The Ringer-Verse - ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Episode 3 Deep Dive | House of R

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

Mal and Ben team up to discuss the third episode of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ (6:00). They run through the plot in its entirety (19:00), talk about why Vader chose Mustafar as his seat (31:00), and speculate on what Reva’s true motivations may be (43:00). Plus, Ben explains the backstory of the Jedis whose names appear in the safehouse (02:24:00) and Jomi joins to answer mailbag questions (02:19:00). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Ben Lindbergh Associate Producer: Mike Wargon Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, Rachel Lindsay here, and I am teaming up with your favorite Ringer podcasters to deliver the Bravo drama and news that you've been craving on morally corrupt. It's the show about all things Bravo. From the housewise to summer house and everything in between, we'll be mentioning it all every week. Check it out on Spotify and the ringer.com. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trimphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks,

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This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here. celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring, save at Whole Foods Market. And welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer podcast network.

I'm Mallory Rubin, and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to hail a ride with Freck, but also to join us on the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Joining me today, now that he's finished telling me that people are not all good, It's today's House of our working title, special guest co-host, Jedi Master Ben Limburg. Ben, hello there. Hello, sorry Joanna couldn't be here, but I'm happy to serve in her stead. I feel a little like Fifth Brother claiming the Grand Quisitor's seat. I am the next in nine.

Wow, well, it did not work out super well for Fifth Brother overtime. That is a pretty grim comp. Not at all. I just want to say, I hope you know that anything you would say about Ewan McGregor to Joanna, you can also say to me, I fully support your interests and your passions. I appreciate that. Rest assured, I was not planning to hold back. I didn't think so.

So, yeah, everyone, Joe is sadly not feeling well today. And so she's not here on this episode to share in another multi- Our breakdown of Obi-1 Canobi's majestic hair and beard, but she is with us here in spirit. And one thing about Ben, he knows that only when the eyes on Zoom are closed, can you truly see the way. So he is here to help guide us all as we break down the astonishing Obi-1-Kadobie Part 3. So happy. Yeah, what a week. What an episode.

There's a lot. There's a lot that we have to get to today. But as always, quick programming reminders. Ring reverse pods like the force. They're around us at all times. Okay? So many shows on the feed right now. Catch up on them all.

Our House of Our Stranger Things episodes are there for you. Our House of Midnight Star Wars Celebration teaser reactions are there for you. Jomi has so much goodness for you from Celebration and Beyond on the social channels. On the Obie front, the Midnight Boys, have a truly fantastic Obi-1 Part 3 breakdown already up on the feed for you. And there is, of course, much more to come. In mere days, the Midnight Boys will have a breakdown of the highly anticipated triple episode premiere of The Boys, a show that everyone at the Ring ofverse loves, can't wait for the new season.

And then later next week, the Ringervverse crew will be covering the Miss Marvel debut as well. And then, of course, the Midnight Boys will be back with their instant reaction for Obi-1 part four. We'll be back with the House of our Deep Dive on Friday for Part 4. There's a lot. How can you follow it? So glad you asked. You could follow all of that by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And by following the ringerverse on our myriad social feeds.

And of course, have to say it, bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. Today's podcast will feature every single plot detail. from Obi-1 Canobi part three. The entire Obi-1-Kobey limited series to date. And listen, all of existing Star Wars canon. It's all on the table. Possibly some adult content at some point. Yeah, that seems like a fair, a fair warning to give here along with a spoiler warning.

So proceed with caution. Proceed with more caution than our dear Obi-1 did when he looked into a probe droid for a legit full minute before deciding to fire his blessing. Oh, boy. Some questionable tactical decisions from our man this week and in the series in general. But we love him. We do. We do. We love him.

Okay. We have a lot to get to on the part three front. But before we begin our discussion of the episode, we want to take some time to address the horrific racist abuse that Moses Ingram has received. It is sickening. to see the messages that Moses shared. And of course, it is not the first time that a member of the Star Wars family

has been subjected to truly vile bigotry on Star Wars and Ewan McGregor and so many others spoke out in support of Moses this week. And while that is an important step forward, it is just so dismaying that this keeps happening. If anyone listening to this right now has not yet listened to this week, Midnight Boys episode, I would really implore you to take the time to do so. Van and Charles

had an incredibly thoughtful and important discussion about racism and toxicity in fandom that everybody should take the time to listen to and really consider. You know, Star Wars is quite literally about banding together in fellowship to embrace hope and possibility and fight tyranny and hate. So let's all try to remember that and show Moses and each other. support and love. Yes. It is sad. It's disappointing that so many other figures from the Star Wars Universe had to speak up on her behalf, others who have faced the same sort of harassment in the past, going back years and decades. So this is a persistent problem. And yes, it's just a subset of the fan base, if you even want to include those people within the fan base, which I wouldn't,

which Ewan McGregor in his video excluded, I think rightfully so, because as you said, it just goes against everything we think we love against this franchise. Right. So the fact that it's a recurring issue that others who've experienced this had to stick up for her. Fortunately, others, just everyone really rallied around her here. And you would hope that this is something that just will not continue because it's just gone on for way too long already. Before we get into the plot by plot and we're going to go chronologically through the episode, as we did last week, what is just going to do? you're just opening snapshot. I mean, I have read your delightful breakdown on the ringer.com. What a great website. And anybody who hasn't should go read it immediately or right after listening to this episode. Either order is fine. But for anyone who hasn't read it yet, what did you think about this episode? Give us a taste. Good, great, life altering.

Darth Vader doesn't disappoint. Darth Vader delivers every time out. He never takes an episode off. He never takes an issue off if it's a comic. no matter how many times he appears, it could be Rogue One, it could be Jedi Fallen Order, it could be all of the Vader comics. He has never diminished. You can't overuse him seemingly, or at least Lucasfilm has handled him so judiciously

that he just delivers every single time. You never think, Vader again, we're going back to that well. Like, you know, the spell never wears off. And we see different sides of him each time, and there are layers to this character. And, you know, say what you will about how Disney-era Lucasfilm has handled other legacy characters and in some cases strip them of power for narrative reasons. But Vader here is at full force.

I mean, this is as powerful as we have seen him, as scary as we have seen him. And that effect does not wear off. And in retrospect, I think it's almost shocking that Deb Chow reportedly had to push for Vader to be included in this series. because ultimately they wasted no time in getting to him, first of all. And it's just hard to imagine how Obi-Wan Kenobi would be anywhere close to as compelling without this character. And the great thing is it wasn't really an action set piece. This episode is not going to make us forget the duel from Revenge of the Sith, right? That's not what we're here for.

Maybe we'll get more of that in later episodes, and maybe we won't. And I'm kind of okay with that either way, because this is all about the characters and the history between them. and the suffering that they have subjected each other to. And so there's no suspense as such, not on a will Obi-Wan live level, you know, who's going to come out of this thing. Like, we know that all of these core characters, they have a date on the Death Star in nine years, right? So we're not wondering what's going to happen next. Is this guy going to live? Is this person going to die?

But there is so much suspense, I think, just in seeing these characters reunite, come face-to-face or face-to-helmet. This is what we're here for. We signed up for this series to see this confrontation, and we got it a little earlier, I think, than we had expected. Oh, yeah. Much earlier than I was expecting. This was, I thought this was just an unbelievable episode of television and an indispensable installment of Star Wars. I've watched this multiple times already. I think this is something that I will not tire of rewatching and revisiting.

You know, to quote our guy, Tony Stark. Shout out Jomey. We always love to quote Tony whenever we can. Part of the journey is the end, but part of the journey is the journey. And I think that this show so fully embraces that idea and that Star Wars and our attachment to all of these characters, Obi-Wi-Kinobi Prime among them is not merely about the key markers on the canonical timeline. One of the real bits of magic and wonder that we get from a show like this and from any new

installment is fleshing out the arc and the thematic resonance of all of those moments that we already know exist. So I found this thrilling. I found this devastating. If we're going on the old meter of how many times did you gasp aloud or say, oh, shit into the void? This is like pretty high on the list of my favorite Star Wars viewing experiences. I mean, as is always the case, there are going to be a few nits to pick. And there are certainly some questions. that have become fairly prominent on the old interwebs this week, which we'll talk about as we go. Most of it worked for me. And I'm really just so excited to go beat by beat here and break it all down.

We will, of course, later today be getting to your lore dive, Ben. Yes, yes. We will do a little bit of theorizing. I think much of it might come up as we go. Some of it might wave for Theory Corner. We'll see. And then, of course, we'll hit the mailbag. But this episode was so full and rich that I think we should.

I think we should just dive in. Are you ready to dive in? I have one more thing to say, which is that I think coming into this series, there was a reasonable concern that maybe we didn't need to see this, that maybe it was over-explaining, that we already knew the broad strokes of the story of these characters. The biggest hand wave, you can't see me, but I'm waving my hand. Look, we knew they dueled on Mustafa, we know they met again on the Death Star.

People were concerned, well, is this going to screw up canon? Is there going to be conflict with the conditions? continuity, there's still some concern about that. Or is it just going to undercut the later confrontation, right? Well, it still makes sense. Like, is this just showing too much? Should there just be some telling? Should there be showing and not telling? Is this over-explanning? But I think since those initial duels, even since Revenge of the Sith, we have gotten to know these characters so much better because of the Clone Wars, because of the comics, because of all of the ancillary stories, which is almost an insult to them.

They're center stage for a lot of Star Wars fans. And because we have developed those attachments to those characters, it was not enough. Attachments. It is not forbidden to be attached to these characters. And because all we had was one minute of them facing each other down and just having a few lines together on the Death Star, that was not enough. That was enough in 1977 when no one knew anything about these characters, including George Lucas, right? When we didn't know the entire backstory, now we have so much history

with these characters that I think that's just not enough that we needed to see the intermediate stage, or at least that the intermediate stage can be rewarding. Even if we know they go from point A to point C, like seeing point B and seeing that feeling because we don't get to see that reaction shot, right? What we've already gotten in this series of them sensing each other, okay, there is the line. I've not felt that presence since, you know, ellipsis, but that's not enough. We need more. We deserve more. We've invested so much time and so much emotion in these characters that even though we basically know where they end up and where this is all going, seeing it has been really rich and rewarding for me. Yeah, I agree. I need the gasp. I need the subtitles.

Yes. Trembling breathing. I need the camera shaking as as O.B. As many subtitles that say panting as possible. That would be the subtitle of you while you're watching. I mean, I agree. We had a mailback question that we were going to say for later today, but it's, I think, worth just contextually discussing here. It came from Max, and it says, I know this is kind of general and not specific to this episode, but we would love to hear your response.

If we as fans want to get more Star Wars content, should we just accept recons and look past things not lining up with their leader plot points rather than getting hung up on them? And, you know, I think you just provided a really thoughtful and nuanced answer to that, Ben. And I agree because, look, I and we are just as likely as anybody who covers Star Wars to write about or pot about the retcons and the thinking of these emoji condundrums that emerge. We did plenty of that last week. We're going to do some of it this week. I think it's totally valid and, frankly, part of the discussion among the fan base to ask about these things and try to piece together how they,

connect and what holds up, what doesn't, what maybe feels like it actually works in a better and more fully realized way because of a change. But broadly here is what I'll say. Some recons can be good and rewarding. Some can be ineligent and confounding. A New Hope is one of my favorite Star Wars installments and one of the most important movies ever made. Like that is true. It is a beautiful jewel that unlocked 45 years of storytelling for us. So the next statement that I'm about to make in no way diminishes that. However, just because we got a new hope doesn't mean that we should cut ourselves off from expanding the universe. Not everything can be totally wed to the exact phrasing or plot choice that George Lucas made back in 77.

And I feel confident saying that one of the people who would agree, it that most is George Lucas, who figured out a lot of it as he went in real time. And part of the beauty and wonder of Star Wars, as we talk about a lot, is that the galaxy is really big. And that's true for seeing new places and meeting new characters, but it's also true for learning more about the characters who are already so deeply embedded in our Star Wars experience. And so, again, always fair game to say, wait a minute, why is Leah acting like she's never met this guy who we now see she had this very meaningful experience with? Totally fair game. I would rather ask that question than not have this show.

That's where I know it out. Yeah. You don't want to deprive yourself of the gas-worthy moment just because technically it could kind of conflict with some obscure corner of the universe that was previously established. Like, yeah, does that stuff get under my skin a little bit? Maybe sometimes, you know, these are not always more elegant retcons from a more civilized age. Like, there could be some clumsy retconning going on here. I don't think that they have violated anything just beyond the point of no return as of yet in this series.

Your secret tenant has yet been. So far. I think we can justify any story telling decision that has happened here. But really, what we're here is for those moments when we just lose ourselves in what we're seeing on the screen. And if we think five minutes later, two days later, when we've settled down a bit, wait a second, how does that square with this other thing? that's not unimportant, but I think you don't want to prioritize that over that moment that's delivering that pure hit of Star Wars. And I do value that Star Wars has the lore locked down more so than some other shared fictional universes, you know, compared to comic books canon, right? Which is just told by so many people over such a long period that inevitably there's a lot of rewriting and retelling and characters coming back from the dead and things not fully being explained.

You just have to accept that that's okay, that this storyteller is going to have a chance to play with this character for a while, right? As Jason Concepcion used to say, you put them back on the shelf. Someone picks them up again and tells a different story with those characters. So I do value that Star Wars, you know, even though it required doing away with some old canon that I dearly loved, at least you can kind of say, this is when this happened. And then this happened after that. And this is why this happened. And have we heard of this before? and it's all kind of tracked, and there are people actually monitoring all this stuff and telling the various storytellers,

no, you can't do this. Yes, you can't do that. But I think you can take that too far, right? For the tiny subset of the fan base that cares about all of those intricate details, and we're part of that subset. Yeah. And yet that's not necessarily what drew us to Star Wars in the first place. So I think you have to keep that in mind. I love it. And, you know, again, because this is an audio experience and people can't see. just have to share with everybody that, as usual, your microphone, your pop filter, completely obscuring your face, which on this episode of particular, I think, has a really heightened and effective meta quality, you know? Yes. I'm gazing into the helmet. Okay. Speaking of gazing into the helmet, let's get into the chronological deep dive.

We have so much to cover. We open with Obi-1 again, trying to do that. to reach out to Quigon through the force. But he does not get a reply. Instead, he hears memories. These incursions sparked by the truth that he learned at the end of part two from Riva, these incursions from the horrors and the regrets that define his past and are increasingly defining his present. We hear Rivas reveal, you didn't know, he's alive, Obi-1, this new, epiphany and revelation that's altering the course of his current life. We hear Yoda's warning from Sith, only pain will you find. That's the hollow warning from a long time ago, but relevant

here too certainly. Like, what will Obi-1 find if he sees Vader again? Well, we will soon see, and it is pain. It is pain, folks, in many different forms. Multiple kinds of pain. Yes. We hear, we do hear Quigon, but it's an echo from the past. We hear the plea. Obi-Wan. promise me you will train the boy. One of Obi-1's defining failures in his mind, as we've discussed. And also, we get a promise later in this episode between Obi-1 and Tala about Leah. So this idea of promise and protection very much linked. We hear many proclamations from Anakin among them.

If you're not with me, then you're my enemy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And Obi-1's face is like scrunched up amid these. these sound bites, these clips, these echoes from the past, they pain him, but he can't resist them. This is a very heightened version of what any of us have experienced

when we're just trying to quiet our mind to fall asleep, and we start thinking about all the pod prep we haven't gotten to yet. Negative self-talk, yeah. And we talked last week about how Obi-1 was already too shut off from the force to reach Quigon.

to reach him for these force ghost lessons, that homework that Yoda set him. Now, even though he has used the force again, reached out with it in episode two to save Leia, that is compounded by this additional blocker, the fear of what he's learned. And you're going to hear a lot of words repeating today.

You'll hear Obi-1 a lot. You'll hear Vader a lot. You'll hear iconic a lot. You're going to hear fear a lot. Fear is definitely a recurring theme of this episode. Ben wrote about this beautifully in his piece this week. It's his fear of what he's learned. It's his fear of the past.

It's his fear of what he's done. His fear of what Anakin has become and having to confront that. His fear, I think specifically in the context of calling out to Quigon in particular of how he failed to honor that pledge. And he wants to reach out to Quigon. He wants his counsel. He needs it. But how fearful is he of what? he'll have to tell him or hear from him when he does.

Yeah, I drew a lot of parallels in my recap to the duel on Cloud City between Vader and Luke, right? Where Vader says, Obi-Wan has taught you well. You have controlled your fear, but that's not what's happening here. He has not learned to control his own fear in this episode. And, yeah, maybe he can't get through to Quigon because his agent keeps saying he's not interested in a live-action TV role. Maybe that's the out-of-universe. explanation here, but one would hope that this is building toward a voice cameo, at least. We're three for three.

Yeah. Three episodes, three calls to Quigon. It's happening. Right. Liam Mason may be biased against appearing on TV in the flesh. He only wants to do movies, but we know he'll do voice work for Star Wars on the small screen. And if not, can we fire up the re-speecher and get Liam Neeson's voice in here against his will? Because we've got to have Quigon in this series, I think.

just to have a satisfying arc for Obi-Wan to maybe foreshadow Obi-Wan appearing to Luke and counseling him in his Force Ghost form in the original trilogy, right? And I think it would just be cathartic for Obi-Wan to hear from Quigon here and to say, I don't know what he would say. Maybe he'd be bitter. Maybe he'd blame him. Or maybe he'd say, hey, you tried. You were not ready. I made you make that promise when you were too young. I should not have put that on you.

Maybe he takes some of the guilt away. Maybe he absolves him or maybe he offers him some advice. We don't know. But it just feels like it would be tough to have a satisfying resolution to this. If you just see Obi-Wan trying and trying and failing to get in touch with his old master and never does it, it's hard to see how he could really make the character leap that we want him to by the end of the series. So you got to think that maybe some kind of direct contact is. coming here. We need it. I don't think we get the three mentions if it's not coming. Yeah. That would honestly be kind of cruel. It seriously would be like not not full on Ralph Boner

territory, but you build up expectations at a certain point. Like this is a this is this is this is checkoff's quigon call here. I feel like it's got it. And I think that at this point, particularly given the conclusion of this episode and the nature of what unfolded between Vader and Obi-Wan in their confrontation and their showdown, I think Obi-1 really needs that wisdom and that counsel and just frankly that conversation so that he can move through some of these blockages and move forward to face Vader and to face his own doubt. That feels like the most crucial thing of all here. And, you know, one of the through lines of the three episodes is Obi-Wan moving out of this period of forced self-isolation and recognizing, and we'll talk about

this in the way it manifested in a lot of different, really compelling ways today, recognizing that there are other people, not only who he can help, but who can help him. And I think letting Quigon back into his life or finding a way to bring Quigon back into his life is one of the most impactful and potential like skeleton key bits of progress for his character because Obi-1 is a character who believes that he deserves to be punished but really needs someone to help him find that absolution. And I think that that can go from Quigon most of all. How can he move forward without resolving that thread from his past?

And it doesn't have to be the full force ghost if they couldn't get Liam if his schedule was too busy. with mediocre movies about vengeance or whatever. If he could just do some ADR, just record some lines, just get in the booth. That would work for me too. But we need something original here. It can't just be echoes of old quagon lines. Hey, he was on Atlanta this season. Spoiler for Atlanta, but he was.

So he's back on TV. Let's do it. Intercut Ben in this opening sequence with Obi-Wan's memories, we see, Darth Vader emerging from his back to tank, his healing chamber, these ports unplugging the breathing tubes, his limbs of fixing his armor plates being placed onto him piece by piece. He is being assembled. And there was something so haunting and harrowing about that. You know, we got to see his face, his scarred face, Hayden Christensen's face in the prosthetics at the end of episode two, thrilling. And that's what we open on.

We get to open on Hayden here, too, before the Vader casing is put on to him. And like you said earlier, like, it's, you know, Vader's going to bat pretty close to a thousand. So even if we had not gotten this, it would have been electrifying to see him arrive on Mapuzo later. But there was something about seeing the body of Anakin Skywalker

beneath that casing that. really helped tie all of these stories and all of these years together and made it even more impactful. And one of the, there are so many awesome cuts and adjacencies in this opening sequence, but I think the one I love the most is the signature helmet lowering, covering, covering Anakin's eyes with Vader's helmet, juxtaposed against Obi-1's eyes opening. And then we get this reflection of the red in the Vader eye plates. We hear the signature breathing. You know what's going to work for me a thousand times out of a thousand hearing the

breath? Every time I'm like, fuck yeah, let's go. It always reminds me of Obi-One too, because it sounds like he's saying Obie to me, or at least it always has, which could just be a coincidence, but it works for me. I love it. Yeah. It's a full body shot, or at least as much of a body as Anakin has left here. We're getting a tour of the wounds that Obi-Wan inflicted on him, right?

The physical wounds. And we're seeing the armor encasing him. And we also know that there is a figurative type of armor, a figurative mask that is over Obi-Wan as well, just because of his history with his character that is preventing him from being his true self, from really embracing the former self that we once knew. These guys have both been through a lot. Now, Obi-Wan came out of it looking a lot better, but he is confined and repressed in some similar ways. It's true. It was so amazing to see Vader's full form emerge in the wide shot, like the way that he emerges from a fog into view. Very poetic, very symbolically rich for us and Obi-1 alike.

And, you know, there are just so many awesome parallels in this opening sequence. I love the connections. I love the links between them even across this, this chasm, this vast divide. Like, even just the fact that they're both in meditative states because Vader uses his back to tech not only for healing, but for meditation across his stories. But neither of them is in a state of insider piece here. They're both halted and disrupted. Like, specifically because they're called to, to, you know, to. each other. They're called to the other one instead of just being able to focus on the now on the thing in front of them. And so they're both in a way, as you said, like in this state that the other left them in and they're worlds apart, like in many respects, right? But they just determine still so much for each other. And there's this fear, but also I think this need, this like magnetic pull drawing them back together. Just tremendous.

Yeah, sometimes when Vader meditates, he meditates about murdering Obi-Wan, which we can touch on a little later. But, yeah, their thoughts are always with each other at this point, at least. And Obi-Wan, even before he knew that Vader was still out there somewhere, he was still dreaming about him. So neither of them is free of the other, and neither of them has been for the past 10 years, even though only one of them has been actively looking for the other. Speaking of needs, it's hollow zoom time in the throne room at Fortress Vader. We're on Mustafa. Great look at the throne room inside of Fortress Vader. What do you think Fortress Vader goes for on Redfin?

What do you think the walkability score is? Yeah. What would you call this architectural? This brutalist maybe, but it's not hospitable, but it suits Vader. We got to see him having his brooding look out the window, which we've seen him perfect and used many times on the bridges of Star Destroyers. Yeah. Loves to brooch. And he's great at it.

Can you remind everybody listening why Vader chose Mustafa as his seed? Because I think that this is one of the most compelling aspects, not only of the comic run in particular, but just of his canon. Yeah, because you'd think why would he want to go back there, right? Maybe not the fondest memories of the place. But he actually chose it. He was offered a planet as a gift, basically, by the emperor. And he says, do you want Nabu? I'll give you Nabu. My home world. You can have it. Or I'll give you tattooing. And Vader says, no, I want Mustafa. Mustafar. Mustafar will be my seat of power for multiple reasons, I think. First, it's the site of his lava baptism and his rebirth. It's the place where he really became his new self, embraced his cis side. And he also believes and has been told that he can use the dark side power that is concentrated on Mustafa to reanimate Padme.

Which, spoiler, doesn't happen for him, unfortunately. But that just adds an element of tragedy to the whole thing, really. Because if it were just your scary bad guy villain, he's on the lava planet in the dark, angular castle fortress. That might be kind of cliched, like the scary villain is in the scary fortress. But he's not there just because it looks really intimidating. He's there for a sad reason. Like, there is such a pathos to Vader. Yes, he's scary, he's intimidating, he's full of rage, but that's not all there is to him.

There is always a pity that we feel to him, right? And a tragedy. The tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. Exactly. That's at the heart of Star Wars, yeah. And that's what makes him so rich and just gives him such legs as a character, not literal legs, doesn't have those. But narratively, he just has a lot of richness to him because of those aspects of his character. We know that Anakin is still in there.

We know that Anakin on some level, there is conflict. There is good in him. We don't get to see any of that good in this episode. But we know it's somewhere under there that there is still some kernel of Anakin that is waiting to be extracted years and years later. And that part is still suffering. And that part maybe still resents what he has become. There is sort of a self-loathing to him that makes him so fascinating as a character.

I love that. Yeah, the sequences at Fortress Vader are particularly important in that respect and never forgetting how present that that aspect of the lost soul of Anakin is. And it makes us hold on to moments like Padmay saying there's good in him still or Luke's ability to eventually embrace that redemptive possibility. And it's one of the things that even though broadly in a new hope, Obi-1 is in a much more assured and peaceful place than he is where we find him here, certainly. One of the things that that he has lost is his ability to see that Anakin is still inside of Vader. They are completely separate entities, dualities for him. Love a Dark Side Locus. Shout out moment. That whole, I mean, that stretch of the comic is just unbelievable. Really great. Yeah.

We then hear Vader speak. We hear James Earl Jones's iconic Vader voice thrilling, but I should say we sort of hear it Because this is the old Star Wars respeacher tech creeping in here again. Do you understand exactly how this works? I can't claim to. Like, is Hayden reading the lines and then they're AI mapping James Earl Jones's computer archive voice on top of it? Did James Earl Jones actually read these lines? Like he's credited initially.

And then later, and then later, the credits, there's the more precise line about the respeacher tech. Do you understand exactly how this works, but more broadly, how do you feel about this? Because on the one hand, it's like amazing to hear the vintage James Earl Jones Vader voice, but broadly, the ability to just recreate people's speech inside of a fictional story is a harrowing stuff. Yeah, artificial intelligence is a pathway to many abilities, some may consider it to be unnatural. I don't know exactly the mechanics of this. I haven't seen reporting about how these lines were recorded or synthesized, but I would assume that this is based on voice samples from James Earl Jones, maybe from

years and decades ago, because we know that he provided his voice for Rogue One and for Rebels, and he sounded different, right? I mean, the man was 85 years old at that time. It had been decades since he originally gave voice to this character. So he sounded a little different. He sounded older, still commanding, still intimidating, but noticeably different, whereas this sounds like original Vader. I mean, this sounds like it's straight from the source, right? And James Earl Jones, fortunately, still with us 91 years old now. I am guessing he hasn't fully discovered the fountain of youth and regained his youthful voice.

So I would assume that this is synthesized from samples of his voice, whether recorded years ago or recorded more recently and tweaked. So I don't know that there is any indication that there's any Hayden Christensen in these line readings at all. It could be. We might learn that that's the case. But I would assume that this is done with a lot of computer trickery using, I think they need maybe an hour or two of the original voice sample in order to reconstruct it and basically make it say whatever it wants. So that is a little disturbing. I mean, I have some misgivings about that generally, both philosophically and in its application.

right, because we've seen lots of de-aging effects in the Disney era of Star Wars. Hasn't always worked out great when we're talking about CGI, Carrie Fisher, CGI, Peter Cushing, right? I think we've seen the effects evolve. And so when we saw CGI-D-Aged Wook Skywalker, Mark Hamill, in the Mandalorian or Bukubo, he looks better, right, than I think those initial attempts did. So we can sort of see the technology getting better. And I think even the voice tech.

maybe has gotten better because this sounds to me better than the re-speechered Luke did. Right. Which was- So I guess it's it's likely to, given that there's a synthesized machine quality to it inherently. That probably helps. Yeah. So regardless of how it happened, however icky it makes us feel, I have a hard time slamming it because it was just so great to hear that voice again, sounding the way that we know that voice used to hear. So I don't know. The methods, we can quibble with the methods, but the results were fantastic.

Speaking of quibbling with the methods, Riva seems to be pinning the Grand Inquisitors, death, heavy air quotes, death on Obi-1. This was a really interesting little moment. He will pay for the Grand Inquisitors, she says, and then Vader cuts her off. Tough stuff here for the Grand Inquisitor. Vader does not give two lava shits. that he is off the board. Fraught history between the Grand Inquisitor

and Vader, so not surprising. But Vader, like yours truly, only has eyes for Canobi. I did want to throw a theory to you, though. Yeah. Joanna and I talked last week about how maybe one of the reasons that we're playing out this grand inquisitor fake out death,

even though anybody who's seen rebels, knows that that character, or I guess, potentially a clone of him or something. But I think that character is, I think that character is around in season one of rebels. And that maybe one of the reasons was just to allow Riva to slide into this position of authority and get more of this direct time with Vader, which is exactly what happened in this episode, right? Okay. One of the people who knows that this is not what happened is the Grandin Quisner.

So if he is in fact alive, it seems likely to me that he could return and reveal her true. treachery and really spoil things for her. Now, on the one hand, constant infighting among the inquisitors, constant infighting among any dark side practitioner, right? As the entire internet has been observing for a week, there's a reason that the rule of two is a thing for the Sith. So I don't know that they need a disruption to spoil her ascendance. Like the Fifth Brother is trying to do that already, right?

But I do wonder if that could be part of how the Grand Inquisites. enters the plot again to say, hey, I've got these mod pistols in my gut now. Yep. Because of Third Sister, let's talk about it. What do you think? Yeah, I would actually enjoy it if that were to happen. And if Riva were to find herself on the run so that she could be a fugitive along with Obi-Wan. So they'd almost be in the same boat.

And it would basically be, can Riva bring in Obi-Wan to save herself? Because look, if she collars Obi-Wan, if she delivers him to Vader, we've already seen how he feels about the Grand Inquister. So I don't think he's going to stand on ceremony and rank here and say, yeah, you lightsabered the Grand Inquisner. But you brought me Obi-Wan. I'm pretty sure he would care more about the latter. And if anything, the former is an illustration of her abilities. Like, we don't care so much about the chain of command here. It's like if you lightsaber your boss, it's like a Klingon kind of thing.

It's like if you kill your commanding officer, well, I guess you deserve to be the commanding officer now. That's basically it. I don't think there's a lot of sentimentality out there for the Grand Inquiser. My question is, though, how does she explain the lack of a body? Where is the corpse currently in her explanation? Like, I get why if you just found the body, like, I don't know if there's an inquisitor CSI, but like maybe there's no equivalent of ballistics for lightsabers. It's like one cauterized hole looks like any other.

You can't tell that that hole came from a red blade as opposed to a blue blade. But if there's no body, like is her explanation that Obi-Wan killed the Inquisar and then took his corpse with him for some reason? I don't know. The guy Vader faces at the end of this episode is not capable of killing the Grand Inquisitor and hauling his corpse around the galaxy. Not at all. But the other thing is, though, in this exchange with Vader, we get the line where he says, prove yourself and the position of Grand Inquisitor is yours. Fail me and you will not live to regret it.

So the question is, He has an interesting motivation style. Oh, God. And he gets results out of his underwings. Fear will keep the local system as aligned. Do you think he has an accurate read on what she wants? This was one of the questions I had for you because it does seem based on the ensuing exchange with Fifth Brother that she does want that seat. she does want to be Grand Inquisitor.

But is that all she wants? It can't be, right? There's no way that that is the limit of her ambitions here because the show hasn't made that position desirable. Like Vader literally just said the Grand Inquisitor means nothing. So no offense to Fifth Brother who really wants that job. But will Riva become Grand Inquisitor? That's not satisfying stakes for her character. There must be more than that.

Right. Do you think, and we talked a lot last week, you wrote about the R&Qaeda, our shared theory of belief that she was one of the younglings at the Jedi Temple, that this is part of what is fueling her desire for revenge against Kenobi and the Jedi. Do you think that she is seeking to become Bader's apprentice? This is my new theory. This is what I think she really wants. And like we need look no further than Palpi's last apprentice, Duku,

to know that the rule of two doesn't mean anything to anyone, including Palpatine, by the way, who was a big rule of one guy, ultimately. Duke Ventress was Duku's apprentice. So what do you think? Is this Reva's real goal to be truly right by Vader's side? Yeah, maybe she sees herself taking his hand, you know, take my hand and together we can rule the galaxy.

Maybe that's her in the Dars Vader space in her fantasy and her vision here. I wonder because it doesn't seem like there's much of a history between these two, at least based on this conversation, right? Because one thing we had speculated about was, is there some kind of master protege bond that already exists between them? Did Vader spare her because he saw some sign of promise at the temple potentially? And did he see something in her because they both came from the gutter, quote unquote? It doesn't seem like there's that kind of bond here. I guess it could be unspoken.

And Vader doesn't show a lot of love for his subordinates necessarily. He withholds affection. But I wonder, because Fifth Brothers seems surprised, right, that Riva opened up a direct line to Darth here. So it doesn't seem like it's at least a known thing that they have an existing relationship here. It doesn't seem like there's any kind of history between those two. So that makes me think, is it more of a one-way thing where Riva sees her. by Vader's side, but Vader hasn't given that a ton of thought to this point.

Like a Don't Draper. Sure. I don't think about you at all kind of thing. But, you know, he did say, I have been watching you, third sister. I know what it is you seek. Now, maybe that's just the practicality of his observation and the way that, both as Anakin and as Vader, often allows him to gain an edge.

But this is interesting. I feel like we need to learn more about this in the next episode. This can't be something that comes together, just in the finale, or maybe it can. I don't know. If the whole next episode is Tala gently sponging back to spray onto Obie's burns, I'll be completely content, to be clear. Speaking of Obi-One way or another, we know Vader will be watching her career with great interest from now on.

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And Leah like kids all across the galaxy wants to know, are we there yet? This is classic. And Obi-1 says that he's not in control of the trade route. And when she asks if he can, quote, use the force on it or something in order to speed things up, her impatience sparks a vintage Star Wars force lesson. That's not how it works, he says. Not quite as emphatic as Han. That's not how the force works. there's a quiet, almost delicate, reflective mood about this.

And Leah says, how does it work, the force? What does it feel like? This was one of my favorite moments in the episode. What ensues from here? Yeah. She's not a noob like Luke, right? She knows what the force is. She's been taught that much by Bail, presumably.

So it's not like she's encountering the concept for the first time. Right. she wants to know what it feels like. You know, this is like the birds and the bees talk for the force, basically. Like she's gone to the force ed class. Like she knows a little bit more than Luke did on Tatween. But there's still some blanks that have to be filled in for her here. Yeah, she's pretty worldly.

She's pretty aware. His response is so lovely and so heartbreaking. He says, have you ever been afraid of the dark? how does it feel when you turn on the light? I feel safe, she says. Yes, he replies. It feels like that. Now, this was just such a sad moment because we know how long he's been cut off from the force,

which means that he's deprived himself of that light for that many years. He's isolated. He's alone. He's absent the safety and the clarity that the light of the force can provide. And this also connects to the idea of the force as a way to see as a guide, which we will come back to later in the episode. Yeah. More broadly, I'm really curious for your thoughts on this. I was really struck listening to this by thinking back to the force lessons that we've heard across Star Wars stories and the pattern of how many of those insights are imparted by characters who were at least in that moment in how.

hiding or in some way at a move from the force and their fellows. Like, to be clear, they're not all the same. They're not all one to once. Like, not every character is hopeless. Some of them are quite full of hope and need to be in order

to inspire somebody else. But I think they're all, some of them are actually like full of awe and wonder and this deeply rooted belief. They're not always doubting something. thing, but I think they're often needing to reconsider something or help somebody else do so.

And there are plenty of other examples, too. But in these cases, like there's this through line of longing, of insight coming not only from some prior success, but crucially from loss and from failure. And it really feels notable to me that so many of our force dispatches, this key core strand of Star Wars canon DNA comes from that point of view. Like, Obi-1 here, certainly. Obi-1 to Luke in a New Hope. Now, again, like much more peppy by then and full of purpose, actually, but still a hermit,

still in hiding, still a recluse from so much of the larger connection that he could have otherwise had. Like, you contrast his somber tone here to the piece that he seemed to achieve in New Hope, and it feels like another key bridge and rung on the ladder of his journey, in a really cool and illuminating way. But what about like Yoda to Luke on Dagaba and Empire, one of the key moments in Star Wars history? Or Canaan who had again been in hiding. Obviously, Yoda isn't hiding on Daegaba.

Canaan had been in hiding when he's teaching Ezra and rebels. Luke imparting his perspective to Ray in the Last Jedi on and on. So what do you think of this? I was just really struck by this in this moment. Yeah. I drew those parallels to Luke last week. They were so striking just to see Obi-Wan in that future position, right? The future tutor of Luke is basically living.

the same hermit-like lifestyle and cutting himself off from the force here that Luke will one day because of a similar loss, right? Because Obi-1 lost an apprentice to the dark side, and Luke will too. And so they've both been burned like this. It's almost like sometimes I'll hear a veteran writer talk to a kid who wants to get into the industry. They'll be like, what should I do to have the kind of career you have? And they'll be like, don't do it. You don't want to be in this business, kid. Sorry, it's tough. Tough to make a living. It's that kind of vibe. And I love it, especially in this scene because it foreshadows the encounter with Vader later in the episode, right? If you're afraid of the dark, a monster like Darth Vader is what you're afraid of. That's the

monster who's running through your mind. And that encounter takes place in near darkness, right? with Obi-1 kind of futilely waving his saber, which at first he's hesitant to even ignite, and then he's just trying to peer through the gloom. And then you see Vader just loom out of the darkness with his stealthiness sort of spoiled by the green and red armor readouts on his chest. But I guess he doesn't have to be stealthy all the time. He was pretty stealthy in a couple of those moments.

Yeah. For a guy whose breathing can be heard on the moon of a planet. He doesn't really rely on sneaky around anyway. So I guess it's okay to have a giveaway. But that whole scene, I mean, that mirrors Obi-Wan cutting himself off. He hasn't felt that safety. He hasn't felt that feeling for a decade now. And he still doesn't, even though he's started to tentatively reach out.

It's just he's rusty. Now he's even more afraid because he knows Vader is out there. And so he is still surrounded by that darkness, whether metaphorical or actual. Oh, boy. Think the gods that he is also surrounded by some beeps and boob. because one of the other things in the sequence, we see that he's repairing something and then we realize it's Lola.

He has fixed Lola for Laia. Ben felt the tightness in my chest when this happened. This is just so sweet. And like, it's of a piece with him trying to gift Luke the Skyhopper. He's obviously not an expert guardian,

but he is so well-intentioned. And I think moments like this just really, you know, especially on the heels of the part two, like good when he hears that Lola's hurt, he has a caring heart. And like his instinct, ultimately, that compassion that we keep hearing about with the Jedi is to try to help people, is to try to bring them comfort and joy. I just loved this little moment. And also, Lola rules. And again, I will say, give me the fucking merch.

That reminded me of Avedican, too, because he's usually the one repairing droids and tinkering with technology, right? So maybe Obi-Wan picks something up from him. think of him as the guy who's repairing broken machines. Like, you know, he's the one who doesn't like flying and he's been living off the grid. But maybe he observed Anakin enough in his technical skills that he's making use of something there. So yes, he has been broken by Anakin in some ways. But there was always that kind of apprentice teaching the master dynamic going on between those two. And maybe this is something, some little remnant of his relationship with Anakin, that is actually nice

that has brought a little light to his life and Talias. That makes me want to sob. That is so lovely. What a great observation. Another happy landing and another happy droid repair. I love it.

They land on Mapuso. Interesting. Just the topography of this planet was really interesting to me. Kind of a hybrid. You've got some mountains and you've got some sand. Now it's technically more dirt and dust

than sand, but I'm running with this anyway. because it did feel a little bit like a hybrid of Mustafa and Tatouine, a very fitting spot for the reunion between these two characters. Looks like California also. Yeah, it's just, you know, right outside the volume. That's true. I don't know whether you've, whether this has bothered you at all.

That's almost like why the indoor trailer was so refreshing because it was so lush and verdant. And granted, we got that with Alderon. to some extent here. But for some reason, I found the effects a little lacking in this series, at least compared to Mando, which is weird because it's the same sort of production method. But it just feels like I can see the seams more often here. Like so often it seems like you have kind of a flat ground area where the characters feel kind of confined. And then I guess I'm not as convinced by the volume, by the scenery and the distance as I was in some prior series.

So I don't know what that is. But at certain times, the effects of phone flat. It's not constantly distracted by Grogu. Yeah, maybe that's why. Sweet baby Grogu always drawing the eye. Who knows? That said, I mean, I'm spending all my time looking at Obi-1's beard and face and lush hair. I just have to say, by the way, this sequence, like, he's very, very sweaty in this sequence.

And, of course, on the heels of the distressing reveal from T's. that our guy, Obi-1 absolutely reeks. It was difficult not to think about how powerfully he must smell. But he looks great on this walk, great in this sequence. Do you think the series is trying to make him look old and run down and decrepit, and it's just not really working because inherently it's still Ewan McGregor? Like all the lines about you can be my granddad, you know, it's like. I was like, I was like, excuse me?

Is that like a wigging? Like, we know Ewan looks amazing here, but we have to like stick to this fiction because he has to look like Alec Guinness in nine years. And granted, he's only like 12 years younger than Alec Guinness was in a new hope, which, you know, he's aging beautifully and gracefully. But I almost wonder whether that is their way of kind of like confronting that head on. Like, how is he going to look like Obi-1 that we knew? from a new hope in nine years. But regardless, whether they're trying to make him look disheveled and run down here, like this look is working for him.

I agree with you. It's great stuff. You got to get them back under the binary sons to speed up the aging. Yeah. I loved we were slacking in our ring of our slack after the episodes. Steve said that one of his hopes was that the sheer terror of the confrontation at the end if this episode would cause his hair to turn away. So funny.

That's a good reccon for you. I like that one. Great stuff. You know what? I have no doubt that he could pull off the silver fox look to. So I'm good with anything. Here, now, he is not expecting to meet anyone as they move towards these coordinates. And we see, again, this shattered trust.

Why would he lie, Leah says? People are not all good, Leah. And he really snaps at her because this is something that he knows all too well, not only just from his years as a general in war, fighting battles, but because of his direct experiences and his direct loss, losing Quigon, losing Sotene, losing Anakin, the Jedi Arta, et cetera. And so many of those are specifically the byproduct of some sort of treachery, some sort of deception.

And so his ability to trust has been completely broken, including, crucially, his ability to trust himself. Yeah, right. And only Sif deal in absolute. So it's nice to see that these characters in the series aren't all good or bad, right? You have Haja, who's a fraud, but also an ally, right, has the heart of gold. And then you have Freck in this episode, who's friendly, but also an informer, an imperial loyalist, right? And they kind of have to blend Leah's too trusting nature with Obi-Wan's not trusting enough nature because they're both kind of right to an extent, right? Obi-Wan didn't really trust Hajah. He didn't know where he was sending him. Ultimately, it turns out that his intentions were good, that he was sending him to allies. And when he says a little later on, nobody's coming, nobody's going to meet us here. He's wrong, right? Someone is coming. She's just running a little late. She got stuck in traffic. So there's that, but there's also, yeah, there's also Leia just trusting too much in Freck, right? So she has some lessons to learn here too. But again, they have to

learn from each other, just the classic Mendo and Grogu and Bad Batch and Omega. Yes. Yeah, it's a two-way, two-way relationship. I thought it was so great that immediately after that biting retort, he launches into speaking about the empire, ravaging this world and other worlds. He says it wasn't always like this here. There were fields and families, and then the empire came in and ravaged it all. And it's not a coincidence that that's where he goes right away because the empire's parasitic existence is the product of and the embodiment of that kind of broken trust. It's the rise that he feels he didn't do enough to thwart the people that he thinks he failed. And of course, like the empire ravaged planet is a Star Wars tradition, a Star Wars through line.

And so often you get these mining planets, these stripping of resources that take the essence of a place, the identity, the heart and soul of a way of life and turn it into just a commodity, a resource for the empire to use. Like, you can think of something as recently as Corvus, which we saw in the season two, Mando episode when Mando meets Assoca and battles the magistrate. Or, of course, you could think of Lothal and everything that unfolded there. There are so many examples. But I thought this was a nice little way to kind of link patterns in canon. Right.

Yeah. In the Legends timeline, not canon anymore, but in the old Dark Horse comics, they had world devastators, right? A little on the nose name, but just, you know, sweeps across the planet. Yeah. Death Star was super subtle. That's true. They have a history of not naming, not like couching their super weapons in PR-friendly language. But yeah, they have so many worlds that each individual one is disposable to them. They're just stripping it of its resources, whatever it has to offer. And then they're moving on. And they don't care what's left in its wake. Right. And I really liked that Leah's response to that was I thought the empire were supposed to be helping. Again, it speaks to that still intact innocence that you just talked about, but also to what she directly has been exposed to, which is. the fact that her father, her family, they are fighting.

They are quietly but consistently resisting. And Obi-1 acknowledges this, right? He says, well, there are some like your dad who are trying seems like a losing battle these days. And that was such an interesting line and an interesting vibe because it feels like another sign of his hopelessness, but mixed again with his guilt, a building guilt, as he confronts not doing more. Like he has to acknowledge, whether it's to watching bail or seeing Nari and the premiere, that others have not given up.

And he's going to have to confront that more later in this episode when he meets Tala and sees the Jedi etchings inside of the safe house. Like, it's harder to give up and say that you lost and say that it's over if you see how many others are still in the fight. You know, and we talked last week about how even for Obi-1, that was not entirely true, there was this great dissonance and conflict inside of him because that felt very present. But it was mixed and entwined with him insisting that Luke needed to be trained. So the more moments like this, the more he hopefully will be pulled back into believing that the fight is one that's worth continuing to wage. Right. Yeah, he can be a bit of a downer these days. We love him.

We feel for him. We know why he's like this. But he's a tough hang if you're an idealist, right? And that's because, well, sure, I know. But he doesn't want to hang. I mean, maybe he'd make an exception for you. but he wants to be back in the cave by himself. So he's been keeping himself separated from society for so long that he's lost his social skills.

It's like us post-pandemic. It's like, I'm going to see you in person in real life for the first time next week. That'll be weird. Hasn't happened in years. It's good a minute, man. Yeah, we're emerging from our caves and we're just trying to remember the social niceties. So some of us are doing better jobs than others. on the subject of trying to remember,

he is still very much anchored to his past and he looks out here and sees across the expanse Anakin, a mirage of Anakin hooded and ghostly. He's in his revenge of the Sith form, both because he is a specter from Obi-1's memories from his past, and because Obi-1, of course,

does not yet know at this point in the episode what form he currently inhabits, but he's taunting him, like he's drawing him in but also repelling him. And it's this visual manifestation of what Obi-1 fears, the boy that Anakin was, and then this shadowy looming truth that is still in the distance, but is increasingly hard for him to not actually stare in the face. And we should remember, we saw on the premiere, like, he has been seeing Anakin in his dreams. had he also been seeing visions like this throughout his waking life?

Like, we don't know, maybe, but it certainly seems like what Riva told him sparked this specific moment. Right. Yeah, I want to think that there's a clause in Christensen's contract, which was like, hey, can I be outside the suit in one scene at least this season? So kudos to him getting his face on screen. But also, I think it makes sense that this is how Obi-1 would picture Anakin because this is how he looked last time they met, maybe with redder, yellower eyes. But he basically looked like Anakin. And I think it's helpful to be reminded of that here because he's about to confront what

Anakin has really become. And so when he says later in the episode when he sees him and he says, what have you become, right? Which is just a heart-wrenching line. Like, this is the worst that he can conjure in his mind when he's thinking, what will Anakin look like now? He's out there somewhere. But in his head, he's still Anakin somehow.

even though he knows he chopped off a lot of his limbs. Like in his vision, he is still whole seemingly. And I think that makes it more jarring, more devastating for him when he's confronted with the reality of what the current Darth Vader really looks like. Absolutely. I think that's exactly it. When we head to NER, to Fortress Inquisitorious, we get this kind of pop and score, fourth sister, fifth brother, third sister,

meeting in the conference room, some of the worst team chemistry that we've ever seen. They really, they need a glue guy on the inquisters. And, you know, we can move through this part pretty quickly because we talked about this earlier.

The fifth brother says, she's not in charge. He's next in line. That's his seat. As far as we know, he's not getting that promotion because he has certainly not grand inquisitor when we meet him in rebels

and is in fact still paired with another inquisitor who he's bickering with all the time. But he uses the force to pin Riva on the table. And there was a little moment I might be grasping here and reading too much into this. But when she stands, she reaches, she touches her waist. And I was wondering if you thought that was a clue or indicated anything. Could that point to some sort of prior injury

at a decisive moment in her life as something else? Yeah, there was a shot, a dedicated close-up of that little reaction, which probably wasn't an accident, right? And she says that right before she brings up, Vader. So I wondered if there's some connection there. Sixth, Lex, I just spoke with Ward Vader. What a dunk on Fifth Brother. Yep, I went over your head. I got the direct line. I sent him the Slack DM. Yeah. So that's tough for Fifth Brother. You're right. I mean, they're like the Bronx Zoo Yankees or like the Shaq Kobe Lakers or the Jordan Pippen Bulls or something. Like, they've been successful without their leaders getting along. Are you into the sibling rivalry here? Like, are the Inquisitors working for you as convincing standalone villains, at least the supporting inquisitors or do we even need them to be with Vader around?

Because it's almost like they're poised somewhere between, like, comic relief. Like, the bickering could be kind of funny. It's like, oh, Fifth Brothers, like, oh, here goes third sister again. We just can't corral her. And she's like constantly defying orders. But it doesn't seem like it's played like that exactly. So I don't know. Is this clicking for you?

It's an interesting question. I think that there are two things really working against the overall Grand Inquisitor deployment in this show, one of which is Rebels, an existing measuring stick. Now, the Grand Inquisitor and the Inquisters are not like my favorite part about Star Wars rebels, hardly. But they're pretty interesting and persistent foes. And so it's difficult not to compare, not to be, you know, thinking about that with something like the Grand Inquisner in particular. But, I mean, the real thing is what you said at the top of the pot, like, Darth Vader's in this show. And it's not just something that we've been waiting for and waiting to build toward

in the final 10 minutes of the sixth episode. Like, we saw him in the second episode, which aired on the first night that we saw the show. And he was a huge part of the third episode. So if he is very, very present as the primary threat, then nothing else is going to, just definition of nothing else will be as compelling. I will say, though, I'm very interested in Rivas. arc. And I'm really curious to learn more about third sister and her history and her future. In part because she's the only one who we don't know if she survives or what happens to her,

right, which helps. But you're right. They get upstage. They get bodied by Darth pretty quickly here. It's hard to share the screen with him as a villain. It is. We get that. I will get what I deserve, third sister. And so will you, fifth brother boast. And Reva says, I hope so. I certainly hope so. which feels again like, I mean, maybe this is about, you know, her anticipating his eventual demise, but it seems again like another connection to her pursuit of this vengeance against Kenobi and the Jedi. Yes. She does a lot of muttering to herself under her breath as the other inquisitors walk away.

Oh, boy. Fortress Inquisitorious, very cool building. They need to work on the team chemistry. They really do. And the name. That's a real mouthful. I love it. It's foreboding.

It's great branding. into it. Plus, you know, you got Fortress Vader. Let's just call everything Fortress. It works. By the way, that world, Nour is in the Mustafar system, which is, it's not a moon of Mustafa, but it is in that same system. So you've got the proximity there, right? Vader has his underlings nearby. And it's a watery world. You think they should, like, combine them, maybe. Just like tip some of the water from Nour down onto Mustafar. To the fire. Yeah, then you could, you know, make some time shares on there, make it more hospitable, sell some land.

I don't know. I hear it's all about balance. So, Ben, we're running so long. So we'll try to pick it up a little. But there's so much to talk about, honestly. We're back with the Mapuzzo crew. No one's at the meeting spot. Leah still believes.

But Obi-1 is impatient, cranky, annoyed, certain that he will be let down. Maybe they're just late, Leah says. Maybe it was a lie. I knew it. I never should have trusted him. And when she says, we don't know if maybe, you know, looking to, looking to believe, no one is coming here. Leia, he snaps. You know, she wants to continue to have faith.

But he's just on the edge. He's not only ready to be, but expecting to be disappointed, expecting the worse. I would like to give my guy a calming edible and a neck rub. Like, this isn't tough to see him this way. It really is. But Leia, not deterred. She wants to find help. She doesn't want to go it alone, as was the case in episode two.

So she flags down a transport here despite Obi-1's pretty firm protestations. And then she talks despite him expressly directing her not to. And she says, hi, I'm Luma. This is my friend, my father. This is my father, Orden, we're farmers from tall. Two things here. One, Leah calling Obi-Wan or Ben to her, her friend by mistake is one of the cutest things that I've ever seen.

This was so precious. But I have to ask you. We won't go on too long of a, help me, Obi-1, tangent here. But if the fake names here, Luma and Orden, are ones Leah came up with and she's using first letters

of their actual names because you always want the lie to be close to the truth. Why does his name start with an O instead of a P? Good question. Canobi, you're my only hope. I got the impression.

that Obi-1 came up with this? He does say at a certain point, like, yeah, he's like, remember, we're farmers from tall or whatever. He stressed the farmers from tall, but he is slipping up calling her Leah as soon as though as the transport. And she was, like, pretty swift with the lies. So I was wondering how much of this she was a manning of a fly. But you're probably right. He wants her to be, you wants her to be like the loading droids, Ned, Ned B, right? Just be seen but not heard.

But she is not into that. They had a lot of time on that trade route to get their cover story straight. I know. It's tough. They could have done a better job of getting on the same page. Like you said, he's out of practice, working with others, you know? We were going on a trip, and we got a little lost in this field. That's prexing.

That's a weird story. It's so funny. I love that. By the way, what did you think of when Leia says, father, aren't you going to say hello? And he said, hello. But they resisted. They resisted the urge. The hell of their restraint is shocking to me midway through the story.

But when they climb aboard, he sees the imperial flag. And this appears to be handmade, which is quite alarming. Like this guy, Freck, is a true empire enthusiast. And despite what the stormtroopers say about how long the ride is, it's actually pretty short, but a lot happens because they come upon these four stormtroopers. Clearly, Palace of Freck, this is a regular kind of thing. They board and they reveal their look. for a Jedi. Ben, it's not what you want. And the trooper says, we'll find him. We always do.

And as with the Nari meeting, this is one of the many moments in the season as well as the wall etchings that are still to come in the episode where Obi-1 has to not only think about his own safety, not only think about Luke and now Leia, what will happen if he's not there to protect them, but the number of other Jedi who might have survived Order 66. We always do. Now, on the one hand, we know that that's not true. Like, the stormtroopers are going to fuck up all the time.

They're going to whiff after whiff after whiff. But that kind of line speaks to a recurring exchange that has to just fill Obi-1 here with this sense of despair about how many other people might have been out there, which, again, is a real through line of the episode. And the emotion continues, from there because Leah shares this cover story about how they're visiting her mom's planet. And it's, again, I think a good thing that she's kind of driving here because our guy old Ben

immediately fucks up by calling her Leah. I was like, come on, would he do this? But I feel like we're, we talk a lot about how do we link the path between the prequels and the original trilogy. This puts him more firmly on the path to not remembering anything, including R2D2 by a new hope. So, helpful. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a good. cover. I mean, this does not seem to be a hot tourist spot and it does not seem to be very walkable. So it's suspicious that they're there. It's a decent cover story. And then he recovers quickly. He does a decent job of saving it by saying that he sees her mother in her. That was her mother's name. I get confused. I was, oh, God, I was cracking up. But then I got emotional when he says sometimes when I look at Louva, I see her mother's face. Right. And Leah senses the sincerity there because he's already, he's made. that comp right in episode two. He notices some Padme in her and they were close. And so it's nice. I think we get that moment. The cover story slips. And then, yeah, there's the moment where he says it's a long story. The trooper says it's a long way. One minute later, he's like, well, this is us. It's going to walk. That's not actually that long away. But the cover almost slips. And then they slip it back into place just in time. And they continue on their merry way. that we all miss her very much was just a really like sad and tender little moment and then it leads to after the troopers disembark this like contemplative presumably as we've been discussing forcetuned leah reading something right penetrating to some truth and asking if he knew her mother and then that was like okay this yes this this tracks and then i was i gasped when she said are you my real father and he turned to her so sad

badly and said, I wish I could say I was, but no, I'm not. Now, lots to parse here. Of course, he knows her real father. So he is speaking from a position of sincere remorse in multiple respects, like wishing none of this had happened. Because if Anakin hadn't been the father, then maybe he wouldn't have been seduced by Palpatine and fallen to the dark side. Like, that felt like the, the true and genuine heart of that moment. The less maybe crucial top line item, but definitely something I was thinking was this is a big moment for the Padmey Obi-One shippers. And also, Obi-Fox canon confirmed. He's like, yeah.

Yeah. Why not? There's much more of a love triangle aspect to the early drafts of the prequels, right? That's right. Yeah. Anakin was suspicious. Hey, Obi-Wan, what are you doing in Padme's quarters here? That plays a part in the lack of trust between them.

A lot of that was written out of the prequels on the screen, but there's still sort of a subtext there. There's a bit of a jealousy going on there. So, yeah, I guess it's not true that he is literally her father. I guess we can rule that. But this is kind of a callback to that wish. Incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. And then, Obi-1 responds to this by opening up about his own family. This was a huge moment. He says, I know that feeling. As Jedi were taken from our families when we're very young, I still have glimpses, flashes, really. My mother's shawl. My father's hands. I remember a baby. A baby? Yes, I think I had a brother. I really don't remember him. I wished I did. Then I joined the Jedi and I got a new family just like you. So I want you to

clarify for us how much of this is new canon because this is pretty fresh stuff. Yeah, this is brand new. As far as I know, there were prior understandings that maybe Owen was actually Obi-Wan's brother, right? This was like in original scripts of the original trilogy, but that was written out. And as far as we know, we haven't known any details of Obi-Wan's family. And we still don't know a lot here. But I think maybe it supports the idea that if you have some force sensitivity as a kid, right, Leah is saying that she remembers her mother, even though she saw her for one second just after she was born. So maybe that is a little support for the idea that if you are a future Jedi, If you have a high enough midi-chlorian count, then you can form a very quick impression of your family.

But it also links the two of them, right? That they were both torn away from their families, that they had to find adoptive families and adjust to that situation. So it's another moment that brings them closer together. And could it come up again elsewhere in this series or somewhere in the canon? Yeah. One would think, right? I mean, you don't get kind of offhand references to maybe kind of important characters. that don't get picked up at some point.

So I don't know what form that will be in, but maybe we will learn more about OB2, as I called him in my recap at some point. I like iconic. I love it. Yeah, it feels like that's bound to come into play after we heard it. You're mentioning the link that this establishes

between Leah and Obi-One. The other thing that I kept thinking about was it's another link between Anakin and Obi-1, like a very thematically rich one, because we see here Obi-Won's own longing, specifically in that I wished I did line. And that just feels so key because his regret, there's this great passage in the Asoka novel

where he's reflecting on his regret about not supporting Anakin to just go back home, you know, to see his mother again. Like this recognition in a statement like this here of the limitations of the Jedi way. He's not saying it outright, but I feel like it's embedded deeply in the text here. There's this added heft to that this reflection puts on the You Are My Brother moment, like losing a brother,

ending a new one found family and then the pain of that loss. And, you know, just like with Sotene and Padmaid, this feels like one more thing, one more way in which Anakin and Obi-1 could have found some common ground and could have found a further way to bond and help each other, but so much of the rigidity around them just prevented it. And then, of course, the new family, which is like presented here as this hopeful note, is something that he's also lost. Like, this is just so, so, so tragic. Also tragic, but predictable. The treachery at the checkpoint here, rat it out by their transport.

Who could have foreseen this with the imperial flag on the back? I think this was always his plan, but I did wonder, you know, you think this was always his plan? Or did he just hear everything that everyone in Leo were saying. after great stuff. The troopers call a probe. It's a quick little moment where Obi-1 stands in front of Leia to protect her, which I loved.

And then he stares into the probe as we talked about earlier for an incredibly long time. Go full on here. Just shoot first. Don't wait. There's no mistake in that, Facebooks. As soon as you let the probe get a glimpse,

it's done. And then suddenly, we get this action sequence, firing at the probe, firing at all of the troopers. He, the Obi-1 is an ace shot. He's a marksman after his inability to hit the target from the rooftop in episode two. That came back quickly.

Yeah. So some skills are returning to him, but he still is not ready to whip out the lightsaber, right? That's going to take some doing. He'll shoot you, but he will not slash you yet. That's right. So uncivilized. And then another transport arrives and all briefly seems lost. He's still raising the blast or he hasn't given up, but it's.

Pretty grim until is that Indira Verma's music? Alaria. Big moment for Thrones fans, big moment for Rome fans. We've been so excited to see her character, and here she is. Tala arriving at last, an imperial officer who is really part of the budding rebellion. This was so fun and so cool. Obie completely shook. He doesn't speak here initially, but he looks stunned.

He's disbelievingly. Can you trust her? Are people, people in Imperial Garp, people at all, actually capable of helping and doing good and not letting you down? This is the beginning of a really big moment on his journey. The probe did, in fact, relay their location, Mapuso. And it turns out that the empire's got a whole bad right there.

Strip operation. Vintrium. Fun little, fun little Easter egg there. Riva can't call Vader to tell him the news because Fifth Brother already did. Unbelievable stuff. Fader's got like call waiting. He's got like third sister on one line.

Fifth Brothers dialing at the same time. Which one do I answer here? He's going to have to mute the text threads from these two. Riva says, you want to take the credit, you go right ahead. But we both know who will be standing by his side when this is over. I think a line like that kind of fuels what we were talking about earlier. Maybe the apprentice goal more so than just the grand. Inquisitor mission. And back on Mapuso, before the Inquisitors, before Vader arrives,

Tella is leading them to the safe house. And we get a moment just between Leah and Obi-Wan while Tal is checking things out. She tells him that he didn't mean to run away. And he really tries to comfort her. He looks just so heartbroken to see her sad. And it was a quick and fleeting moment, but it really struck me that his, my duty is to the boy, response and air from the premiere feels like a lifetime ago already. He is so attached to and committed to and devoted to Leah too.

Yeah, no, they've bonded. This is not something he's doing out of duty to bail anymore. He's doing it out of affection for Leah. Inside the automated droid maintenance hub, we get to experience more affection because we meet Ned B. Just delightful stuff.

Leah an angel to him yet again. She loves droids. She introduces Ned to Lola. Delightful. precious. And then we get checkoffs. He's just a loader. They don't allow them to communicate. But what if he has something to say? When will Ned speak? What do you think? It has to happen after this. I mean, Tela says actions speak louder than words, right? Maybe he has his own way of contributing. You don't think he's going to say something with actual words? No? He speaks softly and carries a big wrench in case he needs one.

It's true. I do find the sounds of like his sound design of his motions just so super. Oathing. Yeah, he reminded me of Baymax from Big Hero 6, but there was sort of a similar vibe to them. But clearly, he's on their side here and the troopers underestimate him whether he can speak or not. Clearly, he knows what his mission is. And he's on the side of the angels here. In the safe room, which we are led into, tell reveals to Obi-Wan that the safe houses are present throughout the galaxy. They're trying to link the. systems. She says, some call it the path. You're not the first Jedi to come through here. It all leads to Jabeem. We'll hear Jibim come up again at the very end when Tala is saying to Ned that they have to get the burned, Obi-Wan, to Jibim. From there, we give them new identity. She continues and get them out. There's a lot of good people risking their lives out there. And this was just a fascinating. There's a lot of great facial expression acting from Ewan McGregor in this series so far,

but it was very keenly felt here. Like, he looks odd, but also ashamed. And in exchange, which really speaks to how long they've been fighting to have built this up. And we've seen some of this across the stories from Bayel and Asoka, among others. We'll see more of it later. Ezra, Canaan, Phoenix Squadron, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, as we noted earlier with the, I'll know, we'll find him. We always do trooper line or with Nari and the premiere or any of the other examples. Like, it's really striking to watch Obi-1 have to confront and process how many other Jedi

and how many other allies have not given up, like have not allowed. themselves to believe that it's over. And his reaction to there's a lot of good people risking their lives is in part like relief and inspiration. But the shame I thought was helpful there. Yeah. And Leah asks Tala, is it scary having to pretend? And she says, yeah, sometimes, but it's worth it if I can help people. And Obi-Wan's been hiding. He's been pretending all along. He has not been helping people. And ostensibly, he has an important mission. He is protecting Luke, but we know that's not the real reason or the sole reason why he's been sitting on the sidelines all this time. So he's confronted here with someone who has made different choices

and maybe even more difficult choices. We saw him refusing to help people multiple times in the early episodes. And here we see someone who is taking tremendous risks constantly to help the very people whom he's been turning his back on, right? Jedi survivors, younglings, people like Nari, who Obi-Wan was like, go away. You know, you're drawing too much attention, bury your lightsaber and live a normal life. That is not the choice that Tala has made here, and she's making a real difference. Yeah, absolutely. It felt like there was a lot of potential Andor set up.

You wrote about this in your piece in this scene with Tala and then some other little nuggets as well. There's a really interesting moment when Leia asks if they're all Jedi. And Tala says these days the empire hunts anyone who's force-sensitive, even children. Now, of course, on the most basic level, this will make Obi-1 think of Luke and Leah, not showing yet in Luke's cases, Owen put it, but the threat that they are under in numerous respects. But it's more than that, right? I was just like, oh, my God, are we going to get a Grogu connection here? That was my first thought. But more broadly, Project Harvester. Right. There's this ongoing effort here, the Inquisitors just snapping up, collecting force sensitive kids and turning them to their way. And we sort of saw that in the second episode, right, with the force sensitive kid, Corrin, who has been, you know, he's being hunted, presumably, and he's escaping to Corelia. So it's not just people with training, people who were officially part of the order.

If you have that potential, then if you can be turned, you'd be a powerful ally, right? So it's anyone. You have a high enough midichlorian count. The Inquisitors want you. They want to kill you or they want you to make you one of them. So many great moments across the stories, whether it's Cadbane and pursuit or a list of force sensitives on a holocron on it on the sinister shit from Palpi. But Obi-Wan sees a list of names of a sort. Yes.

These etchings on the wall. And he sees and calls out a particular Quinlan Voss's name. Quinlan was here and he sounds like wistful. I gasp. It's just so exciting. You're going to talk. You're going to do your lore dive later in today's episode, a. about the many clues, Quinlan and otherwise,

that we saw here and what it might foretell for the future. But in this moment here, like, again, this thematic resonance of Obi-Wan hearing, yeah, he helps now and then smuggling younglings and smiling at first, but then turning so dower and so somber. And I love, this is one of my favorite moments of the episode, when he sees he's tracing Quinlan's message with his hands

and lay ass what it is. Only when the eyes are closed, can you truly see he reads, see what the way? And this was just a beautiful moment in the episode and already feels like a really key moment

in Obi-1's arc, this somber tone, this sense of remorse, this dawning realization that he gave up too soon. I want to hear your read on this. You wrote about this a bit in your piece.

My read on this is reconnecting to the force more broadly. I think there are many other ways to interpret the way and we should note that it is capitalized in the subtitles,

which feels deliberate. Quigon force connection, certainly possible. Felt to me just more broadly like reconnecting to and tapping into the force. There's a connection, of course, to a new hope there.

A number of moments across Star Wars when characters have to rely on the force or their feelings or their bonds, not just their sight. We can think of Canaan and everything that he goes through on his journey after losing his sight,

Ray closing her eyes and the last Jedi to really see the way that the force manifests. Luke lowering his helmet. What does Obi-1 say to Luke in a new hope? Don't trust your eyes.

They can deceive you. He has to remember that here so that he can get to the point nine years later of imparting that wisdom, which gives us yet another great little link between Luke and Leia and the lessons that they could both receive from Obi-Won. So I just loved this. Yeah. You could read this quote in a number of ways. I mean, it could be a literal surface level reference to the fact that you have a secret

tunnel here that you can't see the entrance to and you just have to sort of sense it the way that Riva ultimately does. I doubt it's the same way that Dingeran talks about when he talks about the way, but it is a way. It's a code to follow. It's some sort of ethos that you want to follow in your way. And, you know, I think it could be a reference to Quinlan Voss's power of psychometry, which I'll get into a little, but that is a power that allows him to sense the memories of

others by touching objects they used. It could be a tip that Obi-Wan uses to get past whatever is blocking him, whatever is keeping him from communing with Quigon. But there's clearly a lot of significance to this quote. And so if Voss doesn't appear in the remainder of this mini-series, I smell a spin-off, maybe an Andor crossover, maybe a Mandalorian flashback scene. Maybe Tala is ticketed for Andor too. Maybe Voss, one of the younglings that he helped smuggle to safety. could it be Grog's? Could he have passed through this room, the secret room at some point?

Did he carve his name in the wall? I didn't see it. But maybe Grogu has been here too. So this is a resonant moment, portentious moment. Do you see the residue of any consumed frog eggs or furhull frogs? Oh, my God. That would be, boy, that would be incredible. The troopers come, Ned, stout, prepared to.

act. They underestimate him just a loader. This is all going to come back for Ned. He's going to have a big moment to shine for sure. And he does even at the end of this episode when he goes to scoop up Obie. And you know, you talked already about Leah as Tala is moving up the flight and they're hurrying and getting ready and she's changing. And there's this like kind of, you know, like modesty or nerves on Obi-1's part. And he's turning and walking away. And Leah and Tala are having that exchange, which was very potent. I loved inside of that the little she'll make a good fighter one day. Yes, I think you might be right about Leah because she wants blaster lessons like amid all of this. She's like, can you teach me how to

shoot, which was just so fun. And then we build toward Obi-One finally asking, asking her about why she risks everything. And as you noted, like the inspiration that he can take, particularly from such an unlikely source, a source in particular that he was inclined not to trust will hopefully have a real impact on him. And one of the really cool things in this exchange was that she kind of has this little retort for him because after she says, I made some mistakes, you know, trusting the empire in the first place, he says, we all did. And I love that because he may not be inclined to trust, but he does see the value of forgiveness because he knows what it is to air. And when she says, I can't imagine Obi-Wan Kenobi doing anything wrong. He replies,

Leia, I hope you didn't hear that. No, he replies, it's just. has been these days. And I just, there's so much to chew on there because his reputation proceeds him. They know his name, his stature, his legends still, but he is not remotely flattered by that. He feels completely unworthy of it. Like he wants to distance himself from that name, that life, not only to protect Luke or now Leia or anyone else, including himself, but because it is praised that he does not believe he deserves. Yeah, it's like Bader not identifying as Anakin anymore, thinking of that as a past self, as a separate person. It's almost like old Ben, medium-aged Ben here, is thinking of Obi-Wan, the heroic general and

Jedi master. That's a different person, too. That's from a past life. He's trying to reconnect with that. Maybe he will by the end of the series, but he's not nearly there yet. And so just to hear about that, I think maybe it only adds to his shame and his sense of guilt, the fact that he has this reputation that people think of him as this storied hero, they don't know the whole story, right? They don't know his secret shame and the very real failure that he did have here, right? So I think he almost wants to unburden himself

and be like, no, I'm not the Obi-Wan. You know there was, that Obi-One is a fiction, right? There's more to that story. Right. And I'm that guy. So I think he doesn't want to be compared to that person because he doesn't see himself as that person anymore. That was beautiful. And so I won't I won't pollute it by saying that this is where we should discuss whether we're shipping Talon, everyone, we can save that for later because we've got a bad question on it.

But I'll just say serious vibes between these two. Serious vibes. And I am worried about Leah's hearing because this is what, the third time now that she has been in the vicinity. This was a tough one in particular.

Yeah. People are saying Obi-Wan left and right when she's like just out of ear shot. I'm also worried about whether she can read because she asks Obi-Wan to read the inscription on the wall. She seemingly doesn't see the Arr-Besh lettering that says Obi-Wan on the bounty hunters hollow, right, in episode two. Yeah, the fuck was far away. It was dark.

Maybe Quinlan has bad handwriting. She's missing a lot of signs. Like, she's very advanced for her age. She's very precocious. But when it comes to connecting the dots between Ben and Obi-Wan, she's not quite making the leap yet. Oh, my God. Well, other dots are about to connect here because as Tala is directing them to the tunnels,

Obi-1 senses it at last, Vader. The music changes. He gasps. He is literally like bold over, unstable in his shock. A disturbance in the force. He has not felt Anakin in 10 years, and he has not felt Vader ever. He goes to look peeking through the slits in the door.

he cannot believe what he's seeing. The suit, the strut, the horror on display, Vader force-choking, force snaps the neck of the child of the man he was forced choking, forced drags. Obi-Wed did not know you could do that on Disney Plus. Oh, my God. This was like real savagery on display. And my read on this was that Peter is trying to lure out Obi-Wan.

I mean, on the one hand, trying to flex, right, to show his might, to show his strength and what he's capable of. But I think more so an echo certainly to like empire and tormenting Han to try to draw Luke, but an effort to prey upon that Jedi compassion that we heard the Inquisitors talking so much about in the double premiere. Yeah. And I think this is how he charges up for a fight, right? Like, this is an energy drink for him. He is feeding on the fear and the suffering and the pain. He's like filling up his energy meter here. Yeah, right. So I love that moment. This is as brutal as we have seen him, certainly in live action.

Like, we've seen him in the past, you know, mowing down troopers at the end of Rogue One, right? But that's a military scenario. I mean, here he is just slaughtering innocence as a way of sort of smoking Obi-Wan out. Does the brutality of this scene, like, we know Vader's capable of this. We have read scenes like this. But does seeing it make his redemption at all? difficult for you, just looking at what he's capable of and thinking to the heartfelt father, son, seen at the end of Return of the Jedi, like, is that enough? Is throwing palpi over the rail there? Is that enough to balance the scales? I don't know. I mean, it's a great question. It's an important one. It's one we should probably keep discussing. It's one that Star Wars fans have been discussing for a long time. It really comes to the four when you see something this stark and this vicious. on the one hand, you know, when you were talking earlier about the way that those sequences

and the dark side locus at Fortress Vader allow us to hold on to the embers of Anakin like still simmering within, the flip side is also true. We are inclined because we have witnessed this entire redemption arc. I am inclined at least. Love a Star Wars redemption arc. And there are other versions of this, Kylo, et cetera, right?

This is a Star Wars tradition to say, well, there was good in him. Padma was right. That doesn't excuse or forgive or erase the atrocities that he committed. And so on the one hand, this is hardly the only example across Star Wars canon of the vile things that Vader has done. It is for us to see it through Obi-1's eyes. Like the last time he saw Anakin, he was this burning husk on Mustafa. Then he becomes the specter in his dreams. And now he is this weight. as you noted earlier, like the embodiment of that monster in the dark, it almost has to be this extreme in order to get Obi-1 to the place that, frankly, we lament that we find him in in a new hope where he says only a master of evil. Like you need to understand how he could get to that headspace where he had lost the capacity to believe there was anything still inside, any of Annencans still inside of Vader. And I think that makes it so tragic. And I think the fact that Obi-One, one of the people who Anakin was closest to and loved the most, one of the people who

in a different kind of a different kind of version of this life could have helped pull him back into the light is the one who brings this out in him, the one who he dreams about tormenting and torturing and murdering viciously, the one who he can't wait to display this vileness in front of so that Obi-1 understands what he helped turn Anakin into. And no one likes to blame other people more than Anakin for things that he's also culpable for. Painful to watch, but I thought it worked quite well. Yeah. And I alluded to this earlier, but there is this pattern of in the sequel trilogy, in some of the series, in the Disney era, we've seen the characters we know and love or hate in some cases when they come back. For story-related reasons, they are often stripped

of some powers that they previously possessed. So Luke has lost his hope and his faith, and Leia has lost a lot of her power and her allies and Han doesn't have the Falcon anymore initially and they've even lost each other or Boba Fett, right, he's lost his armor, he's lost this ship and Obi-Wan too. Obi-Wan has lost a lot of the qualities that we previously saw in him. And I think there are good reasons for that to happen. I mean, for one thing, if you're going to go back to these stories, you can't just have them all be superpowered and everything's going great. You have to have some conflict and you have to have them go through that process again of being broken down and being built up again and going through another hero's journey.

And I think that that can be satisfying. So I'm not someone who's saying, I don't like Last Jedi, Luke, because Luke would never be like that. That worked for me. I love that. Yes, me too. Worked wonderfully for me. Important. I also enjoyed seeing Luke lay waste to the dark troopers for a few minutes in the second season finale of Mandalorian.

So I think there's room for both. And the point is that this is not Vader stripped of any powers. this is Vader leveled up. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if this is but the learner, you do not want to meet the master, right? Because he has gone down the dark path some way since we last saw him.

He has fully embraced that side of himself. Right. And I think if you're someone who's just like, hey, when I was playing with these action figures as a kid, I had Vader just like chopping people up and laying waste to everyone. And I want to see that version of Vader on screen. Well, here you're getting it. So I would not call it. like pandering or fan service in any way.

It totally works. This is what Vader is like at this point in the timeline. And because of the reaction that we get from Obi-Wan, it's satisfying to see that. It's not just like wish fulfillment for fans that we get to see Vader just tearing up the town. It's also that we get to see the reaction shots from Obi-Wan and how sickened and distraught he is and how culpable he feels in all of it. That's what really elevates it. Yes, exactly.

To that last point, like there can be no doubt in his mind. that what Riva revealed this horrible truth is in fact the state of affairs. And when he turns and says to Tala promise me that she will get Leah to Aldrin. It is, of course, not difficult not to think about Quiguan asking Obi-Wan to promise him and the often, like, ill-fated nature

of those kinds of exchanges in this story. And he goes out. He goes out into the street knowing that he will draw Vader away. That Jedi compassion. There it is. Much like a new hope, right? He has to stage a distraction to allow others to get away. Exactly.

But also what felt like a need, a need to stare that truth fully in the face and eliminate any lingering lack of certainty that he may have had. And, you know, interstitched with the duel throughout the final stretch of the episode is more arguing between the Inquisitors and Riva finding the safe house. And Leah convincing Tala that Leah can make it on her own go back for Obi-1, which is important, of course, both because Tala does arrive just in the nick of time with Ned help retrieve Obi-1, but also because Riva ends up. finding Leah. I assume she went around the tunnel. There's no other explanation for how she didn't run into Talah

and how she wouldn't have passed Leah. But even though that's kind of cut in between, we'll just kind of, we'll just say all that there so that we can focus here in our final few minutes of the deep dive before we get to the other stuff in the episode,

the dole, the meeting, the dole of the flames. Again, shocked that we got this year, certainly feels like the opening salvo. I thought this was, was so thrilling. The chase nature of it felt so appropriate, especially given how it concludes, because we, as a teaser, we'll talk about this more than a minute, both fall into the Gator's playing with his food camp in terms of why he let him go.

Obi-1 initially winds up in this mining field. He's running. He's panted. He just seems exhausted. He's looking over his shoulders. It's dark. And then he stops, and we see this vague shape in the foreground and then hear it, the wush. And the red saber ignites in the foresh. And the red saber ignites in the foreground, Darth fucking Vader. This was electric. That first flash of red in the dark, I just thought this was, I got a chill. I really did. And then the breath, the score searching, Obi-1 looking so genuinely and truly afraid and hearing Vader's voice for the first time when he says you cannot run Obi-1. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Just amazing. And I mentioned this earlier. I just got such Cloud City dual flashbacks here.

The whole, you know, in a mining planet location and the cat and mouse and Vader saying there is no escape in Empire and, you know, slashing pipes and steam coming out and just the atmospheric nature of it. And Obi-1 shouting, that's impossible. Oh, no, sorry, that didn't happen. Right. And you get that incredible line, what have you become? I am what you made me, which is just great. That line right there, I think, is why Vader makes such a great villain. Because, yes, he has a distinctive suit and cool powers.

But he didn't say, I'm your worst nightmare, although that would be true. And he didn't brag about his abilities. Like, there is, again, that aspect of sadness to this where, yeah, he is boasting a bit, maybe about his power here, which has clearly surpassed his masters in this moment. But there is also that, yeah, exactly, right. He feels some of that horror that Obi-Wan feels as well. And that exchange, what have you become? I mean, Vader could ask Obi-Wan what he's become, too, right?

Because he's not stuck inside a suit. And yes, he's still hot, but he spent the past decade cowering on Tatouin and losing his powers. They're unrecognizable to each other. Right, just as Inican has. I mean, not just as Inican has, but both of them have lost touch with their inner selves, their true selves that they will one day return to. So this is visually striking. It's thematically striking. This is the reason for this series to exist as far as I'm concerned. I'm with you, man. Beat for beat. They're staring at each other in silence before that exchange,

but no silence needed. I, you have my assent. I agree. I think that to the visually striking point, I loved, loved, loved the aesthetic of this sequence. When Obi-1 hears, as he's, as he is trying to run, even though he was just told that he can't, hears Vader's voice again. And like, just on instinct, after he took his saber out before and didn't light it, he ignites his lightsaber at last. And that, that lash of blue, like, it's almost like he's holding a flashlight at a There's this kind of haunted effect on his face. And of course, what's he holding? Blue, Anakin's old saber color.

Like the last time they battled on Mustafa, it was blue against blue, brother against brother, mirror images. And now we're going to get blue against red. And I loved to the nighttime setting and the way that it evoked twin sons, the Rebel's Obi-1 Mall episode, because you can contrast, like, how assured, even though it is painful, how assured Obi-One is in that decisive moment with Maul, how at peace he is there, relatively speaking, compared to how utterly lost he is here.

And to your point about that lament, one of the reasons I loved that, what have you become, I am what you made me, exchange so much, is because it's true, but it's not, you know? And that's always the most interesting kind of storytelling, like it is what Anakin clings to. certainly. What he needs to believe is that this is someone else's fault that

Obi-1 did this to him. It's what Obi-1 fears that he failed Anakin that fully, that he failed Quigon, that he failed the Jedi, that he failed the galaxy. And he did, to be clear, he did make some real mistakes. This is not like full-on Obi-1 Apologist territory. But so did a lot of other people, right? Like the Jedi are culpable. Anakin is culpable. Certainly Palpatine. is culpable. And the fact that Anakin in his rage is not able to acknowledge any sort of subtlety or nuance like that just feels so appropriate because this is an obsession. This is a fixation. And obsession and fixation is what led Anakin to the dark side in the first place. And when he does finally ignite that saber, it hardly holds back the darkness.

It's just a little flickering light in the middle of this gloom. And he's just whipping around one way or another, just looking for his adversary here. He can't find him at first wherever he runs. Vader is there somehow, much like Riva and Leah, right? One question I had, can Vader run? Like, physically can he run? Because he has that horror movie villain, like, universal speed limit where he always walks, but he can catch up with you anyway.

So mini-lore segment, there are at least two times where Vader does run in the canon. I love this. I love this. book, Lords of the Sith, he runs on Ryloth when he and the Emperor and a couple of royal guards are being chased by Lylex, these scorpion-like creatures. He does run, the text says. And in the 2015 game Battlefront, which is canon, you can run as Vader. So yes, technically, I think he can run when he needs to.

But the whole point of Darth Vader is that he doesn't need to run because he's an inexorable force. He will catch up with you. You can run, but you will only tie. yourself out. And eventually, he will be waiting for you. Well, he's waiting for Obi-1 here because Obi-1 is doing his best to skirt around the mining equipment, but he is just unsure. Invader, stealth mode sneaks up, lowers his blade, and Obi-1 gets his blade up just in time to block the stroke. But he is hardly equal to the task here, because they begin to duel. And Vader is towering Obi-1. It recalled to me

the way that he is presented in rebels, where he is just this, like, hulking, vast, form. And here it is, it is just, it is in part because of their respective postures, but also this offense versus defense, like, bearing down. And Vader is charging forward with such ease unleashing such savage strokes. Like, it's almost like he's working a broad sword and Obi-1 is fencing. You know, Obi-1 is being pushed backwards. Like, it's all he can do to just block. I love the, the way that he's using two hands to hold up and try to control the blade. And Vader is choosing one and it just is the easiest thing in the world to him to the point where he says knowing that he has the edge the years have made you weak and it's great because it's like a new

hope echo but you know there's a little bit of a should obi one be this week i need to see my strong guy obi won who we know can can has best in mall multiple times it took down anakin on Mustafa and frankly, yeah, loses to Vader in a new hope, but only grievous, right, only because he's ready to sacrifice himself in a new hope. But I loved this because not only is Obi-1, yes, aging, but also out of practice with the blade, he's weak with the force. Vader is so tapped into the dark side here. He is at the peak of his foul power. And Obi-1 has been cut off from the force for so long that he has lost this really essential type of strength. And More importantly, even than that, one of the three lines of this discussion, he's hesitant.

He's unsure because he is so horrified and so fearful. He's consumed by guilt still about what happened on Mustafa, and he's not ready for this. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, he's not sure what he wants. Does he want to stop the monster that he sees in front of him? Does he want to find a way to atone for this great life-defining regret? You can't duel against Darth Vader if you don't know the answer to that question. Yeah. How long has it been since he found out Vader was alive? Like hours, right? We don't know how long that trip was. A very short transport ride, but a very long cargo ship ride according to Leah.

He just found out that he's still alive. And now suddenly he's fighting him here. Like, life comes at you fast. So I thought at first, like, is Obi-Wan sandbagging here? Like, is he exaggerating his weakness? Is he trying to, like, lull Vader into a false sense of security or confidence? But I don't think so. He can just barely, stand. He's like bowed down with the weight of his knowledge that this is Vader and that he had some hand in creating this monster. And he just hasn't used the force. His lightsaber has been buried in the sand for who knows how long. Literally. He just tapped into the force like a day ago for the first time in years and years. And it clearly took some effort, right? When he had to save Leia's life, he's like, you can see the strain in him reconnecting with that side of himself. So he is totally ill-equipped for this confrontation.

Oh, my God. And Vader says, you should have killed me when you had the chance. Now, on the one hand, good note. On the other, well, if you had,

we never would have gotten the redemptive arc, so. Sure. Got to take the long view on that one, but. Yes, and there's this great moment

where Obi-1, you know, slashes some equipment and the steam releases. You've mentioned a lot of the visual and thematic parallels to Empire already.

That kind of Luke use of steam is another one, but also, of course, this evokes Rogue One and Vader emerging as this menace through the fog.

And when Obi-1 runs and realizes that he's, he's boxed in and turns and raises his blade, Vader's just like, all right, it's time to take this to an entirely different stage.

He knocks over the flammable material of the ventrium. He forslifts Obi-Wan with such ease and relish. This was painful to watch for the OB stands out there.

This was really harrowing. It is, it is, It is so stark, like the divide between their respective strength here for all of the reasons that we just discussed. There's so little that he can muster here. And when Vader touches the tip of his saber to the ground and lights the earth on fire and says, now you will suffer, Obi-Wan. Like, I got to chill. This is what he wants.

It's not just to kill him, which we'll talk about more in about 30 seconds. It's to cause him pain. It is to destroy him and he force drags him into the fire. He wants him to suffer and to suffer in exactly the same way that Anakin had to when his flesh burned and curdled on Mustafa. Like this is an act of viciousness and torture, but it's also an act of parallel revenge. And eye for an eye, charred flesh for charred flesh. And Obi-1 screams, much like Anacin's, on Mustafa, chilling. chilling.

And we will see when Ned and Talar are hovering over him at the end of the episode, he's badly burned on his right arm and his right side. Mercifully, no face, beard or hair burning. Yeah, right.

Thank God. But this must be like fire resistant robes here. Or maybe Vader is, he wants him to slowly simmer, right? He doesn't want him to burn up right away because he wants to drag this out. But it is shocking. It's no harder for Vader to lift him up and choke him here than it is for, you know, him to do the same with Admiral Azzell or Captain Nita, right?

It's like apology accepted Obi-Wan, you know? I mean, he's putting up no fight whatsoever here. He is helpless. And there maybe is a part of him that just wants to surrender to this. It's like, hey, I deserve this. You know, this is what I deserve. This is my comeuppance. So it's heartbreaking.

Oh, my God. It really is. And when Vader says... It mirrors a scene, right, as you were alluding to, there's a scene in the Darth Vader comics from 2017. I mentioned this a few weeks ago in a lore segment, I think, but there's an early scene where he has a vision of, like, reuniting with Obi-Wan, and they get back together, and he kills Papatine, and he gets Obi-1's forgiveness. But then later on, as he proceeds down the dark path, then he's fantasizing about a role reversal, about reenacting the scene on Mustivar. And this time, it's Obi-Wan who doesn't have the high ground or he overcomes the high ground and he's the one who is burning. He's taken the lava bath.

This is how he gets his jollies now, just envisioning that happening to Obi-Wan. And here he is. Finally, he is in his thrall. He can do with him what he wants. And of course, it's going to be the fire. Of course he is going to inflict the same sort of suffering that Obi-Wan did on him, or at least that's how he sees it. Right. And he says, your pain has just begun as Obi-1 is just helpless and roasting and screaming.

And that line is the key. Because Vader does not just want to swiftly dispense with Obi-Wun. He wants to torment him. And so he doesn't pursue after Tala, he initially says to the stormtroopers, you don't bring him to me. And then Tala fires a shot, hits a stormtrooper, and then causes an explosion with the equipment that brings these flames back to life. And we got a lot of, this has been a topic of conversation on the internet. for a couple days. The Midnight Boys talked about it. We've got a lot of mail-bad questions about this today. Why didn't Vader follow him? To me, to you, to us, this completely tracks. Like, make no

mistake. Darth Vader, the flames dancing in the eyes of his helmet, chooses to walk away, chooses to let Obi-1 go. He did not have to. He wants to toy with him. He wants to torment him because he wants to cause him the same kind of pain and humiliation that he thinks Obi-1 caused. him. He wants to play with his food. You know, let him escape because that only extends the game, which extends the torment. Like if Obi-1 thinks for a second that he is safe, it'll only hurt all the more when he realizes again that he isn't. And he wants him to feel exactly what Anakin himself felt, which was that terror, that waiting, that wondering, would it be okay? Would there be a way forward? He could have four-strokeed him in a second here if he wanted to. And then the other thing that I

love about this and found actually really rich is he thinks he can find him again too. He doesn't doubt that for a second. Like this is a real, you know, you underestimate my power kind of moment, which I love because, okay, we've talked a lot about how we understand this story in relationship to a new hope and the larger canon. And I think this is an example of where a new hope and our knowledge of what awaits is not just a we know where this is going or how do we avoid a reccom kind of situation, but actually like a real thematic character journey, Boone, because we know that Obi-Wan Kanoi makes it out of this show alive. A lot of things could contribute to that. We don't know exactly how, but I just think it is so fitting if one of the reasons is Vader's hubris. If he's so sure he can

find him again, so sure he can beat him whenever he wants. And then he doesn't. That greed, that arrogance will mislead him again. And I just think that's really rewarding because believing that he can best him and then failing would just be so poetically rich for his character. Right. I mean, it brings back the high ground moment, right? Where he thinks, yeah, you can jump over my blade and that's not possible. So I think we know he has the power to extinguish the flames because he had done it a second ago.

He could do it again. In an instant. Absolutely. But remember the exchange between Riva and the Grinquisitor in episode one, she asks why chase after scraps? And he says scraps are all we have left. Right. So Vader has not had anyone or anything to challenge him to test his powers for years here because there's so few capable, powerful Jedi out there and the few that there are have gone to ground.

And so they're chasing after ex-Padawans, you know, ex-younglings. Like, this is not enough for him. And there is a point in the comics that takes place about five years before this series where Vader asks Tarkin to hunt him down just for fun. I love that arc. Tarkin puts together a team of hunters. What a weirdo. Yeah, just because he misses the challenge. He needs something to hone his skills against.

So he has not had any opponent like Obi-Wan. And I think he's probably disappointed by the fact that Obi-Wan is posing no threat to him here, right? I mean, he's been envisioning and savoring the idea of his confrontation for years. I don't think he wants Obi-Wan to be weak and to roll over. He wants to best him when they're both at the peak. of their power. So maybe he just doesn't want it to go like this. Like he just wants to wait. Maybe he wants this fire scene to play out again on Mustafa. Like, I found him once. I can find him again. We don't know if he will attach a tracking device or anything, the episode four move here to find

the rebel base. But if he found him once, then he can find him again. And maybe that by that point, Obi-1 will pose more of a threat than he has here. And I think that's what Vader wants, which doesn't mean that we're going to get the full-on, you know, extra long special effects CGI duel that we got in Revenge of the Sith because I don't know how you can top that. And these guys are older now. And it would be a leap for Obi-Wan to get back to that point in the next three episodes. So to me, it's not necessarily that they need to be acrobatts and it needs to be balletic

and they need to be doing twirls and jumping over each other. It's more about the satisfaction of the character work here and what they say to each other and what we can see written on their faces. But you would think that the next time they meet, which will presumably be before the end of the series, that they will be at least a little more evenly matched than they were this time. Yes. Give me some back to tank healing time. Give me some strength and conditioning training with coach Quigon, the Force Ghost.

And give me right now a little lore dive into those etchings inside of the safe house. It is time at last. All right. I will download as quickly as I can here. So we got a shout out to Quinlan Voss, king of the one line, Obi-Wan mention, right? Who could forget the indelible line from Revenge of the Sith? Salukhame has fallen and Master Voss has moved his troops to Buzz Pity. Just a great line, iconic quote, who can't quote that one?

But that's the same Quinlan Voss here, same guy getting a mention. Initially, when Obi-Wan said Quinlan was here, I thought he was reading the inscription than that Quinlan had written Quinlan was here on the wall. Like the old... Like that middle school bathroom graffiti? Yeah, like Kilroy was here. Yeah, the old graffiti team. Fortunately not the case.

I could see it. Maybe. There was a more profound inscription here. It's true. Quinlan is a quipper. He's a wisecracker. So other than Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Asoka, Quinlan is probably the most prominent and powerful Jedi to survive.

Order 66 and still be kicking around at this point, prominent both in terms of his place in the canon and in fans' affections. So if you enjoy Jedi who don't go by the book and whose morals are slippery, gray Jedi, you know, slipping back and forth between. And who have passionate love affairs with Assange Ventress. That too. Then you like Quinlan Voss. So he was based on a background character who is visible in the same frame as Anakin and Quigana and Tatooing in the Phantom Menace. So technically he has appeared in live action before, although that was a retcon. So really, he was created by the comic book writer John Ostrander, who featured him prominently

in the now non-canonical Dark Horse Comics, Star Wars Republic, Star Wars Jedi. These are from the late 90s and early 2000s. There's actually a Quigon link in his name because Ostrander said, Sometimes I work with syllables and from established names within a given species. When Quinlan Voss was named, I patterned it after Quigon Jin. I wanted the same number of syllables. Quai became Quinn, Gahn became Lan, and then I joined them together without the hyphen. So he still has not managed to find Quigon here, but he found someone who was sort of named the same way.

George Lucas took a liking to that character, put him in the Revenge of the Sith script. He was supposed to have a scene. They made an animatic, but they never shot it. Sort of similar to how Quimlin Voss's Paduan, A La Secura, another character created for those comics by the same writer. She was also ported into live action in Attack of the Clones for the same reason. So Voss was originally supposed to appear in a season one episode of the Clone Wars. Didn't actually make it into the series until the season three episode, Hunt for Zero,

where he teams up with Obi-Wan. So they're kind of an odd couple. Obi-Wan controlled, refined, sticks to the code. Quinlan is impulsive and rude and a real maverick. They both get some good one-liners off. And after some initial misgivings, they get along pretty well. So the council tasks the two of them with tracking down Jabba's Uncle Zero, the hut. He's escaped from a republic prison, also from the huts.

He has incriminating info about other hut crime lords. Zero ends up getting killed. Obi-Wan and Quinlan fight Cadbane, who survives that, of course. Frilling stuff from Cadbane. Yeah, cannot be killed, except in Book of Obavet, sadly, maybe. So he was slated Voss to have a whole extended arc in the Clone Wars where he would partner, let's say partner professionally and romantically with Asage Ventress as they tried to assassinate Count Duku. But instead, that story ended up in the 2015 Christie Golden novel Dark Scipital. So like Cal Kestis from Jedi Fallen Order, Foss has the power of psychometry.

I mentioned that before. So he can pick up other people's memories by touching objects they use or being in places they pass through. So this makes him a great tracker and a spy. So he's often going undercover. He's in the underworld. He's embedded. He's working with shady characters. I know you've devoted a lot of time to thinking about whether Obi-Wan fucks and in your head and in your head canon, he does.

With Quinlan, there is no doubt. Quinlan definitely fucks. Multiple people at multiple. multiple times. The council sends him and Ventris to assassinate Duku, which is not a very Jedi-like mission. And at first, he's so deep undercover. Even Ventris doesn't know he's a Jedi, but eventually he reveals himself. She convinces him that they'll need the dark side to take down Duku. So their relationship status would definitely be it's complicated at this point because Ventris has killed Vasa's master, but he doesn't know that. She tells him Duku did it. Meanwhile,

They're student and teacher, but they're also sleeping together. It's pretty complicated. So, Duku eventually, when they track him down, he says, So she has given you a taste of the dark side. Indeed. And perhaps other things as well, I gather. Incredible. Oh, my God.

Tell me, Vass. How many Jedi vows have you broken to destroy me? Remarkable. Pretty much all of them. So. Oh, my God. He tells Venet. he's not returning to the Jedi, Duku outduels them.

Quinlan becomes his apprentice for a while and a separatist agent known as Admiral Enigma. He's still planning to use Duku to get to Darth Sidious and take out all the Sith. But then he rejoins the Jedi as a double agent. The council discovers he's still working with Duku. They assigned him to assassinate Duku again, which seems like a questionable plan. But the council secretly sends Obi-Wan and Anakin to tail him. And after Vos defeats Duku, Obi-Wan and Anakin capture them both, they escape. Lots of twists and turns here.

Then Vos and Duku, they turn on each other again. Ventris gives her life to save Quinlan. Sad. Very touching, tender, sad moment. Yeah. Duku escapes. Voss spares him, which Obi-Wan sees him do. So Obi-1 knows there's still some good in him.

Obi-1 argues for his reinstatement to the order because he believes that that assassination assignment was a mistake in the first place. So then Quinlan is just a Jedi again. All is forgiven. He's a Republic General. He's also got a new girlfriend. He has a kid with her in the old expanded universe, although not in the current canon. So he survives Order 66. He's listed as one of Vader's priority targets, but clearly he has escaped capture all this time. And he is still out there. And now we know that he is still good enough. He is still close enough to the light side that he is helping these agents ferry the younglings along to safety. So as for the other names on the wall, we have a few names here that you can kind of piece together and do the translation from Arrabesh and you can study the screenshots.

And it seems like we have at least three confirmed figures here, Jin Altis, Roganda Ismarin, and Valen Halcyon, all of of whom date back to mid-90s novels from the old expanded universe. And now they're in the canon. So to be clear, we don't know anything about them in the current canon, except for the fact that they escape the empire and they sign their names on this wall at some point. But I will give you briefly just a bit of their original backstory. So Altus and Ismarin were first mentioned or first appeared in the 1995, Barbara Hambly Book, Children of the Jedi.

Altis is the leader of a splinter sect of Jedi that believes in marriage. and thinks you can be trained at any age and that masters can take more than one Paduan at one time. It's kind of culty, to be honest. But there is a book called The Clone Wars No Prisoners, No Longer Canaan. But in that book, Altus meets with Anakin, tells him you can always come be a part of my splinter order if you get expelled from the Jedi because you're with Padmae.

So both Anakin and Asoka are kind of shook by the existence of this alternative to the order that encourages attachments, which makes them question whether Obi-Wan and Yoda's teachings are actually the only way. So most of this other sect, the Altisians, they survive Order 66 because even though they fought for the Republic, they weren't really fighting with the clones. They weren't in the Grand Army. So he's still kicking around. Roganda, meanwhile, is part of a refugee group called the Children of the Jedi, who were actually children of the Jedi order, who were themselves trained as Jedi and escaped Order 66. So eventually she's captured by the empire.

She becomes one of Palpatine's concubines. Gross, but it happens. Palpatine fucks too, at least, in the expanded universe. Then she falls to the dark side. Yeah, she becomes an imperial operative. She has a son whom she grooms as the next emperor, and she turns him into a 10-foot-tall killer with a cybernetic brain and lightsabers implanted in all of his joints.

And eventually he destroys her. like Frankenstein's monster. I've said this before, but the old expended universe was wild. Lastly, we have Valen Halcyon, also known as Hal Horn. So he's a character who was first mentioned in the 1996 novel, X-Wing Rogue Squadron, first book in the excellent X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole. So Valen was also secret son of another Jedi who was trained as a Jedi by his father, survived the purge, was adopted by a Corellian family, became a Corellian Security Force inspector, or eventually he gets killed by Basque, but before all of that happens,

he has a son named Corrin, Corrin, who goes on to become a master in Luke's New Jedi Order. So make of this what you will, but the kid, whom Hajah helps escape in episode two of Obi-Wan, listed in the credits as Corinne. So these might just be Easter eggs

for fans of 1990 Star Wars stories, but they could also be, if they are, I appreciate it, I felt seen, thank you, But they could also be laying some groundwork for those characters to appear in Andor or the X-Wing movie or new comics or somewhere else. And it's also, I think, worth noting that all four of these Jedi, I just talked about, including Quinlan, they're products or proponents of attachments, right? That Obi-Wan would have considered forbidden. So is that a coincidence or is it a nod to Anakin and Padme or Obi-Wan and Satin or Obie?

You want in Tala, if that happens? I ship it. If he decides that he doesn't hate Alaria sand, he likes sand, actually. So is it setting up something in Asoka or in the acolyte or some other upcoming series combined with the fact that we got the mention of Obi-1's brother here and just how jarring that lack of attachment and being torn away from your attachments can be? Like, it doesn't seem like it's a coincidence that all of these Jedi who are name-checked here have some kind of, you know, not strictly following the code, having some sort of romantic attachment.

I don't know whether that foreshadows something, but it is a quality that they all have in common, which is intriguing, to say the least. I'm in, Ben. That was incredible. As always, I'm excited to really excited to see more of Quinlan soon. I just can't wait. And I agree that it feels like a lot of this could bear fruit in and or if not sooner. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks,

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Normally this is where we'd fly to Theory Corner, but we hit everything that we we were going to talk about in Theory Corner already. So we will instead move to our duncy of Easter eggs, which we've also almost completely hit. So I will just ask, do you have one of the remaining Easter eggs that is a personal favorite of yours or anything that you wanted to highlight on the Easter egg front in this episode? Gosh, I guess the Storm Trooper cut in half, Darth Miles style. That's mine too.

The mall cut in half, nod with the stormtrooper falling into the... They're doing great things with robot legs these days, so I'm not giving up hope for that guy. What would have been lethal injuries in the past? not necessarily now, which is relevant also for the Grand Inquisitor. He basically has the Quigon injury, right? That's the same sort of fatal, lethal, lightsaber wound that Quigon sustains. But since then, we have seen characters suffer far worse injuries and recover from them, whether it's Vader or whether it's FedExand or whether it's Mal himself, right?

You can come back from a lot. So that seems relevant. And I don't know if this is Theory Corner or not, but just wanted to mention because we had a slightly different interpretation, I think, of Riva's reaction when she sees the Jedi crest, which I guess you could call that another Easter egg here. So when she's in the secret room, she tentatively reaches out to it and then pulls back from it as if it would burn her or something. And you were editing my recap and we were going back and forth a bit about this because you read this as pure rage this moment, at least initially, right? like exclaimed and threw a lot of furniture. But you clearly, yeah, some longing maybe or some.

It looked, yeah, it looked like there maybe some more complex emotions under the surface there. I don't know how much good or conflict there is in her, but it seemed like some, like the way that she was reaching out, I wondered whether she was thinking, hey, I could have been one of those younglings who is passing through this room to a completely different fate. And ultimately I wasn't because whatever happened to her happened. I agree. But I read it is, yeah.

And because the Jedi and Kenobi failed me, I never got that chance. But yeah, that's a great one. You mentioned younglings. I'll shout out one other Easter egg, which Eric Vasa and New Rockstars highlighted, zoomed in on the conference room shot at the Fortress Inquisitorious, the collection of youngling helmets and all of the Jedi lightsaber, like lightsaber's ringing the room. Yeah, trophies.

Positively Grievous-esque with the collection there. Yes. Ben, do you have a secret scroll? This is a recurring bit here on House of Art. My pick is Freck. I'll just tell you that. My pick was also Freck. We know that he's, you know, he can put one face out to the world and have something lurking underneath.

Although he does advertise his sympathies, right? He's someone who likes order, but I would not put it past him to have. of multiple layers to him, Secret Skullf Wreck. I love it. All right. It's time for the mailbag. We've hit a lot of these today,

but we're still going to get to a few before we wrap. Jomey, come join us. Extremely happy to be here. I'm much more happier to see you guys than Obi-Won was to see Vader. That was a scared. Lobar. I have never seen a man so scared in his life before. He was fumbling with that saber.

It was incredible. Now, Ben, glad to have you here. We missed Joe, but, man, I always learned so much more about Star Wars when Ben is here. Oh, thank you. I feel like I'm getting my Ph.D. in Jediology when Ben's here. All right, our first question comes from Emily. There had been a lot of theorizing. We'd get flashbacks in the show.

Obeteen, maybe Osoka, Obi and Anakin. Halfway through, and there hasn't been any yet, which makes me think there won't be any at all. Is there still a chance? Should I hold out hope? And we got another one kind of like this from Laura. If we're about to treat those burns, are we getting a flashbacked up? Do we even want it after Boba? Will it be more old footage as they've been doing or some new?

So my quick answer to this is that I think we have gotten flashbacks. Like they maybe not in the full we're getting a five-minute uninterrupted sequence the way that we thought we might. But we've gotten so many, whether it's the dream, or the incursions of the lines from other characters. We've got audio and visual. The four minute previously on the Star Wars prequel's recap. So we've seen a lot for the past. I think we will continue to.

And I'm glad we got that question from Laura, because that would have been my first answer is, is the seemingly inevitable back to healing process going to spark some more of this meditative state reflection? I think that would be really, I personally would like that. I'm ready to see, you know, Hayden pre-Mustafar in some of these sequences. Obviously, I'm holding out hope for Sotene, though. The further we get, the less likely, it seems.

But I do think we continue to see the lenses of the past. And I think it feels like inextricable from Obi-1's path moving forward. As he keeps reaching out to Quigon, keeps trying to process and heal, he needs to be assessing the past in order to move forward. So I do think we'll get more flashbacks. What about you, Ben? I don't feel like I need flashbacks personally, just because. Because Obi-Wan is, he's living in the past, in the present, right?

It's so constantly with him, which I guess could be an argument in favor of doing the flashbacks. But it almost seems redundant to me. Well, I guess that's kind of what I mean. But maybe it depends on how strictly you want to interpret the term. Like, I feel like the flashbacks are kind of embedded. Yeah. Right. But flashbacks, literal flashbacks with possible de-aging effects.

I mean, I don't know that we need to go there necessarily just because we've seen so much of the past of these characters. And we know what the conflict is. We know what the drama is. We know the emotions that are lurking under the surface here. So I think it's almost extraneous. Like, would I be mad if it happens? Could it be cool? Yeah, sure.

I would welcome it if it's done well. But I don't need it. How about a scene you haven't seen between Quigon and Little Paduan, Obi-1? Ooh. Yeah. Think about it. Think about it. All right.

Our next question comes from Anderson. these episodes so far seem to imply that Leah is already force sensitive, which while it is a so-so retcon, makes sense for Star Wars going forward. But why is Anakin so bad at sensing other force users? How does he not sense Leah here? Is this why he has the Inquisitors? Interesting.

So I think you're born force-sensitive, as far as we know, right? You have the midi-chlorian count that you were given. I don't think Leah being forced-sensitive is a rec-com. But I'm interested in your read on the second part of that. like why Vader is not sensing his child right there on the planet. Right. I mean, first of all, he has a lot on his mind in this moment. He is sensing.

Busy day of the Google Cal. Yeah, he's snapping necks. You know, he's kind of focused on Obi-Wan. And again, like, he does not expect that he has a daughter. So he's not, like, attuned to that. He's not on the lookout for one. And because he's so focused on Obi-Wan and slaughtering innocence in that moment, And Leah is not actively tapping into the force, right?

Like, does she have some precognitions? Does she have some flickers? Does she have some gifts that maybe she doesn't fully understand? Sure. But she hasn't harnessed those, and we know that she won't fully harness them for decades to come, right? So I think as long as she is not actively channeling that, it's more of sort of a passive force sensitivity. I think there's some precedent for that, not necessarily like making as big a blipy on the radar as it would be if she were really using the force. And again, like, you're feeling

Obi-Wan for the first time. There's a lot of baggage there. I think that covers it. That explains it to me. You know, if he were stuck in a room with Leah at some point and they're having a conversation, could it become clear that, oh, she actually has some power? Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. Not that it would necessarily be clear. I mean, look, later in the saga, right, he is in a room with Leah, right? It's true. In episode four. Or first flight of the trilogy, basically, right? And then he doesn't immediately recognize. Exactly.

So he doesn't know. He doesn't sense that she's his daughter. I think it's just basically because she hasn't been trained. She doesn't herself know that she has that ability. Maybe she suspects that there are certain things that she can't explain that have happened in her past. But I think there's enough precedent to say that just merely being in proximity is not necessarily enough even for a skilled Jedi hunter like Vader who has some other things on his mind. mind at this moment. All right. Our last question comes from Jack. Now that we have Doran spiritually in Star Wars, who wins in a fight? Oberyn Martel or Dinjari? This is easy. Easy question.

Easy question. This is a softball. You can't get your skull crushed when you never take your best car hanging off. Exactly. Game set match. I rest my case. It's not a discussion. It's not a discussion. Yeah. It's true. It's true. I got I got Mando and four. Yeah. Baskar also helps you avoid inadvertently poisoning yourself with the tip of your own blade.

So just, you know, din all around. Unanimous. Consensus. Okay. This was just a thrill. And friends, your pain like our pods has just begun.

We will be back. We will be back before you know it. We will be with you all Obi-1 season long. Thank you to our Jedi Masters. Mike Wargon for producing this episode. Arjuna Ram Gapal for his additional production work on this episode. Jomea Denneron,

for his work on the social for this episode. And of course, thank you to Ben Limburg for pinch hitting today. To you back in next week for our OB-1, part four, instant reaction and deep-dive pods

and our impending coverage of the boys, Miss Marvel, and more. And until next time, just remember, we are what you made us. What's the difference between butter

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