If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, the Town, on the Ringer podcast network. My name is Matt Bellany. I'm a founding partner at Puck and the writer of the what I'm hearing newsletter. And with my show, the town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix. Who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again. Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You brought me here. We both knew this is where this trip was headed. I didn't know you were still so angry. She killed my family. She destroyed my life.

This is grief. Let it go. You are not my master.

I do not need your permission to.

Go out there and confront her.

I deserve justice.

You want revenge?

Look what revenge has done to your sister. I couldn't save her when you were children.

Let me try now. What's up, Bhad bhabies? Hello. Welcome back. Back to House of our. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, I give her her. She gives me me. It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. How you doing?

Joe, don't you think what we do is so stressful?

Incredible. Made Jacinto impression from Mallory Rubin. Off the top.

It was that project Pip.

Why not talk about why not both always? I assume that you're just gonna scream that 20 times before we're done today. Okay, yes, we're here to talk about Acolyte. I don't know why I just pronounced it that way. Acolyte episodes one and two. This is your deep dive into episodes one and two of Acolyte. We also have a very special guest today. We have an interview at the end of the pod today. We got a nice. We'll sit down, chat with Leslie Hedlund, who's the creator, showrunner of this show, and wrote and directed the first episode that we're going to talk about today. So stay tuned for that at the end of our rundown of these episodes.

Fantastic conversation between Joe and Leslie. Make sure you listen to every second of it.

It was wonderful, Leslie, genuinely. I mean, I'll just say this. I'm supposed to be talking about programminders, but I'll just say this. I watched the episodes. I talked to Leslie I watched the episodes again. I think my second time through a Star wars show is always like a better experience for me. But watching it again with her insights in my head just really changed my perspective entirely on the show. Really helpful. So hopefully that is helpful for you all here today. Listen, we're here to talk about acolyte, and we're so excited to do so over on the midnight boys, they gave their instant reaction to acolyte. Already a great episode, a really wonderful conversation. Loved it. And next week they'll be back to do the same. But they'll be coupling it with the boys, right. It's a twofer episode that they're doing next week. The boys.

Double pods. Next week, two pods. Yeah.

Wonderful, wonderful. Who could ask for anything more? Okay, we, of course, will be back to do acolyte as well next week, but also House of the Dragons coming. Yeah, so we're gonna be doing House of the Dragon prep next week. A little recap. I don't wanna, I'm not gonna jinx it. I'm just gonna say there might be a special guest on that pod, but anything could happen, so I just don't wanna over promise under deliver. So at the very least, you will get prep House of the Dragon prep pod from us at the beginning of the week. Acolyte episode three, deep dive later in the week. And then, Mallory, what else is happening from us? If you count Sunday as part of next week, which I do.

Zachary. Yeah. Steve and Sir Dragon screech here. It'll be time for actual coverage of season two. Hot d season two. We will be rejoining our third dragon head, Chris Ryan, for talk of Thrones on Sunday nights. Everybody will be able to join us right after the hot d premiere concludes for talk the Thrones episode one. And then stay tuned for more programming announcements because we're going to have, as always, an absolute bounty of hot d pods, not only here with our house of our deep dive, but on the ringerverse, the midnight boys, Joe and Neil and Dave, on trial by content. Chris and Andy on the watch. I mean, the website cramming Riley. We're going to have everything everywhere. We'll give you the detailed rundown next week, but get hyped because we are mere days away.

Zachary dragon time. Zachary.

Thrilling. Genuinely thrilling.

And there's a Star wars show on at the same time. Like what? I mean, who could ask for anything more? Also, just want to shout out, mint edition crew. They're covering inside out to next. I can't wait to see. And the Pixar movie. Also, in the middle of all of this, it's incredible.

What a content summer.

So I'm calling it the content gauntlet. That's what I've decided to call it. You can call it whatever you like, but that's what I've decided. Just sort of, I like the rhythm of it. Content gauntlet. All right, Mallory, how can folks keep track of all the dragons, all the Jedi, all the feelings that are coming from all of us in the next couple of weeks?

Thanks for asking. My first recommendation would be that you follow the pod, follow House of our on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow the ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow all the pods that you're interested on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the ring reverse on the social media handle of your choosing. We are on Instagram, Twitter.

Yes.

Tick tock.

Yes.

Of course the inbox is open. You can send your call inducing emails our way. By the way, speaking of emails, we had a on the end. Speaking of House of the Dragon prep, we had a all thrones, all hot D prep mailbag pod just a couple days ago. So catch up on that, if you haven't yet that's already waiting for you on the feed. Send your emails to hobbitsanddragonsmail.com and stay tuned. Stay tuned to the pod. Stay tuned to the socials for, for more programming announcements about exciting things that await. And we're gonna mention one more thing, which we've been teasing, but just to remind you all, we're doing a couple live shows. This.

Yeah, we are.

So if you have not yet secured your ticket, you still have a chance. Head to the ringer.com. what a great website, the ringer.com events. And then you can find the link to get your tickets to talk. The Thrones live, Tuesday, June 25. Joe, Chris and I will be there. We will be having a blast. Talking about House of the dragon, talking about thrones, talking about westeros. Wonderful stuff. We genuinely can't wait. Please join us. And then later in the summer, mid July, the ring reverse crew is getting together for ring reverse live. So you have two chances to come hang with us in person in Los Angeles at the L Ray Theater this summer. Get your tickets now.

Love it. Thank you for all of that. Mallory Rubin, speaking of the socials, as you were, if you have not yet watched Benjamin Lindbergh's I saw it on instagram, I don't know where else you can find it. Perhaps on TikTok possibly on Twitter. His video breaking down, sort of like the gist of the high Republic, which is what we're gonna be talking about. This is the era that this show is set, sort of the tail end of the high republic, so we're gonna be talking about that. A good deal will be back on future acolyte deep dives to give us his classic lower segments. So this is a double episode. And Leslie, we got the Leslie interview. We have no Ben this week, but there is Ben content available to you. Great recap from Ben on the ringer.com. what a great website. So we're really excited to have been on the team going forward. Quick facts. Today, we are here to talk about acolyte part one, lost slash found, written by Leslie Hedland, directed by Leslie Hedlund. Clocking in at a 43 minutes. And then at a very late, quick 39 minutes, we've got part two, revenge, last justice, written by Jason McCaliffe and Charmaine degreat and directed by Leslie Hedlin.

Spoiler warning. Have we issued our spoiler warning? Because I was just about to say, I forgot that. I'm sorry. We. It's just gonna say something spoilery. So I realized I should just.

That was when I realized women.

Spoiler warning. We're going to talk about the first two episodes of the accolade. Joe just outlined that for you. What else, Joe? Anything that's ever happened in Star wars.

Yep. Oops. Anything that's ever happened in Star wars, it's all on the table, be it in a comic or a video game or a Lego minifig set, whatever it may be, if it is canon or if it is legend, we are going to talk about it. So that's all on the table. Not future episodes of the show. Just everything up through acolyte episode two and everything else that has ever happened in Star wars.

There you go. Spoiler warning issue. Joe, I just want to quickly say lost slash found revenge slash justice. We got to see the logo come to life with the little red and blue twin crescent moon shapes. The idea of twins, of course, this twin twist was a huge one. They kept this quiet. I was like, oh, shit. Episode one, twist, they pulled it off. And to see that incorporated across the language and the framing and the positioning of the show right there in the episode names and in the logo, I thought was really cool. I like those logic.

We're talking about twins. Are you emotionally prepared to talk about force dyads?

Force dyads? I mean, simultaneously always and really never.

Great let's go to our opening snapshot. Mallory Rubin, you and I have actually not had a chance to really talk about. We've just had a few other things on our plate that we've been doing. We haven't had a chance to download since you've watched the episodes. So I am excited, along with our listeners, to hear your overall thoughts on accolade episodes one and two. Other than the logo and the episode.

Titles, I'm excited to hear yours, too, because you gave us that delicious little tease about looking at the episodes through a different lens after chatting with lesbian. I can't wait.

A certain point of view.

From a certain point of view.

Yeah.

Opening snapshot. I enjoyed the first two episodes. I liked the second one more than the first one, and I. It actually took me a little bit to get with the rhythm of the show while watching the first episode. There was a lot that I liked about it, but there were certain aspects. First of all, like, the pace of the show surprised me. So, like, you revisiting it, then another time through, after seeing it, after seeing the first two episodes once and then going back to watch them both again and having a sense of what the pace was gonna be, because a lot happened really quickly. Like, this question of who is responsible for the killings is not really the question. Right. And the initial twist that Osha and May are twins happens quickly. Learning that OShA thinks May is dead, learning that may also thought OSha was dead. A number of things I can't, like, say Osha still without thinking of Osha from Game of Thrones, by the way, just simply cannot.

I think about it in the way that I wasn't allowed to wear flip flops when I worked at the bookstore because of ocean violation.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's also interesting. Yeah. So they're jam packed. We planet hop, we go all across the galaxy, we move through places, we meet a lot of characters. We're getting a sense of a lot of different dynamics quickly, and the mystery is unfolding quickly. And then the question of what happened, what happened in the past, which we'll obviously talk about at length and in many different aspects of the dual episode breakdown as we go through beat by beat, scene by scene. I think I had to get my bearings with that a little bit. The pace felt really good and exciting and energizing to me in the second episode on the first viewing, and then felt better to me overall when I went through a second time. Something about the first episode, the rhythm of it didn't quite work for me. It felt a little like halting in its cadence. I don't quite even know how to explain it, but I don't know if it was the fact that we got a lot of these. May the force be with you. And then I know I have a bad feeling about this game in the second episode, but we have these moments where, obviously, something bigger, more thematically rich, which we'll talk about the centrality of the idea of attachment.

Something was like, I'm hearing characters say things that I wasn't necessarily expecting to hear them say. And then, I think, more broadly, the acclamation period for me was, this show is not as different from the rest of Star wars as I thought it was gonna be. That was the big adjustment for me, from anticipation, hype, expectations based on marketing and positioning of the show into consuming it. And there's something about that that I like the through line years and years and years of Hubris and myopia in the Jedi order and fear of attachment leading these characters astray, that the same mistakes, that their limitations are cyclical. And we did know that this was all about the pathway to the prequels and to phantom menace. And so, of course, and we talked about this in our primer pods. It could never quite be that separate, really, ultimately, because if you're blazing the path to a certain outcome, there's definitionally a tether and a tie. So that part of it. How does history repeat itself? And the conversations inside of the episodes about learning from our past, studying our past, that's really interesting to me. I do think that I just thought the show was gonna feel more tonally distinct.

There's stuff that's really different in it. The fighting style, which I thought was awesome, et cetera. So that was the big, oh, initial episode one response for me. Episode two, that was less of a thing. I have not watched beyond episode two, so I'm curious to see if that aspect of it evolves, if the tone starts to shift, if the mystery and the propulsive nature of that and the inward assessment coupled with the outward quest does really amplify and heighten a kind of darker.

Right? Because we were told this was from a sith point of view, and, like, I don't feel like we're really there yet. My hope not having, like, seen everything, but my hope is that there will be more room for that in later episodes.

And I think we ended the second episode in a great place. Like, I genuinely decided to keep watching. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the show. I can't wait to see episode three. I thought a lot of the performances were really captivating. I think some of the character dynamics. I just, like, cannot wait to talk with you about Soul and Osha. I just cannot wait. We could. I'm sure we could do it for 15 hours before Steve cut our mics. Like, there was a lot in here.

One.

Absolutely wonderful.

Wonderful.

And connects to so many. That's the kind of connection to other things. It's ours that. I love that thematic connection. And then Pip was just an instant icon. I have absolutely no notes. I thought Pip was just a sensation. That's TL, Doctor.

Yeah, I like.

I really liked it. I had a. I had some notes on the first episode in particular, and I think, for me, a little bit of a. Was my expectation totally in line with the thing we were actually getting, but not in a way that diminishes or dampens my enthusiasm for what's to come. And I think there are a lot of building blocks here to make something really cool over the course of a full season. What about you?

Yeah, I think any. We just can't help ourselves. And I'm so sorry that it's the case, but any Star wars tv show is going to be held up to our experience watching Andor because it felt, like, so different and so refreshing. But something I remember because they dropped. Was it three episodes of Andor at once? It was at least two, if not three. I remember the first episode being feeling kind of like you're acclimating yourself to this new world. And, like, they dropped several, I think. And I think it was smart for them to drop two here, because, like, that first one, you're just sort of like, okay, there are no skywalkers. When am I? Where am I? What's going on? What's the rhythm of this show? That sort of thing. And so I agree. The thing that really struck me, actually building our notes for today, is when I was pulling quotes for us to, like, drop into the episode, all the ones I wanted to pull were from episode two. And I was just like, except for the very end of episode one. But I was like, it's not like nothing interesting happens.

It's just like, there's so much exposition and sort of, like, establishing of the world happening in episode one by design. That, and I think also by design, what you're talking about in terms of it not being as different as you expected is part of the new normal that we should expect from Star wars. Now that everything is sort of under Dave Filoni's auspices, at Lucasfilm, like Tony Gilroy, making Andor is operating independently, but everything else is sort of coming under this one guiding hand a la Marvel and Kevin Feige, et cetera. So that's just something to think about, is by design. I think they're trying to make things that feel more of a piece rather than sort of what we were hoping, which is, like, wild and unusual and different flavors inside of one world. I really liked a lot, and I really liked it more watching it the second time. I liked it well enough, and then I really liked it a lot more watching the second time. And I think Li Jung Jae as Seoul is one of my favorite Star wars performances ever. Like, genuinely, there is something so tender and emotional about him and something so if anyone listening to this listened to Chris and Andy talk about the show on the watch earlier this week, Andy had a delightfully Andy, a greenwaldian rant about how uninteresting Jedi are.

And then I had, like, a text debate, a debate be coward text exchange with him about that, and I see where he's coming from. I largely disagree in that. I don't think it's a Jedi problem. I think it's something you and I have talked about on several of these Disney shows, which is like a stoicism problem, which extends to bo Katan and Boba Fett and Fennec Shand and Din Djarin. This stoic archetype is something that Dave Filoni is really interested in. There are a few stoic characters in this show, but, like, in Seoul, a Jedi, we're getting someone who's so unstoic, who's so emotional, and that is something that I really respond to. I think Lee Jiang Jae as soul is, like, really? And Amandla's great, you know? And Manny Justin toe, when he comes in, is, like, charisma.

Dynamite. Just, like, absolutely dynamite introduction.

But I think soul is this sort of, like, heartstring of the show is something that is just, like, really pulling me forward.

I totally agree. Just an incredibly tangible amount of pathos coming through the screen in every line. And we can save our thoughts on the particulars for when we're contextually talking about the actual exchanges that are unfolding. But the combination of when the thing that is wrenching at him has to do with another person or when it has to do with himself, how that ties into the questions that the Jedi ask of each other, the limitations and the fears that these strictures place on them. The just very human.

Yeah, exactly.

Qualities emanating from not just the longing and the despair, but, like, frustration with the other Jedi and the decisions that they're making, it felt. So I got some. Even though it is an incredibly different performance, and I think the particulars are really distinct. The character that he made me think of the most was Qui gon, because.

A thousand percent quigon. Yeah.

And you're such a satisfying way that we are very easy marks for, because we love Qui Gon. But this question, and especially when you're paired with, like, a padawan who left the order, we don't yet know why we're gonna. This is another intriguing mystery already established in the show. I don't get the sense from soul in the first two episodes that there's an outcome that we're necessarily heading toward him, deciding that life as a Jedi is not for him. But I do think that he's positioned quickly and very effectively as a character who does not believe that every decision that the people make around him make is right, which is so important. And, like, we love. I mean, we've said this bazillion times, we might as well say it again like one of our shared favorite Star wars stories is the last Jedi.

And.

One of my big thoughts leaving the first two episodes, one of the things I really appreciate about what the accolade is clearly interested in doing centrally, is interrogating the Jedi and interrogating the relationship to the Force, to a foothold in society. And I'm hopeful we both consider last Jedi brilliant, important, yes, Star wars installment and story. And I'm hopeful, though I feel almost foolish saying this out loud, given the really despicable review bombing and response to the show from the bad faith contingent, which is very upsetting, though perhaps unsurprising, to see unfolding. My hope is that on that front of interrogating and critiquing the Jedi and trying to hold the Jedi to some account for their hubris, that there's maybe a little bit more of a willingness to receive that than there was when it was coming from a character like Luke. Now, for us and for people who love last Jedi, the brilliance of it was that it was Luke, and that was really inextricable from what made it so powerful that Luke would be the character to voice those things. But I hope that there is this very subversive quality to the focus of this story that I love and that I think is necessary to keep Star wars big and vast and vibrant and sprawling.

And so I hope people are excited about that part of it and willing to engage with that part of it.

That would be. Not only do I hope that people are excited about it, the thing that I think the thing that I'm concerned about, and it's too early to get concerned. We're only talking about two episodes here. But I know that that's what Leslie wants to do. It is clear in all the interviews she's given, and especially in the chat we had with her that's going to be on the podcast today, how much is she allowed to do that? Inside of Lucasfilm is the other question. How scared is Lucasfilm of that after the reaction to last Jedi? So I don't know how much, like, punches will be pulled in this telling or not.

You know, this is what I think my favorite thing about the first two episodes is, actually, other than Saul, I have, of course, that general anxiety as well, living through the sequel trilogy as we all did. Yeah, I have a lot of confidence, actually, after the first two episodes in that episode.

This is my hope. Something made King Tommen, you know, meditate for a decade. So let's find out what that was. What was so bad that that happened? I do want to talk about really quickly, right at the top. No, we're going to save that. I need to know.

I just want to know.

Build up to that.

I want everyone to know every now and then. You know, we like to take people behind the curtain, building the outlines, prep process, the number of times in the process of building the notes that Joanna acknowledged the wig's existence, but literally in the notes, forced herself to wait to comment. I just thought it was hilarious and simultaneously an admirable show of restraint and a real indicator that I don't think the restraint is gonna last for long.

It's one of the first thing I texted you after the trailer when I was like, Dean Charles Chapman's wig. Anyway, we're going to talk about it. It's, you know, it's definitely not a deal breaker for me. It's genuinely delicate and blind eyeball, though. Yeah, real sick. I loved the eye. Okay, before we go into our deep dive, which, you know, we haven't even started yet, cool beans for us, I do want to just really quickly talk about Acolyte as a title, which we have a bit in our. In our preview pods, but acolyte versus apprentice, I think apprentice is the word that is most often used both by the Jedi and the Sith alike. Acolyte is loosely a synonym of apprentice, but more crucially, Acolyte has a religious connotation that apprentice doesn't, and so I think it's important to think about that, about, you know, we're always, I think, thinking about the Jedi as religion in a sort of, like, spiritual way, and then occasionally the Jedi as religion in, like, a constricting, institutional way. But I think if we're thinking of this from a Sith point of view, this idea of dogma spreading ideology, we're going to talk about that speech at the end of episode one, killing.

How do you kill that ideology? How do you kill the dream? Why the word acolyte is used there. Manny Jacinto holding up some poison like a communion wafer and saying, absolution. Like, these are important things that are running through the show. But I think that is why it's Acolyte. I mean, acolyte's just also, like, a sexier word than apprentice, but that's why the show is called acolyte and not Padawan.

And Acolyte is a Sith rank.

Yeah, it is. Yes.

Sith Acolyte is a rank in a part of the Sith canon, and then that. We'll talk about this elsewhere in the pod. But that's an interesting data point in terms of how we, as Skywalker saga Star wars fans, think of the rule of two and the fact that there can be these other tiers of Sith existence will become part of the tangible text. Certainly, but I agree with you that not only in addition to that literal aspect, but it feels like, more importantly, actually, the very overt religious presentation of not just following, but that deification and worship and all consuming pursuit. Fascinating. The communion wafer for the bunta is a great flag.

That was, I mean, great scene, Manny. You're the best. Let's go now to our deep dive. Oh, I really forgot about that. Oh, I missed our Star wars cues. Thanks, Steve. All right, so part one, lost and found, is where we're starting. We're starting with an opening scroll of sorts, obviously, like, scrolling on the screen, but it is, you know, a blue font on a star field, getting us excited. This is what it says. 100 years before the rise of the empire, it is a time of peace. The Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic have prospered for centuries without war. But in the dark corners of the galaxy, a powerful few learn to use the Force in secret. One of them, a lone assassin, risked discovery to seek revenge. So we're doing, like, three, as far as I can count, three key things here. We're establishing the time period for people who have not been listening to every house of our acolyte prep pod and that's fine. You're allowed to not listen to every prep pod. It's a time of star peace, and the Jedi Order have total control over who can and cannot use Force in the galaxy.

That's a key part to what's going on here. That's something we talked about a lot in the prep pods. Like whose power? Who's allowed to use it? The scroll itself. The language of the scroll. It's not a scroll. The language of. The opening graphs here establish that non regimented force users are suspect in the dark corners of the galaxy. Right. Outer rim, unknown region, whatever it is. But it's a dark corner. A powerful few in secret. This is my favorite part, this language here, which, if we're meant to take this show from a Sith point of view, which I would argue we're not quite in yet, this is not that. This is Jedi language. This is Jedi propaganda, is what it feels like to me.

Yes, definitely.

And I think that's really interesting. And then the last, and we're about to learn this more explicitly when we see the Mae versus Andara fight, is that this is very personal. This is about revenge, right? A lone assassin risks discovery to seek revenge. It's not. An acolyte seeks to prove herself to her master. That's not what this mission is about. It's not only what this mission is about. It's about revenge. A really loaded word in Star wars, of course, because revenge of the Sith, or Return of the Jedi's original title, Revenge of the Jedi, whatever you prefer. This is a classic George Lucas buzzword. What did you think of this opening moment? And do you want to talk to me about concrete BBY numbers? Valerie Ribbon.

As you know, I always like to put a very long, like, four page long timeline in our docs at the start of a new Star wars season. But I did not do that. Here, we can limit ourselves to a bullet point or two. We all learn and grow.

But I want you to have room to be your authentic BBY self if you need to.

Thanks so much, pal. Yeah, so just to.

That would be your droid name, by the way. Bibi hyphen Y. It's cute, right? BBY? It's like BB eight. All right.

Do you have. You know, I built my own bb. Can you see?

I know it's purple. Yeah, it's LJ eight colors, right? Yeah. Yeah.

LJ eight. Yeah. Wonderful stuff.

Oh, I know my Reuben lore. Don't worry.

Had a great time there. Drank some blue milk. It was wonderful. Got a terrible stomachache because I ate so much junk food over the course of that evening. But I was, as they say, on billions. Worth it.

Bob, this is all so on brand for you. I love it.

BBY, check in. So the high Republic era runs from 500 to 100 bbY. This show is set hundred years before phantom menace. We're in 132 BBY, which means we are not only a century before the prequels. That's obviously, I think for most Star wars fans, the most important time marker. But in terms of that high Republic era, and just a second, what Joe said, you'll be able to get great downloads on that lore from Ben and hopefully from us on this podcast all season long.

Oh yeah.

We'Re at the end. We're in the late stages of the high Republic era, which, given that the high republican publishing push covers a larger span of time than this and is now into its third phase, this feels very deliberate to start the screen version at this point where we are nearing the end of the thing and building toward the more familiar thing. Will we then work our way further back in future shows and films? Who could say? Obviously eventually we're going very far back. Very far back. Well beyond the high Republican, if that happens. Yeah, can't wait. So that was great in terms of how I felt about the opening non scroll card. Overall, I like it. I always enjoy that's one of the hey yeah. This is not maybe so different from other Star wars things after all. That is fun. It's cool, it's familiar. It feels like you're sinking into a warm bath. You're home again. I do think your point about oh, that initial note is not a from a sith point of view on struck me as well. The few, the choice of few, a powerful few learned to use the force in secret.

I think few was my that was what I really latched onto in the opening. Not to go all Jeff propst on Zelinsky in the most recent season of Survivor, where how many is several really became a season long recurring discussion point in a way that I found very amusing. Very amusing. You know, few is not to. So we just alluded to this with the idea of scythakelite and the rank, but where do you place fue? You might have more characters in the mix than we would normally anticipate, which is exciting.

Where do you put few between like smattering and handful? Like a light dusting.

A dusting? I don't know. I usually reserve spattering for like when I'm describing my tattoo idol Zoe Kravitz like a smattering of small little forearm deaths. That's the vibe I'm trying to cultivate.

All right.

And the music, like the sounds in the opening, incredible. Great stuff. Steve, just want to say that we support your efforts to talk about the score.

Suck it. Everyone else on the menu. Thank you. I appreciate that.

It was a fantastic podcast and beautiful and important, and everyone should listen. You were within your rights to bring up the score. The score's sick.

It was good. It was very good. Yeah. Very Williams esque, but with some cool, because as we discussed in one of our prep pods, that Michael Abels, who's the composer that he's worked with, Jordan Peele on us and get out. So that horror string sort of element that Mallory just loves horror scores is sort of in here for some of our dream sequence nightmare stuff that happens in these first two episodes.

It's my horror. Joe, I'm going to see the annulus with you and Chris on opening night.

I'm so excited.

You both promised to hold my hand. And critically, that's not what happened. Chris was like, I don't think you can hack it. Stay home.

And I said, come with me. You can do this.

Yeah. Chris was like, you're actually just not fucking invited.

Chris did literally say, I don't think this is for you, Mallory.

He did.

This is like, tough. It was tough. Okay, rough one. A wild Trinity briefly appears.

Briefly. Should have been in all caps, but this was italicized.

This is something we kind of deduced from the trailer, didn't we? Yeah. That we had said the only footage, non flashback footage we had seen of her was from this one fight. And I said, I'm worried. And this is before I'd seen a single minute of the show.

You had also called the cast list.

Like, oh, yeah, she's way far down the cast list. Like, yeah, yeah.

You were reading the signs. I jumping to the end of the scene now at the very beginning of it. But just because we're talking about that like we do, we clearly. Flashbacks are going to be eight, I would say, not just minor part of this season, based on the setup we've gotten. It feels like going back to whatever happened with May and Osha and Seoul and the fire and learning about the Torban and Endura and the decisions that everybody made. I would be stunned, based on the nature of these first two episodes, if that was like a scene.

Oh, yeah.

I just feel like we're gonna be spending some time, some time of consequence in the past. So do you think, how much more time will we be getting with Carrie Anne Wasp? Because one scene, obviously, it's not just gonna be one scene, but hopefully it's not just gonna be one, two scenes either. Like, do you think there's a chance for multiple additional appearances, or.

I think it's gonna be more than one flashback.

Smattering.

Yeah. Light dusting of Carrie Anne Moss. I was talking. I remember Sean Fenesty was texting me about his excitement level for the acolyte. He's like, his number one thing was Carrie Anne Moss. And I tried to be like, listen, guy, I hadn't seen. Seriously, I hadn't seen the episode, but I was like, she's way down on the cast list. I do think they're kind of bait and switching people, which I think is a little unfortunate. Carrie Anne Moss, on your show, you have Trinity doing force fu. Like, you want people to get excited about it, but I think a lot of most people went in expecting that Carrie Anne Moss is the main character on the show, and she is the Drew Barrymore of this film.

I think that there's a very modern tv Thrones era tendency to. I don't want to. I was going to mention another show entirely in a casting decision and a first episode twist, but I don't want to spoil. Spoil that. But this is, like, a thing that people do now. Weirdly, if it had just been Endara dying in the first scene of the show, it might have felt more like that to me. Again, accounting for the fact that we know from trailers that we'll get at least a glimpse elsewhere, but the fact that Torbin was also killed in the double premiere, that gives me more confidence that this is just a cool and interesting structural choice. I think all of your other points about just limited footage, cast list, all of that still stand, obviously, in terms of just, like, relative screen time, but if multiple people are dying and being eliminated, and then part of our journey is going back to understand how we got to that outcome, that's actually interesting to me.

Totally agree. All right, let's zoom back. We're on a planet.

Yeah.

Ueda. Ueda. Is that how we're pronouncing it?

Who can say? I have no idea. I do like how you put this in the dock. Like a date line, like, you were reporting on the ground.

Capital U e a d m dash. M dash. It's a very planet hopping show, perhaps even more, I think, than the Mandalorian. I think Andy made some good points about two planet hoppy. Did you have.

Did you did you like that part of it? Did you feel like it was exciting and propulsive, or were you like. I can't really get my bearings.

I just don't know that we spend enough time anywhere to get the true flavor of it. Versus, like, again, Andy was comparing to Andor and just sort of like, how we felt a real sense of place for all those places. And this is just like, a little bit of, like, I understand there's a noodle shop on this planet, and I understand that that place is snowy, and I understand that. But, like, you know, a little. A little. A little hoppy. We've only seen two episodes. We've already been to, I think, like, four different planets. Noodle shop.

I star right now the recipes on.

Starwars.Com for the noodles from Lomiuski noodle shop. I may be mispronouncing that.

Are you gonna make them?

Maybe I'll make them for you when I'm in LA and you're in LA and we can eat them together.

Should we. Steve? Sounds like you're not invited to the meal, Steve. Joe and I. Joe and I are gonna be dining together.

Steve's cat is invited.

Steve puts sick invite in the zoom chat. Should we?

I don't know what black vinegar is, but that's one of the ingredients, so I'm excited to find out.

Should we pair the noodles with the count chocula?

Gross. Absolutely foul. No, we are going to be eating some Count chocula.

Where's your construction adventure?

Count Chocula feels like an in, like studio experience that Jimmy can mind for social.

Yeah, save that for Halloween.

Noodles. Feels like noodles. No. The Paula trainees podcast, is that when we should have Count Joncula? Do not invoke. Okay, back on track. Listen, first line of this show is, where's your Jedi? The first line of this show establishing that, like, every little outpost in noodle shop has a Jedi setting vigil, or at least they are. Abundance in the galaxy. What did you say?

I love this. And I thought this was in perhaps contrast to some of the clunkier exposition that we'll get to very deft shorthand to explain what's different about where we are now. Because contrast that to say, I mean, really any number of things. But, like, think of Obi Wan or rebels like Inquisitor era Star wars stories, where this question, if posed, where's your Jedi? Means that you are hiding someone who is evading, seeking to evade capture here. This is about abundance. This is about a carefree, sprawling life, not about fearing pursuit or capture. Or discovery. So that just struck me as a really quick and tidy way to say, this is a different time in the galaxy.

As Ben pointed out in his excellent recap, man walks into a bar, cantina, noodle shop, etcetera is the way a lot of these stories start. I thought of Mandy.

Do you think anyone in the noodle shop has ever said, can bring the noodles in warm, or I can bring the noodles in cold?

I am going to text that to you. I'm going to bring the noodles to the office, and I'm going to say, I'm bringing in warm. I can bring him in cold. And then Endara, Carrie Ann Moss, giving us cool, calm, collected, her turn to the camera. All of that great stuff. You're like, this is why you hire Carrie Anne Moss. Absolutely.

And Mae did not seem nervous right at first? Seemed very much like.

I actually kind of disagree when you.

Think she seemed nervous.

When she lowers her voice and says, attack me with all of your strength, like, that feels like someone posturing confidence. You know what I mean?

I felt like the initial master and Dara, we have unfinished business.

Yeah.

She had maybe the nerves then creep in, but really throughout the way that she engaged. That's a scary fight, right? If you're mei and you're challenging and Dara, and she doesn't shrink from it. So there was an element of like, almost. Yeah, you have to, like, what's your pre game routine? You gotta, like, talk yourself up and get ready.

She has practice. She lines seem. Don't you think she's practiced these lines in the mirror. She uses them again later on. Torben.

There is a rehearsed quality to it, certainly.

And we have unfinished business. And attack me with all of your strength are overt lifts from kill Bill.

So, yeah, love getting the kill bill energy throughout here. The my child return from Endara was interesting, too, on the other side, like, feels like a very deliberate, let's remember how the master and apprentice master Padawan dynamic goes and that it's not just always one of tutelage. It can be one of superiority. It can be one of making the person on the other end feel like they're not ready for something. Something.

And Dara says, Jedi do not attack the unarmed. A moment to make us think about this era of Jedi where they're supposed to just be peacekeepers. True peacekeepers. Mace Wadu still thinks they're peacekeepers. The prequels. He says we're keeper of the peace, not soldiers. I don't think so, buddy. But nice thought. But they used to be allegedly keepers of the peace, or space cops, if you prefer. And I think this. Yes, you do, obviously just loaded with personal enmity from Mae, and then later, underlined in the unmasking moment when Endaris is like you to not just her face, but the tattoo on her forehead. So what are you doing here? We get this information actually fairly quickly via some slick and some clunky exposition along the way. But just to give us this right at the beginning is so tasty to me.

Totally. The mace references are great. The thing I always think of there is the voyage of temptation. Satine, Anakin, conversation that I love so much. We are protector's highness, yours at the moment. We fight for peace. And satine saying, what an amusing contradiction. That's one that I always think of there.

So good.

But the. Yes, you do. This illusion so early to whatever, like, horror. This is not just something unfortunate that happened.

It's not just their family. It's their entire village. The village wiped out what role the.

Jedi had in it, in responding to it, in causing it, and covering it up. These are questions we will be asking as we go through the two episodes today. These are questions we will be asking moving forward, but right away to set our minds racing in that respect. Like, what is she identifying? And what is that recalling and bringing up? That was a. And I just thought this fight was awesome.

Oh, yeah. The way that, like, tactile that Amandla and her son double and, like, love a mask design so that the stunt double can just, like, really cook. But the flips and the kicks and the turns and, like, all this sort of. And, like, her hair whipping around and all of, like, all of that movement and then. And Dara's stillness in response to it and just, like, the economy of her gestures and movement and just sort of, like, stepping to the side. All this sort of stuff.

Yes.

Maze, and we're going to come back to this a couple times. But maze, like, frantic grabs and preoccupations with the lightsaber and indara clocking, that is a fascinating dynamic in all of this.

What is your soul fight, too?

Yeah, exactly. What is your take on? I just want to skip to this because I am actually very curious about this. So may, in both the soul and the endara fight, is grabbing for the lightsaber on these jedis hips and missing. But when she has the opportunity to pick up Indara's lightsaber from the ground, she leaves it there. So there is an abundance of stories about the Sith and bleeding Kyber crystals the Darth Vader 2017 comics has, I think, one of the more famous storylines about this, but this idea of a Sith going a Sith apprentice or however you prefer, going to a Jedi master, killing them, taking their lightsaber, bleeding the crystal, I don't think there's any specificity in canon. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You might know better than I do that you have to take it off alive Jedi, or you have to take it off their hip, or you have to kill them with it or anything. That's not part of the rules, as far as I know. What is your read on why Mae leaves Dara's weapon on the ground there?

I think it's a great question, and clearly something we're meant to flag.

Yeah.

Walking away when it's sitting right there, it's not like she's running out of the joint like the camera makes it, returns her blades to her hands, you know, takes the time to do that. It's not a pension. There's no time.

Isn't there?

Like, she definitely could have picked it up if she wanted to. She chose not to.

Yeah.

I think there are a number of possibilities. It could be one of the. This is, like, unbleeding the crystals, purifying the crystals example. But I always love to talk about what Ahsoka does when she forges her white blades, takes the six brothers bled crystals, and purifies them. And part of the reason that that felt like the right thing for her to do was because the crystals were calling to her. So I think there's always a question whether it's an initial gathering style forging of your first blade. And we don't know. Did Mae ever do that? Has that happened for her yet? And maybe that's set aside waiting, or is this the path to that? We actually don't know because we have a lot of blanks in the history for both Mei and Osha. So does she not feel the response that she needs to feel from that crystal? Does it not feel like the right one for her to take? Could be that. I think there seems to be. If that was the case, I feel.

Like we would have a moment of her. Like.

I agree.

I think that's probably not considering it.

Yeah, I think there seems to be, because we see her like, there's the hip pans and the close grazing moments here. But the most overt one by far comes later in the soul fight with the slow, slow kind of hip pan that made me think, is that the one specifically she's seeking and then, more broadly, that connects to one of the things I was trying to track on my second watch. And we'll hit some of this in context as we go through some of the things that Chimere and may discuss together. I'm running out of time. You're running out of Jedi. It seems like there is not just one mission, but there are missions within the missions. I will get one of these skills without a weapon and please our master.

That was my interpretation, though, is that.

You'Re running out of different trials.

You've got four jedi to kill on your list, and you have to do one of them without a weapon.

Without a weapon, definitely. But then that made me think, are there mini tests inside of these trials? Is it just that one?

Oh, it's like a full blown sith scavenger hunt off one of them. You have to pull the lightsaber hot off their hip off another one. You have to get them to kill themselves.

Like, who knows? Maybe there's a certain order, order of progression. Maybe the blade that she's seeking needs to is, whether it's in her mind or part of the mission that she's been set from mystery dude, who we'll talk about he stranger. According to the captioning of the episodes, maybe there's a reason that the portrayal from one of those four feels supreme and that that would be the right blade. I don't think we can say for sure, but I I would be surprised if taking a blade and bleeding a crystal was not a part of this quest at some point. That would be really. It feels like the pan on the blade is setting us up for that.

Oh, 100%. I don't know what's interesting about.

I only got two left now, so.

Totally. What's interesting about your question about has may ever tried to get a Kyber crystal or bleed a kyber crystal or whatever? We don't know. We have blank spots here that feeds into this next part of who trained you and then Dara immediately calling in. I have an unidentified force user really underlining this idea of the Jedi as cops and gatekeepers of who gets to use the Force and who doesn't. We have to think about Mother Anisea. And by the way, we learned that Manosh's last name is Anisea. So is Jody Turner Smith their mom? And if so, that feeds into your hope that there's lengthy flashbacks, right? Mother Anesthesia's line from the trailer that we've been mentioning in most of our prepods, which is this isn't about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it. So the Jedi, as gatekeepers of this power, I don't have you registered force user. Who are you? We the Jedi get to know everyone who's using the force in the galaxy. That's the status quo here.

Right? And it makes you wonder, not to get into too much speculation this early about what we might learn from their time in the past, because on the one hand, we have the data point that, and I have some thoughts on this when we get to this later conversation. Stop me if you've heard this before. Osha was too old. There were some concerns that OSha was too old.

What's her m count, though? That's my question.

I don't know. Was Qui gonna rant and just steal her blood? Wrong timeline for that.

Yeah, I guess so.

On the one hand, the fact that there was concern about the ages and the fact that we know these four Jedi were posted on Brendok, clearly for some other reason than just recruitment, makes it seem less likely to me that they were there specifically to retrieve these force sensitive children. And also, we have not met this family, but just the explanation of who the characters are and what we've seen in the trailers, there's this witchy quality. So a presence of the force more broadly across this family unit, could that line that. That we've latched onto from the trailer have something to do with them going and seeing these four sensitive children and being like, we're interested in one but not the other? Like, we sense darkness here. That's not for us. And then mother Aniseia being like, wait, you're gonna tell me that, like, you're only gonna take one of my kids for your special school? And the other one because of some mind probe you're doing on an eight year old, like, doesn't deserve your care and your opportunities? I'm curious if it's something like that.

At the very least, it feels like a clash between an institution and force users in the wild.

Absolutely.

Versus the institution.

And I thought it was really notable that Endara didn't activate her calm link, didn't call for help just cause she was attacked. It was only that. It was only seeing Mae use the force and realizing that there was a force user outside of their tight net of control that led her to communicate what was unfolding, which just. I think the further supports what you're saying. Like, that's the threat. Anything outside of their web, and I.

Think, not to get too far into this whole mother Aniseia thing and the witchiness that we've seen from the trailer, but it goes back then to this idea of the Jedi institution as the catholic church as a religion versus pagan celebration of religion in the wild, that sort of clash. So we'll talk about that if and when we get to it. But I want to mention, I love Mae's throwing knives. I love that she uses the Force to make the knives even more lethal. It's very like black widow to me, meets, like, Mando's whistling birds. A Nej from six. Of course, the way that the knives.

Are just body from fourth wing.

Ooh, nice. Yeah, sure. A nes is just, like, bristling with knives at all time, and I just love that about that character. And then she says, we see a Jedi doesn't pull her weapon unless prepared to kill. Edard does eventually activate the saber. And then we get this moment, I.

Think, lowers it, though.

We get this moment that I'm, like, both anti and pro. You're anti? Yeah, I don't. And Daria goes out like a chump in a way that she doesn't need to. She definitely could have.

This really bugged me.

Stopped both knives. Absolutely, she could have. So on the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I do like the fundamental, underlying idea that Mae is using the Jedi mission statement of protection against them, and that's in the same way that she's going to use guilt to conquer the next Jedi on her list. Like this idea of using their strength as their weakness, that sort of thing, which is a very sithy thing to do. We've talked about this before in Star wars, but the knife, I mean.

No, I agree with you. It's always interesting to hear the opponent or the foe try to turn something that should be a point of pride, compassion, and warp that against the Jedi. I'm pretty much always interested in that. I do agree with you there. I can't, however, accept. I just. I actually, like, couldn't accept that she couldn't feel the other blade coming with the force and stop both. That just actually doesn't make sense. So I think that's the kind of thing. It's, like, little things like that that take us out of a scene. It's the opening scene of the first episode. Then that's in your mind as you're watching the rest, and it makes it a little bit harder to embrace a thing that ultimately we thought was pretty good and interesting. So that was just a little odd.

It's also tough in the larger universe, where we've seen multiple main characters take lightsabers to the gut, and they're fine.

Darth Vault got cut in half and is fine. So, like, yeah, I mean, that part, too.

So, like, one little throwing knife, albeit to her heart, seemingly, is like, yeah.

Right to the pumper. That's true. It is tough on, like, the other thing is just the adjacency inside of this scene to stuff that was really working. You know, the. Not just the you. What are you doing here? Like, pulling the mask down and seeing May's face, but specifically the dialing in on the. On the far hard mark.

Yeah.

You know, it's not a lightning bolt scar, but it's our version of this. And, like, what was interesting about that to me is. And I don't know if this will actually be right or true, but it seemed to me like that was a little. As we collect data points and clues, because this is a mystery, I felt like that indicated that obviously, the mark is gonna be a way to tell the twins apart. That's, like. That's one part of it. But what that made me think was that Mae had that already as a kid because. And Osha didn't and doesn't. Because that's the thing that makes it not only, like, oh, I know who you are, but, oh, I know which of the twins you are. And so if she had that as a kid, then what does that tell us? Was she training for something distinct from what OSha was training for? Was she involved in something in her village that Osho was not? Was that part of what led to this fracture, whatever fracture unfolded that tore this family apart? And what level of awareness did Endara have of that? Like, what level of direct action and capability do the Jedi have?

And how many in that group of four is the you?

What are you doing here? I thought you were dead. Or is it you? What are you doing here? I knew you were alive, and I thought you were, like, why are you coming out of hiding the woodwork?

Absolutely could be that.

Great question.

Definitely could be that. I think there's something on the Torbin timeline front that makes that seem more likely to me.

Delighted. And I hope it's a wig based analysis, and I can't wait to hear.

Lamentably not. But it is that we've learned that he's the vow for him, that he's been in that state for ten years.

Ten years? Yeah.

So, like, we know that this whole period of time is 16 years.

So what happened from the fires is your question? Okay. Yeah.

He didn't go into the.

Did something happen in the sixties?

He didn't take it after OSHA left the order, which was only six years ago. Six years ago?

Did something happen? Six years or six years? The amount of time it takes for guilt to eat away from at you.

Oh, to the point where your hair looks like that.

Listen, I support all hair lengths, okay? You do. Come on.

You do not. You might support all hair lengths, but you don't support this wig. And don't pretend you don't.

Okay?

You referred to him in the talk at one point as bewigged. I was, like, in tears.

It's a word. Okay, listen, I just love it.

I love it.

We gotta get out of this noodle shop. So let's just yada, yada, yada and say that Mae looks not entirely pleased to have killed Endara. She looks a bit conflicted. And then she also does not kill the bartender owner or whatever when she sees that there's a little kit there. So may not fully rotten to the core yet there is, what, some good in her? What? Okay, well, and of course, this would.

Make sense if part of her origin story is being stripped away from her family. Cause she doesn't know what happened. On the other, she doesn't know that Osha's alive either. So she thinks, presumably, that her entire family is dead. And she's like, I know what it's like to be a kid who grew up having your family torn away from you. Makes sense. Tracks. Only other thing I want to say about that opening scene was because we talked about that idea of compassion being wielded against the Jedi. It makes me think about the scene we're going to get into in a few minutes here. But the first description in the show that we hear of soul is how lucky these younglings are to have such a compassionate teacher. That's our introductory. I just want character trait for him.

I just want to cry about Soul all the time. I just feel so tenderly towards him and I am so scared for him. Okay, now we are leaving the noodle shop, and we are going to meet the main character of this show. It's Pip.

I'm using my Jon Snow, my injured Jon Snow voice.

Pip. Pip.

Sweet pip.

Okay. Actually, the main character of the show is Osha, but Mallory, I'm just gonna hand the mic over to you if you want to tell me your feelings about Pip.

I just thought Pip was an instant star. Every now and then you have the pleasure of seeing a character who understands the assignment. A performer who chews the scenery. Yeah, Pip was just sensational. So cute. You're concerned about Pip. Yeah. Versatile, like, handy, good pal, companion, communicative. Lots of interesting warbles and trills and chirps. I thought that when Osha ripped Pip's head off in a later scene, it was unacceptable and outrageous, even though I.

Was worried how your sympathies towards Osha would survive that moment, but it seems like part of his function. But still, how did you do it? Were you mollified? Were you mollified when she then later, like, tenderly tucked him into his little hip pouch when they were fasting?

The fastening the luggage on the hip pouch to make sure that he was safely tucked away before their crash was sweet.

Okay.

That was sweet. I love Pip. I will be. I assure you that as soon as Pip merch is available, I will be securing a pip of my own.

I'm sure Adam has already pre ordered it for some occasion. Coming up. Okay. Okay. So we meet Osha. She wakes as if from a nightmare. If we're paying close, close attention, we can immediately see that this is a different person. It's different hair, no forehead tattoo. But, like, is this a flashback? Is this a vision of the future? You know, we find out, like, pretty quickly that this is a twin, but, like, were you taken in? You say you were surprised by the episode one reveal. Were you taken in, in this moment where you, like, this is definitely the.

Same person had the exact journey that you just described. The. Oh, I wonder if we're in a different point in time or. Wait, wait.

What?

Is there more than one person? It was in the very close to here, like, sister moment that it was like, wait, what? Oh, okay, so that's what's going on.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we get conversations between Fileck, her fellow. What is it? Mechneck? Guys, guess what? Your favorite pals, the trade federation, are here. Trade fed. Fun times triggering. You love to see them.

I honestly thought that they were a riot when they're, like, the jettisoning.

And then the female of the two, seemingly. Female of the two, where she was just like. You don't have to mind trick us. I'll tell you where she is.

My echoes happy to tell you what you need to know. And again, like, interesting timeline clues, right? Like, trade fed never used shields. We're in a time where that kind of thing is, like, just not the daily requirement as you make your way about the galaxy. So little things like that were interesting about the scene, too. What did you think about just seeing Osha? Given that we learn that Osha left the order six years ago. This kind of life, like, choosing to live this life. What, did you.

Yeah. As far away from Coruscant as she could possibly get. Seems like she's, I think Coruscant pretty fucking. Ugh. Honestly, there's barely any trees. Why would. Why would you live there? It's a planet.

Like a plum tree in the yard to make your barbecue sauce.

Yes. You need some nature, man.

That's just city. Great summation. Yeah.

I think that sucks. It's just layers of city. That sounds terrible to me. But listen, she's clearly licking her wounds. I mean, she later says that leaving the Jedi order was her decision, but she has chosen to go as far away from Coruscant as possible. She doesn't even seem to socialize that much, I guess, with her fellow mechanics, right? She doesn't go, like, party on the smuggler's moon with them, and she's doing a joke.

Joke was like, where were you? But we know at least she partied one night to get that debt.

She sure did. But she's out there doing jobs that, you know, our two units are supposed to be doing under the radar, all of this sort of stuff. So. Yeah, she just seems like very.

Yeah, yeah. I liked this. It simultaneously felt like an actual, like an inversion of a Star wars trope where we tend to think of, you know, a character like power converters to actually station. Like, this is the thing you want to escape, right? So that you can go on your grand adventure so that you can heed your call. Though it did remind me so powerfully of Ahsoka after Ahsoka left the order. Now Ahsoka was in hiding, so that was different. The stretch where Ahsoka is, you know, like, living on the land, working the farms, it really, really felt like, reminiscent.

Of that as Osha is doing is stealing jobs from our two units. You know, on the x rays, did you think, did you have a doctor who moment when they were out on the outside of the ship? I was like, this is where a demon comes to kill them or something like that.

Yes. And I had another doctor who moment because I thought the. When we get to the prison brink, I thought the speaks electronically convict number three looked like a centaurin.

Oh, yeah.

Like a tech augmented centauri.

Oh, my God, I love that you can just say that now.

Are you proud of me?

I'm so fucking proud of you.

Actually, I was just thinking of the hound here because the.

Oh, fire.

Yeah, the fire.

Hot water burning. Yeah, it's a bummer. So the fire happens and sends osha into an unfortunate mid job traumatic flashback. This is not when you want to have a traumatic flashback whilst hitting on.

The hull of a ship in vacuum. No, it's not ideal.

She remembers something, and then the closed captioning really helps us out here in terms of what we're listening to. We hear young Osha say, mae, what are you doing? And then a girl. I won't let you leave. Mama, help me. No, mama. Young osha's screaming. So this feels like the fire that killed her mothers and she thought her sister and all of her village. This is what she thinks of any time she sees fire.

So very, genuinely very sad.

The trade fight. The Jedi are here. The trade fed say, ugh. And this is when we activate the Yord horde.

Yord horde.

Yord Horde. I have seen it all over the Internet. It is catching fire for good old yord.

Catching fire. Hopefully not in front of osha.

Not in front of Osha. She will have a stroke. So listen, yord is here. He's only been with us for a few days, and the fandar fandom is just really. Is really popping. We got an email from Jordan. We got. Most of our emails were about Jord, by the way.

This is so funny to me. I love this.

Charlie Barnett, you are a legend for taking your kid off in a Star wars show. Okay, so Jordan wrote, oh, Yordi, the himbos have arrived to horny Star wars. Thank you, Jord. More, please, and thanks. Incredible coastline.

Yeah.

Jord, who's a knight and tough as.

He is, happy to tell you.

Oh, eager as he is, happy, freshly minted knight.

Yeah.

And Tasiloa, his padawan. I do not get good vibes off of her, by the way, comes sweeping in wearing sparkling, pristine white robes. We got an email from Kelsey about this, which I want to read, but I think this costuming is. I mean, it's obviously intentional because the high Republic Jedi look. Wear different clothing than the Jedi that we're used to. But Kelsey says, I couldn't shake this distracting thought the entire premiere that they are wearing costumes. I don't believe they're actually wearing the clothes, particularly the Jedi. The colors are too crisp. The fit is just so. The hair perfectly coiffed. There is a too perfect quality that simply doesn't feel lived in other than some gorgeous creature design. This didn't bother me in any other Star Wars Disney series, but I feel like I'm watching toys telling me I'm crazy. So what I'll say to Kelsey is like, I don't entirely disagree. And oftentimes in Sci-Fi fantasy shows, being too clean does bother me. It does not in the case of, especially Yord and his padawan here, because this idea of crisp, white, officious by the book Jedi who have shiny boots and pristine robes because they don't fight, and they're not out there in the muck and the mire.

There is a time of peace, and they are just tidy little peacekeepers. That actually really works for me. How do you feel about it?

I agree. I think it's visually jarring. Intentionally. Yeah. And it's helpful in cementing that when later we'll talk about that broader moment more when we get there. But just seeing your steam, his robes, and I know you're excited to talk about the flick of the robe when he stands up.

Like, I have already made a gif of it for myself.

I would expect nothing less.

An incredible book.

This is, I think, completely of a piece with a character like Cyril in Andor, tailoring and changing the piping of his uniform, like, what that represents to Yord. And there's a part of me, like, we've got a lot of notes on the way that Yord conducts himself in the first couple episodes, and again, that's by design. There's a part of me, based on what we hear between Yord and Osha in this exchange, where it's like, maybe it was really hard for him to reach night. Right. It seems like clearly that.

Yeah, you finally did it. Yeah.

And so that, like, makes me. There's a part of me. Then my heart goes at him, and it's like, he should be proud like, he did it. But then, as we'll talk about in other reasons, it's like, oh, wait.

But, yeah. Like, it's. I think you kind of.

He's achieved to him.

Yeah. And he can't wave to shout out, everybody. Okay, so this is our last Jordi male. I promise. I think that's true. Yes. Okay. From Alix, who says, is your the biggest Herb Jedi we've ever seen? Feels like he could give Cyril Karn, as you mentioned, Cyril, a run for his money, even. Okay. This is where I say, I don't know what Herb means. It seems like sniveling little rule follower from, like, context. Context. Urban dictionary says someone who tries too hard to be cool, an overzealous poser. When you think you're on some next ship, but you're really on some bullshit. From what I can determine from digging around the Internet, because I was really felt dramatically uncool that I did not know what Herb Jedi. It seems to be New York based, like, very regional slang. Have you encountered, as someone who grew up closer to New York than I did, Herb, as an insult for someone?

I have. Okay. Great. People in Maryland said as well, but I loved this journey for you.

Sorry. There's definitely some California slang that I could have hung with, but Herb did not make it out to the coast, so I apologize anyway. Okay. I love this moment, how Yord is sitting on OShA's bed as stiff as possibly could be, and then just the way he gets up. I hope that Charlie Barnett practiced that 900 times before he executed it. Just so awkward and stuffy, and I feel so tenderly towards him while also being deeply annoyed by him. These are my complex Yord feelings.

This is an amazing moment.

She's just, like, so happy to see him, and she's so loose, and she's just, like, shoving him on the shoulder affectionately. And he's like. He's. I think. Cause I think Charlie Burnett, who I know from russian doll and tails from the city, is, like, an incredible performer. I think he's giving us actually not always, but definitely hear a really complicated reaction from Yord because I actually do think he's happy to see her. I think there is this unspoken, we dug cold together. We were padawans together, sort of energy between.

Are we hooked up? What is the history here? It definitely seems like, I don't know, have a history.

He was very excited to find out she had a twin. So I don't know if he's like me, maybe that one won't dump me or reject me. I don't know.

Oh, my God. Yeah, there was a. Even though he is being so formal and he's putting on the airs of authority, there are those little moments where he breaks, where the facade cracks and you see the little smile, and he's not only proud of what he has achieved, but he's proud that someone he knows, who knows him, can see that, which is, I thought, very sweet. I agree with you. There was a lot at play here. But then it does make the. The shift into full on unyielding. I will chase you, arrest you, insist that you should be in restraints. Harder for me to wrap my mind around. Like, is Yord a character who, honestly, in a way that makes me eager to just learn more about him and understand him better? Not in a way that I thought was odd or out of sync, but I'm like, what does that tell us about Yord. Is it that he's a just a by the book rule follower? Is it that he is so because there's a tenderness when he brings up the, like, when they talk about their past here, when he brings up attachments to those we have lost or the most difficult to let go, there was a real tenderness in that.

And then that makes you wonder, well, are there things in his own past that he has had to really, like, tamp down and not allow himself to access? And that then creates a. Oh, yor.

Looks like he's about to, like, pop at all times. Because if you track this, and you should, he is so quick to pull his weapon. Like, especially in contrast to what everything we get with Endara and this idea that, you know, and, like, Sol hardly ever pulls his weapon, right? So it makes sense that he's, like a brand new knight and he's sort of, like, insecure about his. If he had to work really hard to get there, and he's, like, insecure about belonging there. But you're being so tightly wound and constantly trigger happy. Makes me nervous. Yes. Do you think this dynamic, this swing between sort of secretly pleased to see you chasing you down to the corners of the galaxy, would have worked better for you if Osha said you're my friend and Jordan had said you're my mission, would that have my mission attached to those we have lost? Or the most difficult to let go as you flag? Attachment is like the thesis of the.

Key and a keyword.

This is it. Please stay tuned to what Leslie has to say about attachment. It is, like, wildly profound and wonderful in the interview that we have with her. It's so good.

And this is one of the things that we have both always aligned on in how we think about Star wars and view Star wars, that it's such a lament we share about the Jedi Order. So I love that this is at play here.

Tassie, who's somehow even less diplomatic than your. It's just like a painful interrogation exposition dump here that I really didn't like. It's so funny. I was reading, I forget what it was. I think it was maybe Ryanairy on screen crush talking about this idea of a scene where two characters who experience something together talk about it in a room. Like, remember how this was? You and I did we both know this happened. No, no. But the reason I bring it up, it's not great here. The reason I bring it up is because later, when Osha and Sol do it, when she says, we've had this conversation so many times, it works perfectly. So it has to do with.

There's an emotional truth that's driving that exchange. And what's happening here with Tassie and Yord and Osha is like Yord saying, your training was difficult, to say the least. It's simply there to catch us up as the audience and everyone in the room is in possession of the facts, and that's just not emotionally compelling. So we feel that it is there purely for function, and that's just not as interesting.

They brought an eyewitness into her living quarters, onto the ship. It seems like not due process at all.

Astonishing stuff.

I believe that OSha withdraws her membership from the Yord Horde, and she asks him if he really thinks that she could do this. And the herb that he is sadly says it doesn't matter what he thinks. And Tessie, who I already did not like, how'd you feel about her putting her little. Her little, pretty little hands all over Pip? It's violating a scandal.

It is a scandal call of galactic proportions.

The media. And then. Listen, I would criticize Jordan Tassi for putting Osha on this prison transport without going with her, except. Except everyone in the galaxy does this. So.

Yeah, yeah.

This is just a classic Star wars setup. Why would we ever personally escort our prisoner anywhere? Why would we do that?

Oh, man. If I recall correctly, Master Andara advised the Jedi council to discontinue her training when you were. When you were what? Like, did something specific happen?

Right? And then she insists it was her choice to leave. Yeah, yeah. So what did. What did she do? Yeah, when you were rejecting me for that date I asked you on, and I reported you to the council.

Oh, no. Yard.

Yard. Don't be Ansell. All right, let's go to Coruscant.

Okay, I know you don't want to. I know you hate Coruscant, but anyway, it's pretty ugly.

Um, can't be like.

It can't be as beautiful as scariff. You know, we're not supposed to want to spend time in the. The hustle and bustle of bureaucracy.

I don't know. Some of those, like. Anyway, all right.

It is interesting to see how, like, Ben and Ben talked about this on our. One of our trailer pods. How. Again, just different. The skyline. Yeah.

How it's lower, slower than it becomes. Yeah. Okay. More trailer content for us. The youngling class with master soul. We got most of this in the trailer. And at the time, you flagged a lot of the language. Close your eyes. Your eyes. Can deceive you. We must not trust them as, like Obi Wan to Luke in a new hope. Ahsoka to Sabine and Ahsoka. But this is a message to both the audience and himself about the twin thing. Right. Your eyes can deceive you.

Yep.

Just because you can identify this woman who looks exactly like the woman, that doesn't mean. Or just because you thought you saw a twin die in a fire doesn't mean you actually did so.

Right.

There's a lot going on. And then I loved this next part. This part is not in the trailer. Think of diving into a great ocean. Give yourself over to its weight. It's stillness, it's uncertainty. And tell me what comes into your mind. I love, I mean, we've heard water imagery with the force before, and, like, off, like, we could think a lot about, like Lucan, ahch to or whatever, the rhythms of nature. But this idea that in the high republic era comics, the ocean or the sea as a concept of the force, there's a religious. This is me doing my best. Bad impression. There's a religious orders called the Falanasi who thought of the force as a massive ocean. They called the light side of the force, quote, the white current and the dark side, the, quote, dark tide. And I find that beautiful language and, yeah, I just. What did you think of this ocean imagery?

It's beautiful. We love an ocean vista.

Yeah.

Love to spend time at sea. Yeah. This is really lovely. And I like, first of all, hearing soul, like, right before. Think of a great ocean, say, connect to the force, have faith. Faith is going to be a recurring tenet across these episodes.

Faith in what?

Faith, exactly.

Faith in the Force. Faith in Jedi. Faith in someone you know personally.

Right. And those are not necessarily the same thing.

Correct.

And actually might be an active conflict with each other.

Right.

And it also felt very key that he said it's uncertainty, because what were we just talking about? Control. And telling us here that Sol is a character who embraces uncertainty, who is trying to counsel the people in his charge and care to accept that uncertainty is not a part of life, but a part of the very power that they're tapping into is beautiful and really positions him as distinct from some of the Jedi who we will have notes on. So I love that.

Don't we? Get, in contrast to the ocean imagery, this idea of fire, because one youngling says life, one says balance, and then one says, I see fire. It grows larger, consumes anything that tries to stop it. Totally fine. Don't worry. Don't put any youngling.

The Jedi temple has a follow up chat with this youngling.

I would like that youngling to get some counseling, is what I would have to say about that.

I have a question for you. Do you think that there's any chance. I don't even know if this makes sense, but do you think that this is okay, this youngling is. Is. Is sensing this in the force, either because that is the part of the force that this youngling is attuned to or because of everything that is about to unfold? Do you think projection force projection, inadvertent or otherwise, was a big part of these two episodes? And I was wondering, like, did you think it was possible that maybe this youngling was sensing Saul's memory? Saul's memory, 100%.

I think that, okay, that he is always circling this, harping great mistakes in his life that he made, and the look that he gives her on second watch, the look that he gives her is not just. That's a disturbing thing for my student to say, but it's sort of like, get out of my head then I.

Sent that your way.

Preternaturally gifted child.

Yeah, that was what I read there, too. Lovely.

His crisp little white robes and shiny boots look less out of place, I think, in the classroom setting than yours did on the trade fed ship. But here comes Vernestra Rose. Don't call or Verne, a person who has not touched a door handle in decades. And we talked a lot about this character in our prep pods, in that this is one of very few, as far as we know, characters established in canon who's here in the show. This is a character who shows up in the high republic comics and books and has, you know, her own teenage arc and is here as, like, an over 100 year old person looking great, looking pretty fresh. This is an actress I really like. This is a character I have. I'm having a lot of trouble accessing. How do you feel?

Same. So I thought this exchange was really emblematic of what worked really well for me and then what didn't work as well for me in the opening of the season. Soul saying in this exchange that he's the fortunate one. He's the fortunate one. To be taught by his students, was so genuine and beautiful and, like, tells us everything about not only the affection that he feels, but the responsibility that he thinks he bears as a teacher. How much of that stems from regret? How much of it is passion? They don't just genuine. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. Right. But how has his relationship to that idea changed because of OSHa leaving the order. There's so much to latch onto in the span of half a sentence from that perspective. And then, you know, later, obviously, we get to him saying, like, maybe I wasn't a very good teacher, which we're going to talk about at length when we get to it. So that was, like, great. He looked like he was about to.

Cry when he called Osha devoted Padawan. Like, he looked like he was about to start crying.

Beautiful. I cannot wait to learn about their backstory. The fire, the saving, the recruitment, the training, the parting, everything. I want to know everything that happened between them, 100%, I thought. In contrast, the instant I see I have underestimated your attachment to her line was just really odd. I didn't feel like I was in it enough with those two characters together. We had the history between them to understand how that would be the deduction based on one moment, other than the understanding that we do have that this is a creed that the Jedi are always volleying back and forth to each other. That way lies danger. That way lies perilous. And so that was kind of emblematic, I think, again, of the stuff that just felt a little bit off and a little out of rhythm in some of the exchanges across the episode.

I think it's a tough character because her job is to be obstructive. It's helpful if you're either Yoda or Samuel L. Jackson for us to be excited about seeing the Jedi council, but, like, the Jedi council's job is to sort of, like, we talk. People talk about this all the time in storytelling. When you talk about something like, sorry, this is a weird comp. But, like, breaking Bad, people would always come after the character Skyler White. And there are misogynistic reasons, but there's also this idea that she's a character whose job is to stop the characters from doing what you want. You want Walt to keep cooking meth, because that's the fun story. And she's like, stop. So we want soul to go after Osha. We want to see them together. And Verne's whole role is, stop. Come back. Come to a meeting, blah, blah. Don't chase mei. Come back. Like, all this stuff. So it's like a wet blanket character. And those can be done in a way that is a little bit more effective than it's done here, but it's a tough job. Yeah.

And again, I recognize that there's a little bit of a dissonance in me simultaneously saying that I like that the questions about attachment are present here as a through line. But it was really about the exact delivery of that idea in this conversation that just pinged oddly for me. And some of the other stuff with Vernestra later, too. We go from that act of resistance that you're correctly citing into. Yeah, take Osha with you. It's like, what? I don't know. It was hard to totally understand what was driving some of the decisions that the character was making.

Certainly we at least have this character as emblematic of what the future holds for the Jedi council in terms of concern with politics and optics. She's concerned about political enemies. This is a little teaser amuse Bouche for the prequels. At the height of the high Republic's power, they were acting very independently from the Republic, but they are starting to worry about politics, and it reminds a lot of conversations between Mace and Yoda. The prison break happens is what happens next. It's a fun sequence, and there's plenty. I could say we are running a little long. I just want to, like, what do you want to say about the prison break?

Hmm.

Um, I was wondering. It's a parasite used to subdue violent criminals. It does weird stuff to your brain, this dye book, forgetting how they pronounce it. Dye book, dye book. I was wondering, because they make a point of showing us. After Osha saves the dude who the parasite was attached to, him fluttering away into the air vent. And then when everything unfolded later on, Karlak, with the vision, I had a moment where I was like, did that parasite latch onto. Oh, shit.

Another dark psychopath.

Something. Yeah. Is something else, and I'm eager to talk about what we think actually is unfolding with those dreams when we get there. But that was one thing. I was just like. Like, we're really, like, focused on this little critter, this little fluttering critter.

Maybe it'll come back later. But, yeah, I, too, was like, I would keep a firm eye on a thing that just skitters into the air. Let's keep an eye on anything that skitters. I want to know where it is at all times. Skitters. I don't want to lose sight of it. Okay.

To your point about faith in what, this is where we hear Osha say that she has faith in faith in the Jedi. So that's an important flag for us. She's not just saying, I still have faith in the Force, even after leaving the order. She has faith in the order, which is notable because that's not the experience necessarily that we have with a character like Ahsoka leaving the order where she's like, this is not something that I can participate in anymore. So that was really interesting.

And when she and Saul reunite, there's no enmity or bitterness there. You know, it's just like, I think we left.

Did you feel that her complete inability to access the force was surprising or. I mean, she can't bring Pip to her now. She's been away from the order for six years. What did you read in this? Did you read, maybe she was not very. Was not powerful in the force to begin with? Do you think this has to do with her time away? Do you think this is an emotional and mental response, disconnecting from the force like we've seen with other characters? How did you.

I think it's.

How did you feel about this?

Blocked. And I suspect we're gonna see it unblocked.

Yes. Obsessed again.

And I wonder if this is the, you know, when Yord's, like, when you dot, dot, dot, is it when you lost your force powers suddenly and, like, you know, were no longer able to padawan the way you had before? Okay, speaking of padawans, is it totally normal to stare longingly at hollows of your old Padawan, Wadi Wesque?

I thought this was a perfect television scene. I loved this soul looking at his hollow of Osha as his yearning current Padawan catches him.

Good old Jekyll. Oh, man. And then she's like, excuse me. Why are you doing this? This pastime encourages sentimentality and nostalgia, and both of those emotions can lead to. And then Saul says, our memories are lessons. If we don't meditate on the past, she says, we're doomed to repeat it. Love their dynamic. Like, I'm just like, any. Any moment with Saul is just wonderful. And this is a couple things I loved about this.

Yeah, the Saul part. Wonderful. From Jackie's perspective, this struck me as. Right, that, like, we should be meeting her as a character, who, on the one hand, is kind of like, what the fuck, dude? I just, like, kind of caught you cheating right in that inside of the.

Are you going to look at our relationship, me, when I'm gone? Like, happening here?

But she's very pragmatic about it, because if she were too jealous or too overtly driven by her emotional response, then she would be the one who's guilty of the thing that she is pointing out that he runs the risk of doing so. I also just love when we get to encounter the fact that masters have multiple padawans. One of the reasons that I love the Claudia Gray master and apprentice novel is because we get to spend time with Rael Averros, who is Dooku's Padawan, before Qui Gon. And seeing how all of those characters are interacting is just kind of riveting. So that's interesting too. And then we get to see, obviously, Jeky and Osha interact with each other.

I think it's when we think about this trio of Jedi who are set off to go on this fact fighting mission, and we've got Sol, Yord, and Jeky, I think that this is our spectrum of emotion. Right? Like, that soul is perhaps too emotional for a Jedi. I like it about him, but we'll see if that gets him into trouble. You're very repressed. Very, very repressed. And then Jackie is some sort of just right sort of thing, right where she's asking these questions. She's like, excuse me, rationally, we're not supposed to do this, but when he gives her example, she is repeating the other half of the lesson. She is warm to him. She's warm to Osha later. And I love the scene of them walking out of the room because she's like, Daphne Keenan is just so small, and so she's just genuinely just looking up at him adoringly. It's just very sweet. Okay, anything. She's alive. I can feel it.

Good on him. Not only for tapping into the force, but being like, hey, can we maybe just check? Rather than just assuming that she survived the crash, I would also just.

I just like to say that she's alive. I can feel it. Feels like something Mei and OSha should know about each other, if they are.

This is definitely a question, though.

Twins and or even forced dyads that they should know that each other is alive, it's surprising that they don't. Yes. But he says, if she is guilty, it is my failure. Let me take accountability. And this is just. I just need a tiny moment to say how much I love a failed Jedi or failure among the Jedi. Luke Skywalker, as I have discussed many times, the Last Jedi. I failed you, Ben. I'm sorry. Adam driver. As Kylo Ren says, I'm sure you are one of my favorite line readings of all time. I'm sure you are. Yoda saying, the greatest teacher failure is, which is like, my favorite Star wars line. And then Luke Speed, Pete Schrey, which is my favorite mark Hamill performance. When he says, it was me, I failed because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, a legend. Mighty Skywalker blood. I love that sequence.

Me too.

I just think failure and guilt and remorse among the Jedi is such an interesting way for human emotion to bump up against this very restrictive, emotionless, aspiring to be attachment less. But when you feel guilt or failure or all these other things, you are unmistakably attached not only to your own emotions, but to who it is you failed. What did you do? Good old King Tommen had to lock himself into meditation for ten years because he's so failed and is so guilty. It's just my favorite thing, and I'm delighted it's here in a character like so.

I love it.

I love it.

Absolutely wonderful to see. Wonderful.

What do you want to say about Jord steaming his robes and taking his kid off? Anything?

I think we covered it when we talked about his.

We sure did.

Feelings about his drip earlier. I did like Jackie's.

She's like, it's not Yord. It's like. It's like the Jedi or.

That was good stuff.

Jekyll, not yet a member of the Yord hoard, not even when he took his robes off. And I do actually have a theory about that. Okay, so Osha wakes up gaspingly again. This is the second time there will be a third. And we're inside a nightmare because she doesn't immediately check on Pip. And that's how you know it's a dream, because when she wakes up for real, immediately she checks on Pip, hopefully making Mallory feel better about everything. This is a forced dream. And we get ghostly twin stuff as OSHa chases a vision into the snow. Very, of course, Luke, very Rey. Chasing your own reflection. And maybe at first that we think that that's what it is, and then we're like, oh, twins. There is another.

There's another.

Yeah, yeah. Hello, sister. I actually really hate it in movies and tv shows when brothers and sisters greet each other as like, hello, brother. Hello, sister. Or, well, you know, brother. Well, you know, sister. Like, it's only there to let the audience know who they are. Or like, how is our father doing? Or whatever. It's just like all the. Oh, except this kid who's playing little May. The evil sauce she poured over. Hello, sister. Delighted me. I thought it was so funny. How'd this work for you?

I really liked this. I'm not only very compelled by what is happening emotionally for both Mei and OsHa and then Sol, but Torben, every character who was involved in whatever foul thing unfolded between these people, but the nature of this dream got my theory brain racing. Because if you said this a few minutes ago, like, wait, they don't know that the other. It's not just that they don't know that the other character is alive. They don't sense each other in the force in a way that would make them wonder. So if May thinks Osha is dead and Osha thinks May is dead, I think eliminates the possibility. That would be the first thing that popped into our mind here, which is that, like, Mae is force projecting, actively deciding to appear to her sister. That's not what's happening, because May wouldn't think to do that, because she doesn't think there's a sister to appear to.

I love when we have the same theory. So someone doing this, ascending that dream.

Yes. That's how it feels to me.

It is similar to why Rey and Kylo were able to connect over force Skype in the last Jedi. It was orchestrated by somehow palpatine or snoke, actually. It was somehow orchestrated. Right. So somehow, someone, probably someone tall, dark, and helmeted, has sent this dream to OSHA. Which makes me think this is my favorite theory, that OSHa is the real target here, that may is, or both. Why not? Why have one acolyte when you can have twin acolytes if they're forced? Dyad? Why not collect both or whatever? Or if OSHA is the real target all along and not me, why did OsHa go with the Jedi and not Mei? Is she strong? Actually stronger in the Force than Mei is, or something like that, you know? So. Yeah, and there's hints throughout, gently issued forth by your less gently, by your more gently by soul, that, oh, she's got some shit she has not let go of. She's got some darkness. May has some lightness inside of her. Oh, she's got some darkness inside of her for sure. Okay, we get the twin conversation on the ship where your's like a twin Jackie lon's like a twin soul.

Looks a little bit like, I shouldn't have said that. And then he says, she's definitely dead. And the way he says it here.

Is, I saw her die, is like.

He has to believe Mei is dead, because if Mae is not dead, which he. He actually, within the next scene, has just sort of been like, yep, you're right. She's not dead. But in this moment on the ship, he's like, if she's dead, I did not. Just like, whatever his involvement with fire is, I left her there.

Yeah.

And that's just. That's enough to make someone.

Yeah.

Sit cross legged and float in a bubble for ten years. I think so, you know, yes, this.

Was an interesting scene right before we get to that part. I really liked the little smile that crosses Saul's face when he says, you don't need to keep asking when Jackie's permission to speak freely. And we've heard that multiple times at that point. Again, he's a bit of a rogue, right? Because there are plenty of masters in the Jedi order who would be like, I grant you permission in this one moment only to speak freely. Make sure you ask again next time. And that's not who he is, and that's important for us to understand. So I really liked that. Again, on the timeframe front, this is where we learn that he was posted on her home planet 16 years ago. She left the order six years ago. They were together for a decade. These people shared a decade of their lives. That's no small thing. Not in her file. This is just the other thing I want to quickly hit before we move to the next scene. Her twin sister is not in her file.

How much have they buried? What happened?

That reeks of COVID up to me.

Absolutely.

It just, I don't know how we can have any other read on that. And so, like, what's interesting about that to me is not just what will we learn, like, who was involved or even if it wasn't an active decision somebody made to do something terrible, did they? Did they still brush it under the data banks? Seoul is going to have the same questions we do, I would assume, I hope. And so, like, the idea that he is not only going to be confronting his, his personal guilt, but that he will have some sort of shaken faith on that idea of faith in the order. If someone is complicit, someone he knows, someone he long trusted, or is it just that these people were all this easily duped and bested by some outside force? That's another read that is also really dramatically interesting and certainly would not be the first time, even if it is earlier in the timeline than elsewhere, that that happened to two characters in Star wars. No one thought it was worth mentioning. The kid they just brought to the temple had just had a twin sister who died.

I don't know.

You wouldn't think that was worth other people knowing?

I don't think it's. Yeah, I don't think it's not worth mentioning. I think it's definitely like, we hid this, we didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Hey, listen, if I thought of you immediately when we saw Pip, I hope you thought of me immediately, and I know you did. When Osha runs her little ass into a crevice. Snowy crevice. Instantly terrible.

Instantly.

Um, listen, Jord, again, quick on the trigger with a lightsaber. This time he's using it a bit as a flashlight. Yeah. Sick.

Yellow saber.

Very cool.

Phenomenal. I love yellow lightsaber.

He's using it as a flashlight. Yes, but still, he doesn't, like, ever put it away. You know what I mean? Even when they break out to the other side where there's actual daylight. Again. Okay, in this moment, when Osha's backed up to the edge of cliff, were you thinking of the fugitive, or were you thinking of the leap of faith moment from the last crusade? Or what flavor of Harrison Ford moment did that give you? I went to leap of faith in.

My mind all the time.

I went to leap of faith first, but then I went to the fugitive. And then when you rewatch it with the fugitive in your mind, the prison transport crash, where she could have gotten away if she hadn't saved a criminal, is exactly, of course, what happens to doctor Richard Kimball in the fugitive.

I love this. Though, of course, instead of tumbling out electively, she, like, okay, so this was weird. Like, I couldn't tell. But here's my question. Was this deliberately weird? Like, is it just odd? And she slips and it. Like, it's actually just supposed to kind of be her losing balance and falling off an icy cliff. And it's like, oh, that's okay. It's almost seemed to me like she was pulled.

Pulled?

Oh, like force pulled. Like the way her foot moves. I watched that so many times because I thought this was so bizarre. So, like, it was something, someone or something pulling her.

Huh. Interesting.

I don't know.

I would like to mention. So I don't have an answer for you. I think it was just sort of, like, clumsily executed, but I don't. I don't really know. She falls off the cliff in a way that doesn't make a ton of sense to us, necessarily. But, like, I would just. Like, if it were me, I would just have a section of the snow give way underneath her rather than her just tumble over her feet, over the side or whatever, before she does it. Saul sags in relief when he first spots her, and it is so lovely. And then he just reaches out and force grabs her and yanks her up in a way that is just not since Colin Farrell and Fantastic beasts and where to find them have I been so dazzled by someone doing something that we've seen a million times, which is like, you know, Colin Farrell's wand work in that movie where he's just sort of like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna put all the sauce on it. I can. That's how I felt about this. Like, yoink up. I was just like, this is phenomenal. Phenomenal. Yeah. Absolutely.

Really captivating. And he has these gauntlets.

Like, he has these gauntlets that he wears, and Yord has them, too. That is just like a really cool, like, look to it.

Yeah. That moment, too, of Osha being positioned in stasis for a second there, flat. We get the same positioning for Mae in her fight with Sol, but with the opposite intention. In this case, he's above pulling to try to save, and in the other instance, he's above holding her there to try to win the day. So that was really interesting, too. Visually, that parallel, but also then that contrast, which I liked and I really like to like. This was what you alluded to earlier, where he very quickly goes from, like, no to accepting the twin thing. Which believe you, but I believe you. Exactly. And the way he. What's the word that he emphasizes you like, I believe you. That's what convinces him.

Please.

Very sweet. It is very sweet.

You're super bummed he does not get to use his. His sick yellow saber. Jackie Lon. Pretty bummed she does not get to use the cuffs. And here we go. It's just a dude on a rocky outcropping. Being a guy, just a bro on some rocks. Being a pal, just a lad being a Sith. They quickly mollify my crevice fear with an ocean vista. Love that. For us, this is one of the moments where there's several of them, where we're in a real place. We're actually on a beach. We're not in the volume. The waves are crashing here. It looks very cold. I hope everyone was well dressed. It feels a bit octoey, but I think it's not. I mean, it's definitely not. And then may watches as a helmeted, enclosed figure with a distorted voice says, steve, will you play our first clip? The Jedi live in a dream, a dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail.

Steel or laser are no threat to them.

But an acolyte.

An acolyte kills without a weapon. An acolyte kills the dream dude.

Steel is no threat. Tell that to Endara.

Do you want to do your saw Gerrera impression here? Wise deception.

Poor Gollis.

Yeah, it's. Listen, how are we going to talk about this character? How have we decided we're going to talk about this character?

I think we have two choices, because the subtitles label this character Stranger.

Stranger.

So we could say stranger. Also, in episode two, we will hear Chimere and Mei when alluding to this figure, say he or master.

Master.

So, yeah, he. That won't get confusing at all.

Oh, I hope you can hear the.

Captain Venom Helmet dude.

Here he is.

His stuff here.

His voice sounds a little familiar to me. Perfect, but that's fine. Okay, so what do you want to say about this wonderful speech that closes episode one?

I mean, this was great. This was great. We cut right from the sol osha reunion to this stranger with Mei. So we have this juxtaposition of.

We get it again later in episode two. This sort of like, master, apprentice.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Multiple masters and apprentices. And what those relationships are like and what sort of lesson is being heeded or passed down. We have to wonder right away if this figure, this stranger, is also, like, what ultimately, is the pecking order? Is this character also serving somebody else, or is this the top?

Because this could be the oppression apprentice, and there's a sith master out there somewhere. We don't know.

Yeah.

You know, because this idea of killing.

The dream, very compelling.

Yep. Save the rebellion. Save the dream. Remembering what Palpatine says to Anakin, as we like to do, he says, anakin, if one is to understand a great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force. This different point of view, this sort of, like, we talk about Jedi propaganda, the Sith propaganda. Like, what are the Jedi? They're dreamers. There can be a positive association there if you're maybe a Targaryen, but here, we're trying to kill the dream, not just because we're evil, mustache twirling villains, but we believe the Jedi way is the incorrect way, and ours is the correct way. All right. Anything else you want to say about the Sith? The Sith, they're here. Their sabers are red. Get used to them. Here they are in our story, a.

Red saber ignite, despite in the phantom.

Menace, them saying the Sith or extent they've been for nearly a millennium. Here we are. In the gaps of the story, there's a little Sith uprising. The question. And. And Leslie has addressed this in interviews or whatever, because plenty of people are like, does that mean everyone who sees the Sith dies before they live to tell the tale. What happens that there's Sith in this story, and 100 years from now, we can have a Jedi council say, what do you mean, the Sith are here? How does that work? I say tune in to find out, because I am certain that the people who make the show definitely thought about that.

I agree.

Okay, part two.

Revenge, justice.

Revenge, justice. Meanwhile, at a local Jedi temple. What do you want to say about this? We got a text from CR being like, I'm going to start a podcast called local Jedi Temple.

And he should.

He should.

Peacetime or not, high Republic era or not, the security setup at this local Jedi temple is on. Olega. Shameful. It took a local child 2 seconds.

To even worsen that is that Mae strolls in a second time. After this security breach, she just walks in again later.

Oh, man. This is where we get to meet Master Torben Tommen himself for the first time. But the conversation between May and Torben takes place in a later scene. So maybe we talk about the barash vow and what passes between them and your thoughts on the wigs. Or perhaps that will wait till wig watch in the next scene. This is just a glimpse here, because May has to flee because she's detected late, but eventually, eventually.

And she does some wire work out of the skylight. Love that for her. Okay. Osha wakes up. This is the fourth time we've seen Osha wake up. Up. Maybe talking about dreams and dreamers. Osha wakes up. Not gaspingly this time. Gently on the ship, surrounded by the other Jedi. She is tank topped. Tattoos there. I texted you full Starbuck core. What were your Starbuck vibes coming off of Osha here?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, starbucks from the ocean, Galactica, not the coffee. Okay. Just making sure.

Yeah, good clarity. I was waiting for Sol to come in and say, what do you hear? Osha. And for Osha to say, nothing but the rain. Seriously. And I loved that. I loved it.

Should we get this tattoo we have? It's gonna have to wait. It's, like, 10th in line of all the other tattoos we're supposed to be getting. Okay. Jackie, Lon, and Osha have this moment. I think it's flirtatious. And if it is flirtatious, it might explain why Jekyll is not very interested in shirtless Jord. And if it's flirtatious, it might speak to why Yord might be excited. If Osha has a twin. She has a twin. Is her twin interested in dudes? I don't know. I don't know.

It seemed a little stunning.

I caught some vibes here. It's pride month. I would just like to celebrate two young, a padawan, or next padawan, enjoying each other. Yord is not having a straight up having a bad time. Right. With this quote unquote twin theory. He is not in theory corner with us. He doesn't.

Not a podcaster.

No, he's not a fan.

He likes when tv seasons drop as a binge. He's like, why do we need to talk about this week afterwards week? I don't understand.

Vern's all in on the twin theory, and she's like, as you pointed out, take Osha with you. She might be helpful. Go to a lega, find out who's just strolling into the Jedi temple without much muss or fuss. And our colleague, our beloved Benlenberg, and his recap of this episode called Mei's Murder List. Arya Stark. Like, but we just. And it is. And I hope that Mae does go to sleep every night. Night muttering, Endara soul.

Torbin.

Torbin Arnek. Anyway. Yeah, but we're also doing kill Bill, which is the overt reference that Leslie Headland has mentioned since the dawn of this project. She called it frozen meets kill Bill. We understand the frozen a bit better, that we understand that there are sisters at the center of this story.

Yeah.

And maybe the evil one isn't as evil as we think or whatever, but the kill Bill vengeance list is straight up the text.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The professor is always welcome, and so is the bride.

Yeah. The bride is always welcome. Yeah.

Let's put some respect. I agree.

Hitari Hanzo lightsaber. Okay.

Soul wanting Osha to join on the mission made sense to me because he knows her. He believes in her, and he probably also, I assume, thinks it is important for her to be a part of this, for her own understanding and healing. Verne thought she was a murderer 12 seconds prior. Weird. Jord saying may would not have the training to defeat a Jedi master was just another bullet point on the ever growing ledger of classic beat for beat, note for note, Jedi hubris. Exactly. The kind of blindness and arrogance that ultimately allows Palpatine to rise.

But also, it's not just like, she couldn't be. She's like, if we didn't train her, who could have possibly trained her? Right. We're the only ones who are doing force training. Right.

No one else could do this. If they were, we would know. This is, like, gonna be a pattern that repeats. I also just thought, like, soul saying to your, don't let fear affect your judgment was interesting because it didn't have the tinge of you're on the path to something damning that it often does when a Jedi master invokes fear. So I thought that was yet another.

Point of distinction for gentle parenting tactics, and I love that for him. Hold on to your hats and glasses. Here comes man. It's just a dude being a guy, being an apothecary, and we're very excited for him.

This is just wonderful.

When May walks in, throws something at him, and he just, like, prat falls out of bed. And I'm just here to tell you, and I was already. I'm always in the bag for Manny Jacinto, but every single thing he does. Yeah. Delights me in all of a great performance in this episode. Just absolutely incredible. He's fumbling, he's fumbling. He's prat falling. His hair's in his face. He's very stoner. Concerned about may being out all night. He's wearing the clothes of the old apothecary. What happened to the old apothecary?

Nothing good.

Nothing good.

I'm gonna go with nothing good.

Nothing good.

Nothing good. This was a great introduction. It was interesting to see how may behaved with him. In turn. It's quite rude to him and dismissive, which we're gonna theorize on who we think we've been wrong.

Start about this so we don't minute one. So we're like, we're not going to pull our punches on what our favorite theory is, is that Mana Jacinto as Chimere is the sith master, or at least if he's not a master, the guy with the saber, he's under the helmet. Yeah, he's under.

I would be astonished if that's not what happened.

If you watch these scenes with that read, everything works out.

He is.

He is counseling her like a master would. From, like, from the COVID of this bumbling, fumbling character.

He's doing nothing but giving her flyer. Would not.

No, just not giving her advice and telling her how and successfully training her on how to defeat the Jedi. I'm reminded so much of a rings of power scene that was a real alarm bell for us about spoilers for season one of Rings of Power, about the real identity of hot, sexy Sauron, who was also Halbrand, who next season will be annatar. In that jail sequence, Halbrand says to Galadriel, in an instant like this, Galadriel here is Galadriel here. He says, in an instant like this, it seems to me that you do well to identify what it is your opponent most fears. And Galadriel says, and exploit it. And he says, no, give them a means of mastering it so that you can master them. And you and I were like, evil guy. This is an evil guy, right? Like, it's slightly different with Chimera because he's like, you know, he's one of the.

Her son.

One of the bad guys. Yeah, one of the bad guys, to be clear. But he's pretending to be a low ranking bad guy. We think he is the top main bad guy going on. Find his weakness. He says to Mei. She says, he doesn't have one. He says everyone has a weakness, but also to praise. Further praise may just into his performance. The way he throws this stuff away. He's, like, fiddling with this lamp, like, doing lamp business, and then later, cocktail shaking business, like, to distract from the fact that he is counseling.

You know, he is so casually, effortlessly dispensing this worldview on humanity. Really, really, really good. And this was like, this builds right into the. When may asks him to make her the poison, and she says she's running out of time. Like, what do we think that means?

Literally?

Like, is there a clock on this quest?

The Sith scavenger hunt has to be completed. Is this, like, drafted in a month? I don't sure. Before the full moon? Something like that. You mentioned that. And I will kill one of them without a weapon and please the master. We discussed that already. But let us hear.

Do you think this requires. Is it an interpretation? Yes, an interpretation. But do you think that this will mean killing without a weapon means using the force as your weapon, which means reaching a new level of dark side corruption.

Right. Because if it's killing without the weapon, I mean, I guess poison's a weapon. But I feel like if I were writing this, I would be more specific than this, because I feel like getting someone to poison themselves is somewhat killing someone without a weapon, but obviously it doesn't count, so. Yeah, I feel like it's as Vader did. It's cracking someone's neck with a force, something like that. You know, I think that's the implication here. So we get. We get the kill list, right? You know, we get. We get Saul, we get the Wookiee, we get Torben. This is. This is the list. This is the remaining list. Here is chimere essentially quoting the sith code. Steve, will you play this? I do really believe that though everyone has a weakness, the Jedi justify their.

Galactic dominance in the name of peace and peace is a lie. I know Torbin is not this serene and as you say, impenetrable meditator. Like every Jedi, he only thinks he's found peace. What he really needs is something only.

You can give him.

Oh, man.

Absolution.

Absolution. The sound of the cocktail shaker poison. Cocktail is whipping up poison, all right.

There was so much humor in this stretch when he. The way he transitions from saying he needs a drink to. Don't you think what we do is so stressful? Just killed me.

It's really good.

Lawless. I thought this framing was fascinating. Absolution, not punishment. Freeing them. Now, this obviously connects to what you were talking about earlier with this very religious cloaking of the doctrine. Is this what he personally, really genuinely believes? Is this some sort of manipulation? Is it a tactic, framing it this way? And then there's the other framing around peace, where. Where he's talking about the galactic societal state, but he's also talking about the inner state, which is very much in addition to the actual parallel language that he's using here from the Sith code. That idea, that inward state of being. That's very Sith coded. Penis lie. There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory, etcetera, etcetera, et cetera. And this idea of critiquing the Jedi who deserve critiquing for their dominance. Dominance is the word. But then believing that you can and should be the arbiter of justice and absolution is just, like, base hypocrisy, which is the Sith way. So I loved that as well, really. Pings. What would Gandalf say here? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. So this was all great.

This scene was fantastic.

Would you say only a Sith deals an absolution, or would you kick me off the pod now?

I will.

Absolution. And then, yeah, may says, please don't tell the master. He's like, yeah, sure. And we're like, cause he is the master. Or to your point, he might be an apprentice, and there might be a Sith master out there somewhere.

Either way. Like, we just feel very strongly that he's not just chimere supplier, he outranks her. Getting drunk and napping on the.

She's trying to threaten him. And it's cute.

And so then there's like, that is interesting to me, too, is why is he choosing to enact this farce? What is the. Show me who you truly are, driver of why he is behaving this way, and what will what he sees inform who he wants?

We're gonna get to that. Okay. This literally happened to me, that feeling when dad sees your tattoo. My dad, when I. I don't know if I've ever told you a story, but I, like, hid my. I got my tattoo right when I was. My first tattoo, right when I was 18, and I, like, like, just kind of casually hid it from my parents, just like.

Did you wear very long sleeves?

No, it was long sleeves. It was on my ankle, so I wore, like.

Okay, the wrist tattoo was not the first one.

I don't know. And so I just, like, wore, like, you know, like, jeans or whatever around them. And then I was, like, at home for Christmas, I was wearing PJ pants, and I was, like, sitting on the ground, and, like, the leg of the PJ pant had just sort of, like, ridden up enough. And then my dad. This is, like, actually very sweet. He was like, he's just trying to be act so cool, which is very similar to what Saul does here, where he goes, oh, I didn't know you had a tat, is what my dad said. Oh, I didn't know you met a tat. Oh, man.

Okay, great stuff, great stuff.

To your earlier point about mirroring master and apprentice scenes, if we think what we just saw with Chimera and May was a sneaky master and apprentice scene, then we flip right to Solanosha, right? And we got this email from Alex, who says, I love the caw. I missed it. I feel like we haven't been using it enough. Alix says we've seen a few of the former Padawan master dynamics on the small live action screen now, and this brought some needed variants. Both the Ahsoka Anakin, and Sabine Ahsoka mind a fraught and frayed dynamic, the former being much more successful, in my opinion. I thought it was nice development to start with a scene with Soul, Jackie and the hologram to set up Soul's relationship with the past and attachments as a much more nuanced view than we've known. And it pays off when Soul and Osha have that interaction about the tattoo. You can feel the warmth soul has for his former Padawan without shame, and you feel it was reciprocated by OSHA. It's like a former boss at a company you left for being a toxic mess, but your manager was never problem. Meanwhile, if you lay out how their monastic order child force service kidnaps children and tells them not to feel anything while training to become Superman cops, it becomes pretty evident there might be something rotten in the temple on Coruscant.

So that was sort of like a hybrid of Alix's full email. But how do you feel about the different master former Padawan relationship we're getting here? Yeah.

I mean, again, if we think we're seeing what we think we're seeing in the prior scene, and part of that appears to then be not just the active test that may know she's undergoing in this trial, but the secret test of, like, how are you conducting yourself then? This is the opposite. This is like when there's the really cute little moment when OSHA says, and you hate it, and sol kind of, like, gives this, like, gentle little laugh and says, it doesn't matter what I think. And both sides of that are important because her saying that that way shows us that she actually does care what he thinks, you know? And from the little laugh to the substance of what he's saying, it's like he's, I think, genuinely, like, touched and flattered that she would say that.

Right.

And that she would care. And he also is then going to give her permission to be her own person, which is just completely, like, anathema in this world. And so that's, like, really lovely. Really, really lovely. And it's a subtle way to show us that distinction, but an important one.

Um, let's hear this, uh, this conversation between them, please, Steve. I wanted to save you both. What happened that night wasn't your fault, soul. I've told you that you did. And I have made peace with what happened on Brandoc. I know you have. That was a lesson you tried to teach me many times to accept what I lost. And I wasn't a very good student. Perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. Incredible. Shit. Please stay tuned for the conversation with Leslie, where she talks about this. I don't want to spoil what she says, but I thought it was. Was absolutely incredible. I've told you that. You did. I know you have. Again, as I mentioned earlier, this is a retread of a conversation they've had many times. It should be one of those moments where we're like, why are they having this? But it's not, to your point, about its emotional vitality. And also the repetition of the conversation is part of the point of the conversation, which is like, no matter how many times we process this, this is a thing that is stub, that has wounded us in a stubborn way. Both of us.

Right? Like, you know, I have made my peace with what happened on Brenna. I don't think he has. She says, I know you have. I don't think he has.

Certainly not.

Yeah, and certainly not, you know, and then she acknowledges that he tried to, you know, teach her how to let go of what she had lost. Her mother's, her sister, her entire village. And she's like. Like, evidently could not do it. Is that part of what's blocking her in the force right now? Is this exactly why she left the order? You know, all of those questions come up for us.

It's so interesting because there are very emotional, spiritual, mental centric questions there. And then there's also, like, in tandem, a plot question that this brings to mind for us. We hear, like, she must have survived somehow, even though we saw her. Like, was she. Again, this question of, was someone else's deception at play? Was this an accident that then spawned something bitter in its wake, like plots and schemes. Schemes and plots. And to pair that question really nimbly with these emotional questions is just incredibly compelling. I think also the other thing here, in addition to what you said, which I agree with about it, does not seem like he has made his peace with this. Certainly, if we think that the youngling in the temple is like. Like sensing his trauma, this is very present on his mind. What wanted to save you both? What choice did he have to make? And then what put them in a position where that choice had to be made? But also, I think everything you said about failure and the role of failure in Star wars earlier is beautiful. And I agree. And I love those conversations and those scenes.

I think often in Star wars, we get to a moment where a character admits that they weren't. That they didn't do enough. Too late. When Obi Wan is saying, I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you, it is too late. And that struck me, too. That soul is saying, perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. A very hard thing to say out loud. A hard thing to admit to another person. A hard thing to admit to yourself. A hard thing to consider whether or not it's true. When it feels like there's still time.

Yeah.

Which not everybody does in Star wars or in real life. That's a hard thing to be able to say that to somebody else. It's a vulnerable and scary thing. And so I loved that.

And the contrast of that between that, and I don't blame him for it. But the way that Obi Wan talks to Anakin on Mustafar. Right. And it's never really like, I failed you. It's like you let the side down. You were supposed to do this. You were the chosen one. You were supposed to do this. You really not. Like, I fucked up and didn't do what I was supposed to do. Oh, we won't get to that eventually. Okay. The baresh vow. Yes, this is a. You know, this is a canonical. I don't think you need to know all the details of it to understand what is going on here. But is there anything detail wise you want to say about the barge vowel?

I think if you're getting the sense that this character shut himself off from the world because he is carrying a great trauma, you're good. The vow, the oath. We love to talk about an oath or a vow in a story. What does it mean to take one? What does it mean to make one? Are you making it with yourself? Are you making it with someone else? Swear and swear, Joe. They make you swear and swear. We're going to be back in Westeros so soon. But the penitents. Yeah, and cutting yourself off.

You can go to a swamp, you can go to a rocky island in the middle of the ocean, or you can just lock yourself a little bubble.

And you can meditate, hang out in your cave.

Yeah.

In the boiling desert.

Oh, yeah. And work at the meat factory and.

Then take breaks from the power to slice meat under the sun. But, yeah, you were communing only with the force when you were taking this vow and you were cutting off everyone and everything. And so what would lead a character to do this? And we learn that again, what we learned about the amount of time, it's like, this is not just what time passed before he made this choice, but then how long Torben Thomas has been doing this. And so everyone else accepting that this is a thing he did is also interesting, because when Sol arrives, he's like, well, he'll talk to me. Not like, wait, what do you mean? He's taken the barrage vow and isn't speaking to anyone. So that's interesting, too, just because I do wonder how much of this would be the kind of monk like aspect of life for some Jedi. This is a choice that people make, and at some point, you'll cross paths with someone who does this. And whether a character like Sol, who knows a character like Torben would be like, what led you to make this choice? I'm curious. Like, I wonder if there was a moment where he wondered.

I mean, I'm interested in that part of it, too, but what did you think of the actual exchange between Rey and Torben as she pulled him out of the stance.

Dean Charles Chapman. Our guy gets very little to actively do, but we expect, again that we will see him. We know we will. We've seen him in the trailer in a different way, so we will see him in the flashback, I believe.

Both eyeballs intact as well.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've been waiting for you, may, through one. Deadeye just gave me a chill. I loved it. Just, like, the way he just slowly descended and then just sort of like. Yeah. The way he delivered that. Forgive me. We thought we were doing the right thing.

Dude, what happened?

What happened?

I wonder how long we're gonna have to wait to find out. Will that be a reveal at the end of the season? Will we learn that soon? And then the story will unfold for there. I'm so curious how this is gonna be structured. I really can't wait to find out.

I do have to think that at least some of those flashbacks are coming early. Cause I think, as is the case with all Star wars properties, a lot of the trailer footage we saw came from the first half of the season, you know, so, like, I don't think we have to wait till, like, the finale to see Tommen and his wig. Other wig.

Right.

Osha and Seoul, like, both follow the force to get to Mei, though down different passageways. And again, if Osha is sort of blocked in the force, who's sort of pinging her radar to go down the back alleyways to get.

We hear a little, like, a little baby mae Osha whisper on Karlak to draw her. I mean, may seem like puppeteer.

Yeah, exactly. Sneaky. So. All right. Unless it's just like, I don't know, mysterious force, twin tingle, which it might be. Who knows?

It could be. It definitely could be.

But I like the puppeteer. Okay. Yord is in on the twin theory because he finally in on the twin theory because he literally followed Osha down a hallway. So welcome to the party, Yord. And then we go to just a dude being a guy dumping his trash in a merchant's basket.

This cracked me up.

Okay.

This is so funny. Just nosh it on his snack. Walking down the street, dumping his trash into the basket that somebody is carrying as they go about their hardworking day.

This is so funny. So perfectly, casually shitty. I loved it.

Oh, Manny.

Yord, ever eager to pull the trigger on something, is so excited to use a stun gun. But Jackie has a better idea. Jackie comes up with the undercover twin gambit. Yordas shocked it Apollo that this is the plan, but Pip is in pip is all.

In Pip is, like, plan that involves violating 13 precepts.

Pip gets to be the hot mic. Oh, she does. Pretty unconvincing. May cosplay, as far as I'm concerned.

Let's just call it what it is, which is slapdash nonsense, both from Osha and the Jedi. This is the prep work. Really? Now, I'm sure it feels very time sensitive. They need to get in there while they have a window. But, like, this is it.

It's not a great.

She's found out in an instant.

Well, but that's what I love. Okay.

Yeah, that part is great.

When do you think Chimera, if you want to call him that, knows it's her and not Mei?

Exactly. What you put down in the doc is what I thought as well, is the second. So there's the. Hello.

Hello.

Hi. Hi. The second.

Hi.

There's the tig.

Yeah.

Hi. There's the change in intonation. And he's like, part of what was so funny to me about this is like, you just know that he's like, not only are you speaking differently, carrying yourself differently, wearing an imposter's cloak, you did not check in with Damon Targaryen on murder cloak etiquette at all.

Have the forehead tattoo. This is like.

But why are you not, like, laying into me for drinking on the job and napping at work?

It's just everything is why you're being polite. Yeah. What's going on?

But. So here's my lob. A question back at you then. If he's onto her that quickly, which it seems like he is, what do you make of him then? Cause they're waiting on the other end.

What, obsession? Yeah. What's his motivation to say, Lee offers the poison. You did use the poison, the master, all of this.

Is it that he is just totally, utterly unafraid of the Jedi? They are no threat to him? Or is it that giving them that intel is actually part of leading? I think it is these characters toward.

The end goal that he wants.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do. I think he's got plans and then plans other than plans, teams and plots.

What you say, both plots and schemes.

The way he says, you look exactly like her. I could do an entire podcast about this. It is so predatory. So I talked to Leslie about the use of the word seduced to the dark side as part of it. It's just like. It's very charged, and it's scary, you know, because he's like, he's playing the fool. And then immediate switch to this predator character, and then immediately back to the fool when the other Jedi is storm the shop watching this. If you believe that he is a sith bastard of some kind, watching him fumble up, please don't wipe my mind. Please don't do all these things. His way around the shop is so funny. The fact that they all just leave him there is.

Sheer incompetence of the highest order. I just don't know what else to say. Just like, I mean.

They just all leave in there. You're on perimeter, Jackie. You gotta get to the ship. Osha, you're with me for no reason, and we'll just leave him our best lead alone in his shop. Okay. Anyway, ludicrous.

I needed one side exchange where someone was like, let's let him go, so we can try to follow him.

Or you're on perimeter. Make sure he doesn't leave the shop. I guess from both entrances or whatever. I don't know.

I will say on the comedy front very quickly, Manny's just so funny because they've heard everything via pip. So now, from our perspective, I read this kind of planted information.

Yeah.

Sol saying, who is he? And pointing to Yord and saying, I thought he was with you, was just hysterical. Just hysterical.

So good.

Oh, boy.

I wonder if the mind wipe, because, again, we have this question of, like, how are the Jedi gonna suddenly forget that the Sith popped up 100 years previously? Is this planting of the seed of a mind wipe as a possibility of something people can do with the force, like a seed that will bear fruit later in the season? I don't know. That's just a question I have. Because it's not like a Jedi don't go. They're not the men in black. They don't usually go around wiping minds. Right. That's not a thing that they do. Right. So it's just weird for him to bring it up. I thought, okay, Solv may Yort says, I got a bad feeling about this. I don't like it. We're just going to move on. Sol and Osha have a great conversation about grief and revenge that we heard at the top of this episode.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Sol ending it with this idea of, I failed to save her. I couldn't save her when you were children. Let me try now. Is this repeated Star wars idea we love about someone insisting on saving someone who everyone else thinks is beyond saving? Rey with Ben Solo, Luke with Vader. I just absolutely loved this. And then this is. Do you want to talk about the use of faith here? Who has faith in whom? Here at this exchange, she wants to kill you.

Osha says. And then Sol replies, have faith in mei. Then have faith in me.

He says, have faith in mei. And Anosha just sort of, like, tearfully, slightly shakes her head, like, a little bit. Then have faith in me.

Faith in me. This is absolutely beautiful. And there's such an intimate quality to how the relationships are driving these big, sweeping, potentially cataclysmic outcomes. I actually was thinking in the look what revenge has done to her sister line. It made me think of T'Challa and Zima. You know, vengeance has consumed you. It's consuming them. I'm done letting it consume me. That idea. So, like, how the characters, because the past is so present. Like, soul is being driven by the past here too. But he's seeking redemption. This makes me nervous. I know you're feeling nervous. Like he's seeking absolution, which is the thing that we heard Chimera and may talk about. So that's a little bit scary. He's not driven by revenge right now.

And he's brimming with compassion, which is the thing that took down Indara.

They weaponize.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, Saul. Okay. You know, I've just made my peace with the fact that Seoul's not going to make it out of this season alive. So I'm just gonna say make it to the season finale so that I could just, like, spend as much time with you as possible. That is my hope. Meanwhile, we get a caption that's just pip trilling and warbling. That's just a thing that we get.

Fantastic.

Seoul and may have this fight in the streets.

This was dynamite.

Wonderful.

The first catching by the ankle.

Yes, dude, wonderful. The only question I have in this fight here is she tries. So she's going through the saber on his hip as we talked about. Very similar in many ways to the endara fight. She tries to pull the same move on him that she pulls on Endara with the hidden knife, and it gets redirected away. Is your reading that Saul redirected it away or that you're yanked it out of mid.

Oh, Yord Yankee.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I thought that it seemed like Yord pulled it off.

If Yord pulled her knife away because it means two different things. If Sol did, it means he has a better read of her than Endara did.

Right.

If yor did it, then it speaks to more, like, stronger together. You know, we gotta be a team in order to tackle this.

Live together, try alone.

Yeah. I love it. Love it.

I liked when he said, cause the fight is not only physical. There's the penetration, right? There's the probing. Like. Yeah, I'm sorry, that's it. No, no, that is not what I meant. The Jedi mind probe. I see your master has taken great pains to hide his identity, even from you. That was interesting to me, obviously, in terms of theory, corner and all that. But, like, is that the kind of thing where when it's brought to Mei's attention in that way, it's gonna build resentment? Like, why won't you tell me who you are? You know? Does that lead to a rupture from May's side between May and he, the master, the stranger? He is him, but not in the meme way that people say, like, gutter Henderson is him. It's like, he is him. This is just. We need a character name soon. So. Yeah, that was really interesting. That was interesting. And then we learned that May thought Osha was dead. That's where we get it.

And Sol really, really clocks her reaction to that, which I thought was interesting.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

May airbends a bunch of dirt and dust in their faces. She force pushes. Why has no one ever done this on a desert planet? And if the way that some people feel about the hold'em maneuver. This is how I feel about this. Why have we never seen a Jedi do this? Maybe because they're too busy, like, chopping and slicing with their saber to force push a bunch of dirt in people's faces. But I thought it was a really effective move.

Yeah, this was great.

Mei and Osha, equally unable to attack each other. Osha, perhaps more significantly so, given that she has a big fuck off gun and they're just sort of like ICU.

You see me just stun gun. Just stun your stuff. Because your stun, who you thought was dead the whole time, bring her in together, you can figure out what happened.

I just wanna talk. Maybe instead of continuing where the plot is interesting, Seoul has to go back to meet with the Jedi council, which seems.

I don't want that. I don't.

I don't want it.

I want them to now keep going on mission.

I know, it's very silly.

Also, this was interesting. Cause, like, we do get from Verne, this kind of, like, okay, the game has changed. The facts on the ground have changed. It's not just sure that your padawan went rogue, now a trained outsider is responsible. From Sol's perspective, this is where, when I mentioned earlier, like, the frustration, it's so palpable here he's like, just outraged that this is the thing that they think makes sense. And the refusal, Verne's refusal to let Saul go to help Kalnaka, who is obviously by every aspect of the fact pattern.

Next on the list. Yeah.

Is, like, real. Wait, what the fuck is happening here? Is this, like, just incompetence or what stuff? I hope that soul goes rogue and just goes there anyway.

Yeah. Cause I don't want to go back to the Jedi temple. Okay, Coruscant. Who wants to go there? Not me. All right, last but not least, it's just a dude being a guy. Being better than a highly trained dark side assassin at knife fighting. If Chimera's not supposed to be force sensitive. Just a scavenger. Just a traitor. Just a scoundrel. Why could he beat may with a knife in an alleyway?

He couldn't. That's the only read on it. That's the only answer. There's no way he could. There's no way. It's impossible.

It's not true.

That's impossible.

Next time on the acolyte, we get a little tease, right? Kofar and a wookiee.

This looked nice.

Looked gorgeous. The establishing shop.

Building a forest abode out of, like, a. Like, a rock covered shipwreck.

Telling.

It's great stuff.

Telling some scavengers to get off your lawn by breaking their gun. Kelnok is my favorite. I love his little top knot. I'm a big fan. Okay. Theory corner.

I feel like you should go right from that to Wigwatch. Honestly, from the top note. Honestly, we're not even lying.

We're actually not even to stop at theory Corner because we actually have already talked about all our theories. Sorry. We couldn't restrain ourselves.

It's a theory show. I don't know that we're going to be able to wait for theory corner as we break down these episodes.

All right, let's go straight to Wigwatch.

Do you wear wigs?

Thank you, Steven. You're the best. Jordan. Jackie have interesting hair. I'm actually not against it. Midnight boys had some things to say about yours hair. And. And I support them. I like Jackie's little space mullet. David Bowie look. I think it's fun. I don't understand what has happened to Dean Charles Chapman's wig situation. I don't understand it at all because I've also seen the flashback wig, and it is also confounding to me. My only thought is that Dean, that's the, like, curly. Yeah, it's the curly one.

Right? Yeah.

His head just looks so big. My only thought is, like, does he have a lot of hair that he needs for another role? And they had to, like, shove it under something like, what's. What's happening? I don't know. I understand that they were trying to make him look Dean Charles Chapman. Like, if in the flashback, he's like a padawan or entree or like, whatever. He's a young looking guy. Even, like. Like, for his own age, he looks younger than he is. But the beard and the receding hair, it's just. It was an astonishingly strange look to me. So maybe that's just what happens to you if you sit and meditate for ten years. Don't get a lot of blood flow happening. I don't know. Anyway, not my fave. Wigwatch. Doing a lot of work on the twin front, there's a forehead tattoo, but there's also the slightly different extensions happening on the wigwatch. That's all I really have to say. I don't know what else there is to say, except that is Wigwatch. All right. We skipped past it, but I think now we have to go to Easter eggs. It's an old code, but it checks it.

Anything you want to shout out on the Easter egg front? On the reference front, Mallory Rubin death.

Watch heads will recognize Karlak. That's a fun one. We spent some time in the Clone wars animated television program on Karlak. So fun to be back there. And think of Ahsoka and think of beau.

Always thinking about Bo Katan. I would say the fact that ghost dream may leaves no footprints in the snow the same way force projection Luke leaves no footprints in the salt on crait.

Great stuff.

So is it your theory that little ghost May is actually the stranger force projecting himself or just force projecting an image? Like, is he pulling a full Luke, or is he just, like, planting images in her mind? In your theory?

Interesting.

I don't know.

I guess I like the idea that, yeah, maybe actively driving this isn't like a self driving car that someone just sends out into the world like, you're at the wheel. I think I like that. Yeah. What do you think?

I don't know. I like the idea of if that's the case, seeing little may transform into.

That would be fun. Yeah, I think that seems right.

Manny just sent, okay, the Netflix subtitle award. Did you do one of these? The reason I put this in the doc is because there is literally a caption that says squelching.

Yeah. Should we just then make it addled brain distends wetly. Like to honor the spirit.

Love it. The squelching happens when the dybbuk is on the prisoner's mouth and it just says squelching.

Yeah.

Addled brain distends wetly. All right, great. Yeah.

Or we could go with a sweeter and note, you know, pip trills and warblers.

Charmingly, sweetly love it. Okay. And on that note, sweet pipe trilling and warbling. We're to go to our interview with Leslie Hedlund. She was so generous with her time, so lovely, so wonderful. I just want to set up something really quickly, like pretty early in the chat when we're talking about may versus Osha, this idea of opposite ideologies and characters, I made a reference to russian doll, and if you've never seen Russian Doll, a show that Leslie Hedlund co created with Natasha Leonardo. That show has a main character as played by Natasha Leone. But there is another character, Allen, played by Charlie Barnett. Charlie Barnett, aka Yord himself, the legend, the one man horde. Yord. Charlie Barnett plays a character named Allen in Russian Doll. So anytime she's referencing Allen, she's talking about Charlie Barnett's character in Russian Doll. And that's all you need to know. So let's go now to our chat with Leslie Henson. I want to start by asking you about, so we've been hearing for so long this frozen meets kill Bill sort of elevator pitch that you gave, and now we can even better understand it because we know that this is a story about sisters, and not just sisters, but twins.

And so I wanted to ask you about sort of what the Star wars own, like, rule of two, this idea of twins, or forced dyads, if you prefer, whatever. How is that feel integral to your idea of Star wars?

My instinct is always to start with one story or one character and then flip the paper and turn the paper over and start writing. What's the opposite of that? Like, when the yin to that yang.

Like when Charlie shows up in russian doll and you're like, exactly like, who we.

I remember that in the writer's room we had a breakthrough when we were working on Nadia fighting against this supernatural maze that she was stuck in. It was a real breakthrough in the writers room. When we started to circle this idea of who would like this. She very clearly is fighting against it and looking for a way out, frustrated by the repetitive cycle, struggling with the loss of control. And then when Alan, Charlie's character, shows up, we thought, who's the guy that would be comforted by consistent repetitive. What happened to him on that day or that evening, that he would want to keep reliving over and over again, that he would be interested in reliving and trying to, quote, get right. Once you have those opposing viewpoints, those opposing themes, then you've got conflict. If everybody's on the same side, is there a story? I don't know.

In that regard, do you start with OSHA and then come up with may or start with May and come up with OSha, or do you come up with them together at the same time?

Well, definitely. They were like, the pitch was the same time. Meaning there is going to. We're going to introduce twins. We knew one of them would be Jedi affiliated and one of them would be Sith affiliated. It was a bit easier to write OSha at the beginning because she is a fish out of water protagonist, not unlike Nadia trying to untangle the jewelry of. How did I get in this position? What is it about my past that's contributed to my present position? Is it something that I did wrong? Is everything I know challenged by this new information? I don't want to say it was easier, but it lent itself to more conventional storytelling. To write Osha's character Mae was a bit more difficult because you didn't want to just fall into the evil twin trope. This person completely is in conflict or opposing this other character. It was more, if Osha is questioning her inability to quiet her negative feelings, then who is the character that would completely embrace her negative feelings? It was our goal to, while they were both created at the same time. To answer your question, as they developed, we definitely ping ponged.

We didn't want that cliche of, like, one of them is evil, one of them is good, even if it began that way. Meaning one is capable of murder, and one is a former Padawan who, as far as we know, is guilty of anything. And if she's guilty of something, it would be her internalized judgment of herself because of her perceived failure to become a Jedi.

So we've got family. The classic Star wars. This is a story of good and evil and intergalactic war, but also just basically family issues, which I love about Star wars.

Well, that was the nice thing, too, of setting it where we set it, because you couldn't actually have a galactic war.

Right. Yeah.

So everything had to be personal and the familial dynamic.

Yeah.

Something that Mallory and I go back and forth on, and I will say that I struggle with when I wrap my arms around Star wars. Is this idea. The idea of attachment. And this idea that the Jedi have that attachment is bad. And you've got a character like Lee Jung Jae's character, Seoul, who is so tender and emotional in his connection to Osha. So I was just curious. When you think about that idea of master and apprentice and attachment, how do you view it, you personally, and how does that work its way into the show?

Well, as we all know, because the mythology of George creating Star wars is almost as impactful as the mythology of Star wars, we know that George was very influenced by eastern philosophy, and it is a concept in Buddhism that attachment is suffering. But there's also the concept that suffering is inevitable. And if I were to criticize the Jedi at all, it would be the latter, that suffering is inevitable. So when Yoda says, like, hate leads to suffering, I sort of disagree. That would probably be where I disagree with Yoda. I think suffering is inevitable. I guess that makes me a sis. Peace is a lie. This is. I don't know if it's because I'm telling a story from this perspective or I've just. I myself personally feel this way. But it seems to me like you may feel like you're in balance, you may feel that you have freedom from attachment, but I think the Sith perspective is. That's not possible. You know, the Sith may be wrong, the Jedi may be wrong, but I think writing a story from the Sith perspective, a character like soul is the perfect example, is the perfect culmination and example of the incongruity of avoiding attachment or resisting attachment in order to circumvent suffering, in order to stay away from being seduced by the dark side.

And I think this is so evident in JJ's performance. He's a light sided person. He's a glass of clear water, and there's this drop of food coloring. Let's just say that's dropped into that clear glass of water. And that drop is Osha. Though I think you asked me originally before I started was what does it mean to me?

Yeah.

And I do believe Filoni says this about Ahsoka and Anakin as well. There's. There's a. There's a tinge of a family dynamic or a more obvious connection to a family dynamic with master and apprentice. When Anakin calls Ahsoka sniper in Ahsoka, it's very much the older brother teasing the younger sister.

Yeah.

With soul and Osha. It's very. It's a profound connection that I have had with my father, which is there is love between the two of us. And my father passed away in September.

I'm so sorry.

Thank you. There's a love between the two of us, but in a way, that love, that deep love that's just ingrained in you, is what. What can curdle and wreak havoc on your own independence and your attachment. Like, everyone can remember the time where they started to realize that their parents were people. I think everybody can really pinpoint that moment.

Yeah.

And I don't think Osha is there yet with soul. I think she still sees him as this flawless master, this master that she failed, this father figure that she let down. What I think JJ does so beautifully and so in such a nuanced way is portray how much soul feels. He let her down. I think in episode two, it's. One of my favorite scenes in the show is when he and Osha are reconnecting. They're kind of reconnecting for the first time, meaning it's not a high breast situation. They're just sitting on the ship, finally talking to each other.

Yeah.

And Osha says, I could never calm my negative emotions. I guess I wasn't a very good student. And then JJ, in my opinion, this heartbreaking way, says, perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. I would say that echoes so much of the paternal relationship between a father and a daughter, and definitely was my relationship with my father when I said to him, you know, in so many words, you know, I guess, you know, I guess I'm not a good daughter. He. You know, he's able to come back and say, you know, perhaps I wasn't a very good father. And that's not a conversation you really get to have with your parents. But to me, that's the antithesis of the Empire strikes back, the declarative statement, I am your father. It's more like I. It's almost like Soul's starting point is anakin's ending point.

Oh, I love that. In that scene where Saul and Nosha are talking about being master and apprentice, she's wearing a tank top, and she's got this tattoo on her arm. And I wrote in my notes, Starbuck Cor is Battlestar in Starbuck and Inspo in that. Look at all.

I mean, what do you think? What's your thought on that? Starbuck was in a lot of, like, my sister Inga and I do a lot of image work ahead of time. We make. We make. Well, she really makes them. I just give her the, hey, pull from this. Pull from this. I think it's a little bit of this thing, you know, Starbuck was on the OSHA board many times.

What else was on the ocean board many times?

Oh, Katniss was there a lot. A lot of times, Inga chooses editorial photos, meaning they don't reference a particular person or actor a lot of times, because you don't want that to get stuck in people's head as it's supposed to look like. This character is supposed to look like Jennifer Lawrence. But we did feel that OSHa had that. That heart, but also that courage of, like, a katniss, for example. But then the sort of grizzled. That's the right word. Toughness of a. And likeability of a. Starbuck, I know.

You have a leia tattoo on your hand, which is sick. And I'm just curious. Yeah, it's great. I'm curious. I don't know. This might be too big of a question to wrap your arms around, but, like. Like, what have you loved about women in Star wars? And what did you want to expand upon in terms of women in Star wars in making this?

Well, when I think of the iconic female characters in Star wars media, which the three that come to mind are Padme, Leia, and Ahsoka, what I think of when I think of them is what I think of as women put in very high stakes circumstances that rise to the occasion that they go through character transformations due to situations that they never thought were possible. I mean, I think Leia knew. Leia, of course, knew as one of the leaders of the rebellion that she was willing to sacrifice her life to face off against the Empire invader. But when her plan had this destroyer that way, you know, who can deal with that? Who can deal with the love of your life murdering children? Who can deal with being accused of bombing the temple after years and years of faithful service and people knowing who she is. So I hope that Mayan Osha follow in the footsteps of those characters.

I love that. I like that. You just referenced the Clone wars episode the wrong Jedi, one of our favorites clone wars stories. My favorite line from the trailer, it's not in these first two episodes, but is Jody Turner Smith's character, mother Aniseia, saying, this isn't about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it? So this idea of. We like to talk about this idea of democratization of the Force. Like, who's allowed to use the Force? Do you have to go through the academy? Do you have to be Midi Chlorian? Jesus named Skywalker, who's allowed to be in control of this power. So obviously, part of the story is sort of muddying the waters on the Jedi or interrogating this idea of an institution, an establishment. And I was just wondering if you could expand a bit upon your thoughts on that idea of who gets to use the Force or the Jedi as the villains of Ahsoka's story. To a certain degree in the Clone.

Wars, unchecked power, whether good or bad, is susceptible to corruption. It just is. It doesn't. I just. I just believe that. I mean, I didn't this. I didn't come up with this. You know, it's like, you know, George put it in the prequels.

Yeah.

You know, as good as the intentions are, you know, the strength and the Force had diminished so much that they didn't recognize that the Sith had reemerged and were right in front of them. So at that point, I believe George, and this is just my personal opinion, but what I believe George is highlighting by making that the story of the prequels. No power lasts forever. Not even the best, most well intentioned, most benevolent institution can rely on their collective power to keep peace, to remain unchallenged, to protect themselves, to protect others. It's so susceptible to either corruption from within or corruption from an external force, like a sidious. So I think the point being that in the Star wars, in our Star wars, everyone's worried, so worried about who's good and who's bad that I think the larger threat is but who's allowed to use this power and who isn't.

You mentioned sort of in press leading up to this premiere that I know you're a longtime Star wars fan, fan fiction writer, RPG player, EU enthusiast. You mentioned this idea of really big EU ideas early in the series. Is that something that you feel like has emerged already in these first two episodes, or should we still wait for this?

Oh, well, the barrage vow is one name checking that. Obviously, there's a little nod to the prequels by calling the poison bunta instead of Bunta. I have this whole background in my head about the Hutts co opting natural resources and naming planets after them. But pieces lie. Obviously. That's not a sanctioned canon thing. It exists, but it's not necessarily. The Jedi code and the Sith code are not necessarily within the recent years of Star wars. That's not necessarily considered something that characters are repeating to themselves. That's more of a wink to the people that know what it is.

Yeah.

Yord Fandar is the name of a character that we played in my rpg so my group was. Couldn't believe that I had slipped him into the show. They were like, you named a character Jord Fandar.

It's like, such a.

It's such an rpg name, you know, like, it's just like, you know, yord Fandar of, like, whatever, you know, so it just seemed like the silliest Star wars name we could think of. And now it's canon. Obviously, there's this, like, it's, you know, the. The Jedi is not pulling their weapon unless prepared to kill is very much a. A feeling I got from the high Republic, which is, it's not like they're fighting. You know, in our story, they're not fighting the Nihil or the I hill, depending on how you say it. They are pretty much unopposed. So why would they pull out lightsabers? Why would they do that? I mean, I guess they could for, like, you know, blaster shots or, like, maze knives or, you know, but they're not. It's not like there are other star there. There are not other lightsabers to fight against. They're not battle droids to fight against. So it's essentially criminals and civilians. So that thought led me to the martial arts of it all in the hand to hand combat, that they would eventually phase that out in favor of lightsaber training in order to not just become politically allied.

Look, we have a lot of militaristic force. In addition to being a bunch of monks in 104, Basil is a tenon, which is a species that I believe has only shown up in the EU. I don't think they're canon. Pablo was so happy we were using them. He was so excited. He was like, oh, yeah, they exist. And throw them in. Definitely get them in there.

This idea of seduction to the dark side, that word seduction, which can only come into play more given that the dark siders we've met so far in your story are Amandla Stenberg and Manny Jacinto, like, two of the most alluring people that you could put on screen. What do you want to say about sort of this idea of seduction versus, I don't know, even temptation or any other words you can use. Why is word seduction so interesting to you?

It's so funny that you say that. I brought that up a lot in the initial pitch and then in the writers room once we had convened them, because when Obi Wan says it in episode four, and I was obviously a bit younger when I was watching a zygote.

Really?

A zygote? Yeah, which was when I was seven, which was 20 years ago. I think that that was something that I emphasized over and over again. That was the. When I. Oh, sorry. What I meant to say was, when Obi Wan says that in episode four and I was a young girl, that was the first time I'd heard that word. I'd never heard that word before. He was seduced by the dark side. And whatever it was, it felt very, you know, salacious. Really. It felt. It felt. I knew it felt like. Like it's, you know, kind of sent a shiver down my spine. Even though as a young girl, there's no reason I would know what that meant. As I got older and I thought about that line more and more and, you know, watched, you know, episode four more and more. I thought seduction takes two people. It takes a person doing the seducing, and it takes a person drawn in by that energy. He could have used so many different words. He could have used defeated by the dark side, tempted by the dark side, like he said, but he said seduced. So there's a bit of agency on the part of the other person there.

I mean, when I thought. When I think seduced, when I was, like, younger and then twelve years old, I thought of those, like, Romeo Romance novels covers.

What is Fabio doing?

Yeah, yeah. Like, by the way, I thought of the. The poster for Empire strikes back, where Leia and Han are in the same position as Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable for the Gone with the Wind poster. Like, that was seduction to me, that, you know, the way he seduces her in Empire strikes back. Like, that feels like what, whatever that is, is what the dark side did to Vader.

I think what I love so much about a movie like the Last Jedi, which is one of my favorite Star wars stories, is this idea of Rey and Kylo and this, like. Or Ray and Ben, if you prefer, in this, like, forbidden. Skype calls for. Skype calls. You know what I mean? This, like, forbidden, like, bad romance sort of idea, that is.

Oh, when he absolutely, like, when he says, join me, and then Adam says, please, in that really beautiful, you know, distinctive, intimate way, I feel like you could have ended the movie there, to be quite honest. I mean, I enjoyed the rest of it, but you could have been like, stay tuned. Two years from now, you're gonna find out what happened.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, you know I love you. I know. It felt. It felt like the I love you I know moment to me, totally. Not that he was declaring his love for her in that moment, but that he was saying, I need you?

Yeah.

Please, I really need you. Not I love you, or even though I'm recalling that moment. But he's not declaring his romantic feelings for her necessarily in that moment. He's saying, I can't exist without you, and if you don't come with me, I'm not sure I can do it. That's what I get from the please there.

I love how you talked about this. People get so confused between tv and film, and that bothers me because I think tv is an important, distinct medium. And I saw you talking about this when it comes to your show and this idea of taking a beat to digest things. Like, I think the quote you had was, when you hear it's time for the Jedi to end, when Luke says that it might be nice to have a week after that to sort of process, to just chill out, just think about it.

Holy shit. Luke coming in hot.

So in between audiences watching episodes one and two, and episode one ends with the Jedi live in a dream, a dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail. Steel or laser, no threat to them. But an acolyte. An acolyte kills the weapon. An acolyte kills the dream. What do you want in an ideal world, your audience to be chewing over in the week between. Between episodes?

I mean, I could go on forever about it, but because you asked about that line, I mean, how do you kill a dream? You wake up. So the question is, what's getting. What's. Who's waking up? What's being awoken? And it's not force awakens, by the way, you know? But I think that that's how I. I think that line is so beautiful. I mean, I wrote it, so I can't say that it's so beautiful, but I do think that.

That when we.

When we stumbled upon that line and when we, you know, when I decided to use it as the. As the button of the. Of the pilot, it felt to me like a nice setup for. This isn't really. Yes, she's murdering people, but this isn't really a corporal problem, or the murder is, like, a side effect of the philosophical and spiritual destruction that's coming. So I would hope they'd think that. I feel like the show has. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I feel like the show has a lot of story packed in every episode. There certainly isn't a lot of vamping in terms of, like, Osha's arrest. A lot of people that watch the show early on are like, you know, like yourself. Saw them before. They said, I thought that was going to happen in episode, you know, three. I didn't realize that, like ten minutes, you know, five minutes after the murder happened, she would be arrested for it. I figured it was this whole thing that was going to unfold. So I think having a break between each episode will be a nice way to digest the amount of story you're being.

You're being. That's being delivered.

Perfect.

Thank you so much. Thanks for all the extra time. I really appreciate it.

It's nice to see you again because I love you and I love your guys podcast, even though I'm gonna have to stop listening to it.

This has been your deep dive into two episodes of the accolade and an interview with the creator. Meaty. A chunky little episode. I think our future acolyte episodes will be a little.

Two episodes to break down and an interview.

That's what I'm saying. Our future episodes will be a little swifter. No such.

Lepron told us he thought it was going to be 4 hours. We came in an hour shy of that.

Listen, no such promises for future House of the Dragon episodes, which is what's on the horizon on this feed. So stick with us. We're about to talk about dragons for a very long time, but we will also still be talking about mysterious Jedi twins.

I'm excited to keep watching and chatting about the show.

Oh, I know, me too. And what did they do? What did the Jedi do?

I don't know, but I really want to find out.

Okay. Thank you to Mallory Rubin, the other half of my force dyad. Thank you to Stephen Allman, who's invited to every single noodle party we ever have. Thank you to Jomi Adenaran on the social. Jomi is also invited. And thank you to our generic pal for his additional production work on this episode. He is also invited to noodle with us. We will be back House of the dragon next week. Until then, bye.