The Ringer-Verse - 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' Episode 6 Deep Dive | House of R

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

Mal and Joanna are joined by Ben Lindbergh to dive deep into the heart of the finale of 'Obi-Wan Kenobi'! They begin with their initial thoughts and a discussion about fandom as a whole (04:47). They then take on the themes of the episode as Obi-Wan confronts Darth Vader once again (34:06). Later, they talk about Leia's involvement in the season (02:09:14), then conclude with Ben's lore corner before answering your questions with Jomi. Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Ben Lindbergh Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the host that brought you to Coding Westworld. And Westworld, the recapables. Comes the Ringer Prestige TV podcast on Westworld. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Danny Hyfitz. And I'm David Shoemaker. Welcome to Westworld Season 4 in the Prestige TV podcast feed, where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld season four.

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New sweetgreen wraps hit different. Order now at order. Sweetgreen.com. I am what remains. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Anakin, for all of it. I am not your failure, Obi-One.

You didn't kill Anakin, Skywalker. I did. 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 back to Tatooine, but also to join us on the ringer's Nexus podcast feed

for all things fandom. Joining me today, now that they've finished telling me, they were always here. I just wasn't ready to see. It's my house of our working title. Co-host Joanna Robinson and our Jedi master,

Ben Limburg, here for the entire pod. Hello there. So happy to be here. You stole my line, though. I had the Quigon line all holstered and ready to go. You stole my thunder. I'm sorry.

If you're both representing Quagon, does that mean you have to like split the beard and the wig between us? Like, does Ben get the badly glued on beard and I get the badly glued on wig? Is that how that works? Probably. Bad situation. Or do we get half and half anyway? Yeah, much like Asoka revealed one eye under the helmet and Obi-Wan another, you guys can share.

I guess that came before the spoiler warning. But, you know, the finale aired a couple days ago. It is what it is. Okay. We have a lot to get to today before we dive in to discussing Part 6, the Obi-1-Kadopi finale. Some programming reminders, as always. Jam-packed feed. Jam-packed.

The Mint Edition crew will be back on Sunday with an umbrella academy breakdown on the new a season. Then on Monday, it's a House of Midnight Boys Breakdown. That one's going to be a dozy appointment listening. Can not wait. And then later in the week, we will have Marvel pods. We'll have Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2 pods coming. It's already somehow time for that. The week after that, we'll have Thorpods. It's all happening. How can you follow all of it? So glad you asked. You can follow all. all of that by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, by following the ringer versus myriad social feeds. We're everywhere, we're everywhere,

including on TikTok. Check it out. And of course, final programming note. Spoiler warning. It's a friendly neighborhood one. Today's podcast will feature plot details from the Obi-1 Kenobi season series? Who can say? Finale. The entire season to date and all of Star Wars canon. All of it.

All of it. So proceed with caution. Proceed with more caution than Bail and Obi-1 did when arranging a truly moving and sweet but irresponsible visit on Alderan. What's everyone doing?

Broad daylight. Oh, my goodness. Boy, okay. I have to say my posture is going to be worse than ever on this pot. I'm hunched so far over to get it. The height of this little makeshift setup is just all wrong. All right. We're here to chat about part six.

52 minutes. This was the longest episode since the. the part one premiere, and it brought our very anticipated Obi-1 Canobi limited series slash season one, who can say

journey to an end. We have a lot that we're going to dive into today. This is a show we've been looking forward to for so long, and there's so much to break down and parse not only with the finale, but now the season as a whole and how it fits into the larger context of Star Wars canon that we thought Ben had to join us. for the whole time.

We're really excited to chat about this episode, a divisive episode of television as a trio, before we get into the deep dive. Let's start as we always do with a little opening snapshot, just a taste, just a teaser of the thoughts and feelings that we will explore at length as we go.

Quick overall impressions of the finale and the season. Joe, you want to kick it off for us? So I was, to preference podcast, I was re-listing to that, like, a most essential Obi-1 moments podcast we did a while ago to sort of see how our thoughts about it then align with our thoughts about it now. And something that I said on that podcast is I was like, all right, we know that there's going to be some continuity monkey business. But if it emotionally makes sense, then I promise to be okay with it. Will you be breaking your promise today? No, I mean, I will say this.

I cried several times watching this finale. Same. Maybe some of those tears were frustration, but a lot of them were emotional. Like, I was very moved by several moments. And so in that way, it was a really successful episode. But I won't lie to you. Like, Ben Lindberg and I traded some, like, I think it was like 3 a.m. My Time, 6 a and his time.

Slacks about a. The heat of the moment. About some frustrations. Some things were said. Yeah, with this episode. But if you asked me emotionally if it landed the plane for this character, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I will say, yes, it did. Okay. Ben? How did I feel about this finale?

I have a few notes. Yeah. You collected those notes in a piping hot column on Pringer.com. I did. To be honest, parts of it really lost me for reasons I'm sure we'll cover. there were also aspects I appreciated and some very emotional moments and the inherent Hayden-Ewen appeal of it all. And I'd like to like it more. So I genuinely hope that you can convince me. But I had a hard time with just how dependent on retracing the past it was, which we will get

into, and also just how clearly you could kind of see some of the plates spinning as they tried to resolve all of these conflicts without truly being able to because of how their hands were tied by the timeline, which, to be fair, we knew would be an issue going in. And even more so than some of the previous episodes, this one was full of the kind of character decisions that keep me awake at night. And not just when I'm writing recaps at 3 a.m. and messaging Joanna. But you know those peanut strips from after the 1962 World Series where you see Charlie Brown and Linus just sitting quietly for a few frames peacefully?

and then in the final frame, Charlie Brown stands up and he screams, why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher? Or why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball even two feet higher? That's been me since this episode ended, screaming about various things related to Star Destroyers and duels and trips to Alderon, which I'm sure we will discuss. I'll just be quietly going about my business. And I'll think, but why wouldn't they have used the tie fighters or the tractor beam?

Why would they walk away from the duel at that point? And maybe there's more than one answer to some of those questions. But ultimately we know why, right? Because then the series would have ended and Obi-1 would have died or Vader would have died. And that really would have caused a headache for the cannon. Man, do you think we were talking about recons before? Yeah. That would have been a thorny issue.

He was a horse goes the whole time. Did you imagine? I just had a hard time shaking the feeling that some things happened here, almost solely. either to summon a memory of something that happened before or to avoid conflicting with something that happened after rather than because it made sense for this story or these characters in these scenes. And in the end, that left me feeling a little bit unfulfilled and frustrated, despite some highlights here and there. So that's the finale. The season as a whole, because I am going to have a few notes here, I do just want to reiterate a general note that something that helps me keep my

Star Wars disappointments in perspective, which is that when I was a kid, when we were all kids, back in our day, there was no new Star Wars. None, nothing. There were video games and magazines and books, and I buried myself in those things. But seeing a series like this at that time would have made my year. So we're all flummoxed by the fact that it's been two and a half years since the last Star Wars movie and we're not sure when the next one will be. Sweet summer child. Try 16 years between trilogies. Try 10 and a half without any Star Wars TV to tide you over. So we are just saturated, suffused with Star Wars here, but we're still sort of evaluating each episode or series as if it's the only morsel of Star Wars we're going to get. And I feel like we're all immensely

spoiled. And I remain grateful that the franchise is back in a big way, even though I haven't loved or even liked every individual release. So love the first half of the season. Love the third episode. We talked about that, Mel. It was great. I wasn't always happy with where it went from there. Feel a little like I did after Book of Boba, which maybe isn't surprising given the origin of those series as anthology films that were then reworked as streaming series. So there were some rush things. There were some things that went a little along and things that maybe this wasn't the right length or structure for the story. But there is still good in this series, and we will talk about that too. Before Mallory tells us how much she loved this episode, and I'm excited to hear why.

I'd want to point out two phrases that stood out, really stood out for me in Ben's, at least the drafts that Ben sent over to me, I don't know if they made it into the final published version. But the two things that he said about the state of Star Wars where it is right now, because to your point, we've never hit such a rich banding of Star Wars content. But the way in which they're trying to place these stories in the margins of a story that we already have, which, to be clear, started with George Lucas. This is something George Lucas did with Clone Wars, right? And the prequels you could argue. The word you used was ossified. And I thought that was such a smart take where it's like, we made the final copy. We know so much. You don't see people use that word enough.

Yeah, we know so much of what came before, and we know so much of what came after. And so our hands are so tied as we come into this middle section here. And then the other thing you said was like, it's an episode of Star Wars where people just quoting Star Wars at each other. And this is like a huge pet peeve that I had in the end of Game of Thrones when people would just sort of like speak Game of Thrones lines we've heard before. And I'm like, first of all, that doesn't happen in real life. And that's okay, we're not in real life. We're in space wizard territory. But, like, secondly, that isn't a perfect, that isn't a substitute for emotional content.

Now, the emotional content is there in a lot of these scenes. And the original writing is actually what got me the most. So, like, there were just too many lines in this episode that I was just sort of like, okay. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm pasted over from other scripts. And, like, but that to me is not successful Star Wars. But there are some lines in here that will forever haunt me that are original to this finale. Exactly, right.

It was really special to see Ewan and Hayden in these roles again, whatever the failings. There are moments from Obi-Wan's relationship with Leah and his scenes with Vader that will stay with me forever. We got a good new John Williams theme. So count our blessings. But from a storytelling standpoint, from a production standpoint as well, I felt like given the ingredients, it could have been baked a bit better. And maybe we still need Star Wars movies, which is one of my go-to takes, even though I like the streaming series. Not everything conforms to that format. This isn't the best fit for every story.

So this just felt a few midi-chlorians short of force-sensitive to me at times. Okay, Mallory Rubin, Ben and I are at the bottom of a pit and we're covered in rocks. And the light has gone out. What hope can you offer us? I won't walk away. Without reaching out through the force to see if there's any... Not this time. Any life left.

I liked the episode. I liked the season of TV overall. I definitely think it was flawed. I think the finale had flaws, and I think the season had flaws. Overall, I think, like, a lot of the through lines of the second half of the season, again, I'm like, I'm like with Ben, I really loved the, the first three episodes,

as I've mentioned before, I thought the third installment was like, oh, this is going to go into all time territory stuff. I think that the finale had things in it that I just absolutely adored and loved, and that were like genuinely meaningful to me as a person who loves Obi-Wan

and as a person who's really invested in the Obi-Wan-V-V-Tarer relationship across the canon. Ben had a recurring bit in his column called the come on counter. It was a tally of all the times. He said, come on while he was watching the episode. And so when I rewatched it, I decided I would do a cry counter to see what my tally is. And I got to six, six different times in this episode. I think I had five come-ons. Good ratio. We're in positive territory. Now, again, I think that there were things in this episode and in the season that just did not work. And one of the things I'm looking forward to discussing with you both today is whether the season needed more time to make those things work or whether they should have just been dispensed with entirely. Like the Riva, Luke, Tatooine of it all in the finale, I was not super fond of.

Vader, Obi-Wan. Now, the point for Ben about character choices and people behaving in certain ways we'll have to parse some of the decisions and whether they track. In terms of the emotional catharsis, I just found it really moving.

And I do think it will feel like an essential installment, much like, and I'm not sure I'm ready to say this is exactly a one-to-one with the prequels. I think that overall this was stronger than two of the three prequel movies. But much like when I return to the prequels,

there are plenty of parts in those movies where I'm like, this is like not great, right? Not the best. But when I think about the character arcs or Joe, when we do an episode like the Obi-1 Moments episode, a lot of the things that we pull from that stand out for bonds and relationships or single character arcs,

sometimes can come from weaker installments. And so while I thought that the finale as an episode was stronger than four and five were, certainly, it's a mix. You know, really high highs, confounding lows. That's my take on the finale and my take on the season overall. I agree. I'm interested in how divisive it is because just anecdotally, you know, chatting with our colleagues, chatting with friends, loved ones, reading things on the old interwebs. There seem to be a lot of people who really strongly disliked the finale and a lot of people who really enjoyed it. And I'll just say, Ben, to your note about like maybe, maybe I can convince you to like it more. And I mean this with nothing but like love and respect for both of you and everyone else out there who deserves love and respect. I'm not really interested in trying to convince you to like it. I think it's completely fine if people didn't like this finale and if people didn't like this season. And

one of the things that really bums me out about Star Wars fandom is the compulsion that a lot of people have to try to make other people feel bad about the way that they consumed something or felt about it in any number of directions. Like, if you like something that somebody else didn't, that's okay. If you dislike something that somebody else liked, that's okay, too. I think that part of our charge here on the pod is to interrogate why we think something worked or didn't. And that's one of the reasons that I really cherish these conversations with you both.

And there's a lot to parse out on that front today, a lot. But if you didn't like it, that's okay. Yeah, I completely agree. I actually tweeted something similar. based on reactions I was seeing about this finale, where, as you say, from both sides, like if you didn't hate this, you're not a real Star Wars fan,

or if you didn't love this, you're not a real Star Wars fan. And that drives me up the wall. It's just like, yeah, love what you love. It'll let people hate what they hate, and it's all okay. And then plenty of us are somewhere in the middle of that, right? And the absolutism in only a Sith deal is an absolute, right?

So fans like, Absolutely. Exactly. Put that down. And like the thing that I think about all the time because you hear

people say like, well, I saw the movie in the theater in 77, so I, you know, my opinion,

like whatever. But like, what we all know is true is that this has been a part of Star Wars in the beginning as well. The Ewarks were hugely divisive when they show up

and return the Jedi. There's like something called the EWalk line, right? Where when you're born a certain time, like, you're like, EWCs are great.

And then other people are like, what are these teddy bears doing Roan-up Space Wizards movie, right? And then, of course, that to the end's degree with the prequels and that with the animated series and so like that. It's just Star Wars content is not going to be for everyone. This is especially fraught and tricking one because unlike the Mandalorian, we're dealing with a character that just like, you know, has been here since the very beginning and means so much to so many people. So it is especially, it feels especially charged.

That being said, the last thing I want to say about that is that like, Molly, I don't think it's your job to make me like something, but what I love about talking to you and what I love about listening to Ben, like breakdown on the lore is that it does help me focus on the things that I already loved more. And I find that in a more enjoyable way to go through my week. Just thinking about the things that I liked in a thing, rather than like angrily dwelling on the things that I... Generally, I like to like things.

That's why we're here. We all like this franchise. We may not love every manifestation of it, but I feel what you're saying even more strongly in this era, when we have such an assembly line of Star Wars, I'm not saying that we should take each individual piece of it as disposable or dispensable. But if you didn't love this one, maybe you'll like the next one.

And the next one's going to be coming down the pike really soon, right? If you didn't love this, maybe you'll love and or. or maybe you'll be excited for Bad Batch to come back. Maybe you're looking forward to Asoka or Mando season three. There's so much. Right. Yeah. But maybe not everyone will float your boat, but something well.

And that's okay because there is so much of it now. It's not necessarily like when there was one thing every decade or two. And if you didn't love that thing, that was all you got. Now you might like the next thing. And not everything needs to be a larger overarching referendum on the state of Star Wars. So those were our brief quick impressions of the finale. No, I, I, there's already so much to like parse there because I think to Joe's point from earlier about if it felt emotionally satisfying, that would be, if not necessarily like enough, at least the most important thing. One of the things that really struck me in our preview pod and our discussions throughout the season, but our preview pod in particular was how often we were just.

drawn to the gaps, the gaps that needed to be filled in between prequel Obi-Wan and original trilogy of Obi-1 and understanding what rungs forged over time on the latter, not only between the two actors and the performances, which is something that, of course, is Star Wars fans we talk about a lot, but these versions of this character who was so precious to us. And I feel like that was the thing I needed most out of the show. I was excited for the showdowns and the duels. We got way more Vader than I was expecting in a way that I largely really enjoyed. Understanding and just having that time with Obi-1 to reflect was the thing I cared about most, and I felt like I got a lot on that front. I think that the...

So we got this really interesting mailbag question, which I'll just throw out here, because I think in context, it's really relevant. This is from Tom. I loved the finale, so did lots of my friends and a lot of people really hated it. So here's my question. Is it possible at this point to make a Star Wars product that is more or less universally liked? I don't, I'm really curious to know what you both think about that. I don't know what the answer to that is. But I think my like gut almost like instinctive response to that is again, it's okay if not everybody likes a thing. And the larger Star Wars gets and the more it sprawls and spans, the more likely it is that people will respond to it differently. Something like the Mandalorian, which is broadly, not universally, of course, there's always going to be someone who doesn't like a thing, but broadly adored is really rare, actually. Even if we just look at the, I mean, certainly the larger history of Star Wars, but even the recent history, I mean, of course, the prequels,

but the sequel trilogy is deeply fraught, right, and divisive. and a movie that like we all on the Zoom absolutely love, like The Last Jedi, was propped up by many, I would say, like, often bad faith actors as an indictment of some sacred original Star Wars text. And I think that like this is just one of the last kind of big picture points I want to make before we dive in. And again, I'm not, I'm sincerely not asking anyone else to agree with this. This is just how I feel about it.

One of the things that I really genuinely love about Star Wars, about all of the things that we cover, and particularly about sharing them together, is that they change and they evolve over time. Like a text, when you watch it, when you read it, is of course definitionally etched onto the page, onto the screen, whatever the case may be, right? It is locked.

It is there. It is fixed. But it's not. Like, it's a living, breathing thing that changes the more you learn about the characters and the more you learn about yourself. You can bring something new to it. And to see in The Last Jedi a character like Luke,

questioning something that he and we as viewers had held as absolute for so long was exhilarating to me. And I am almost always, as long as the story is in like responsible hands and doesn't feel like, there are plenty of stories that I, uh, franchises that I love, where the thing we got really, really, really disappoints me, right? Rise of Skywalker. Season 8 of Game of Thrones, just to name a couple recent examples. Like, I am certainly capable of really disliking a thing and feeling like deeply, deeply let down by it. But broadly, I think my relationship to this is that I would like to see people continue to spend time in the world and give me a reader, a viewer, more entry points, more ways in to spending time with the characters I love. Like,

I'm reading for the first time this week ever. I had read the master and apprentice short story, the Claudia Grayshard story, but I had not read the novel. And I'm reading it now and I've been like texting you both all week. about it because it's unlocking all of these new things for me. Like I've spent so much time over the last few years of my life talking about Obi-1 Canobi and thinking about Star Wars. And it's a real delight for me that there can be new stories and new tales and new interpretations that help me think about a character like that in a different way. And so the parts of the show that unlocked that for me, I feel grateful that I had. The parts of it that didn't work didn't work. And both of those things

can exist in the same space. And Star Wars often do. And I found myself thinking, like, we'll get to this later when we talk about Obi-1 and Leah. One of my favorite moments of the episode, I'll spoil, is when Obi-1 is talking to Leah about Atticant and Padman. It's like about to cry right now thinking about it. I was like sobbing watching this. And as I reflected on it and rewatch that moment again and again, it almost felt like he was like a Star Wars fan talking about Star Wars. We're like, you have the ability to hold on to the good and the things that you enjoy.

And that doesn't mean the bad things aren't there. And I definitely believe that we should hold our stories to a high standard and that this show could have reached a level that it didn't. But also that the elements that are successful can still be meaningful to us, even amid the parts that didn't work. That's my take. My journey through the sequel trilogy, I think about that a lot because... The thing about fandom is, or a thing about fandom is that it is so seductive. The highs of feeling like you're around like-minded people who are emotionally responding to something that you're emotionally responding to is one of the highest highs you can experience. And I think that my memory of seeing the Force Awakens when it first came, when it very first came out, like the first couple weeks.

And I was just surrounded by other people who loved it. And I went to see it like, oh, a ridiculous number of times in theater. and all the crowds were loving it. And I was like, Star Wars is back. This is so exciting. I have a BV8 droid. And you know me, Mallory, I don't even buy merch,

but I bought a BV8 droid. Like, that's how I felt about the Force Awakens. And then I started hearing from all the people who didn't like the Force Awakens. And they're like, it's just a retread of a New Hope, all this sort of stuff. And I was like, okay, but that doesn't threaten my enjoyment of this.

It's okay that they didn't like it, and I liked it. And that's okay. And then the last Jedi was so fraught. And that was a bummer to me, because I loved that movie, and it was a bummer to me, that that became more about the conversation

than it did about the movie itself and then Rise of Skywalker is just a whole other kettle of fish. But what is always, always true about fandom is that someone's dislike of something does not and should not threaten your love of it, right? There are a few caveats there that have to do with something being like racist or sexist or problematic in some sort of way, but all of that aside, like if you love something,

and I didn't, if I think this is dumb and you loved it, it doesn't mean I think you're dumb for loving it. And I think, I think, I think, I think, I think about this, I've thought about this a lot of the years. And I think in this increasingly, sorry, we will talk about it'll be one going of you, but like in this increasingly like, fracture and divided society that we live in, this, like, isolated and lonely society that we live in, where a lot of us are, like, living a lot of our lives online or whatever.

It may be a lot of our community institutions have gone. gone away. Fandoms have kind of come in to replace a lot of the things that bound us together as a community. And so then your fandom becomes wrapped up in your identity. And then it just becomes really dangerous. If someone says, you know what, Star Wars in general isn't for me. And then what you hear maybe is you in general aren't for me.

And then it becomes this emotional thing. And what I would hope for all of us and especially all of us here on this Zoom call filled with people that I love is that we just, yeah. love the things you love, protect the things you love, you know? And, yeah, Ben, anything to say about fandom? Nothing is universally liked, and I don't think we should necessarily aspire to universal popularity. I would be worried if there weren't some people who were put off by something. But I think there are things in recent memory that have been liked by the vast majority of the fan base

that at least people have found something to love about. You have the Mandalorian. You have that final stretch of season seven of the Clone Wars, right? If you care about the Clone Wars, yeah. I don't know that anyone didn't care for that. That ended beautifully. You have episodes five and six of Boca Boba, at least if you view those as the Mandalorian season two and a half. Those things to me were almost above reproach, some of the best Star Wars I've ever seen.

And that's not even talking about some of the expanded universe stuff or Jedi I Fallen Orator or Star Wars squadrons. All these things are within the past two to three years. So if we do want to focus on the positive, there is still a lot of Star Wars celebrating that has gone on amid the more divisive stuff. And there are productive ways to disagree about things. And I think that's healthy to some extent. It is sometimes applied in unhealthy ways.

It's okay to disagree. But there are also a lot of things that I think we agree on and that do keep us coming back as a community to these series, to these games, to whatever it is. So I wouldn't want Star Wars to just get the reputation of such toxic fandom, which in some ways it has earned. But if everyone's sort of spoiling for a fight, the second, the new episode drops, right, I wouldn't want people to go into it that way. I would want them to be open to whatever they're about to see. And that kind of in this defensive crouch, just bracing for the takes that will be hurled, right? And I think there is a lot of it that has been really rewarding and that people have

loved a lot. And there are also some things that do not meet that description. But again, that's okay because there is so much of it. It's such a big galaxy now. What I would love is for Lucasfilm itself to listen to what you, Mal and you Ben just said. Because the one thing that I think is a problem is when Lucasfilm is trying to chase that universal adoration. And what you get out of that, is something like Rise of Skywalker felt like, oh, such a response to the Last Jedi Division that they were trying to placate everyone. And in the end, I think placated no one.

And so I would just, or not no one, there are plenty of people who liked Rise of Skywalker. And so in the end, I would just prefer Lucasfilm be confident in its creators and confident in its varying visions. And some of those visions will work for people, and some of them won't. So like when Tycho Waititi goes around and he says, I'm to make a Star Wars and it's going to explore characters we haven't met before. Like we're finally stepping off the Skywalker Saga path, perhaps.

You know, that thrills me. But what scares me is that's what Rogue One was supposed to be. Rogue One was supposed to have no force, no Vader, no Skywalker's in it. And then Lucasfilm got scared and they put Vader in it. And a lot of people love Vader and Rogue One and that's great. But like I also want these other stories. You know what I mean? Like, I want those to exist too.

And how many times have we seen a midstream replacement of writers or directors or both and sometimes multiple times? And there are various reasons for that. And maybe that's always going to be an issue when you have sort of a centrally managed franchise with billions of dollars at stake. Star Wars is not necessarily unique in that respect. But to the degree that that comes from fear of letting people explore their own personal conception of Star Wars and getting weird in some ways. then I would want Lucasfilm to push back against that impulse of just bringing everything back to the middle. And it does seem like Tyca is the one to do that and also has the cachet not to get canned and replaced by Ron Howard halfway through. So I am hopeful for some of the things that are on the horizon.

Me too. We're in complete agreement on that. You can't be afraid of your own story. You can't be afraid of your own fan base. On that note, then, if you look ahead, and again, we'll definitely hit this. Quigon again, we've got a ways to go. We've got a ways to go. We'll hit the season two possibilities in the future for certain characters.

I think naturally as we talk about some of these plot lines and resolutions. But just our last kind of big picture teaser here, where are you both on the season two possibility? Is it something that you're hoping for? Is it something that you want? Is it something that you actively do not want? Are you conflicted? Do you feel the conflict within? If we are going to get one, what do you hope it covers, et cetera?

I definitely do feel some conflict. In a way, I want to give these writers a chance to tell a story from scratch. No rearranged movie, no series rewritten by who knows how many stakeholders in that process. However, if this was the A material, I'm not sure I want to see the second best idea. Obviously, I'd sign up to see Ewan as Obi-Wan, however and whenever. and it sounds like he would too. But I think the combination of the time period in the character arc makes for a really challenging setup for a story. And I don't think that would get any easier with a second season.

If it became a kind of anthology series, maybe focusing on different characters within this universe, maybe that would be better. I would watch a Vader-centric season. There's so much material to mine from the comics. Even something about Riva or Quinlan or even Rokin might make some sense. I have to say, already we have the take of the pod, which is you're into the idea of Obi-1 Kenobi Season 2 as long as it doesn't star Obie 1 Canobi, but instead stars broken. I'm just, I'm not sure how much more I need to know about Obi-1 at this point, much as I love him and much as I love the portrayal of him. The only thing is that there's not much opportunity cost at this point because, again, of the scale of Star Wars at this point. point, if it were, well, I have to choose between, well, this series or that series, they can only

make one or two. This would not be anywhere close to the top of my list, right? But if they're making six or seven, would I come back to see Hayden and you and again? Yeah, I guess I would. I would just hope that some of the wrinkles that we had a problem with here were ironed out the second time around. Joe? It's really complicated. It's complicated. Do I? Do I love watching Hugh McGregor as of Juan Canobey? Yes. And when we see him at the end of this episode in much more of the sort of jolly, jovial Alec Guinness space, we see him in a costume that is known from the comics in terms of his adventures in and around Tatooine, etc. Yeah, if they could pry themselves from under the rocks that are the Skywalkers, yes, I want Obi-1 liberated from if he's decided that for some reason Owen and Baru, who did an okay job trying, ish, to try to defend Luke are all Luke needs right now.

And he can go off and do some other things while maintaining his like alter ego, which is crazy old Ben Kenobi in the desert. If he wants to do like a sort of scarlet pimpernel Batman kind of thing and like, you know, work on the rebellion while also being a kooky hermit, like that could be really fun. I actually think I know, I know for a fact that they changed some things at the end of this season to leave the door open for a season two.

I know that they've made some changes. I think they made the wrong changes because if it were me and I was like, okay, you one's really enjoying this. He wants to do more. It's not just going to be a one and done. people are really excited about this. Let's do more Obi-Wan. Why would I not leave Tala alive to have the adventures of Tala and Obi-Wan in the rebellion?

Like, why would that not be- I thought you're going to say in bed. Also that. Also, like, all of that together. Like the two of them being in love and running around and doing rebellion shit? Yes, absolutely. Roken? No, not so much.

You're rejecting my Roken season two pitch? Yes, broken. Wow. So, yeah, I think there is a way forward. I just, I think it would be, I think we would all just breathe easier if it weren't, despite the fact that the lay and Obi-Wan conversation on the ill-advisedly public tarmac of Alderan made me cry. Some of the Anakin Obi-1 made me cry multiple times, rewatching the episode.

but I would like to free the series from these like continuity constraints and that ossification that Ben was talking about and just like put Obi-1 on a path where he can have these adventures and it doesn't bump up against so many other things. What do you think, Mel? Yeah.

I'm in. Mostly just honestly, because I thought, listen, it's no secret to a listener of this podcast that Joanne and I, big fans of one Ewan McGregor and of the character, Obi-Wan Kenobi. And so it's a powerful potent combo. And I thought that he was sincerely like spectacular in this show. I just thought it was a great performance.

And I would love to keep watching him play Obi-1 Canobi. And he shows up in that comic book fit and he's smirking and he's got a little pep in a step again. he looks incredible. I'm like, Luke, later when you said, I wonder if he means old Benko, why didn't you say, I wonder if he means the most handsome person I've ever seen in my entire line.

That's what I would have said. So do I want more time there? Yeah, I, of course we get, we'll get to Force Ghost Quigon, who did in fact make a long-awaited appearance at last. I'm ready to see Obi-1 become a learner again, to see Master and Apprentice reunited and to watch that Force Ghost training, their relationship. Again, part of this is because we've always loved that relationship,

as we've chatted about a lot this season, Joe. And part of this is because I'm having this newfound, real love affair with their dynamic and how it's evolved over time because of reading Master and Apprentice is such a rich history between them. I'm really into that. I love the idea of the sand stories as our lovely mailbag question posed. it last week. I would, I think though, if I'm being honest with myself, if I'm searching my feelings, I think I would have a hard time with an entire season of Obi-1 that didn't include

Vader or now, like, Leia at all, because part of what I left this, this finality shouting is just like, I can't believe he's going to go nine years and not face Vader again. And I, like, can't believe that he and Leia never see each other again. Like, I actually, like, can't accept it. And so even though the bulk of me, my rational mind, knows the risks and knows that you're both right. And like, it's a very fraught and maybe downright perilous thing. We're walking on top of the ground that Vader just dug his saber into. And it could, it could just shattered and fall away beneath us at any point. I know that to be true. I can't help but wanting it. Just a little more. Okay. Follow question. As we like parse these original trilogy lines for like,

What's the breaking point on continuity for us, you know? Mm-hmm. When Vader says to Obi-Wan, we meet again at last. Yeah. What is that window of years for you? Right. Or when he says, I've not felt since last week. Since like three days ago.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. What's the window? Is it like five years? We meet again and last after five years? Nine years is a pretty long time. It's not as long as 19 years.

Nine years. Nine years works. I'm just saying if you keep doing the adventures of Obi-1 and Vader, like how close can we get to the finish line before? Diminishing dual returns here, right? I mean, what happens the next time they meet? There's another standoff. One of them wins and walks away for whatever reason.

They just keep repeating this process. I mean... Let's put a pin in this, because this is something we'll go into a great detail. I think one of the most... And the wake of the episode is whether it makes sense that Obi-1 walks away and doesn't kill Vader. And I'm really interested for the three of us to discuss that. Can we actually accept, on the one hand, that Obi-Wan-Kadobie, knowing what the Empire is doing and knowing what Darth Vader is doing, them them, them is just going to, like, allow Darth Vader to go be Darth Vader for nine years and not try to stop him, not try to fight. Similarly, can we accept that Darth Vader so much. and hell bent on this singular obsession, had one chat with his boss and was like, cool, I'm set. No, to either of those things.

Like, I would have a hard time accepting that neither of them sought the other one out for nine more years. Are you right that seeking each other out creates a new problem? Yes. This is our great dissonance. As Star Wars fans in 2022, I don't know how to resolve what is really like a fundamental central tension other than to not keep making stories set in these tight spaces between in existing canon with characters who people have been telling stories about for 45 years. And yet, when I think about my favorite Star Wars and I think about something like Clone Wars,

the reason I love it so much, of course, in part is like a new character who means so much to us like Asoka, but in part because it helps us better understand those relationships and those figures. So I want more of those. I am greedy. I'm realizing how greedy I am. I'm like a Sith. This is the path to the dark side. The grade.

The hunger. I understand your desire to want more dimensionality and like are there some nuances shaded in by this Obi-1 Canobi series, yes. But at some point, then you start to eat at the existent, the core foundational relationships. And when you press continuity into the breaking point, you know what I mean? And I'm like, and I just, I mean, to Ben's point, it's not like we have to choose one or the other, but like I would just say that for me, my particular taste right now is

to meet more people like Dynjarn or Grogu or Kylo and Ray or like, you know, new characters that help me understand the force and, you know, the way the world works more. That being said, it's hard to argue with how fucking dashing and handsome menomot. I honestly think that having seen every single E.M. McGregor thing ever in my life, I actually think this is best performance. scene in this finale is the best thing I've ever seen him do. I agree. It's like transcendent.

You put everything into that. Like you put it all in there. And so is it, is all of this stress and confusion about continuity or all of that sort of stuff? Does that, is it worth it for me to get that moment? That's something I'm, that's an ongoing conversation and I'm having with myself. I want subsequent seasons just to see the. try to age you in enough to make him resemble Alec Guinness, do your worst. But it's not just the canon matters with how long enough, how long do you have to go for

certain lines to make sense and for someone to say, I've not felt that presence since and have it actually be long enough. I don't care so much about that. When I go three days without seeing Joanna Robinson, I spend the first four minutes of our conversations being like, I missed you so much. I haven't felt your presence. You know, the days are long. Okay.

I agree. I agree with Mallory. Mallory's right about everything. That I could excuse. My question, though, is what will we learn about those characters, right? What is the potential to change our understanding of who they are and what their relationship is in what cannot be a climactic confrontation? It has to be a prelude to the final one that we've already seen. And now we've already seen several, right, at very.

points in the timeline. So if they keep meeting, I just don't know that there's going to be a more cathartic moment than the one at least this episode tried to tell us that we were seeing. I agree with that. I think that is why, even though I'm acknowledging the greed of like meeting still some more closure, answers or resolution there, I'm more like locking into the exchange with Obi-1 and Leah. What are you going to do now? Why don't know? What do you think I should do? And it's like, I would love to know where they net out other than sleep, which seems honestly like a great plan, at least in the short term. Catch some zes. Get some rest. Recharge. You got nine hard years of living ahead of you. Get some suns.

Get a bed and use it, my man. Get off the same. Get a bed. Oh, my God. Okay. We're an hour in. I'm having a blast already. What a rich text here. Not quite an hour. Almost, though. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. It spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale

signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Should we dive in? Should we dive deep into the rocks of the, I believe it's officially called desolate moon? Yep. Or barren moon? Troubling, got to say. Remember that showdown on the memorable location of Barron Moon? Craigie Rock Planet There will be like some sort of canon short story about the history of Barren Moon. Plenty of planets in Mando

that we didn't learn the name of until episodes later but this is a pretty crucial moment did not have a name for the planet. It's true. Tough one. All right, let's start there. Let's start with

we're not going to go chronologically. We're going to kind of group by character sets here. We have to start with with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Ever heard of them. We'll hit on Pelt me a little bit here. We'll hit on Quigon.

Let's go through the duel, the showdown, and chat about what worked for us and what didn't. There is a lot to talk about here, the real emotional catharsis of many aspects of the meeting and the exchanges. The Twilight of the Apprentice parallels. We called that. I mean, a lot of people did, but still. We knew that helmet slash was coming and again.

I was like, ah! The quotes and callbacks, as you both already mentioned, the way that Obi-Wan has so helpably tapped back into the force here. I'm wondering, though, before we even talk about the dialogue, the exchanges, the conversations, and the substance of those lines, the originals and the references like, can we talk more about the setting? and the scale for a minute.

I'm curious what you both thought of this location and whether it felt appropriate as a setting and whether it feels like a memorable enough escape for a duel of this magnitude. I'm almost surprised that we didn't go back to Mustafa somehow. It would not have been surprising. Because they were in that system at some point. That could have happened.

So to set it somewhere that is not memorable that we can't even identify was an interesting choice. I think that production-wise, this is what I was getting at earlier. I don't know what it is, but I was so aware of the volume in this series, much more so than the Mandalorian, which Deb Chow did wonderful work on,

more so than the Book of Boba, too. So many scenes in this series just seemed like sets to me where there was this flat, confined foreground area, and then an unconvincing background, which perplex me because you'd think they'd be getting better at that, not worse. And the fight scenes were so dark, which I liked in episode three, but had a harder time here. I was squinting for a lot of this episode. We could talk about the fight choreography, but it was a somewhat nondescript setting. The events were not nondescript, and maybe in a way, setting it in such a nondescript place just helped us focus on what was going on between these two characters.

But it was not enhanced, I don't think, by the setting in a way that some Star Wars confrontations happen. I've been thinking about this a lot since listening to the Midnight Boys talk about this. And Charles made some great points about the locations having meaning. And I was thinking about the challenges of the volume. There's a couple of things I want to say. Number one, if folks are feeling like Ben is feeling and I felt a little bit, which is like, okay, we thought the volume was this huge miracle of filmmaking in the Mandalorian. and now we're seeing some of the limitations of it.

Good news. At Star Wars Celebration, San Wolenberg, one of the producers on Andor, said there's not a single scene in the first season of Andor that was filmed against the volume. So if you need a volume break, right, Andor is coming. Lower the volume a little bit. Yeah, turn it down. Okay. We had another question.

I don't think this made into our final mailbag, but we had another listener asked us on Twitter like, okay, the budget for this thing was huge. Why does it sometimes feel like it was? And I will tell you, when you break down budgets, there's not just production budget, there's the overall budget. And I would wager a lot of that money went to one Mr. Ewan McGregor. There's a difference between getting one Mr. Ewan McGregor to come back for Obi-1 Canobi

or Liam Mason to come back for literally two seconds, then the cast of the Mandalorian, which is not filmed with anyone in that level, right? And her star is literally a puppet. So I think if corners were cut and if you're wondering where the money went, it went to that dazzling smile and the red beard and we deserved it. And then I was thinking about lightsaber fights in the volume and what we've seen. Because like Mando has the advantage of it's very rarely a lightsaber fight, right? There's been a few exceptions.

There's like the Asoka fight. There's like the dark saber stuff. but for the most part, we're not doing big lightsaber duels in the volume on Mando. And the Asoka one, they were so smart because they set that on a bridge, right? So they are like restricting. And similarly, like the dark saber fight in season two of Mando is on the bridge of a spaceship, you know, or when you see Luke come into that, like, cutting through people with the lightsaber that's like on narrow at like places on a spaceship.

But when you have a whole planet to work with and we have the reference point, to Revenge of the Sith where they're hopping around the lava flows of Mustafa, it is going to feel claustrophobic. And there are some shots that I thought worked with that claustrophobia. Like there's a shot where the camera's like moving through crags to like get to them.

And I thought that was kind of cool. But I love a crag camera move, but you hate a crevice, but you love a crack. You know what is I know about you? This is the fact that is true. But you know, I would love to see

I think for the sake of secrecy and probably some COVID, they love the volume for that, right? But I also love in Mando when Robert Rodriguez directed the episode in season two and they like went on location and were like fighting up and down the side of a mountain, right?

Like that looked great and cool and real. And I think I could have stood for that here. But they're so terrified of people spoiling things and leaking things that they want to set them in small locations. I don't know if that answered any of your questions, but that's some of the thoughts that I thought. No, yeah, this is really interesting.

I also, part of the reason I asked Joe was what you already cited, which I was really struck by the conversation on the Midnight Boys. I thought it was fascinating. And I think Charles is really smart to note what the locations tend to tell us about the moment in time

or the character journey or any number of other things. And so when you have, you know, a lava planet like Mustafa and Anakin is falling from the light into the dark, from Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, what better place to set that duel

than the fiery pits of hell itself, right? There could be no more fitting choice. This does not match that. I thought that there were certain choices of how to navigate and present the location within that that were compelling, albeit on a much smaller scale, like the initial wide shot of Vader

exiting his show, and approaching Obi-1, and you have the crags and the rock formations behind Obi-1, and you have Vader in just this openness, and he seems like so solitary and alone. And he's also emerging from this, like, mist from this fog. And I really liked that. That felt fitting. You know, this moment in time has come to confront each other and confront the truth, to emerge from that fog for both of them.

I was also thinking, like, one thing this was, this is like, not necessarily. relevant in terms of making this television program more so just on this podcast but I was thinking back to our bending chat Joe and like we did get the earth bending we did get the earth bending and also I almost

sorry this is a disgusting sentence I almost made a tweet about this because like we talked about the fire in the water bending there's the earth bending here and then he also Obi-1 launches himself at one point I'm like I'm counting it as an air bend that's all four I'll throw this at you.

I think we can count the entire Death Star battle as airbending because we're in space. Okay. What do you think? Is that how space works? The other thing I liked about the rock formations, that claustrophobia that you're describing

and just the physical, like the aesthetic of the rocks, the jagged nature of them, the spiky, like spire-like quality, they almost looked like teeth to me. And there were a lot of moments, especially as the duel built where it felt like almost they were inside of a closing jaw.

So I liked that. What about the fight choreography and the force powers? And we'll again, we'll get to the exchanges in a second, but just broadly. How did the duel itself work for you as a duel inside of Star Wars where we've seen a lot of cool duels and in the context of Obi-1 Vader dolls, which we've seen a few of? That's the thing. Anytime anyone ignites a lightsaber, immediately your mind is cast. back to the best lightsaber battles

you've seen, right? So you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself. You can't top duel of the fates or battle of the heroes, just the nostalgia

that we have associated with those, but also just the agility of the athleticism. Those are acrobatic battles, not to mention some of the most memorable music ever.

And I think wisely, they didn't try to stay in that lane, that style of lightsaber battle in this series or in this episode, although this was probably the closest that they came. I liked the brutality of Vader just wearing out the overmatched

Obi-Wan in episode three and just looming out of the darkness. I loved Vader's look-no-lightsaber fight with Riva, which was an interesting spin and just was another way to demonstrate his mastery. Still an all-time flex, yeah. Yeah, great. Really, the closer it came to the traditional lightsaber battle, I think the maybe more underwhelmed I was, just because, you know, these characters and these actors are at a different stage of life now. It wouldn't even make sense, really. Even if you tried to replicate the look of those earlier battles, Vader's in the suit now, right? He doesn't really leap around. He is someone who stalks and pummels more so than he flips and spins. So I think there's just a different kind of physicality to both of these characters

in this series that maybe limits you in some respects. If people were hoping that we would get exactly what we saw in the prequels, then maybe they were a bit let down by just the scale and the curiosity of the fight scenes in this series. But I thought in this episode, we got the great Form 3 moment the Sorosu's stance, right? When we see that Obi-Wan is back to full strength here, we confirm that he is arguably the best duelist in Star Wars. If you look at just the opponents that he has taken down over time, no one beats Vader in the suit or outside the suit for that matter. Obi-Wan's done it twice now. And he demonstrates that that's back here in a way that is it a bit abrupt, given where he was in episode three?

Who do you give the scorecard two in Twilight of the Apprentice with Assook and Vader? Because he's in the suit there. It's kind of a draw, I guess. It's kind of a draw. Yeah. Yeah. Some environmental factors intercedes there. interference from the world beyond world.

Yeah. So whether it was because of the production limitations or what, like it just, it seemed like we were right up in these guys' faces during one of these fight scenes, which at times. Ideal. Yeah. At least for one of those faces, we want to be all up in there. But it was hard to, I guess, appreciate some of them. There were actually moments where I just like paused and like tried to go almost like frame by frame to figure out what happened there exactly. You know, like when Obi-1 uses.

the hilt of his lightsaber to sort of smash Vader in the chest and mess up his mechanics. I was like, wait, that went so fast. I need to go back. And I watched that a few times to follow the fight choreography, which I guess you could say that if you need to do that, then that's a failure of sorts. But it's a lightsaber battle. Things happen fast. So I'll play devil's advocate on that and say that that was one of the things I really liked about it. Like, I thought it was a duel that rewarded repeat viewings and had like an onion-like peel back the layers of what is actually leading to each decision within the fight. Now again, whether the decisions in the fight makes sense is one of the big questions of the episode, but something like that,

the using the, using the hill, first of all, like the reason, the reason that he's, let me, let me, guys, I'm a mess. I'm just, I'm so. I'm so. I'm so excited to be talking to you about this. I have a million thoughts. I can't focus. I need to focus my mind. It's what Yoda would want. It's what Quigon would want.

The initial moment of just Obi-1 standing there, waiting for him, the number of moments in the duel that, of course, there's a ton that connects to Mustafa and a ton that connects to a new hope. But it also felt important

that inside of this season of TV, this duel related to the episode three or part three, excuse me, showdown, and I really thought that the inversions of what happened in that showdown and this showdown were successful, whether it was something like Obi-1 waiting there, ready, bracing rather than trying to evade Vader, something like him displaying the patience, that whole, like, I'm bringing him to you idea that he said to Riva in episode five, like he knows he's the one bringing Vader to this fight here. He knows that he has that upper hand.

And similarly, like, later, the way that he sneaks up after. he emerges from the Boulder pit that Darth Vader didn't sense him alive inside of tough one, but thematically interesting, we'll get to that later. He sneaks up on him, again, inverting the who is the whisper in the dark and, like, who is the prey? Relationship from the episode three dole, so I liked that.

I think, Ben, to your point about the, how the actual kind of choreography and the moves of the fighting itself compare here to the prequels, and compare here to a new hope, I liked the vibe and feel and flow of it overall because it felt of a piece with that larger discussion we've been having of like a bridge, right?

They're not their younger selves anymore. They're not doing, not only in terms of just their athletic powers, their age, the kind of balletic nature of the prequel dueling in general, you kind of have to get from the prequel to the original style, and this feels like a move in that direction, right?

It's a progression. But also, like, in the prequel duel, even in the flashback we saw in episode five, so many of the coolest, I mean, as you both know, the Moustafar Dwell and Revenge of the is like one of my favorite things ever. I fucking love it. I'm not saying this is as good as that, of course. But they are mirroring each other in so many moments on Mustafar because they are still in that moment in time with each other, master and apprentice.

They are just then on the brink of that rupture. right? Here, they are so out of sync with each other in a way that feels totally appropriate for the way that their paths have diverged. The unifying thread is just the ferocity of it. Like, there is an almost animalistic brutality to the way that they are charging and slashing at each other. There is like a need, a need to unleash this rage upon each other. Does that align with the ultimate decisions again? We'll come back to that. I'm not. I don't know. I'm not. I I love the twirling, the handing off of the lightsaber behind Obi-1's back from right to left. I'm sorry, that was fucking awesome. That was an incredible moment. That was great. The use of the force powers too beyond just the lightsaber mechanics, like one of the things we've talked about all season long, attract all season long, is how Obi-1's powers reflect

his rekindled connection to the force. And obviously, the payoff is something definitive, like Quigon appearing to him and saying you weren't ready before, right? But now you are. The bolder usage, force pushing when he was the one who had been forced pulled before. Like a moment like Vader looming above him

after sending him into the pit, literally having the high ground and not being able to use that to his advantage because he still doesn't understand the things that Obi-1 does, I thought that was impactful. And then to the Hilt point,

like I liked a moment like that using the Hilt, both because they're only that close to each other because they grab onto each other's hands. Like they're actually touching and the idea that they would need to be, they would need to have that proximity and nearness to each other in order for

for Obi-One to try to chip away at the Darth Vader casing that is around Atticin Skywalker was like, I thought really poignant. And then even the choice to use the hilt instead of the blade, it's like he's not ready to turn that blade around, even in a moment of that.

that stark brutality. Spoiler alert, he never will be. But he did use the blade to slash open his head. But no, I, I'm with you, Mal.

Like, I don't love the prequel Leisure Fights and I'll be the dissenter in that conversation and that, like, there's just a lot of flippy defying gravity stuff that I don't love, love,

love. And of course, you're using the force. You don't have to obey a loss of gravity. I understand. But, like, um,

for me, that's not how the force works. But for me, you know, I love dual with the fates, et cetera, et cetera. For me,

the height of lightsaber battles is going to be on brand for me is the throne room battle in The Last Jedi and that's a much more grounded,

weightier. And it's not even like a lightsaber duel necessarily. But like that, that to me, that choreography kills. This choreography is similar

to that. And so in that way, it did work for me. I do think that there are some really cool moments, like, Anakin knocking Obi-1 in the face with the same move that, that, you know, disarmed Quigon. Like, that's huge.

And I didn't see it until a YouTube breakdown. And that's, I think, a failure of lighting or choreography or something like that. For the most part, this really worked for me, choreography-wise. And I want to zoom out a little bit and talk a little bit about just, like, just briefly about what got us here. Because I think that, you know, the parallels between Vader-making. inexplicable, terrible strategy decisions just to get to Obi-Wan

with the Grand Inquisitor being like... Let's do it. Yeah. Come back to the Dole. This is important. We can't have some notes on this. We cannot prioritize

one lone Jedi, right? Like, I just want to shout out Rupert friend who I think is actually great as the Grand Inquisitor. Is that a meme yet, by the way? I've barely been online this week because I'm in the outer banks of my family. Is the facial expression that he makes

when Vader's like, fuck you and your logic, dude, we're doing my point. The soft, The little focus nod or whatever. Yeah, yeah. If it's not, maybe we can make it a meme. Jomi.

I like how I'm just sitting here making faces to you on Zoom. Like anyone listening to this will know what I'm talking about. Great podcast. And then you contrast that with Obi-Wan's decision and Roken saying it's not about us as it. You want to do it, right? So this is a shared obsession. And it goes back to what we've been talking about, of what people on Star Wars been talking about for a million years,

this idea of a dangerous attachment, right? There's like this attachment that they have to each other, even if it's fueled by like hate on Vader's side and hope on Obi-1's side, it is still a dangerous attachment. We're not thinking logically. We're single-focused on each other. I love Roken saying it's not about it.

Roken, a character that I think is thin as caper, saying it's not about it says that you want to do it. And it, like, it reminds me of Obi-1 saying, like, he'll only see me. You know what I mean? This just, like, obsessive connection. And I do want us to go back to Vader strategy, a naval space strategy for a second, in a second. But I do want to also say, can I do one of the most annoying things anyone can possibly do when watching something, which is fanfic how I would have written it? Sure.

Imagine Obi-1's at the bottom of the pit covered in. rocks. It's dark down there. Cannot see the light. We've been talking about light and dark this whole time. He's like, have I lost? I don't know what to do, blah, blah. Imagine that's the moment. We see a little light come on and that's the moment he discovers Lola in his pocket. And that's what gives him the like what he needs to get out of the pit, like a little

literal light in the dark that came from Leia that she put in his pocket. That would be precious. Would that be amazing. Yeah. I would have, that would be absolutely just heart melting and precious. I would have some, I would have some notes for Obi-1 on his battle prep if he left his outerwear on and didn't check his pockets for weight balance. Or like notice it clinking against his side as he was spinning?

Sure. Emotionally residents. So as they say on billions, worth it, Bob? Even as it was, that moment when he discovers Lola is absolutely the best, one of the best moments of this episode of the season of my life. Taking the cloak off, finding the little letter. Oh, my gosh. That was great.

And the subtitles, nervous beeping? Darling. All right. I'm going to step away from the mic for a second to let Ben's strategy Lindberg. Ben, give us some of your commons for how we got down to Desolate Moon before we talk more about the exchanges on Desolate Moon. Yeah, fair measure. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a lot of questions. a lot of notes, partly because, so this scene, right, where they are chasing this unarmed transport, it is very intentionally a callback to the opening scene of Star Wars Episode 4, right? Now, we know how that scene ended. It didn't go great for the craft that was getting pursued, and that was a rebel blockade runner that is built to outrun Star Destroyers or get past them. In this case, so many tactical failures, it's hard even to do.

do like a post-mortem debriefing of what went wrong here. There should be an inquiry. The empire should convene a committee to figure out the breakdowns in the command structure of this scene. And I hate to be the nitpicky person. And if there were just emotional moments that transcended the, why didn't they do that kind of analysis of the episode, then it wouldn't be as big a deal to me. And there are some of those moments. But Star Destroyers carry several dozen Starfighters, which can be deployed for just such a situation such as this, perhaps, putting aside the fact that for whatever reason, the gunners at the turbo lasers here cannot seem to hit this unarmed transport.

Devastator, more like devastating aim. Yeah. Am I right? Impenetrable shields. Impenetrable shields. Can't figure out what's happening there. Tie fighter who? Yeah.

The fact that they had time for several. interminable goodbye scenes and Roken changing his mind about what the odds of success were scenes. During this moment that was supposed to be a high-stakes, suspenseful moment, right? Where we're being chased, where we're running for our lives, it seemed like they have all the time in the world. So there's not only that that they can't destroy. They cannot devastate this unarmed transport. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone to deploy their tie fighters to go after it. And then we get the moment where Obi-Wan leaves in his little drop ship and we're presented with a binary choice of, well, we can either go after the transport and we can take out this incipient rebel network, or we can let them all leave and we can go after Obi-Wan's drop ship.

Don't see any alternative. It just has to be one of those things or the other. Grand Inquisitor doesn't do a great job of reading the room here, not realizing what can, Obi means to Vader and thinking that he would ever choose to go after someone else in this moment. But the point is, you do not have to choose. Why can Vader not just get in his fighter and go after Obi-1? Why can't he go in his shuttle and go after Obi-1? Why can't they use the Thai fighters?

Why can I not destroy this drop ship with their giant turbo laborers? Just so many questions about this scene. So many questions. On the not destroying roken ship thing, it obviously, doesn't make sense that this Imperial Star Destroyer would not be able to take out that ship. It's, that's silly.

Try a tractor beam. Try the nonviolent approach. What I was going to say is if Vader was just so hell bent on the I will face him alone of it all, right, which we hear him say later, that I could buy, but then don't fire on the ship

the entire time. Because then it does actually seem like you're trying to destroy it, increase power, whatever, right? Like he's telling them turn up the guns here. So that's good. Let me offer a possible counter, and this is something that someone said to me after we are discussion of five, which is, we can believe that Vader is precise and calculated inpatient and planning when he's toying with Riva and that and the other thing, but that he loses all of his ability to make any good decisions when it comes Obi-One Canobi. which is like why he kind of forgot that there was a second transporter in five. And he was too busy ripping the top off of the other one.

You know, um, so if all of these terrible tactical decisions are just a function of his brain being completely clouded, which is why maybe he gets a medium score in his evaluation with his boss at the end of the episode. I can kind of understand that. But you're not wrong. Everything does not make sense. You know what I mean?

Remember an empire in the escape from Hoth when Hobby says, two fighters against a Star Destroyer? I'm giving him more of a drawl than he has. But here we have no fighters against the Star Destroyer and no ion cannon laying down protective fire either. And no problem, apparently. I guess I would have appreciated just some sort of gesture at making this more plausible.

I would want more Grand Inquisitor eye rolls of this makes no sense there or whatever. Like a real, like he needed to go full hucks and just like really undermine and just be like, what are you doing? Right. Or maybe the captain of the ship comes up and is like Lord Bader, you know, we have starfighters here and they shush him, this is not for you, whatever, like something. It just seemed like they made no attempt even to hand wave away. I almost admired the audacity of just being like, well,

have to let that ship just fly away to. They all have to survive. So why even pretend that anything could happen otherwise? If someone were just like, hey, the hangar doors are jammed, you know, we tried to deploy the fighters and we just can't. In terms of inexplicably letting people go, this is lower. That's a pattern. It's not over on my list.

Fair. Okay. That's a good note. And that brings us back to the duel. So the duel is parceled out to us in a handful of different blocks and different exchanges. As is often the case in Star Wars stories, we are cutting between different fight sequences. And as is often the case in Star Wars, one of them is vastly more compelling than the other. The first exchange that we get between Vader and Obi-Wan, Vader speaks first.

And he says, have you come to destroy me, Obi-Wan? And there's almost like a, like a gloating quality. Like he's mocking the notion that very idea of this is absurd to him, which I loved is an opening tone setter for this battle because that is so perfectly of a piece with the Vader hubris that we've been talking about throughout. And then we start to get into the mirror lines that are in some cases satisfying and in some cases bugging you.

So we get here, I will do what I must. Of course, a Mustafa. echo. And instead of you will try, which is Anakin's Moussify reply we get, then you will die, which is the rebels. Twilight of the Apprentice, Asoka, Anakin. Anakin replied to Asoka in that fight. So I thought that was interesting that even before the helmet slash, there was this tone setting element of mixing and blending

Moussafar and Rebels, Moussafar and Twilight of the Apprentice as the seminal touchstones that would inspire a lot of what unfolded in this debate. And I really love, you know, we'll talk about the helmet slash later. I really love the presence of the Twilight Apprentice, which of course we should say is later. That's years down the road in the canon. So this actually happens first.

And now we can say is part of Vader's thought process and on his mind when he's facing Osoka on Malacor. I love the parallels between that fight and this because not only are Obi-1 and Osuka, two of the most important people in all of Anakin's life, but they're the master and the Padawan. So you have those those dual ends of the Anakin Skywalker Jedi experience. So I really liked that part. Where did those lines rate for you guys in terms of the reference meter?

I love, there's a part of me that loves the Twilight of the Apprentice parallels. And there's a part of me that wonders, would this have been even more powerful if I hadn't already seen Asoka do this, even if she does it a couple of years in the future. Do you know? I'm a little torn on it. I don't know. Star Wars is like poetry,

it rhymes. These things happen cyclically, you know, like I get it. But I honestly can't tell if it makes it better if it makes it slightly weaker. You know, like you predicted this would happen,

Mallory, because of Twilight the Apprentice. We talked about, of course, the cast Hayden, they're going to give us a good old Hayden Christian's an eyeball, like, of course. But yeah, that being said, like, once the mask is half off, I mean, anyway, sorry, I'm

getting ahead of myself. You want to go beat by beat. But there's a lot to talk about with the helmet slash, and I can't wait. With the callback specifically, this might be a me problem. Sounds like it's a bit of a Joe problem, too. But look, I like quoting and references Star Wars. I like it when fellow fans quote and reference. in Star Wars to me. We've been doing it this entire episode. We will continue to. It's one of the ways

that we bond over the stories that are special to us. We reinterpret that material. We apply it to our own lives. We signal that this is meaningful to us by just dredging it up again. And I think that that can be a good, fun, healthy thing. I don't love, as Joe alluded to earlier, when Star Wars characters quote Star Wars to each other. And when you have a significant percentage of the script, It is a lot. I mean, it is word for word or close to it that is copy and pasted from other Star Wars stories. And I know that the theme of this series is that these are characters who are haunted by their past.

It would be weird if there weren't some echoes and callbacks here. And obviously, we knew to expect this coming in. But to make it this explicit, it turns the characters into polestring dolls who say their catchphrases. You know how in Toy Story when Andy is playing with Woody, he just, morphs into this lifeless staring toy. There's a snake in my boot. Reach for the sky.

You're my favorite deputy. Yeah. That's what this made me think of. You pull the string on Obi-Wan's back and he says, hello there, or I will do what I must. You know, you pull the string on Darth Vader's back and he says, I must face him alone or then you will die. I just find it distracting and somewhat uninspired,

at least when it's used to this extent, because I like it better when we have to work to make those connections. You know, when they're there, I'm not saying don't have tributes and homages to other things in the canon. I'm just saying let us do a little work as viewers there. Let us on earth them from beneath the boulders. Literally, right. Like when Vader is standing over Obi-Wan as he's being buried, we notice, hey, he has the high ground now. It's much more satisfying to me if that's unstated subtext than if Vader had said, now I have that.

I was terrified he was going to say that. Like when that happened, I was like, don't say it. Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it. I am shocked that they had the restraints. Yeah. So all of that said. You underestimate my screenwriting. Yeah.

There were a lot of things that I really liked about the exchange in the scene. And to me, we were just critiquing the choreography. To me, that's not the main attraction here. That's almost beside the point. Like, I like a lightsaber battle. Don't get me wrong. But we have seen these characters light saber battle each other. And we know that no one is going to strike a decisive killing blow here.

here for what is going on in their heads and their helmets, right? And there's not a ton of talking between these two in these series, right? They use their words pretty sparingly, especially the lines that we haven't heard them say before. So I'm trying to treasure every little moment, every little window we get into what is going on in their heads in this moment that is so meaningful to them. And what I love about Vader, and we talked about this after episode three, is that he's not just purely the monster, the expression of rage, he is that at times certainly, but there's

more to him. He's a more complex character than that. There's a sliver of Anakin that's still in there. There's sort of a self-loathing there, and you never know how much is Anakin and how much is Vader. And I love the moments in the scene when we saw Anakin leaking into Vader, not

just in the obvious ways, like their voices blending, although I love that too. Amazing. But when he says, you have failed master as he's standing over him. The fact that he calls him master, like, is that just gloating? Is that mocking him because he's not the master anymore? Or does some part of him still see Obi-Wan as his mentor?

Did that come out unconsciously because he called him master so many times? Or when he says the line that we can discuss, I'm not your failure, Obi-Wan, you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did. Is that because he wants to take full credit and agency himself? I have the same. He doesn't want to give Obi-1 the credit. I think it's...

But also there's absolution and culpability. Does he feel some affection for Obi-1 on some level? He wants him to go to his grave. He's trying to kill him, but does he want him to go to his grave without guilt? It's such an interesting performance from Hayden there. Obviously, like, Hayden has been knocked his entire career for his performance in the prequels. But, like, this one moment here, there's that smile and gleam that makes it feel evil of, like, you and Killianneken Skywalker. I get the credit for that.

You don't get any of that. But that doesn't make any sense if you rewind to episode three when he says, I am what you made me. Which I love that line at the time. But in retrospect, now, how do you square those things? Well, the way I square it is it does feel, you know, Mallory and I were talking about this a lot last week. When they presented us with the flashback to the training between Obi-Wan and Anakin and the line about mercy. And so our question was, how is mercy going to play into the finale?

How important is that going to be? And there's like mercy for Riva or you could, I guess, say Obi-1 leaving Anakin alive as mercy, though. I don't think they sold that as a motivator. But this is the most merciful act. Is him absolving, I don't know if he meant to, but him absolving Obi-1 here is a, and I like to think that he knew that. And that maybe it's both. then maybe that's the Anakin Vader smoothie that we're getting in this line read. Mal, what's your take?

I think it's, yeah, there's this mix and this push-pull. And I think there has to be because as we've talked about all season, we can't, on the one hand, not really think about the thing as that Darth Vader is doing just because of what happens in Return of the Jedi. Similarly, as we watch him commit these acts of a try, it is difficult for us as Star Wars fans and consumers to forget where we know his arc is heading, right? And the nature of a redemption arc in Star Wars is like a pretty complex thing.

And I think that the internal conflict is always present in Anakin in a small little way. And it's something that he has to actively work to suppress and stifle. And so if you look to like a moment near the end of the episode where he gets the talk into, from Palpi, like, I wonder if you're seeing this clearly. There are a lot of different motivations for Palpatine there, primarily as is always the case with Palpatine control. Like, Anakin's obsession used to be something that Palpatine could take and weaponize and warp. If it ceases to be something that he has his arms around, then it's not leverage for him.

It's a variable that is outside of his command and he can't accept that, right? But also, what are these factors, Obi-1 and these are polls? pulls back to Anakin. Like reading the Thrawn books, the way that Anakin refers to, the way that Vader, excuse me, refers to himself internally as the Jedi.

He can't even say his own name. Why? Because of the pain that it's still there, because of the shame, right? The comics, like we've talked about, Ben, you talked about them a few times in your lore lessons this season, like the moments when he is thinking about Padmae still

and trying to push through to that portal. And again, there's a lot about that that is like unnatural and unholy and wrong. and like a level of greed and the pursuit of power that you should not ever, ever seek, but it comes from that seed of humanity and love that is still inside of him. And his relationship with Obi-One

is one of the central defining forces in his life. And so even before those key lines that you guys already shared, you have something like your strength has returned. And there's like a little bit of like, I don't know, I almost thought like awe in like a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of like, oh, you know, look at you.

the opponent, right? Your strength is returned to worthy opponent. Exactly. He let him go the first time they met because he hoped for a confrontation like this. He wanted something to test his skills. But the weakness still remains. But the weakness still remains. And so there's that push pull, that seesawing, not only around them in between them,

but inside of both of them. And that is one of the defining aspects of their relationship. Given the way this ends, I would argue that he is right. But I think what's also true. I mean, but that's that mercy point again, right? Mm-hmm. Because, like, Joe, what does he think weaknesses? He's talking about physical strength and power, sure, but he's talking about compassion and mercy as weakness.

And that's the thing that saves him. Obi-1's weakness is his, like, hope and compassion is how Vader sees it. But that's his strength at the bottom of the pit of the rocks. Right. When he taps into Leah and Lou. The Gittos. Yeah. Right.

The new hopes. Not a new hope. The dual new hopes. Yeah. And he says, like, and that is why you will always lose. And again, there's this. element of almost, I found, like, unknowing projection. He's not thinking consciously, oh, I'm talking about myself, but like he kind of is. Why does he always lose because of his weakness,

his limitations, so the things that he like can't admit about himself. And so this like, this connection to the episode five flashback mercy lines, like he views mercy as a weakness. Anything but decisive strength is a limitation. But there is a part of him deep, deep, deep down, buried though it may be like, Obi-1 is the one literally buried here, but Anakin has the one who's repressed all of this inside of him, the ability to acknowledge anything but that absolute, that Sith absolute, it eludes him. It eludes him completely because he is still ashamed.

And so much of his journey has also been defined by seeking that affirmation that he cannot get. So like, did you truly think you could defeat me? You have failed master boast. Sorry, I was just going to say the master line. I just want to zoom back really. You have failed to what master. It's the same line.

Yeah. I want to zoom back to what Ben was saying. about that, why does he say master there? And there are a fun, like a number of fun avenues, your brain could go down for that. But what that master line is, is a smooth version of what we get later with the clunky Darth drop, right? Because like, Obi-Wan calls him Darth so that we connect that to what he calls him in a new hope. But this connects to the but-the-learner line. Right. But the learner, but the master. But it's smooth and it's just like in the midst there and it doesn't land like with a clunk, you know?

And I think that's a beautiful way to bridge versus the Darth stuff, which doesn't work as well for me. And then, sorry, what were you going to say, Mel, about? No, I was going to say that exact same thing about the master learner thing. And I think the other thing about that, did you truly think you could defeat me?

You have failed master. Like, again, the hubris that is so often his undoing, you're hitting a lot of key character beats through the limited, but through the lines of dialogue in this duel, you get a moment that allows, you to think back also to the flashback from last episode of the year need for victory, Anakin, at Blinds You Line,

because there's a part of me that's like, how can he just walk away from that Boulder burial sinkhole and, like, not reach out through the force to sense that Obi-1 is alive, or maybe he doesn't care. But he is so desperate to win. It's similar to what you were just saying about the tactics in space. Like, he's so desperate to win and focused on that end game at all cost that he's kind of losing sight of like all of the particulars, all of the details, right?

He's just not thinking clearly. Yeah, I guess. A tad too far for me to go along with it because. In terms of him walking away and leaving Obi-1. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that's really weird. Your overconfidence is your weakness, right? He is just so focused on victory that he ignores the comeback that is waiting to happen here.

But, I mean, there's so much of that in this. series of characters leaving other characters alive. Yeah. Under kind of confusing circumstances where you have Riva leaving the inquisitor alive, even though she knows well from personal experience that a lightsaber stab wound is eminently survivable. Also, you have the Inquisitor and Vader leaving Riva alive. You have Riva leaving Luke alive, which we'll get to. But then you have the two instances in this scene.

And both of them were troubling to me, even though I know that, yes, Vader is overconfident. he's not bad at his job. He's pretty good at killing people. He is pretty competent. He has to sense Obi-1 actively using the force to keep himself from being buried and then blasting the boulders off and then somehow stealthily sneaking up on Vader. So that's just asking me to suspend disbelief a little bit. There's something to the thematic lesson of it. Okay, this is revealing or confirming something about Vader's character.

But when it gets to this point, to that point, yeah, I agree. Then you're just diminishing his competence, essentially, and you're asking us to believe that he would just completely ignore something that there's no reason he should not be aware of. It takes you out of it in a literal life and death, like decisive moment. Like that, it works much better in like the subsequent sequence after we go from the blending of the Anakin Vader, sound bites a little bit of an own goal to resurface that you should have killed me when you had the chance line there.

one of us maybe would have left that one out of the cut given what comes next but and then when he makes his way to him and sneaks up behind him and again

that inversion of episode three like the fat and he's he's they're their Obi-one is just dominating as they're dueling here and we talked already about like using the hilt

to break the breathing the mechanisms of the suit we start to hear this wheezing and he's like hitting him in the side with the boulder not the full boulder pelt sequence just the other heavy boulder into the side and the steering the back of his cape with the saber,

like, Vader strikes you in that sequence of the duel as utterly unprepared. Like, he just did not think that Obi-1 would be equal to him or to the task, right? So in a moment like that, it feels really rich, the not checking, not checking the force pulse, tougher. Let's get to the helmets here and talk about this a little bit more. I want to hear the rest of what Joe wanted to say earlier. So the Midnight Boys hit on this as well.

Jomi, Jomi mentioned this, and I was really struck by this watching it. It's a different eye than the one that Asoka will reveal later. We get the helmet slash. It's the left eye here. It's the right eye with Asoka. Luke will eventually be the one to reveal the mask in full.

And I love, I did love that because each of Asoka and Obi-One, they're each able to get half the mask. They can each reach a sliver of Anakin. But nobody is quite yet, including Anakin himself, ready to see the whole of Anakin again, and only Luke will be able to do that.

And also their slashes come, those are angry slashes, right? Whereas, okay, so like when... Yes. You have to shift from that pure height of rage into the heartbreak of hearing his voice, seeing his face of the humanity, the despair.

When Luke takes his mask off in the end of Return of the Jedi, and he says, Luke, help me take his mask off, and Luke says, but you'll die. And he says, nothing can stop that now. just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes.

And the fact that he talks about using his own eyes and the fact that we get one eye and the other, I think is really beautiful. And I think that also, fun fact, I think Ryan Airy on screen, Crash is the one who pointed this out that the poster for the series, if you look at the poster for the series, it has an eye. Yeah. Well, it's the images in there. Ewan's face sliced in the eye that we see is like the binary son and Vader in that eye.

And it's just sort of like a preview of what's to come here. But I mean, this is just tremendously affecting. And then fucking you, McGregor crying and saying, I'm sorry. And talking about Anakin, the way, like the emotion in his voice when he first, because Vader's kind of hunched over at first. And it takes him a minute to stand and for Obi-1 to see his face. and you've got this like bathing blue light from the lightsaber on both of their faces, and then that shifts over the course of this exchange to the red, which is just so haunting

and effective. The way that he just chokes out Anakin for the first time after he has chipped away at this Vader casing and can finally glimpse the boy within, and it is both that last vestige of hope and also the thing ultimately that will lead. We've talked to how does he get to that moment? How does he get to that only the master of evil, Darth? moment. How does he get to the exchange with Luke in A New Hope where he is talking about Anakin and Vader as though they are completely separate people. This is how. Right?

And I was a fucking wreck watching this guy. I was weeping. Saking. I was also crying and like my friend is truly dead. Like all of that is very upsetting. Yeah. I will say, I think Obi-1 takes the absolution a little too easy. Like it seems to me The way that he like jauntily goes to the rest of the episode that he's like, well, he said it. Check out these sand goggles. Not my fault. I'm going house shopping. I'm doing five.

I think I could have stood a little bit more processing of that rather than being like, oh, thank you. I've been really carrying this for a while. Thank you for taking that off my back. Thanks for the text, bro. Really helpful. I have a lot of my to-do list. Leia is going to soon tell me. I need a nap. Oh, man. It's a good, it's a good point. That's where we have, I've met more with

myself about whether the show needs to be longer or shorter, I'm still not sure, but those moments of introspection. When he's packing up the cave later and we get to see that, that was like a really small but sweet and touching moment where we can see the progress that he's made. Like, he wants to move forward in his life in a different way. And maybe just more time right there, like reflecting, you know, would have been lovely. Please allow me to fan, fake one other thing. And then I swear to God, Ben Lindberg, I'm going to let you talk, which is this. packing up the cave, that's when I would like to see Quagan.

And I would like a whole ass conversation. And if they want to have a whole ass conversation about failure and what Anakin said to him here, and maybe that's what we'll get in season two. But like, you know, I don't know what Liam Neeson wanted to do. And if he was like, I'll give you five minutes. And that includes slapping this wig on my head.

But yeah, anyway, sorry, Ben. What do you want to say? I have so many things I want to say. But let me start here just a couple points about what you were just talking about. Just the slicing of the mask, Joe, you were saying earlier that you didn't know whether the fact that we had seen this before, although it's later in the timeline, had reduced the impact of it or heightened it for you. And that seems like just an essential question about Star Wars these days or maybe any kind of fandom that is so firmly rooted in the history of that thing. just because what is that initial reaction? What does that prompt in you?

When you hear something that you recognize and you think, I get that reference, does that thrill you? Do you do the DiCaprio pointing meme and you feel seen and that is what you want out of that thing? Or does that frustrate you? Because I've seen this before. I don't need to see this again. Show me something new. Show me something memorable. And I'm kind of constantly going back and forth between those poles and probably leaning toward the ladder.

In this case, I think the helmet reveal worked for me. Obviously, you've just had to do it so that we could see more of Hayden. And really, Darth Vader needs to invest in a Bessgar upgrade at some point. Really? How many helmets do you think he's gone through? Seriously. I think it works in this case, even though it's something we've seen before. And first of all, not everyone has seen it, right?

Not everyone who's watching this series has seen Rebels. But if you have, then I think there is something satisfying. there's a certain symmetry to it in that these are the two people who were closest to Anakin who cared about him the most. They both took a crack at it, and they both got halfway there. But ultimately, neither of them was able to bring him back from the brink or beyond the brink. It took Luke, right? And when Luke finally gets him to remove the helmet, it's not by slicing it off him. It's just by bringing out the inner Anakin again so that Anakin willingly wants to take off the helmet.

So there is a symbolic significance to that that works for me. And then when you have the colors and the flickering between the blue and the red as Anacin's delivering his lines, I like all of that stuff. I also wanted to say that I appreciated how this series referenced the sequel trilogy at times because the sequel trilogy very rarely referenced the prequels, which seemed like a missed opportunity. But the moment with levitating the rocks, if that's a ray callback or call forward, sometimes it's hard to tell because the sequel trilogy has so much. any callbacks to the original trilogy that you can't actually tell whether this is referencing the original or the copycat. But I prefer to think that this is, yeah, this looks more like a Ray tribute to me. And later we get the foreshadowing of Luke almost killing Kylo, right?

When Rieva's almost killing Luke, that made me think of that scene. We got some scenes that were reminiscent of the resistance fleeing from the First Order in The Last Jedi, although that was also sort of similar to Hoth. So I just appreciated that even though this series was really, rooted in the prequels and the original trilogy, it made an effort to incorporate the entire Skywalker saga. And I just, I like those connections. So if I haven't talked too much, I do have some things to say about the decision that Obi-1 makes here. I am open to persuasion, but I had and have deep problems, deep problems with what happens here. Before you,

Before you say that, I just want to, I want to say one thing because to the point about the Asoka, Obi-Wan, Anakin connections, and parallels. Like, I think it's, I think one, there's a lot of similarities, but there's a key difference. And it transitions us into this discussion, which is after the Anakin's gone, I am what remains. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Anakin for all of it and the key line that we already talked about. What does Asoka say? What is the decisive choice that somebody makes in that? confrontation. I won't leave you, right? And she charges back in and pushes Ezra away. Obi-1 will leave you.

Obi-1 leaves. That is a fundamental distinction between how the, then there are other differences, as we mentioned earlier. But the emotion of that sequence, the agony and anguish that Anakin is experiencing, the tears that are streaming down Obi-1's face, all of that is so, so, so impactful. The blending of Hayden's voice with the, the James Earl Jones for speecher, the glimpse of not only the boy that Obi-1 used to know, but the charred husk, the remnant of their dole and the decisions that they both made on Mustafa, all of that, not only the then my friend is truly dead, then my father is, you know, all of these parallels, but the decision, all of those lead to the decision to walk away and how much of that is what Joe was just saying about like the effectiveness of the absolution.

I just wanted to note that the Asoka choice is a very different one. And I think, oh, yeah, and that's why the Asoka thing makes entire sense, whereas this only makes most sense because, like, with Asoka, she gets pulled away. The reason that that fight ends in a way that everyone is still alive is because there's an external force separating the two of them. And, like, they've kind of forgot to do that here. And I think that two other parallels, one of the parallel, I want to point out, which is that in the Twilight of the Apprentice fight, when his mask gets cracked, he's the one who speaks first. And he says, Soca, Soca. And in this case, it's Obi-Wan who says Anakin, you know, and I just like, and that's interesting. And then I think also, no, I do not remember what I was going to say, oh, okay, if you're going to do this, if Obi-Wan is going to walk away from Anakin Skywalker here, sorry, Darth Vader, because that's who he's,

decided he is. He's going to walk away from Darth Vader here and not take the kill shot. Then I need to know why they left the line in earlier when he's speaking to Quigone and he says, whether he dies or I do this ends today. Another own goal, as you put it, Valerie. Why leave that in if that's not what we're going to do here? It's like, the only thing I can say there is that he's like, Anakin's dead? He's talking about Anakin. That to me, right. I mean, either he dies. As we transition here into trying to wrap our minds around this decision, I must read a mailbag, a tweet that we got. It's from Jonathan that says,

he's a 10, but he keeps leaving a genocidal Sith Lord who kills younglings alive. That's a, that's a theory. That makes him a three. It's an apt summation. Is anything about the thematic, character-centric,

reasoning or logic of this, whether it's the mercy element that we already raised or anything else, the compassion, the fact that Anakin and Vader are now separate entities, does any of this allow you to find some peace here?

Or is just indefensible? It is largely indefensible. The one line that I will say that comes before the mercy conversation or the mercy lines is a Jedi's goal is to defend life, not take it, is what Obi-1 says to Anakin

in last week's episode. I would say there should be an exception. When is Darth Vader in front of you? He has taken lives, right? We've seen him slash some stormtroopers in this series. So there are exceptions to that. Yeah, I mean, this was when I said earlier that I hoped you could convince me to like this more. This is what I was talking about because this scene bothers me to the extent that it really interferes with my appreciation of this episode of this series at all.

So help me. Here's my best. My best attempt. You're my only hope. I mean, like. I also had a problem with this. I mean, it's a difficult thing to wrap our minds. around, you know, a character who we consider elemental to the story, who is elemental to the story,

and who the thing is, like, I can't help but think back to a moment, like, the bizarre, Rogan Wade intro, of, you know, like the idea that other people don't know what the empire is capable of, which was weird and wrong then, but the only, like, read you could have on it at the time was that Obi-1 knows that more than most. But that only makes something like this even less defensible. Like, He has had such a front row seat for what Vader and Palpatine and the Empire are capable of doing. And yes, he's been in isolation and out of remove for 10 years. But then look at all of these people who have come back into his life. Like Leia, Talah, the Pat, etc.

Wade. Right. Never forget Wade. So the most important character in Star Wars. Also, that kid who got his neck snapped by Vader. Like, yes, he witnessed all of that. He saw that. He saw that.

Right. The true. So on the one, I just think, yes, of course. It's not even an on the one hand. It's like on the hands. It's just like a very tough look for our guy, Obi-1 Canobi, to leave Darth Vader alive knowing what he and the empire have done and are capable of doing. And then to, unless we get much more story that tells us otherwise,

allow them to continue a pace for nine more years. That's really hard. We talked a few episodes about how is he going to let the Inquisitors keep going after walking through the hall of the dead. This is like a, this is that on steroids. And what's, what's really frustrating is that the solve is so easy.

This is what I was going to ask. What's a better conclusion? The solve is, I haven't tried to convince Ben to like it yet. I cannot fucking kill my friend. It's too hard. I want to watch him wrestle with it. And also,

holy shit, Luke's in danger. Like, you know, he gets that bat signal later. You know, like, oh, God, I got to finish this. Oh, I have to decide.

Do I save Luke or do I finish Darth? What do I do? Like, I'll go save Luke. I don't have time to do this. And also, I can't do this. And I'm Ewan McGregor and I'm crying. He could, you know, you can't sell that to me.

If he was like, I can't kill my friend. So it's not the walking away for you as much, Joe. It's that he's not wrestling with it. There's just no attempt. There's no attempt to show me the thought process, you know? I agree. You could absolutely craft. compelling, fulfilling, satisfying ways, A, that he's prevented from killing him, or B, that he decides to.

This is just not the way that you go about it. He's not held to account at all for that decision after this scene. And I feel like it's inexcusable to fumble this moment because this is what it's all been building toward. This is what you know you are writing toward, right? From the moment you decide, we're doing a series about Obi-Wan and Darth Vader's in it. You know they're going to meet again. You know they're going to have a climactic duel. and you know that they're not going to kill each other. So you have to come up with some sort of solve for that. And the fact that this was the best they could do is really dismaying to me because, yeah, what happens to this ends today? What happened to telling the path people, you're what needs to survive, an impassioned speech that he delivers, knowing that Vader has been hunting them and will continue to hunt them if he's left alive.

He was like, I'm good. I don't need to follow them. But yeah, sure. What happened to I will do what I must? was he not listening when Vader said and reminded him, you should have killed me when you had the chance. Again, yeah. I can understand. Reservicing that line and then doing this utterly baffling.

Seriously. I can understand why he walked away in episode three. If you read the novelization, and this is maybe more subtext than text, but it says he sensed Palpatine approaching. He wanted to get away with Padman. And he wanted to leave it to the will of the force. Right. And he would not murder a helpless man, he says. He trusted in the will of the force to decide Vader's fate for him.

And by the way, he's like sliding into a lava lake. So like it seems like probably the will of the force is going to decide that he's going to die at that point. But the force saves him. But buddy, the force seems to be sending you a signal here by giving you another crack at this to take him out. So the line earlier to Quigon that you mentioned instead of, all right, I got to do it. It's got to happen. It's him or me. Have, despite the, the, the, the, the, the,

Dress testing, you know, the tolerance for callbacks. What we needed here was what he said to Yoda in Revenge of the Sith, which is I cannot do what you're asking me to do. I cannot kill him. Like, I do not ask me to do this. I cannot be the one to do this. Yeah. Like, you know, that's what we need here.

That's what he should have said to quiet. We understand why he can't kill him. Right. He can't kill him at that point because it's too fresh. It's too raw. He hasn't accepted that Anakin is lost yet. So that's what really gets me in this scene. And this is not just another nitpick like VATIC, like VAT

not deploying the starfighters of the tractor beam or whatever. This undercuts the catharsis of the scene in the whole series because we knew that Obi-Wan couldn't kill or redeem Vader. And I think it's actually appropriate and poignant that Obi-Wan would conclude that Vader is irredeemable, even though we know he's not, right, that he can be saved because whether Obi-1, yeah, exactly. And that's been the tragedy of their whole relationship, really. Whether Obi-1 doomed Anakin to the dark side or not, he couldn't stop him from pursuing that

path, and now he can't rescue him. Okay, only Luke can help Anakin rediscover his old self. Fine, but if what ends today is Obi-Wan's hope that Anakin could be brought back to the light, and now he believes, as he says, that his friend is truly dead, then what is holding him back from making it official at this point? So, alternatively, if he doesn't truly believe that Anakin is irredeemable, if there's some lingering part of him that thinks maybe he can be saved, but he's walking away again anyway, then what has he actually learned in this series? What creative growth has there been? Because in that case, he would still be retreating to the sidelines where we found him when the series started dumping his problem on the rest of the galaxy while everyone else,

including the path and any other surviving Jedi, and for that matter, potentially Luke and Leah, whom he's supposed to protect, are paying the price for him sitting on the sidelines. And so So if he wasn't willing to kill him under any circumstances, whether because of his just enduring love for Anakin or out of loyalty to Quigon's belief that Anakin would somehow bring balance to the force, if he still believes that even still, then I don't know, say so. Make that clear to us. Make it seem like he's struggling between what he wants to do and what he thinks he has to do. I'm not saying it should have been easy, no sweat for Obi-One to end his life here even now, but just walking away felt like such a sudden. That's a shrug as if the writers were like, well, we can't kill him. So I guess we'll just end this scene here.

Home by five. Obey one exit stage left, right? And when Obi-Wan tells Riva later, now you're free, we both are, how is he free? That's what's what's taking that absolution so easily? He's like, what was not my failure, was not my fault? And the other issue, and I promise you, I did cry in this scene. I did love what Ewan McGregor was doing up to a point. But the other issue comes from the very beginning of this series

when we learned that Obi-1 Canovi did not know that Anakin survived Mustafa and he only learned that a couple episodes ago. So when he says, then my friend is truly dead, the asterisk on that is just like I thought he was dead for the last 10 years also, right? Because hasn't Obi-1 believed that Anakin was dead this whole time? Isn't that what we were meant to believe from the opening? of the series?

Well, that's why we need the helmet crack, right? And like, I do, I do completely agree with you both that we need to see Obi-1 wrestling with this more. Absolutely. That is, that is missing. And it's, it's confounding. Because there's a version of this where he is saying either to himself to Quigon later, some way that we're able to access and glean what he, this turmoil within, where that's

actually, like, really powerful that it. character who we associate with so many of these decisive moments and, like, pivot points in the history of Star Wars is really deeply flawed and doesn't make all of the right choices, actually. And, like, Ben, to your point about, like, going back, it's, I actually think there's a version of this that is super interesting where it's like, he has so much more he still needs to learn. He has so much more that he hasn't figured out. Like, one of the things that Joe and I were debating last week was, I really, like, I was

viewing a lot of the last episode through the lens of how much more Obi-Wan has learned than Anakin. And I do broadly believe that. But I think this is an area where you see that there's a limit on even that. And again, I think that's like ultimately a cool thing. It's much, I was going to say it's much like Luke in the last Jedi. These are not the same things. But the idea that a Jedi through his life, like Obi-Won Kenobi is 48 years old here, but he's about to go become an apprentice again. He has so much more he needs to learn. Lean into that. Like, it's a difficult thing to reconcile inside of the story because the only reason he can see Quigon is because he has communed with the forces, attuned to it again in a certain way, allow him to connect to it while

still recognizing that he has failed, that he is flawed. You said binary earlier. I love Star Wars. Star Wars is one of my favorite stories. It is one of the things I care about truly most in the world. One of the things that can be frustrating inside of Star Wars is this often reductive binary, this either or, especially in a text that acknowledges, as we mentioned earlier, but only a Sith deals in absolutes. So we talked last week, one of the parts of our Obi-1 discussion that I think we both love the most was the mercy chat and this we, the Lord of the Rings corollary, right? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. And that Gandalf quote and that idea about like, you know, only, even the wisest cannot see all ends. If Obi-1 is thinking about that, I think that's really rich.

but show us that he's thinking about that, show us that he's weighing that. We have the knowledge of what awaits and he doesn't. I don't expect them to bring in every single aspect of the novelizations and the wider new canon novels. That's obviously not practical. They can barely account for all of the animated shows, right? But there's also this whole strand and master and apprentice about Rael having killed his Padawan. And the absolute horror that Obi-1 feels like confronting that idea of what it would mean to kill your Padawan. That's like a defining thing in his life.

There are ways earlier in the show to like plant that seed of the way that that has haunted him. And then Joe, to your point about, well, that was only a couple episodes ago when he realized that Anakin was alive, that can be part of why he makes this choice if they lean into that. The helmet is slashed and he sees him. It's one thing to know it. It's one thing for someone to tell you. When you are staring that truth in the face, you can say out loud all you want, then my friend is

truly dead. You're still looking into the eyes of the person who you have. helped raise. You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you. And it is not too much for me to believe that it would be downright and possible for him to strike that decisive blow while looking and Hayden Christensen's eyes. Not too much to believe at all, but show him grappling with that. And here's a problem that Obi-1 has, is that it is a show that was written to be both a standalone miniseries and an ongoing series, just in case Yuma Greger decides he wants to do more. So just in case, E. McGregor decides he wants to do more. There are, I think,

more things for Obi-Wan to learn. But just in case, this is the last we get of Yuma McGregor here, we need to be able to make sense of the end of this fight and when we next see them in a new hope. And so he needs to say that my friend is truly, you know, that my friend is truly dead. And it's too early to close that door. It is way too early to close that door.

He needs at least a couple weeks or months in the, desert to process that. You know, he cannot say it there because when he says it there, then him walking away doesn't make any sense. So it's just, this is the sublime of Star Wars, which is Eulam McGregor crying and saying, I'm sorry. It's agonizing right next to one of the more frustrating things I've seen. Yeah.

Just right next door to each other. Love the duel overall. Incredibly emotionally impactful. confounding conclusion. The idea that he believes he's free, that the show is trying to tell us he's free, just because he can tell himself that Anakin's dissent to the dark side wasn't his fault, great, glad you got that load off your mind, and now you can rest easy and enjoy your downtime on Tatween, but Vader's still running around out there.

And doesn't this dishonor... I just can't believe that he just like is content to sit there. It's not possible. Doesn't this dishonor Tala's sacrifice, right? because her whole thing is that she's been out there on the front lines. Obi-1's been sitting on the sidelines. He seems to feel some shame when he realizes that. And now he's back in the fight.

But now all of a sudden he's ready to retreat. But I don't know that he's ready to retreat. I mean, I didn't get that from the episode. Honestly, we, I think that it's clear that he's like girding himself for whatever's next, right? He packs up. He leaves the cave. He moves forward. He changes his outfit.

He reunites with his beloved Eopee. Glad to see that Eopee's thriving. He gets to have that brief moment of very limited catharsis with Owen. He gets to meet Luke. He hands over the T16 skyhopper. He sees Quigon. He is moving forward on his journey. I actually think that's one of the reasons that that decision and the way that was handled

is frustrating because more broadly inside of the season, it does feel like he is really making meaningful progress in his connection with the force in the way that he thinks about the fight. We are so far away from the fight is over. we lost Obi-1 Canobi of episode one. We are really far away from that character in a way that is rewarding and does show that he has learned things and internalize the lessons that Talah and Leia and other people, Wade, dear sweet Wade taught him. That undercuts that a little bit.

Guys. Wade. Well, I can buy that he would be very eager to hear and receive this message that it's not his fault, right? Because he's been tortured by this memory for the past decade. he's been having nightmares. So here he has the nightmare himself is coming and absolving him. I can absolutely see why he might feel some weight lifted and why he might be willing to jump at that. But he does.

I won't just say he doesn't leave after he hears, I am not your failure, Obi-1, you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did. He's not like, cool, good talk, bye. It's after the same way I will destroy you. It's when Vader returns. Two seconds later, but, yeah. But I mean, I get that, you know, he would make that, that he would feel some freedom initially. And maybe it is just a matter of once he gets back to his cave and he sets up shop there, he might realize, hey, I can't just sit here now.

I'm no longer content to do that. We need season two. This is convincing me we need season to. We haven't seen that. Right. I guess so. But it's almost like, you know, at least the messaging around this series was this is a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end. It'll be the first time ever that an IP machine has changed its mind.

about whether to make a second. I'm not naive enough to ever believe. And then, you-Ham-O-M-Gregor is like, this press tour is fun. I love people. I love me. The idea that, like, he gets a mulligan on Moustapar. He gets a do-over. He makes the same choice all over again.

Fine. That's an element of tragedy. You know, you end up repeating the same patterns for the same reasons. Okay. But for the show to treat that as a transformative moment that heals him just didn't land for me at all. I think it's shallow. I think it's shallow, actually, for a character as rich and thoughtful as Ben Kenobi to say, oh, it wasn't my fault? Okay, then cool.

But I do think that there, we were talking from the jump from before this started when we talk about Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan versus a New Hope Obi-Wan that we needed some absolution, some some lifting of that guilt for him to be. the character embodied by Alleganess. There needed to be some of that. There needed to be that idea. We talked about this a lot. This idea of like, Anakin is not Darth Vader. Anakin is dead.

Darth Vader lives as different. Like, none of that absolves him walking away. But I think we talked about that a lot. And again, he's wrong about that, which I do think is interesting. It is interesting. But that guilt, that failure, that fear. Yes.

That fear of what happened with Quaghan, the fear, what happened with Obi-1, the fear, Anakin, the fear that maybe that would happen again with Luke, not being able to trust himself, not being able to trust anyone, all that sort of stuff is what cut him off from the force in the first place,

is what cut him off from Quigon, right? So he needed to be able to break through that. That it came with this one line from Anakin Skywalker and then he walks away or Darth Vader, if you prefer. I don't know that I 100% buy that. I think that my guy is probably still a little torn up and going to be grappling with some of this.

And I look forward to seeing it in season two of Obi-1 Canobi. Guys, we're two hours in. We're on page two of our outline, even for us. Shocking stuff. So we've got to pick up the pace. Anything else to say about Vader and Palpi or Obi-1 and Quigon before we move on to Leia? One thing about Palpi, I think he always enjoys a little needling, a little psychological manipulation, some mind games. He doesn't want Vader to feel too comfortable.

at his side. And remember, we know that there is still good in Vader buried deep down in there. Maybe only Luke can see it, but maybe Paupe sees it too. And maybe he has some level of uneasiness or some presentiment that Vader could be his undoing someday. I also like this little look at their relationship, especially coming right after the duel, because it drives home the difference between Anakin's former master and his current one. Say what you will about Obi-Wan, but he loved Anakin. He wanted the best for him. Palpi calls him my friend

and feigned concern about his agitation, but there's really an implied threat there. You shall not have any other masters before me. And that's really the nature of the Sith master-apprentice relationship. They're both just using each other until the inevitable betrayal, right? So it's also clear, which I like in the scene, that Vader isn't being sincere either

because he says Kenobi means nothing. Well, we know that's not the case. protesting too much here. We know that's not true because we heard him say Kenobi is all that matters twice in this series. So I like that he is hiding something from Palpi here. And each of them gets to consult with their little blue, glowy person, one of whom is alive and one of whom is not. But it's a very different vibe in these two conversations. And I thought this was a good chaser to a scene that left me with a lot of questions. Especially when the Imperial March kicked in in full.

I want to say the smartest thing that George Lucas ever did by accident was cast a 37-year-old Ian McDermid to play Palpatine and Smyraman prosthetics so that he could still play Palpatine 40 years later and look exactly the same. I love Ian McDermott.

So often in recent years, we've been like, why is it all about Talpatine? Made total sense here. Loved it. One little more come-on question because Malew had in our outline that maybe the purpose of this palpi call

is just to establish okay, Vader is going to lay off the Canobee hunt for a little while here. But speaking of not looking for Obi-Wan, how to Bail and Leah last until episode four, given what has transpired in this series? Forget about the Obi-Wan paying his visit to Alderon here to return a droid. But Leah was just in imperial custody. She got busted out by the emperor's number one most wanted fugitive, who is clearly in cahoots with pale this entire time. Off the book's Riva operation and the Grand Inquisitor was like, what the fuck are you doing? Right.

Right. But they know that there's this link here, right? How do the inquisters now not show up on Aldron, place them all under arrest, torture Obi-Wan's location out of them? Like, how do they just survive now unmolested? The empire. This is one thing that I'm fine with. It's a reasonable point to make, but one of the most central elements of Star Wars,

a story that has existed for 45 years, is that they hid Luke. with the last name Skywalker at Anakin Skywalker's literal home. So the empire is and has always been incompetent. I'm willing to forgive that. I'm with you.

This is an original George Lucas sin. You're going to have to take it up with George. How about Force Ghost Quigon? Anything else we want to hit here before we move to Lay? Listen, I know I understand. I understand.

That our dearest friend, Van Leith, and I said it's the summer of no expectations. But I just want to say, yes, okay, Quiguan. We got Quigone. Sure. Not like this. You want more?

It didn't just wet your appetite for the inevitable season two. If they wanted a limited series of dollars on Liam Neeson's doorstep and get him a better wig, sure. If this season really was intended to tell a complete story and not just serve as a teaser for a second season, I would have liked to see more. I like the took you long enough. Yeah. Beginning to think you'd never come. Love a meta wink. Connecting to Quigon at all is a breakthrough for Obi-Wan because he's been trying to make that connection for this series.

But I wanted more because, as I mentioned last week, they do have this heart-to-heart in the short story in the book. But that's there if you want it. But I feel like even though Anakin kind of absolves some of responsibility here, he would have needed to hear that from Quigone too. And maybe that's what they will chat about when they head back to the big. But I wish we had heard it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, a Padawan again at 48. I'm delighted, but this would have been a nice way to solve some of the, some of the conundrums at the end of the episode.

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All right, two hours in Obi-1 and Leia. Let me just say this. There were some moments this season where the Leia stuff was an absolute thrill, some moments where it didn't work as well. In this finale, I was a blubbering mess a handful of times in Obi-1 Leia exchanges. I was moved to tears multiple times

by exchanges that they had, and not just at the end. Like, throughout, I found these exchanges between them so impactful. How did, before we go through, and we don't have really time to go through, we don't. It's just a quick one, quick one,

as Bobby Barathean would say. Overall, I think the one thing we should talk about in a little more detail is the Padmae-Annequin exchange, but overall, how did the Leia-O-B-1 relationship land for you and how did you find their parting in the finale? the Tala Holster handoff, the Lola handoff, the goodbye, the promise, and then the reunion on Alderan, all of it. Ultimately, I really liked it. And I'm glad that this happened.

And despite all of my misgivings about this series, this is actually one of the things I am most happy about that we got this to establish that there was this bond between Obi-Wan and Leah that we never suspected, never knew about, frankly, wouldn't have had much reason to suspect from what we saw in episode four, which is maybe a minor issue. But I think initially it was like, oh, this is kind of contrived. You know, they need to find a way to get him off Tatween. And of course, so it's Star Wars, so they can't use Luke. They're going to use Leia. Of course, it's the obvious thing that they would do. But it worked for me. Ultimately, there are just so many tender moments. I mean, I love that moment on the ship during the just endless chase scene where Obi-1 sees Leia just, you know,

using her budding diplomacy skills to comfort everyone with Lola. And then just that little, like, catch in his voice as he very tenderly is like, you know, maybe I need that kind of comfort too. I mean, that relationship between them was wonderful. Does it make any sense that he would journey all the way to Alderan when Bail would clearly be like under very tight surveillance here? And to use the same ship that he just ran away from the empire with, I mean. But he just told Bader not to look after any of this. So it's fine.

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, that was really tough. I don't know what Obi-1 and Baylor doing. They've really dropped the ball in the secrecy thing. Again, it was an incredibly moving sequence. I'm glad we got it. But baffling. Yeah.

Yeah. This is going to come up again in a little bit, but I've been reading E.K. Johnston has a trilogy about Padme, Queen's Peril, Queen's Hope, Queen's Shadow. And in Queen's Hope, there are these beautiful little vignettes about the women of Star Wars. And the one about Padme, like describing Padme as a young girl and there's this like illness and a boo and the like the sun is blocked out and like and the quote is this. It wasn't until the children got sick that she Padma began to panic through her fear she nursed them giving comfort where she could never betraying her terror as a sickness grew worse. And I was just like, is that not little Leah like entertaining people with Lola on on the ship? Like that's just, you know, and to to circle that then back to, you know, fucking Ewe McGregor saying Princess Le Argana, you are wise, discerning, kindhearted. These are qualities that came from your mother. We were also passionate and fearless forthright. And these are gifts from your father. Both were exceptional people who bore an exceptional daughter. I, that absolutely destroyed me. As they, I mean, this, this episode,

use so much more John Williams than the rest of the series. And this we get a little bit of across the stars, which is, of course, the Padmae and Anakin theme leading into the Leia theme. And it's just sort of like, okay, sure. Hit me with you, McGregor, emotionality, a cute child, and John Williams.

Cool. I'm done. So that crushed me, absolutely. That line reading from you in, we've talked so much about the facial expression acting in the season and the line reading, the absolute tenderness in his voice. I mean, I will think about that moment

where he is talking, you know, and the opening, like I said before, that I didn't know your parents. I will think about that moment and what he says about her and about Anakin and Padmay

for the rest of my life as a Star Wars fan. Like, I really well. I was sobbing. I'm about to cry now, just thinking about it. Like, what, it was just such a gift to hear him say those things,

not only for Leah. And the show, one of the things that did definitely, handle was building these bridges between her and Anakin and Padme while also really toasting and honoring Bail and Brea as her parents and as her family in a lovely way. And we get these great moments where they see the holster and they're like, this is my daughter. She's awesome. She kicks ass. You know, then we'll change it together. What a gift this was for Obi-Wan to be able to say these things and for us to be able to hear them. And this is where that catharsis, I think,

I felt it so, so, so strongly. Like to have him reach this point where all of the other stuff that we discussed is still valid, right, is still germane. But where he can think of Anakin, like this is the other side of the, they are separate beings now to him coin, without much as when he's talking to Luke

in a new hope about Vader and his, and Anakin, he can talk about him now without being so consumed. Like he can hold on to the light and the ghost. that was once there and was once at the heart of one of the most meaningful

relationships in his life. I just loved it. I loved it too and I'm also so grateful that Leia got that because we saw Luke get that in a new hope.

We saw him learn about his dad. So the fact that Leah got an effective parallel, for sure. A couple of the other, like, that's obviously the highlight, but a couple of the other smaller moments between Obi-1

and Leia that I loved in this episode, when he said, this was when they were still on the ship, please tell your father I tried. that killed me for like a few different reasons. One, I think it really, really shows in a kind of subtle way how much he values Leah and the bond that they've built and how he trusts her with like his true self and his vulnerability. And also like we've talked about Tala a couple times and this was present here and in the holster

handoff like how much the people that he met in this serious Tala chief among them and Laya chief among them helped him grow because that idea here and that line please tell your father I tried, is that you aren't always going to win. It's not always going to be okay, but you have to try. You have got to try to help other people. Like, you have to. And that was one of the real lessons

that he learned in this show. Similarly, when they say on Eldron, they can never repay him. And he looks at Leia and says she has already done that. Guys, I was just a wreck. I was just like a mess watching this. The Lola thing we already talked about, but was so sweet.

And again, not just because she listened when he said, maybe I should borrow her to you and gave Lola to him, but because he's totally comfortable showing her his fear and imparting that lesson to her that it is okay to be afraid? Can I say two tiny things?

One, when he gets off the transporter, I'm obsessed with the fact that Leah ran to Lola first before Grand Obey one was a classic like Poe Dammer and running up to BV8 like tickling his tummy. And then also Princess Leia Arragana

You have many fine qualities This was too much I was a mess Knowing how to use a comb Is not one of them Oh I thought you were going to say That's not where you thought she was going with that No

Oh you're not into the new You're not into the new comics fit And the braid No I love the comics fit So she's got the comics fit That's great The braid is great Her braid is done

Her entire updu is done And then she picks up the comb And sort of just sort of jabs at her head slightly. And I'm like, that's not how Combs work. We're always on a match corner with Joanna Robinson. We'll never leave it. It's simply not how they work.

Not on Alderon, not anywhere. Incredible. She's so good at so many other things, though. We can let that one thing slide. She'll grow into it. He's like, was this a dinglehopper? I don't know how to use it. A couple other things on the, on the fit corner with the holster now,

a part of the fit. When he gave that to her, he said, Roe confound it before we got out, she would have wanted you to have it. And Leah says, it's empty. I got it. He says, well, I wasn't going to give you a blast a layer. Leia, you're 10 years old.

But you won't always be. Like, that was one of the moments that really got me. And I was in tears there because that was one of the, we've talked a lot about the less deft calls and connections to the stories that come before and after as well. That was one that I thought really worked. Because it is just a reminder. of all of the years and all of the story

that we know, and Obi-1 doesn't know what the future holds, but we do, right? We know what the future holds for Leah. We know what awaits. And so when we hear, but you won't always be, we think of everything that is going to come for her. And in general, the bolstering of their history

and their relationship, like in a moment like this, you really feel, like, his time with Luke actually training him is quite short, right? And his time with Leia is short, too. And again, I refuse to accept that they never see each other again. But either way, there's this master and apprentice

Paduan moment with Leah here too. And you feel so much here like he is helping her to take that step into a larger world. And I just, like, loved it. And then on the Star Wars beats that are a guaranteed 100 out of 100 going to make me cry from, the actual goodbye, you know, we get the, okay, we must be careful. Like, okay, here's how we're going to tie the knot.

and close the loop on the new Hope Hollow, which is not the thing that made me cry to be clear. Similarly, we get the exchange with Obi-Wan and bail, you know, well, if you ever need my help again, et cetera. But we got the goodbye hug and him saying, goodbye princess, may the force be with you, as the force theme kicks in. And I got like chills from that.

for a couple reasons. The force theme, just a guarantee. Always got to get a tingle down the spine. But it just hit me so hard because, like, I think I just felt so keenly in that moment, flaws of the show, which are very present and real, as we've discussed at length today on this very podcast, how much I care about the character. And how glad, truly glad I was that he had found his way back to being able to say something like that out loud and really feeling the power of it and the meaning behind it.

he is connecting to the force again. He wants other people to believe in it too. And I just thought that was like a really important bit of catharsis for us and him and a really lovely, beautiful thing. And she was the one who brought it out of him initially, right? Because she jumped off the roof because he had to do it. She forced him out of the rut that he was in, forced literally him out of that rut. And that was just kind of the first domino to fall on his way back. And she's like, what's the, and she's like, what's the force?

should I be trained in it? Do I have some of that? Oh, God. Any other New Hope, Leah connection thoughts? Any other Leah, Obi-1 thoughts? It was lovely. It really was lovely. It was beautiful.

I wish some of that connection made more sense to me in terms of some of the things that we've talked about. I can almost get there with the hollow message of helping you, Obi-W-W-W-W-Kadobie, you're my only hope. But her not mourning his death, I can't reconcile that. at all.

Luke saying I wish Ben were here and her not. You know, like, someone was, someone was clipping the... And she said, she calls Moby one here.

The right, yeah. That's the name I haven't heard in 90s. Okay, so my name is Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you, droid,

and she goes, Ben, Canobey, and she jumps up. Right. Like, you can make that, you can make that feel so much more powerful now.

Like, that's huge. That's a great, beautiful thing. But I wish Ben were here. Me fucking too. I love him. Yeah.

It's agonizing. We need a second special edition. Let's go back. We'll hear you take a new ho. Fire the Reese feature. Yep. Oh my God. From Leah to Luke.

Luke, Riva, everything on Tatooeen. Owen, Baru. Let's talk about it for a couple minutes here because we're two hours and 23 minutes into our podcast. Ben mentioned this earlier, but this is my solve for the Luke thing, which bothers me to no end.

Why not just keep him sleeping? Let's say he's a sound sleeper. Maybe Baru put something in his milk. And then we could get that sequel echo. Like, if we get Riva looming over a sleeping Luke, then you get that, then that makes Luke looming over a sleeping Kylo like mean that much more in the future

in The Last Jedi, Luke's scampering around and people waving away by saying he never actually saw the lightsaber or so it was fine. Technically he doesn't, which I guess is something. That's a lot to build

the second part of this on. I've been nitpicking other scenes so I would reverse nitpick this one and say that it is plausible if you watch. I mean, I'm sure you have just that he's like climbing up the ladder when she first goes into the building, right? And then Reva deactivates the lightsaber.

And then the next time you see him, he's like up on the cliff and it's dark and she doesn't have the lightsaber on. And she's just a cloak hooded figure. And then by the time she actually approaches him with the lightsaber, he's fallen down and he's unconscious. So because he was told the Tuscans are coming. This was a tough one on the heels of Boba Fett and the Tuscan. That being said, if anyone's plan, everything that happened with me.

Yes, exactly. Shitty about Tuskins, it might be a large family. Yeah, right. Yeah, this actually, like, all the critiques I've had of this episode, this storyline, this subplot bothered me, I think, less than it. This, like, really did most. That's surprising to me. Yeah, didn't anticipate this turn for me.

This really did not work for me. I'm not saying it was great. I'm not saying, yes, give me more of this subplot. Obviously, like, there's no suspense. I mean, you could say that about almost any aspect of the show just because we know Luke's not going to die or anything. But this was no suspense coupled with us, not. learning much of anything about the characters or them learning much of anything about themselves.

Like, it's, yes, you can rationalize that Luke doesn't see the lightsaber and so he can still learn what one is from Obi-Wan and New Hope. Fine. We've talked about this already, like, I thought one of the important choices the show made was to get off of Tatooine early. I think the point that you made earlier in this episode, Joe, about like, okay, if the threat to Luke is what pulls him away from Vader, okay, that would have been one of the ways that I could have understood reintroducing Luke and Tatouina to the story. But it just feels like kind of another own goal to introduce these elements. Like, Obi-1 must really feel confident in where Riva netted out at the end of this episode because she knows that Anakin Skywalker's kid is there. She knows that Obi-Won Kenobi is there.

I don't know that we know what she knows, right? Because she like, she saw the hollow, but doesn't say like your son or whatever. And then she does say the thing to Owen where she's like, you love him like use your own and Ona's a beautiful line. Joel Edgson delivered it well. Yeah, I thought that line implied that she understands that he is someone else's kid. Right, but we don't know what she knows or when she knew it. And does she know that Leah is also the kid? Like, I'm unclear on what Riva knows.

I'm unclear on what Riva's plan was at all. Is it just kill the kid? Is it grab the kid and use him as bait for Vader and be like, I got your kid? Like, what's the play? It seemed to just be killed the kid. She says justice, right? So that's part of why I think she knows that there's. this connection to Anakin because her pursuit is against Anakin.

But yeah, this was just not, I think in a vacuum not satisfying. And certainly when you're cutting away, and again, Star Wars cuts between different duels and battles all the time, that's fine. But it's difficult from to, there are not too many sequences where the drop off is as stark as it is in terms of our investment. I still think that Revo's a really interesting character. I think the performance is excellent. But we did not have enough time.

We talked about this so much last week. Like, my opinion didn't really change at the end. Like, Star Wars Redemption arcs are always a delicate balancing act, and there's got to be that decisive moment. I think it's perfectly reasonable to debate, like, okay, why is this one decision not to kill the kid enough? Like, there are all the other kids that were tormented or someone else killed, and who knows how much is actually unfolded in her direct work as an inquisitor.

We saw a lot of real acts of horror throughout the season. That's been true for a lot of characters who have a Star Wars redemption arc, Vader, or Kylo Callas on and on the list goes. We just need more time to understand, as we talked about last week, everything that has led to that point. And this felt, I think, it just felt very tacked on

to the central focus of the finale and the story. So I think on the whole, that was true for the Inquisitors, too. But should the Inquisites have just not been in the show? Should the whole show have just been Obi-1 and Vader? Or do you need other characters

and plot lines to balance it out? Can I, if you're going to go six episodes, you probably do. But I think that I like that Luke and Leah are linked a little tenuously by the fact that they both had run-ins with Riva here. She was after both of them. They both survived. I also liked that she pulled herself back from the brink. It didn't take someone else talking her off that ledge. She came to that realization herself.

Now, I think the concept of this character is sound. I mean, more than sound compelling. Like a former Padawan who survives the temple attack, vows to get revenge on Vader, becomes a double agent inquisitor to get close to him, which forces her to dabble in the dark side, tell herself that she's doing it for the greater good, but maybe just be swayed too far in that direction. I would watch that show or that part of this show, but we just didn't get enough of it. I'm not sure it needed to be a twist or for that twist to come as late as it did. Well, that was what we talked about last week. It just felt like there was a real, like, miscalculative. there and what was lost and what was gained by us not knowing from the start and being able to linger

in that full understanding the entire season. I think that would have worked a lot better. Right. We never got a great sense of what inner turmoil she was feeling here. How does she reconcile the fact that she's hunting down Jedi to get revenge on Vader for hunting down Jedi? Does this not occur to her before she's about to kill Luke in this moment? So I just would have liked to know more really about her whole backstory. And I still would, I suppose. And maybe there's a, a place to tell that story. And like Moses Ingram, I think she was great in this role. I almost felt like she was like too old for the part in a way, not just because the math doesn't work out exactly if you figure out how long has it been since Order 66 and how old was she at that point, but also because like

she doesn't seem like she is just kind of fledging, fledgling like proceeding along this path, you know, feeling her way. It's like she is a fully powered like dark Jedi. at this point, who has been hunting Jedi presumably for years now, right? And so I wanted to see more of that, like, oh, am I going too far in this direction? Do I have conflict in going after these kids or the path or whatever? Like, did she already have those feelings or did she never have them and just bury them deep within until they finally come out in this moment? So I would have liked more of her, maybe less of the Grand Inquisitor who just seemed to be there

as a red herring really to make us think that a promotion and a pay bump was what Riva wanted, which I don't think any of us ever thought that was the case, but you go back to Rokens, it's not about us, is it? And no, it's not.

And it's not really about the Grand Inquisitors either. So I would have liked for Riva, I guess, you know, either to have her own thing separate from this, and maybe that's still a possibility, or to be integrated more tightly into this, perhaps at the expense of some other characters. My issue is less with Riva.

I'm just going to harp again on the Luke thing. I'm so sorry to do this to you. But it is very important to me, archetypically, that Luke lead a really vanilla-boring childhood. That, like, in the myth, that the mythos that this is founded on. But going to Tashi Station is the single most exciting thing that could happen. Exactly. Like that the prince, you know, the hidden prince has to like grow up as a woodcutter in the forest somewhere and nothing ever happens to him until adventure comes coming. I'll just say, Joe, I agree with you. And I think that's a big part of why I thought like this was not the most effective way to land Riva's arc because of that Luke variable. Like, get us to the end with her in a different context entirely. This just did not feel like the setting that was going to totally unlock the conclusion of that arc, I think.

that's all I want to say about that. What are your thoughts on Baru? Can I talk about Buru really quickly? I just want to say a few things. I think the moment where Baru just like points out that she's got guns hidden away is like a real big moment for this character that we've literally just seen like poor blue milk

in multiple films so far. And to go back to that Queen's Hope book, the E.K. Johnson book that is reading, there's a section for Baru. section for Padme, there's a section for Smey, and there's a section for Brea, which I think is really beautiful, like these women who have helped raise, you know, like we talk about Obi-Wan Canobee forever, who literally mentored Luke for a week, but Owen and Beru are the ones who raised him, you know. And so the Peru story is so interesting because it's all about how she like

helped Schme get this chip that was in her, like, and out of her and how she helped free. a bunch of slaves on Tatouine. And I just want to read this quick quote where it says, others took over the technical aspects of freeing enslaved people in Tatouin, but it was the girl who comforted them. But I was the girl who comforted them if tragedy struck. Most of the newly freed beings left Tatooine and the girl could not blame them. It wasn't her hands that liberated them.

And they might not never know her name, but it was her kindness that sent them on their way. Buru, White Son, knew her work would never be done, but she hoped it would be enough. And it's just this idea of this kind of this like maternal figure that Baru is. And how that isn't talked about a lot in Star Wars. But I just thought it was a really cool moment. And what that moment of her, there's also a Brue shirt story.

And from a certain point of view, this collection, there's one by Meg Cabot who wrote the Princess Diaries. That's interesting. But I think that showing her have, I mean, it's a very like ranchers have their long guns ready if someone is going to come attack. That all makes sense to me. But it also then informs the fact that we see Owen and Baru not just dead but charred,

like charred in a new hope, makes us feel like now that we've seen this, that they put up one fucking hell of a fight before they went down and they had to go, they had to get, you know, turned into brisket in order for like the job to be done. So I don't know.

I just think, I think it's a tiny moment. I love that they gave it to Baru. I love that there's all this like Baru stuff that's floating around the canon. We don't talk about her ever. And I think sometimes we should. So that's all. Baru Corner.

I love it. I love it. When she says to Owen, we're enough, you and me, you know, there's like a part of, of my mind as a viewer that's like,

it's okay to admit if that's not true and you need help. They had that great exchange about like Ben Skahn's and she brews like, whose fault is that? Who's fault is that? Which I love. That was great. but that like then is, you know, there's the nice bookend

when Obi-1 returns to the Lars Homestead later and shares very much that same sentiment. It's like, I'm not sure that Luke not needing to be trained is the right takeaway

candidly, but him saying, he just needs to be a boy, he just needs to be with you guys, and like, that's enough for now. There's a, the circle is complete

kind of element to that that I thought was nice. And, you know, Ben, you, you mentioned Ben, do in your column, Joe and I talked last week at length in our episode 5 pod about that, only you can change yourself line. And I think that, like, Joe, what you're just highlighting about Baru, it makes me think of that idea again, like that choice and that decision to try

to do something different, to protect the people you love, even if other people think that you can't or that you shouldn't or that that wouldn't be the normal course of events to try to help other people. That's a really cool part of Star Wars. And, you know, because Riva and the Lars family are united in this episode and connected in this episode. that is definitely a very present in the exchange that Riva and OB-1 have. When she says, have I become him? I agree, Ben, that there's, like, a compulsion to say, have you asked yourself that question before, right?

But Obi-1's saying, like, no, you have chosen not to who you become now. That is up to you. Like, that is a fundamental pillar, I think, of Star Wars storytelling. And so I'm really interested to see how that could play out in the future. Like, Riva buries her lightsaber, replaces it down in the same. You know, another Tattooine tradition. Lightsabers in the sand. Let us take a metal detector over to Tatouine.

That doesn't. It's just lousy with lightsabers. Choked with savers. Oh, God. If Grievous ever tried to walk on the sands of Tatooine, he probably wouldn't sink into the sand because there's just so much metal underneath that he could have just walked clanking, clanking and clanking across it. What are you hoping to see from Riva next?

I actually am not that interested in Riva in the future, and I apologize to everyone listening who is. But I do think I want to just, yes, and Ben's point about Riva making the change for herself. And also, you know, to our point about wanting Quigon earlier, Obi-Wan making, Obi-1 made all of his decisions in this thing without Quigon. So, like, those parallels are interesting and important, it feels like, but. Not without Talon, Leia, though. Riva, Riva doesn't work for me at all in this series.

And it is not an indictment of Moses, obviously, who I think is tremendous. but yeah she's she's tremendous Riva as a character is not working for me at all so on the Tatooine Luke Obi front we have to of course talk about the fact that we got at long last

the line they said the thing they did the thing we got the hello there moment I have to say I was like pretty heartbroken when Owen softening ever so slightly like a very frozen block of ice that sat under the binary suns for just like 30

seconds. We got a little droplet and then right back in the freezer. You want to meet him. Like the idea that Obi-1 had spent 10 years watching over Luke and never interacted with him is just heart-wrenching, so sad. Spying on him from nearby. Handed him off as a baby and then just watched him through the binox. We get the hello there. Again, he just looks just tremendous. Great, great, great, great, great, swagger in this moment. Just tremendous. The hair looks great. All of it is wonderful. anything on the Obiluk meeting front or the decision to say the future will take care of itself,

which I guess could mean the future will take care of itself because his angry dad live and they'll surely meet up at some point. Interpretation there. I don't know. Anything else on that front? The only projections he needs now, Owen, is you and Baru has nothing to do with what we saw in this episode, right?

No connection to what we saw in this episode with love and respect. And again, that's okay. But I think the future will take care of itself. Takes me back to something that we talked about in our OB1 prep podcast. My number one Obi-1 thing was Obi-1 saying, in a new hope, you must do what you feel is right, of course, and how contrasted to how stressed and adherent to the Jedi Council and all the stuff that he was in the prequel trilogy.

So I see this as him moving towards the future will take care of itself, really is him moving towards the man who says you must do what you feel is right, of course, trusting the force, trusting the balance of the universe. But that's all I have to say about that. I don't know. I love them. It's time for our lore dive. Ben, we're...

You got to channel your Bobby B buddy and make this a quick one. It's, we're two hours and 40 minutes in. But help us. Opie, Ben and Berge, you're our only hope. Tell us about Hyperdrives. I want to talk to you about Hyperdrives. One of the stars of this franchise and of this episode, really the washing machines of

the Star Wars universe, they're always leaking, they're always having something that gets stuck in the wrong drain. They always need servicing, but they are absolutely essential. So you just have to punch it and hope for the best. They're essential in so many ways. allow me to present the broken hyperdrive theory of Star Wars, which postulates that when you get right down to it, everything important that happens in Star Wars happens because a hyperdrive broke.

Obviously, you can't have a galactic empire or a galactic civil war without the ability to traverse the galaxy quickly. So working hyperdrives are also essential to Star Wars in that sense. But they're essential in a storytelling sense to every pivotal plot point in the first two trilogy. In this episode, Obi-Wan and Vader meet up for their potentially penultimate duel when they do, where and when they do, because Rokin can't jump to hyperspeed, right? Hyperspace, which is poetic in the George Lucas sense in that Obi-Wan and Anakin met because of another faulty hyperdrive. In the Phantom Menace, Padma's ship is damaged in the escape from Tatween. So in the escape from Nabu, so Quigon and Obi-Wan stop on Tatween instead of going straight to Corrassan.

So they visit Wadoes to pick up the parts. They and Padme meet Anakin, and the rest is history. So if that hyperdrive doesn't break, maybe Anakin just becomes a great pod racer. He just earns his freedom from Wado and he and Schmey and the Tuskins that he doesn't slaughter, just live happily ever after, just basking in the sun and the sand of their home planet, which he would love and not find irritating at all. So poof, I mean, no Luke, no Leah, no Skok. Skywalker Saga if you have a functional hyperdrive there. And then, of course, you have the Millennium Falcons damage hyperdrive in Empire. Without that, Han and Leah don't get their quiet time for Han to make his move, have that romantic first kiss inside the space slug. If that doesn't happen, maybe they never get together. Ben is never born. He never becomes Kylo. The Falcon never needs to go to Cloud City. Han is never captured. The carbonite. It never happens. He never gets frozen. Luke never shows up to

have his showdown with Vader. Maybe he never loses his hand. Maybe he never finds out Vader is his father. We never meet Lando. We never meet Jaba. What would we do if hyperdrives always worked and characters could always go where they want? So as the saying goes, life is what happens while you're busy making other plants. The Skywalker saga is what happens while our heroes are trying to fix their hyper drives. So why are hyperdrives so finicky? You may be wondering, well, they're complicated pieces of machinery. You got your leaky generators. You got your polarized power couplings, which can cause your malfunctioning motivators, which seems to be an energy converting device. There's the problem with Roken's ship.

That's the problem, although really Roken himself has a bad motivator. We didn't talk a lot about that, but he can never quite decide what his motivations are. There's just a lot that can go wrong with a hyperdrive, which is somewhat understandable if you consider that these things allow you to enter an alternate dimension and cross the Gulf of. between stars. So just to put this in layperson's terms, the hyperdrive propels the ship into hyperspace by releasing hypermatter particles, the reactions of which also power the Death Star super laser. I could get into the more advanced physics, but that's probably beyond the scope of this segment. So if you want to go over the equations, just see me after class. But another thing that can happen is a hypermatter leak, which leaves a trail that can be followed. Sometimes hyperdrives are

damaged in battle. Sometimes they haven't had enough maintenance. Sometimes it's a mystery. Han has modified and voided the warranties of every piece of equipment in the Falcon. So it's hard to say what went wrong with that thing. Sometimes there's sabotage, Cloud City. The Empire rigs the Falcons hyperdrive to conk out in the book, Tarkin, Tarkin cooks up a plan to disable ships by infecting their hyperdrive motivators with a computer virus. And then there's the direct approach in the series finale of the Clone Wars, Darth Maul, just rips a hyperdrive out of its moorings with the force, which that will do the trick, too, that plunges the ship back into real space. That can happen if your ship encounters a gravity well, a mass shadow, because hyperdrives have

fail safes that can take you out of hyperspace if you're about to fly through a sun or something. So the Empire has those interdictor cruisers that project artificial gravity wells to force ships out of hyperspace, which is useful for ambushes, blockades. In the Legends timeline, hyperspace travel had existed. for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, but in the current canon, it's kind of unclear, and the invention of hyperspace is sort of lost in the midst of time. But prior to hyperdrive, some species used sleeper ships

to freeze themselves in carbonite, kind of a classic sci-fi trope, make the long journeys at subspace speeds. But the Rebels episode, Season 2, The Call, suggests that inventors got the idea from Pergles, space whales, which we heard Bail mention. Yeah, he wanted to chase. purgles, and that's hard because they can travel through hyperspace naturally. So sort of how actual aviation experts have studied how birds fly, the inventors of hyperdrives studied

pergels jumping to hyperspace, and they copied that. And that obviously plays a part in setting up a Soka, so I'm sure we'll be discussing that sometime next year. But the pergels, they inhale a kind of gas, they turn it into hypermatter. It's a very green energy approach, no power couplings, no motivators. So when their tentacles start glowing, get out of the way because they are about to jump. And there is a high Republic-era cruiser called the Pergull class, which is if you save up enough and spend your life savings on the Star Wars Hotel at Disney World, that's one of those. So hyper drives overtime, they get better, they get faster. Clearly, they're still working out some of the kinks. They have hyperspace routes that are mapped to allow safe travel. But we know that not all

ships are equipped with them, notably Thai fighters, which is why they have to be ferried around and deployed by larger ships or inexplicably not deployed, as the case would be. And hyperdrives, they come in classes, so a lower class equals faster travel. So class three is sort of standard for non-military ships. Military ships are class one or two. Depends how big the ship is. A star destroyer is class two. The Death Stars, class four. The Falcon breaks the scale with a class. 0.5 hyperdrive, which might explain why it breaks. Han has overclocked it. So in practice, we don't hear about that that much. It's not really you hear about warp speeds in Star Trek much more than hyperdrive classes or speeds. And we never know how long hyperspace trips take. But lastly,

I should note that since the first two trilogies, hyperspace technology, or at least our understanding of it, has just advanced by leaps and bounds. They have figured out all sorts of new hyperspace tricks. And personally, I'm kind of a hyperspace purist when it comes to like real-time communications while at light speed. Not because of the science, because we're talking about faster than light travel here. So that isn't much of a hang-up for me. But I like the idea of there being times when you're out of touch. You try to call someone in Star Wars. It goes straight to the hollow mail because they're in hyperspace. This is Ben's way of telling me he wants me to stop asking if he has time for a call or Zoom. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like having Wi-Fi on airplanes.

which offends me somehow. It's like I'm traveling 600 miles an hour here. I'm at 35,000 feet. No one likes a call more than Ben Glickman or hates it more than Ben Limburg. So just pretend the Wi-Fi on the plane isn't working. I probably shouldn't say that while I'm on a podcast with my editor who might someday want to contact me. Well, mid-air, who knows. But I think the reason the Millennium Falcon breaks all the time is because L3-3-7.

Yeah, there's that too. That Honsolo stole her from her boyfriend? In the Clone Wars, in the Force Awakens, you see pilots just having long-distance chats while they're in hyperspace, which would have come in handy in Return of the Jedi when Akbar Landau are about to attack the second Death Star, and they haven't heard from Han that the shield is down. My heads up would have been nice. But in the Clone Wars, in the sequel trilogy, you have microjumping, right? You have light speed skipping.

And then, of course, you have the Holdo maneuver. which is visually striking, unforgettable, but does raise some questions about the use of this hyperspace raining, perhaps. Of course, that is made possible by the fact that the First Order has invented hyperspace tracking. That's the new innovation. So there's just no getting off the grid anymore. It's sort of sad. But in conclusion, hyper drives, you can't travel far without them,

and you often can't travel far with them. But one way or another, they make the Star Wars storytelling world go around. Ben, we'll miss these. We'll miss these lore dives until the next season of Star Wars, which, as you mentioned earlier, is just around the corner. Okay. We have putting a clock on the rest of the pod. We have 10 minutes to finish. We've got Easter egg, scrolls, mailbags, and our final closing words.

Easter egg. We've done them all, I think. Most of them have come up. Everyone gets to highlight one that they enjoyed. If you have one you'd like to mention. Joe. Anakin's cheek scar, which appears to have come from Obi-1 Canobi slicing his helmet open in this episode.

I guess I'll go with the music cues and drops. We got the authentic ones, right? There have been some sort of like sound-alike knockoff Williams' cues every now and then in this series. But we finally got the originals. And it was really nice to hear that again. Yeah. I think that's mine.

But for the sake of variance, I'll go with understanding how Owen Lars got his limp. The leg injury. So good. There we are. All right. Secret scroll watch. Easy.

It's the guy on tattooing and it goes, something you want to say? Like, where's that accent from? I don't know. But if he's a scroll, maybe he doesn't understand that there are no southern... The meat cutting form is right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That guy. Man. Something you won't say. Great pick. Is it too late to nominate Roken here? I feel like that. would explain a lot about rook. I'm going with Luke.

How else to explain? A real Luke was never there. I love me. Not remembering any of these traumatic events. Yeah, sure. Unconscious for part of it, didn't see the lightsaber fine. I'm going with Luke.

Secret Scroll. Got a little boppa's noggin. All right, mailbag. Mailbag time. Jomea Deneron, joining us. I love listening to this pod because every time I listen, I learn

something new. You know, you learn about pergals. You learn about hyperdrive. You also learn that Meg Cabot wrote a Star Wars story, which is news to me. I read, listen, this is just us. I can, I can, I can, I can, I can defest you guys. Not only did I read Princess Diaries. I read All-American, All-American Girl series, right? I met, I read Teen Idol. I read How to Be Popular. Met Cabot. That was my, that's my girl. You're a Cabot Head. Well, you have some reading ahead of you, it sounds like.

You're part of the Cabot Patch. I love it. I'm a fan. I got to pick it up. Yeah. What? I love it. I love it.

All right, let's get to these questions. Our first question is a mouse special. We got an MFK for y'all. All right. Mary, fuck, fuck, kill. Hello there edition. First pick. Ewan.

to grievous. Second pick, Ewan to Luke. Third pick, Alec Guinness to Luke. Where are you guys at? Oh, God, I was going to kill the Luke one, but... What? Are we talking about like Obi-1's in those stages? Yeah.

That's how I'm interpreting this. Okay, that's different. The way that he delivers the line. If we can kill the quote. I thought it was like, kill the quote. Okay, you're a free to interpret it that way. I'm interpreting it. Which of those Obi-Wans do we want to?

Okay. Okay. All right, cool. That's how I am interpreting it. I'll do, Mal's. I then am going to kill the general grievous, Obi-Wan.

I'm marrying Alec Guinness. And I'm fucking, you know, goggles, gogles, gogles, ovies. Okay. Fascinating. All right, Ben. Huh. Ben Jamim.

Wow. All right. I guess I'm going to kill young Obi-1 because he just gets better with age. Correct. And I will marry this episode's delivery just because that's the Obi-1 that I want to spend the rest of my life with. Aw. And then I guess that means I'm getting down and dirty with Al-Qaeda. I love that for you.

Man, I thought it was a quote. Yeah. That's how we had turned it. You and Joe had the same picks. Mal took it in another direction. I said you're free to answer it that way. I don't know. I'm marrying Alec Guinness.

He's boning Alec Guinness. But you're both killing. We're killing Gen. I figured it's hair out. Yeah. Like there's things going on there. Okay. See, for me.

Jomey? Yeah, Jemmy. I'm killing U.N. to Luke. I'm killing Obi-Wan. Hello there. You know, cool. You know, it was nice. It was like, ah, my overhit, you know, point five, smashed the over. I got my one. But to be clear, I'm killing that quote. Yeah, me too. We can't answer

both ways. If you want to do the quote answer, also give that answer. I'm killing that quote. Yeah. I am, I am marrying you into grievance. That's just, come on. That's special. The hello there rising up is, is special. There's nothing to say about it other than it's incredible. And me and Allen, again, this, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, getting in a nice little bath. Yeah. You and me,

Jome. You know, some candles, you know, putting on some of that music. Who's going to go first? A lot of bathing on, on tattooing.

Yeah. You got to stay clean. We know that everyone smells like shit. That's why you need a bath. That's why I'm taking them to get a bath. And the water shortage.

I am killing Sir Alex. I know. Goodbye. Apologies. but this is not particularly hard for me. You know, I think there's a temptation always with the fuck marry and kill exercise

to think that the real prize, like the, oh, this is my number one pick is like who you'd want to fuck, right? Because it's the lust, the real attraction, the poll. No. That's not how I think about it. It's who you want to marry. The prize is the marry, yeah.

Yeah. Marriage is not necessarily like full of fucking, but in theory in this thought experiment, it can be. And so I will be fucking the grievous Obi-Wan and I will be marrying

this Ogles, goggles, Obi-1, and this hello there. He looks resplendent and we're going to have a wonderful life together

on Tatooee and I support him in his force ghost training and pursuits. Every now and then I'm going to be like, you know, in a marriage, you talk, you chat. Hey,

given any thought to find a Darth Vader? Ever heard of them? It's going to be great. It's going to be a really productive union, and that's my pick. If I had to actually do the intended spirit of the exercise here and kill the quotes,

I have no idea what I'd pick because I didn't think about it. What's wrong with me? You're might as occupied elsewhere. Oh, my God. All right, what's next? Our next question comes from Miguel. Where does Lola sit in the Star Wars

droid power rankings? This is hard. That's tough. This is tough. Yeah. How many top fives? How many droids are we ranking? Like, what are we doing?

I mean, we could be here all day if we did a full ranking. So we've got to have a half of it. Let's just do. Let's just do it. Your top five. Lola makes my top. Lola's like third for me. Wow.

I can't go that high because just so much competition. Even like if there's one thing, Star Wars has done well during the Disney era, it's create great droids. I mean, we get BBA8. We got BD1, IG11, L3, K2SO, AP, AP. Dio, the best part of it is gonna fuck off with Dio. If we're doing fuck Mary, kill, droid, killing Dio.

Oh, God. I do love K2SO. Yeah. Yeah, K2SO is great. I love Lola. Lola's great. The top three is just crowded, crowded, crowded, because my top three is BB8 R2 and Chopper probably.

But I might slide Lola in right after that. Yeah, she goes in right, for me she goes in right above chopper it's like R2BV8 above chopper yeah that's wild that's wild tell me what you chop would have some uh glum beeps and boops for you after that i mean it's it's chop is my number two okay you got to have R2 at the top like that's that's that's that's Jordan you know what I'm saying that's that's that's that's that's that's let's me you know what I mean like that's that's this this Tom Brady you can't you can't have no other

enjoy it on top. Honestly, and this is a, like in my top five and this is just me being like a rebel's head. AP5 is my guy. Top five. That's my guy. I'm obsessed with Joby calling himself a rebel's head having literally just watch rebels.

I support it. I support it. My goodness. Casey, K2SO's got to be up there. K2SO is great. I love L3. I'd love to. It's stiff competition. That's what it is. The men apology to C3PO who, none of us like, I guess.

That's what I think so. We didn't say top 15. Not even red arm C3PO. We didn't say top 25. I respect C3PO, an important part of Star Wars history. Not cracking my top five. Certainly not. This thing, it's not Lola's fault.

There's a lot of competition. I love Lola. It's a deep field. I love Lola too. I think Hala can be a riser when Lola returns. Where do you think Lola is now? Like, what happens to Lola? We don't...

We got custody. Yeah, where's Lola? after back in Layla's possession and Layla's possession and then what? I think she gave it to a young cousin. Their cousins are assholes. I hope not like a nice one. Not those two shitty ones,

but like a nice cousin of Alderon. Oh boy. And she's been like, Lola got me through a lot. Here you go. I don't think she'd I'd rather that than it went to Ben. I don't want,

because what did Ben do with it? Take it apart for parts? I don't know. Oh, God. So I'm saying. Grim. Well, Grim.

I guess if it stays an Alderan, it blows up. So lola. Oh, my God. All right. We have to move on. This is horrifying. What's our final now? All right.

What's our final question? So dismaying. Our last question comes from John. If you could have one character in this series as a guest in your podcast, who would it be? And what questions would you ask? It would be Obi-1 Canobi And I'd say, did you listen to our edition of Buck Barry Gill? What do you think?

Mine would clearly be Wade, and I would be like, Wade, my guy. Tell me every single thing about you. Mine would be Fifth Brother. And I'd just be like, mine is Fifth Brother. Yes, for sure. Got to ask Fifth Brothers some questions. Where'd you go? My great regret of this series is that we never got a follow-up.

For sure. Yeah, we never got a follow-up. with Fifth Brother. I mean, like, vocally, it might be a challenging listen, but like,

give me all the gossip about the Inquisitors, all the dirty laundry would get aired. We never got to hear him gloat about Riva getting kicked out of the club. We could get hours of content

with Fifth Brother. He was deprived of his rightful final bow in this series. So we got to get him on the pod. That's great. That's smart. Um, Fifth Brother hit us up.

It's honestly, for me, it's got to be Darth Vader. You know, uh, I want to, It's a good pick. It's hard to argue.

Here's the thing, right? You know, obviously. Does Steve have to let it out of breathing? Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. That'll be a tough on the listener. But check this out. Hey, man,

are you just fought Obi-Wan for the first time since he burned you alive, bro? How does it feel? You know, it was good, but, you know, I wish I could have killed him, but I didn't kill him. It's like, wow, that's really tough, man. So do you really think? You could go toe to toe with him. Do you anything I beat him? Hey, you know, there's a lot going on.

You know, I got my thing with the empire. You would definitely shout at you. You underestimate my power if you asked you that. I would just love to understand the mindset. But behind like, hey, man, you got like a whole galaxy of things. You got to be worried about. Why are you worried about this old washed man? I would love to see the answer.

I just need everyone who's not on this Zoom call to know that when Jomi does his Vader impression, he makes himself an inch taller. he just like sort of gets above the mic. Well, Vader looms. I mean, Obi-1 looked like a tiny little boy in the first part of that tool. You know, Hayden Christensen is a tall man.

She's taller than Obi-One. But when he's Vader, he put on like five inches. They got a guy. They got a tall guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, at least six, seven.

Right? So what's going on there, my brother? How many times in the course of a podcast interview would you hear, I find your lack of faith disturbing? if I gave him push with any of your questions. This is just too risky. This is nice. I would definitely get it like once or twice.

I would be worried. Can I say something? Oh, sorry, go ahead. Because he would be like, you know, I can take Obi-Won. I'm like, I don't know, man. I sinked it before, pal. I seen you lose, man. What are the odds you would get through the interview

without a fatal force choking? Very low. Very low. It would be my last podcast. Speaking, can I just say, speaking of tall people, Can I just say really quickly that this is not a spoiler

in Thor Love and Thunder film that I've seen something that I find fascinating is that when Natalie Portman is the Mighty Thor which she is in the trailer so that is not a spoiler she is like four inches taller

and I want to know if they put her on like platforms or like what happened borrowed the platform the lifts from Tony Stark maybe yeah I had them around those like the links are two Apple boxes to her feet

I don't know what they did. No, they got the crates that Tom Cruise uses on all those films. The Applebox. I love that. Yeah, yeah. All right. Three hours in. What a treat it was.

What a season it was. I have to say, the highs and lows of the show, the podcasts were just a consistent high for me. This was such a, such a treat to talk about this character and this part of Star Wars with all of you. Really, I will sincerely amiss it. I'm, like, experiencing a little bit of mourning here. I'm really sad. That's part of why we talked for three hours today. I don't want to stand.

hopefully we get to do it again soon. Yes. I love listening to you talk about Star Wars. I love talking to you about Star Wars. You opened my mind to new interpretations of things that I hadn't considered. You helped me reframe things in my mind. I was hoping you would reframe certain things for me in this episode that you failed me on that score. But it was just a joy and the future will take care of itself, I guess.

So you'll see me again, maybe someday, if you ever need help from a tired old man. I was going to say to our listeners, if they ever need help from tired old podcasters, we'll be here, you know? That is a wrap on today's episode. Thank you, as always, to our Jedi Masters. Ben Limburg, that's your title usually, but you're sharing it right now. Steve Allman for senior producer in this episode, our Juno Ram Gapal, for his additional production work on this episode, and Jomea Denneron for his work on the social for this episode.

And Ben, for joining us for this three-hour. extravaganza. Please tune back in. Lots of pods coming. The Umbrella Academy, the boys, Miss Marvel, Stranger Things, and more. Until next time, remember, we wish we could tell you more.

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