The Ringer-Verse - ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ Chapter 6 Deep Dive | House of R

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Mal and Joanna are strapping in to discuss the biggest episode of 'The Book of Boba Fett' yet! They share their thoughts on this monumental episode and why it's the most important bit of 'Star Wars' lore in a long time (05:39). They also discuss the return of Ahsoka and what it means for Luke to become a Jedi master at this point in his life (37:12) and dive into the journey of Grogu and Din (75:02), all before joining Ben Lindbergh to have a lore lesson on the bounty hunter Cad Bane (1:39:30). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producer: Steve Ahlman Guest: Ben Lindbergh Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From reviews to rankings, the big picture is all things movies. From in-depth analysis of the latest flick to sit-down interviews with some of the biggest movie stars and filmmakers on the planet, Sean Fennessee and Amanda Dobbins have got you covered. Check out The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

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Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiatoradio.com. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. 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.

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You should have never given up your armor. And welcome into the Ringerverse. Here on the Ringer Podcast Network, I am a very excited, Mallory Rubin, And it is my absolute pleasure, truly a pleasure, to invite you not only to Freetown, but also to join us on the Ringers Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Joining me today to talk about one of the most important 47 minutes stretches of our lives, the book of Bobafet Chapter 6. I didn't expect to see her here, but she's an old friend of the family.

It's my house of our working title. Co-host. My favorite Android observer, Ringer Senior Staff writer Joanna Robinson. Cut to me leaning casually against a tree, like the coolest motherfucker in the galaxy. Oh my God. I love it.

I love it. So we have a, we have a Zoom chat already from our beloved producer Steve Alman saying active title. And we got a lot of Instagram comments and a lot of tweets saying, hey, is it no longer a working title? Joe, technically it's no longer a working title, right? We and the Midnight Boys have beautiful new, pew-poo-poo, beautiful new podcast art, amazing illustrations from Jonathan Bartlett and the ringer art team,

just incredible stuff. House of R is, it's official. It's cemented. it's active, and yet we will keep saying working title. Working title is just too fun to whisper. A few other quick programming reminders before we saunter across the desert sand.

Slowly. Lots of pods. Lots of pods coming next week, in part because all of you are wonderful, brilliant, highly engaged listeners sent us so many mailbag questions that we had no choice but to do a separate mailbag episode. We will be doing a boba bonus bag.

That is coming on the feed Monday. Triple B. B, B, B, B, B. And we will be diving into a bunch of your questions about this episode, looking ahead to the finale, what all of this might mean for the wider Star Wars universe, etc. And then, of course, the Midnight Boys Van and Charles, Poo, pew, pew, pfew! We'll be with you on Wednesday with their instant reaction to the book of Boba Fett,

Chapter 7, the finale. Next week is the finale. If you have not listened to the Midnight Boys' most recent episode on this episode, Chapter 6, treat yourself to it. It was an absolute joy. Everyone in the Ring of Verse family is just in a euphoric state right now, not just because Joanna is also podcasting about Euphoria every week.

Check that out. But because we were just having so much fun. What a touchdown of a reference. And if you want to hear Mallory Rubin talk about football, you can check out the NFL show. Oh, God. Incredible. And then we will, of course, be with you next Friday

for our Boba finale deep dive. Follow all that by following the pod and by following the myriad ringerverse social feeds. We're everywhere. And as always, bear in mind, but really particularly today, please bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. Today's podcast will feature plot details from the Book of Boba Fett chapter 6. From the desert comes a stranger.

Instantly iconic episode title. As well as details from across just all of Star Wars. All of Star Wars canon. We're not even going to try to be more precise in our spoiler warning than that. Everything. Everything. Everything. Whatever was.

Those extended universe legend books that you read. Yes. They're on the table. The spice chest is open. And it's all blowing out into the wind. It is all eligible for mention here today. So proceed with more caution. Then I think it's fair to say Joanna's least favorite Star Wars character, Deputy Scott did.

Fucking Deputy Scott. Rest in pieces, dude. Oh my God. Okay, Joe. We have, even with the mailbag coming separately, even with some of our finale preview coming separately, we have so much to cover today. So let's get into it first with some quick overall impressions, big picture thoughts on this installment directed by Dave Filoni, co-written by Faloni and John Favro, 47 minutes of bliss. How did you? you feel about it? Well, I mean, so this is for those us who are like

playing director detective, this is the episode we were waiting for it, right? Like, this is the Philoni episode. This is the only episode that's not solely written by Favreau, like, Filoni, you know, and so we knew probably that some heavy lore was coming into the mix here. That's what happens when

Faloni climbs on board. Am I ever think correctly, Joe, that you specifically predicted live action Cadban's debut in this episode because of Faloni? Let's pretend that that's what I said. I love that for me. I don't remember.

Where am a cat-made t-shirt today, by the way? Had to do it. Had to break it out. But I'm not surprised that, you know, it's going to be never going to be a surprise for Asokatano to show up in a Faloni episode. I think that's safe to say. We had had our doubts about whether or not we would get, like, Luke and Grogu here. We thought maybe Mando would be bound to Tatuian and not be able to get to them until his own

series. But no, I mean, but what did not happen is that we didn't get like the reunion. We were like, they got to save that. We'll see if that happens in this series or in his own series. But, yeah, all of that happened. All of that like sort of nostalgia, remember Barry stuff happens in this episode. We're going to talk about maybe some of the deeper meaning behind all of that nostalgia. But then you also get fresh, spicy new canon characters. My first. Dave, Cobbant. Like, you have all that stuff is here. Joanna, can you just tell our listeners, please, before you continue about the special guest that you have in your home studio with you today?

Yeah, you know, usually Mallory's the one who comes through with, like, the cool gadgets, the like, you know, the gauntlets and the baby yodas and the Lego, whatever. Just to be clear, I have all those with me today as well. One time only in like a days of, I don't know what, I saw that someone, a friend of mine on Twitter had bought a live size, almost life size, Cobb Vance, cardboard cutout standy. And I was like,

got to have it. And I bought it. I have nothing else like this in my house. This is very uncharacteristic for me. Such is my love, my love, my love for Cobb Vantth. I larb him.

And Timothy Olifon, Jennifer Ful. Justified, which is Timothy Olifant's like most, I think most famous gun slinging Marshall's show. He was also a lawman on

Deadwood. obviously, like, I watched all of the Santa Clarita diet. I've been a fan of his since the film Go. Like, I am a big, I'm a big Tim fan. Huge, huge, huge railing givens justified fan that's, like, top of my list forever. And so the fact that they were just like, why don't we just do space railing? We're not even going to try, we're not even to pretend. We're not.

We're just going to give you railing givens from Justified, but make it space. And he's back. I mean, we were pretty sure he was coming back. As I pointed out on Twitter a couple weeks ago, he had his cobbant hair and facial hair intact. Joanna Robinson Hair Watch. I love a Hair Watch. You know I love a Hair Watch. So I'm not, I wasn't like super surprised, plus his connection to Boba Fett.

But like still. So all of that, all of that, Faloni, you know, bringing in his animated series characters into live action, all of that stuff. plus some juicy coven stuff and nothing for you, Bubba Fed. Sorry on your own show again. So we can talk about the ramifications of that. How about how are you doing Mallory Rubin? Emotionally. Physically.

Spiritually. Thank you for asking. Yeah. You know, every now and then, some hyperbole might seep in on a given podcast episode, right? Never heard it from you. Not once. It is with the utmost earnestness and sincerity that I say to you, this was one of the best hours of my life.

Like, genuinely a delight. I gasped more times than I could count. I laughed. I cried. I was, I have the privilege of editing our colleague Ben Limburg's Boba, breakdown columns on Wednesday morning on the ringer. Ben will be joining us later today to break down some Cadbane canon. Stay tuned for that.

I see him on the horizon. He'll be here in about an hour. A slow saunter. I was like weeping, editing this piece, just reliving the thing that I had just mere hours before watch. And then got to a line in the piece about how I was probably crying reading it. And I was like, wow, I feel seen. and understood by important people in my life. This is great.

I don't even know, despite having a couple days to think about it, how to really like organize my thoughts on this, other than to say, I feel genuinely privileged to be watching Star Wars in the Dave Filoni era. Like, it is so rewarding and fun to see all of these different characters who we love and adorn or invested in surface in new and surprising ways. and for like this just, you know how you feel when you hear the force theme kick in and the score, right? To feel like that level of harmony, right?

And purpose and possibility. Like, that's how I felt watching this episode. And then they literally play the force theme in this episode. Exactly. And then they play it. And it's like just a perfect encapsulation of my feelings. I mean, obviously seeing Grogu was just wonderful. I couldn't possibly love him more.

I was shocked to get this much Luke in this episode. Fascinating to assess what happens with Luke, which we will do at length today. Obviously, just like completely lost my shit when Osoka showed up. I can't wait to talk about what it means to see Luke and Osoka together, like legitimately one of the most meaningful things that has happened in Star Wars. Cad Bain debuting in live action, Cobb Vance returning. We get R2. the origins of Luke's eventual Jedi school and everything that we know unfolds there.

I mean, there was so, so, so much here that it instantly shot to, like, the top of my list of favorite, not only just like favorite episodes of Star Wars TV. I mean, I think it's firmly cemented near the top of that list for me. But among my favorite hours of Star Wars ever, like I just loved this so much. I would put, I would say quickly, like I've got for Rebels,

the Twilight of the Apprentice season two finale, the season four episodes 10, 11, 12, 13 stretch of rebels, also an all-timer. For Clone Wars, probably the Lawless and the Wrong Jedi. We'll talk about the wrong Jedi and Osokka's exit of the Jedi order today. That'll come up for sure. Yep. This episode of Boba, last episode of Boba,

and then probably for Mando chapters 13 and 16, those are probably like my favorite episodes of Star Wars TV. This is just, this is a classic. Just off the top. It's a classic. It's one of those things too because it makes you want to revisit all of that, right? Like I can't wait to find out what's next, but I also was so powerfully drawn back into my own past experience with these characters and their moments.

It was just a very, very, very special thing. I rewatched one of my favorite pieces of Star Wars live action and we'll talk about that when we get to it. I don't want to say anything divisive too soon in this podcast. I'm going to guess it's the last Jedi a movie that I also love and a door and can't wait to discuss with you later today. Just going to assume that's what you meant. Joe, to make room for all of that,

we once again, barely saw Boba at all. Do we care? Like, how are we reconciling how good these last two episodes have been with the fact that they do not feature... I mean, we got Boba for like a minute in this episode. He did not speak. He was literally not in the last episode.

With the fact that he's not really a factor in his own show anymore, is that something that is bothering you? It's obviously been a big topic of discussion among the fan base. Where are you with that at the end of this episode? So this was my question a couple weeks ago. As we were speculating, like, who might show up at the end of the series?

And my question was, for people who aren't liking the show right now, if they just jam in a bunch of, like, cool people at the end of the series, is anyone going to care? And I think last week, this discussion of like, oh, my God, the best episode of BobaFed doesn't even have BobaFed, and it was a lot stronger than this week where I feel like we've just kind of moved on from the concept that BobaFed is going to be the anchor of his own show. And what it does do is sort of make those first four episodes feel maybe even a little more frustrating in like the ways in which they didn't deliver for a character that people really wanted to spend more time with. But I think, and I think what it also reveals is that

Boba Fett maybe is just isn't the kind of character, at least in this version. Like I said, I read War of the Bounty Hunter's a great comic book story for Boba Fett. But like at least in this version, maybe it's not really capable of carrying a show as well. Not everyone is. It doesn't make you a bad character. But I think when we have like people like Mando, Grogu, or even F and Kavant at the center of a story, you know what I mean? It just like makes us come alive in a different way. So I'm not, I'm not stressed about it. I just think that like when people look at the series as a whole, it's just going to be like a, hopefully the finale included a run. of three extremely solid, incredible episodes, and then a preamble of four that have some highs and some lows.

What do you think? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I felt this way last week, and I feel even more assured, I guess, in this direction. I am so happy that we've gotten these two episodes that it's, like, difficult for me to long for more of the thing that came before, even though, you know, I enjoyed the, premiere quite a bit. I loved the second episode. And it's not like I wouldn't have been delighted to get more of that and see more of where that was going. I'll be, I'll sort of reserve final judgment on this, I think, until we see the finale and what the balance is and how Boba's arc is examined or deployed in that episode and how some of these threads come together. Because

ultimately how much of this feels like a departure versus something that was necessary to bring all of those pieces where they needed to be on the board for the finale is something that we ultimately can't assess until we've seen that final episode. So, you know, patience. But I do, I mean, I agree with you, but I do also think that, like, if, if you're going to do this, it would have maybe felt smoother if, you know, last week's episode had been the third, you know, like, that if it had been interspersed, rather than a four-episode chunk of Boba only and then these episodes right at the end, you know? I definitely agree. I think that that's the, that's the thing that is a little hard to shake.

Like, do those first four episodes, will they ultimately just feel like, separate and apart from what this show ultimately ended up being? And is some of that just a matter of expectation, but ultimately expectation that's reinforced by things like, I don't know, the title of the show, right? Or the marketing of the show.

And some of that is about the surprise of the twists and the reveals. Like, this episode was shocking reveal after shocking reveal, stunning character appearance after stunning character appearance. I'm just so happy that we didn't know any of that was coming. When the Star Wars feeds tweeted out before this episode,

the little Beskar bundle shaped like Grogo's head and basically said some version of like, you don't want to miss this. We were in RingervorSlaq, like, man, if this is a tease of something we don't get, this is actually kind of mean, but they did it, right? And so I think, like, as we discussed last week, a lot of this is about what the ultimate intention of the shared universe, the connected universe that Philoni and Favro are building out around the Mando Grogu Sun.

You know, all of these stories in this timeline are going to orbit around that. And I think that we will go into future shows maybe with a different expectation about how these storylines and characters from across these various properties could intermingle and mix. We just weren't expecting it here, right? Well, I do think that, you know, in revisiting some of the preseason interviews, of which there were very few. But like, you know, the Mando 2.5 thing in those interviews, they were saying this, this season more than some of the other seasons that are kind of. More than Asoka, more than whatever, this season is Mando 2.5. So I don't know that we're going to get like as tight of an interaction in future spinoffs as we're having here.

But I'm not bad about it. Do you want to talk about Dave Filoni before we get into specifics of this? Yeah, I think one thing I'll say on that last point, which connects to Philonels. and forging news stories, right? This new era of Star Wars is that some of this feels like kind of like a less ultimately about giving us, I mean, we are getting to learn more about Bobo, certainly, but less about returning to something from the past and more about, like something we talk about a lot inside of our Marvel pods, assuming the mantle, a passing of the mantle, right?

Where in this era of the Faloni Favs, Star Wars universe, the mandoling. What we think of when we see one of those helmets, when we see a glint of Baskar armor, we're going to be thinking of Dingeran, and we're going to be thinking of Grogu. And maybe after season three of Mandalorian, we'll be thinking more about Boca Tan and Sabine Wren and the battle to retake Mandelor, right?

Like this is a transition and a handoff or at least feels like it could be. That doesn't mean that Boba won't remain a figure, that Fenwick won't remain a figure in future shows. I think that like, to your point about kind of what the balance might be in other episodes, it's a good one because it actually wouldn't feel right. If like Asoka show, we briefly talked about this last week wasn't really oriented around Asoka. But that's in part because Asoka is the most important thing in Dave Filoni's creative portfolio, right? That's the son of his universe. She's his darling. Yeah. She's his Gandalf, right? You just have to look at the amazing little sketches of her next to Gandalf that he puts on his Instagram. They're like, incredible, right? Asoka the gray, Asoka the white. it's baked into the canon that that's how he thinks of her. But that doesn't mean we won't see Grogu and Din and Luke and Sabine and Bo and all of those

characters in her show as she presumably searches for Thron and Ezra. Like it feels like a guarantee that we will. I mean, the thing you're saying about like passing the mantle and sort of the pivot point forward is what's challenging and rewarding about this era of Star Wars that they're covering is that is not only in dialogue, with the past. You know, like the Star Wars saga has always been told out of order, right?

We get the original trilogy, then we get the prequels. And then we get, you know, it's like when we go back and the tension of the prequels is we know how this all ends for Anakin. And something that really frustrated me, we're talking a lot about the sequel trilogy,

I think, today. And something that really frustrated me about the sequel trilogy, which has incredible highs and incredible lows, is the way it felt like a fight between two filmmakers, J.J. Abrams and Ryan Johnson, right? It's like JJ has his idea.

Ryan is going to yes and it in this direction, and then JJ's going to yoink it back into his direction. And that is one of the – I think one of the worst things that happened in all of Star Wars storytelling, that tension. What Faloni and Favro and everyone else working on these shows is really trying to do is be in harmonious dialogue with every – with the comics. And that comes down to the Luxem Story Group, who's at the center of all this. And, like, I've been told that JJ wasn't really that interested in working with the story group. And that, you know, led to some problems. But, like, that Faloni is, especially in this episode, that Favron Faloni are trying to say, yes, let's talk about the Luke you know from Empire. We're going to give you a lot of reminders of that from Return of the Jedi.

This is looking really familiar to you. But let's also talk about the Luke you met in the Last Jedi. Those are both in play in this. All the years in between, right? All that we still have to learn, yeah. And I just like that it's not rejecting anything, that it's trying to wrap its arms around everything all the time, you know? Like, Dyn's ship, you know?

Is us just putting a nice, warm, loving arm around the prequels, you know what I mean? It's just like, let's bring it on in here. We'll get you in here too, you know? And I just think that that's – sometimes that can be a little bit of a burden, I think, for something like this to try to hoist all of that. competing lore on your back. But in an episode like this, the equation can be balanced so perfectly between the two.

It's such a wonderful observation and such an important point to make. And I think that like one of the things that stands out so consistently with anything that Faloni is involved with or creating is just the love that he has for the world. and maybe honestly even more important than the love, though I think that is paramount and, you know, we talk about how some of his best episodes feel like love letters to Star Wars, right?

That was something that Ben wrote about in his piece this week. An understanding, like an understanding of an appreciation of the world, the characters, who they are, and why they have done the things that they've done. And so, like, you can take a key recurring idea across, Star Wars, which we got again in this episode, right? The wide world exists in balance. Feel the force all around you. And it's like, that's what Filoni does with these stories.

So when he tries to rehabilitate some aspect of the prequel, it's not just for the sake of it, for the hell of it. It's to make all of these things feel more holistically entwined inside of this great galaxy, this constellation where all of these stars are all of these stars are all. ultimately something that we can neatly map together and understand, right? One thing informs another. And I love that. I love that we can see where this is moving and leading us toward. Also feel how it connects to the past and then have all these questions about moments and time that we haven't yet gotten to explore, but might soon. And that's, that was Faloni's first great contribution to Star Wars, right, in Clone Wars.

I don't know that I've talked to you specifically about this, but certainly you've talked about it elsewhere and I've talked about elsewhere, which is this. the genius of Clone Wars, whether or not you've ever seen it, let me just tell you that takes place in between two of the prequel films and gives us time with character, Anakin, that a lot of us had trouble connecting with in the prequel trilogy. Like, I'm not going to blame Hayden. I'm not going to blame whatever. Like, for whatever reason,

that character and his fall didn't land the way that George wanted it to land with a lot of people. And so instead, you jam in this interstitial story, showing us Anakin as having, you know, and giving him his own Padawan, giving him someone to love, someone that we eventually love, people didn't love Assoca at first, but like giving us someone to love and then that relationship, making us care so much about the fall of Anakin Skywalker in the way that the Padmei romance didn't quite get us there. But they took these many seasons to show us an Anakin Skywalker that we can like love and care about the loss of.

And that's just a genius, genius thing that George and Dave did with the Clone Wars. And I think it's possible that that's something that they're going to do for the sequel trilogy. We'll see if they pull it off. I hope. Shouts to George for having the courage to say, yeah, of course Anakin, Skywalker had a Paduan.

What are you talking about? Snips and Sky Guy, man, where would we be without them? But part of what makes, and we will actually start talking about the episode in a minute here, Part of what makes Asoka such an indelible character is not only how invested we become in her arc, her decision to leave the Jedi order, right? Taking the Sixth Brothers blades and purifying the previously bled Khyber crystals and forging those two new white blades, right,

and everything that happens with Clone Wars and Rebels and her novel and that we've since seen in Mando. And now here, all of that would be a nice. enough, right? But that's not all we get. She helps unlock other characters for us. She helps us better understand Anakin and the way that the Skywalker saga hinges. And it was always George's intention that it would on the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. And there's such a clear parallel there to what we've been talking about the last couple weeks with Mando and Grogu, right? Where they have these these individual journeys and arcs and decisions that they will have to make and have made, right?

But those are so much more gripping and all-consuming for us because of the way that they inform each other's arcs, because of what they mean for each other and the context around them, what that might mean for the future of Mandelor. Nothing just exists in a vacuum inside of a Dave Filoni story. Like, we're, what a treat. I don't know if you've heard this George Lucas quote is pretty obscure, but he used to say that Star Wars rhymes. just kidding, everyone's heard that. And the way that we have Mando and Grogu here as another father and son pairing, this like cycles of fathers and sons, even if Grogu maybe is technically older than Dinjarn.

It's just, it's a... Fifty. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. That gets us nicely into... Let's do it. The episode. Into Dad Din.

You want to take us into the plot of this beautiful install. Deforce Dad, Dyn Jarn. So, just a little quick bit of lore. You know, Mallory and I have the benefit of a couple days between when the episode drops and when we get to record this.

So I get to hear so many Star Wars experts debate about what planet we're on here when we go to see Luke Skywalker. And the final word on this seems to be that this is an unnamed planet. It is not Octo where Luke ends up in the sequel trilogy. Definitely not.

No caretakers, plus wouldn't have been much of a hideout if this had been where he had built his Jedi school. It is not Yavin, which is like

where he builds a school in the now legends novels and stuff like that. So it's also presumably not the planet where Luke trained Leia and then where the resistance base

later springs off seems, first of all, like the fauna just looks visually distinct. This is a place they just have not named yet is what I've what I've deduced from I've heard a lot of people look in a lot of places for it and this is this seems to be the final word.

Okay, so unnamed planet, but we've seen this planet before in the flashbacks in the last Jedi, etc. This is the this is the Jedi temple where Ben Solo goes to train and falls. So we we mean, Joe. Yeah? Yeah. We had the unbelievable experience of hearing the following quote inside of this episode. There is no place in the galaxy more safe than here with Luke.

This is from Asoka. Yike. Yike. I could hear the no safer place. Binge sound bites just springing into my mind. That was hysterical. I love that. That killed me.

We were like, oh, boy. It's interesting to put words like that in someone like a. Assoca, like a character that we, it's a nice moment because it then makes us question everything else she says about like, what is the right thing to do? Because if she says no favorite place in the galaxy than here, and we're like, that's not true, you know, then like what about her other words of wisdom and advice? The, you know, I haven't read a ton of Star Wars comics, but I have read The Rise of Kylo Wren, which is a great Star Wars comic.

So, but it gives us, like, the time in the, in the Jedi temple with young Ben, et cetera. But so, so Dynchard shows up here. We're seeing the beginnings of the temple. We meet these ant droids, which are our new, new critters in the galaxy. Yeah. Made me think of Ant Man and Antony. Dear Anthony. I miss them every day, you know?

And here's a, here's a moment where I'm going to take a controversial stance. Okay. But I need to rep my friend and yours, Dave Gonzalez, who has been beating this drum for a really long time. his harsh description, he calls R2D2 a withholding dick. That's a little extreme for me, but here's, he will, he will sit you down and make a case about all the times in which R2D2 knew something and said nothing. And C3PO has the excuse of having his memory wife, but R2, just constant. Okay.

Maybe Obi-1 shouldn't say, yeah, you know, R2 was captured, but let's just leave him for dead. If everyone wants a little more out of R2, maybe they shouldn't leave him for dead. Only Anakin went back for him. I will defend R2 now and always. Dave, we're a fight. But let's be clear. Like my favorite, or like, this is unacceptable.

When BBA8 rolls up to R2 and R2 is like, oh, hey, I had a lot of information this whole time. Here's a giant map you needed. Anyway. Well, like, low power mode, man. We all, uh, we all have to think about our own health and self-preservation. And I support R2. I love R2.

R2. So cute. R2 bleep lorps up. So cute. You know, bleep warps up and around. And then just shuts down. And I was like, that's classic R2 being like, follow me shut down. And Dyn's like, what's going on?

Is this a bench? Okay. I guess I'll take a nap. Like that just, it was just a classic R2 moment. Do I love R2? Yes. Has the plot required that R2 like withhold a bunch of stuff time and time again? Yes, for some reason.

I support him. I support him. I will say that the bench was hysterical. And when the Android just started to assemble it and Dyn said, is that a bench? How long will I be waiting? It's like such an incredible Pedro Pascal line read. It's so funny. I loved it.

Oh, my God. On the school front. Yeah. I have a couple timeline things I wanted to throw your way. Should we do that now or should we circle back to it later? It connects to what choice Grogu may make. Should we circle back to it later? No, let's do it.

Let's do it now. Let's do it now. So we'll obviously talk more about the outrageous choice that Luke presents to Grogo. Yeah. And we will, I think, talk at length today about Luke and Asoka's views inside of this episode about attachment and everything about the Jedi Strictures. This is a lot to mind there. Specifically, just in terms of trying to identify and predict what choice Grogu, maybe. apart from even what we think he should do

or where the story overall is going, just with the school and the timeline. So, Jin says, what is this place? And Osuka says, it's nothing now, but will someday be a grade school. Grogu will be its first student. Okay, this is 9ABY, as we know. Ben Solo begins attending Luke's Jedi Academy

in 15 ABY when he is 10 years old, right? That's six years in the future of the timeline. And from Luke's own words in The Last Jedi, we know, or at least barring a retcon or like a semantic tweak, right, that that is when the school began. Because here's what he says in Last Jedi. I took him and a dozen students and began a training temple. Began. So that word began would indicate, I think, that the school was not operational before then, that Grogo was not its first. student.

Yeah. That he will not be staying, right? Which is a hundred percent. Welcome news, I think. And ultimately, it's the destruction is 28 ABY, right? So that's kind of where that timeline nets out. The comment. The only other thing I want to mention, because you mentioned the rise of Kylo

run. That's an excellent, it's only four issues, right? So it's a quick, easy read. Everyone should check it out around from 2019 to 2020. There's like some key updating to what happened between Ben Solo and Luke that is really, really actually central to understanding that dynamic and this phase of Star Wars storytelling, specifically, and read it and parse the nuance on your own. I do think it could be interpreted. Some of it can be interpreted in a few different ways, but it's not, Ben Solo didn't exactly

do the thing that people think he did, right? There's a snoke, and of course, palpi, driven, attack, and manipulation more broadly, right? But attack. lightning bolt, forceful from the sky that blows up the temple. But that's what I love about that Luke Ben flashback to the temple moment because we see it from two different perspectives and it's just like a classic Rushman, like this is how what I think happened, this is what I think happened sort of thing. And that's that's the way the world works. But yeah, the comic gives us even more information. But I think that, you know, to your point, we know that, like, Luke's, technically Luke's first student is Leah, right?

Trains of Leah. And then Grogu, you know, is going to be the first official pupil. And then in the end, it ends up being Kylo and these dozen other kids. And so I think what we're seeing here with Grogu, and this will get, you know, we'll get into this as Mallory gets more and more heated about Luke's Godwucker. is, you know, a big first mistake for Luke as a teacher, and there will be more, you know. Indeed. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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Assoc atano. This was a thrill. Old front of the fam. Old front of the fam. This was a thrill, Joe. Like a shout, oh shit, aloud kind of viewing moment. Really was. I mean, some of it is just seeing Asoka period, right?

Always a delight. Seeing Asoka and Art 2, who have so much history across the anime, animated series, Art Dewey! Art Dewey! I, we will talk about a little bit later, the actual conversation and exchange between Asoka and Luke, we'll save that. But just broadly, that, I'm an old friend of the family line when Din asks why she's there. Like, the magnitude of that moment and knowing that we were seeing Asoka and Luke, that they had met, that they do know each other because this is one of the big questions in the fandom, like, when would we see them meet? And we still don't know ultimately what the origin of their meeting is, right?

We can talk about that for a minute. But knowing that we were going to get that here, given Osoka's history with Anakin, is like one of the most consequential developments in recent Star Wars history. I genuinely feel that. Like, it was that monumental. How did it feel for you? Yeah, I mean, you know, when you look at the original trilogy and you look at Luke Skywalker, a boy so eager for story. of his dad. And Obi-1 feeds him some stuff

that is half-truth and, you know, from a certain point of view. But the opportunity that he has in Asoka to hear stories about his dad, the war hero, the leader, the father figure to Asoka, like all these beautiful stories that Asoka will have about Anakin

that Luke would be so eager to hear. Because, you know, he makes this decision in the original trilogy, saying, like, I know there is good in you. That's what he says. But Assoca can come in later and say, like, you know, as if Luke had any doubts about the decision he made. She can come in later and say, like,

here are so many stories about your dad that we can just sit here and talk about. But along with that, and it's not explicit in this episode, but I think it's implicit in the interpretation, is a possible infection of fear if she can give him first hand information about how Anakin fell and what it was that caused Anakin's downfall.

And if Luke holds on to that, if both of them are holding on to that as like this idea, this question of attachment, the danger of attachment, if they're holding on to that as like a fear factor in all of this, I think that's a possible reason why things might be going wrong between Grogo and Luke and Asoka. You know, beautiful to think about

how many fireside chats they might have had. When, I want to circle back that length to the attachment point and the Anakin influence on their respective states of mind because I think it's crucial. Before then, though, like, what do you think, what's your head canon at the moment for maybe when they met?

When do you think we will learn those details? Do you have any thoughts on actually why she is there? because one of the fun things that happens in this episode is that Dinn says, then what are you doing here? And she just says that's my question for you. What are you doing here? What do you think she's doing there? So it's kind of a two-part question.

What do you think she's doing there in this episode? And then what do you think the history is? How long have Asoka and Luke actually known each other? A bunch of people have pointed out this moment in this episode when Dinn is like, hey, you said you didn't want to train him. Like, why is Luke training him? And Rosario Dawson in her performance, does this sort of sharp exhale.

And I've seen a bunch of people mention it so much so that I think it must have been in the sort of like audio description of the episode. That's one way if you want to be, get really granular on covering an episode of television. If you listen to the, um, the audio description of the episode, which is there for like the seeing impaired, right, to describe what's going on in the episode and to listen to what they make sure to highlight in a performance, um, it can be an added way for you to understand and what it is the creators really want to make sure that people observe. So this sharp exhalation of breath from Azario Dawson as Assoca when she says, you know, sort of basically,

that's his choice. I don't necessarily agree. But that's something, you know, Master Skywalkers decided to do. And so I think maybe she came to say, like, hey, do you think it? You know, she says to Luke, as I told you he would, the Mandalorian is here. So I think she came to be like, oh, you're training Grogo? Let's talk about whether or not you think that's a good idea. Like, tell me why you think that's a good idea.

Because I don't really think it's a good idea. That's why I think she's there. What do you think? Ooh, interesting. Great call out on the size. There were a couple moments like that at this episode where pauses between sentences and replies or deliberate size or head tilts, things like that were just so telling. There were just so many interesting.

parallels between Asoka and Luke. Like, again, we'll hit the attachment stuff more as we go. But even just like Luke saying to Groger, let's go take a walk. And then Asoka saying to Dinn, let's go take a walk. Like all of these little moments that kind of unite and put them in contrast, but also similarity to in our minds. Like, one of my thoughts was just, is she there? You know, we're getting her show shortly.

Is she there because of her quest? Is she there asking for help something pertaining to the mission with Thron and Ezra? I mean, I'm just stating that like it's a given that that's going to be what her show is part about, but I just, it feels like, it feels like a safe bet. So, you know, where is Grand Admiral Thron, right? It was right there in the setup in her live action intro. Or, you know, could Luke have reached out to her after he picked up Grogu to say, hey, I've got this beautiful little baby, this little gumdrop with me, can you come by?

I have some questions, want to, you know, want to game plan this a little bit with you. But none of that necessarily accounts for when they would have first met, how that initial interaction would have happened. And like, one of the things that I was thinking about is that when we saw Asoka in her episode of The Mandalorian in season two, there's that interesting exchange where she says to Din, the Jedi order fell a long time ago. And Din says, so did the empire yet it still hunts him. But the way that she said the Jedi Order fell a long time ago, like it was so heavy and anchored in the despair of what had gone wrong. Anakin's Fall, Order 66, any guilt that she still carried, right? It just doesn't feel like a line read delivered by a character who knows that Luke Skywalker is like building a school thinking about training new pupils.

So you think they met in between? I'm wondering if they met in between. Now, maybe not, right? Maybe it's just like, hey, for now that's just Antroids and, and, and, and, you think, And stones, there's no pupil. So it's still kind of like a backward-looking gaze. But I don't know. That did stand out.

And you already mentioned the like, as I told you that you share a strong bond. Like clearly they've had a debrief about all this, which means I think whenever they met, there's been some fast bonding, right, in a level of maybe shared trust that has developed. I think like there are, oh, God, there are just so many incredible little moments between them. even in the short amount of screen time. I loved they're watching sweet little girl, a sweet little bubba, snooze in on his little sea stone,

not the seeing stone, just a stone in a sea and a lake. And when she says, you've taught him well. And Luke says, it's more like he's remembering than I'm actually teaching him. And she says,

sometimes the student guides the master. Like part of that is the fun of kind of allusion to, you know, the circle is not complete when I left you. I was with the learner. Now I am the master, Vader line.

but just more broadly, like a nod in the nods we got throughout these exchanges of her relationship with Anakin and how often she, as the Padawan, was the one who taught him, who imparted some sort of valuable lesson or worldview to Anakin, right? It wasn't always the other way around. And like, the moment when Luke says, sometimes I wonder if his heart is in it about Grogo and Asoka says so much like your father, I think it's been interesting, like, to see, there's been a lot of, like, what does that actually mean that line? Like, Lindberg and I were talking about that when working on his column. And I think that you could interpret it in a few different ways. Like, I'm curious to know what you thought of that line and what you thought it meant.

Is it just about Luke, like Anakin so often did, doubting others feeling unsure? Is it more about how, like, a projection, like how Anakin's heart wasn't always in it? You know, that lack of certainty in other people around him. But regardless, just such a great moment to hear Asoka talking to Luke about Anakin. Like, honestly, a fucking dream. Yeah, we're going to, I mean, we can do it now. It's hard to delineate these things cleanly. But like...

They're all connected. Just as Dave Filoni wants them to be. Well, I think that the best interpretation that I've seen that I tend to agree with is, like, Anakin's resistance to having a Padawan in the first place, his uncertainty that he should be the one to guide anyone in the force and all of this. He was quite opposed initially. And I think, you know, so thinking about how Anakin was opposed to teaching her. And it's not that Luke is like opposed to teaching Grogu because obviously like he wants to build a Jedi temple and like teach some students.

That's what he wants to do. He's insecure. He's doubtful and arrogant at the same time. You know, like you in the last Jedi, you get in one of my favorite scenes of any Star Wars thing, you get Luke. Skywalker talking to Ray and talking about how, you know, she's like, you're a, you're a legend. And he talks about his arrogance and how he thought he could do something because he was the legendary Luke Skywalker. And I think that's in here, but there's also so much uncertainty. One thing I want to shout out about that moment where Asoka says, you know, so much like your father, I have a lot of questions, comments, and concerns about Luke's undeniably better-looking digital face.

but like I still have a lot of questions, comments, and concerns. That being said, they're definitely, there are definitely shots that they focused on more than others. You know, like, some of the like running, jumping, climbing trees, they're like, it's okay if his face looks a little wonky there. Like that's, but this moment, like the first time we see him meditating with Grogu, and this react, he doesn't say anything because the lips don't always line up to the dialogue, so they wisely didn't give him anything to say. It's just a reaction look to Asoka saying, so much like your father, they spent a lot of. of time on those frames. Like the face looks really good in that reaction. It's a crucial moment.

Very smart. One of my favorite moments from Digital Luke in this episode is when, so when Grogu like raises the frog out of the water for a little, all tasty treat. Just let him have his snacks. God damn it. He's hungry. And it looks like, no, no. But then he has a moment where he's like, he's like, oh, what should I do?

And he's like, oh, I know. And he raises all the frogs up in South. And that digital performance. The Dagabar, Yoda, raising the X-wing callback. I love it. But I think it's not just a callback, and it is a callback. This is where, like, for people who are critical of this episode, they're like, oh, the member Barry's nostalgia of like, oh, he's got the backpack.

Oh, he's doing the flips. Oh, he's doing all the empire stuff. And I love that stuff. And if that stuff were just there to give us that, like, twinge of nostalgia, I would also be kind of critical of it. But I think it's also there to show us that Luke, an incredible. insecure teacher, all he knows to do is copy paste what Yoda did for him. He's like, what did Yoda do here? Oh, I'm going to do this. You know, and like, that's what he,

that's what he knows how to do because of his incomplete training. He didn't go through the proper channels and stuff like that. Right down to right. That decisive choice at the end, right? You can go be with the people you love or you can stay here and complete your training. Yeah. And so I just think that, you know, the nostalgia's fun and it's there and the Easter eggs. are there and the visuals are there and that's fun. But I think in a deeper way, it speaks to this fragility in Luke as a teacher. It's so funny. I watched some people react to this episode, especially the people who hate the portrayal of Luke in The Last Jedi, watch this episode and be like, this is what we wanted. Badass great teacher, Luke. And I'm like, is that what you're seeing

here? Because that's not what I'm seeing from Luke at all in this episode. You know what I mean? Like, I see him. Yeah, I think this is a person really. riddled by doubt and burden. Doubt, yeah. And I agree with you with the reading of that line from Asoka to Luke and the callback to, like, again, a perfect moment because it simultaneously creates a bridge but highlights the distinctions, right? Which is an important thing to be able to do in tandem balance once again, right?

Anakin wasn't sure about having a Paduan. But so much of young Anakin's arc was defined by unflinching certainty about his own purpose and his own mission, even if he wasn't certain about other people, right? Yeah. And Luke is so often, and respectively, this is part of what makes them both such compelling characters. But right here, Luke has this unbelievable weight that he has to shoulder, right? This is on him to rebuild this, to re-forge this. And so you have this. No, preche.

It's just you and the entire Jedi Order. So Grogu isn't just his own being and a Padawan and a foundling and a forced user and a Bubba, a precious little bubble. Though he is all of those things. He is an embodiment of that responsibility that Luke carries. In that way, there's a few. seeming inconsistencies in the way that both Asoka and Luke are handling this attachment question, right? It's confusing for Asoka to seemingly be anti-attachment. When she left the Jedi Order, not exactly because around the attachment issue, but she left it because she saw the limitations

of it and she forced her own, yeah, the rigidity of it and she forced her own path. And for Luke to have come off of seeing what happened with his dad. One direction he could have gone in is to say, you know, attachment, I love my sister. I love Han. Does he love his sister too much? You know, I love my droids. Like, I have attachments. And maybe if my dad and my mom hadn't had all this shit hanging around their love story,

they could have just loved each other and it would have been fine. Yeah, that's one way he could have gone. But it seems like Luke has gone in another direction where he just has a strong fear of this attachment around this attachment question. We can extrapolate what we know from some of the comic, but we can extrapolate what that meant for Ben Solo in terms of like Han and Leah, right?

And we can bring that all the way to the point where Luke has removed himself entirely from society for a number of reasons. But when we get to him in The Last Jedi, he has zero attachment. like at all because he just doesn't know he doesn't know how to do any of this he is he's left he's like the green milk straight from the teeth just from the teeth fresh from the teeth quite literally attached to that and some and some fish nuns you know you got to have some fish nuns around but like and a pork or two

but other than that words none of it so i mean i think it makes sense as this like fear this post anachin's traumatic stress disorder for his two of his children, because Asoka is like a daughter to him. You know what I mean? And so I don't know. What do you think about all of that attachment question? I think this honestly, this question could have been the entire pod sincerely. Like there's that much to talk about here. I think you summed it up quite well already. I think that in attempting to reconcile for both Luke and Asoka, their stances here inside of this episode with more broadly their arcs and the lessons from the things that have happened is actually, like, even though I had a response of like pure rage and fury, right, like, believe I slacked

to you guys in my, in my mind, I was using my best Werner, you know, I would like to see the baby voice. I would like to force choke Luke Skywalker, right? And not just because he was like, hey, you're not trying hard enough during training. Was it just force choke? You were like, I hope Groome slits his throat with a lightsaber. Yeah, that was a separate slack. Those were different moments of time. Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was mad at Luke.

I was listening to Midnight Boys and Charles when I was like, yes, because I felt the same rage. But the other thing that I felt was gratitude. Because it is like such an incredible thing to be able to see the way that these characters are developing. And so, like, I will just offer very briefly before I go back to dunking on him a very begrudging defense of Luke. It pains me to do this. But I think it's important that we think about it this way. When he is saying to Grogo at the end of this episode, when he reveals that precious Beskar chain mail, Joe, we got the me thrill. We got it.

We got them. The thrill. And then presents him with Yoda's lightsaber. lot of tangent within a tangent within a tangent, the house of our way. A lot of how could that be Yoda's lightsaber when that is something that was destroyed in the comics.

Yoda, you know, long life. Forged in another one out there on Dagaba, presumably, right? When Luke presents those two choices to Grogo and says, If you choose the armor, you'll return to your friend, the Mandalorian. However, you will be giving into attachment to those that you love and forsaking the way of the Jedi. But if you choose the lightsaber, you will be the first student in my academy, and I will train you to be a great Jedi.

It will take you many years to master the ways of the force, and you may never see the Mandalorian again, because, Grogu, a short time for you is a lifetime for someone else. There's a part of me that is like, well, this is a seminal, seminal, seminal step on the road to fully understanding Luke in Last Jedi, a character in a rendering that I was personally very grateful to see because I don't think that any character, including Luke Skywalker, should be like frozen in time as this idealized archetype, right? he is a human who is flawed and strives to improve and learn and grow. He has an arc and he changes. And so understanding the decisions that he has made and how he got from one point in his life to another is like part of what the entire proposition of these shows and these new stories are, better understanding that for all of these characters. Right. So in that, in that respect, I was like, this is actually really cool to be able to see.

I so agree with you. I had a passion argument with like absolutely nobody in the shower this morning about this. Because like, you know, there are the people, the straw men of the internet and the real people of the internet who like hate the Last Jedi, right? And they hate Luke and the Last Jedi. And that's okay. That's how you feel. I love, like, I don't, as a fan of Luke Skywalker as well, I do not fully emotionally understand that take because I think, I think the Last Jedi is the only Star Wars property where Luke Skywalker is the MVP. you cannot say that about any other thing.

People say, oh, my God, he's such like a loser and a coward and I'm like, no, the heroic acts he takes at the end of that movie to come back from this massive L in his life and still come back and do the right thing, right? I could just, if anyone ever says to me, if we ever end up in a scenario, Joe, where someone's like, you can only watch one thing on loop for the rest of your life, right? On the short list would be Kylo saying, you know, you're going to save my soul. And Luke just saying, no. Yeah.

Luke, badass? I've put some Jess for men in my beard on the salt plant. Just, I mean, just incredible stuff. But the possibility here for these stories to do what the Cold Wars did for people who didn't feel the same way about Anakin, for people who didn't feel the way about Luke

to show them the steps he took. Like, I think Ryan did a great job with the Luke story there. I think you can fill that stuff in. if you want to. I'm a passionate defender of it. We are aligned on this. We are on the same page.

But if it didn't work for you, here's, and I was really worried, actually, when Luke showed up at the end of Mandalorian, and he shows up and he's such a badass. And I, you know, see the glove, tears through the, like, all that stuff. The score at that point. And a bunch of people are like,

yeah, this is the Luke I want to see. I was really worried that this stuff was going to be in conflict with The Last Jedi. But what we've seen this episode is not. It's in conversation with The Last Jedi. And in putting those stakes, the mistakes that he's making, putting it between Grogu and Mando, a union we are very attached to emotionally.

Putting Luke's misinterpretation, I think, of what the future of the Jedi Order should be in between two characters that we are yearning to see reunited is such an intelligent way to get even people who did not agree with Luke's depiction in The Last Jedi, maybe back. on the side of that is an interesting story to tell. Yes. That's what I think this show is doing. Yes. Right.

And so after that like begrudging recognition of why this is honestly a great, a great, as a rage inducing it says, a great storytelling choice, right? We can separate how we feel about Luke from the wisdom of this storytelling decision. And it is wise. So then that gets us back to that. Like, however, as you're noting. And a few things here. You've mentioned a couple already. Like, attachment defined Luke's life and his rise at this part in his arc, right?

And he didn't train under that, like, prequel era intensity. I think certainly, as you noted, he's been absorbing these stories about his father, right? But I just found it so... And again, I don't, I probably don't need to keep repeating this, but I want to make the distinction between like, I'm not critiquing the storytelling choice, which I loved. Thinking about it from the perspective of the decisions Luke is making, it was just so sad. Like, I found it so genuinely sad and dismaying because it's like, Luke, you're the guy who climbed back into your X-wing on Dagaba as Yoda and Force Ghost OB-1 implored you to stay. Like Yoda and Empire says, if you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did. Subtle, subtle next part of the quote here. You will become an agent of evil.

Patience. And what is his reply to that? And sacrifice Han and Leah? To which Yoda says, if you honor what they fight for, yes. Luke rejects that and goes to them, right, Joe? He goes to them because he knows. His attachment to his father saves the galaxy. Exactly. He knows that it is through those bonds, through having something ultimately worth fighting for, that these powers that he has, these abilities that he has, this purpose that he has, ultimately all of that is going to enhance and inform each other. And so, like, hearing Luke say in this episode, episode to Grogu, the galaxy is a dangerous place, Grogu, I will teach you to protect yourself. It's like, but at what cost, at the cost of having Grogu's version of the,

the same bonds that allowed Luke to do all of this in the first place. Also, he trained Leah. She has attachments. Like, Leah makes the decision to set down her lightsaber. That's her choice, right? And I think choice is a big theme across this episode. But if this is, like, the product of a combination of Luke being alone, you know, collecting those sacred Jedi texts that will be piled up and burning one day in the future,

that he just love when Yoda's like read them, have you? Page turners. They were not. The secret Jedi text. I love that. Like Yoda's saying to him and Last Jedi still looking to the horizon. Never hear now. The need in front of your nose.

And so that's really fun to think about too, what changes for Luke, but what kind of remains the same? And it's a hard thing always, especially in that position, to balance the thing that is right in front of you, the here, the now, the short term, with the immensity of the stakes and the potential future ramifications, right? And I see it as a cycle, a Yoda Luke cycle where, like, I feel like Yoda, when we watch the prequels, we watch Yoda and the second coolest person in all of the galaxy maze window, make mistakes. with Anakin, right? And then you would think that by the time that Yoda gets to Dagaba, he would have learned from his, and he's learned some things, right? Definitely. A lot of wisdom packed into that little green body, right?

But that idea of attachment, like, I think the way that the original trilogy ends, it ends with Luke giving something to his father that Yoda was never able to give, which is this sort of like faith in you, compassion, I see the good in you. you, all of that sort of stuff, whereas Yoda's like, you got evil in anger in you, buddy, and you're going to pop off anytime, and I don't trust you, and we're not making you a Jedi master and all this sort of stuff. So, like, that Luke is able to extend that. But then, as he now finds himself having to carry the entire Jedi order on his back,

as we see in this episode, he is just going to be like, okay, what did Master Yoda say? What did Master Yoda do? And I will do that. And Master Yoda said, I should not go get Han and Leah. Okay, so I will ascribe to the stashment thing. And then we see him make that mistake again with Ben. He is unable to offer to Ben Zolo what he offered to his own father because he has learned the wrong lesson from Yoda. And I just, this is such a good humane, human story to tell these cycles of mistakes and wrong lessons.

And it's all jammed into this little 47-minute episode. We haven't even gotten to Timothy Oliphon. But no, like the one of the key quotes that we return to a lot from The Last Jedi, you know, we both submitted it as a soundbite ahead of this episode. And Steve was like, I already have it, right? We all knew it was going to be at the forefront of our minds here when Luke and Force Ghost Yoda are sitting together. And Yoda says, pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. Hmm.

But weakness. Folly. Failure also. failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is. We are what they grow beyond.

That is the true burden of all masters. That's my number one Star Wars Quill. It's incredible. It's incredible. And like the fact that in this moment in time Luke and Asoka, because of their

own pain and loss, are unable to reach that point of clarity is like a genuinely tragic thing. Like taking, I think that you're completely right that the weight of Anakin's fall is what is informing this for both of them, but they're taking the wrong lesson from it. And so unfortunately, the greatest lesson failure is that's not,

the lesson isn't coming through here. It will come later from the other failures that spring up here as a result in the way that those failures compound each other. Like the way that we heard Asoka in Mandalorian season two say to Dyn that she couldn't train Grogu because of his attachment. She said his attachment to you makes him vulnerable to his fears, his anger. And when Dynne says, well, that's all the more reason to train him, right? What did she say?

No, I've seen what such feelings can do to a fully trained Jedi Knight to the best of us. So I don't even think we have to like reach to interpret. It is clear that Anakin's fall is what is informing Asoka stance here. and it does stand out in such stark and frustrating contrast because when Asoka leaves the Jedi Order, the season five finale of Clone Wars, The Last Jedi, she has been wrongly accused,

it's definitely worth watching that arc. It's fabulous. I agree. There's this incredible conversation between Asoka and Anakin, right? And like, the just anguish that passes between them, I think, in that exchange is, something that is impossible not to think about inside of a moment like this, right? Asoka saying,

But I have to sort this out on my own without the counsel and without you. I understand more than you realize I understand wanting to walk away from the order. I know. It's so important not only to understanding Asoka's perspective here, but also then to setting up something like Grogu's choice. and the choice that he has to make, and how even though Asoka is not thinking about this in the moment the way that we maybe would expect or want,

she is still like a totem, right? She is still a character who we can hold up and say, here's an example of another path. Here's an example of a choice you can make on your own to live a different way. That's why I think it's really bizarre, actually, the season two episode, that Asoka's episode, season two is titled The Jedi,

when like, the whole interesting point of Asoka is that she is a gray, She is a force user that is neither Sith nor Jedi. And I don't know. I still have questions about that. But I love something you put in the notes here and you essentially just said is like that that Asoka is this great example, the possible example of another path for Groku. Why she's not articulating that as an option is something we can think about and something

that may become clearer in the future. But I don't know. I just think all that's really interesting. really smart. Can I talk about the visuals on Luke Scott Walker for a second? Yeah, yeah, please. So, as you know, in our Slack, like the first thing I said when Luke cropped up in this episode was like, holy shit, it looks so much better because it does. I am famously down, and by down, I mean, against this kind of stuff. Like, the Tarkin stuff in Rogue One took me completely out of that movie, not to mention the Leia stuff at the end. I was deeply uncomfortable with what happened

with Carrie Fisher, even though I know they meant that respectfully in the wrong. Rise of Skywalker, all this sort of stuff. This stuff makes me uncomfortable, less uncomfortable when the person is still alive. And, you know, they can credit Mark Hamill, I guess, for this performance. But, like, there are still issues with it. It looks so much better, so much better. We want to shout out, of course, that Lucasfilm went ahead and hired the deep fake YouTuber Shumuk after his better Luke face went viral.

So they've done a lot of great work. there are still a few issues. Number one, I think the eyes still look kind of dead. Number two, I think the lip sync is still like the main issue when his face is still. They do a lot of, especially when you first see and they do a lot of over-the-shoulder shots when he's talking so you don't have to look at his face while he's talking. Like, that's smart. Our friend Eric Voss on his new rock stars video breakdown did a really good analysis of like what words they used in his lines. Yeah, that was fascinating.

What's at the front of the mouth and the back of the mouth? That might be easier to show. There's another element that Eric didn't touch on, though, which is the fact that it's not that Mark Hamill went in and recorded these lines. These are the dialogue for this digital Luke is completely synthetically constructed. John Favreau said in an interview, something people, in the gallery episode, actually, something people didn't realize is that his voice isn't real. His voice, the Young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application

called Respeacher. So when Eric Voss in his video talks about repeated phrases, it's not just repeated phrases because they're easier to animate. It's repeated phrases because they've already figured out how they've already digitally put that sentence together. So let's just like snip it and paste it over here again too. You know, like that's part of it. That makes me think of the Black Mirror episode, Be Right Back. Spoiler alert, but like digitally recreating a person from like sound like something. It makes me think of it.

makes you think of sneakers. My voice is my passport. Verify me. Like that's, that's essentially what they're doing here. And, and how can you get a beautiful human performance out of a construction like that? It's close. It's so, and, and I think probably someday they'll get there. But it's not quite there for me yet. And so it didn't take me out the way that Luke at the end of Mando season two took me out. But I'm not fully comfortable with everything that's happening here. And I think, Those are some of my thoughts and questions at concerns. I thought that his face looked just so markedly better compared to the Mando season 2 finale that, you know, it was uncanny and like shocking almost. Obviously, as you said, mostly when he is stationary. I mean, it was just, it was like nearly perfect. Yeah, sometimes with a certain phrase or mouth movement, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a little bit jarring or the tone and exact pitch of a given phrase. This was such an improvement that it made it a lot easier for me to hang with it every minute

and not constantly think about the fact. Like, how did they do this? Oh, my God, look at this recreation, which was hard to kind of shake in the Mando season two finale. But it is fascinating. The Midnight Boys talk about this a little bit to think about, like, okay, well, as the technology continues to improve, like, what will this? look like and how often will this sort of tech be deployed in the future? Like, what is the limit? This is a little... I mean, this is why... I completely agree. This is why over at Marvel, if you're an

actor in a Marvel movie, I don't know if they do the same for Star Wars these days, but if you're an... I know for a fact, if you're an actor of a Marvel movie, you sign away the likeness rights so that they can use a digital version of you in the... You know, they scan you, they scan you entirely when you enter the MCU. So they own your likeness and they own you. And so like, you know, if they decided to, I think, you know, I think thus far cooler heads have prevailed. But if they wanted to, they could, in theory, do an entire digital Chattuck-Bosman

performance in a Black Panther movie. They have, legally have the right to do that. And there is, I have some such doubts about that as a wise move forward. And I think for me, any day of the week, I would take the imperfect, very, very, very human performance of Mark Hamill in The Last Jedi over this, even though I did and I was astounded by how good this looked. I thought it looked really good. This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus.

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He's right there. Brogo misses you a great deal. If he sees you, it will only make things more difficult for him. Oh my God. We have so much to get to. So let's spend a few minutes on the din and Grogo of it all, which we actually haven't talked about a ton yet, which connects, of course, to this choice that Luke presents Grogu with.

There's a moment as Dinn is chatting with Asoka where he asks why she's okay with Luke training Grogo if she wasn't going to do it herself. And she says, basically, again, this theme of choice, right? It's up to him. It's up to them. It's not my choice. I don't tell other people what to do. Just as she then says to Din, if you want to go do this, I'm not going to tell you not to do it and then promptly stops him and says, Are you doing this for you or for him?

But if we think back to her episode of Mando, she said, she said, place Grogo on the seeing stone at the top of the mountain. Then Grogu may choose his path. And so I like thinking back to that because it, I think just speaks to the consistency

from Asoka's perspective here where she is saying, this is up to Grogo, this is up to Luke. I have my personal feelings on it, right? but they can make the choices that are right for them. But also because, as we think about what choice Grogo might make, we should remember that he has made one before already. He did sit on that seeing stone.

Now, Dinn took him, but he reached out, right? He tapped into the force and he reached out. And so we have these moments of like, for me at least, and I think many people watching this episode, genuine anguish when we see the respective long. longing between them. Din saying with like his voice, another just wonderful line read from Peter Pascal,

but I came all this way. He's right there as he looks up and sees. He could see Grogu, right, on the top of the hill on the horizon, like the absolute embodiment of longing in that moment. And then for him to have to make the choice to not put Grogo in the position because Osok is saying he already really misses you.

to not have to put Grogo in a position where the journey that he's on is even harder. He leaves, which then takes us to the moment where we see Grogu reaching out to him with his little hand, the same hand, Joanna, that he put on his cheek in the Manda Season 2 finale. I mean, I was watching this episode through tears in these moments. Like, it is just so moving. They're bond. And I just can't stand the thought that they won't be together. And I feel like they will be in the Mandalorian season three premiere.

The premiere episode two. I don't think, so a lot of people, we're going to talk about our finale predictions on Monday, given how long we're running. I feel confident that's where that's going to go. But a lot of people have asked if we think, like, Luke and Grogur are going to show up in the finale. I don't. I think this, I do think this actual reunion is going to be saved for the beginning of Mando season three. Because that's a popular theory that if Grogu makes his choice to take the best guard that Luke would fly him to Tatooine and

It show up in time for the showdown. I do think that... So I was a little salty about this idea of the poignant parting of Din and Grogo at the end of season two and the idea of them getting right back together like the beginning of Mando season three. And I was like, that feels manipulative, you know, to make us like ache for their separation then to be like, just getting they're back together, it's fine. But to have... This episode did a lot of work to change.

my mind on that, to have this interstitial moment where we see the training, see some of the training happening, and we see this as a choice, and we see this as Grogu, knowing, knowing what he's leaving behind, knowing that he's giving up Yoda's fucking lightsaber to be with his dad, makes that choice of them being together that much stronger, as I presume that that's what's going to happen. I think it's really smart, and it's really, really strong, and I did, and I, and I, and I, and I, commend Pedro Pascal's voice performance and everything the Mandalorian has done to get me invested in the shiny flat surfaces of a helmet. Because when he tilts his head and looks up, I'm just like, that's yearning. I can't see the face, but that's yearning. I can tell, you know.

Totally. Yeah. So the moment where Assook says, why, so he will remember you about the gift. And he says, no, as a Mandalorian, Foundling, he should have this. It's his right. And Assook replies, foundling perhaps he's a Padua now. I was just thinking back to our discussion last week with everything with the dark saber and everything with these respective traditions, right? These respective strictures and how din, but really Grogo represent this possibility to reject all of that rigidity, right? And so Grogu can be both of those things. Maybe not in Luke's mind, but that doesn't mean Grogu has to completely give up on one or the other. And so if he takes the Baskar and decides to return to Mando,

which is what we want, obviously, it's hard not to think. Well, like, well, what will that mean for his training? And we haven't talked about the Order 66 memory yet, but we should for a minute here because this is huge. This is crucial, right? Like Grogu's trauma and his repressed memory. And the amazing moment in this episode where we get to hear Luke talk to Grogu about Yoda

and he's trying to like spark his memory of his time at the temple or maybe just more broadly his his people right and when he asks grogou if he can help him remember first of all even before that there's a moment where he says have you heard anyone talk like that back home and grogoo like reaches out and a little like a leaf or a piece of mulch whatever detritus there is on the ground there kind of lifts like he's using he's he's he's doing something there he's responding he's signaling something And then the way that he responds to Luke asking if he can help him remember, there's like a real fear before he ultimately allows Luke to like, he leans into his hand and cups his little, his little, his little head. What we see in that memory, and remember, we learned from Asoka and Mando, he was at the Jedi Temple and Currassant. Many masters trained him over the years. Someone took him from the temple. And what is she?

say. Then his memory becomes dark. He seemed lost alone. And so this reinforces that, right? He is watching the slaughter at the Jedi Temple. And he was so precious. The younglings, the 5001st, Vader's fist, the best of the best of the clones. Rex, of course, not there with them. He's elsewhere with Asoka during Order 66. The questions of who took Grogu, did Grogu maybe tap into the dark side. This is a popular theory. We got some mailbag questions about it. Lindberg wrote about this possibility in his column. We'll probably talk about that in the mailbag episode. All of the possible theories about who could have come for him. Like, that's exciting to talk about the future. But the main thing in this moment was just seeing, seeing, reinforcing what he had been through.

And the impact that that has had on him still. And so if Luke is sending him out into the world alone, even with that line about how he's relearning and maybe that can keep happening with the lessons that he already has inside of him can keep surfacing. Like, he does need both of these things still. He needs somebody to help him, right? And I don't want him to have to go through life alone without that. But I also do want him to actively reject the idea that that help can only come in one form and that it has to come at the expense of other things and other people.

I love them. There's so many indications this episode that, like, there is a possible future where he goes with Din and it's not, I hear what you're saying. and you may be right. There is also a possibility that it's just like he already is trained and he knows how to do everything. And he's just forgotten how. I mean, in theory, he's just a bit of a youngling in all of that. But still this idea that Luke's like, I don't know if I'm teaching him anything.

Like, I'm just servicing old memories. And so it's possible that he doesn't need to, like, hang out at the Jedi Temple and do all that. I don't know. But I mean, what we all agree on is that. And if there is turmoil in him, that's fertile ground for the future. But we do know that there has been at least one person who has embodied both, you know,

the four sand medallory principles in Tarvisla. So there's these questions of like, will Grogu yield the dark saber? It looks very big and heavy for him. But like, who knows if he's working in harmony with it? If Din loses it at some point to another character, whether it's Bocahont or someone else, it's fun to think of the idea of Grogu then winning it back.

That would be pretty cool. You know, one of the more painful moments was that line from Luke about how if he chooses to stay, he says it will take you many years to master the ways of the force and you may never see the Mandalorian again because Grogo a short time for you is a lifetime for someone else. So yes, on the one hand, he's 50, a couple decades since Order 66. So he had spent a couple decades at the Jedi Temple by that point. But like, is that equivalent because of his lifespan to another? youngling training for that amount of time. I think, I think probably not, but we have a lot to learn in that respect.

It's more than nothing. It's more than Luke got. Luke got however long on Degobah and like, you know, Joe, that was one of my questions though. Like, do you think that he, because his physical response and his little coos, his little gurgles to seeing lightsabers many times across this episode, like the whole training sequence is incredible. Seeing him in the backpack, the way they climb up the stock and look out and Luke talks about the force incredible. The parallels from the X-wing and the frog, we get the flips, the jumps. Luke, kind of like, force. No tank top, jumping him. No tank. You were, the tank top. You were bad about the no tank top. All of that, other than, of course, Luke using the training remote Obi-1 style, and then actually blasting Grogu, which is horrifying and unacceptable, and Luke should be banished

from our television screens. Slit his throat with a lightsaber, Malabrooen said. As a result, all of that was incredible, but the way he responded to lightsaber specifically, including seeing Yotis at the and maybe think like, but also in the Order 66 memory when one rolls toward him. What is his association with that? That's something Eric talked about this week in his video too. That was super compelling. Is he afraid of those? Or you could interpret it as like, maybe he's like, oh, I had one of those, actually.

Like, he's a little, little baby and a little cradle when we see him in that memory. So I think it's unlikely that he went to Ilam on the gathering and found his khyber crystal and forged his own saber. But maybe he did. Like maybe he had one or maybe at least he knows about that process. I thought that was interesting too. There's just so much to talk about this episode. Oh my God.

Luke offering him someone else's was fascinating to me because of course Luke has forged his own second saber, right? He's forged his own saber, his second saber overall at this point in the story. But the first lightsaber that he ever had was handed down, right? He received Anakin's from Obi-One. And so even though Luke would know by now everything about Khyber crystals and the crystal calling out to you and finding your bond with your saber, it wouldn't be strange to him to gift somebody a saber from someone else and would in fact be like a great honor, which is

another cool and really interesting parallel. I want to shout out this test really quickly, which is a bunch of people have pointed out that a similar test happens in Lone Wolf and Cub, which is a clear inspiration for the Mandalorian, but it's also, and I only know this because of my coverage of Lost, there's a similar test for the character John Locke and Lost. And in covering that, I learned that the Dalai Lama goes through a test like this. So it's like it's a, it's a, in Avatar The Last Airband or does it. You know, it's like it's a, it's an old, old idea of like pick the artifact, pick the item, pick your future.

And, you know, I think we all agree why not both. But I think if there's one choice to be made is going to be the mithril. And like, and I will say really glad, like the thing that I didn't want to see was baby be it in any armor. But the beauty of Mithril is it can go under your cute little robe, right? So you have your little chain mail shirt. I was imagining it going over and I'm like, I hate that. Under the road.

Frodo-Sk. Frodo. Mithril. Under. You get to keep your little hobbitty blouse intact and then some shiny protective bling underneath. So there's all that. I didn't see what's in that chest. And consequently, no laws have been broken far as I'm concerned.

If you gentlemen load up your wares. and head back to where you came. We can chalk this one up to you guys reading the map wrong. We are almost out of time. Do we want to talk about my boyfriend in Cobbantz at all? Let's do it. Bring the cut out over. Put him on Mike.

Take us to Freetown. I mean, I don't know what else to say about Cobbantz, except I think he's an incredible, incredible Star Wars character. I think Timothy Oliphant is incredible. I think something's so smart that they do in all of this. You know, his history with Mando, his interactions with Mando, all of that is there. But one like sort of underrated aspect of all of this,

other than giving him like a shitty deputy that, you know, thankfully draws fire so that he doesn't have to die. I was doing this like, however you were feeling about Baby Yoda reaching on his little hand, that's how I felt as Cad Bain, like notorious Banff is walking towards Cobb Vant, who I'm like, well, I'm like, they're not going to kill Cobb Vance. He's not dead. He got winged in the shoulder. He's going to be fine.

he's not dead because he's such a popular, interesting character. There's no way they're going to kill him right now. But they're not going to kill Cabin right now. So I was like, so how is this going to end? And like, thank you, Deputy Scott for drawing the fatal fire. Boba, body double. Our favorites could live. But also another really smart thing they did in all of this.

And it's a subtle thing. But in casting W.O. Brown, who is an actor from Deadwood, who's worked with Timothy O'Lefant there. And also. He's in a great episode of Justified where he just wants to get some fried chicken. He's a criminal. He's got history with Timothy Elephant. And so I feel like you can feel that history.

So when they're talking about what's right for Freetown and what we should do and should we intervene and should we go, I feel like that sort of camaraderie is baked into these two actors, even though W.R. Brown is under layers of prosthetics. And so I just think all of that stuff is really small. I thought it was really smart. I forget who said it. Maybe Eric, maybe some another video that I saw, talked about how these two aspects of the episode, the Luke stuff, and the Cobb stuff, are divided into the tune made influences on Star Wars, which is a samurai story and a Western story. And I mean, which are in themselves in dialogue with each other. But I just think that that is like a really interesting divide. You have the blend of all of it. You have that incredible sequence where Cobb takes down two pikes with one shot. Yes.

Three out of the four. Incredible stuff. Kicks the spice over into the desert. That was a beautiful shot of the spice just blowing into the wind. Man. I want to answer a question on the Midnight Boys. They were asking what kind of drug spices. And spices based on spice from Dune.

And we know what Spice and Dune does. It gives you shiny, glossy curls like Timothy Shalomey, right? It gives you a nice hallucinogenic drug trip, I think, is what spices. supposed to see. Bright blue eyes. Yeah. What do you want to say about Cobb and Freytown and all that? Couldn't have been happier to see Timmy back in our lives, to see Cobb Vant

back in our lives. The full embodiment of the Raylan given spirit, the easiness with which we got justified in space here was just incredible. Obviously the actual showdown between Cobb and CAD, which was incredible. starting with the glimmer of sunshine and the twinkling of the wind chime and then the shot of

CAD starting to emerge on the horizon and immediately you're like, it's just his silhouette is unmistakable and it's such a, you know, again, another, one of the many moments where I gasped allowed such a thrill to realize that this faceoff was coming. The title of the episode,

from the desert comes a stranger, like, the Western Odes were so palpable. but also so seamless and well executed here. Like the whole episode could have been this, right? And it would have been a joy. And I think that Timothy Oliphant brings to all of his gunslinger characters is this sense of like this like emotional intelligence and sensitivity.

Like when he says to the Mando, you know, about not having the armor more careful these days. And he says, I guess both of us, when he finds out about Groger, he says, I guess both of us lost something we're fond of. Oh, my God. You know, versus Pellimoto. Versus Pelimodo who's like, I could have put him in a zoo? Yes, that was rude and terrible. Com is like, oh my God, your son.

You know, and then he says this thing to Mando about his smile. I mean, it's just like... That big smile of yours lets you get away with anything. It's just so good. Charm and emotional death. He's effortless in his charm. He is. He really is.

Incredible. Incredible stuff. It was cool, too, to see, like, the crate dragon skull atop the Java sandcrawler and to see the rib cage from the same dragon inside of the Freetown saloon and hear them talk inside of that setting about how they had renamed Os Pagos Freetown. And then we think back to the mining collective and the origin of the Cobb Vance Marshall figure. That name change, right, comes from the aftermath novel. which are the canonical introduction of the Cobb Vance character, but more broadly in terms of like the thematic resonance, you think of the way that Cobbant is so protective of his town and his people and his community and almost like innately,

but in a well-earned way, suspicious of outside forces. And so on the one hand, the Cray Dragon visuals, and just, of course, the exchange between, Dinn and Cobb make us think of the Mando season two premiered their mission together, which also involved the Tuscans, which then makes us think, oh, could the Tuscans come back into play in this pursuit of more numbers, more people, could that be one of the ways other than these 70, 80-some seconds where Phenic ran through the War Council plan, that we bring the Tuscans back into the fold

in the finale, but just more broadly the way that we think about. protective instincts and purpose for these characters and where that allows them to find some sort of alignment with each other, even though a cop is like, at first, no, right? Yeah, he says no, because he has this idea that he's, you know, and when we get, when we first met him, we get this, he's like, my town was under siege, and I found this armor, and with this armor, I was able to protect this town. It's like, sort of like, you know, parallel to Luke. He's like carrying all of this.

He's like, it's me. It's definitely not W. Scott. It's me. And as long as the town has a me, I'm more careful these days they'll memorize. As long as the town has me, they're fine. And then what happens, he gets winged right away because he doesn't have a protective armor. Out here, I'm the one tells folks what to do. Right.

And so now he's, you know, no doubt that most Pelgo or Freetown, the Freetown forces are going to show up for the finale to help. Like, no doubt at all. Will Cobb be healed? Does he get a mechanical shooting arm? Like, what's going to happen? I don't know. That's a lot of questions. We're going to do some finale

speculation on the Monday mail bag as we talked about. I'll mention, too, that it was interesting when Cad Bean emerges and presents his proposal slash threat to Cobb, that it mirrors the pitch that

Fennick and Boba made to the three families, which is like, don't align with the other side. Stay out. of the way. And we know for the way this episode ends that that's not going to be what Cobb decides to do. And so does that signal anything to us about what the three families might also be thinking? Could they come into play then on the other side? And again, we'll do more, you know, forward-looking finale speculation there. But I wonder if that could be like a small signal of how

they could come back into the fray. We have very little time left. We haven't even talked about Garza, which I think we can talk about a Monday. Well, I think we're talking about on Monday. Quickly. Just quickly. You have to mention her. She's her gal. I think she's dead. Couldn't have survived the blast.

Oh, my God. This is painful. I think she's dead just because I went back and looked at her face right before the bomb goes off. And it does not look like the face of someone who's like, aha, I will fake my own death. She also seems to be like in the path of the blast. She's not great. I think she's dead. No, before we go, I need to talk really quickly about Max Rebo and how he wasn't there.

Cobvance outfit. Without the armor, he just needs something a little bit more. Raylan had his hat. Cobb has a neckerchief. It's great. He needs a space duster a la cabane. Or at least Raylan used to have a blazer that he would wear. You need something to draw back off your gun as a gunslinger.

It's so hot there. He's just walking around. No concern about the actual layers. It's true. A duster and tattooing does not. Well, if he has a sling or a new, a new modification, an augmentation, maybe he'll wear something to cover it because he won't want the opposing force to see. I just think he needs one more item to pull the look together.

That's all I'm going to say. Oh, my God. It was a delight to see him. I pray he's okay. Yeah, I think that it's unlikely that our gal Flipp survived, which is tough. Obviously, we got that moment in the previously on where we're. we heard Boba say, you know, well, sanctuary will be under my protection. So that bombing was obviously. No safer place in the galaxy. That bombing was like an attack on

Boba's reach and his ability to, like an attempt to undermine his ability to actually follow through on his role as Dimeo. Some interesting theories about whether the two bombers are actually pikes. We got a couple mailbag questions from the, from folks about this because the theory in essence hinges on like, and there have been many could so-and-so be framing so-and-so theories throughout the season, but like their refusal to hand over their helmets, you know, are they masking an identity? I just feel like there's no time left for all of this. We have one episode to go.

Oh, my God. Hey, Mallory, I have a question. Yes, true. If I don't, if I don't fully understand all the, all the ramifications of a Cadbane appearance here, who can let me know what I should know? Is that Ben Limburg's mural? Ben is going to come join us to dive into the Cad Bain. Cannon.

From the Zoom room comes a stranger. Not a stranger. It's our old friend. The marshal of this episode, Ben Limburg, hat on, breathing tubes affixed, or so we assume, because as usual, we cannot see his face behind his microphone. here, of course, to talk about the monumental live action debut of our guy.

Is that Cad Bain's music? All right. Now that I've blown out everybody's eardrums, Ben, let's talk about Cadbane. Valerie and Joanna, it's always a delight to talk to you. Thank you for having me on today. I'm excited to talk about Cad Bain. Excuse me. Shit.

Like Grogu, I had a little frog in my throat there. That was absolutely incredible. Can we actually hear that again? That was just so special. We need to run that back immediately. Mallory and Joanna, it's always a delight to talk to you. Thank you for having me on today. I'm excited to talk to the campaign.

I'm literally crying actually one of the best moments of my life. If Corey Burton has to sit an episode out, I'm ready to fill in. Just a little bit of post-processing there. Oh, my God. Wow. Wow. Wow. Ben, honestly, you're free to go after that if you want.

I can't believe we're talking about the live action debut of Caddain, and it's arguably the third or fourth most exciting thing in this episode. We have truly been blessed by Lord Faloni this week. So as was the case with Kersen. I appreciate the way Cadbane was introduced here. If you don't know his history, he's just a menacing, cool-looking minibus who's in the good guy's way. But if you are familiar with his past appearances, it's a major DiCaprio pointing meme moment

as it was for all of us, I think. And I think that's the ideal way to integrate the Faloni back catalog. It shouldn't be a barrier to entry. You shouldn't have to watch 10 or 11 seasons of something to follow along, although we recommend they do. It should be a bonus for anyone who's been along for the whole ride and can make those connections. And I think it's also true to the idea that Bain's reputation precedes him. There's a season four episode of the Clone Wars called The Box, in which Count Duku...

Yeah, he pits about a dozen of the galaxy's best bounty hunters against each other in this deadly challenge to see which ones are worthy of working for him. And he introduces each one of them. And as he does, he says something about their bona fides, their bounty hunting credentials. but when it's Bain's turn, he just says Cad Bain, who needs no introduction. And he got no introduction in this episode. He is the stranger. But even among the most notorious and accomplished of the killers, he stands alone. He is basically Boba, if you removed most of his moral code and made him even more deadly than we've actually seen Boba B in this series or in the original trilogy.

He is smart. He is unscrupulous. He will take on any job that pays well. and he almost always completes his mission. He also has an inspector gadget-esque array of weapons and gadgets at his disposal. So he's got the GoGo Gadget Rocket Boots, which we haven't seen yet, but maybe we will. He has his breathing tubes, his control gauntlets, his twin pistols, his dual flame throwers, a whip cord launcher like the Fets.

And he also has a droid sidekick called Toto 360, who does not treat well. He's very mean to Toto. It's not nice. So with the exceptions of Asoka, Captain Rex, Bokatan, possibly Saw Guerrera and Assange Ventris, he is the most significant character introduced in the Clone Wars movie or series. So he's in about 10 Clone Wars episodes plus two Bad Batch episodes and most of the Darth Mall comics voiced in animation and in live action by Corey Burton very distinctively, very memorably. he arrives pretty early in the Clone Wars in the season one finale,

and his roots go back even further than that. So when Bain was being developed, Faloni found an unlabeled concept illustration from the original trilogy of an unnamed gunslinger with a wide-brimmed hat. So it seems like Lucas was playing with the idea for this kind of character even then. And then it was Lucas who suggested that they go with a spaghetti Western look when it was decided that the Clone Wars needed a third. third party character who wasn't aligned with either the Republic or the separatists.

And then they modeled Bain's look on Lee Van Cleef's character, Angel Eyes, from the good, the bad, and the ugly. So like the Pikes, Bain is an antagonist that Lucas had a hand in creating. And he definitely comes from the Lucas School of Naming Villains. So Cad Bain is right up there with Grievous and Mal and Savage O'Press. But he can back up the name, I think. So he was born about 62 years before the Battle of Yavin, which makes him over 70 years old in Book of Boba Fett. He looks great.

I don't know how old that is by Duros standards, but clearly he hasn't lost his quick draw skills, which he showed off here. But he's been at the top of the game for a long time. Even before the clone war started, he was one of the most renowned bounty hunters. He was hired by Moll to help kidnap the Padawan. Later, he works for the separatists, for Jabba, for Darth Sidious, and they call on him to do the difficult jobs. He steals a holocron from the Jedi temple. He captures a Jedi master and steals the Khyber memory crystal that contains a list of all the known force-sensitive children. Then he kidnapped some of those children.

So, as I was saying, no scruples, really, for our man, Mr. Bain. He kidnets R2D2. You could say that. Yeah. And C3PO, he gets the blueprints for the Senate building. Then he takes the Senate building over. He takes some senators hostage. He frees Jabba's Uncle Zero from a Republic prison.

He's kind of done it all. And he eventually ends up in a Republic prison himself. But it turns out that he only allowed himself to be captured in order to stage a prison break of a criminal mastermind. And to hang out with Boba. Exactly. So he's freeing this mastermind who's working with Duku. He pulls off that escape assisted. unbeknownst to him by an undercover Obi-Wan, who is disguised as a bounty hunter after a facial transformation.

One of the strangest. One of the great sins of Clone Wars is changing animated Obi-Wan's face, like genuinely unforgivable. He's also assisted, as you noted by Boba in that episode, who's in the same prison and gets paid by Bain to create a diversion. Then Duku picks Bain to lead a mission to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine, which is, of course, just one of Palpi's false flag operations. And it's foiled by the undercover Kenobi. But over the course of these and many more missions, he goes up against Anakin, Asoka, Obi-Wan, Mace Windew, Quinlan Voss. He either gets the better of them or he lives to tell the tale. So he is not afraid of tangling with Jedi.

And unfortunately, for Fed, he is not afraid of clones either. As he says in the Bad Batch, I've taken down so many clones over the years. Once you figure out one, the rest are easy. We will see whether this. one will be easy for him. However, Fenwick proves to be more than a match for him. Yes. In the bad batch, both Bain and Fenwick are hired to capture Omega, who, like Boba, is an unaltered clone of Django. And as they fight, Omega gets away and Fenwick gets the upper hand. And that's the last thing that we had learned about Bain's whereabouts before this week. We do get a glimpse of him in some graffiti drawn by Sabine Wren in Rebels. So clearly the name and the legacy are. still around, but we don't really know what he's been up to for the almost 30 years between Bad Batch and Bucca Boba. But clearly he hasn't given up the lifestyle. New skincare regime.

Yeah, that's the thing. Sharpening his teeth. Not less lethal, but he seems to be a lighter shade of blue. Usually he looks like Tobias from Arrested Development after he blew himself, but this is more of a Max Rebo blue or maybe a Masamita or Ala Secura kind of skin-tile. So we'll see if we get Grand Admiral Thron in Asoka, we'll see how blue he looks. When? Use me, sir. Wow. Aside from the blue.

I was just wondering if it had, you know how they changed Luke's lightsaber color because the deep blue, the lightsaber didn't go well with like the bright blue of sky of Tatouin? And so it's like maybe if he would like blend. I'm sure they tested him with the more, you know, cartoon accurate blue. But for some reason, they needed that contrast. Yeah, you see some slight changes in live action like Asoka with the shorter headtails, right? Because it's a pain to do stuff with really long head tails. I mean, I think they still look good. Like, CAD's face shape is a little different.

Maybe it's hard to find a real person with the face shape that he has in animation. But he still looks pretty intimidating to me, even though he's a little lighter blue. I mean, but in a coverbatch is busy, I guess. Right. Who's first on the list for people without a nose? Voldemort, hey, can you come swing by and, uh, Boldie's busy. He's busy. So a couple other items of interest here.

There's some indication in the canon that Bain was briefly mentored by Django and then later repaid the favor by mentoring Boba, although the specifics haven't really been fleshed out to this point, but there is some sort of relationship there. So like everyone else who has hijacked Boba spin-off, he does have some history with Fet. And the other thing to know is that before the Clone Wars went on a several-year hiatus, there was a four-episode arc written that would have featured Bain and Boba on Tatween. So they were going to team up to rescue a child from the Tuskins. This was before the Tuscans were rehabilitated, I guess. And they were doing the kidnapping in that case. And Boba and Bain were

going to team up. And the arc was supposed to end in a standoff between the two. And based on some unfinished footage, which you can find on YouTube, it looks as if they were going to shoot each other. And maybe Bain was finally going to bite the dust. So that could happen in the finale. That is possibly in the cards. I feel like no one is playing a longer game than Dave Follone who's like, oh, I'll get my story eventually. Yeah. I've got my rough traps from 2013 here, just biding my time. Oh, I'll get it. I'll get Cabay and Boba Fett on Tatween. Just you wait. Of course, even if he does meet his ends next week, he could still show up elsewhere in the Obi-Wan show somewhere else. Now that they've gone to the trouble of designing him in live action, it would be a shame not to have him show up again, I think.

So for now, there are a few recommendations here. Really just watch all of the Cat Bain episodes. There aren't that many of them. But definitely check out the two Bad Batch episodes, episodes 8 and 9 reunion and Bounty Lost. And then with Clone Wars, he's in a bunch of multi-episode arc. So he shows up in the season one finale hostage crisis. That's the debut where he takes control of the Senate. Would definitely check that one out.

And then there's a three-episode arc at the start of season two, Holocron Haist, Cargo of Doom, and Children of the Force. You can maybe skip the two-episode arc in season three, where he is with zero, evil plans and hunt for zero. That's saying you should. But if you're pressed for time. We're prepping for a potential HUD involvement reveal on the finale. You can't skip that.

I would not advise skipping it, but if you must, because you definitely have to check out the four-episode arc in season four. Deception, friends and enemies, the box, and crisis on Nabu. That's the kidnapping Palpatine plot. Deception is the one that Boba is also in. Amazing, as always. One thing I want to say about Cadbane that has nothing to do with this canad, this beautiful canon that you've laid out for us, is this, what's been funny about watching everyone else cover this episode this week is that when it comes time to talk about he walks out of the desert, like, and there's a million different, like, calms from different westerns. You know, Ben has cited the actual design source here, but it's like every, you know, for me, it looks like tombstone. For everyone else, it looks like something else.

But it's just like every man in a Western and Sharon Stone and The Quick of the Dead has, like, done this. It's iconic for a reason. I just, I loved it. I love the time they took with it. I love the dread that's building from it. I love that you have Timothy Oliphon who has stared down many a fearsome gunslinger. Like, you know, if he looks nervous, I'm nervous. So, yeah.

Yeah. I cited High Plains Drifter in my breakdown on the website, which is when I watched recently, Clint Eastwood, he plays a character. character called The Stranger and he rides into town amid the heat haze at the beginning and then leaves the same way. So definitely a lot of potential callbacks there. From the desert comes a stranger is like an all-time episode name. So good. That is just genuinely outstanding and so literary and poetic. I love it. It's like one of the 9,000 times I gasped in a state of sheer euphoria during this episode when that title card came up. It's such a. great point, Joe, about if Cobb seems trepidacious, we know really to be afraid. And that connects

so well to what Ben said earlier. Like, this is such an amazingly rewarding thing. If you've seen Clone Wars and Bad Batchett have been anticipating Cad Bain's live action debut. But if you don't know any of that, that signal from the Marshall tells you everything, tells you all you need to know, just from the facial expression, sending everybody inside. Right. And the way that he asks him a couple times. Yeah. Didn't, catch your name,

right? And the look when he lifts his head at last. And of course, he's unmistakable from the second, his silhouette.

It's like a pinprick on the horizon. And already it's unmistakably him. But still, that ultimate payoff of lifting his head and seeing those menacing

eyes. And you know, like, as you said, Ben, from that intro list where he just needs the name, right?

It's like his reputation precedes him everywhere he goes. He is. We hear the word legend a lot. side of Star Wars stories, right? He is. Yes. Yeah. This was so fun. I got the sense that Cobb might suspect who he is and is just

asking for the name for confirmation. Or maybe he just sees this menacing figure approaching from the outskirts of town and he knows it can't be good news. But yeah, he looks great. We got to get his trademark toothpick in the mix. I know. I did long for the toothpick. It's true. I don't know. There was a lot going on with the pointy teeth. So it might have been this might have been the wiser course. I did miss the toothpick, though. So quickly, as we look ahead, what theories should we be considering? I mean, it seems certainly like he is there, you know, hired as a bounty hunter deployed on behalf of the syndicate. Is that simply the pike syndicate? Or do we think there's room within that for some nuance? Because he says syndicate, right? He doesn't

say the pikes. So given his involvement, I mean, you mentioned all, many of the affiliations over the years. And obviously, there are a lot of people who can hire Cad Bain, you know, and employ him for his services. The fact that he has so many canonical ties to the huts is hard to ignore, right? Did his appearance make you think, okay, the huts, whether it's the twins or some other Hutt faction, could be coming back into play in the finale, did the use of the term syndicate? And I just to be clear, I understand it's called like the Pike Syndicate. It could still just be that one thing. That's fine and that's possible, right? But we're theorizing. No, I agree with you. I thought it was really significant that he said the syndicate, not the Pikes.

So do we think that points back to this larger season-long theory that we've been discussing episode after episode? Yeah. I mean, we've been on the Kira-Kins and Don train since before the spin-off started. So I still, I mean, look, after these last couple episodes, which were wonderful and I would not trade for anything, but the fact that they did nothing to build up the Pikes as villains only confirms my suspicion that there must be someone bigger and maybe more recognizable behind the Pikes. So whether Bain is working for the Pikes and the Pikes are in league with someone else, that's a possibility. Or maybe he is working directly for some other party. I would expect that we will get answers to that. Finally, next week, I would think.

But yeah, there's got to be someone more menacing, more consequential looming behind the Pikes because they don't make much of a big bad. They haven't done much to build them up as a worthy adversary here. Joe, just think of it. Kira in one of those capes you love, standing next to CAD in that wide-rimmed hat. Is the space pony still? Is she still rocking the space pony or like, she got a space bob now? Yeah, no, I think I, my money's on Kira.

You know, which Ben is the one who prep me for Kira in the first place. He's why I rewatch solo. But, um, so honored to be the instigator of that, even if it didn't change your opinion. I'm less optimistic that the huts are going to come back, despite all the weirdness around their departure. I just feel like that's so much to come back for the finale when we expect other things to happen in the finale as well. But you never know.

I mean, I think they're throwing a lot of things at the wall. And I didn't think we'd get this much Luke or any Luke. So we'll talk about that. But, you know, that's a whole thing. I know. There were so much, so much, so much here. It is kind of even just CAD in a vacuum without, any of the possible permutations of his connections to the Pikes,

thoughts, Kira, anyone, just that history that he has directly with Boba and Fennick is like, such a rich thing to mine in the finale and like, wonder how much room they'll have to, you know, maybe we're just going to get a line or two. Maybe we just get a glance or two between them in the finale. But there's so much there. I mean, as we talked about,

like Fennick got the upper hand on CAD who had beaten Obi-1 and Voss together. Like top two Jedi in a duel on Teth, right? Like, he is at the absolute pinnacle of prowess and achievement and Fennick dusted him, dusted him. So seeing them together. Yeah. Twenty-eight years before this, right? It's going to be incredible. Yeah. And I mean, we'll talk about this as we talk more about like finale theories and stuff like that. But something I like to do when we're headed for a melee, which just seems like we might be, is I like do the math. I'm like, what would be the most satisfying like pairups? Subgroups. Yeah, definitely.

And so, like, Fenwick and Cod would be a really fun one for. Phenic, Cad, and Boba just head over to the side, grab a drink, talk about Omega. What do you think? The clone elephant in the room. We're so spoiled. It's not enough for us that Cad Bain is here in live action. It's who else will come in here? Who else will he be affiliated with?

And yet, Floney justifies all of our fantasy casting and theorizing. Like, that's the thing, right? Not intentionally. But yes, this is not the Mephisto situation. This is like, Follone makes our dreams come true. So it's not silly to speculate. Walton Gaggins shows up as Mephisto in the Boba season finale. Who says no other than Johnny?

And that's, I mean, a lot of people are like maybe they'll put Gagins in as Cadbane to like give us the Walton Gagin's time of the Elephant, Justified. But like, Corey, like, I think they went the right direction with, you. using the original voice. I think that's a great, great move and an honor to this performer who did an incredible job shaping this character. Thank you, Ben, so much for the download. The light has always been.

I learned so much, always from you. I'm happy to have played a small part in what I can only assume will be an hours long episode. Thanks, Bell. Okay, no mail back today because as mentioned, we will be doing an entire boba bonus bag

on Monday. We have a bunch of questions already, but if you want to send us more, please. You got a day or two here to get a few more in. You can find the prompt on the ringerverse. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Send us your questions. All right.

The best gar and lightsaber before us. So it is time to wrap today's episode. Thank you. To our Jedi master, Steve Allman, for producing today's episode. To our Marshall, our Juno Ram Gapal. There's additional production work on this episode. and our syndicate bounty hunter,

Jomi Adanon, happy two-year ringerversary, Johnny! Yesterday was the actual day, but our first chance to say it here for his work on the social for this episode. Head back into the ringerverse on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the bonus Boba Mailbag, the Midnight Boys instant reaction

to the finale, Pugh, Pugh, and the House of our Deep Dive. Until then, remember, it was a scheduled vacation. actually. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy? It's the real California farm families behind it. Real people. Real care. Real intention. Why? Because real matters. So whether you're pouring milk, melting cheese, or just grabbing one more spoonful of yogurt, keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk by real California Fire.

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