[TEASER] Andor - Holocron - On Legends

[00:00:00] This is Jedi Master John Lorehound with a Holocron message for any listeners out there. Welcome to a Lorehounds Holocron bonus episode. Today I'll be talking to Aaron, host of the Legends Lounge podcast where he breaks down all of the Star Wars Legends novels. The first part of our conversation about Star Wars and Andor generally will be open to the public. If you want to hear Aaron's deeper thoughts on the Legends lore in Andor, you can get it with our season pass,

[00:00:25] a one-time $10 fee to get permanent access to everything Andor, or you can listen as a recurring Patreon Supercast subscriber. And as always, send feedback to StarWarsAtTheLoreHounds.com to be a part of the conversation. And with me today for this Holocron bonus episode, this is Aaron from Legends Lounge. Aaron, how you doing? Pretty good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on the show. Can you give us your Star Wars origin story first? So my Star Wars origin story is I'm a child of the

[00:00:54] original trilogy. I was born in 78 and most of my ideas around Star Wars come from watching the VHS tapes of the original trilogy from like 84 through the rest of the 80s. I did not know there were Star

[00:01:18] Wars books and one Christmas I got a Star Wars book. And ever since then, yeah, that's pretty much how my fandom blossomed. And I've been a huge fan ever since. Right. So you got into Star Wars Legends pretty early then in your fandom. Yeah. Not the real old stuff, you know, the comics, the Marvel comics

[00:01:48] from the late 70s. There were a handful of books in the late 70s and early 80s. That was when I was still really young. In Christmas 1991, I got Heir to the Empire as a Christmas gift. Like I said, I did not know that Star Wars was in book form. Did not read it right away because I didn't really know if I wanted to read Star Wars. But I guess by the following summer, by like the summer of 92,

[00:02:15] I always was a pretty big reader. I thought, well, let me try this. And after that, I was hooked. So you were hooked then. And now you have this podcast, Legends Lounge. And can you tell me sort of the premise of that? Well, let me start from the beginning. Prior to the pandemic, through the Song of Ice and Fire books, I became friends with a handful of people from around the country and in

[00:02:39] Canada. And during the pandemic, I made mention that I liked the Star Wars Legends books, specifically the X-Wing books. And a couple of them said, well, they liked those too. They had read them before. So we originally thought, well, we're not doing anything. Let's do a podcast about the

[00:03:05] X-Wing books in Legends. Well, that never came to fruition. Life gets in the way. They were busy with other things. But I still thought, I'd like to talk about some of these stories in Legends. And it was also to kind of push myself to finish all the novels. I'm not much of a comic reader,

[00:03:30] but I did want to finish all the Legends novels. So I thought, well, why don't I just do this myself? And I started right at the very end of 2020. I think I had one episode was like right before the new year of 2021. And then after that, I'm still going strong. I did not anticipate still doing this

[00:03:57] podcast at this point. I thought that maybe after six months, I would get tired of it. But I'm still going strong. And I get emails from all over the world. I've had some guests on to do specific series in Legends. And like I said, it is pushing me to finish the last handful of novels that I haven't

[00:04:23] read. I had not read 19 of the novels when I started. I have five left that I have not read. One of those is the last novel in the Legends timeline. There are a handful of comic books that take place after that. But the very last novel in the Legends timeline, I have not read yet. So I'm going to make that my final episode. And the first time I read it is going to be the last

[00:04:52] episode of the podcast. If I've got the time right, it should be in April of 2027. Okay. So you've got a couple more years to go. And that's good because I'm still catching up on yours. And I want to read that last one with you. Yeah, I discovered your podcast when I was reading the Darth Bane trilogy. And I was like, this is good stuff. I need to hear someone talk about this. And we cover mostly TV stuff over here. We do some book stuff, but not really a lot

[00:05:22] of Star Wars books. Although my co-host Alicia has her own podcast, the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast that goes a little deeper into some of the comics and the books. But again, she does the canon stuff. And so not Legends. And you were one of the only podcasts I found out there that was like, we are going to do Legends and only Legends. And for people who don't know, who are, is, you know, our listeners range from obsessive about Star Wars to, you know,

[00:05:47] dipping their toes in just, just watching Andor. But, but for those who don't know, what are Legends? So Legends are the Star Wars stories that occurred before the Walt Disney, before Walt Disney bought

[00:06:08] Lucasfilm. Except for the six films, the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and the Clone Wars animated series, the one with Ahsoka. Those are the only things prior to the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm that are considered canon. The stories, all the other stories, whether it's books, comics,

[00:06:36] stuff people get out of the role-playing games or video games. If it was before, what is it? I believe it's October of 2012. Those are Legends. And I like both. I like both Legends and canon. I think there's good stories in both. I think there's some stories in both that I don't like. But I know there are

[00:07:02] sometimes people that have an issue with the rebranding of the old expanded universe, which is what it was originally called, to Legends. I completely understand why Disney had to do it. Right. You know, if they made movies afterwards, it was going to conflict with these books. You know, George Lucas himself, we know that he had outlines for a movie seven, a movie eight,

[00:07:28] and a movie nine, and maybe even went so far as to have a treatment for seven. Well, those were going to conflict with all these books. So I understand why they had to make these legends. I just look at these stories as the folklore that the characters in Star Wars, well, the people who live in the Star

[00:07:55] Wars universe tell about the characters in Star Wars. That's the way I look at them. Yeah, I like that framing a lot. I mean, I've noticed just from my very sparse reading of legends and just, you know, reading Wookieepedia articles about the legends aspects, especially the ones you brought up, and we'll talk about that in a bit, how much this still influences the current canon, right? Like these are not forgotten at all. The people who are creating Star Wars today,

[00:08:24] are clearly versed in this and are pulling the parts that they want to from it. I mean, you even see Darth Bane in the Clone Wars cartoon, right? You see there's vague references to maybe the Old Republic is canon. Maybe it's not. There's all these things that are like, are we going to do this or not? And so I think it'll be really interesting to talk about in a show like this, in a show like Andor, that we're pre-recording this before season two. So if we say something

[00:08:54] that you're like, that didn't happen, then yeah, we don't know. But in a show like Andor, where someone like Tony Gilroy is not really steeped in this, but he definitely has people working for him that are steeped for it, you know that he's going to be putting in little seeds of this rich culture that has developed around this. Sure. And I would say the cool part about this time period is,

[00:09:23] at least in Legends, there aren't many stories that take place between the end of Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, and Episode 4, A New Hope. It was a time period that for the longest time,

[00:09:43] Lucasfilm would not let the authors write about. So while there's a rich history in the Old Republic, there's a rich history in, well, I guess not a history, but there's a lot of books about stuff that take place after Return of the Jedi. But this time period, there's not much in Legends. So most of

[00:10:12] the stuff that we see in canon, a lot of times, that's the first time any of us, even us Legends fans, are experiencing these stories. And that's what I find exciting. That is exciting. Now, moving to Andor, and I just want to mention before we go off your podcast, we will be including the link in the show notes for those who want to check it out. So please, everyone, go subscribe and check out some episodes of Legends Lounge. That'll be easy to find in the show notes. Or just look it up in a podcast player. It's an easy enough name.

[00:10:42] So turning to Andor, what were your thoughts on Season 1? Is this a thumbs up for you? Yes. This was an easy thumbs up for me. This is my favorite time period in Star Wars. I generally like the stories revolving around the rebellion against the Empire, specifically from the non-Force users.

[00:11:10] A lot of times more than I like stories that involve the Force. So this was an easy sell for me. You know, unless the writing was terrible, which with Tony Gilroy writing the show, I didn't think that was going to happen. I was going to like this. I really enjoyed Rogue One.

[00:11:31] I was up for Andor right when I saw it advertised at that Disney Investor Day in late, what was that? Late 2019. Yeah, that's interesting because I think this one almost went under people's radar because I think this was after Book of Boba Fett, right? So this was people are watching to Star Wars TV. They're like, ah, there's some ups and there's some downs. This seems like a spinoff of a spinoff.

[00:11:58] Is it going to be good? But it has good people in it. Like, are we going to get an interesting story? And then I feel like it was a sleeper hit, right? People at first weren't even watching it. I saw. And then all of a sudden people just started like really hopping on the bandwagon. By the end of the season, it was one of the biggest shows on. Sure. It's the first season garnered a ton of critical acclaim.

[00:12:21] It's got a pretty sizable hardcore fan base. Unfortunately, if you look at the numbers, it was the lowest rated of the Star Wars live action shows on Disney+. Yeah. Hopefully, people have found it since it originally aired. And hopefully season two, hopefully the ratings go up for season two.

[00:12:48] I think they will because, you know, you have even shows like Severance. Severance in season one, a lot of people weren't watching it. And we just covered it and huge numbers are watching it. You know, this is now one of the biggest shows in the zeitgeist right now. And I think a lot of people were like that on season two, on season one of Andor. I will say also, we're not at risk of cancellation here, right? Because this is definitely the conclusion of the story.

[00:13:13] And so I'm okay with that. Even if this does not that great numbers, I'm like, I'd like it to do better so that we get more stories like this. But at least we will get the conclusion of the story. I mean, I don't know about you, but I was devastated that the Acolyte was canceled last year. I thought we were going to get some really interesting stuff coming out of that. I agree. There were some interesting things in the Acolyte.

[00:13:33] It was not my favorite of the live action shows on Disney Plus, but I thought there was enough in there that they could expand upon what the general audience did find interesting in season two. I think that is one thing, just a tiny little tangent. I think that is one thing we see with streaming sometimes.

[00:13:58] I remember when I was younger, when I was a little kid 30 years ago, TV shows most of the time didn't start out too well, but they were getting a whole season. And during that season, the writers figured out what worked, what didn't work. And a lot of times then by the second season, third season, fourth season, now it's hit its stride. And sometimes with these streaming shows, you don't get that chance.

[00:14:24] If you're not a hit right away, you don't get a chance to improve in that second season. I totally agree. I've said similar things on our podcast. Season one of The Office wasn't that great. It was pretty good, but it's not great. And then season two of The Office is fantastic, and season three is even better. We don't give that breathing room like we used to. But hopefully we start to more in Star Wars. I have some hope, maybe.

[00:14:53] But like you said, at least for this show, we know where it's ending up. Tony Gilroy says it ends with Cassian Andor arriving at the Ring of Khafrene, where we see him at the very beginning of Rogue One. If you're on the public feed, that's it for this episode. But you can get the second half of the episode super easily by going to the show notes, clicking on that season pass, and signing up for permanent access to all of our bonus content for Andor. Or you can subscribe to Patreon or Supercast to get all of our bonus content for all of our shows.

[00:15:21] Either way, we'll see you for more Andor soon. The Lorehounds podcast is produced and published by The Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com slash contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash thelorehounds. And connect with us on Twitter at thelorehounds. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening.