Andor - S02E09 - Welcome to the Rebellion

[00:00:01] Hey Mark, I was listening to Paramore the other day and it really made me think about the amygdala and the limbic system. You just made those words up, didn't you? What, Paramore? We're the Nevermind The Music Podcast, where one musician and one psychologist talk songwriting and the mind, one song at a time. We'll hear everything from Green Day and OutKast to Stevie Wonder and Dua Lipa. And we mostly try to stay on topic. Except for when we don't want to. Nevermind The Music, wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:00:27] Delta Squadron, on your left. Missions all yours, Squadron Leader. To anyone else on this comlink, send all transmissions to andor at thelorehounds.com and get...

[00:01:12] Welcome to the Lorehounds andor podcast. I'm David from the Lorehounds and we're your guides to a galaxy far, far away. This is our season two coverage for episode six titled, Welcome to the Rebellion. With the weekly triple drops, only one more week to go. We are doing our coverage squadron style. Each week, John is covering the first episode, Alicia the second, and I am covering the third.

[00:01:42] Being the anchor is not easy. Each week, we have a different co-pilot joining us on the recording. And today, my co-pilot is a true friend of the Lorehounds, host of the Radioactive Ramblings affiliate podcast, Aaron. Aaron, how are you doing? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me as a part of Delta Squadron today. Absolutely. It's great to have you here. I was thinking that this is going to be a really good episode for you because you study political science.

[00:02:11] And I think you're probably going to have some opinions about what we're seeing. Oh, I have a ton of opinions, most of them related to Luthen and Mon in this episode. Sounds good. Are we going to break the three-hour barrier? Let's hope not. I could definitely talk about this episode for three hours, but I don't know if the people need to hear that. Right. I don't know if people actually would have listened to three hours worth of that. So one other thing I want to do is give you a big shout out.

[00:02:36] You have been doing a lot of our graphic design of lately. So you designed our current logo for Andor, and you also did one recently. What was the other one that you just did? I think it was The Last of Us. That's right. That's right. It was The Last of Us. And you've done a couple in the past as well, and I just really appreciate you doing that.

[00:03:01] And I just wanted to give you a shout out because your canvas skills are pretty good. Thank you. I am completely amateur and self-taught, so my skills can only take me so far, but I really enjoy it. Yeah, well, we're very lucky to have you as a Discord moderator, as a graphic design, as a host of your own podcast, and part of the Greater Lorehounds community. It's been a pleasure working with you, and so I'm glad you and I get a chance to nerd out today.

[00:03:31] Absolutely. I love being a part of this community. Awesome. Well, a few more notes before we start to get into our hot takes. One, I just wanted to mention on the season pass. Because of the way that the coverage and the structure of the releases has been, I personally haven't been able to do all the bonus material that I want to. There are people that I want to have conversations with that aren't immediately available.

[00:03:57] God, I really want to talk to Mark and Nicole from Nevermind the Music, but they're just busy with their lives right now. I have more conversations with Matt Cavanaugh, who's a retired lieutenant colonel from the Army. There are more holocron stuff we can do. Alicia's been doing a great job.

[00:04:13] So we've been putting stuff out, but I think what I'm going to have to talk to the other Lorehounds about this is that we'll probably keep the season pass open and just fill in more and more material over time, given that we've only got four weeks to cover a 12-episode show. So if you're not in on the season pass yet, there's great stuff there, and there's going to be more great stuff coming. So hang on to that. Spoiler warning, all things Star Wars.

[00:04:41] We, as the anchor leg of this week, get to talk about everything up to Episode 9. And that makes it a little bit easier for us. But anything and everything is on the table. I, however, am not a Star Wars lore expert, unlike Alicia or even John. I came to the movie in 77 and have been sort of an on-screen fan. Never really read anything, you know, looked around some of the comics when I was a kid.

[00:05:08] But I'm really an on-screen person, and I'm just bringing my general knowledge of film and TV as just a general watcher and fan of things. Aaron, what is your, just really quick so people have a context for where you're coming in on this as, what is your relative Star Wars background? Yeah, so I think that my knowledge would lie around the same place as John in terms of Star Wars.

[00:05:33] I definitely don't have as much knowledge as Alicia, but when I was a kid especially, I was really into Star Wars lore and was constantly watching, you know, YouTube videos, things like that. So I'm a super fan who's a little bit rusty. Got it. Got it. That's good. Well, that's good because I am not a super fan. I mean, I'm a fan of the property, but I'm not deep in the lore. So that's a good balance for us here. We have balance in our force today. Absolutely.

[00:06:00] Right. So we're going to do a little bit of a hybrid coverage where I'm going to take some scenes and sort of mush them together, but then others were going to deal with them on their own. And this was a hard episode to do bigger arcs. So our tactics sort of have to fit the situation that we have in front of us. And my brain doesn't work the same way as John's. He's so good at accordion, putting everything into an accordion file where I got to like break it all apart. So anyway.

[00:06:30] Really? This was such a simple episode. There wasn't anything going on. Nothing at all. No, no complex editing or anything like that. No, it was straightforward. So what are your hot takes for episode nine? Welcome to the Rebellion. I think that a lot of Rebels fans feel this way. But for someone who doesn't really care about the Star Wars universe or its lore, Tony Gilroy has been exceedingly respectful of the universe. And not only respectful, but he's been really enhancing the universe. There are.

[00:07:00] Well, we have a voicemail from Alicia later on that we're going to play. And she's got a couple of bones to pick with old Tony. I think we'll put that at the very end because it's some lore wrap up stuff. But anyway, carry on with your hot takes. Yeah. And my second hot take, it has been 20 years since Genevieve O'Reilly was cast as the modern Mon Mothma. She made her first appearance in episode three.

[00:07:28] And it's been such a wasted opportunity to not give her the spotlight for all these years because she's just fantastic in this show. And it just feels like a loss to not have had her take a bigger part in the story before now. But we have her and we have her in full form. So, you know, there is that. Absolutely. And then my final hot take is the ISB felt pretty sloppy, almost uncharacteristically so in this episode.

[00:07:57] And that's one of my minor nits that I'm picking this episode. Okay. Got it. And what are your hot takes? Well, a lot. We have a whole episode to talk about it. So, I'll try to restrict myself to the bigger things. This was such an interesting arc. There was almost seven and eight were almost a pair. But you really can't complete the arc without nine.

[00:08:27] So, it's not like the three were fully connected. Nine stands on its own a little bit. But the use of – Tony Gilroy has been on record talking about this. You can hear him in various interviews and podcasts talking about this idea of negative space in the writing. The kinds of things that they're putting down and then not bringing back. Or if they're brought back, they're brought back in a single comment. Oh, do you remember my friend Tay Colma? Right. They're, you know, B2.

[00:08:57] Where the hell is B2? But this is this next level writing that Gilroy and co. are bringing to this property. And again, it doesn't, you know, stepping outside of the Star Wars lore and universe. What he's doing with screenwriting, the process, which, you know, because there was COVID, there was a strike. There's all kinds of things that got in the way of this.

[00:09:23] But what he's doing at this level of screenwriting is fascinating because there's so many things that we would expect a show like this to be in a normal run of television. Oh, Cyril Karn has risen his rank, you know, risen the ranks of ISB. And now they're going to have this big confrontation where they face off. And instead we get a, who are you? How heartbreaking for that character. Oh my gosh.

[00:09:51] And I sent in a voicemail for Alicia and Luke's episode eight coverage about that, tracing the arc of Cyril. But yeah, it's an incredible journey that he went through. And anyway, so this idea of negative space and the things that the writers are not saying as much as they are saying. And I think that's really interesting. It's stuff that you could do in a movie.

[00:10:15] And I think we're getting to this point where this is a show that is really crossing over and straddling the boundary line that normally separates television and movies. It does feel very cinematic in a way that the other Star Wars shows haven't felt. And television in general. Yeah. Right. You know, so yeah, this release schedule is pretty interesting and sort of special in its own right.

[00:10:44] But at the same time, how they're telling story, a lot of times with serialized television, episodic television, we want that extra time to roll around with characters. But Gilroy is bringing a movie sensibility into television writing and into the television format. And I think it's really, really interesting. And it's going to be really interesting to see where we go as an industry from here. Yeah.

[00:11:10] I was going to ask you, do you think this is going to become sort of a template for future projects that Disney Plus puts out? I don't think it's going to be a template. I don't know that you can template the release schedule. And I don't know there, from what I've heard around how Andor got produced, and then obviously the two major interruptions that affected it. And then just Gilroy's sensibility. Yeah, he's respecting the canon. Well, he's not respecting the canon.

[00:11:39] We're getting in trouble with Alicia. No, we're not going to get in trouble with Alicia. But Alicia has a very clear point of view about, hey, there are some canon things that they're just ignoring or not encountering. And then Gilroy, both Dan and Tony, we're hearing these quotes about their attitudes towards Star Wars and whether they respect the property or not. Neither here nor there. Can you reproduce this format? I don't know.

[00:12:09] I don't know if this is just that lightning in a bottle type of situation. This is a one-off. Or could we actually start to look at television? Because I think in British television, you see this a little bit more. Did you ever watch a series called Prime Suspect with Helen Mirum? No, I have not seen that. Okay. Really, I highly recommend that. Those are short seasons, four or five episodes per season. Okay. And they do a very similar thing to this.

[00:12:37] So, yeah, maybe it could be templatized. But is the American corporate market and the streaming market, the demands of streamers, really interested in this? I don't know. I think that's where this is groundbreaking because we can't see the ground ahead of us. Yeah. If we never get a project like this again, I can sit and be happy that we got this just at all. I don't think that they have to templatize it.

[00:13:03] But if they did go forward, especially in the context of Star Wars and make more shows like this with the three-episode sort of movie-like drops like you were talking about, then I would be even happier for it. Right. But don't need it. Right. Yeah, it'll be interesting. And I think that starts to touch on some other things.

[00:13:24] I don't want this episode to be about seven and eight as much, but I can't not just mention, and Alicia in her voicemail is going to mention this a little bit too, but this idea that in this arc we finally brought in the question of the Force. We brought in the question of the larger Star Wars story by having this Force healer.

[00:13:45] And I don't want to talk about that or get too much into the details relative to saying that for me, this episode and this story overall has really been about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Yeah. Yeah. And when we look at the Skywalker saga, those are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.

[00:14:12] And so, you know, the fact that Mon Mothma is freaked out by what Cassian does twice, you know, he just like shoots two people. That's real, you know, whereas, you know, Luke can, you know, cut down a swath of stormtroopers and not have any sort of moral qualms about it. You know, here we see a real person reacting who's never seen murder before, right? Yeah.

[00:14:41] And reacting that way. So I really appreciate the groundedness or the sort of post-traumatic stress that, you know, Cyril might be affecting, like seeing thousands of people around him, you know, being slaughtered and knowing that he was intricately involved in the elimination of those people. Right.

[00:15:29] And then I think there's this really interesting question of watching this senator, you know, the show is called Andor, but it's about so many other people. It is about so many other things. And right now what we're seeing is this, and or, you know, he's going to, has he reached his zenith yet?

[00:15:51] He himself, I mean, he does in Rogue One, but that's not to say that, you know, like when we look at Mon Mothma, we're watching a senator being a political leader become a rebel leader. She drops her cloak and puts on Cassian's jacket. Yeah. This episode in a lot of ways is about transformations for all of these characters.

[00:16:14] There's so many new stages, not just for the characters, but the rebellion feels like it's completely transforming in this arc from being this shadowy organization into a full-blown and real political entity.

[00:16:58] Yeah. And you can put in the faster than light, you know, travels and hyperspace and space whales and all this kind of stuff. But really, at the end of the day, what are the stories that really grip us are deeply human stories. And I think this is a, I think this episode really encapsulates that deep human, the deep human nature of this story. And it's not a fairy tale. It's not, you know, rescuing the princess from the dragon. It's not rescuing Leia from the clutches of Vader.

[00:17:28] That's a fairy tale, right? Right. And they lived every, you know, the first movie was just the first movie. Um, this is about people making very difficult and deep decisions around the relationships around whether they've burned their decency and they're not going to be welcome on Yavin for. They're about leaving behind everything that you've known since you were a child and taking up something entirely new. Like you were saying, uh, a lot about transformations.

[00:17:57] And these are very deeply mundane, um, things mundane, not in the sense of, uh, boring, but mundane in the sense of there's no magical mystical force that's happened here on this, on the surface. Uh, you know, we could, we could say, oh, underneath, you know, you know, Cassian says, oh, you know, it's, I've, I've, I've just been a lucky guy. Yeah. Was it luck or the force is Han Solo lucky or is the force, you know, involved in there somewhere? Yeah.

[00:18:27] And those mundane sort of decisions that you were talking about, it just makes the story feel so much more real to me. Like I know people in real life are making decisions just like the ones that these characters are making. And it's incredible to see the real world reflected in Star Wars in a way that we've never seen it before. And maybe we've never seen the world reflected like this on the screen in general.

[00:18:56] Yeah. Yeah. With, and, and by putting it in, by putting it into the, uh, uh, a universal, a structure of a universe that is different than ours. And this is what fiction does is that we've talked about this in past podcasts, the ability for us to see deeper into and gain more nuance from these kinds of things because they're separated from us.

[00:19:20] But Tony Gilroy is such a, and I don't think he's reading with a newspaper in his hand, but he's so tapped in to how we operate as human beings. That, that just naturally flows out of the end of, you know, and I'm not saying Gil, I'm using Tony Gilroy as a cipher for all the writers. Um, uh, you know, the, the, the writers of this, the way that it's flowing out because it's deeply human. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that we have the current circumstances that we have.

[00:19:50] It would still resonate. It's hitting a little bit harder right now, but, but if we had watched it five years earlier, you know, or whatever, I'm not going to, whatever, you know, 10 years earlier or something. Like that, it would still resonate because these are still real human stories that are being. Right. It's a whole cycle. I mean, the events that are happening in this show, you can see the similar things repeated over and over again in real world history. So it is just timeless. Yeah, exactly.

[00:20:17] I have to give one really quick, uh, comp. Uh, I don't know if you've watched the Ronald Moore reboot of Battlestar Galactica. We're of different generations. If you couldn't tell by the tones of our voices. So I have not seen it. Okay. So I don't, I don't expect all of our media to over our media consumption histories to necessarily overlap, but, uh, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, there's this character, Laura Roslin, who was the secretary of education.

[00:20:44] And she ends up becoming, uh, president. Spoilers for like a 15 year old, whatever you television show. So, but you know, this idea that this ordinary person is thrust into this extraordinary circumstance. And I, I really, it makes me think of Mon Mothma going from this, uh, senator in this bubble to now going to live on Yavin 4 and be a leader of a rebel insurgency.

[00:21:15] And how she's just not built for that. You know, that's a whole different, yeah. Command structures, you have resources, you know, uh, it, so I just had to pull that comp because I thought it was sort of an interesting thing. And then it goes to that question of extraordinary, ordinary people do having to be pushed or who are being pushed into and then do extraordinary things. Right.

[00:21:39] What does a politician know about leading a rebel army, but she steps up and she pulls it off, you know, people adapt to their circumstances or they don't. You rise or, or you're not. And, and oftentimes we've seen in this series is in, in Star Wars in general and in Indor and specifically climbing, we're always climbing, climbing, climbing, you know, right. You know, in Narkeena five, climb up, you know, uh, Cassian in this one climbing up, you know, in the ship as they're, uh, escaping.

[00:22:08] So there's always the sense of, are you rising to the occasion or are you stuck or sinking? Right. And, uh, and these are people who are rising. And I think that's the other thing that's powerful about this episode in particular and this show overall is that, and we talked about this in the, in my last episode in six, the idea of these two kinds of hope that come out of the Tolkien universe. And I don't have that email in front of me, so I don't remember those Tolkien terms right off the top of my head.

[00:22:36] So I'm not going to say them and get myself in trouble. Just go back to that episode. And, uh, there's this two kinds of hope or there's hope where there is, there's no cause to have hope. And then there's hope where you can, ah, I see this, that, and the other thing, and I can line myself up. And, you know, we, we also, I think we oscillate between those, uh, in our daily lives.

[00:22:58] And I think that's, what's great about this show is it's giving us that, uh, former kind of hope where I don't see a way out of this, but yet I'm not giving up. And I think we see that in, in Rogue One as well with Jin, right? You know, we're going to take the, we're, we're going to make a chance and then we're going to take it. And then we're going to take the next chance that presents itself. And then we're going to take the next one and we're just going forward. Right.

[00:23:20] And I think that the show is in some way chicken soup for the soul, if I can say that, that you can be an ordinary person and do extraordinary things. Um, and, and which is where I felt funny about the force healing thing coming. I don't know how you felt about that. I don't know when I get too deep, but. Yeah. I didn't mind a little bit of mysticism being put into the show.

[00:23:48] It was a little bit of a tonal shift and I'm not sure that they needed to include it, but I wasn't mad about the inclusion. I think it's important though, too, that they did bring it in because at some point these, these worlds do have to line up and we can't not have the force fully in star. Like it's kind of weird to not have some of it. Yeah. But I think that it lines up with that transformation I was talking about where this is becoming the kind of rebellion that does have people like that.

[00:24:15] These spiritual force healers and figures that provide hope to the masses. It's not backroom dealings anymore. It's out in the open. People need something more than themselves to look up to. If you want to build this rebellion to be something that's huge. And us in our daily lives, no matter what the current circumstances are, we do need that kind of hope as well. And so we need these stories to help fuel our fires. Right.

[00:24:43] Culture, movements, it's all built on myths and stories and all of these other components that make us who we are. Did you get a chance to listen to Luke and Alicia episode eight podcast coverage? I did not. I'm about halfway through the episode seven podcast. Okay. Yeah. It's the same. This compression is really, what does Lutheran say? We've all been bent by secrecy. Yes. We've all been bent by a three episode drop. And these aren't short episodes, 30, 40 minutes. These are like 50 minute episodes. Yeah.

[00:25:13] And dense and movie script dense. Yeah. I was able to get through most of Luke and Alicia's today. And Luke does this great thing. There's a chant that the Gore, you know, saying, you know, we are the Gore, the galaxy is watching. Well, the world is watching. We are whatever, whatever.

[00:25:36] The world is watching is a chant that goes back all the way to the civil rights movement in the 60s, which is the first sort of televised. Luke points this out. Luke points this out. But he says it's that chant is used elsewhere in time and in place here on our primary world.

[00:25:53] And again, it's just going back to that thing of these are deeply human stories that with these narrative structures and we're telling ourselves and we're retelling ourselves and we're re-reminding ourselves of these things. I didn't know the history of that chant. But now that I do, I'm like, oh, I'm part of a story. Yeah. It's such a great connection.

[00:26:21] So, all right, well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will get into the episode proper.

[00:26:50] We're back. We're going to get started with the episode. We've got probably a lot to say both. And this is a dense episode. So buckle in. A quick reminder, you can send feedback to starwarsatthelorehounds.com. You can join us on our Discord community. There is a link in the show notes that will take you. You can both find the season pass in the link there, in the show note links there.

[00:27:18] As well, we have a link tree, which has a link to the Discord. So if you want to join us there. And I have to say, Aaron, I don't know about you, but our Discord community is exquisite. Oh, it's fantastic. People have the most insightful comments, things that I would never think about. It's just a great place to be. And just read through one of those forums and you'll be blown away. I promise you. It's respectful. It's nuanced.

[00:27:46] And then at times it's silly and fun and goes off into these weird tangents. And everybody's here for each other. And it's a real great sense of community. So I'm really grateful for you and for the other Discord mods and just everybody who participates on our Discord. It's very hard to find such a clean and a bullion and a fun place to hang out online these days.

[00:28:11] So thank you to everyone on the Discord who really contributes to that sense of community and engagement. Yeah. Right. So this episode was written by Dan Gilroy, who wrote the 7 through 9 arc. And it was directed by Janice Metz. Again, they're pairing a writer and a director for each of these three. Metz, besides doing 7 through 9, he directed a few episodes of a really, really great television show called Zero Zero Zero.

[00:28:42] If you've not checked that out, I highly recommend it. He also wrote for some, I believe, season two of True Detective. And then he's got several films and documentaries and won some awards and stuff. So it's actually very interesting. I didn't think about this. This, I guess, was in the background of my mind. Here's a director who's going back and forth between television and movies. Same with Dan Gilroy, Tony's brother. These are both two creators who move between these two worlds.

[00:29:10] And so it's no wonder that this television feels very cinematic. Right. Those influences are very apparent. Yeah. So we're in 2 BBY. So that's two years before the original movie. BBY, before the Battle of Yavin. I remember when John and I first started podcasting and we were covering our first Star Wars stuff. Neither of us knew when BBY was. It was pretty funny. Fortunately, people were very kind to us and explained we got some good feedback that way.

[00:29:39] And the official logline is, in the aftermath of the Gorman massacre, Senator Mon Mothma prepares a career-ending speech while navigating ISB bugs and betrayals within her inner circle with imperial forces closing in. Cassian and or undercover as a journalist must help ferry Mon to safety as the future of the rebellion hangs in the balance. This reads like a Tony Gilroy freight train. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:06] I'm not too familiar with a lot of his other work, but just from all of the and or stuff that he's done, it lines up. If I were to give you one movie of Gilroy's to go watch, like today, right now, I would say go watch Michael Clayton. Okay, Michael Clayton. And that is the one with, oh, what's his name? George Clooney.

[00:30:29] In one of the roles that I felt that George Clooney wasn't playing George Clooney, playing somebody else. He really was this Michael Clayton character for me. He really embodied him. So he was out of his, you know, star persona. It's a really good movie. Yeah, the Bourne movies, whatever, and a bunch of other stuff.

[00:30:47] But I think Clayton really takes this, Michael Clayton's script really takes this mundane kind of situation and then elevates it and pushes it into that next level of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sounds great. I'm adding it to my watch list right now. Perfect. All right, opening theme.

[00:31:06] We get the sounds of the Gorman national or galactic or whatever planetary anthem playing in the background of the theme music. Yes. Did you catch the little choral notes that came in and out there?

[00:31:22] Yeah, when Mon Mothma was talking to Bail Organa, I did notice a little bit of the Gorman musical cue coming up, which is notable for me because I don't typically catch up on those auditory cues. I don't have a very keen ear for that type of thing. You need to listen to Nevermind the Music more. Yes, I do. Not like we need more media to consume.

[00:31:46] But I tell you, having had that podcast in our family, John has said this as well, and we both sort of are on the same boat, which is my ear and my attention to that level of detail has been so improved because of what Mark and Nicole have brought to the table there. So shameless plug for Nevermind the Music. Mark and Nicole, they just operate on a whole other level. Yeah, it's great.

[00:32:15] So that song, too, reminded me a little bit with the Aldani and the chants that the Aldanese, I guess, is that what we call them? We're in the eye in season one. Right. And then we hear these chants echoing. And so it's interesting because we do – we open on that Senate scene where the Gorman – we'll get there in a second – where the guy's getting arrested. But it's this echo, right?

[00:32:43] We're still living in the echo of what happened there. And so for them to bring that song in really brings the energy from the last episode into this episode. Absolutely. And then I also noticed a few of the synth sounds that we got in season one, episodes one through three with Kasa and being on Kanari. Interesting.

[00:33:05] And then the thunder and rain also really called back for me episode 12 of season one when Cassian is sitting in his ship in the – oh, I forget what the name of that ship is. I don't know the name of the ship, but I know the name of the type, but I can't remember it now. I'm trying to work on my Star Wars lore memory something van. It's a day van. Yeah.

[00:33:57] And then Mon and Bael plan their next trips. What did you make of this scene? The whole sort of narrative of you're going to be next if you don't do something to stand up against this is one that we see a lot in these types of situations. And unfortunately, people don't tend to heed that advice.

[00:34:18] It's a culture of silence that is created when these disappearances start to happen, when these mass arrests start to happen because people are rightfully so very afraid to speak out. And so his kind of cry for help at the very end or plea for people to think more critically about where they stand in the context of the empire, it was very powerful and very real. I'm going to probably say that about 20 times in this episode. It was very real. Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough.

[00:34:48] My people today, yours tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:35:20] Exactly. And so, you know, if you're in the furtherance of fascism, how do you counter it? And at least in progressive and more liberal senses, violence is not something that we want because it's a power over, as Marilyn might say. We're exerting a power over somebody as opposed to sharing power or working together. But then how do you, if you're not the state and the state is using fascist powers, how do you counter that? We don't all have a Yavin 4 to go to.

[00:35:50] Exactly. And in real life, usually what that takes the form of is media attention, protests from international organizations, things like that, where the idea that you just brought up that is from Marilyn of violence being power over people. Information is power with people. You're actively sharing the situation and empowering each other by sharing that information. So that's sort of a counter example, I guess. Right.

[00:36:20] And I think that's where we see. But then, of course, with social media, it's such a two-edged sword because it also can be. And we see that in the last episodes where the news media are clearly biased in telling a specific story. And Bale says, he says explicitly, the winner writes the story. Yeah. Not only that, but the media is directly state owned.

[00:36:44] I can't remember if it was this arc or the one before where they say that the hollow news network was bought out by the imperial government. Oh, I don't remember that. I watched this episode four times at the sacrifice of re-watching 7 and 8 more than once. Nice. So, what do you think of Benjamin Bratt? He's been getting a lot of hate online. Has he? I think that he's doing just fine as Bale Organa.

[00:37:13] I don't have a problem with him replacing Jimmy Smits. Is it Smit or Smits? Smits. Smits. I don't have a problem with him replacing Jimmy Smits. I'm going to get in trouble if it's not Smits. I'm watching five emails saying it's Smits. Yeah. How did you like his portrayal? I think Benjamin Bratt killed it. And I thought he did great and I thought he brought – and no shade to Jimmy – Jimmy S. Yeah.

[00:37:38] No shade at him at all because he bring – he always brought this smoothness and calmness and he was – he's a big – he's a person of large physical stature. And so, his presence was very calming. I remember when he steps out of the shadow in Rogue One and you're like, oh. Yeah. But Benjamin Bratt brings something different.

[00:37:56] He brings an intensity and a roughness to the role that I – I think he's bringing something new to the Bale Organa character because Bale Organa is a – and again, I'm not a lore expert, so – but from what little I know, he is – and Mon even says, you know, I've seen you pull off miracles. He is a – at some level, he's a street fighter. He's a political street fighter. Yeah. He can be smooth on the outside and be – you know, have this appearance.

[00:38:24] But underneath, he's got – you know, he's got special teams of people that he can rely on. He knows how to use Senate tactics against – you know, he can do some judo. He can throw a rabbit punch now and again. Like, he is not somebody to be trifled with.

[00:38:37] And I think Benjamin Bratt brings a little bit of something like that to the role that this guy's actually – you do not want to be standing toe-to-toe with Bale Organa in any kind of slugfest, be it political or otherwise, because he can deliver. Right. He's a very seasoned politician with a lot of power behind him, even in this world where the politicians are having all of their authority stripped away from them.

[00:39:07] And it's really interesting that this whole conversation between him and Mon, where she's like, oh, dude, I can't believe that you're telling me to be quiet. And he's like, no, no, no, no. We need to – I need to stay behind and stall because you, you, Mon Mothma, need to be the leader on Yavin 4. You're the one that's going to be able to bring people together. And he says, what does he say? Like, Yavin needs your leadership.

[00:39:34] And so that he's willing to stay behind and be a target and to draw that ire and that attention to him also, I think, speaks to his character as being somebody who can carry that load. Right. And presumably he keeps on in that role up until the dissolution of the Senate in about two years. Right. Yep, exactly. And, of course, we have a nice little foreshadowing here about, like, oh, be careful, the ISB are listening. And, you know, later on we get ISB listening devices.

[00:40:03] So internally in the script, there are so many little jump and hook points that we don't need – you know, they drop an idea or a thought or a place. And then we get the payoff later. So it's really efficient and effective storytelling because as we're wrapping up this conversation with Mon and Bale and setting their trajectories, we also get dropped in this fact that somebody is going to have been listening in on Mon.

[00:40:32] And so when they find the bug, we're already prepared for it. And so that is just really, really efficient storytelling in a scripted way. Yeah. Truly. All right. Clea, the true hero of the revolution. Clea preps Cassian to go undercover to rescue Mon once she gives her speech. Cassian says he's not coming back and Clea makes it very clear what the real stakes are. I am sorry.

[00:41:02] I am sorry. I'm not sorry. I am proud. I am out. Clea is holding it together while the emotional boys are running around going, oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. And, you know, both Luthen and Cassian are having little hissy fits. And Clea is the rock steady spine of steel. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. And this is how we're getting it done. Luthen, blah, blah, blah. You can go burn your soul, Luthen. It's Clea who is the real hero of the revolution in my opinion.

[00:41:32] Yeah. Yeah. She has to keep a level head while Luthen is out on a suicide mission pretty much. Yeah. It's wild. So, uh, I had this whole thought, um, while Cassian is getting put into his place that, um, you know, he's a treasure found by Luthen, right? Luthen is this treasure hunter.

[00:41:58] And what's in Luthen's shop and what's, what's, what's Cassian standing next to now? I don't know if they did this on purpose, but this is the way I'm interpreting it. That's art, right? That's good art. Is that Cassian's stuck in place right now? He's like, oh, I can't do this anymore. I've got to give up. He's locked and he's frozen. And what's he standing next to? A carbonite frozen something.

[00:42:20] I don't know if there's some koi fish in there or what the thing is, but he's, he's locked up as much as any of the treasures are locked up in this shop. Right. Great visual metaphor. Yeah. If that was intentional. Yeah. I don't know. And then they do this other thing, which they, which they did a lot in episode, uh, was it six? I need to go back and look for this. There's a visual motif that goes on quite often. Not in every episode, not every episode uses this motif, but it's a character behind glass.

[00:42:49] And with reflections interplaying over the reflections of them. Yeah. Uh, and so it's used a lot. So we're looking through the internal window of Luthien shop at Cassian and there are reflections, uh, in front of him. So it's, it's really interesting, but yeah, he's, he's sort of stuck there. Um, there is this, and I don't know why he does Gilroy, well, Gilroy and company do this, but there's these weird shots. Like they really show us the 3d printer. Where?

[00:43:19] Like an actual 3d printer? The one that, that Clea is using to print out the past that Cassian is going to use. And it opens the scene. That's what the scene opens of is the little 3d printer encoding the thing. And that's a cool view into the world building for, um, for, uh, Luthien's world. But they give us this detail and then Cassian is looking at this crazy spiral knife, but then that never gets used again.

[00:43:47] There's those claw gauntlets in the, in the last arc. Never see those again. And so I, I don't know what that's about, but I love it. I need Alicia to put out like a two hour long podcast, just talking about every single one of the objects in Luthien's place. Exactly. And then there is this, well, besides that, okay, again, I'm dating myself. You know, indulge me, indulge me, Aaron. Um, there was an old television show called the Rockford files, uh, about a guy who's a detective.

[00:44:17] And there's this, I just, I don't know. This is one of the scenes of that show that stuck in my head where Jim Rockford rolls up to, I don't know, a house or a business or something. And he's in his car and he reaches over into his passenger seat and he goes chunk chunk. And he has a sort of, uh, we had in the old days, we had a credit card to, to run a credit card. You embossed, uh, you imprinted this carbon paper in this machine and you went chunk chunk with this thing. And so anyway, he makes his own business card by having this like business card making machine.

[00:44:49] I'm sorry. I'm sorry, internet that's indulgent, but it was just a funny scene that jumped out at me, uh, that I had to reference. Yeah. I love when they give us those little insights into how the sausage is made with the rebellion, just getting all of the fake IDs and the costuming and secret identity. Luthien is, uh, doing his little costume change on the Fondor, uh, in season one. Yeah. He puts on his wig. Yeah. Yeah. Really. It's good.

[00:45:18] So we get this thing and we'll, I think we'll have to talk about it more later. Uh, Cassian says, I need to start making my own decisions. Uh, he's kind of whining here. And rather than smacking him, Clea just very matter of factly points out, I thought that that's what we were fighting for. Yeah. So that people like us can, you know, you can make your own decisions about your life as opposed to being put in prison to make parts for the Death Star.

[00:45:48] Right. And I'm sure we're going to get into this later, but he eventually has someone else make a decision for him in order to stay within the rebellion. Exactly. And I don't wonder if there's not, so it's, it's interesting because if we think that the force is underneath some of this stuff, I think it gets into the whole determinism versus free will philosophical argument to do we really have free will?

[00:46:14] Uh, you know, and, and, you know, maybe the thing a lot of times you hear this in some philosophies and, and, um, and ideas is giving yourself over wholly to something. Being fully committed to something. And I think Luthan has been bugging Cassian about this. Like, this is your best. This is your all. You're, you're holding something back. You're reserving yourself.

[00:46:36] And I think maybe that's at the crux of what Bix's decision is, is that she sees that Cassian's holding himself back because she, because he's caring, he cares about something else. Uh, someone else that specifically her, um, and for him to fully commit, he needs to remove that. But again, it gets into this whole question of free will versus determinism, I think. Right. Exactly. I don't know. Have you engaged in that conversation at all?

[00:47:04] Anywhere, everywhere, you know, in online or in real life? Yeah. I generally, I think that when I guess prophecy would be a good stand in to use for that. When prophecy is made, it almost becomes self-fulfilling. No matter how things tend to shake out, it's always going to go along those lines of how people want it to go. If that makes sense. Well, yeah. And the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy.

[00:47:32] But there's this whole conversation that's been going on for a few years now when people are really looking at the science of the brain and how things work. Do we really have free will or are we determined? Is there some determined? Are we predetermined in some way? Yeah. Or some combination. Yeah. So, all right. Mon learns some hard truths. Erskine Semaj. I'm sorry, Internet. I'm pronouncing words badly today. It's been a long day.

[00:48:02] How's your day been, Aaron? Not awesome. Okay. The water in my building was out for the past like 12 hours. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, that's a real eye-opener, isn't it? For sure. Yeah. We had power go out the other day. We've gotten, we're getting sort of torrential rains right now. And without basic, and just a reminder to everyone to think of people who don't have the basic facilities that we have. Have a little thought about that. Yeah. It is.

[00:48:32] It's very impactful. Anyway. We could all use a little more compassion in our lives. Exactly. Exactly. Erskine, Mon's Senate aide, finds a listening device in her office. They smash it. And then Mon heads to the plaza to practice her speech. Luthan comes to her and tells her that Erskine works for him and that Bail Organa's team is compromised. Mon confronts Luthan about Tay. Okay. What did you make of this whole sequence?

[00:49:01] I think that Mon almost has two confrontations with reality in the context of Tay Colma. Back two years ago at the wedding when she's forced to confront the reality that Luthan is going to have this person killed. Uh-huh. And this is what the rebellion is for certain people like Luthan. And now she's forced to confront that again.

[00:49:27] And this is a little bit straying off of what we're talking about, but... It's okay. It's the Lorehounds. We stray all the time. In terms of Bail's team being corrupt and all of this going on and Luthan's role with Mon, is Luthan responsible for Bail's team having that corruption in it? Do you think that's an orchestration by him? No, no. I don't. Really? Yeah.

[00:49:56] And it's a blink... Again, this is the construction of this script. They're not putting this stuff straight up forward. It's a blink-if-you-miss-it line when Attendant Falzone tells Supervisor Legrette in their Panopticon ISB control center that Lonnie's agent...

[00:50:17] So it was Lonnie fed the corrupt information about the compromise team to Luthan because he had that inside knowledge that there was an agent embedded with them.

[00:50:33] I think that that was the line that led me to this theory, which was Luthan plays such 4D chess with himself and everyone around him that I don't know what his motivations are, why he's doing what he's doing. But this almost seems like something that he would do is purposefully put this agent there and then tell Mon about it just to make her more reliant.

[00:51:01] And yeah, force her hand and make her more reliant on him, almost separating her from her support system, which includes Bail Organa. And this is something we see with controlling people, abusers. They separate people from all of their support systems. And it almost feels like that's what he's trying to do to Mon Mothma to push his own agenda. And she accuses him of that. Yeah. She says, oh, you know, who can I trust? Oh, you are you the only person I should be able to trust?

[00:51:30] And he gets a doubtful look on his face and he says, well, unfortunately in this situation, that is the truth. You can only trust me here right now. But yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that it was a that he got that intel from Lonnie and set it up. But you're right. It is a 4D. That would be kind of a 4D chess move of Luthan. Yeah. And I think we're going to get some Luthan backstory in this last three episode arc. I mean, we have to get some Luthan backstory.

[00:51:57] So hopefully we'll get a few answers on what he's really been doing, why he's doing it. And we may not. We may not. He could remain a mystery. This is what, you know, this, I would not put it past Gilroy here for what he leaves out of the story. There is no reason for him to give us Luthan's backstory. There are so many characters who we just, we haven't seen, right? You know, or heard from again.

[00:52:21] There was, there's no repercussions so far from Dr. Gorse being blown up. Yeah. Right. You think that would be a major, major scandal and a whole bunch of fallout from that. But we don't see Supervisor Hirt, you know, the guy that used to be Mon's, or sorry, DeDramiro's assistant who was elevated to full Supervisor. We don't see him this episode. We don't see any of the other ISP. We only see LaGrette. We don't know where Lonnie is.

[00:52:49] It's interesting that you bring that up, that they didn't address that because it's one thing to do a raid on a Rhydonium facility in the Outer Rim. But this is in the Emperor's backyard. This is the ISP building. In Coruscant. Yeah. Right. And speaking of left behind storylines, I wanted to see Saw pushing Wilmon to some crazy extremes. Yeah. It was going to get dark. But again, boop, no, well, you know, Will's good.

[00:53:19] He's got a girlfriend. He's a hero of the rebellion. He gets saved by Cassian. Right. Yeah. Maybe his time with Saw taught him how not to act. So let's see here. I've got a whole bunch of notes, but I think we're going to try to wrap up on some of that. I don't know if you noticed. I thought there was a K-Cup machine in Mon Maltima's office. I thought it was pretty funny in the background. I posted that on Blue Sky. The things they adapt into background objects in the Star Wars universe are always fun to keep an eye out for.

[00:53:48] Are you aware of the Camtono lore? No, explain that. Oh, I explained this to John the other day. I can't believe this is like one obscure fact that I know. I'll keep it very short. In, on Bespin, when after, what's his name? Billy D. Williams, Han's friend that he won the money. Oh, Lando Calrussi. Thank you, Lando Calrussi. I'm having an old person moment here. He, once he hits the ski, you know, everybody run.

[00:54:18] And there's a dude that runs through the hallway with an ice cream maker in his arm. And internet fans, you know, Star Wars fans have pulled that guy out. He actually has an action figure with the thing. And they called that ice cream maker a Camtono. And so when in, in the Mandalorian, when he's, what's his name is saying, you know, I went to see the child. And he's got a Camtono of Beskar. That's this ice cream maker machine that's been plucked out of obscurity.

[00:54:48] It's like a blink of you miss it shot with this guy running by with this ice cream maker in his. That's awesome that they've included that further. Yeah. I don't know why they would break the bug. That's the first rule of counter, of, you know, of recognizing that you've been, are being surveilled. It's not to let the surveillers know that you're being, that you know, that they know, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe a part of it is she knows that she has to make her exit right after this speech.

[00:55:16] And it would look very suspicious if the ISB started arresting people before Senate even convened. But it was too big of a risk for them to take that chance on. Yeah, I don't know. When Mullen Mothma's out, I did a whole post-storm. I can't, I want to call it tweet storm. And I don't want to call it a skeet storm because that's really bad. But on Blue Sky, I was screenshotting as I was re-watching the episode in one of my four times.

[00:55:45] And they're just picking up on these visual details that I really enjoy. And there's this beautiful shot of Mon Mothma standing on the plaza with the blue light and the white structure at night with these wings coming out. And there's this little silhouetted figure of Mon Mothma there. Absolutely gorgeous cinematographer. Alicia wrote in some lore notes for me to put into our outline. And apparently this is the City of Arts and Sciences building in Valencia.

[00:56:12] I've not been there, but what a gorgeous structure and what a great thing to situate. What a great real practical set to use for the grandeur of a galactic Senate. Yeah. Anytime that they decide to go with practical effects shooting on location instead of using a green screen and CGI, it just helps the world feel so much more grounded. Exactly. Exactly. A couple of final notes for me on this.

[00:56:40] I think it's interesting how, as we were talking before about the relationship between Mon and Luthen, that Mon has been using her position as a senator up until now to protect and shield Luthen in some ways, not only with money, but just in terms of general operation. But now she's a single point of failure. If they can get their hands on Mon Mothma, she could actually give the identity of Axis, right? And that would be very bad.

[00:57:10] And so this idea that she, right now, has more power than Luthen does in some regards, but yet she's afraid of him is such an interesting dynamic between them. And the way that she recoils from him when he's getting physically close to her. Genevieve O'Reilly, like, come on, man, I need some awards for this one. Oscars, Emmys, whatever. Give her all the EGOTs. I don't care. Seriously.

[00:57:37] And it's got a little bit of a Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster aspect to it where she's looking upon this almost her creation in horror. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's very interesting. That's a good take. I like that. I like that. I have friends everywhere. It's such a good line. And it does double duty in so many ways. It's such an interesting line. And it's not a phrase that you're going to necessarily say accidentally, right? I don't know.

[00:58:07] I like it a lot. Yeah. Works very well as a code phrase. I think they've been using it for a little bit too long, though. I think the empire would have caught it on by now. Last goodbyes. While Supervisor Legret is updated on the status of Mon Mothma by Attendant Falsoni, Mon dismisses Erskine.

[00:58:27] Luthen, Clea, and Cassian prepare to step in when we learn that Luthen is not going to Yavin, and Cassian tries to assert that he has some degree of agency in his own life. I think it's really important to note that Luthen is out in the open without his disguise on anymore. Very good point. And I'm taking this as a sign that maybe he's close to the end of his life. He's out in the open.

[00:58:57] He's operating without the ISB or without hiding from the ISB anymore. It's feeling like his last hurrah in this universe. Right. And he's looking very haggard and tired. Yeah. And it feels like, and even he and Cassian are talking, and Cassian's saying, well, what do you mean no Yavin for you?

[00:59:27] And there's this thing. I was trying to look it up, and it's sort of this promised land denied trope. And it's sort of, you know, you could go back to Moses for this, right? No promised land for you, Moses. And, you know, Luthen has done so much that has been so hard on so many people that he's not welcome there anymore. Right.

[00:59:55] And I think from the outset of his involvement in the rebellion, he knew that when it got to this stage, he couldn't be involved anymore. He talks about how he has all these bridges that he's burnt, and he still has a few more bridges left to burn before he's done. And it just is all part of the plan for him. You have Aldani where he wanted to build a treasury for the rebellion.

[01:00:19] You have all of these little things where he's working towards making the rebellion what it is when we find it in A New Hope. And he just can't be a part of it. There's no way for him to create the setup for that and also be a leader in what's to come. Right, right. And he says that to Lani. You know, I burn my soul for a sunrise that I will never see. Right.

[01:00:45] And it's interesting that Cassian tries to convince Luthen to leave and to protect and save himself. So even, and later, Cassian says to Mon Mothma, you know, Luthen could be hard. But there's still a care and a consideration. Later, Cassian says, well, what does Luthen want? And Clea says he wants Will to get to a doctor. Hmm. Right? Rare moment of him actually caring about the people under his command. Yeah, exactly. I want to get into something.

[01:01:14] I've got an audio clip here in a second, and I want to wrap up a little bit more on Cassian and Luthen. But I want to just flick back really quick to the rawness of that feeling of betrayal that Mon Mothma must be experiencing when she realizes that Erskine has been double dealing. Right. And that just got to be rough. And no matter, she can't, later I think she comes around, right? Clearly.

[01:01:41] And then, of course, when we get into the Rebels animated series, Erskine is there as well. And he's running point for Mon. Yeah. Did you watch the episode? Did you watch episode 18? Season 3, episode 18? I only got a chance to rewatch Mon Mothma's speech from that episode. I didn't get to watch the full episode. Good enough. You didn't... I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to get in trouble with the Rebel lovers. I think that Rebels has some great moments, but a lot of just fine moments as well. So, well, at least you got that.

[01:02:11] I did watch the whole episode, but I watched it on like 1.6 speed or something. Yeah. To really make sure. Because I try to cram a lot in today. But this idea that... Man, that had to have been a gut punch for her. Like, Mon Mothma, you're right. She did... This is a transformative episode for her. Her betrayals, watching people getting murdered, fearing for Lutham, this guy that she's been working with for a long time. This is a really...

[01:02:37] And then giving the speech, you know, the speech of her life, this career-ending speech in the face of a powerful fascist state. This is a big... This is a big Mon Mothma. Like, you don't... I don't think it really actually had come to that terms of how big this was for Mon Mothma until just now. Actually putting all these pieces together. It's the end of her political career within the Empire.

[01:03:04] And if things go wrong with the extraction, it's the end of her life. Yeah. That's true. That's true. This could have easily been the end of Mon Mothma. All right. Well, she... Thankfully, she... Thankfully, Cassian was there with his line of... And being able to convince her. Right? Because he had to actually get her to be willing to go with him. Yeah.

[01:03:30] And all of the murders that take place in front of her, like you were saying, it has to... She needs a certain desensitization to the violence if she's going to be a part of the rebellion in full. She has to still be horrified. She needs to keep her moral standards. But she has to be exposed to it now. She has to see the way that things are.

[01:03:54] Which, speaking of the murders in front of her, do you think that her driver had a change of heart and was going to help her beforehand? No, no, no. He was coming to... He was trying to play the ISB Stooges. Okay. But don't... Let's not bury the lead here. That's a really super insightful comment, Aaron. That's really, really interesting.

[01:04:17] She does need to be desensitized because she's going to be signing off on orders that her command staff is going to be giving. And there's a council and whatnot and all that. But she's going to have to be approving missions that are intentional sacrifices. We're intentionally... We're sending young men and women to... Well, just people, species, whatever. We're sending beings to go die. And she has to be okay with that.

[01:04:46] And you're right that it's very hard to be so morally sensitive in that kind of circumstance. Yeah. And that this seeing... God, that's really interesting. That she sees two people killed by one of her... Her agent, so to speak, right? Even though we're still moving into that relationship. To protect her. To achieve her objectives.

[01:05:16] Right. And it keeps bringing me back to the line that Luthun had during the wedding arc where he tells her, How nice for you that you don't know what I'm talking about. And now she has to be the one making those decisions. It is such a transformation for her. Damn. You win the MVP for the podcast today. That's really, really good. I did not even think about that. That's awesome. Well... Such a good episode. Yeah, it definitely was. And it's so great that we have such a fun community to discuss.

[01:05:46] The Squadron thing has been great. It's been a lot of fun. It's been great to listen to. I've been really enjoying hearing everyone's takes on this. So let's revisit the Luthun-Cassian conversation. And it's interesting because the line starts off, this part of the conversation starts off with Luthun saying to Cassian, Well, eventually they're going to hang us both, won't they? Yeah.

[01:06:14] And we've got to remember that Cassian's father, Clem, was hanged by the Empire. Right. And Luthun uses the same line to Cassian. Like, they're going to hang you no matter if it's a Star Path unit or whatever. I forget what the exact line is. But he uses that line twice now on Cassian, which is like a very potent line. Because that's going right to Cassian's deep core psychology and his relationship with his father and what the Empire did.

[01:06:43] But I've got a little audio clip here I want to play for us. They're going to find you, Luthun. You act as if we had a choice. Eventually they'll hang us both, won't they? We set that course the first time we met. Speak for yourself. You see no truth in that? I make my own decisions. Is that what you've been doing? Sometimes I wonder.

[01:07:14] You appeared when I needed you. Aldani. Arkena. Variks. Sinarm. Mineral. Gorman. And here we are. I think you're right. I think they're setting us up. They're signaling to us that Luthun's fire is burning down, is burning low. Yeah.

[01:07:45] He's just not needed anymore. The type of work that he does is outdated. The rebellion has outgrown him and that's always been his purpose. That's always been his end goal. And he's put so much psychological and physical energy hopping around the galaxy, staying up late at night. It's the stress of, did you get the bug out from the piece of artwork? And that's high stakes. And that's going to take it out of you. And he does.

[01:08:15] He looks very physically worn out. And I think they're very much signaling. Because that's a very self-reflective and indulgent thing for a spy master to say. A spy master is always thinking about, you know, you've got to remain outside the game, right? He can't be inside of Palpatine's game. He's got to be outside of Palpatine's game so that he can make the moves that are going to force. Who has the advantage?

[01:08:44] Who has the high ground? If we wanted to even speak in Star Wars lingo. That, you know, to be able to make moves against the Empire, he has to be outside of the Empire's game. And so you're always thinking about, what can I do next? How can I destabilize my enemy next? How can I build my forces and deny my enemy, you know, their ability to regenerate and to move forward? And so you're always thinking forwards.

[01:09:12] This is a very backward-looking comment. This is a reflection on the past. This is a self-reflection of, you know, it was you all along. You were here all the time. When I needed you, you were there. That's indulgent in a way, given that they're standing outside the Senate building where they're about to throw a pie in the emperor's face. Yeah.

[01:09:34] And in addition to that, what does it say about the Empire that someone like Luthan, a high-status sort of art dealer that gets invited to every single major event, this is your greatest enemy. This is the guy who's been the thorn in your side all this time, is the person you never would have suspected. Just an unassuming merchant, essentially. Right. Brilliant. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant.

[01:10:04] A couple of other minor notes here. Clea points out that Mon Mothma knows the building. And so, you know, Mon does. She saves the day later on. So that's, again, that little foreshadowing, the internal script foreshadowing, setting us up internally, not episode to episode, but within the episode, prepping so that when Mon says, oh, we need to go a different direction, we have that credibility because Clea has already advocated on her, already put that into our mind.

[01:10:33] The script already said that. And then, this is a weird thought that I had. Let me know what you think about this. What if Mon gets arrested? What if Mon gets arrested? Was there a subtle cueing? And Cassian says, well, what if she gets caught or whatever? And Clea, I forget who, I think it was Cassian who said that. And then Clea said, it all comes down. Was there a subtle understanding among them that Cassian should kill Mon in case they were about to be captured?

[01:11:03] Was that sort of an implicit order? Maybe. I hadn't thought of that. But it would be just like Clea and Luthen to have that pragmatic view of this person needs to be taken out. It doesn't matter how close we are with them. They're a threat to us now. And no one can be expected to withstand torture. That's not a realistic expectation. Right. So, yeah, I think that was in the atmosphere. But it was, again, negative space. It was unsaid.

[01:11:32] And I only picked it up on my third watch, right? So, I don't even know that I picked it up. You know, I would have necessarily picked it up. So, I think it was there. Anyway, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll pick up with Mon Mothma's speech.

[01:12:06] And we're back. We're going to get into Mon Mothma's speech. And it's a tough, from an editing standpoint, there's a lot going on. So, there's a lot of minute detail that I don't want to gloss over by abstracting too high up. At the same time, there's a lot of complex editing. And so, some of these things we may just want to hit a couple of notes and a couple of beats and move through. So, I've sort of broken it up into one giant arc. And then we'll sort of work through the details as we go.

[01:12:37] So, Erskine clears the TSA checkpoint. I'm sorry, the Imperial weapons check. And we're introduced to Bale's extraction team at the same time. Again, really efficient storytelling. Meanwhile, Cassian enters via the back press entrance. And Bale's team assembles. And Legret sends his regrets. There's something interesting going on with Legret. I'm not really sure there.

[01:13:02] And then Mon confers with Bale before her speech. And then they say goodbye. There was a lore note from Alicia. And I don't know that I have it here. I think it was the mid-rim fake news network. The mid-rim are like the suburbs of the core planets. I think that lore note was supposed to be. I wrote a note to myself to write in the lore note.

[01:13:30] And then I got distracted by the 50 different things that I was doing today. So, I didn't get around to doing it. Life gets in the way. I'm telling you. And you know what? I'm so... The one show that I wanted to devote my entire and whole being to for this whole year. If I had had this space that we had for a severance for Andor, no problem. But, of course, everything needs to pile up right now during this. It's like...

[01:14:00] That's how it always goes. When it rains, it pours. I'm telling you. And it is pouring outside right now. In fact, literally. All right. I wanted to point out... So, I already sort of commented in my description that introducing Bale's team as Erskine goes through the security checkpoint, I thought was just really good. Quick shots, visual identification. We know who they are, and it works really well.

[01:14:27] There is this whole thing with the ISP control room, which we were introduced to in the last arc, and they had everybody go out. So, we pre... They gave us a pre-visual of that scene, and now we're going to spend a bunch of time in it. Right. But something I picked up again, again, only for this, because I watched it so many times, was that there's that cool graphic around the rim of the ISP control room.

[01:14:53] And it's got some weird graphics on it, you know, some sort of lines and rays, and it looks like your geometry, you know, your high school geometry class. Right. There is... There is... It really reminded me of some of the graphics from the Death Star control room.

[01:15:07] But if you watch as the overall episode plays out, as the tension ramps up in the storyline and more and more things are coming to a head, the graphics on that screen, not only are there more little bleeps and bloops moving around, but they start moving with more urgency and frequency, and then there's more red ones starting to appear.

[01:15:32] And so, that graphic is giving us a subtle visual cue in the background, that shit is starting to pop off. Like, that stuff is going to get really busy. That's a great catch. I did not notice that at all. But having the room almost be an extension of the ISP agent's anxiety is fantastic. Exactly, right? Yeah. And again, I only noticed it because I picked up... I was like, oh, what a beautiful room. And there's this great picture of Tendon Felzone with these big, silly earphones. And he's from...

[01:16:02] Do you remember when Dedra goes to get a multi-sectoral analysis from the databank control room? Yeah. That's that guy. I love that they're bringing back the ISP agents instead of having a whole cavalcade of faceless people. Right, right. It's great that these are real characters. Yeah, and so he got promoted, and now he's working in the control room.

[01:16:25] So again, yeah, with Bale, I think this is the last time that Mon Mothma and Bale Organa will see each other until he makes it back to Yavin 4 at some point. Mm-hmm. And he says this line, a Star Wars line, tear the shit out of this place. What a great line from him. He really has every bit of confidence that Mon Mothma is going to tear the Empire a new one in her speech. Yeah.

[01:16:54] And she does. She uses some strong rhetoric. And he says shit on Star Wars. Is that the first shit that we've gotten in Star Wars? No, I think Cassian swore in episode one of season two. Mm-hmm. And obviously we had a brothel in an episode, and we had a cigarette being flicked off the dam in Aldani. So, yeah, this is Star Wars by night, for sure. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:17:22] It almost makes me a little bit sad that all of the projects about the Star Wars underworld that were in development back in the day got canceled. Yeah, yeah, it's a bummer. There's one other line that I thought was really interesting, and it really echoes some stuff for me in the whole Gorman in the previous arc. Bale says to Mon Mothma, next year in Yavin. Yeah. And I thought that was a very powerful line because then we do see Bale there.

[01:17:50] But this idea of hope, having something to hope for and to move forward towards something. And so Yavin is this place. And a quick shameless plug for the Holocron episode that Alicia and I are going to record tomorrow. She's going to brief me on Yavin, because I have no idea about anything about Yavin. What are those temples? What are those, you know, what is that place?

[01:18:14] And so we're going to get a Holocron bonus episode for the season pass and regular subscribers all about Yavin 4. Sweet. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, it'll be exciting. All right, the next scene we get, the Senate session begins, and Erskine makes contact with Cassian and leads him into the Senate chamber areas.

[01:18:32] Several senators give speeches praising the Empire and lauding the troops who gave everything and decrying the perfidy of the Gormans while the ISB agents make contact. And one of them checks in and then kills the other. What did you make of some of these speeches? Some of the speeches. Well, I do have one little crossover with Game of Thrones.

[01:19:02] The Senator Carlou was the Spice King of Karth. Wait, wait, wait. Say that? Senator Carlou, the one who talked about losing someone during the battle. He was the Spice King of Karth. Yeah, yeah, that guy. Yeah. We too lost a citizen. Mm-hmm.

[01:19:27] Who else was there besides Empire troops who could be from anywhere? Gorman's Cyril. Cyril's not Gorman. Was this a senator from Coruscant? And was he referencing Cyril being killed on Gorman? Hmm. Could be.

[01:19:50] I took it more to just be a reference generally to the Imperial troops that were there and who died. But the other senators we're giving, those were saying, you know, the list of our dead and all that kind of stuff. This guy, very specifically, we too lost a citizen yesterday on the Gorman Plaza. That would be interesting. It would be interesting for them to call out Cyril specifically in that context.

[01:20:17] Because he was doing some pretty high-level work for the ISB at the time of his death. So they could spin his story into a really heroic Imperial narrative. Absolutely, they could. Yeah. And then we see these stooges of the Empire, these senators who were talking about, oh, you know, the brave troops who gave their lives against the perfidy of the Gormans. Those bad, dastard Gormans.

[01:20:45] But I really liked how Bale uses, and I forget there was another senator who sets up Bale. And there's a great look between the three of them at the end. And I didn't grab her name. I think it was Senator Everine, or Everine, one of the two. Okay. And do you know what planet she represents? I don't believe that they had anything on that. I looked her up on Wikipedia, and I couldn't find anything. Man, Wikipedia's got to be slammed right now.

[01:21:13] I hope they have some good servers to carry the load. But I love how that, again, we see that Bale working miracles. So they worked it out to give the time and then point of order and using that emergency thing. So, again, that's all part of what Bale's doing is stalling time and providing cover so that others in the Rebellion can coalesce. Yeah. I had a quick lore note that I put in the outline about that. Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah.

[01:21:42] So the ruling that Organa invoked, he said it comes from the Emperor's Council, which in previous Star Wars material, they have named that as the Imperial Council. Which, if you remember from the prequel trilogy, the guy who was sort of running the Senate, Mas Ameda, he's the Grand Vizier of the Empire. And he is the head of this Emperor's Council or Imperial Council. Okay. Familiar face. Okay.

[01:22:07] And I think they're the ones who also authorize the fact that other senators can be monitored and stuff. So, yeah. Yes. It's a controlling body above the Senate that sort of narrows down so that the emperor has a smaller point of contact instead of having to deal with a big council or something. He's just got a small group of people he can talk to who can affect the – yeah. Right. Smart. All right. So Mon Mothama delivers her big speech and the Empire tries to shut it down.

[01:22:35] And then we see two technicians who follow protocol and then Chloris listening in. I could not get a clean – Mon Mothama's speech apparently – which is great. I'm so glad that they recorded the entire thing. And I'm sure there's a recording of her without being edited and cut up and showing us other places at the Senate building of just her cleanly giving the speech. But we don't have a clean audio of it. Otherwise, I'd play the full thing.

[01:23:02] But it gets – the scene moves around so we hear it from different speakers and Chloris is in the car and people are in foyers and things like that. I don't know. I don't know. Should we read it? Do you want to try your hand at oration? Sure. I can give it a shot. Fellow senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries. Trying to do it in the Mon Mothama pronunciation. It's going to be tough. Yeah.

[01:23:29] I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I've spent my life in this chamber. I came here as a child. And as I look around now, I realize I have almost no memories that predate my arrival and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Let's do a paragraph by paragraph and just make a couple of comments and notes as we go. Yeah. I think this is really interesting that she came here and now there's nothing left.

[01:23:55] The environment of the Senate has so been radically altered by the pressure of the emperor and the grand vizier and all these people that there's no one left that she has common cause with. Right. It's the false pretense of giving people a voice. Mm-hmm. Would you like me to continue or do you want to do an alternation? We can alternate. We can sort of save each other.

[01:24:23] Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honorably and upheld our code of conduct. I think these are very two interesting things because there is a code of conduct, and Alicia pointed that out last time, that you're not supposed to use your position for espionage. Oh, interesting. This chamber is a cauldron. So interesting. A cauldron of opinions, and we have certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might.

[01:24:53] I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility days to come. What do you make of this? It's almost her reaching out to anyone who might have rebel sympathies in the Senate chambers. It's almost like she's inviting people to take up her role as the voice of reason within the Senate because she knows that she's about to be gone. Interesting.

[01:25:20] I like this visual imagery of the cauldron, too, because it is shaped like a cauldron. There has to be status issues of what level you're on because you kind of want to be up. You don't want to be at the tippy top, and you certainly don't want to be in the bottom, but you don't want to be in the middle. You want to be upper middle, maybe? I don't know. Yeah.

[01:25:39] It was interesting to hear them go through the procedures of only being able to yield the floor to a senior senator in this one specific instance. It just really accentuates the bureaucracy of the empire, that there's so many minor rules and regulations that inform the way everything is done. It's fantastic. And how do you have a legislative body with that many representatives?

[01:26:09] You need a lot of rules and regulations, and democracy is messy. And I think that's one of the inherent tensions between single leader-driven movements that can veer into fascism, monarchies, things like this, versus democracy, which takes time. It's messy. It can be manipulated.

[01:26:33] But how else do we allow for the governed to be able to speak in the chambers of those who govern? Yeah, exactly. All right. You want to pick up the next one? Yep. I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. That's just a great line. It has become an abyss.

[01:27:01] Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. Such great rhetoric here with Mon Mothma calling out the truth and framing it in a way that she's almost calling out the entirety of the Senate of being ignorant. She's telling them, or she's telling them, you don't follow the truth anymore.

[01:27:31] There's no reality to what we're doing here. We're essentially a puppet government. And when you don't have an objective reality to agree on, then it is whoever is in power gets to shape reality. And if they want to say up is down and you don't agree with that, then the forces of the state will be brought against you.

[01:27:58] And so when we see key people in governments being replaced or fired at will, key historians, the whole legal system is based on rules so that we can agree upon and that we can reach to an agreement. And at some point say, this is the objective truth. In fact, everybody's had their say to interpret it.

[01:28:24] And if that whole fundamental reality structure is altered because one person has say over whether that, the way that goes, that is the ultimate victory of evil. Truly. Yeah. And she continues, when truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

[01:28:53] This chamber's hold on truth was finally lost on the Gorman Plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Gorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this chamber. Fantastic.

[01:29:15] Using the word genocide to describe the actions of the government that she's a part of, it sends such a strong message and it sends an even stronger message in the final part of her speech when she calls out Palpatine for that. Yeah. It's bold and unthinkable that someone would call out the emperor themselves as a committer of genocide. Right. Right. And that this is fresh.

[01:29:44] This happened yesterday. Yeah. And that, you know, the people that are protesting the most, the people that are accusing the most, the people that are pointing fingers the most, the people that are making the biggest deal out of all of this are, in fact, the ones who are using that rhetoric as a smokescreen to, you know, what is it? Every accusation is an admission, right?

[01:30:05] Every time I accuse you of being, you know, this or that, it's actually me that's doing that, but I'm throwing it at you to try to cloud and confuse the situation. Absolutely. And she finishes up by saying, and the monster screaming the loudest, the monster that we've helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine. And that's it, right? That ends her career.

[01:30:34] That ends her life as a senator. Yeah, that's it for her. And not only is this such a good example of her taking one last stand, but it's such a strong message from the Empire later on in the episode that they're sending the military into the chambers of the Senate.

[01:31:00] They're sending stormtroopers to arrest a senator who has dissented against the government. She has a controversial opinion, and they're sending not just a security officer to question her. This is fully a military occupation of a democratic institution. Right. They're controlling the physical space, and they're controlling the bodies of those people. Yes. Yes. Yeah. All right. A bunch of stuff to talk in and around this.

[01:31:31] I want to be mindful of time, so we're going to pick up our pacing a little bit. There's something I just wanted to point out. When Mon takes the floor and hovers out, boy, that's a vulnerable thing, right? You're not tethered to reality. You're out there floating. But the sound effects make the chamber sound hollow and cold. And we get two shots showing Mon in the scale of this chamber and how small and alone she is.

[01:31:59] But that is such a contrast to the power and the stature of her voice. And so that this one voice can have power in the face of this giant galactic Senate. So beautiful visual storytelling. And as well, the background audio sounds very echoey and empty and cold. And so you really get the sense that she's taking a huge risk by going out there alone. Yeah.

[01:32:26] And you have all of these senators who are clamoring out in protest of her words when she uses the words unprovoked genocide. That's right. That's right. So we get Legrette trying to use Imperial Authority to shut down the audiovisual feed. So again, the winner tells the story. The guy, it took me a second, it took me a couple of watches to realize that the guy that Cassian checked in with when he went back in there, you know, he's Ronnie Guja or whatever.

[01:32:56] That's the same guy who's trying to shut down the AV feed. Because I was like, who is this guy? Great comedic relief right there. Absolutely. And the fact that the, did you catch the little look that the two technicians give each other when they've sort of foiled him? They've temporarily slowed him down. Yeah, it was fantastic. I wonder who those two are. I want to get their backstory.

[01:33:21] Well, Alicia had a lore note about the one tech is possibly a species, the Miraluka. I'm probably putting the syllables in the wrong position. Apparently, this is a fan favorite species dating back to legend. They don't have eyes, but they oftentimes will augment technology where their eyes would be.

[01:33:50] And apparently a lot of Star Wars fans have been waiting to see this species in live action. So we thought, apparently some people thought that Fern from Skeleton Crew might be that, but it turns out that that wasn't. But anyway, that's a cool little lore note. And I just love the fact that the empire is foiled by its own protocols. Yep. And these two with their weaponized incompetence to combat it is so great. Yeah.

[01:34:20] And intentional. They're like, ha ha, screwed that guy. Yeah. And it didn't escape me that it was a woman of color and a woman who has other physiological attributes who is foiling a white dude. Yes. Sorry, I'm just going to call that one out real quick. Can't let that go. But it reminds me of Nemec's manifesto about the systems of control, how brittle they are. Yeah. I already talked. Did you have something? Oh, no. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. I know.

[01:34:49] I was just going to say, I talked about the ISB background graphics are getting more and more frenetic. And we get a lot of, during the whole speech, we get a really great musical cues that's swelling in the background. And then when we get a scene of Cassian outside in the hallway, and it really reminded me, as he's listening, he's pausing and he's thinking. And I was having a conversation with somebody on the Discord. I forgot who it was. I don't know if it was Zatoichi or somebody else.

[01:35:21] I was trying to find it, but I don't think I'm going to. That it wasn't Doug. It wasn't Joe. It wasn't Sub-Zero. I don't know. I can't find it. Sorry. There's so much. The conversation is just flowing right now. It takes a minute for Cassian when he hears Nemec or when he hears Mon Mothma or he hears Marva through Brasso's voice.

[01:35:51] That it takes sometimes for him to process. Sometimes when he's hearing, he's really thinking. He's actually listening and thinking. But he's listening to Mon Mothma's speech in the hallway. It really reminded me of him listening to Nemec's manifesto, episode 12 of season one. That's a great callback. Yeah. So I think Mon is a little taken aback, too, that Luthien's guy is so inside the Senate facility. She's like, whoa.

[01:36:18] Like, I think she's, you know, when they get together. Yeah. Anyway, Cassian and Mon make their way out of the Senate chambers and are confronted by the ISB agent. Cassian kills her and Mon directs them where they can escape when they're confronted by Chloris, whom Cassian also kills. And then we get this final shot of Bale sort of contemplating his fate. And we get a final scene of Colonel Yeloren calling into ISB headquarters. Yeah.

[01:36:47] Great to see a familiar face with Colonel Yeloren. A lot of people love him. We don't see him. We just hear that he's calling in. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. They love him. Yeah. I don't know. He's an ultimate bureaucrat. He really is. So, for folks who may not remember, he was in season one. He's the one who authorized the Farrick's operation. And he's a character that's plucked out of A New Hope from 1977.

[01:37:14] In the Death Star chamber of the command meeting with Tarkin and Vader, he's the one dude in a white uniform where everybody else is in sort of their naval greys. And so, they plucked him out and he's, again, Balochton Joel thing. So, I think just on that, I think Legrette is going to be in some deep doo-doo.

[01:37:35] Because if the colonel of the head of ISB is calling in to find out what the hell's going on and that Mon Mothma got away, your career is probably over at that point. Yeah. We might see – what was the technician's name that got promoted that you brought up earlier? Oh, Falsohn? Yes. We might see him take on a bigger role and get a new promotion. Right. So, there's this great scene, too, when Legrette has his finger on the switch to flip.

[01:38:05] And again, they gave us a preview of this switch flipping when the agent is calling in. So, they've already cued us into that visually, so we're ready for this. But when Legrette flicks the switch, he flicks it down. In the next scene, we get Mon and Cassian driving away in Mon's fancy car. And the direction of travel is the same direction relative to the screen that the switch is being flicked.

[01:38:31] And right when we jump into that scene with Cassian and Mon Mothma, Cassian floors it. And so, they're both pushed back in their seats from the acceleration. So, the energy of Legrette's switch flicking translates across scenes and goes into that next scene. So, that they're visually – it's a visual smash cut. But the energy continues through so that the action carries forward. It's really, really good editing. That's a great catch.

[01:39:00] You're on top of it today with the visual cues and the music cues. Four times. Yeah. The fourth time I was watching it, like 1.5. Just trying to refresh my brain because I'd taken it apart so much. I have to say that I think Mon is pretty – yeah, obviously pretty shocked. And it goes back to your point, a really good point the other day – or earlier today about that she has to be desensitized to the fact that this is what's going to happen. People are going to die. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

[01:39:30] And I love how Erskine used the ploy of that, oh, she's a rebel spy to distract the agent briefly. Like that was a funny thing. And then the final thing of Mon dropping her senate cloak and then putting on the jacket that Cassian has to hide her identity. But it's – again, as you pointed out before, it's a great transformational point. Mm-hmm. I thought that the disguise could have used a little bit of work. I don't think the jacket is fooling anyone. Just enough. Just enough.

[01:40:00] And then we see Cassian do the thing too, which we saw in season one. When he decides, he doesn't hesitate. If he's going to shoot somebody, he shoots them. Right? Hey, Cloris. Boom. Right? You know? Just over and done with. Exactly. All right. Well, let's take another quick break. And then when we get back, we'll start to wrap up the episode. And we've got, I think, one piece of feedback. But we need to talk a little bit more about Yavin 4.

[01:40:48] We are back. So, escape to Yavin 4. We get a quick scene of Yavin 4. And we see Vel doing new recruit intake. And we get a neat reintroduction of Melshi. Mon and Cassian join Clea and Erskine at the safe house. And we learn that Will and Drina have made it back from Gorman. But that Will is gravely wounded. They discuss the plan for Mon to go with Gold Squadron back to Yavin. And Cassian will take Will back on Yavin 4.

[01:41:16] Where Cassian delivers Will, Drina, and the KX unit in pieces that he scooped up from Gorman. I'm really looking forward to seeing Cassian and K2SO develop their relationship a little bit. And get to where they were in the start of Rogue One. This is a big fan service area. And I think if the fans don't get service, they might get a little grouchy. For sure. Alicia pointed this out.

[01:41:45] And some folks, there's some other folks on the Discord have as well. Apparently there's a whole series of comics or books or material around K2 and Cassian. Their adventures. That's fun. Yeah. Did you think when Cassian asked if he's back there, I thought he was referring to Luthen. I thought so too. Because Will hadn't been involved in pretty much anything in this episode. So not at all did I think that it was going to be Will sitting back there pretty wounded. Yeah.

[01:42:16] So that was great to see that Will is still alive. Obviously, this is a big setup for, as we've mentioned, Mon Mothma's speech in Rebels Season 3, Episode 18, titled Secret Cargo. You watched the speech. I watched the whole episode. It was a – without the Mon Mothma's speech, it's a Rebels episode, right? Yeah. It's pretty straightforward, right?

[01:42:43] There's a setup and the bad guys come and the good guys prevail, right? So very simple like that. Yeah. Mon Mothma's speech in that episode was very good though. When I rewatched it, I was surprised at the quality of it for being a kid's cartoon. Nowhere near this speech, but –

[01:43:07] Nowhere near this speech, but we didn't know that that was going to be what was on offer at this point. Right. I want to play another audio clip for you really quick. This is Cassian and Mon Mothma in the apartment. You know this place. I lived here once.

[01:43:32] I'm not sure how to thank you. Get worth it.

[01:43:59] The fact that Cassians will never – they don't – Draven says, we're not going to log this trip. Like, this is all off book. Cassian will never have any credit for saving her. He'll never have any credit for desensitizing her so that she could be a leader. And that he gives this final, you know, instruction like, give it all. Yeah. And I think that's an area where Cassian is similar to Dedra.

[01:44:29] I think that neither one of them are seeking glory. They're not seeking attention and accolades for their actions. They know what needs to get done to further their own goals and the goals of the people they work for. And that's all they really care about. They know that the public-facing roles are for people other than themselves. That's an interesting comparison. That's really – Dedra is such an interesting character. Like, God, this show is so dense.

[01:45:00] Yeah, you could spend – well, I think Luke does get into a bunch of stuff with Luke and Alicia in the Episode 7 coverage. There's a lot there as well. So, yeah. So, and it's interesting. So, yeah, we need this heroic story. I got a weird side comp of Hunger Games in that one where they send Katniss back in with the media crew because they're trying to frame a narrative and tell a story of the rebellion.

[01:45:29] And so, this whole big setup of getting Maul onto the ship where they can broadcast another speech because that Senate speech is going to get controlled and shut down. Right. Where they need an unrestricted broadcast. And so, I think that's very interesting. Again, it's smart. Like, what are we doing as a rebellion? We need to let people know. Yeah.

[01:45:53] Them creating a new speech for Mon Mothma in this episode was a fantastic way of taking a tiny little line that was in Rebels about, you know, I called out the emperor directly and now I have to be on the run and turning it into an entire episode of television.

[01:46:11] Which goes into the whole point that you brought up before about how interesting it is that they might have said some jerky things in the public media about their attitudes towards Star Wars, but they are not inattentive to a lot of details. And yeah, there's certain characters, and we'll get into that in a minute, that aren't here, that should be here, or this or that. But when it really comes down to a lot of key details, they're not being dismissive either. Yeah.

[01:46:41] They hate that they have to work within the confines of the Star Wars universe, but they're going to work within the confines. And it's really good. Like the whole Yavin 4 thing. Or, you know, there's just so many, you know, they're deploying the lore very smartly, I think. Yes. Agreed. So, a couple of things I wanted to point out about, a couple of wrap-up details around this group of scenes.

[01:47:07] When Mon is standing in front of the window in the apartment, if you notice on the windowsill, and again, this is one of my posts on when I had my thread on Blue Sky. There's a, and I think it posted in the Discord too, there's some withered flowers on the shelf there. Mm-hmm. The ones that fixed. Exactly. And so, space of time, but also sets up so that when Mon says, oh, you've been here before, it's like, yeah, we're sort of reminded of that stuff. And then there's just a beautiful shot.

[01:47:36] The blue, the frame and frame, there's a whole bunch of visual stuff that's going on there that's absolutely gorgeous. Really quickly, over on Yavin 4 with Vel, we had some fun on Discord today. Yes. There is... We had a little disagreement on the blasters. Well, I don't think it's a disagreement. It's a, oh my gosh, like a blink if you miss it.

[01:47:56] So, obviously, we have Melshi's weapon, which is a Primor corporate security weapon, which Cassian took off the dead guard in episode one, and that ended up in Melshi's hand. He gives it to him at the end of the Narkina arc. And so, then we get Melshi back, and that's great, and I really am looking forward to... I would love to see some hot action with Vel, Melshi, K2, and Cassian at kind of a Jason Bourne pace, right?

[01:48:26] You know, let's get some action, yo. Let's go for it. We got some... Absolutely. And correct me if I'm wrong, Melshi led the ground forces at Scarif, correct? He was one... Yeah, I think he's a sergeant in the story of the rebellion, but not only was he on the ground in Scarif, he was the leader of the team that sprung Jyn Erso from... I can't think of the name of the planet they were on.

[01:48:54] But, you know, when she's in that transport in prison, he's the guy saying, hey, you want to get out of here? And then she, like, knocks him out. That's awesome. Yeah, so that's Melshi, so 100%. And then, so then, yeah, so we have that. But prior to Vel picking up that weapon, which she would have remembered from Aldani, because Cassian had both of those weapons, and Skeen was saying, like, oh, what's this weapon?

[01:49:21] This isn't, like, this was owned by somebody else. So absolutely Vel would have recognized that particular weapon. Because how often do you see Primor core security blasters floating around the curse? But prior, just, so there's a wide shot of Vel, so we have that weird dissolve where everybody's sort of walking in faceless and silhouetted. And then we go to a wide shot of her standing in front of the table of weapons.

[01:49:51] And then we go into a close-up. We don't go from wide to a medium. Anyway, we start to get in closer there. And there's a very, very quick scene of her holding a blaster that she puts down and then continues her walk. That is the same kind of blaster that Jyn uses in Rogue One. Oh, yeah. And I saw some folks on the Discord saying that there was never an explanation of how Jyn got that weapon. So it could be the exact same blaster. Exactly.

[01:50:19] And I think, I forget who it was, somebody mentioned that in the book, in the novelization of it, there is a scene where Jyn is rummaging in Cassian's bag and pulls it out from Cassian's bag. But, you know, did they film that and cut it? Yeah, we never actually see a specific reference of where, in the movie, where Jyn actually got the weapon. We just see her pulling it out of her bag. So, yeah, so very cool little details like that. Absolutely.

[01:50:49] All right, moving on. I'm choosing the rebellion. Cassian returns to the treehouse and tells Bix that he's done, but that he wants to be with her and they can leave before things get too complicated. She gives him some Narion leaf tea and tells him to get some sleep. Cassian wakes in the morning to find Bix gone and a message from Bix telling him that she is leaving. I want to play this audio clip as well.

[01:51:20] My love, you're sleeping now. You look so peaceful. I want to be brave, but I can't. If I was brave, I would stay and do as a person. But I know you and you just talk me around. And I've been thinking about this too long to let that happen. I have to leave.

[01:51:55] I just know that I can't stay here with you now. I believe what you said. It is a choice. It just can't be me. I can't be the reason you leave here. If you ever give this up for me, I'd never forgive myself. We have to win. We have to beat them.

[01:52:27] And I believe you have purpose in making that happen. I need to believe that. I'm choosing for the both of us. I'm choosing the rebellion. And when it's done, it's over. And we've won.

[01:52:56] We can do all the things we ever want. Everything we know we've missed. I'll find you. Sorry for the extended clip.

[01:53:20] But it's too important of a clip to not have Bix in our heads giving her words the way that she wanted us to hear them. It feels like such a punch to the gut knowing how Andor's story is going to end in Rogue One. Yeah. And that they're never really going to be reunited.

[01:53:46] Without that context, this wouldn't be the tearful goodbye that it is. It hits hard. It does. It really does. And I hope that we get to see Bix at least one more time in this last three-episode arc. But if we don't... Guarantees with Gilroy. Yeah. This is a great exit and such a good speech. It's shocking that we got Mon Mothma's fantastic speech in this episode.

[01:54:14] And then we also get Bix's goodbye speech. It's just two heavy hitters in this one. And then we have a little mini one from Luthun, too, about like, oh, it was you all along. You know, you were there all along. Yeah. But it's a very short one. A quick lore note. I looked up Nary and Leaf. I couldn't find anything but my... In my headcanon, it was a tea that would make Cassian sleep a little extra. Mm-hmm. Because she knew what she was going to do. Yeah.

[01:54:42] I think he would definitely need the extra help if he was going to stay asleep while she was up and recording her goodbye message. Yeah. And he was looking pretty shell-shocked when he got in. He was done in that moment. Yeah. I think when he got back, he was exhausted. And I think that's the thing that he's feeling is that every time he goes out on one of these missions, that he makes it back is a relief. But it's getting harder and harder. And what does he say? The line is, you know, I've gotten lucky, but like that luck is running out. Mm-hmm.

[01:55:11] Mm-hmm. And I think the emotional rollercoaster of trying to have a normal, quote-unquote, normal life in his cool jungle hobbit. Are there jungle hobbits? He's got that round door. Yeah. I thought that was very cool. It's just getting harder and harder. And then so, yeah, Bix says, you know, she can feel it.

[01:55:34] And she knows that he wants a life with her, but she can see the toll that it's taking and that he's probably going to slip up because he's not going to be on his best game. Yeah. If he's got a background thought of, can I make it out of here alive? Yeah.

[01:55:57] I have, you know, he's got to be fully committed and fully aware of every situation that he's in. If he has any kind of distractions, that could be the hesitation, that moment where he misses the guy with the blaster or, you know, he misses the potential to escape from a situation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:16] Do you get the feeling that through some kind of feeling in the force or destiny, something like that, that Bix knows she's never going to see Andor again? That's a tough one because she says, you know, well, he gives her hope. She gives him hope. She gives him something to hope for. And we talked about in the, in that last episode that, Oh God, I wish I could have that.

[01:56:44] I didn't have the reference in front of me, but it's like a stale and something else. The, the two different kinds of, of hope. I apologize for not having that reference. It's a lot. Um, but yeah, uh, I, I don't know. I just, and I'm fine with not knowing. I'm fine with not having an answer. Yeah.

[01:57:04] I hope that we get some kind of post rogue one scene with some of the characters that are still around, maybe dealing with the fallout, maybe Bix at, uh, Andor's grave or something similar. I don't know. Well, I, in my head and, uh, just like Marva said, the empire can never take, uh, that safe place away in her mind.

[01:57:26] In my mind, I have a scene of, uh, Bix reuniting with B2 and, uh, no one can ever take that away from me. So that's, that's mine. That's great. Uh, I, I, speaking of Marva, there's a same thing. He tried to do the same thing where things were like, Oh, it's getting hard. I'm not having as much fun as I was anymore. So let's just leave. Let me just like exit the scene. And that's what he tries to do with Marva. Uh, is, you know, we can leave, we can leave. Uh, we can go in the morning.

[01:57:56] It'll be fine. We'll go to some small out of the way place. There are still places. And that didn't work out for him. And, and, and Bix would have had some sense of that. Yeah, I think. Uh, and she was part of that whole, that whole thing, uh, when he tried to leave and come back and stuff. So, yeah. Uh, I want to call out another visual thing. There's this thing that they do. It's called frame in a frame.

[01:58:21] And so when we have Cassian standing in the round doorway on the, on the porch of their little thing. So he's framed inside the frame of our, our view screen. And if you look for it, it's everywhere in, in this episode and in a lot of them. Uh, but, and, and if you go on blue sky and you find my, my, uh, posting storm, you'll find a lot of examples of me pointing out the frame and frame shots. So did you have, uh, I got a couple more notes. Did you have anything else?

[01:58:52] Um, yeah, I, the whole sequence of Cassian trying to chase down Bix at the sort of loading dock landing platform area. The final act of desperation of him trying to keep Bix from leaving only to realize it's too late. It's already done. And the decision has been made for him. It's such a great moment. He, he needed someone to be the level head, just like Clea is for Luthen.

[01:59:21] You have this motif of the, these hot headed sort of not, not always rational men driven by their emotions. And you have the women in their lives who have to make the smart decisions for them. They have to make the decisions that contribute to the greater good. Yeah. And she says, I'm choosing for the both of us. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm choosing rebellion. Absolutely.

[01:59:51] The way that they edited that whole sequence, I choked up to thinking about it too, that he's standing there in the doorway looking for her. And then we hear her voice. You're asleep. And I was like, wait, what? Is this some sort of dream sequence thing or something? And then the way that they cut back and forth. And it really reminded me of severance when Mark was talking to himself through the video recorder thing. Um, I just, again, just a beautiful visual. Uh, set up.

[02:00:21] Um, there's one last note I want to make. She uses the line, you have purpose. She doesn't say you have a purpose. You have purpose in the rebellion. If she had said, and this to me is, is an example of God tier writing, knowing that a, what is an A? Is that a, uh, an article?

[02:00:47] Uh, it, that removing this one article radically changes the meaning of the statement. If I said to you, Aaron, you have a purpose. That is a singular thing. Oh, I need to go do this thing. There is a thing that I am destined to do, or I'm responsible for doing, or that it's, it's a singular, uh, definite, definite article. Is that coming back from my high school grammar classes?

[02:01:16] As opposed to a, have purpose. You have purpose in this rebellion. Uh, you have purpose in, in, uh, achieving this outcome. Um, um, so she's not because having a purpose, Luke has a purpose. Han Solo has a purpose. These are heroic characters doing heroic things. They're extraordinary in, in extraordinary circumstance. Cassian is not. Bix is not.

[02:01:41] They're ordinary people and they are, um, we don't know what's going to happen to them. So that's why I thought that the whole force healer and you have a destiny thing had a, a weird tonal, um, uh, it, it was like, oh, right. We're in star Wars, right? Where we're, we're big people doing big things where this really refers to me grounds being the fact that I could walk out of my house tomorrow. And, you know, I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah.

[02:02:11] I want to go back to the whole purpose versus a purpose thing that you brought up. Yeah. Yeah. In the first season, when he starts out, he has a purpose finding his sister, right? Ah, yeah. Yeah. And now his purpose is the rebellion. So I think that's a great point that you brought up. And, um, and we don't know what in, what for the rebellion, what he's going to do. He's just, he's just a part of it as opposed to having a specific thing. Yeah, exactly.

[02:02:41] Uh, and it's interesting you mentioned the sister thing because are we ever going to get a resolution to it? It's Gilroy. We may not. Yeah. Yeah. The best resolution we're going to get is just Marva telling Cassian that it's a futile. Let it go. Yeah. Let it go. I don't think we'll ever get resolution for that. Do you know something else I don't have resolution on that? That's been, that was sort of a bee in my bonnet was where's the sky crystal? Remember Luthen gives them the crystal? Oh.

[02:03:08] We never see Vel give it back to Luthen. We never see Luthen holding it again. And we never have a scene where Vel is like, here's your crystal back. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if they'll bring that back. They may not. It's Gilroy. It's Gilroy. All right. Worst trade ever. Uh, which is, this was coined by Zatoichi on the, on the discord in relation to, uh,

[02:03:35] uh, Cassian is confronted with the fact that Bix has left and he's called inside to witness the birth of K2SO. Uh, so, uh, Gilroy, uh, has been quoted as saying, well, yeah, you know, I think it was in the decoded, uh, Disney behind the scenes thing where, uh, yep. Bix is out and K2SO is in, right? So it's just a swap one for one and that they set that up purpose that way. Uh, but I liked the way that Zatoichi said that, oh yeah, yeah.

[02:04:04] Uh, I'm a big K2SO fan, but that's still the worst trade ever. For sure. Bix is definitely a better influence in Cassian's life. That's right. Um, so this is a big deal. And I think, uh, Alicia, we're going to play Alicia's, uh, voicemail here in just a second, uh, when we get into the feedback section and I saved it rather than trying to break it up, put it all out of other places that we're just going to save it for the end as kind of a, um, part of a wrap up. Uh, there's, there's, I guess this breaks the cannon a little bit.

[02:04:34] So they go off on a different direction, but then we get into the whole shippy test of it, you know, does the medium and the message, uh, uh, meet. So we get Cassian and K2 with their first interaction. Uh, it happens, uh, but yet it, it, it goes against how it was written other places. So I, I'm not enough of a lore person to, to know or to have any feeling about it. Same. I have no idea about the comics or the books that has their origin.

[02:05:04] Right. Right. Uh, I, something that was interesting to me and let me, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. The text says that it's all about impulse suppression, which is an entirely wiring issue. And I had this thought, and I don't know if I'm way off base here, but Cassian needs to suppress his impulses right now. And the rebellion is trying to rewire him. They're trying to get him to conform to a command chain of command.

[02:05:33] He's a captain. Now he needs to follow orders. He needs to give orders and that suppress. And it's all about suppressing Cassian's own internal impulses to wanting to go off and do his own things. Yeah. Am I off base there? Is that like a crazy tin hat foil hat theory? No, I think that I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mentioned it, it sounds like that would be an intentional thing that they're going for here.

[02:05:59] Because Cassian is just this fiercely independent person and always is threatening to leave. He always, he has the mentality of one more job. I just need to pull off one more heist. Right. Right. Yeah. Always the one more. Yeah. Yeah. True. Yep. So he has to get away from that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So it feels like that whole speech that the tech gave about impulse suppressing impulse control and rewiring that to me, that was like, okay, this is, he's talking about Cassian

[02:06:27] as much as he's talking about K2. So. Yeah. Do you get the feeling that Cassian is a little bit reckless during his period of emotional distress in Bix leaving? He is standing very close to the K2 or KX unit. He is refusing the goggles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is. He's definitely, I agree. Yeah. He's a little bit more emotionally raw. So. Yeah. Less self-preservational. He, he really gives that soldier a look too.

[02:06:55] When he wants to take his weapon, the dude's like, I will give up my weapon. And Cassian's like, just a look at his eye. Give me your weapon. Yep. We saw what the blasters were doing against those KX units back on Gorman. And I don't know if they're going to be able to stop that thing if it goes haywire. Yeah. They, they definitely gave them beefier guns, a little, you know, some BFG. Do you do it with BFG? Is that a reference you would get? Okay. Yes. It came from Duke Nukem. Yep. Back in the day. So.

[02:07:25] BFG. Still is a big part of like gamer culture and stuff. Game lore. Okay. Right on. Good, good. All right. Us old folks over here with our 16-bit graphics and Castle Wolfenstein. Boy, I remember the first time I ever saw Castle Wolfenstein on an old map, Apple toot, at the Apple shop in downtown Portland. Boy. So yeah, going back. Now people put them on calculators and stuff. Right. Yeah. Back in the old days.

[02:07:54] My final note on the episode is the ending music had a real driving beat to it. So it feels like they're giving some energy for the next arc stories. Yeah. So now you're going to be paying attention to more background music, aren't you? I am. I might have to go re-listen to a few Never Mind the Music episodes. Yeah. That's something I want to improve on is my musical and auditory cues when I'm watching these shows. Yeah. Right.

[02:08:24] Any final big thoughts or anything that we didn't get to cover? Any notes that you have left unsaid that you want to get in? I don't think so. Okay. I guess the only thing that I have is people like Luthen, Saw Gerrera, all of these people, they're part of a dying breed. They're not relevant anymore. And you can really feel it at the end of this arc that they're not needed. Right. Yeah.

[02:08:54] Right. All right. Well, let's take a quick listen to Alicia's lore. She had a couple of things that she wanted to point out, which are important and best said by her herself. So here it is. Okay. Alicia here. I am recording on my phone. So sorry if I sound a little bit different. Just recording on the fly here. Just wanted to say that this was a great episode of television.

[02:09:20] I want to say that up front because I know a lot of people get a little defensive of any suggestion there could be anything in this show that falls short of absolute perfection. But I do both appreciate the show and still see some room to point some things out. I'll save any further discussion about the writing of the women for a roundtable discussion I think we'll have at the end of the series. But I'm here to talk lore because this is an arc. This is the arc that we knew going in was going to have the most overlap with existing lore.

[02:09:50] And so there are three retcons slash lore boo-boos that we need to address this week. One is the one people are least likely to be upset about is the way they change some details around Mon's speech and exit from the Senate. Details that were established in Rebels, Season 3, Episode 18, the episode titled Secret Cargo.

[02:10:13] And in that episode, we see these events from the perspective of the Spectres, the main Rebels characters who aid in Mon's escape from Coruscant. Before they pick her up, indeed, they get her from Gold Squadron, the squadron site in this episode. They hear a snippet of her speech from the Senate that says, I name the Emperor himself for ordering the brutal attacks on the people of Gorman. Their peaceful world is one of countless systems helpless against his oppressive rule.

[02:10:41] This massacre is proof that our self-appointed Emperor is little more than a lying executioner, imposing his tyranny under the pretense of security. We cannot allow this evil to stand. And Tony Gilroy says his brother Dan, who wrote this episode, said that he didn't want to do that fucking speech from that cartoon, which, yeah, that's the only part that's going to upset people.

[02:11:07] The way that the Gilroys consistently talk as if they're too good for the Star Wars storytelling that came before. I kind of agree with Alicia on this one. That fucking cartoon is what gave them this Gorman massacre lore. They've spun into an incredible course in Fascism 101 this season in the first place. So, yeah, Dan Gilroy's speech was more powerful, more pointed. And I think even Rebels fans are more than okay with that.

[02:11:32] I liked that later we hear Cassian asked if he wants to hear Mon's second speech, and he turns that down. And this second speech is the one that she delivers from the cockpit of the ghost in that episode of Rebels. So you can hear it there or probably on YouTube if you haven't yet. Plus, there's some space fighting on their way to take her to not Yavin, not yet, but the planet Dantooine. So, yeah, I think that most people are going to be happy about that.

[02:12:00] Just stop being so dismissive of Star Wars. You're not slumming it, boys. The second retcon, I've heard some people are really upset about this one, some people who don't care at all. And that's the retcon of how Cassian met K2SO. This is a story that was previously told in a one-shot comic in 2017. I talked about it more in the episode 8 breakdown, so I won't say too much about it here. But I'll just say it is a shame that we keep seeing comics and books overwritten when it doesn't feel necessary.

[02:12:29] Or in the case of the Ahsoka short, arguably sometimes creating the horror story for it. Yeah, perhaps that's the case with this meeting as well. The third lore, Boo Boo, is the one that I'm personally most upset about, though I know not everyone agrees with me. I know a lot of people do not agree with me on this one. And that is the fact that we have not even yet gotten a mention of Leia, despite her father being in the show. To the people out there saying, I don't want any Skywalkers showing up, it's been overdone.

[02:12:59] I hear you, but I just want to remind you that this show was explicitly created to link directly into Rebel 1, which was created to link directly into the original film. And considering that Leia by this point already knows Mon Mothma and was cited in the original film as being the youngest senator ever, she should be there in Mon's story. But I guess that plot hole was already created in season one when it was said that Mon became a senator at 16.

[02:13:27] I just hope that we get a mention of her in the final week, just to make some semblance of maintaining lore. As much as I do want a recast, I'm not going to hold my breath for it. A mention would be plenty. Hopefully when Vivian Blair, who played little Leia in Obi-Wan, hopefully when she's old enough in a few years, they might revisit this part of the timeline from her perspective to explain why she wasn't there on that day.

[02:13:51] For now, I'll take comfort that Bale's mention of the idea of leaving the Senate being, quote unquote, complicated for him. That must be referring to his daughter. But I'm never going to watch that conversation from this episode without scream singing at Bale and Mon both. Say her name, say her name. Okay, that was this week's Lore Boo Boo Corner. And again, that does not change what an incredible three hours of television that we've been gifted. And I'm very excited to see what the finale brings. All right, thank you.

[02:14:23] That was great. Thanks, Alicia. Hold your truth. Hold your truth. I am of the – I don't mind Leia not being mentioned, but I respect your ground that you're standing on. And I'm glad you are reminding us all that, yeah, there is some canon here and that the Gilroys are not slumming it. They're actually elevating a rich story world. So be nice if they were a little less crass about it.

[02:14:52] I'm totally happy with them being not lore addicted because it gives them space to tell the story, but you don't need to be jerky about it. Yeah, the whole haughty attitude of I'm better than you because I don't watch any Star Wars content or read any Star Wars lore. Yeah, exactly. Which – that's a pet peeve of mine is people who bash on cartoons or animated series just because it's in that format. Right, right. Yeah. Fair enough. Cool.

[02:15:22] And remember, so at the time of our recording right now, it's Friday. Alicia and I are going to be recording that new Holocron bonus episode on Yavin 4. I didn't know that she went to Datween and then to Yavin, so that was a little confusing to me. But whatever, that's fine. And I'm sure Alicia will explain that to me. So if you're interested in that, look out for that bonus episode. Should be – I think it might come out Sunday. I guess when we might publish that.

[02:15:49] How is your French and or French accent? Pretty horrible. I don't speak a word of French, but I can always attempt a French accent. Well, we have friend of the pod, Jordan, who always likes to write in and tease John and I a little bit about our French – our ability to read French. I can – I don't know. I have a complex relationship with French.

[02:16:17] Of course, Alicia is very eloquent in French. But I was going to see if I could force you to read this email, but I can – Yeah. My limited knowledge of Latin and my knowledge of Spanish can give me a few words here and there, but I – Okay. Not good. Well, Jordan, again, dear friend of the pod. Salud, lorehound peeps. First off, your and or coverage is killing it. Even David's adorable, Skuldoon. Ha ha ha. Je t'aime, David.

[02:16:48] Thank you. You know, being a podcaster is hard. You're recording. There's a lot of different things going on, and so sometimes we catch flack for mispronunciations or whatever. And I think it's – as long as we're self-aware and we can make a joke out of it, but the internet does let us know and mispronounce things. Yeah. You've got to be able to laugh at yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Continuing. Continuing.

[02:17:13] Also, man, I love how Gilroy has confounded us all from Cyril to Dedra and beyond. I even wonder – remember when Deidre, Dedra, like we were stuck, we couldn't figure out if it was Dedra was the right way to do it? Anyway, we got emails about that. I even wonder if Mon's driver was running to save her. Oh, didn't you ask that same question? Yeah. Having heard the speech and a change of heart himself. Alas, we will never know. The show is amazing.

[02:17:38] I almost don't even consider it Star Wars rather an intense, incredibly well-written story of the depths of rebellion against fascism. Truly fantastic. Cheers, all. Santé. Are you – where are you on the – is it – does it – does it, you know – are you happy that it's within this Star Wars world or would you be fine? Like, where are your – what are your feelings about that?

[02:18:04] I think that I prefer it in the Star Wars world just because it makes it more accessible to people and it sort of brings – Good point. Really good point. The themes of the show to an audience that wouldn't have otherwise sought out content about fascism and rebellion. Love that. Love that point. The accessibility of it. Right? Yeah. Because you're going to show up because it's Star Wars and then, oh, hey, creeping fascism. This is what it looks like. Exactly.

[02:18:32] Which is something that people definitely need to be aware of. That's right. It's true. We live in a context. We live in a world. And as we've said several times, we're not a political podcast, but we're also not – we as individuals have our points of view. And we want a place where we can talk about entertainment and enjoyment. But we're also – I think everybody is – all the hosts and co-hosts are keenly aware of the world. Yes. Yeah.

[02:18:59] And if you have any – if you're not sure where we stand, then you're not listening. But here, anyway, we're here to enjoy. So, yeah, great feedback and greed. I don't think – I think this is a perfect show for me. It's spy. It's action. It's character-driven. It's sci-fi. And, oh, it's in the Star Wars world?

[02:19:27] Oh, and it's elevating all other property. It's lifting up so much else. That's just absolutely extraordinary. And it's concurrent and relevant. Yeah. It is truly. It's just amazing character work in it as well. Yep. Well, I think that's it. I think we're going to get in under three hours. So, maybe just around two and a half. So, that's pretty good for such an intense episode. Absolutely. Aaron, thank you so much for making yourself available today.

[02:19:57] It was really fun to talk to you. Thank you so much. And I think you brought some really great points. So, I'm glad to have heard those. Thank you so much for having me today. It's been great to be a part of Delta Squadron and great to get your perspective on everything. What's happening with Radioactive Ramblings? Because you're the host of your own podcast in the Lorehounds Affiliated Network. Over on Radioactive Ramblings, we are doing Fallout Lore currently.

[02:20:22] We're waiting for a show to come out that we feel compelled to cover. And in the meantime, we're going to be putting out weekly Fallout Lore episodes. We are doing a kind of wild wasteland theme where we're talking about all the craziest, weirdest parts of the lore. And we started off with the aliens of the Fallout universe. And we're going into clones next week or I guess this week. Okay. And a bunch of pre-recorded episodes. So, stay tuned for that. Nice. Nice. Good. All right.

[02:20:52] Coolings over there. What else are you guys going to do this year? You're going to, I think, hook up with Alicia on the, oh, what's the John Cena one? Oh, Peacemaker. Yes. Peacemaker. Yeah. Yep. You're going to join her on our feed for that though, right? Yes. Very much looking forward to that. Peacemaker is fantastic. Cool. And I think, is there a boys coming up this year? A boys property? Unclear at this point.

[02:21:18] But if we do get a mainline boys season or a season of Gen V, we are definitely going to be covering that with weekly breakdowns. Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, I'll give my best to everybody over on that podcast. Again, we have a whole others. We have Rings and Rituals. We have Properly Howard. That's Anthony. Rings and Rituals is Marilyn. And in fact, Anthony was just on with Jean and Alicia talking about sinners. So that's cool. So Rings and Rituals is on break, but they'll be back soon.

[02:21:49] And Properly Howard will be back soon. They're also on a break. We've got Rings and Rituals. Alicia has Star Wars Canon Timeline Project. She's putting out some spinoff stuff from this onto that. And then the Wool Shift Dust podcast, which they were doing the silo. And then I think there's a little hiatus, but she's always got plans for that. So keep aware. And then I think that's it. We're just really focused on Star Wars right now. And I know there's more things coming up later this year. I'm excited for Alien Earth.

[02:22:18] You said you're looking forward to Peacemaker. Anything else that you've got on your radar? We might be doing a little special episode over on Radioactive Ramblings about the remaster of Oblivion. Okay. So I meant just any new shows. What are you personally looking forward to later this year? Really? And or after that, it's a little bit of a lull for me. I don't have anything to look forward to after this one. Right. You're just going to sit and contemplate. Exactly.

[02:22:45] What's that meme of the guy sitting on the swing just sort of sitting there? Yes. That's what I'll be. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Remember, season pass. It's only $10. You get ad-free episodes of season one, season two, and you get all the bonus stuff that we're going to be putting out. And I think that we're going to have more and more after as time goes on. Or if you want to support what we do and support the community, support our Discord, support all of our great co-hosts.

[02:23:13] The season pass and regular subscription, we actually acknowledge our co-hosts and they get to actually partake in our revenue. And so any subscription fees, part of that goes to that. And so we really appreciate you guys supporting the community. And so we put a lot of time and effort into the work. So having those financial contributions makes a big deal for us. If you got feedback, starwarsatthelorehounds.com.

[02:23:40] In the notes for this episode is the link tree. You can get to the Discord. You can get to all of our subscription options as well as all of other podcasts. At the end of every podcast, we do like to give a shout out to a handful of people who do go an extra little mile to supporting the podcast. First, shout outs to our Discord server boosters.

[02:24:06] Our number one Discord list on this of people who just support the Discord is a guy named Aaron K. Do you know him, Aaron, by chance? I think that my name is listed in too many places. We need to start removing me from the Matrix. Well, shout out to you. And Tiller the Thriller, Dork of the Ninjas, Doove71, Athena Adjalea, Tina Lestu, Nancy M., Ghost of Perdition, and Radioactive Richard, who I believe is one of your cohort on the Radioactive Ramblings podcast.

[02:24:35] And those are people who subscribe to Discord, and then they get extra bonus bits that they can give to other servers. And that just makes our server a more functional place. To our Loremaster top tier subscribers,

[02:24:49] Samarshan, Michael G., Michelle E., Brian P., SC, Peter OH, Adam S., Nancy M., Doove71, Brian A.B. 63, Frederick H., Sarah L., Gareth C., Matthew M., Sarah M., Andra B., Kwong Yu, Dead Eye Jedi Ba, Bob, Nathan T., Alex V., Sub Zero, Aaron K., Dally V., Mothership 61, Gnarls, Kathy W., Lestu, Jeffrey B., Elisa U., Neal F., Ben B., Scott F., Stephen N., Julia F.,

[02:25:18] Kali S. Ilmaril, forward slash Tim, and forgotten, not forgotten, and forever last, Adrian. Thank you all so very much for continuing to support the podcast. We have people who are subscribed as Loremasters since the day we launched our Patreon. We couldn't do this without you, and we're so grateful to have you in our communities. We're grateful to everyone who just listens. We're just glad that you're here. If you can't subscribe, it's no big deal. It's just the fact that you're listening is awesome.

[02:25:48] Join us on the Discord. It's exquisite and a lot of fun. And I think that's it. I think we can wrap it up, Aaron. Any final thoughts? Thanks again for being here. Thank you for having me, David. It's been a pleasure. Great. Squadron coverage is awesome. I love this format. It was John's idea, and it's worked out really well. Yeah. All right. Until next week, may the Force be with us all. All right.

[02:26:18] I'll put in the credit. Hey, Mark. I was listening to Paramore the other day, and it really made me think about the amygdala and the limbic system. You just made those words up, didn't you? What? Paramore? We're the Nevermind the Music podcast, where one musician and one psychologist talk songwriting and the mind, one song at a time. We'll hear everything from Green Day and Outcast to Stevie Wonder and Dua Lipa. And we mostly try to stay on topic. Except for when we don't want to. Nevermind the Music, wherever you get your podcasts.

[02:26:49] Thank you. Thank you.