriate.

I'm not appropriate. It was disgusting. That's just weird. It's like he's your son. He's like, heal? He'll? Like, what the fuck is that? Didn't like that.

And did not like Ward, not letting him eat. Everybody just needs to let Grogu eat. He's a growing boy. He needs his nutrients. We've got his favorite cookies here today because we are thoughtful caring guardians for our beautiful boy. You know, whether it's like in very deliberate, I'm going to use the force to push dad forward into the mud hut that isn't big enough, very cute.

Or, okay, just boom, I'm going to, oh, I'm going to go and didn't told me to help Rada, so I'm going to use the force to move the levers. He does it that way. Or if it's like just on instinct, I've got to do it. Okay. Yeah, we've seen him use it in enough different ways that there's no reason he couldn't use it there. I guess it's like the threat is too big around them.

No, you're tab dancing and I appreciate the top dance. No, I don't think it makes sense either. I'm trying to, like, offer what the logic of the movie. no explanation for it. The reason that it doesn't make sense, actually to me, is less about Grogu not freeing himself, even though that also doesn't make sense. Because I think it would have been logical and cute for him to basically sneak out. But the thing that really doesn't make sense is that he's not using the force to try to help Din. Because that's just canon. How did we become Klan Mudhorn in the first place? If they had a special force dampening

cage that they put him in, like Gideon's hand-caused. Like, sure, but they didn't. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. Very strange. Seeing him use the force healing again after, because of course he used it in season one, episode seven to force heal grief cargo. We realized in hindsight that he had been trying to use it to heal din earlier in that season.

That in real life and real time was, you know, mere days away from Rises Skywalker when we saw the Raye-Kilo force healing used. Now we've seen it again, you know, so this power, Grogu's very powerful. in the forest. The midi count is off the charts, as we know. The fact that Grogoku can force heel is, I think, going to continue to, like, be relevant in the story moving forward. The, like, pull the poison out versus just closing the wound thing. You know, he's a baby, he's learning. The animal bond was really interesting to me because, like, I think that it seems so clearly relevant with Grogue specifically because, you know, we saw him with the rancourt and Book of Boba Fett. We had the pergol moment where they're in hyperbollah.

space and he is like observing with and almost communing with the purgle as they pass by at the beginning of season three. It certainly felt like across season three that we were setting up this Grogu will be the one who rides the Mythosaur to like unite all the Mandaloreans. Feels like that's where we're heading. For Grogu, I like it. And so seeing it bare fruit here, although it didn't hold was like not surprising. Once again, though, I do feel compelled to note that this is a Faloni preoccupation, because this was really central for Ezra, too. Including with the Pergul, of course, that's how Ezra ends up banishing Thron, right? But the Loth cats and the Lothwolves and the Fjernox, I think it's pronounced, that whole

stretch, which the mall kind of weaponizes, right? So this aspect of, like, I think it's a really interesting force power because you can use it to, like, calm and commune. And, like, as Canaan trained Ezra, that's really about, like, peace and conniving. Like a beautiful idea of how you think about the force. When it's weaponized and it goes wrong for Ezra, it's really like about control and taking over the mind, which is bad. So I think it's an interesting power to continue to see what like impulse Grogu has and how far. Character we saw a force-choked caridoon on instinct in season one takes it.

But I do kind of again, like how much of what we see is going to be like another version of a thing we've played with before with other characters in the Faloni toy box. a new thing entirely. I'm fascinated to see how that goes in the future. I have some hut-based questions for you from our listener, Emily. Okay. Here's Emily's. And these were only some of Emily's questions, to be honest with you. Emily says, does Rada slash Stinky still have trauma for the first time he was kidnapped? And that is why he was so content with staying kidnapped. Where was Stinky during the rise of the first order?

Since they're both going to conveniently live until 500, Rada and Grogu's spinoff show post-first order when. I need more of them playing on the beach together. Do any of these questions inspire a response from you? You know, I did think that the Rada Grogu moments were cute, like them playing in the ocean, snoozing together. The nap. That stuff was, I thought, actually quite cute. And I understand the impulse behind it, which is to take a character who reminds us of a famous character in Star Wars. Now, in Rada's case, it's literally his dad, Jaba. in Grover's case. Yonah and Java. It could be, it could literally be, as we, as we speculated before, like, an actual offspring.

But, like, just the reminder, the fact that, like, when he meets Luke, when he talks to Assook, it's like, you remind me of someone, right? This kind of shadow that looms over you and who you are, both to the people in the story and tossed at home. But, like, dear God. The long lifespan. But, like, dear God, Mallory Rubin, some of the worst writing I've ever seen in my entire life is when Rada, in two separate scenes, says the exact.

same boring thing, which is like, I'm not my dad's son. I'm my own man. I'm my own man. And it's not even... Why is he saying I'm on my own man? I'm my own hut. I'm my own hut. Like, what is he talking about? It's very strange. But it's the exact same scene. Yeah. Oh yeah. Back to back. It's so confusing. And this happens a couple times in this movie in a way that felt to me almost like the Netflix exact instructions that everyone's going to be second screening your your TV show or your movies, so you need to repeat things so that in case people weren't paying attention, they got it. To see that in a theatrical release of a Star Wars film is so depressing to me, like monumentally. I thought this was very strange as well. And we got it

with Janu, with Lord Janu, quite a bit as well, like in the scene at the Salt Ration Bar. And there were some stuff in that in that stretch that was kind of fun and cool. Marty Scorsese crushed it. Salt's currency was a fun idea. It was a fun idea. It felt so clunky to like hear these characters just repeat this thing. And it's like we're trying to give you a sense of this place

without like totally giving you a sense of this place. And then coin Lord Janu repeats. I got, I feel like four, at least four times in this, in that exchange with Din. Basically an offer for him to just please consider fighting in the pits. The people would love to see a fable Mandalorian Warrior come fight in the pits.

He says it like four times. Then you have the rata repetitions that you noted. Bizarre in general, but particularly heavy in their impact as like a ham-fisted bit of dialogue and just scripting because there's so little dialogue in the movie. Plot, but also like people don't talk that much in the movie. So when there are only so many lines and exchanges and like six of them are repetitions of things we've heard, those same characters say that's, like, quite weird. I thought on the Rada front in general, this was one of the weirdest. It's hard for me to think of a weirder use of

Jeremy Allen White than this. He is one of our most, we've, we've praised Grogu. A motive for being emotive and expressive. Jeremy Allen White, that is like the whole thing. You watch Carmi. Pedro, too. Petro too. You watch Carmi, you watch lip on shameless or on the bear. And it's like, what he does with his face, the way his eyes. listen. And it's like, we were deprived of that completely. And then his voice is like modulated in a very strange way. You could have hired literally anyone to voice that character. There was no reason to hire Jeremy Allen White. That was so bizarre. But yeah, let's take some of our most expressive actors and then not let them do anything. Meanwhile, with love and respect to Johnny Coyne, an actor I

have like no familiarity with as John O'Coyne. The actor's name is Johnny Coyne. The character's name is John O'Coyne. Yes. Mali, should we come up with Star Wars names for each other that are just basically our own names? Sure. Yeah. That is wild. Johnny Coyne. I was like, is he friends with John Favre? Like, what is what is happening here? What would your name be? Let's see. So Joanna Robinson, it would be like changing Joanna to Jonah. Yeah. Or J.O. Joe to just J.O. E. Joe. And Robinson to like Roberson. It should be a droid, like J.O. Yeah.

J.O. Roberson. And it's just, oh, J.O. J.O. J.O. J.O. Yeah. I love it.

Consider it your canon. I mean, it's hard to beat Darth, Darth Mal. Like, there's really nothing I can do. Hobbs and drag is at Gmail.com. If you have better Star Wars names for us that are basically just our names because that's what they did with Johnny Coin. But Johnny Coin, not very good in this movie. Like, I don't think John & Coim is a. great character at all. He's just kind of there. I kind of liked his perp walk when he's back

at Adelphi. Like his insolent perp walk was kind of fun. You know what? That like drove me crazy, actually, just that they brought him there. Like, this is your base. Secret base. What are you doing? What if he escapes or what if he has a way to communicate with the other imperial remnants? Now they can all go find a Delphi base? That was bizarre. So the coin character, so we have two imperial remnants. We haven't really talked about the opening. Oh yeah. There's a cold open, that's basically just what the trailer was. Yes, yes. So those two characters, those two Imperial Warlords,

we have, of course, seen in the Mandalorian before. We saw them in the Shadow Council stretch in the penultimate episode of season three with Moff Gideon. That was the, there's Huxes there, Pellys there. That was like a kind of fun and interesting scene at the time. Thrawn and the specter of Thrawn was a throat. But like, we took random little holograms from, the Mandalorian show and made it like...

Yeah, it's strange because it's like, again, it really does sort of reek of, okay, the Thron connection that was supposed to kind of tie all this together as we build toward... You know, as we use these stories to continue to,

much as Clone Wars did for the prequels, flesh out and explain how we got from point A to point B, right? I think because both of those Imperial Warlords were featured in the trailers, it seemed like that would be a more central continuation of a core aspect of the plot, which is we can't let these relics of the empire linger in the galaxy and work to restore a thing

that they think in real time will be the empire, but we know we'll become the first order. Right. We're 10 years out, we're about, we're roughly 10 years after the Battle of Yavin, and we're roughly 10 years before the first order begins, not takes over, but really begins, according to the AB-wise. Yes. And so we're right in the midpoint of the defeat and then the reforming of it.

Right. Right. Yeah, I just don't think, it felt, you know, the way that Damon characterized it, like a bond cold open, right? Like bond mid-mission, which is where we find the Mandalorian

at the beginning of this movie. And so it's, it's, I mean, it's a funny scene the way that he is like bullying all these people and they're like, he went that away. We fucking hate this guy. Go get him. Like, that's funny. And there's a lot of, like, dazzling action there for, you know, if that's what you're coming to the Mandalorian and Grogu for, you know, and if you want to see familiar shapes and different troopers and all the sorts of like that. We get our Imperial Walkers. It's all there. I just didn't, was not invested in it at all.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And, like, I, you know, other than what Grogu was doing. Grogo was killing it once again. I thought it was fun. One of the more successful set pieces and action stretches of the film, I think. It looked really cool to see it in a movie theater in IMAX. You know, even just like when they're riding the walker over the cliff. And if you're watching it on the big screen,

you really feel like you're going with them. The pull to the dark side, and this was Star Wars always. And this was also present in the pursuit of Rada when Grogu, very cute, leading the charge again, he's the one leading the way not didn't now, jumps into the little cradle that has been abandoned by the Rodian and Zims Off. You're sort of like, oh, you see already how this will become an amusement park, like a theme ride where you're like almost being ported into the... How do you feel about Shikari as a...

We're doing Chicago, but we've called it Shikari. Is that the Jhanu coin of Planet Names? I guess it might be. It's interesting because, like, you know, we talked about in one of the real misses of season three, which was the Jack Black Lizzo episode where Din had his big, like, droid regression, and Din and Grogou were separated in a way that it's like, oh, it's actually bad sometimes when they're separated. It's not always like a rich, rewarding character thing. And, you know, the other thing, of course, it was just a huge miss in season three was the,

let's just go spend all this time with Pershing and Kane on Corrassant. So, like, again, to say why was there not more of the continued story when the continued story has sometimes really been off is, like, a little bit tricky. But the Blade Runner, the Blade Runner kind of visual aspect of that that we talked about in Episode 6 were like, oh, they're trying to do a Blade Runner thing with even just the pursuit and the chase and everything. I don't know, like sometimes it looked, I thought that that, I thought Marty Scorsese, who has, you know, made no bones about shitting all over Marvel and then decided to be in the Mandalorian and Grosgo. That this is the Star Wars that he's in? Pretty strange. That said, I thought Hugo kind of landed as a character. I agree.

Entertaining and really worked. I agree. And that flat meat sandwich with, by the way, on the subtle Easter egg front, a literal egg, the mudhorn egg with the hairy egg, you know, putting the yolk on Gros sandwich. And I was like, ports us back to the clan mudhorn origins for these guys. But the score was amazing there on that planet. Yeah. Can I go back to, you mentioned season three, episode three of the Mandalorian? Yes.

the convert as a sort of universally reviled episode. The writer of that episode is Nocloor and Nocloor is the third build writer on this movie. It's a puzzler!

They took the writer of the most reviled episode of The Mandalorian and had him work on this movie. I don't totally get it. So confusing to me when there are beautifully written episodes of the Mandalorian that exist. Gorgeous.

It did also, make me think we would be doing more of the New Republic First Order stuff, which is here as a freeming for Howden is sent on his adventures, you know, the looking for the Ace of Staves, the Ace of Staves. But like we don't really, you know, you mentioned the time frame for the First Order and like to think about where we are plotting these points and the BBIs and the ABYs, like 21 ABY and 29 ABI for key first order dates and then 34 ABY for Force Awakens. boy, we've got a lot of story to cover still

if we're going to keep fleshing that out from now to then. And I just don't want to. Yeah. So then it's like, well, let's find other cool, fun things to do with Dinn and Grogu that don't just feel like Rod of the Hut is here for no reason. You mentioned the score in Shikari. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we get to the Ludwig Gorson's score? Which I loved.

Oh. Just wanted to end on an upbeat. Let's see. Anything else? I mean, I guess the twins, you know, on the hut front, just not just we're not only porting things from

the clone wars we're porting things from the book of Boba Fett too and you know on a repetitious story beat front like the let's go challenge Boba on Tatooine because we can't have any threat to our like crime

syndicate might and then here Rada we can't have a threat to the hold for the hot crown like we just have to be able to do something a little more fresh than this. It feels in a story world as big as a galaxy far, far away, actually genuinely impossible that there's not a newer, fresher story to tell. I did think seeing the huts on Nal huts, which we've been to tell Hutz on the animated verse and the idea of like the swampy planet and Hutt space and the Hutt Council and stuff like

that is interesting. Zero the Hutt is an animated character who is like deranged and fascinating to watch in animation. So it's not like, it's not always a miss when when huts are back in the story or anything like that. I did think it was pretty wild to get... I think it's not a miss in animation. Yeah, and it can be quite fun in animation. The best live action deployment was interesting to just see the movement of like the rolling

in the gladiator stretch. Fascinating. But really, it was the like, oh my God, for a minute, we're back in the bells of the pleasure den. It felt like we were in Hot D for a second. Panning the hallways and you're just getting orgy after orgy after. Orgy. Tell me more about that. I'm interested. I'm not going to lie. I'm interested in learning more about

that. I would watch that. You know, for the kids. For the children. I have some notes for the New Republic on their bombing technique. You know, they come in. They're like, well, it's where the DIN's like, we're going to jump out. Yeah, lock on me on you. Are you sure? Okay. There's like almost I would describe as like an ADU right next to the main structure that they don't bomb at all. It's like, what if someone's still in there? That's it. That's all we're going to do. Very strange. The score was amazing. I thought it was a lect, genuinely electric. The score is incredible. You can listen to it on Spotify, wherever you listen to music.

Grogu's World, which is the track, you know, because mainly this score is just a reworking of the fantastic Mandalorian theme. You know, Lizzie Gorence is just reworking. He's absolutely gangbusters. And it was interesting to hear, you know, like, this is a debate I've been seeing online where people are saying, many people are saying, some people are saying. Like, is this the first stuff? Star Wars score without John Williams' light motifs in it at all. Because it's present even in Rogue One. And so, like, is this the first time we're just getting a pure Ludwig Gorensen joint without playing with some of those?

And then I've seen people who can hear these things better than I can. Some people are like, oh, I hear a little bit of this and this track or whatever. So I'll be interested to hear, like, that conversation develop. Mostly, though, even with, like, you know, we get the additional synth stuff and all the sort of stuff like that. this is the Mandalorian and Grogu or the Mandalorian theme reworked. And especially the end credits, this isn't on the, as far as I can tell, this is not on the soundtrack that's been released, but I was really digging the end credits. We got like a jaunty like ragtime like Mando Grogu.

Like it was just like a bunch of like let's try it in a different genre like Mandalorian theme. I thought was really fun. But Grogu's world in terms of like a new track to listen to, I thought was. the real standout extraordinary stuff. It's all for you, buddy. It all comes back to Grogo, you know, just let him sit there and eat Mantell Mix,

watch sports, and... That's another moment that Mallory leaned over to me. Just like Omega! She's like, that's Omega's favorite snack. When Grogo's eating the Mantle Mix at the Gladiator Pigs. That's a better way to connect to the... Like, okay, you want people who have watched Bad Batch and Love Bad Batch

should be like, oh, the Animatorverse Faloni Hive rise. Like, cool, do that, you know? Just use some Cracker Jacks. Did you like seeing the razor crest again? Did you miss the razor crest? Sure. More of an appropriate family vehicle, you know, than the sports car. A minivan?

Should Peter Pascal ever go near a gladator pit again? This is a really good question. No. It's a really good question. Well, so sometimes the performance is electric, but his head ends up being exploded like a grape. It's three times now. Yeah.

One of the performances was mesmerizing. It just didn't end well for it. with the character. And then the other two times, it's real... Mm-hmm. I say, Pedro, no more. That's it. When Grogu went inside the stop-motion guard droids,

did you think about Ant Man shrinking down and going inside of a... I was thinking about inner space. Also, you know, as I was thinking about the Jim Henson movies, I know you haven't seen Labyrinth, but this is very similar to... There are these guards at the gates of the Goblin King's Castle that like turn into these metallic giant things

and it takes one of our, this little dog who's one of the like band of heroes like gets in and drives, I think it's the dog, maybe it's someone, maybe it's hoggle. I can't remember who does it. But one of the good guys gets in

and like starts driving the mech. So, you know, we're doing a labyrinth homage. I'm not mad about that. And the fact that you stop motion animation, like that fight was really dragging on for me. So like I wasn't having the best time, but I was delighted to see the Phil Tippett sort of like stop motion animation technique being used there. The stop motion, very cool.

The use of miniatures, like with the ship, very cool. Obviously the puppets, these things that harken back to the soul of OG Star Wars. Yeah. As you already said, though, then the... Everything else is soulless. Heroes rot out of sleep. Whatever that is. Should we eat some cookies?

Oh, yeah, let's have a cookie. We're going to wrap this up. Let's have a cookie. A friend of the pod. month has really been a snack forward endeavor. It sure has. Grogoo, you know what he was loving on the snack front when Rada was feeding him, you know, the like little blue like shrimpy things, loved that. Yeah. All right. This is not a free ad. No, no free ads. But, uh, but I do still need to try that Burger King Grogo shake. No free ads, but I do still need to try it. But Nabisco maker of the

Nila wafer has put out these little blue cookies that are, I still think they should have gone like full macron, which is like essentially what the Grogo cookies are. Yes. We were. We were warned by Arjuna producer who provided us with these cookies, that they will turn our mouths extraordinarily blue. And so we did not eat them at the beginning of the podcast. This is an end of pod endeavor. You don't want to use the force to grab it? Okay.

Delicious. I would taste like an old wafer. Arjuna says, is this good ASMR or bad ASMR? Arjuna says that... All right, how blue is your mouth? Let me see. Pretty blue. Let me see her.

Pretty blue. But just the tongue, not the team. Yeah, you're too. Yeah, just your tongue. That's the end of the podcast. Not brought to you by Nabisco or Lucasfilm, but we love you, man. We love you, Grogu. We love you Mando.

Yeah. And we would love to see you in a better adventure. And I'll hate you Mando because you're a legend. Remember that? Yeah. That was the good stuff. Thank you, too. Who's here?

Jacob Cornett's here. C.T. is here. Our dinner, Rang Pau is here. Carlos Chiroboga. Carlos Chiroboga is here. Jomea at Dinneron will be helping us out with the social. Thank you all. Thank you to Grogo.

Man, what an actual force for good in this cold, dark world. We'll be back in the Cinemas for Disclosure Day. That's right. And we'll see you all soon. Bye. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes. Good, this is for you.

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