House of R - Tropes Course: Golden Trios

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

They say the best things come in threes, and Joanna and Mal are here to give you their latest Tropes Course on our favorite golden and Freudian trios throughout storytelling (07:25). From 'Avatar' to 'Harry Potter' to 'Star Trek' to so much more, they break down main characters in threes and how some of the best teams bounce off of each other in some of our favorite stories. Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Joanna Robinson. Join us every week on the Prestige TV podcast feed is your favorite ringer hosts like Bill Simmons, Van Lathen, Mallory Rubin, Sean Fentasy, Chris Ryan, Julia Lippman, and many more cover the latest episodes of your favorite TV obsessions. From boardrooms to throne rooms to courtside and through the mushroom apocalypse, we'll be here throughout the week breaking it all down. Subscribe to the Prestige TV podcast feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The playoffs are here.

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So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers on their magic and said that each Should earn a prize for having been clever enough to evade him. What are you doing? Trying to keep everyone together. You're my superior officer.

You are also my friend. I have been and always shall be yours. We can decide that as long as the three of us are together, none of us are gonna be alone. It's easy to do nothing, but it's hard to forgive. I can't carry it for you. But I can carry you. I guess I'm starting to understand why there's no ancient prophecy about a chosen one and her friends.

A Troops course episode. I'm Joanna Robinson joining me today. Well, there are two people joining me today. One you will hear. The other is just silently in the background. Together we form a golden trio. It is Mallory Rubin and Steve Alman. Hello, Mallory.

How you doing? Joe, Steve, thrilled to be here on another house of our with our golden trio to talk about the most important manifestation of three in the universe, three true outcomes, one of my favorite baseball stats, hyped for the next couple of hours. Exactly. As you know, I'm really very well prepared to talk about that subject at length and depth with sharp insights and expertise. Today, before we get to that, that's going to be the final segment. Before we get to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We're going to spend some time talking about the concept of the golden trio. And if you're like, what's the golden trio or what's a Freudian trio, that is what we're all going to learn together over the course of this episode. Mallory had really good time digging into some of our favorite stories to talk about this very topic. Before we get to that, some quick programming reminders here in this feed. It's a three-fer. We were not, we only did one episode last week. So we were doing, what would Daphne, all of our pal, call it a threesome? It's a threesome week.

No, we're doing golden trios today, Trump's course. Wednesday, something we're calling the V-Day Quickie or the Valentine's Day Quicky. What is that episode? Sooner to find out. Oh, yeah. Mallory, what are we doing on Friday? Boy, we're excited for our Friday pod. We are nearing the release of Netflix's live action adaptation of Avatar The Last Airbender.

And so in anticipation of that moment, we're looking back. We are revisiting and celebrating one of our shared favorites, a favorite across the Ring ofverse family, the animated original, Avatar the Last Airbender. We will be going through doing a classic house of our, primer pod, a top moments pot. We're going to be going through our favorite moments from the original series, and we're going to be doing it on a character by character basis, which, let's just be frank. Let's just say the reason. It's so I did not come with 10 Momo moments. And Joy, it didn't

come with 10 IRO moments. We're spreading the love around. This week. I'm really excited for this. Can't wait. Ben and Mall are going to be doing some bad batching. Yes. So that's going to be great. Over on the Ring reverse, Mint Edition, Minty Fresh Today, a Super Bowl trailer reaction from Steve, Jomi, and Ben to talk about all the trailers, et cetera, et cetera. And then Thursday. Beep you. Beepoo.

Get excited. Put down the spiders that you're studying in the Amazon to tune into the Midnight Boys' Instant Reaction of Madam Webb, which is short to be an all-exam. timeer, like one for the history books, I think. More excited for the pod than the movie by a margin so comfortable that we need not even measure it. And not wait. So that's, I mean, listen, that's a lot of great content, Mallory Rood.

How can folks keep track of all of that? Thanks for asking. Yeah. My recommendation would be to follow the pods. Sure. Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow the ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow trial by content.

Follow prestige TV. Follow all of it. Joe is just crushing it as always over on prestige TV right now. Pods are plenty. While you're at it, you're like, okay, I followed the pods. I followed it on Spotify or wherever I get my podcast. What else? I'm thrilled to tell you that the ringerverse is on the social media platform of your choosing.

The ringerverse. It's true. I know. Wow. Is on. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,

yeah, you can find us there. Lapeche, peach, no? If only. If only. If you have a thought that's longer than a tweet, you want to send us

your questions, your queries, your thoughts, your theories, your pickles, your apples, the inbox is open. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail. com.

Keep the email. emails coming. Thank you again for the wonderful emails last week. The mailbag was a blast. We can't wait to do another one. We had a great time. Um, what is a spoiler warning today? Stuff, you know? Stories. The eush. We're trekking through stars. We're having wars and stars. You know, Percy's here. Yeah. Lyra might show up. Demigods and wizards and wizards. Damans. Certainly. Yeah, exactly. So, um, that is what. Demons and avatars. And I should say on the email front, shout out to our listener, Carlo, who's one who suggested this idea in the first place.

It's a great suggestion. So hobbits and dragons gm.com and you two could shape a future tropes course episode. All right, let's start, as you always do, with the scope of the trope. Threes. Why threes? What a great episode. Webster's Dictionary decides, no, okay. Fictionary.com.

Three is a very key number in all of storytelling and sort of in our lives in general. But in the pattern of storytelling, three is super important because one is a lone example. Two might be a coincidence or a flupe. But once you get to three, you got a pattern. My English teacher in high school always used to say three trees make a row. If you have two trees, that's not a row. If you have three, that's a row. And once you have three trees, this is about supporting quotes for your points and essays, etc.

then you've got a row. And so many great things in the history of storytelling come in threes. There are often three trials. And those three trials might be undertaken by three brothers, where usually the youngest brother is the one who passes the test. You got pigs, you got blind mice, you got bears, you got wishes. You've got the underworld, the earth, the spirit realms. You've got the comedy rule of three.

you got the three-act structure, you got love triangles, and you got Beetlejuice, Beetle-Jus, Beetle-Jose. You got it all, right? I love it. We've got the three stooges, which we've mentioned once already and Will certainly again.

We've got the Jonas brothers. I know, I'm sorry. I would like to apologize for my cruel humor there. Well, you know, Rule 3 in J-School too, right, Joe? Rule 3 very present in our lives throughout sports. Already mentioned three true outcomes.

How about the hat trick? How about the Triple Crown? I have heard of that trick and the Triple Crown. Yeah. Yeah. Should we just talk about sports all pod? Or do you want to talk a little bit about the Holy Trinity? Oh, ever heard of it?

Glass and lasses. It's just the father of the sound of the Holy Ghost. Come on. There's company. Well, let's talk about the origin really quickly of this trope. The idea of threes goes all the way back to Pythagoras. Don't worry. There's no math on this.

and the idea of the sacred triangle. There's, in the fifth fourth century BC, Hippocrates is the origin of this idea of like the four personality types, the fundamental personality types of sort of ancient literature of sanguine, caloric, melancholic, inflammatory. And this is sort of like pleasure-seeking, ambitious, analytical, and relaxed and thoughtful. So that's four. four ideas.

Later on in life, though, Freud comes along. He's like, four sounds like too many. Why don't we just do three? Why don't we do three aspects of the personality instead of four? And the ego and the id in 1923, he gets rid of the phlegmatic, the, you know, the lax one to give us the id, the ego, and the super ego. What is your relationship to Freud and the id and the ego, the super ego, Malibu, Rubin? Oh, I love Freud. He doesn't love you back.

I'm sorry to say. Yeah, I'll have to spend some time, stretched out, reclined on a couch thinking and talking about that later, processing it. Who doesn't love good old Sigmund Freud and the analysis of the human psyche? I think what's apparent, right, irrefutable, is that whether or not, you as a given person in the world is at all inclined toward psychoanalysis or that sort of study, you have absorbed this via osmosis because it has become, along with Greek myth and the Bible and other aspects of history and life, a pillar on which storytelling and storytelling and storytelling

identities are based. So one of the great ideas that Joe had in structuring this episode, and we won't necessarily be like rigidly bound by this, but just to look at the tree, as we talk about some of our favorite trios, you know what we haven't done?

We haven't issued our classic tropes course, House of our caveat. We're going to hit some of the highlights. It's not going to be every golden trio who's ever great, the page or screen. Some of the faves, we'll say it a few more times, probably.

The ability to say, do these characters neatly, tidily, loosely, maybe not at all, fit, map onto Hugh II, the id, super ego, ego roles is such a fascinating way to think about the dynamic, not only, of course, inside of each individual character and figure and story, but the dynamic in a group. What does each member bring to that particular brew and how do they play off each other? What remains fixed over time? When do some of those roles shift and evolve? It's been a really fun thing to kind of think about a track in this respect. Totally. Like when I, when I, you know, we sort of mapped out some of our favorite trios, we divvied them up. We'll talk about them.

But like when you're looking at some of them that are messier, it's almost like a puzzle to solve. I'm like, does this fit or does this not fit or how can I make this fit? or how do people swap places? Or what does when facing an obstacle and if it's a character that maps onto the id or maps onto the ego or maps on the super ego, whoever, like who is leading the charge here? Is this an emotion forward, you know,

heart forward story that's the id? Is this a rational, logical, mindful story? that's the super ego, or is this like a courage, action, you know, like fully embodied a story? That's the ego, right? And so we'll... Reconciliation, balance. We will redefine these again and again and again because I can get confused on them, so I promise we'll, like, keep... You don't have to keep notes.

We'll keep talking about it. But basically we're talking about, like, if you want to break it down into, like, really easy to remember, if you think about the Wizard of Oz and you think about scarecrow needing a brain, the Tin Man needing a heart, and the Carolyn Landing needing the nerve, that's sort of like the three that we're talking about. But to Mallory's point, the nerve, that action character is often the balance between the head and the heart.

So that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today. Before we leave this section, I do want to mention our guy Aristotle. And in the fourth century BC, Aguatu, it's not Trump's course without Aristotle. In the fourth century BC, in his seminal work, rhetoric or rhetoric too. I forget. It's either rhetoric or the sequel. I forget. But he comes up with

the concept of logos, ethos, pathos. Big, big expanded universe, guys. He loves IP. Aristotle loves IP. Okay. Logos. Early to the streaming wars. This is about how to craft a successful argument, right? And so the idea is that Logos is the logic, the reason of the argument. Is the argument? Is the argument? itself rational and sound. Pathos is the emotion, the feeling of the audience. How does the audience feel about this argument?

And ethos is the spirit, the credibility of the orator. Right. So you've got head, logos, heart, pathos, and then spirit balance ethos. So these three cons, like, did Freud crib from Aristotle? I don't know. I did some heavy Googling around it and people feel kind of mixed about it. Some people think that Freud crib from Aristotle. I just think you should keep that in mind as you go forward in your life.

The oldest, like I mentioned, I just named, name dropped a bunch of old Greeks, et cetera. The oldest story I think that we have on our list today is the Three Mesketeers. It's just written in 1844. So that's far back as we're going. Mallory, I don't know about you, but I was first alerted to this, like literally just a couple weeks ago where you were talking about Percy Jackson. I was like, huh, there's a trio on Percy and there's a trio and Harry Potter. I wonder if this is a common storytelling thing. And boy, howdy, is it? Do you have a memory of like a longer association with this concept of the golden trio or the Freudian trio?

That's a good question. As is so often the case with these tropes course episodes, I love that we always start with this question of like when this entered our lives or when we became familiar. I feel like typically I have a very poor or just like no answer to this, which I think kind of like proves to the point, right? Which is that this stuff is just so present in our lives. You almost don't even feel it and see it at a certain point. A trope becomes like the air you breathe just around you at all times until you stop to acknowledge it. And, you know, I think obviously like we'll be talking more about Harry later. spoken many times on podcasts here in the ringer podcast, I work about Harry.

That's certainly like one of the most dominant trios in my life and was, you know, certainly in my high school, late high school when I was reading Harry and watching Harry earlier in high school for the first time. I was obsessed with the particular version. The 1993 Three Musketeers. Oh, yeah. Dr. Donald.

Yes. I used to watch this all the time when I was a kid. Like constantly it was high up in the rotation. So I guess that could be a candidate. Is that your answer? I just don't think I ever noticed it until literally we were talking about Percy in the context of Harry Potter. And then it was like, oh boy, it's it everywhere in every story that we like.

I was shocked to discover. and I felt like I had really missed something. But two point, like, I often think about, like, seven is the most powerfully magical number and, like, other roles of numbers and stories. It's actually been fun going through this pod prep to think about when three is directly opposed to another number in one of these stories. But even, like, Harry as the poster trio for the idea of the Golden Tree. trio, I, I find myself, like, I was thinking back to binge, like, just, I think I'd probably say, like, Holy Trinity just as often as trio or anything else. So even that term golden trio, while it is directly associated with something I have spent a great deal of time thinking and

talking about, it just is like a part of the vernacular that you just sort of absorb over time. So it's interesting. I think the place where I have been most trained to pay attention of threes in characters, sets, is like in the fates and the goddesses and stuff like that. We love the fates. We love that. We talked about that. In person, we talked about it in Asoka. Like, that's something that I perk when I see like three women.

Yeah, when I see three women, I'm like, I like sit up and pay attention, right? And so we're going to talk. I just want to talk really briefly about this idea of the three faces of the goddess before we get into this, like, more deeply into this Freudian trio thing. Like a lot of people think about Shakespeare and his three witches. the weird sisters. He was drawing from like Scottish folk tale. But he was like, he was sort of the origin of there's like the three fates, the mori. The idea of the triple goddess crops up in like Hindu and Egyptian mythologies, the morgan, the Norn in orthmosologies.

It is around the globe. But in terms of this idea of three witches, that is largely attributed to Shakespeare and Macbeth. Because even though he was stealing from or heavily borrowing. inspired by Scottish folklore. In the Scottish folklore version of these stories, these are like nymphs or like fairies. They're not witches. And he's like, let's make them witches.

And then in terms of like the idea of the mother maiden crone, which we think about a lot in that like witch trinity, this was the idea, okay, the idea of assigning roles to the three witches. is. First comes from this occultist, uh, theorist, Jane Ellen Harrison.

She comes up with the mother and the maiden. She's like, mother maiden and the third one, right? She's like, let's talk about like, the, the roles of women in society.

You are a young woman, and then you are like a motherly woman. And then like there's this third entity that she does not name. And enter. Shit heel, bad boy, Alistair Crawley. Just like never met a thing.

He couldn't mess up. And in his novel Moonchild, Nights 21, he's like, I know. It's Crone. Let's go with Crone. Mother Made in Crone. Great stuff. And this is his interpretation of the Crone. He says, she is Hequette, a thing altogether of hell, barren, hideous, and malicious,

the queen of death and evil witchcraft. Hecate is the crone. The woman passed all hope of motherhood, her soul black with envy and hatred of happier mortals. It's speaking to me. It's me, Mallory. This is the it me meme. Is it? Oh, man.

Oh, then famously in 1948, Robert Graves writes the white goddess, which really cements the idea of the mother made in Crone. And he said, not as bad as I think Crowley did, but also not nice things about the Crohn role. But this idea of the three, the power of three in witches, you see in like charmed, hocus, pocus, you'll game in love. the three fates, the three witches, they crop up in Sandman, Star, us, ocean at the end of the land, et cetera, et cetera.

The Once in Future Witches, a book we read by Alex Harrow that we love. But my favorite of all time are The Three Witches and Terry Pratchett. And I just want to read a quote that I love from this. The maiden changes in some of the books. But the mother, it's called Nannyog. The Crone is Granny Weatherwax. And I just love this quote from, I think, is Witches Abroad. The villain says, look at the three of you, bursting with inefficient good intentions, the maiden, the mother, and the crone.

Who are you calling a maiden? said Nanny Hogg. Who are you calling a mother? said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax glowered briefly, like the person who had discovered that there is only one straw left, and everyone else has drawn a long one. So, Crohn, we have some questions about how you use it, use it wisely. There's great ways to embody Crone, but let's just be careful and cautious. Don't be a Crowley is the point. Someday we'll do a full Trobes course on witches, but I just wanted to get those female, the fates and the witches and that Holy Trinity out of the way. Anything else you want to say about fates and witches

and mothers and maidens and crones? I think you summed it up beautifully. Like you said, we love whenever the fates, the marae pop up in a story. It's like we talk a lot about often in these tropes course episodes about how fun it is to track a storytelling tradition where the roots and the connections are, they're not supposed, they're not subtle and they're not supposed to be subtle, right? They're intentional and present for us to assess and consider.

But then what form and shape do they take and how does an influence then spawn another influence and like how can we trace those tributaries or the branches as they spawn? You know, it's also fun to think about how specifically I think the idea of the fates connect to another storytelling tradition that we like to talk about a lot. Prophecy, right? And like thinking of how these things mix and match, particularly because when you were saying earlier, like, how are we assessing the id, the ego, the super ego, and the mapping to the characters. fun to think about the parallel path with an arc, right? With the hero's journey and when or how a given character's relationship to a given role in categorization changes over time and does a prophecy and maybe perhaps, oh, I don't know, like you said, Macbeth and the witches influence the decisions that a character makes the way that they interact with the people around them and the faith that they ultimately make their way toward. and we love when these various traditions

that we're so fascinated and connect to each other. So yeah, it's always fun to see the great mothers. Shout out James Juniper, one of the best names. And from Alex E. Harrow wants some future witches and recent fiction history, just astonishing stuff right there.

Can't wait to talk about witches more with you one day. Which tropes course will have more parts, prophecy or witches when we finally do them. Prophecy. Who are we kidding? Prophecy is going to do them. to be our Magnusophon, our Magnus. Okay. I love how you put that. And I think what has been most interesting to be in trying to map these trios is when it's really messy, I find, like, it might relieve some of you who think we talk about loss too much. We don't. Loss is not on

our list today because it is actually very messy and hard to map a trio onto loss. And I think one of the reasons why is, and I tried, but one of the reasons why is, are you. characters are arcing all over the place all the time. And that's true of another example that we'll get to later where I was like, it's about where you move in the trio because it's a story that is really known for massive character growth and change and arc and stuff like that. So it's like, I'm not saying that the ones where they stay fixed, those characters aren't on an arc, but it is interesting to see someone move from, say, the rational role to the emotional role

or, you know, the action role to the thinking role or whatever the case may be. That's a fascinating thing to keep your eye on the Freudian trio. Before I hand the mic over to Mallory Rubin to take us back to binge moan Harry Potter. I just want to take a brief for it into our listener, Cass wrote in to say, I'm introducing Therapy Corner TM with Katz TM. Love it. And she's a therapist, and she was talking about how she's. took a dialectical behavior therapy course, and in that model, they were talking about

the wise mind. And the wise mind is the center of the continuum between the emotion mind and the reason mind. What this essentially means is that when making decisions, you want to try to integrate your emotional and logical sides to make more balanced or wise decisions. One way the instructor helped us understand this was by conducting an exercise where we thought of three characters from a story and had to place them in either the emotion mind, the reason mind, or the wise mind. The example the instructor used was none other than the iconic golden trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Mallory Rubin, take us to Hogwarts. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

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Painful landing. I will try to keep this brief. This will be the hardest one for me to keep brief. Obviously. I think the most passages that I quote here, but I will try still to keep it brief. You want to hear more? Got 68 episodes of Benjamin McHawarway. You sure do.

Check it out. Harry, certainly a story where numbers are prominent and present. What better example than three Tri-Wizard champions? No, just kidding. Dase my boasterisk on that three! Seven horrockses. Three Hallows. This idea not only of the presence and prominence of the number,

seven is the most powerfully magical number. This is where I say that. It's, of course, from Harry, and a million other stories. In conflict with each other, what choice will our heroes make? Okay, well, who are those heroes? Harry ego. Hermione, super ego, Ron, id, possibly the cleanest mapping

across the pod today. Crystal clear. There will be areas where we can quibble and debate is Hermione the super ego and is Ron the id? Not one of them. Now look, we're talking seven books, we're talking eight movies. We can't go beat by beat through the formation of this friendship.

But from the very beginning, Harry's entrance into the magical world is entwined with these relationships. Who is there on the Hogwarts expressed with him? Ron. When they finally embrace Hermione, I love this quote. I mentioned it often on pods.

But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other and knocking out a 12-foot mass. mountain troll is one of them, Sorcercerer Stone. Another one I think is podcasting about House of the Dragon and Rings and Power at the same time. Just a trauma bond that will last for that.

Truly. I always, whatever anyone says trauma bond, I hear it in the Yellow Jacket, season one finale. It's trauma bond. Trauma bond. Trauma bond voice for all the reintegrate. It's our drama bond. This trauma and trial that brings people who maybe would not be inclined. to spend time together into a shared orbit and that knitting together happens rapidly and it sticks.

Well, we could go chapter by chapter, book by book, beep by beat. What are like the key aspects that make this trio so lasting? They're not the only people who share meaningful relationships with each other, right? We've got more characters than we could possibly name. We've got professors. We've got family members. We've got other classmates and friends, some of whom we'll talk about later in this second. but always at the center is the trio.

This, we're going to talk about some other examples where the trio is there initially and then expands. Yeah. Or expands. This is solid as the trunk of the bumping willow. I'm going to read one of my. It is the core of the magical wand that is, it's, this book series. Just.

two other members of the trio. No, it doesn't work quite as well. Okay. No. I'm going to read the closing passage of half blood prints, book six, which I think sums up the beauty of the bond as well as anything. We'll be there, Harry, said Ron. What? At your aunt and uncle's house, said Ron.

And then we'll go with you wherever you're going. No, said Harry quickly. He had not counted on this. He had meant them to understand that he was undertaking this most dangerous journey alone. You said to us once before, said Hermione quietly, that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we? We're with you, whatever happens, said Ron. But, mate, you're going to have to come round my mom and dad's house before we do anything else.

Even Godrick's Hollow. Why? Bill and Floor's wedding, remember? Harry looked at him, startled. The idea that anything is normal as a wedding could still exist seemed to be. incredible and yet wonderful. Yeah, we shouldn't miss that, he said finally. His hand closed automatically around the fake horrocks. Spoiler. But in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path, he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort,

he knew must come, whether in a month and a year or in 10, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione. So that idea, one last golden day of peace, I'm going to get to some darker moments for the trio in a second, but that is the heart of it. They are facing down evil itself, the threat to their family and friends and way of life. And the only thing that can pull Harry out of that for a second is that these people who he doesn't want to put in harm's way are insisting not only on staying by his side, but on pulling him out of that and bringing him into something resembling normalcy for just an instant. Like that is the heart of that bond. Now, part of what

makes this such a memorable trio is the way that their relationship, even amid that consistency that we're citing, does morph and change because they morph and change. So you get to the seventh book, you get to Deathly Hallows, and you have like a couple of my favorite moments in the series, which are little, sometimes they're little and subtle and sometimes they're loud, a reshaping inside of the trio, right? Harry glanced over at the dark shapes they made on the floor beside him. Ron had a fit of gallantry and insisted that Hermione's sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so that her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm curved to the floor, her fingers inches from Ron's. Harry wondered whether they had fallen asleep holding hands. The idea made him feel

strangely lonely. That has always killed me that moment because there's this closeness forming inside of the group that does not include one of the members, right? And in that moment, Harry is the one who feels like apart and separate. But then you build, of course, toward one of the most famous moments in the series, deeply painful. for everybody, including the characters in question. The rift. The rupture. Fueled by a horrocks, yes, but

just like the Super Soldier serum, like the horrocks is acting on something that is real, on something that is there. In this case, Ron feeling like he's not the one, like he's not enough, and like it's Hermione and Harry who would form that duo inside of their trio. Harry felt a corrosive hatred toward Ron. Something had broken between them.

Leave the horrocks, Harry. said. Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket into a nearby chair. He turned to Hermione. What are you doing? What do you mean? Are you staying or what? I, she looked anguished. Yes. Yes, I'm staying. Ron, we said we'd go with Harry. We said we'd help. I get it. You choose him. What I think is so interesting about that in terms of like, in terms of this idea of the golden tree or the Freudian tree or whatever, that concept of like no one does it alone, which you already outlined beautifully, sort of in one of the earlier passages, we hear again and again and again and again in stories. But when it comes specifically to the trio, this idea that like the heart alone can't accomplishment or the head alone can't

accomplish this or the courage alone can't accomplish this, that you need that blend or to use a Molly Rubin word, that brew, that special brew to like to get the job done. And in this case, and we'll get to another example of this later, the id character. the Ron, the Hork Crux, of course, works itself on him more easily than it does anyone else. He's the passion. He's the most volatile element of this trio. And you need him, but, like, that's a volatile, you know, ingredient in this potion. What would Snape say about the volatility of a given ingredient in a potion?

Let's talk for a minute here about the parallels between. this golden trio of Harry Ground and Hermione and the Peverell brothers, the three brothers, who plays such a central role in Deathly Hallows. Steve, can we hear this clip? It was death, and he felt cheated. Cheated because travelers would normally drown in the river, but death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers on their magic, and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.

The oldest asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence. So Death fashioned him one from an elder tree that stood nearby. The second brother decided he wanted to humiliate death even further and asked for the power to recall loved ones from the grave. So Death plucked a stone from the river and offered it to him. Finally, death turned to the third brother. A humble man, he asked him. He asked for something that would allow him to go forth from that place without being followed by death.

And so it was that death reluctantly handed over his own cloak of invisibility. Best part of any of the movies, honestly, like, easily. The stunning animation, the beautiful rendition of the tale of the three brothers from Beetle and the Bard. one of the many reasons that Hallis Part 1 is in the running for Best Film. Okay. Someday we'll have this debate and I'll lose, but we'll have it. And and speaking of Shakespeare and borrowing the things, good old JK loves to borrow something. Or you could point it as just like sort of the evolution of storytelling, that tradition of the three brothers and the youngest.

or the third being the most humble and therefore the one who like passes whatever test there may be. I love that. I love that she, that it's baked into this very specific version that gives us all the clues that we need to hunt some hollows. But yeah, it takes three and it's the third

and usually the youngest gets done. And it's great when you build toward the moment at the end of Hermione reading the tale aloud of like meeting, death as his equal and how that connects to this larger theme of the story and how certain characters can make their peace with what awaits and how others seek to avoid it at all costs, including the compromising of their humanity and all natural law and order. But in addition to just like how wonderful this stretch of the adaptation is,

certainly and how interesting the tale is and what the characters are parsing for clues. I think my favorite part of this when we think about the Peverell Brothers as another trio and their roles and their choices, then we get this immediate, immediate payoff of how that parallel connects to our golden trio of Harry Ron and Hermione. Which Hallow would you choose? Here's the passage from the book. I think you're right, she told him. It's just a morality tale. It's obvious which gift is best, which one you'd choose. the three of them spoke at the same time. Hermione said the cloak.

Ron said the wand, and Harry said the stone. They looked at each other, half surprised, half amused. You're supposed to say the cloak. Ron told Hermione, but you wouldn't need to be invisible if you had the wand. An unbeatable wand, Hermione. Come on. We've already got an invisibility cloak, said Harry. And it's helped us rather a lot in case you hadn't noticed,

said Hermione. Whereas the wand would be bound to attract trouble. Only if you shouted about it, argued Ron. Only if you were proud enough to go, dancing around, waving it over your head and singing, I've got an unbeatable wand, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. As long as you kept your trap shut,

yes, but could you keep your trap shut? said Hermione looking skeptical. You know, the only true thing he said to us was that there have been stories about extra powerful wands for hundreds of years. There have, asked Harry. Hermione looked exasperated. The expression was so endearingly familiar

that Harry and Ron grinned to each other. So this is like a perfect moment where not only do we get to consider the connection between that trio and the Peverell Brother trio. But what does it tell us? Like, they each made not just a different choice, right? They each have a role inside of this trio, but the specific choice that they made. What do they each want? What do those particular items and those hallows represent and stand for? And I think the best and most interesting choice inside of that, right, is, of course, Harry, who has the cloak and

knows the value of it picking the stone because of the way that grief and loss and the absence of his loved ones has defined him despite, I would say there's a lot of harrowing stuff in the full tale of the three brothers. Nothing quite as harrowing as what happens to the brother who chose the stone. And yet that's the one that Harry is drawn toward. And that tells us something about him, right? It tells us something about all of them. So great little moment there. Joe, anything on the Golden Trio, the Peverell brothers or other trios inside of Harry that you want to hit here? just wanted to briefly mention that because when we talk about trios, part of that conversation always has to be this idea of dramatic foils.

Yes. Because, like, how do you put a foil inside a three when foils are usually two? And oftentimes, like, the rational side and the emotional side will refract. So you have like a sort of split foil between sort of that Ron and Hermione represent two parts. hearts of Harry, and that's a foil. But there's another couple other obvious foils for Harry in the Harry Potter story, Neville Longbottom, obviously being one, the potentially other subject of the prophecy, right? And so the trio that you can think of when it comes to Neville centered around Neville is

like, what happened in Hogwarts when we're gallivanting around looking for horror cruxes and hollows is Neville as the ego, as the Harry, Luna, Ravenclaw, as the Hermione, and, Ginny, passionate Weasley wielder of the Bat Bogey X as the id. What do you think of that mapping? Does that make sense to you? I think this is, of all the things

we'll talk about today, one of the best and most satisfying examples of a payoff for a character emerging into a new role. Like, Neville leaning into ego status after years and years defined by not feeling like he was enough, like not feeling like he could live up

to the legacy of his parents, or the pressure that maybe Grand put on him or what it meant to hold another wizard's wand, like any of it, right? Ron has his versions of that too, for Neville to be the one who is leading and embracing that role and who other people look to for courage and confidence

and a way forward. It's just such an amazing thing to see. Neville Longbottom in that position. It's just a great thing for everybody who loves Neville and who doesn't love Neville, right? Luna, just another gem. I mean, these are three great characters. It is fun to think about this trio.

Book Ginny is just like an all-time great creation. And then we also wanted to mention the Marauders. James Potter, again, being another obvious spoil for Harry Potter. You know, his own dad is the ego as the leader of this troop. Lupin is the professor, the cerebral, the super ego, the Hermione, and Sirius Black, obviously, as the Id. I know that there are four marauders. Tough one here for Wormtale. Tough one.

We can return to the Marauders later. We talk about this other idea of like three plus one. Because they might be more of like a three plus one situation. But yeah, I love the Marauders. Same. I'm desperately begging Warner Brothers to give us a Marauders television show, whatever they want to give us. I need it. Joe, fun fact for you.

My best pal group in college, we all assign. the Marauders' nicknames to each other, the many Wormtale, pad, foot, and prongs. Which one are you? I have a guess. Which one are you? What do you think? You can go ahead and guess.

I think you're prongs, but what are you? Prongs. Yeah? Yeah. I love it. Okay. Yeah. Friendship test passed.

Okay. What if I said? I was Wormtale. That would be brutal. Who was, Wormtail? We love you. Oh, God. No, but here was the reason.

She came in late. So it was kind of like our, It was a little bit like of an intentional ribbing. Like you're going to be wormtail until you read the books and then you shed the label, but by then it stuck. Too late. You're warm. You're wormy for life.

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This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to close, that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers? Oh, yeah. They have the perfect. I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the MetaPant, that's my number one. I need to look like I tried option.

Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com slash Simmons. and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply, visit the website for full terms and conditions. I'm going to take us to one, the trio that people often cite as the origin of this idea in contemporary storytelling. And that means we're born in the USS Enterprise

and we're going on a Star Trek. This one goes out to all the people who are bummed. There's more Star Trek content on the Ring Reverse feed. Here you go. classic trio in original Star Trek is Kirk as the ego as the leader, Spock, the rational, logical Vulcan as the super ego and Bones, Dr. McCoy as the Ed, the passionate Ed. You can track this on another other Star Trek cast. You could get Picard as ego, Data as a super ego, and Riker that's scoundrel as the id. whatever you prefer, it's around.

And also I would say that, like, in some of the more modern, in, like, the JJ Abrams alternate universe, Bones, Dr. McCoy has sort of dropped off as, like, part of the main trio, and I think O'Hura has taken his place in there, and sort of the roles are sort of shifting around. But for our purposes, we're going to talk about OG, Bones, Spock, and Kirk. Steve, can you play this first clip, please? What are you so worried about anyway?

I find Jim General knows what he's doing. It was illogical for him to bring those players aboard. Elogical. Did you get a look at that little Juliet? That's a pretty exciting creature. Of course, your personal chemistry would prevent you from seeing that. Did it ever occur to you that he simply might like the girl? It occurred.

I dismissed it. You would? Did you know that he suddenly transferred Lieutenant Riley to engineering? Lots of things have gone around here that I don't know. Mr. Spock. Now, he's the captain. He can transfer people as it pleases. You can look that up in 100 volumes of space regulation somewhere, all right?

All right. Now, come on. Have a drink. No, thank you. Well, you're welcome, but I will. And please, Mr. Spock, if you won't join me, don't disapprove of me. I love Bones. Bones?

Like, McCoy does not get enough, you know, love, I think, in the modern track era. but I love these three together. And it should be said, and I think this can map on to Ron and Hermione, too, is like oftentimes in these trios, your superego and your id, you're rational and your emotional, oil and water, they clash, you know what I mean?

And Ron and Hermione, a lot of conflict and tell eventual love story. We love that. Passion. Passion. But, like, in Trek, specifically, there are so many scenes of the original series of the three of these characters debating what should we do.

And McCoy is offering a very impassioned, clear argument, and Spock is taking the cool, calm, logical approach. And they're directly opposed, often in their strategy and strategic thinking. And Star Trek as a whole is a very humanistic property, very interested in the psychology of human beings. And so for Kirk, I think Kirk, again, like when has Chris, Pine plays them is a bit more like Lothario aid, but as honestly as Shatner plays him, is this sort of this clever balance between the two.

And it is a joy to watch the three of them debate and then James Kirk, Jim decides what to do. Like, he's like, okay, this is what we're going to do. Or it's also when Kirk is not there, a joy to watch Spock and Bones just like clash and clash and clash and clash, which they constantly do. until they develop this, like, deep bond that just comes from being in a trio where it's just sort of, like, I don't know, I'm used to you now. Or, like, you exasperate me. That sort of, like, faunt your quote about Hermione's exasperation. There's, like, a fondness. Like, we're just used to it.

So, like, this is who we turn to. So I love these three as a really important cornerstone in my. storytelling. Our listener, Willoughby, wrote in to say, Kirk leans on Spock and McCoy for their perspectives, which is what a great leader does. Even though each character has their individual relationship with each of the trio, when they come together, there's almost nothing they can't do. When one member is down for the count, the other two will stop nothing to get them back,

like stealing the enterprise or breaking them out of Klingon prison. And while McCoy and Spock argue like hell, it's clear by the end of the films, these old men love each other. So that takes us into the films. And specifically, I want to talk about Rath of Khan, which is the most famous of the Star Trek. I think the most beloved, the most famous of the Star Trek films. Important movie in this household. A sacred text for...

I mean, it's very, very important. As you might imagine. Early in that film, you get this exchange between Spock and Kirk. You're about to remind me that logic alone dictates your action. I would not remind you if that would do no so well. If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a starship is your first best destiny. Anything else is a waste of material.

I would not presume to debate you. That is wise. In any case, were I to invoke logic, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. You're my superior officer. You are also my friend. I have been and always shall be yours. So I picked this scene because when this line comes up again at the end of Rathocon,

I would just be like weeping and also there's just like a lot of gasping and like dying happening. So I couldn't use that version. So let's get the clear version out here. One of the most, I would say top three most famous quotes in Star Trek lore. along with like boldly going, etc. Is the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. This is a trolley problem, rational, logical approach to a situation, any situation. And this is what Spock decides when he sacrifices himself at the end of Rath of Khan.

Spoiler for Rath of Khan, a very old movie. And don't worry, he doesn't stay dead. Spoiler for other movies. But don't let him coming back draw, like sap and. any of the emotion out of this scene, which is then reversed in the JJ Abrams films, but this scene where Spock is locked in the chamber and dying, and Kirk is sort of begging and pleading with him. And Spock has taken this calm, rational, self-sacrificial approach,

and it is a rare case of the super ego leading, the course. Like, usually you have the ego leading and the others advising. There's moments and what does it say about one of the other two points of the triangle taking the lead on the story? So this is the logical move forward, but it is also an incredibly emotional moment for both, because you get not only that the needs of the many outweigh the knees of the few or the one, but you get, I have been and always will be your friend. That is also true. true of Spock. And so I think Spock, Vulcans in general, as this like really interesting case of how to create a super ego character, highly rational, logical character that is also warm. And, you know,

Spock is complicated. There are emotional factors. Spock. It's complicated the further he goes in in his various iterations. But you want your super ego character, your rational character, to still be accessible and someone that we care about. Absolutely. And Spock is, I think, an excellent example of that. The best. Rath of Khan, do you, like, does Adam, like, do you guys watch it together?

Is it just something that, like, Adam watches over and over and over again in secret? Or, like, what is the situation? Both. Both. It's, like, one of his 10 favorites. Yeah. Movies of all time. So I think he watches it more often than we want.

As you know, just routinely done weekly and sometimes daily basis watching Star Trek without me in some form and some capacity. But we have shared breath of con together. Yeah. It was lovely. It was lovely. You guys got a nerd out together about Trek one day. I would love to.

We only hung out very briefly after the live show. I would love to spend more time with Adam. Yeah, I just, I think that this is the, when you look at, like, when you go and look at like various trope wikis, you know, shout out TVTropes.com always like a perfect resource and all these other places. The Kirk Bones and Spock Trinity is usually the first exhibit. Like before Harry Ron and Hermione for some reason, maybe just because people have been referencing it longer than Harry Potter. But it is an or text for the Freudian trio, which brings us Smalley. to something we covered very recently. Yeah.

So technically the impetus for this episode because we were just covering Percy Jackson over a couple months-ish. Three episodes? Four episodes. We had a blast. Dope into the text for the first time. Watched the Disney Plus adaptation

that we were quite fond of. We loved. Absolutely loved. And this isn't talking about the role of our central trio in the first book in the first season sparked some of the discussion that led to the email that inspired the pod. Not a fixed lasting eternal trio, though, like some of these others. So let's actually talk about the ways in which the Percy OG trio fits and maybe the ways in which the OG Percy Trio doesn't

Steve, can you set the mood for us? You didn't choose to be demigods. We didn't choose this quest. But we can decide that as long as the three of us are together, none of us are going to be alone. And if we can't do that, we might as well just head back to camp right now because we won't make it.

Shout out Grover, our beloved Seder, with his heart and his wisdom. and his standing as the ego question mark. This is an interesting one. So obviously the role of three is very prevalent across Greek mythology. We talked about the fates earlier. The fates are figures in the Percy's stories. We've got our core trio here.

We've got the big three gods on and on and on the list. Goes. Do we have a core trio here? Well, one season in, one book in. The answer is yes. It gets a little more complicated after that. before we get to the gets a little more complicated after that part, let's talk about the complication inside of even the first resignation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think it is Grover ego and Annabeth's super ego is a lock? Yeah, it's pretty easy. Yeah. That part is set. Do you think it is Grover ego Percy Id or do you think it is Grover Id percy ego or do you think it shifts over time? Where do you come down on this?

I mean, our natural inclination is to think of Percy as like the leader and so in the ego role, right? because he's our main character, he's the POV and the story. And then, like, if you ask on the road, if you ask who the leader is, Annabeth would say, I'm the leader, you know, sort of thing. So I think this is less a case of, like, who's the leader and more a case of who's the reconciler, who's the peacekeeper, who creates the balance. And cue the consensus song, like, that has to be Grover.

It's certainly not on Percy's mind, right? Annabeth and Grover aren't clashing. It's Annabeth and Percy who are classing and Grover who is keeping the peace and bridging the gap between the two of them. So I think for that reason, I agree with this designation. Though as I was typing it out in the notes, I was like, is it? Like, you know, Percy is I have some questions about it. I don't know. It's complicated.

This is really a tricky one. I think your point about Grover as the figure who is focused on reconciliation in the first book slash season is appropriate. And he is in his role at this moment in the story of protector. And so that is like literally his job, right? Make sure people are safe, but also think about how to get to that next step of where you need to be. I would say that after the first story, I would probably flip Percy and Grover and put Percy and Ego and Grover and Id because Percy has become like more acclimated, comfortable. Obviously, this is a journey for him over the course of the series. he's embracing in full the role of what it means to be this figure.

Whereas Grover, in the shift from protector to searcher, I think is leaning much more fully into the id and is focused on the thing that he passionately believes is right and sacred and essential. And so it's fun to think about the parts that they hold on to from the other role and then the parts that they both maybe graduate into of the other role. Yeah, I like that idea of graduating into it and also just sort of like, what does what does that initial story

need, that first book, that first season, which is you know, Annabeth and Percy and their differences and Grover is conciliator. And then later, at the end of, by the end of the season, they're so strong, three of them together

as we heard. You don't need that conciliatory role as much anymore. And so things start to move and shape from there. Plus, as you have said, no major spoilers, but like, you know, the groupings come and go in the Percy Jackson series. Yeah. We'll issue a spoiler warning in like a minute, but I do want to talk about that a little bit more.

I think the other thing I like about Grover kind of arguably moving from ego to id is that it's a way to celebrate the id role. Like that isn't always something that a character has to shake off. You know, it can be actually something to. to lean into, like, what is the impulse that is driving you? What is your desire? And what course can that set you on? That's kind of like a fun way to think about it. Not always an impulse that needs to be stifled, maybe one that actually can be heightened if you move into a new sphere of life. I like that. Is the trio in Percy inspired by the trio in Harry Potter? Thanks for asking.

Rick Ryarden, the author of The Tale, is here to answer this question. On his own website. On the mic. No, wait, he's not here. I'm sorry. He's here. Steve, let him in Zoom. No, but he did have a very helpful, full article on his website running through the various things people have asked him over the years, like, was this?

Was Thing X inspired by Harry Potter? And he has an entry about the idea of the trio. Here is the quote from Rick himself. Harry Potter has two friends, a boy and a girl. Percy Jackson has Grover and Annabette. they must be identical. This is the quote question that he is in theory getting from people. Setting aside

for a moment that the characters in question have very different personalities when Grover isn't even human, it's a fairly common technique in folklore and children's literature for a male protagonist to have a strong female counterpart so the story appeals to both boys and girls. Ged and Tanar from the Earthsea trilogy.

Hansel and Gretel, Thesias and Ariadne, Jason and Medea. Often there's a third companion to act as a foil for the hero. Again, this is a very old paradigm. The Harry Potter series uses it to great effect, but it by no means invented the formula. Thank you to Ryrdoran for this very helpful rundown of examples across history of trios in text. Well, I mean, he's talking about duos, and he's talking about male female foils. But what I will say is that something that I came across in sitting all these is it's often two guys and a girl. a lot of these trios, not all of them,

but a lot of these trios are two guys in the girl. Tension. Yeah. Tension. And then let's exacerbate that tension further. And then also bring peace into it by making our foil and our duo a trio. Great idea. So is it a trio that lasts? All right, this is where we'll do a little, like, very tiny spoiler warning. If you don't want to hear this part about future Percy books,

just hit the fast forward button like twice. Okay. It's never the core trio again, which was kind of a fast, fascinating and amazing thing to discover. We've got Grover as the object of the quest in Sea of Monsters in the second book, going to find him, to rescue him, Percy, Annabeth, and then Tyson enters the fold. Book three, we've got Percy, Grover, Zoe, Bianca, redacted, just in case even inside of the spoiler warning, people don't want to hear a real spoiler there. Well, we'll keep it redacted.

The fourth book, we have all of our characters back together, right? Because in book three, Annabeth is the one that they're trying to find. There's someone needs to be found in two and three. Four, everybody's back together. But then it's a fellowship. Labyrinth takes us where we are and the fellowship has to, we love a fellowship that unites and then a fellowship that splits and then has to make its way back together.

And five is just complete, complete chaos on this front. Now, this connects in an interesting way to this idea of the great prophecy and the variable that this plays in the story, like how certain characters think about their connection to the gods, their connection to prophecy and fate, how that That brings certain people together, moves other people into different roles. But this longing for Grover and Beth and Percy to be together was so fierce among the fandom. This is something obviously that we're learning about in real time here as we learn more about this, the world around this story. Once again, on Regriard's very helpful website, he is written about this and explain that.

So there are these new Percy books, right? part of the Disney era, et cetera. A lot of reasons that these books exist. But one of them, Chalice of the Gods, was to reunite this trio. Quote, as you probably know, I have continued to write about Percy's world in many different books

from many different points of view, but I have not done a first person Percy Jackson, POV, full-length novel since the last Olympian in 2009. And I haven't done a novel centering on our classic trio, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover since the Lightning Thief in 2005.

As you might imagine, this is the main request I get for readers. This is just fascinating. Get the trio back together. Absolutely. Get the band back together. Get the trio back together and make more books. One of the things that I love about the evolution of the trio is that it becomes not just

a thing for us to think about, but much like the role of prophecy in the story, something that the characters are an active discussion about. I will, as an example, read a quote from the fourth book. I think this is spoiler light enough and out of context enough that it's okay if you don't want to hear it once again hit the fast forward button once. Anabath. Kairon flicked his tail nervously. Consider well, you would be breaking the ancient laws and there are always consequences. Last winter, five went on a quest to redacted.

Think on that. Three is a sacred number. There are three fates, three furies, three Olympian sons of Kronos. it is a good and strong number that stands against many dangers. Four, this is risky. So again, this is something that the characters are actually talking about. A quest, it's got to be three. Well, does it?

What does it mean if it's not? What if you say, fuck that? We're going to do it another way. What if it doesn't work? What if it does? Like, this is something that the characters are actually thinking about and talking about with each other. These rules and the way that these rules and these ideas guide the decisions that people

in their world make, which is just such a, it's one of my favorite things. about reading these books for the first time as something that we're always thinking about as readers, it becomes incorporated into the story and the characters talk about it too. I just love that. I love it. Percy.

Are you ready to go to... Let's bend. Fire Nation, Water Tribe. Percy could be a Waterbender. Earth Kingdom. Avatar, the last airbender. This is something we're about to cover this very Friday. We're going to start.

It means Mallory and I are in our... full-fledged rewatch of the animated series. I don't know how you're doing. I just rounded the bases into, that's a sports metaphor, into season two. So I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it. It's going to be fine.

But I love thinking about, I love trying to figure out this trio because this is, first of all, a trio on the move, not just physically around the map, but also in terms of where they map onto these archetypes. And they land really not where you think they'd land. And I'm going to stick by this.

I think it's another two guy and a girl trio. And I think my first inclination is like, oh, I'm going to throw Katara into the Hermione role. That's like she is a little bit of a know-it-all sometimes and like whatever. And it's like, no, she's not the super ego, the super ego, the rational, the logical, the strategizer. That's Saka. That is his role. And it stays his role. And it is clearest in season one, episode 14, the fortune teller, when he's just trying to get this whole village to believe in science.

And they are like believe in prophecy only. Okay. Yeah. So then you think, okay, Qatar is not in the super ego, the rational role. That's Saka. Okay. But surely, she's the girl. She's the emotional one.

She's motherly. She's all this sort of stuff like that. No. Ang is the id. Ang is the has no impulse control. What's this adventure? What's this weird animal? can I fight this sea creature?

What can I do? Watch me do this guitar. Watch me do that guitar. Ang's the it and that puts Katara in the ego role. But do we think of her as the leader of this trio? This is largely season one because this trio quickly becomes a fellowship. But like, do we think of her as the leader? I don't know necessarily that I do.

I think they all sort of take turns. Because you think of Momo as the leader. I think of APA as the leader. Yep, yep. But in terms of like that Grover conversation we were having, in terms of the great reconciler, this is clearly a Katara role. Steve, will you play this clip, please? Wow, there's hardly any in here. I'm sorry, okay?

It's a desert cloud. I did all I could. What's anyone else doing? What are you doing? Trying to keep everyone together. So that's a temper tantrum aing in itting out and Katara trying to keep everyone together. We don't blame it. We don't blame it. We don't blame Appa.

Appa's gone. Eng is going through it. It's a stressful time for all the animal lovers. For all of us. It's for all of us. Yeah. mere moments away from my favorite moment in the entire series, which is Momo, this is not relevant, but Movo is high as fuck on cactus juice.

He's diving into the water and Saga's saying, Mova, you killed us all. Saka on cactus juice is. And Crash is absolutely a. astonishing television moment. So funny. Wonderful. I'm so excited to do all the Avatar animated coverage with you on Friday. I can't wait.

As I said, they quickly become a fellowship because the point is they're adding people, not just MoMo and Opa in season one, but we add Toff in season two and then Zuko in season three. Suki is in the mix as well. Like, we're a fellowship. We're

the gang with two A's. Like, that's That's what we are. But if we want to look at the trio and what happens to them, Eng moves into this ego, this leader role as he matures, as he gets, you know, as his training progresses, as the prophecy weighs more and more on his mind, speaking of prophecy, et cetera, et cetera, he understands that he has this job to do this role to play and his distractibility. goes down and he's just like focused on what he has to do. That leaves an opening in the id role.

And wouldn't you know it, our beautiful friend Katara wearing Fire Nation Red in season three has moved into the id role when she also starts sort of experimenting with her bending. Is an eagle or super ego going to bloodbend? No, but an id by bloodbend. That might be something an id character. would do. Steve, will you play this clip and, like, maybe keep in mind the season two clip we just heard. This is the season three clip with Katara.

Wait, stop. I do understand. You're feeling unbelievable pain and rage. How do you think I felt about the sandbenders when they stole APA? How do you think I felt about the fire nation when I found out what happened to my people? She needs this, Ang. This is about getting closure and justice. I don't think so.

I think it's about getting revenge. Fine. Maybe it is. Maybe that's what I need. Maybe that's what he deserves. Katara, you sound like Jett. It's not the same. Jet attacked the innocent. This man, he's a monster.

Katara, she was my mother too. But I think Ang might be right. Then you didn't love her the way I did. Katara. Now that I know he's out there, now that I know we could find him, I feel like I have no choice. Katara, you do have it.

choice. Forgiveness. That's the same as doing nothing. No, it's not. It's easy to do nothing. But it's hard to forgive. It's not just hard. It's impossible.

Katara hitting Saka with maybe you didn't love our mom as much as I did. The show is so good. So good. And there's like what's interesting about that. As the trio becomes a fellowship,

you understand the influence of Toff and Zuko and Suki on like the others. And so you hear in that clip, Zuko is like pulling Katara into this vengeance base, into this id role. I still ship it. Oh, 100%. There's no version of this story where Katara shouldn't end up with Zuko, obviously.

Strongly agree. Strongly agree. Let's set aside now. We're talking about that on Friday. But like, please. But I love the idea of the malability of these roles. Again, we teased this earlier, but when you've got characters shifting around in the roles in a trio or as you expand into a fellowship, those are just characters in an arc. And Avatar is famous for its art.

Like, we think about Saka, where you meet him versus where he grows through Zuko, one of the most famous, like, character arcs of all time. Unmatched. Move over Anakin Skywalker. Right. But to think about, we think about Saka and we think about Zucco, but to think about Ag and Katara also in their movement, around is it was really fascinating part of this exercise for me. The other thing I want to add, we'll get to this more examples of this later, but if you add a Toff, let's say, when you get to four, it's an interesting thing because

you can say, oh, it's four, we're mapping on to Hippocrates, we're doing the, like, choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, like, you can say that, or you can think of it as three plus one. That is you have your main character and the three other characters that sort of inform it. So to go back to that Wizard of Oz example, you've got Dorothy, and then you've got the scarecrow,

the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion. So here you could say you've got Ang, and then you've got Katara, because Toff is also in, let's be clear. You've got Katara and Toff and Saka being like the three plus the one that is Ang, the chosen one, the leader. Which is another interesting.

dynamic. But other than that, yes. They're just the glue that binds everyone together. Oh, man. I love this. The other thing that I love, I mean, this is true for a lot of the examples that we're talking about today, but very present here. Avatar is also a coming of age story, right?

And so these are young people and young people who have been thrust into some sort of extraordinary circumstance with each other. Ang, it is, it is, we talk a lot about the idea of arrested development. I mean, Aang was present. for a century, right? Frozen as a 12-year-old for a century. Like, he has to work his way out of that, and he has to do it with the pressure and the burden of being who he is weighing on him every minute of every day. And sometimes his inclination to embrace that is actually like an impulse that the characters around him have to stifle. I think often of at the beginning

of season three on the heels of his, as he would, as he sees it and says his failure, right? And also obviously, like his grief injury, the realization that he's been out so long he's got hair. It looks great on him. He looks wonderful. Everyone looks better in a Fire Nation fit. Let's just be very clear about that. And I'm like, I typically am very inclined toward a blue, gray, green wardrobe, as you know, but boy, the Fire Nation fits look great on all of them. They really, really do. Wonderful. He can't heed for even an instant. the idea that he could wait, that he not only could,

but has to wait in the shadow, let other people take the lead. And so you have these characters moving in cycles, like bending, honestly, and with their arcs around each other, it feels like very appropriate. Saka, I'm always like, who's my favorite?

Is it Zuko? Is it Iro? Is it Momo? Is it Saka? Is it Saka? It might be Saka. And like, he's wonderful.

And I think especially because, This is one of the things I'm really excited for us to chat about on Friday when we do our look back in our top moments, pod. But, you know, he's not, he's the lone member of the, of the humans in the group who can't bend. And so, like, to find his purpose and his role. And so sometimes it feels very keenly like the reason he holds on, he, he grasps on to the order. I can read the map. I made us the schedule. Here's the strategy.

Here's the strategy. I see something. It's because that's the thing that he can bring other than a voracious and insatiable appetite. And a magical sword. Shout out Saka.

Man, I love a, you know, we love a blade forged from space matter. We do. We do. Um, our great show.

Can't wait to talk about it more. I will have, on Friday's pod, I will find a way to have my Momo Appa and Pabu plushes all perched on my shoulders, all of them.

If I can. I'll, like, move my fire ferret poster behind me so that we can just like, oh, and my, I have Ang and Zucco, like, watercolors that I absolutely love. Yeah, I'll move all my art behind me. Oh, delightful. That's how I manifest my, you do it in, like, plushies and Legos and something like that. I do it in posters. I have so many posters around.

Lots of posters and paintings here as well. That's the merch in our hands, merch on the walls, merch on our bodies. It's everywhere. I love it. I love a painting. We wanted to shout out two other Freudian trios in this universe before a role forward. The bad babes of Season 3, Azulam,

May and Ty Lee, right? Which is Azula is our ego. May is our super ego. And Tai Lee is our id. Love Tailey. Love all of them. Azula.

What an absolute basket case. Love her. And then when we get into Koramian. When we get into Kora, we've got Bolin as the ego, Mako as a super ego, and Kora is the Ed. And once again, I think this idea of like,

Avvvvvvon. I know, Bolin's my favorite. Avatar is Id. moving into the ego role. Because when we meet Kora, she is, like, so volatile. I think that's a fascinating journey that the creator set up for both Aang and Kora to start in this, like, immature, you know, volatile space and move into the calm and centered leader that they become. Love it. Mali Rubin, where are we going next?

Let's talk for a moment here. about his dark materials. Let's go into multiple worlds. Let's go to Oxford. Laira's Oxford. I love Laira's Oxford. Speaking of posters, I have a beautiful little poster of Laira's Oxford. It says a wonderful little map. Take a photo of it. I'll show it later. Yeah, well. I will indeed. Lyra will marry. We're only going to talk about this trio for a moment or two here, but wanted to include this group for a couple different reasons.

This is a slowly forging trio that is not fully intact until the end of the series. That's an interesting thing to think about. So many of our examples, this great journey, this quest, confronting your destiny. These are the people who are with you from the beginning. Well, that's not the case in his dark materials, right? Lyra is our central focus. in the golden compass, and it is in the subtle life that we make our way to will along with Lyra, and Mary is there for us in Book 3, Amber Spyglass.

And they are learning something crucial every step along the way. And so it feels like there's a part of you that thinks, what if they had been together the whole time, but you know that that's impossible, right? Their journey was about everything that they had to learn individually before they found their way to each other. Then you kind of heighten this by the fact that each of them, is associated with is the possessor of one of these great magical objects that Lyra carries and reads until she can't. The eletheometer that Will is the bearer of the subtle knife until he can't be.

Mary is the carrier, the forger of the amber spyglass, the way that this connects them and their quest and their understanding of dust. And then also the way that this connects all of them to, stop us if you've heard this before, the idea of a prophecy and the role not only of each of them as the wielder, carrier, or possessor, a bearer of an object, but we've got Lyra as the Eve figure. We've got Mary as the tempters, the serpent. So you have these roles that exist in some other form or that we can then connect to a different storytelling tradition that also, permeates so many of the tales we love, you heighten that further with the idea that these are characters from different worlds who are making their way into each other's lives, into a shared journey literally by cutting through or someone blowing a hole in the fabric of the universe. Like that was what it took for them to make their way to each other.

And how improbable, how improbable that is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And then like they're never really just a trio.

That's the other thing because they're never just one. demons. Lyra always has pan, you know, Will and Mary discovering their demons over the course of their journeys in the story is such an incredibly rewarding and like chill-inducing thing. So you never have just an individual. You can't ever, definitionally in this world ever really have a trio. And that's a fun thing to think about too, not only because these characters are definitely in a position always of like, there's an isolation and a loneliness and a sadness that is always entwined with some sense of companionship, the companionship and understanding that you find with yourself, right?

And then how does that help them, like, unlock something for each other? It's just a, it's a different kind of version of a golden trio and story. And so it felt like worth... I love that. Yeah. I take you now to a sleepy little town on the top of the hell now. It is Sunnydale, California. And we were here with Buffy Vampire Slayer.

Obviously, of course. What was I going to do? Not do Buffy the Vampire? The Honorable wants. This is another, as with Harry Ron and Remini, this is obvious, this is a clear, easy, crystal clear trio. Buffy, our vampire slayer, our leader, our action heroine, the ego. Willow are nerdy. I'll research that, eventually a witch.

I'm always finding the answers in the books or online or whatever. Willow. And Xander are id. This is an example of a love triangle This is a rare two girls, one guy, I should say. And this is an example of a love triangle on the move. Most love triangles feature some kind of play in the Freudian trio. Like, as we mentioned, Hermione and Ron,

as like an interesting opposites attract kind of thing. When we meet Buffy, Willow and Zander in season one, Willow is hopelessly in love with Zander and has been forever, and Zander is in love with Buffy. the new girl in town and Buffy is sort of oblivious to all of it because she would rather fuck a vampire. So that's where, that's what that show is about. But I, I'm about to something I never do when I talk about Buffy, which is talk about Zander Harris. Zander is a character who I loved in the 90s when I first watched the show and then as my tastes evolved and most

people find when they come to the show new now that they're like, am I supposed to like Xander? Zander is an audience insert. He's an author insert character for Joss Whedon, like very clearly. He just has some like regressive, nice guy 90s sort of vibes to him that you're just sort of like, ugh, gives the ick. And a much better example of Zander is the Saka, like because Willow becomes a super powerful witch, Buffy B is the vampire slayer and Zander's just the guy, right? And so Saka is like a

really, really good example of that archetype, but there is a moment, there are a few moments, Zander has his moments. Zappa's a good episode. But there is a moment at the end of season six, a very famous Buffy Vampire Slayer moment where Willow, sorry, spoilers for Buffy Vampire Slayer Season 6, Willow has gone evil because she is grieving. So her Wiccan powers have taken over and she has gone evil. You could tell because her red hair turned black and she got all vainy. Buffy is doing her best to physically battle a problem, but Willow is actively trying to end the world with magic because she's so upset and rageful. And it's not Buffy, the vampire slayer who can reach her. It's not any of the magical people around her who can reach her. It is the id,

the heart, the Xander Harris, the person who has known her since she was a kid who is the only one who can diffuse this bomb. A rare case, again, speaking of like Spock being a rare case of the super ego sort of leading, this is a rare case of an aid forward moment. This is a very famous, the yellow crayon scene from Both of the Empire Slayer season six. Steve Lee, please play this. Is this the master plan? You're going to stop me by telling me you love me? Well, I was going to walk you off a cliff and hand you an anvil, but it seemed kind of cartoony.

Still making jokes. You're Willow. Don't call me that. The first day of kindergarten, you cried because you broke the yellow crayon. And you're too afraid to tell anyone. You've come pretty far, ending the world, not a terrific notion. But the thing is, yeah, I love you.

I love crayon-brakey Willow, and I love... Scary, vainy Willow. So if I'm going out, it's here. It's here. If you want to kill the world, well, then start with me. I've earned that. You think I won't? It doesn't matter. I'll still love you. Shut up. I love you. I love you.

Shut up! I love you. Stop! Just a scene a bunch of times when doing research for this, because I was like really having an argument of myself, Am I really going to dedicate time and love and attention to Xander Harris? This scene makes me cry every single time. It made me cry when I clipped it. Make me cry right now when we're playing it because when Allison Hanigan, who plays Willett, when she cries, I cry.

And that's just it for me. So that's those three. And essentially, they two form a fellowship. We add a bunch of characters. I mean, I think this is a very common thing that, like, the trio expands to a fellowship. But that core trio of people who knew each other when they were teens, they end the series as well, similar to Harry Brown and Hermione. Like they are the three.

They're kind of a three plus one, though, because they're the three kids, but there is one other character and it's Giles, who is the librarian in the school. And he is, what's known as a watcher, he, like, is there as a mentor for Buffy. So this is where we get into this idea of the one plus three, the chosen one, plus three other characters. And there's like a ton of examples that we can look at the three musketeers. You have D'Artagnan, but then you've got Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, right? So it's like D'Artagnan plus three Wizard of Oz, as we already talked about.

This happens a lot in sitcoms. You've got Jerry Seinfeld and the other three. You've got Carrie Bradshaw and the other three. The one plus three is like a common archetype here. But I want to play this last clip from this episode called The Yoko Factor, which is about a breaking of the four. And this idea that, like, Buffy feels like she has to do it alone, which, spoiler alert, she can't. But this is the art of fracturing of the core for Steve, will you play this, please? I could go back to scope it out, track him if I have to.

Right. And then maybe you'll get lucky And he'll still be there And he can rip your arms off for you Buffy, you can't go back alone So she doesn't go alone Giles, weapons all around You're not going, Xander

You get hurt Okay, you and Willow go to the superpower thing I'll stay behind and put her on the back hay With crusty old Alfred here Ah no, I am no Alfred, sir No, you forget, Alfred had a job Willow is not going either I'm doing it alone

Oh great And then when you have your new No arms We can all say gee, it's a good thing We weren't there getting in the way that Besides, when is there any us two? You two were the two, who are the two? I'm the other one.

Okay, I need you. I need both of you all the time, just not now. How do you need me? Really? You're good with the computer stuff, usually. And there's the witch stuff? Witch stuff? What exactly do you mean by which stuff?

How can you possibly help? I guess I'm starting to understand why there's no ancient prophecy about a chosen one and her friends. That line where Willow says, are the two that are the two was what I was thinking about when you were talking about Harry Ron and Hermione. And like who's the two and the three? Who is the most, who is the most closely bonded? And like how easy it is to get jealous or feel left out in a threesome. Fraising, phrasing. Indeed.

Oh, yeah. Really tough to find the balance. At the end of season four, after they have this blow up, Buffy cannot punch the bad guy to death. That's not something she could do. She has to be imbued with the power of the other three in. And so they create this enjoining spell where Xander the heart, willow the spirit, and Giles the mind all give their power to Buffy via a spell. And that is the clearest case of one plus three that I can think of where it's like these three elements, you need it all to get things done. And then she can punch the guy to death. And that's what she needed was the spirit, the heart, and the head, the mind. So that is Buffy Vampire Slayer.

Isn't it a fun and delightful show? Everyone should watch it. I love hearing you talk about Puffy. It makes me so happy. It was wonderful. Holly Rubin. Do you want to take us to a galaxy far, far away? Let's do it.

Let's talk about the war. In the star. For just a moment. Okay, Star Wars. We knew we were going to talk about it today. Some of the most iconic trios that may or may not actually be trios. You know, this is not a podcast that will ever fail to mention Chewbacca or R2D. Or R2D2.

No, that was really bad. Take it out, Steve. That's actually pretty. I honestly think that was pretty good. That's better. You got to gurgle it better. The first one was the best. Oh, really?

Okay, cool. Yeah. Take none of it out, Steve. Again, I need that clipped and incorporated into a segment sound effect, just like the dragon screech. Yes, ma'am. We'll see you for the acolyte. Can't wait to add it to the soundboard. So, start.

Wars. It's interesting, again, like to think about stories where more than one number plays a central role and sometimes these numbers are like in conflict with each other or heighten each other or a boon in some way. So we think of Star Wars often as a story defined by twos, the master and apprentice, this guiding, orienting variable inside of the Jedi Order, the rule of two for the Sith, et cetera. But when we think about the character groupings that we associate with the stories

that have become these central groupings in our lives and in the last 50-ish years now of cinema. Cinema. We think of trios, often, or trios

plus. So, I'm going to mention some characters who people may or may be familiar with? Try me. This is guy.

His name's Luke Skywalker. Oh. Uh-huh. Just on the station. Pick up some fucking power converters. Who among us? Man. Luke?

Ego. Han. Poster boyfriend. Period. Baby. All lit all the time. Unvarnished. Royed.

Royed. And Laya. Super ego. And again. No, we have not forgotten the other beloved members of this essential tale. But when we think about this trio, when we think about how they adhere to these roles and how they help each other find these roles, there are so many examples that we could cite of when we feel this, when we see it. Luke, he's just, you know, trying to take his first step into a larger world, Joanna. and their Han is to say the force?

Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? Questioning, the experience, the history, their backstories that they can bring to this galactic sprawling tale and say, well, this is what I know to be true. What about you? All of this builds toward a moment when Luke, in another trio, with Yoda and the force, ghost of Obi-One on Dagaba needing to complete his training is pulled out of the essential circumstance there in the swamp by his friends, by the need and desire to protect them no matter what, to go to their aid, even though he knows what logic is telling him the danger that awaits.

Steve, can we hear this very famous clip from a little movie called Empire Strikes Back? Must compete the training I can't keep the vision out of my head They're my friends I gotta help them You must not go But Han and Leo will die if I don't You don't know that

Even Yoda cannot see their fate But I can help them Shocker I feel the force But you cannot control it This is a dangerous time for you When you will be tempted By the dark side of the force

Yes, yes To Obi-One you listen The cave. Remember your failure at the cave. But I've learned so much since then. Master Yoda, I promised to return and finish what I've begun. You have my word.

It is you and your abilities the emperor wants. That is why your friends are made to suffer. That's why I have to go. Luke, I don't want to lose you to the emperor the way I lost Vader. You won't. Stop, they must be. On this all depends.

Only a fully trained Jedi knight, with the force as an ally, will conquer Vader and his emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil. Patience. And sacrifice Han and Leah. If you honor what they fight for? Yes. Fox as usual, we have some notes for you.

notes for Yoda, some feedback and some thoughts that we'd like him to consider. One of the things that I love about considering this moment, not only in Luke's arc, not only in the flow of this sacred thing, the original trilogy, but like how we think of Star Wars as a whole and the Skywalker saga as a whole and how we think about the repetition and the patterns across generations. Because we often talk about that in Star Wars as like some sort of failure or some sort of misdeater or mistake that the next generation has to repair, like has to rectify, a wrong that they have to write.

And it's fun to think inside of this idea of trios, you take Asoka, Anakin, and Obi-One, or Padme, Anakin, and Obi-1, and think about how their dynamic, is so present in what we hear from Luke there. Right? We're always talking about attachment when we talk about Anakin. This is a moment where Luke is guided by his attachment to two people that he loves.

And no matter what anybody tells him, nothing will dissuade him from going to save them. And that was right. Now, the things that Anakin does are not always right, but it doesn't have to be a simple, light, dark, right, wrong. binary. There's room in Star Wars for attachment

to actually be something that heightens your connection to the force, that heightens your ability to understand your role and your place and your purpose inside of this great tale. Then we go back even further, right? Like we think of then Anakin and Obi-Wan and Osoka as characters who were on Mortis and thinking about the father and the son and the daughter and the mortis gods and a trio like that, a figure like that.

what does it show us and tell us about balance and the role of the force in the galaxy? It's really fun to think about how these patterns play out era after era. And I think what we love about and what Lucasfilm loves about these various Jedi who don't follow the rules of the Jedi Order, and so do form attachments or do surround themselves with, like,

flyboys and, you know, like people who have different sets of skills And when you think about, you know, a Jedi holding it down in a climactic fight, there's often, you know, something that needs, a gate that needs to be turned off, this, that, or the other thing that the other people who don't have lightsabers have to do. You know, you need this aerial attack. We need this, that, of the other thing. So, Star Wars, what a great property. Finn, Ray, and Poe, I love them, fight me. Okay. Same.

Yeah. No fight here. Last and at least. I'm so excited for the accolite, by the way. But last time of the last time, same. I can't wait. We're going to the Shire,

and it is very complicated here in the Shire, because, yeah, listen, in Lord of the Rings, the most iconic groupings we have are fellowships, right? The fellowship of the ring.

Or you think of Bilbo and all the dwarves and Gandalf, that's another fellowship. Well, I'll be a lot of them, but to your point, about fellowships joining and then splintering apart and Percy

we've got major splintering happens at the end of Fellowship of the Ring and we've got a couple trios that emerge you've got Ergor and Legolas and Gimli are a trio and then you've got Sam and Frodo who head off

to Mount Doom but they don't head off alone do they? No there's a little critter that tracks them and follows them in the form of Gollum but like we should say that this is where it's so complicated because Gollum himself is a split personality, Smeagel and Gollum.

So in theory you have Frodo, Ego, Sam, Super Ego, Gollum, Ed, but it all gets much more complicated. We're foiling all over the places. We're fracturing, all this sort of stuff. The importance of Gollum, though, because I've seen arguments that they could have gotten the Rington Out Doom without Gallum, but that is not what Tolkien thinks. And I think what the professor thinks is more important than what you think. So, or I think. Professor Tolkien, always welcome.

Always welcome. On the house we are. Broto and Sam need Gallum. They need the end. And this is like the most interesting part about the Freudian trio is, again, not just that basic, like, no one can do it alone. But like, you need a particular blend of personalities and perspectives in order to get this quest accomplished. So we're going to hear a clip from Fellowship of the Ring. And then we're going to hear it clip from Two Towers.

And it is about the importance of Gullam and also the split nature of Gullum, uh, Steve Leeples. Even the very wise could assume ends. Tells me that Gullum has some part. Before this is over. The pity of Bilbo. You've left out one of the chief characters.

Sam Wise, the Brave. I want to hear more about Sam. Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam. Now, Mr. Frodo. You shouldn't make fun. I was being serious. So was I. Then let us be rid of it.

Once and for all. Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can't carry it for you. But I can carry you. Come on. Okay, that's an example of me forgetting what clips I put in there, because that is more about the importance of Sam, obviously. But the importance of Gallum at the beginning,

and I forgot the clip that I thought I put in there, but I forgot I didn't. Was in two towers when they're like following Gollum and he like disappears and he's like, yeah. Like he's doing his like Smigel Gollum thing. And Sam's like, he's betrayed us. He's left with him. Like, Golm just pops up and is like, come on, hubbuses.

Oh. It's just like, such a quick personality moment for Smigel. Oh, man. And like Sam and Gollum being at constant at each other's throats, literally in some cases. Quite literally. And Frodo having to balance it all together. I can't carry it, but I can carry you. One of the best movie lines of all time.

It's not just a movie. Like in the book, Sam says, I'll get there if I leave everything but my bones behind and I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself. It breaks my back and hearts. So stop arguing. So there's that. And then there's the very... You to me every time I say I'm too sick to pod.

Got heartburn. I haven't slept. And at the very end of that Mount Doom chapter, Tolkien underlines that concept of like they can't do this without Gollum. But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the ring. The quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him, right? Without Gollum, we don't get here.

I found this really interesting quote from Ursula K. Le Guin back in the conversation. We should do a full earthy dive sometime. That'd be great. I was trying to find a lot of people talking about a Freudian analysis of Tolkien. This is not a thing that people like to do. And part of it is because Tolkien himself is like, please don't try to like put symbolism or whatever on top of my stories. But it's just like it stubbornly sort of rejects a Freudian analysis.

So I was looking for smarter people than me to like say smart things about Freud and Lord of the Rings. Didn't really come up with anything. But this idea of like foils and how foils refract across trios I thought was interesting. And this comes from Ursula K. Le Guin, who has written many essays about Lord of the Rings because she loves it. And she wrote this of Professor Tolkien. She said his villains are orcs and black writers, goblins and zombies, mythic figures. And Sauron, the Dark Lord, who has never seen in his no suggestion of humanity about him. Asterisk.

She didn't see rings of power. But that's okay. We forgive Ursula. Okay, back to the Back to Ursula. These are not evil men, but embodiments of evil in men. Universal symbols of the hateful. The men who do wrong are not complete figures but compliments.

Saraman is Gandalf's dark self, Boromere Erichorns. Wormtong is almost literally the weakness of King Theodin. There remains the wonderfully repulsive and degraded Gallum, but nobody who reads the trilogy hates or is asked to hate Gallum. Gollum is Frodo's shadow, and it is the shadow, not the hero. who achieves the quest. I love that. It is the shadow, not the hero, who achieves the quest.

Though Tolkien seems to project evil into, quote, the others, they are not truly others but ourselves. He is utterly clear about this. So I love this analysis from Ursula. Great stuff. But this idea of Ghalm as the shadow self of Frodo, clearly. But Sam as the, like, whatever the light self. It's not really a thing.

But, you know, the, like, aspirational self of Frodo is interesting because Sam, you know, when we first meet them, Sam is, you know, the lower class, you know, Frodo has on the money. Frodo is a hobbit princeling, essentially, you know. And Sam is the gardener son. And so for Sam to become this aspirational figure, this, like, this stalwart beacon of. of goodness and strength, and is eventually the one who gets to enjoy the afterwar experience that he marries Rosie Cotton and he settles in the shower. He gets to enjoy the shire and Frodo. There's too much shadow in Frodo now, and he cannot enjoy the world. And so Frodo refracted across the shadow self of Gallum and the other self of Sam and making this the Holy Trinity

at the center of this quest is very powerful to me. I love this story. We love Lord of the Rings. We love a Trinity. It's a rich text. It's almost like we should spend some time revisiting it at some point. Do a full-blown reread. Name the day and the time.

Rewatch? Re-watch, reread, reduce, reuse. To your point earlier, our point earlier about the id, the Ron, being most susceptible to the horrocks. That comes from Ghalom, the id, being most profoundly impacted by the ring, of course. But it's taking its toll on everyone. That's all I really wanted to do. It's complicated in Lord of the Rings as it should be.

And when it's not clear-cut, that's when really interesting things start to happen, I think, in some of these stories. I'm really excited to talk to you more about Avatar and, like, what they do with characters on the move in those stories. But we also have just like an assortment of other trios that we wrote down but didn't necessarily want to like talk about at length. Are there any that you want to call out of note? You know, I think as mentioned, we're, we're focusing on some of the faves and maybe the most emblematic of different slices of a golden trio rendering. I think if people are listening to a Joe Mal house of our pod, they're going to be like, you guys did a pot on trios and you didn't say the dragon has three. heads at any point. What's wrong with you? So now we've said it. Yeah. And there could be peace in the

podcast universe. But yeah, I think Thrones is, there would be plenty to talk about in Thrones, but I think Thrones is an interesting, obviously you have, the dragon has three heads and the role of that place. So the story you have, like, Agon and his sister wives and their dragons. You've got the Lancer kids. Sibling groupings. Yeah. The Barthians or the Lansters. But I think it's a story where we think about I don't know how to articulate this distinction. Groupings of threes, not trios. Like when we're talking about trios in this pot today,

we're talking about people who have chosen to align or go on a journey together. And there's a, it's never neat and tidy in Thrones, right? Definitionally, that's like the law of the land. But we certainly couldn't call, I think we could call Egon and Vesnia and Rhenia a trio. But we wouldn't say like Circe and Jamie and Tyrion are a golden trio. I mean, they've got golden hair, certainly, and they're three siblings. But they're so often in various ways at odds with each other, same with the Baratian boys,

that it would be a different type of conversation. Yeah, and I think. But, you know, we wanted to at least quickly mention. Thrones. I'm going to mention... What else do you want to toss out? I'll mention two other things really quickly. Okay.

One, shout out the Muppets. Great one. Fazi is the ego. Kermit is a super ego and Gonzo is the aide. Love that for us. But more importantly, I want to shout out the dark night. Batman in general, the Batman story we return to again and again and again and again is Batman versus Joker.

This duality of the two of them. is such a very important story that we cannot get enough of or certainly Hollywood can't get enough of. What The Darker Night does is add Harvey Dent into the mix, right? So we get Bruce as the ego, Joker as the Id, and Harvey Dent pre-to-face as the superego and the decimation of Harvey Dent and his fall from the super ego role into a more. more id-like role is part of the

absolutely delectable tragedy that is the dark night. You know, it's not just that, like, Heath Ledger is perfect as the Joker. It's not just that, like, you know,

Nolan is masterful in his craft. It is all of that, but that trio of Bruce thinking about Harvey Dent as a foil for him and thinking about the Joker as a foil for Batman. And so, like,

Bruce's divided personality and how that has its own mirrors in the story. You know, Harvey gets the girl that Bruce is supposed to have. Harvey, you know, gets the accolades that Bruce could have if he didn't have this other obligation, this darkness inside of him, all of that. You know, and then the Joker as this horrible funhouse mirror always, this dark, dark reflection of Batman is, I think, why that is one of the most potent versions of the Batman story that we've ever gotten. And I love it. I love that. How about the Powerpuff Girls?

Which I only learned a trio because of a fairly recent release of Nike Dunks. Steve knows what I'm talking about. Three great colorways for PowerPuff Girls, Buttercup Bloss of Bubbles. And I'm like, okay, here we go. Another trio. And all of the shoes are great.

Not sure if Steve has any thoughts as a fan of the Nike Dunk. But I had to mention it for him. And maybe I should bring up my favorite movie of all time, which is Jurassic Park. I believe Sean Fennessee once called me Jurassic Park Pilled. So there you go. But Dr. Allen Grant is our ego. Ellie Sattler is our super ego and Ian Malcolm.

Chest hair fully on display. Always looking for the next ex-Mr. Mrs. Malcolm. Ian Malcolm has the id. Love that trio. Incredible. Of course. I thought you're going to mention Matrix. What do you want to say about the Matrix?

You know, sometimes when I'm like, what story would it be fun to talk about? more. Think of Matrix. The general Matrix verse. It's an interesting one. I don't think if we've really had the pleasure of discussing it much. You and I haven't. You weren't on our Matrix Pond. I know. I missed one of the most historic pods in the history of the Ringerverse. This was devastated not to be able to participate in that. So I've just been craving it and coveting it ever since. Neo, Trinity Morpheus. We've got a mapping there, right? It's, super ego ego. Matrix is always a fun one to think about in terms of like a more modern day rendering of a tradition that then becomes a new archetype for this generation of viewers and fans.

It's always fun to think about. What other ones do you want to quickly hit, if any? Are you just the Caribbean? I'm going to skip Captain Jack and I'm going to straight to something we always rely on for these shows courses, which is our listeners to come through with the anime inclusions. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we don't, we don't have those examples at our fingertips. So I want to shout out Tyler. Yet.

Yet. We eagerly look forward to our anime experience. Yeah, our Crunchyroll education begins now with Tyler's email. Tyler from Crunchyroll, I love this because Tyler sends me PR emails from Crunchyroll, and then sometimes he sends me listener emails

from Crunchyroll. So Tyler, shout out to Tyler, who's both doing his PR job and is a listener of this podcast. So Tyler says, Love it. First, the most dynamic superhero trio from My Hero Academia, Izuku Midoriya, aka Deku, Katsuke, Bakugo, and Shoto Tororoki.

How did I do? Not well. Okay. Demon Slayer. Kimetsu No Yaiba consisting of Tanjiro, Zanitsu, and Inosuke. Attack on Titan with Aaron, Armin, and Micasa. Lastly is three. Is there any trio more iconic? then Ash, Brock, and Misty from the original Pokemon series. You could almost call it a fellowship based on the adventures they go on to fill their dreams for the past few decades, leading up to their final farewells from each other. And I'll help Tyler do his job and say all of those are available on Crouchy Roll if you want to go watch any of those shows.

And I apologize for previously for my terrible Japanese pronunciation of anything. Yeah, that's the golden trios. I had such a fun time researching this. I always love a choice course. And I think it's going to be really fun to think about it going forward, looking at the live action avatar, thinking about are there any in Dune? Can we make an argument for some in Dune? We'll think about it. You know, are there going to be any in three body problem?

We'll find out together. Stay tuned. Thanks to our larger fellowship. That includes, of course, show me a dinner on the social and our junior reguple for his additional production work. And thanks to the core golden trio of this podcast, as Steve Allman on the soundboard, and also cutting out all of our errors, except, I guess, for my terrible wookie impression,

Molly Rumin, the heart to my head, you're the best. And this has been another trip's course. And we will see you on Valentine's Day. Laura Quipan.