On this episode of X-Ray Vision, Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight try to buy some death sticks! First in Previously On (2:43), Jason and Rosie discuss the plethora of news that came out of Star Wars Celebration, including the Andor trailer and more, as well as address the racist social media comments toward Kenobi star Moses Ingram and how LucasFilm and Disney handled the situation. In the Airlock (17:36), Jason and Rosie dive deep (deeeep) into the first three episodes of Obi Wan Kenobi – recapping episodes 1, 2, and 3, exploring Obi-Wan’s relationships to the other characters, theorizing about what will come next in the series, and analyzing the ways in which some characters would know Darth Vader’s identity. Then, in Nerd Out (1:38:56) Heidi pitches us on The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

 

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Send a short pitch and 2-3 minute voice memo recording to xray@crooked.com that answers the following questions: 1) How did you get into/discover your ‘Nerd Out?’ (2) Why should we get into it too? (3) What’s coming soon in this world that we can look forward to or where can we find it?

 

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Listener’s Guide to X-Ray Vision

Lumpy – aka Lumpawaroo; a Wookie child and the son of Chewbacca.

 

Doctor Aphra – An archeologist with a hot and cold relationship to Lord Vader.

 

Darth Vader (2017) – by Charles Soule, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, Joe Caramagna, & David Curiel, as well as others. Issue #12 is the one Jason mentions by name.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

 

Jason Concepcion: The force is strong in this one. And that’s why we’re warning you that this episode contains spoilers, folks. Big spoilers for the first three episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Some discussion about the Darth Vader, the 2017 Darth Vader comic. Some other Star Wars comics and some legends lore also plus theories for the rest of the show. Minor spoilers for Star Wars Rebels and The Mandalorian. So be warned, there’s a big, big, big Star Wars conversation coming up next. Hello. My name is Jason Concepcion, and welcome to a fully Star Wars edition of X-ray Vision, the Crooked Media podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. In today’s episode, Star Wars nothing but Star Wars, where Star Wars and all the stuff. All the news. Which we’re going to run by, to be fair, from Star Wars celebration, including snippets from The Mandalorian, Reveals about Andor, Jedi Survivor or the sequel to Jedi Fallen Order of the Ahsoka Trailer. All that stuff we’re going to talk about. We’re going to speed by it because, we’re going to dive deep into Obi-Wan Kenobi parts one, two and three, mostly two and three. But we’re going to dove deep into it. We’re going to talk about all the stuff, because there’s folks are so much to talk about in our Nerd Out section, a listener pitches on The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. And of course, if you want to jump around, check out the timestamps in our show notes that have all the details about all the topics that we talk about. And of course. Joining me now to talk about all the things involved in Star Wars is the number one comics encyclopedia, the person who knows about legends, unlike myself. She’s the great. She’s the powerful. Rosie Knight. Rosie, how are you?

 

Rosie Knight: Hello. It’s me. I’m feelin so much better. I’m so happy to be here.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s like anytime, if it’s not comics, it’s like any time that there’s something that other people probably don’t care about. Rosie knows it. It’s like legends. But guess what? She knows everything about an ewok or a savage press like and this is, I have to say, is going to be a a legends heavy episode.

 

Jason Concepcion: So let’s get into it, folks. Star Wars celebration was held over Memorial Day weekend over in Anaheim. And let’s dive into some of the announcements. We’ll probably dive into these and more detail oriented way at a later date. But let’s kind of run through the highlights now, starting with, oh, gosh, let’s start with the Star Wars Jedi Survivor trailer. This is, of course, the sequel to 2019 Jedi Fallen Order, a game that is harder than you expect it to be when you start playing it. They introduced us to Cal Kestis, the only partially trained Jedi acolyte on the run from the Inquisitors. They do a bang up job of trying to get him. More on that later and of course introduces his alter to his wonderful Droid buddy, BD-1. BD-1 who I absolutely love a two legged robot. And.

 

Rosie Knight: Adore.

 

Jason Concepcion: This trailer looks great Can’t wait to play it. I love Jedi fallen order it it gave us a lot of background on on the Inquisitors something that is very relevant right now. And I and I’m excited for this. Your thoughts, Rosie?

 

Rosie Knight: Yes, same. I also think this is this is like one of the things that was a stealth and highly anticipated thing, going into this. Like this was the one where even like Chris had said it, like multiple people were like, I know everything’s going to be happening with TV and film, but I want to know if we’re getting a sequel. Like, what’s the info? We haven’t had to buy it for a long time. Here’s the trailer. So yeah. No, I’m stoked. I love PD one, I love Droid.

 

Jason Concepcion: We got a Bad Batch. Season two trailer. It is returning the fall our our good friends have a new look with some new armor and folks. This series will feature appearances from Emperor Palpatine, our good friend Palpy, who is, of course, terrorizing the galaxy at this particular time in galactic history.

 

Rosie Knight: Shocking.

 

Jason Concepcion: Our good friend, Commander Cody. And the big news. The big, big news, surviving order 66, folks.

 

Rosie Knight: Wow.

 

Jason Concepcion: You know him from the Clone Wars. It’s young Wookie Jedi in training sensation, the youngling Gungi has made it. He survived.

 

Rosie Knight: Wow.

 

Jason Concepcion: This is exactly what I care about.

 

Rosie Knight: Absolutley. This is like the biggest news from Star Wars celebration to me. I’m like a number one Lumpy stan.

 

Jason Concepcion: I love Lumpy.

 

Rosie Knight: If you’ve never seen him, just Google Lumpy and you’ll see why I love him. So Gungi is like the that’s like the spiritual successor to the Lumpy throne. So I am incredibly excited about this. I also feel like. His inclusion specifically and kind of where it is a hint of where the Star Wars shows are going , Obi Wan included, which is this very deep seeded interest in the younglings and in padawans. That’s right. And then and that is like. So that and that was all the things that they hinted with that, you know, like I think that was like a kids show that they’re doing called Young Jedi Adventures, which kind of sounds almost like Young Jedi Academy, which is a big legends book. But I think that they’re really interested in this very under spoken about in canon part of the Star Wars lore, which is these kids who are taken away from their families to become Jedi. And what does that mean? And I’m really excited because I think that’s a that’s a very fertile ground for kind of emotional and fun and epic Star Wars storytelling.

 

Jason Concepcion: I couldn’t agree more. And you are exactly right. We are exploring in detail the events surrounding Order 66 from different perspectives, which is, of course, a massive tectonic shift in galactic history. And it’s been really interesting to watch. And, of course, that theme continues in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Up next, we get a trailer for Andor, which premieres August 31st, Showrun by Rogue One writer Tony Gilroy.

 

Rosie Knight: Tony Gilroy. The script saving icon script and we’re bringing him in. Bringing him in.

 

Jason Concepcion: The script saving icon of Rogue One. If you catch me on the right day. Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie. And it will.

 

Rosie Knight: I’ll never forget.

 

Jason Concepcion: This. I just watched it.By the way. I watched it over the weekend because I’m like, I want to watch it again. It tells the story of Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, the the kind of like morally gray but very dedicated rebel spy, who is, of course, one of the heroes involved in stealing the Death Star plans. This trailer just looks great. I don’t know what it’s going to be about, but it looks really good.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah, it looks so good. And something I think is very interesting that I would really love to see this dig into more and I think is one of the strengths of Rogue One, which also is very high up on my list and sometimes hits number one. Rogue One did a really brilliant job of talking about the wreckage and horrors wrought by both the rebellion and higher echelons of the rebellion and the empire. And kind of like that really deep truth of who were the people who got the medals?

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight: At the end of the Star Wars trilogy. And who were the people who died so that that could happen. And this trailer seems to be leaning in to that notion of. The Empire sucks. But who are these people in charge who are leaving this to these young fighters, to these people who have to grovel and beg and. And I’m really interested. I love that socio economic aspect of the Star Wars. And I, I think this era has, you know, they got into it in the last Jedi that both people sell them by the weapons, you know, and I’m I’m very interested to see where it goes because that was the main takeaway from this trailer was kind of like I felt like they were hinting that we were going to see this kind of underclass who had allowed the rebellion to become what they are.

 

Jason Concepcion: I mean, that’s what so fascinates me about Rogue One. One of the things is this idea that. You know, a character like Sw Gerrera who.

 

Rosie Knight: Mm hmm.

 

Jason Concepcion: You know, if you. You can easily frame him as someone who went too far as a terrorist, even. On the other hand, he was kind of right about everything, about the nature of the empire. And he was right early before anybody else was even thinking that way. And ultimately, you kind of needed a figure like that. Paranoid, maybe, willing to act when no one else was, in order to spark the thing that would end up being the rebellion. And I love exploring those spaces. I just love exploring that side of it, you know?

 

Rosie Knight: Absolutely. Especially, you know, it goes back to that conversation from like one of the most iconic fan conversations in Kevin Smith’s Clerks, right? What they do, what the rebellion do, what Luke does, they they blow up the Death Star. They kill so many people. They commit terrorism that well, it could be argued it was terrorism in under the guise of a chopper.

 

Jason Concepcion: A chopper level body count.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. Like, how is that different to what I saw is Saw’s version is just unsanctioned. Right?

 

Jason Concepcion: Right. The Saw didn’t ask permission. He just went and did it.

 

Rosie Knight: Exactly.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight: And I find that to be a very interesting space. And Saw has always been about the politics. It’s always been about the bureaucracy, how it works, how it happens. And I love that we’re now in an era where we’re seeing that from a street level, not just from a  Galactic Senate level.

 

Jason Concepcion: So very, very excited about this and very, very excited about the first look at the Ahsoka series. This, of course, building off of Ahsoka’s appearances in Mando and the book of Boba Fett. But after months and months and months of rumor, we have a casting news with Natasha Liu Bordizzo, australian actress is going to play rebel Ghost’s stalwart Sabine Wren. We can expect a live action, Hera Syndu.

 

Rosie Knight: Oh my god.

 

Jason Concepcion: One of my favorite captains of any ship in Star Wars history. And again, give you come to me on the right day. That is my Star Wars wife who we see.  I love Hera.

 

Rosie Knight: Also like can I just say that this also means speaking of legends. This also means that we might get a live action version of her son Jason. And his name is like. I remember watching I wrote about those last two episodes, Slashfilm with a colleague of mine, and we just that was like our biggest freak out. Everything that those last two episodes of Rebels are probably my favorite TV of all time.

 

Jason Concepcion: Oh, it’s so good.

 

Rosie Knight: Like the World Beyond World. It changed my life. I still can’t believe they haven’t uilt it further into the live action.

 

Jason Concepcion: World Beyond World did more maybe than anything. You know, post legends in terms of expanding. Our perception of what the force is, how it interacts with living creatures. Just an incredible episode of Star Wars television. And, you know, you know, Rebels is my favorite Star Wars. I think that in terms of like a run of Star Wars stories, it’s my favorite because, you know, season two on is like incredible. The Inquisitors, again, incompetent. They can’t catch anybody. They can’t catch a half trade, Ezra Bridger, who we expect to see in this series. They can’t catch a unsighted, Kanan. They can’t catch anybody. But that’s fine. We’ll get into that more. And Obi-Wan. Very, very excited for the Ahsokae series.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion: And in the lastly in in no one is surprised news. Obi-Wan Kenobi star, Moses Ingram, plays Inquisitor Riva was his is only the latest actor talent person involved with Star Wars person of Color involved with Star Wars to suffer racist abuse on social media. This follows of course, the experiences of John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, events that kind of went unremarked upon by the larger corporate powers and their colleagues that Lucasfilm is very, in very welcome fashion, is pushback about this tweeting from the official Star Wars account. Quote, We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Stars family and excited for the Riva story to unfold. If anyone tends to make her feel in any way unwelcome. We have only one thing to say, we resist. And then even more directly, there are more than 20 million Siniteen species in the Star Wars galaxy. Don’t choose to be racist. Ewan McGregor also posted in support of of Moses. And all I have to say is, one, this is not surprising, you know, for a fandom as large as Star Wars with a history of kind of like this kind of thing happening, it’s unsurprising this happened. Star Wars is such a big fandom if even if it’s only 0.005% of the fan population that that engages in this toxic behavior. It’s still a lot because the fan base is so huge and it is really, really welcome to see Lucasfilm push back so strongly against it. Because, you know, honestly, we don’t need those people. They can. They can go fuck themselves. Any thoughts, Rosie?

 

Rosie Knight: I just agree completely. I love to see Ewin also standing alongside her and his message was really good. This is just the bare minimum of what any of these faces should be doing. It’s a shame we have to deal with it, but it is the place where we’re at now. And Moses is amazing and Riva is amazing. We’re going to get into why she’s such an interesting character.

 

Jason Concepcion: And let’s do that right now. Up next in the Airlock.

 

[AD]

 

Jason Concepcion: Stepping out of the Airlock. Into the twice baked beans of tattooing that are filled with ancient fish meat, to discuss the first three parts of the Disney Plus Limited series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, we start this speed light speed recap with part one. We open in really shocking and bracing emotionally like devastating fashion with the massacre at the Jedi Temple during Order 66, we see the Jedi padawans falling, their teachers attempting to defend them, but all in vain. And we fast forward ten years later, we meet the Inquisitor. As we meet the Grand Inquisitor, we meet Fifth Brother, we meet Third Sister, Riva, and we see them interrogating locals on tattooing as they search for the various remnants of the Jedi diaspora who have fled the massacre and are still out there somewhere. Young Jedi named Nari, played by Benny Safdie, the part of the directing duo, the Safdie Brothers.

 

Rosie Knight: We Love Him.

 

Jason Concepcion: Rescues the canteen owner from Riva and he goes on the run. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi is his fully rejected. His name, Obi-Wan comes Jedi name. He only goes by Ben. Now, it’s not all he’s rejected. We come to find out over the course of these three episodes that his connection with the force is extremely weak. Very, very weak, in part consciously, because clearly Ben has been so traumatized by the events in his own failure to stop the events of some ten years past, that he has willingly disconnected from the force. Now he’s earning his his his way as a salaried worker, butchering sandwhale meat and living in a cave, watching young Luke Skywalker from afar and trying to protect him from from a distance, occasionally making contact with his brother. Let’s not jump head, but Owen Lars, like only occasionally making contact with Owen Lars just to check in and Owen of course wants very little to do.

 

Rosie Knight: And I just want to say Owen Lars.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: Maybe the sassiest man in the galaxy for he is delivering some sick burns.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight: Which Obi-Wan Kenobi definitely deserves. If you’ve ever watched Star Wars and I know that this is like a 5050 split, 50% of people think Obi-Wan is the coolest guy in the world. I understand. I get it. The other 50% are like, What is wrong with this guy? He is useless. Why didn’t he tell anyone anything? He is like betraying people constantly. Like he is just not on it. And you know what? This is a show that has given you an in character and its Owen Lars, who’s just like, What the fuck? Like, please leave my child and my family alone because my brother is dead and I’m just done. And it is.

 

Jason Concepcion: It’s great.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s great to see it.

 

Jason Concepcion: It’s fantastic. Nari are on the run. A force sensitive ex Jedi perhaps comes to Obi-Wan. Excuse me, Ben. He’s undercover. That’s right. He’s Ben. Even though many have said this, but Ben, stop dressing like a Jedi if you don’t want to become recognizable.

 

Rosie Knight: This guy. He  couldn’t, he couldn’t dress more like a Jedi if he tried. And I’m sure that that is, like, narratively is like he has that connection. Maybe he doesn’t know how to dress any other way because he was stolen at birth by Jedi eyes and raised in robes. But seriously, you guys, everyone is walking around this town being like, Oh, where’s the Jedi? And this guy is just wearing Jedi robes.

 

Jason Concepcion: Just put on some pants. Just put on some pants and a shirt.

 

Rosie Knight: You know what? Even a robe that’s, like, purple.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah. Something

 

Rosie Knight: So even a robe that’s not brown. The brown robe is too much, man.

 

Jason Concepcion: So Nari he comes to to Ben and is like Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

 

Rosie Knight: He’s like, master, master. They’re like, Let’s do it, man. We got to help people.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah, we’ve got to do something like, yes, finally. Like, you know, it’s been ten long years. The empire is is it seems unshakable. We have to do something. And Ben is like, nope, hey, good luck to you. Wish you well, but I’m out of the game. Sorry about it. And it’s heartbreaking to watch this because this is where this is how shattered and traumatized Ben is. And then we go from here to Alderaan. Where in a absolutely shocking, at the time for me, development, we meet the young Princess Leia Organa who is precocious not one to listen to any kind of of a direction from any kind of adult figure. And just loves being out here running around in the woods. I was not expecting this and it was amazing.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s so amazing. And I have to give a big shout out because if you heard, if you listened last week, you would have had us talking about Kathleen Kennedy saying we can never recast the character, duh duh duh. I want to give Kathleen 500 stars for her incredible red herring interview that she gave to Vanity Fair because this. I was like, The only thing I want in my life is a young Princess Leia show. How will we ever get that if we can’t recast? And someone at Lucasfilm was like, Haha, well, here you go. I mean, I this show is so good even by this point, which you’re like 15 or 20 minutes in. I was like, okay, Ewan is a workhorse. You’re selling this like, this is unbelievable. But the moment that we’re in Alderaan and you see these kind of like people dressing a young princess in this costuming that it’s so obviously Leia.

 

Jason Concepcion: I couldn’t belive it.

 

Rosie Knight: I was just I immediately, like, teared up. And then when you see this character in this this actress who plays our Vivien Lyra Blair, she is like one, definitely named after Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. And two, like she is just so evocative of everything that made Leia so great. She has like this attitude and just.

 

Jason Concepcion: Big attitude.

 

Rosie Knight: This sassy, but chill and also, like, doesn’t give a fuck. Like, it’s it’s so good. And I can’t believe that Disney stealthed us once again. But instead of baby Yoda, this time it’s baby Leia. And I love it.

 

Jason Concepcion: I love it so much. We meet Leia. She’s running around in the forest. We get what I suspect, I think we both suspect, are meant to be hints of her very instinctively using the force as she runs around at play. And later on, despite being directed to not run away and go run through the woods again, she goes and does it anyway and is waylaid by a group of bounty hunters led by Vek crew, a.k.a. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s quickly revealed that Knockers gang was hired by Riva, of the Inquisitors, to lure Kenobi out of hiding, which is our first hint that Riva is obsessed, for whatever reason, with finding Kenobi, Bail Organa. Jimmy Smits still collecting checks after all these years. This guy did not.

 

Rosie Knight: Jimmy,They knew it.

 

Jason Concepcion: They knew it. Jimmy could not look more thrilled to appear on screen in yet another Star Wars story. I absolutely love it for my guy. He contacts his old friend, gets a message, is offering Obi-Wan saying, listen, I need you, I need you. You’re the only one that I know who can who can do this? Please help me and Obi-Wan, who has spent all these years trying to reject his identity as Jedi’s connection to the force, gets on a transport with his light saber to head off and try and and find Princess Leia. That brings us yeah. Part two.

 

Rosie Knight: And that’s like another one of my favorite moments in this show that I think really speaks to how these Star Wars TV shows are building out. The context and language of these shows is like at first Obi-Wan tells Bail, he’s like, No, no, I’ve got to look after the boy. And Bail says, The thing that every single person in the universe has been saying for so long is like the girl matters, too. Like she is also your responsibility. This is an important person. And we know that that was something that has always Leia’s always been a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy. But as we’ve gotten later in the kind of franchise’s history and more contemporary, more and more people are saying, I want to know more about her. Like, Why wasn’t that? Why wasn’t she the chosen one? She was force sensitive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I kind of love that. Once again, this nods to that conversation and it calls Obi-Wan out. And you know what he does? He does the right thing and he gets on that transport. And Episode two.

 

Jason Concepcion: Obi arrives on Daiyu, which is an urbanized planet where all off world communication and signals are essentially blocked. This is a crime planet where anything goes spice stealing, spice trading, you know, creature alien, human trafficking. Obi walking down the street recognizes an old veteran of the what appears to be the 501st clone troopers.

 

Rosie Knight: This got me so hard.

 

Jason Concepcion: Oh my God, I was not expecting this and there’s that moment and this is why Ewan McGregor is so good. There’s a moment where. It’s all on his face. He’s like. It’s this connection of, oh, here’s a here’s a person. You know, a clone of a person from a group that I worked so closely with for many years. We fought side by side from planet to planet, bled together. But I’m terrified because if this clone recognizes me, boom or an Order 66 will retrigger. And yeah, I’m in trouble. And you’re sitting there wondering, like, God will will he recognize? Will it trigger?

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And they just pulled Temuera. They were like, Temuera, come over here and play this clone. And I was like, yes, finally. Like a recognition of that connection. Yeah. It’s I mean, Ewan is just pulling the heavy duty. He is so good in this role. It’s just it’s mind blowing to see it. It’s so emotionally driven and so much of it weighs on those close ups. On his face of the storytelling that he puts across in like the slightest facial expression.

 

Jason Concepcion: And it really is like, you know, delving into this period. Between a new hope. After the Clone Wars. It is an absolutely tragic period where, you know, if you’re a surviving Jedi one, you’re terrified, you’re afraid. Two, all you can think about is, how did we fuck this up? How did we fail like this?

 

Rosie Knight: Yep.

 

Jason Concepcion: Palpatine was right there and we missed it. All of us. Like Yoda missed it.

 

Rosie Knight: Yoda missed it.

 

Jason Concepcion: It. Obi-Wan Big missed it. Everybody missed it. Just an unbelievable an unbelievably tragic time. And it’s and you can really feel it with Ewan McGregor.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And I feel like that moment of having the clone trooper there is like such a great recognition of the real cost of that war. Yeah, like, it’s not just the Jedi’s who felt it, like it’s the clone trooper.

 

Jason Concepcion: Clones have been thrown away, too. We don’t even need them anymore. You know, we’re on World Stormtrooper time now like that. You can get rid of these clones. We don’t need them.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s like this vet, these veterans who have been abandoned by the empire, by the people who use them in this war, is there’s so much texture and like these little nods that give this a real they real add to that like tragic element of this period.

 

Jason Concepcion: Obi is met by a kid named Jacob. It’s kind of like a street smart, young, street urchin kid. He’s like, Do you need a Jedi? I know a Jedi. If you’re looking for, you know, you’re you know, you need something, some kind of mission accomplished. Guess what? I know a Jedi. Obi’s like that sounds interesting. Yeah. I’d like to meet a Jedi. It turns out this Jedi named Haja Estree really just a con man. He’s doing good, helping, you know, people get off planet when they really need to get off planet. But, you know, he’s doing it for money. And of course, he has no affinity with the force. He just has some decent sleight of hand skills and really powerful magnets. Obi-Wan exposes Haja forces him to help him find Leia. Later, Obi, a still somewhat tentative, tentatively in contact with the force, manages to follow his feelings to a spice lab run by some kind of organized crime group. He gets in there, blows up some beakers for distraction, heads deeper into the building, has a fight with a death, Dathomirian and a human. And then he finds this room that he’s looking for. But of course, it’s a trap. Veknoc crew and his henchies show up, they start beating the shit out of Obi-Wan. But then Obi-Wan throws a flask of spice on the ground and puts on a mask so he doesn’t get high off spice and he escapes. Finally, deeper in the complex he finds Leia and the young princess is like, Who the fuck are you? Like, Who are you? I don’t know you at all. You’re trying to rescue me. You’re one fucking guy. Where’s the army? Why is it my dad? My dad sent the army in here and it’s a wonderful mirror of the events of a New Hope. Later on, you know, a Luke Skywalker will come to rescue and be like you. You’re here to rescue me. And an equally interesting mirror of, you know, here’s here’s here’s Ben Kenobi rescuing a Skywalker. But it’s not the one you expect. It’s Princess Leia.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And it’s I know that a lot. Like some people had been like, oh, isn’t this like a plot hole? Because, like, before, she just mentioned that she he knew his that her dad. Yeah. But actually, if you think about it, in that moment when Luke comes in and he says Ben Kenobi, she knows who that is. Yeah. In A New Hope. She doesn’t need it to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, which is what she says on her little, you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi you’re my only hope. I think this actually feels very natural for that.

 

Jason Concepcion: It felt very natural to me.

 

Rosie Knight: And so it feels like it adds. It’s it’s additive, you know. It feels like add something to the original trilogy. And also, I really think something their seeding really well here with that question that Leia asks where she says, you know, where’s the army? They’re seeding this understanding that Leia is going to come to and we.

 

Jason Concepcion: Have to fight.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion: We have to build the army.

 

Rosie Knight: We have to fight. And also as well. Why can’t my dad send an army?

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes..

 

Rosie Knight: Because she’s starting to realize that there’s something about her lineage, her family, that makes her vulnerable. And it’s very it’s very interesting. And I this fits so well with the new books and the kind of core canon they’ve built in about her as a teenager. And also a lot of expanded universe stuff where she was like a great a great warrior and a great leader as well. So, yeah, it’s just so good. And I love her and Ewan are so good together. The chemistry is like exactly there and we get so many good moments in this episode, in the next episode where Ben is just seeing Annie and PADMÉ when he looks at her and it is just fucking great. It will make you cry.

 

Jason Concepcion: It gets you absolutely in the heart. The two slip away in kind of disguise. Obi, again, still dressed like a Jedi. Because this fucking guy can’t help it. He can’t help it. Riva finds a vet and of course, the people that she hired to do this kidnaping job, and she finds them absolutely diluted on spice and she realizes how Obi-Wan must be cloned. Obi and Leia are heading for a spaceport across town. Meanwhile, the Grand Inquisitor and the fourth sister in the fifth brother are fucking pissed. Riva’s obsession with Kenobi is getting to be a problem. It’s a big mess. Here she is. She engineered this fucking kidnaping. The Empire doesn’t need a diplomatic crisis with Alderaan right now. Like, why are you making waves at that level? You feel like you shouldn’t be doing that. Riva’s like, listen in what I find to be a very interesting dialog. Riva says listen, I went in the archives, I found a link between Obi and Organa. And I,  that’s how I realized that. The Princess would be the perfect bait to lure Obi Wan, one of the most dangerous Jedi, still alive. Now, they didn’t specify what archive. Right. But when I hear archive so the Grand Inquisitor a back in the in the Darth Vader comics the 2017 Darth Vader comics. Not the not the 2020. We learn that the Grand Inquisitor, his turn to the dark side, which was done in secret. Darth had no idea about it that the Emperor did this like as his own pet project and then revealed it to Darth. And was like, hey, you can lead these guys, the Grand Inquisitor, the way in to turning him. In addition to the torture, the copius tortue they all underwent,.

 

Rosie Knight: The massive torture.

 

Jason Concepcion: That they all underwent. Was that the Grand Inquisitor, you know, used to be a Jedi Padawan. And he was like mad that the the lead archivist of the Jedi archives, Jedi librarian Jocasta Nu, wouldn’t let him read the books he wanted. He wanted all this knowledge. But of course, that’s not meant for everybody. And Jocasta Nu was like, No. And that was like kind of his way in. So when he rose to be the Grand Inquisitor and they had access to the Jedi archives, like he would just spend evenings in there reading everything that he wasn’t supposed to read and luxuriating in it. All of which now later on this is getting off track a little bit but I’m just going to later on, Jocasta Nu, in  absolutely clutch move would delete the entire Jedi archive rather than it fall into the hands of the empire is very very early on and I wonder, you know, understanding how the Grand Inquisitor feels about Archive, the Jedi Archive and probably knowledge in general, it’s very interesting to me that Riva would have access to stuff like this where she’d be able to find these clues and it. And I think we are certainly meant to wonder if this is the Jedi archive, right?

 

Rosie Knight: Absolutely. And also, I think that what we’re getting into now, I mean, this was very heavily in Boba Fett. It’s been hinted at in The Mandalorian. It’s definitely the kind of space that we’re in on Daiyu. This is a cyberpunk era of Star Wars that if that were a Jedi archives, somebody hacked them and somebody has a copy. If that were Jedi archives, the Grand Inquisitor may well have downloaded the things he wanted from before then. The question is how? They’re doing something really clever with Riva. One of the biggest issues in a lot of Disney stuff, Star Wars stuff, whatever is like when they cast person of color, they make them a villain and they’re like irredeemable and they kill them or they make them a good guy and they kill them. But like with Riva, they’re doing something that they never really do, which is Riva has her own reason for being after Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 

Jason Concepcion: And thta’s the mystery.

 

Rosie Knight: And being an Inquisitor is really just a, it’s like a step to getting Kenobi rather than she doesn’t really care about the empire. She doesn’t bow down to the the Inquisitors. She doesn’t really play by their rules. She has this secondary life. They talk about her being from the gutter, you know, and she has these connections in the Daiyu underworld.

 

Jason Concepcion: Which I took, and I’m sure you did, to mean that she, even more than the other Inquisitors, had gone through the Jedi training process, maybe further than the others.

 

Rosie Knight: Yes.

 

Jason Concepcion: Was taken later, perhaps buried perhaps even was one of these kids that survived 66.

 

Rosie Knight: Yes.

 

Jason Concepcion: And and that is why they look down on her so much is because she is more firmly connected with the Jedi.

 

Rosie Knight: And the Force, because they say to her that her skills and her powers were what got her the standing. And we see later in this episode, she’s like a wild queen. But also she interestingly that kind of mirroring two aspects of that. They’re mirroring an aspect that both she and Leia seem to share, which is an almost telepathic empathy where they can read situations and that’s a version of the force we haven’t seen a lot but has been hinted at. And yeah, I definitely think the opening of the first episode, which we talked about briefly, where we saw the younglings being massacred, I think Riva survived that.

 

Jason Concepcion: I think so too.

 

Rosie Knight: And I think that is why she is upset with Kenobi or has this deeper connection to Anakin that we kind of see play out.

 

Jason Concepcion: We will deal we will delve more into those questions quite soon. So did did the Grand Inquisitor. Listen, they need to work out their chemistry as a team. It’s not working their way. You could get like. Like it’s not just this. I understand that they probably caught other Jedi, that many of whom we don’t know about. But when it comes to crunch time, Cal Kastis, Kanan Jarru, Ezra, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 

Rosie Knight: Guess what? There’s not a lack of Jedi. Nari.

 

Jason Concepcion: Jocasta Nu, even, like, yet. There’s, like, extenuating circumstances, that one. Ferren Barr who was, like, a corrupted Jedi. Like, they just. They step on their own capes, and it’s very tough. And I think a lot of it is because they can’t they they don’t work well as a team. And we saw it here.

 

Rosie Knight: Also, we should say, if you are not well versed in this. Yeah, the very interesting thing about the Inquisitors that makes them so tragic and a great symptom of this tragic time. They are Jedi who were tortured and turned in the dark side and now hunt down Jedi. So it is like a really brutal, awful thing. So I actually think can narratively explain why that kind of bad at their job.

 

Jason Concepcion: And also.

 

Rosie Knight: Because they did not choose their they were like tortured and corrupted and that they find it very hard. And everyone’s ambitions, which we see in this episode and in the next episode, they’re very furious.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: Their ambitions to be near Vader, to be near the ultimate corrupted Jedi. And that kind of seems to be driving everything. And it’s really interesting because I feel like, again, like you said, the bad the bad at their job is bad chemistry. This almost seems kind of a bit of an answer to that because we’ve all been laughing for a long time, like, how do these Jedi survive? Order 66, did it work? And I feel like in this show that kind of trying to build out a little bit more about the Inquisitors and why it might not be working.

 

Jason Concepcion: I think that in addition to that, you know, they aren’t sith’s very consciously get into that in a second, but the Sith philosophy is certainly what is animating them in the rule of two, which said that no two siths can ever exist more no more than two Sith Lords can ever be  around at the same time because they try and kill each other. It certainly holds like the ambition that drives the Sith, the paranoia, the lust for power, etc. does not necessarily lend itself to to working as a team. And then secondarily, Palpatine very consciously, does not want them brought up in the tradition and consciously selected ex-padawans, force sensitives, who he thought would never be powerful enough to ever challenge him or even come close to challenging him. So he specifically picked people who are just not that good with the force. Which is why when we see Riva running around the rooftops.

 

Rosie Knight: Yes.

 

Jason Concepcion: We realize. Oh, it’s something different about her.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. Absolutley.

 

Jason Concepcion: So anyway, the Grand Inquisitor takes Riva off the case, she’s like, You’re off that. You’re out of here. You’ve caused so much trouble. I will bring in Kenobi myself. Riva, of course, is not going to take that. She is not going to give up.

 

Rosie Knight: He can’t take the credit. She did get Kenobi there.

 

Jason Concepcion: That’s right. So she puts Kenobi’s name out on the street all throughout Daiyu. Now the whole planet of all these gangsters and criminals and the street urchins are all looking for Kenobi and this young princess. Princess Leia is, we learn in this sequence, she is curious, she is independent, she is smart beyond her years, but dangerously a little. She is so courageous that she’s a little naive about how dangerous things are all around her. She doesn’t .

 

Rosie Knight: She’s been on Alderaan her whole life, somewhere safe.

 

Jason Concepcion: Safe.Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight: She’s never been in a situation like this. So she’s very much like, I’ll just sort it out. And it’s like, Babe, you’re ten and your legs are like two inches long. Like, it’ll just take a second. Hang out with the Jedi.

 

Jason Concepcion: As this criminal of all points bulletin goes out. It is received by the kid Jayco and Haja. They see it and they decide, okay, we have to help. We’re going to help. Meanwhile, the Grand Inquisitor discovers that the whole city now knows about Kenobi, and he’s like fuck, Riva. At it again. I can’t believe you.

 

Rosie Knight: I’m sick of this.

 

Jason Concepcion: Obi and Leia understanding that the city is hot right now. They hide out in an alley. Leia through their little conversations here realizes hold on a second, I was bait because they’re looking for you. They’re actually looking for you. Why? Why are they looking for you? Who are you? What is going on? And she makes a run for it. And now Obi has to, like, fight all these various street criminals in Daiyu, all these bounty hunters while catching up, attempting to catch up with the slowest running yet most elusive ten year old ever. Which, I should say like, there’s been a lot of joking about this, I think that I think it’s quite clear what they’re trying to suggest here. The various chase scenes that we’ve seen Leia,with a young Leia, is that she is instinctively using the force to make people miss. Like she doesn’t know she’s doing it. They don’t maybe know they don’t maybe realize that that’s happening. But I think those opening scenes in the force of all around were made were leading us to that conclusion that she’s using the force somehow without knowing it.

 

Rosie Knight: In the first in the forest scene, you kind of very evocative of what we’ve seen in Leia in the original trilogy and the new stuff. So it was like really emotional, but also there’s this great like the best because there’s a lot that has been said about these chase scenes. I’m a young Leia stan, so I’m just like, Go for it baby. Yeah, you can make it. But like, the one thing that I think they do, the one scene they do really well in that moment is like she slides away from them under a tree and it’s like really slick. And they still managed to get her because there’s so many of them. But definitely in this scene, especially with what we’re about to learn about Obi-Wan, I think that the notion is that the reason that they can’t capture is they kind of it’s the it’s the spell thing that we talk about. There’s only there’s no way home group always look the wrong way. You always something distracts you. Someone comes in your way. And for some reason you’re an adult man or men and you just can’t catch that ten year old. And it’s the force. That’s the reason. Something is protecting her.

 

Jason Concepcion: In this world, who parkours?  It’s Jedi. And for sensitive people.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion: Leia flees to a rooftop. Ben is in pursuit. Also, the Inquisitors have been reinforced by a battalion of stormtroopers. And of course, Riva is up on these rooftops, just kind of peering around, waiting for any kind of clue that Obi-Wan has poked his head up there. Up on these rooftops, Ben is trading Blaster shots with some random bounty hunters. Meanwhile, he’s trying to get Leia to come to him to come out of safety. She is scared of him, but she sees a gap between buildings. She’s like, I can jump to this other rooftop to safety. It is way too far. But like, again, those perhaps those Jedi instincts kicking in, telling you you can maybe do this. You know, she leaps. Doesn’t come anywhere close. Obi manages to reconnect to the force. And he has.

 

Rosie Knight: At the last minute.

 

Jason Concepcion: At the last minute. Saves her life. Saves her from, from falling to her death. And gently deposits her on the ground. On the ground, Haja points them to a cargo port is like he saves their life, which goes unremarked upon. And then he’s like, listen, here’s how you get out. You go to this cargo port. It’s fully automated. There’s nobody actually there. It’s all droids and computers. You can go there and you can get out. You had to Mapuzo from there. Obi is like, I don’t trust you, but we, you know, what choice do I have? But they head off to the cargo port. Haja intercepts Riva and he tries to bluff her, he’s like, hey, guess what? You’re looking for a Jedi? I’m a Jedi. I’m here. And she’s like, no, you’re not. You’re not a Jedi. But you know something? And I’m going to use the force to pull it out of you. Meanwhile, Obi is getting to know Leia. He tells her that you remind me of someone and that someone. Is it not spelled out? But certainly by the description is the Duchess Satine, leader of Mandalore.

 

Rosie Knight: I think it’s most I think it’s like multifaceted.

 

Jason Concepcion: Let’s hear it.

 

Rosie Knight: So I think when he starts saying it’s how he’s like, you’re really stubborn. And I think he reminds her of Anakin. And then I think he’s he he’s like, you don’t let me tell you what to do. And I think she reminds him of Padme. And then when he says she was a leader, I think she reminds him.

 

Jason Concepcion: I love that, actually.

 

Rosie Knight: And I think it’s this I think it’s this kind of like he’s constantly going through these memories of these three people that he lost. And she is kind of this. She reminds him of what he was trying to save with Satine. And then she is literally like he’s looking in the face.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: Of his these two people whom he loved. So I love that. And I had a friend. Amazing Joelle Monique, who texted me the exact same thing about Satine. I think it is. I think that’s like I think that’s the third key of the loss that he is going through. And I think Leia is all of that for him.

 

Jason Concepcion: Riva catches up with Obi and Leia at the cargo port. Obi is like, Leia go, go without me. Just go get to the ship. I’ll meet you there. Obi’s connection, as we mentioned, is with the force is very tentative. Riva is kind of searching for Obi amongst all the cargo and she’s trash talking him. And she mentions that Lord Vader has been looking for him. And then it is in this moment where Obi-Wan realizes that Anakin Skywalker survived being maimed on Mustafar laying.

 

Rosie Knight: By Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 

Jason Concepcion: Laying low by him, laying on a field of lava. His mission was to stop Anakin Skywalker to to, to stop the threat of the Sith, to the galaxy, to kill him. Obi didn’t do it. He walked away. He did make sure he thought maybe the deal was finished and he couldn’t bring himself to actually finish him off. He walked away. And it’s in this moment almost, you know, ten years after those events, that he learns that Anakin Skywalker is alive and has been looking for him. And it is an absolutely terrifying and incredible moment, which leads us to to wonder. So this is something we’ve been talking a lot about and wondering a lot about. In our pre-production meeting and in our calls, I mean, not a lot of people at this time know that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader. It’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi who didn’t even know that Anakin was still alive. Right. It’s Yoda.

 

Rosie Knight: Just found out.

 

Jason Concepcion: Just found out.

 

Rosie Knight: Right.

 

Jason Concepcion: Now. He knew that and again had been christened Lord Vader by Palpatine, but he didn’t know that he was still doing his thing as Darth Vader. He didn’t know that. Didn’t even know the.

 

Yeah, he had been hiding in a cave yet.

 

Didn’t apparently know that Darth Vader was a person in the world. Yoda who has been out of it. Emperor Palpatine, of course, who turned him Jocasta Nu, the librarian of the Jedi archives, who found out because and this is like the first year of Darth Vader’s existence. Darth Vader goes into the the Jedi Library and the security droid there is like Anakin Skywalker, I recognize you. You’re not a you’re not cleared to come into this area. And Jocasta overhears that. And much to her shock discovers that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader. And that is terrifying. A Grand Moff Tarkin or just Moff Tarkin at this time, who.

 

Rosie Knight: He does know.

 

Jason Concepcion: Who does know? He figures that he got a slew sit out. Ferren.

 

Rosie Knight: And it’s like very early on and he probably hasn’t told anyone.

 

Jason Concepcion: He probably hasn’t told of it. And this is like and that’s like five years into the empire, a number of years before this and after Jocasta knew Ferren Barr, who was the ruined Jedi, who was secretly advising the the king of Mon Cala, Lee Char. And was kind of manipulating, was not even kind of was manipulating the Mon Calamari into direct conflict with the empire, hoping to spark the rebellion. But he knew because he had seen the videotapes, I think the security tapes from the Jedi Temple, he knew that Anakin Skywalker was Darth Vader. He talks about it. And this is in the Darth Vader comic and he tells his acolytes all about it. So his acolytes, I guess, would also know and. Not that many others. We think Mas Amedda must have known that the Grand Vizier of the Empire.

 

Rosie Knight: It works out, but it’s not confirmed that we could find.

 

Jason Concepcion: But the fact that Riva knows and is just throwing the name out there is very notable to me. And as we’re going to talk about in part three. She seems to have a special relationship with.

 

Rosie Knight: Yep.

 

Jason Concepcion: With Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader. So did Anakin save her from the massacre? Did he take her under his wing? What? How does she know? And how does she feel so comfortable just revealing this? Because that’s a big this is a big deal.

 

Rosie Knight: I think that Anakin, as we know him, even in his Darth Vader form, especially if you’ve read those Darth Vader comics, you know that there is still an internal battle going on. He has accepted the dark side, but he he feels guilt and he does wonder about you can tell that he wonders about what could have been like this different path he could have gone on. And I wonder if he saved Riva and potentially other younglings because that him killing those younglings was the moment he turned to the dark side. And that is kind of there. I wonder if there is a level of reflection and guilt there. And also this fits in very well to this comic book version of Anakin slash Vader that we met who can have these unexpected alliances with people like Dr.Afra.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: I feel like there are relationships that can be built there. Even in this person that we thought was this cold blooded, cold hearted, fully dark side person. No, this is still the era where he was able to make connections with people. He was able to make alliances. And Riva knows. She knows before Obi-Wan like that, his brother, his lover, whoever, whatever way you read it like that is the person he was most connected to. And we get to see that as like the episode ends in like give a give you and all the awards for that final scene.

 

Jason Concepcion: It’s all there on his face. And it is. It is. It’s truly shocking. Truly, truly shocking. The as this trash talking has happened, the Grand Inquisitor shows up and he’s like, Ha! I caught you, Riva. I caught you disobeying my orders, trying to bring in Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m going to do it my self. I’m going show you how it’s done. And Riva’s like nope, and she stabs him through the gut, killing him. No, he’s actually fine.

 

Rosie Knight: He’s actually fine. We know that because of the Canon.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah, we know that for the cause of Rebels. And then the other Canon comic book stuff, he a he a I won’t say what his fate is. For those of you who want to take that journey, it’s a really fun one. He he ends up a the leaving the story in a very interesting way. I’ll just say that. But he is still alive right here, although the show is clearly playing very coy with it. For those who are just into the live action, haven’t done the animated stuff or the comic books and aren’t aware of what goes on with the Grand Inquisitor. He is out here for a number of years later being incompetent yet again. Obi and Leia make good their escape on the way in the cargo ship, Obi feels his old pupil, Anakin, reaching out with the force. And then far away in Fortress Vader on Mustafar it is back to tank and Anakin’s eyes open and we get chills. Oh, my God. What a what a moment.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah, Obi. Obi Wan says the Anakin. And then we hear the oh, oh. James Earl Jones. He’s back. He’s not you. 91, 91 years young, given us the Darth Vader voice we need.

 

Jason Concepcion: Vader, the pipes sounding as strong as ever.

 

Rosie Knight: That moment is just like I already thought I was like, they got me with these first two episodes. I didn’t know how I was going to be feeling about this show. But Baby Leia, like, I love this. This is everything I want. Obi-Wan, who’s introspective, but that moment when they reignite that connection and you remember why the prequels have stood the test of time, why these characters mean so much to people. That connection between them is just like that is just starts. Like they felt like a historic moment in reality in Star Wars but also in like prestige TV. Like Deborah Chow is doing such a brilliant job with these episodes and that framing of Ewan’s face, and then seeing that reflection of the back to the tank and the eyes opening, you know that Darth Vader has been in his suit all the time, like live in this Darth Vader, right? That’s the notion. But in that moment, it almost makes you feel like he’s just been in the back of a tank for ten years waiting to hear Obi. You know, it’s like it’s that he feels that huge. That monumentous. I mean that’s got to be one of the that is like Disney always does a good job teasing with that the episode amounts that they choose whether it’s three, whether it’s two, whatever. That’s got to be the hook where you’re just like, Oh my god.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah, it hooked me. That was one very smart to do.

 

Rosie Knight: I need that episode now.

 

Jason Concepcion: Now very smart to just drop those 2 first. And that takes us on to part three released this week. On the cargo ship, out of Daiyu, Obi Wan meditates on these recent and very, very troubling events, including the revelation that his old Padawan, Anakin Skywalker is alive and is doing a lot of mass murdering across the galaxies. Lord Darth Vader Ben tries to connect with the spirit, the energy of his old master, Qui-Gon Jinn, through the force. But his connection is just too muddled. It’s too weak, still. He is inundated instead with these troubling images and memories. He sees Darth Vader emerging from his back to tank, suiting up. He hears and remembers snippets of conversation from his clash with Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith on the slopes of Mustafar and elsewhere, he hears Riva taunting him. Meanwhile, across the galaxy on Mustafar Fortress Vader, Darth emerges from his tank. He has a zoom call with Riva. So this is what we were talking about. The fact that they have nobody contact Vader doesn’t really have 1 to 1 conversations with a lot of people, you know,.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s like really just Palpatine.

 

Jason Concepcion: It’s Palpatine and like Tarkin level people, you know, it’s the not a lot of other people. So he has this Zoom call Riva. He harangues her for her failure to capture Obi-Wan. Riva’s like, by the way, Obi-Wan stabbed the Grand Inquisitor. And Darth Vader’s like, I don’t care.

 

Rosie Knight: He’s like, he is irrelevant.

 

Jason Concepcion: I don’t give a shit about the Great Inquisitor. Which, I will get into it later. And Vader doesn’t care about the Grand Inquisitor. He’s obsessed with finding his old master. Darth is like, Listen, I know what you want. You want to be the Grand Inquisitor. And guess what? You find Obi-Wan Kenobi. I think I can make that happen. But if you fail and, you know Darth Vader doesn’t need to finish the sentence, when Darth Vader says, if you fail, you just better not fail. On the cargo ship, Ben fixes Leia’s little droid, Lola. And then they have a talk about the force. Leia’s like what does it feel like? What’s it like to use the force, you know? What’s it like to be Jedi? And he’s uses this really wonderful metaphor, says..

 

Rosie Knight: I love this so much.

 

Jason Concepcion: I love this so much. Absolutely. He’s like, Have you ever been afraid in the dark? And then you turn on the light. What’s it feel like? She’s like it feels safe. He’s like, that’s what it feels like. I thought this was just wonderful. Absolutely.

 

Rosie Knight: Ten out of ten, right?

 

Jason Concepcion: Ten out of ten. They arrive on Mapuzo, which is an out of the way mining system, kind of like the industrial heartland of the galactic empire. They follow Haja’s coordinates to the meeting, point to to find their contact, and they set out walking in that direction. Ben is growing more and more concerned with Leia’s trusting nature. Her instinct to see the world is like inherently good, and he snaps at her a little bit. It’s like everything is not good, Leia. Everything around us is not safe and good. He had just, I should add, seen a vision of Anakin standing on a hillside right before this.

 

Rosie Knight: First glimpse of Hayden and possibly why they recast Hayden and why how we’re going to see that we will. More to the fall.

 

Jason Concepcion: We will talk about this talk about that exact thing more. Meanwhile, Riva arrives at Fortress Inquisitorius, this our first live action look at the home base of the Inquisitors. We first saw it in a Jedi Fallen Order. She’s called in for a meeting with fifth brother and fourth sister, probably. I don’t think they’ve identified her yet, but fourth sister. And she’s like, Hey, so Obi got on a cargo transport to some mining system somewhere and we should do something about it. Fifth Brother’s like, Listen. I know what’s going on. You want to be the Grand Inquisitor. But guess what? I’m next in line to be Grand Inquisitor. So watch yourself. And he uses the force to kind of, like, make her bow. But Riva then flexes on everybody by saying, Oh, yeah, well, I just got off the phone. The face time with, you know, my my friend Darthy Vades, you might know him as Darth Vader. I caMll him. I call him Darthy. We’re close.

 

Rosie Knight: My old bud.

 

Jason Concepcion: We text sometimes. And, yeah, I just got off the phone with him, and I don’t know, he told me that I am to lead the hunt for Obi-Wan Kenobi. So when I say launch the probe droids to the mining systems to be launched, you better fucking do it. Because Darth Vader told me. Now launch the fucking probes. Probes go launching. Ben and Leia on Mapuzo agree on a cover story. If they’re asked, they are visitors from Tall and Leia’s name is Luma, but also Ben is like, Don’t talk, just don’t talk at all. You talk a lot. You have a propensity to engage in, get involved in conversations with people and just don’t please don’t do it. They arrive at the coordinates for the meeting and no one’s there. Nothing. Nobody what to do next. Leia’s like I know. I see a truck. I’m the flag them down. Ben is like, is that a good idea? But Leia is already doing it. Flags down. The driver’s name is Freck, and Freck is a big, big fan of the empire. He loves the empire.

 

Rosie Knight: He thinks it’s great. He’s like, What’s wrong with some order?

 

Jason Concepcion: What’s up with a dollop of order in the universe. Didn’t we need that? I think we needed it. And I think the universe is better for it. Good imperial people. I love it.

 

Rosie Knight: He’s. He’s loving it. He’s also, like, hilariously friendly. It’s like he’s just, like, really chill guy.

 

Jason Concepcion: On the road, a squad of stormtroopers hails Freck to catch a ride. They know him well, you know. They know him as a lover of the empire. The troopers. It turns out they’re on the lookout for a Jedi. They’re just happens to be a guy riding in the truck with him dressed exactly like a Jedi.

 

Rosie Knight: But you know what? They don’t even worry about it.

 

Jason Concepcion: Don’t worry about it too much.

 

Rosie Knight: Listen, terrible trouble at finding Jedi.

 

Jason Concepcion: They are very, very bad at it. Obi.

 

Rosie Knight: They are tired. I have to say, this is like another thing. I think this era of Star Wars, even from like the new trilogy has done really well, is like building in a little bit more humanity.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: For whoever’s in the stormtrooper suits and these stormtroopers are battered.

 

Jason Concepcion: They’re dirty.

 

Rosie Knight: They’re tired.  Think they have to get a Freck.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah. They can’t even get em.

 

Rosie Knight: Because nobody picked them up.

 

Jason Concepcion: They don’t have a vehicle for them. No speeders. Just walking around.

 

Rosie Knight: It was, it was hilarious, yet absolutely believable in the context of what we see that they kind of just though even when what happens next happens, you believe it?

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: Which is impressive.

 

Jason Concepcion: So they question Ben a little bit where are you from? What’s going on? He’s like, I’m from Tall. We’re here because her is my daughter Luma. Her mom’s people are from here. And so we were just visiting and then Obi fucks up and uses Leia’s real name, but then covers it up by saying, you know, her mother again just passed and that was her name. And things have been really, really, really tough since then. But in this conversation, Leia, again, a force sensitive person who just instinctively can empathize, as you said, Rosie, with people and feel things. She knows that Ben knew her real mother and she can tell that he’s been hiding something probably related to that. But whatever it is, it’s certainly painful. The troopers get off the truck. And Leia asks Ben, are you my real dad? Like, is that what’s going on here? It is really sad moment, by the way.

 

Rosie Knight: And he’s like, the saddest thing is he’s like, I wish. Yeah. And I’m like, so does everyone else who wants to please. I wish I wish that you were the more age appropriate pairing for Padme.

 

Jason Concepcion: That would have been nice.

 

Rosie Knight: They did such a good job in that moment. And again, Ewan kills it. Like the chemistry between them is perfect and it’s another bit of that. Great storytelling way you can just. The reason Leia knows is because like when he is looking at her and saying the stuff, we miss her mother, you know, did it. It’s true.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s just about Padme, you know. And when he’s like, Yeah. Like, I wish I could say I was or whatever, I was just like, wow, that is, like, so real.

 

Jason Concepcion: It is so real.

 

Rosie Knight: And then we get like we get like a huge Obi-Wan moment as well.

 

Jason Concepcion: Well, here we go. So Ben is like, listen, I. He doesn’t tell her, of course, who her real dad is.

 

Rosie Knight: But he, like, derails it with his own emotional story.

 

Jason Concepcion: He is like, hey, but you know, listen, I know what it’s like to wonder who your real parents are. The Jedi came for me when I was very young. I still have snippets of memories of, you know, my mom and my dad and my brother. Wait, what?

 

Rosie Knight: What? But this this is like. I absolutely love these shows. Yeah, I’m sure that they’re just doing what the Marvel shows do. Are they just like throw in some, like, Canon, if it was legit, would be absolutely explosive. So kind of like the notion of Obi-Wan’s brother is like a huge controversial fandom drama. And it goes back to the The Return of the Jedi novelization by James Caan, where it is claimed that Obi-Wan is the brother of Owen Lars.

 

Jason Concepcion: Dun, dun,dun. Which would explain a lot.

 

Rosie Knight: Luke Skywalker whisper now that essentially stayed in the expanded universe canon. It was referenced multiple times, it was built on it. Sometimes I think he was referencing this like he was his stepbrother maybe. But what basically that stayed in that expanded universe canon as a truth until Attack of the Clones. Because in Attack of the Clones we see Shmi who is Anakin’s mom, who is left by Qui-Gon Jinn. She the guy she marries the guy who bought her. And then that makes Anakin and Owen Lars step brothers in the current Star Wars kind of but saying Obi-Wan Kenobi remembers having a baby brother is going to make fans go oh my god yes. Especially with the sassy relationship that Owen and.

 

Jason Concepcion: It is clearly what they are hinting at.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. They want you, I’m sure. Could it come to something? It could. I mean, the notion of Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Anakin, you are my brother Anakin, is like one of the most famous moments in Star Wars history. So I would be interested to see if they wanted to try and find a way around canon to make something of that connection between the three of them and to make him more of a clinical family member of Luke and Leia. But that was such a huge moment. I was yelling because it’s like it’s like they wanted to set the fandom on fire. I haven’t even really been on the Internet today, and I’m sure there’s like 500 articles about that because that was just like, Oh my God, I texted you guys immediately. It was just like.

 

Jason Concepcion: It was is.

 

Rosie Knight: They did it.

 

Jason Concepcion: Out.

 

Rosie Knight: Oh.

 

Jason Concepcion: It was one of many kind of like huge drops in this very episode. They continued, the truck continues on its way. Freck stops at a checkpoint and he gets out and he warns the troopers that are manning the checkpoint that, hey, I want to take a look at my passenger. Some some weird about that guy. Oh, shit. Ben pulls up his hood so that he can look specifically very much more like a Jedi that he already did that. I don’t know if that was the right move and things go sideways extremely quickly. And the Inquisitorius probe, one of the probes they sent out across the galaxy, shows up and scans Ben’s face. He shoots it, but not before he can upload his information to the Imperial Cloud. There is a shoot out. Ben takes out the Stormtroopers, but unfortunately another squad of stormtroopers pull up and it looks like it is curtains for our friends Ben Kenobi and the young Princess Leia. But then of all people, the the imperial officer who arrives with that squad of stormtroopers by the name of Tala saves Ben and Leia. Turns out she is a a double agent, so to speak. There’s no real rebellion at this time. But she has been working to to undercut the empire in any way that she can. She takes them to a safe house, which is a stop on an escape route for a Jedi on the run. Imperial dissidents for sensitive children called The Path.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah and this is a really cool The Path leads to a planet called Jabiim and Jabiim is like an old legends stalwart planet that was always getting mentioned in comics and books and there was a battles on Jabiim. It’s a relevant place. If you’ve read the legend stuff, you probably recognize it. And I think that’s just another really cool way that these shows, the kind of building in that expanded universe world and of course the canon animation stuff that we’re seeing like play such a huge part here.

 

Jason Concepcion: The Inquisitors now know where Ben is. Fifth Brother says, Hey, Riva, don’t, don’t bother informing Vader. I already told him. I got his number I called him and I told him and guess what? He was really excited about it.

 

Rosie Knight: Everyone’s just hollow calling Vader. Like Vader is lonely. He’s just sitting in the house, like, and he’s like, he’s got his like. He’s got his DM’s open. He’s like, please, anyone. And he might tell me what’s going on with Obi. I need to know.

 

Jason Concepcion: So the Empire is now heading towards Mapuzo in force. Leia is now star after seeing all this violence up close, people dying that stormtroopers are going to cut in half. She and seeing this escape route by people who are on the run from the empire, she now is beginning to understand how dangerous things are all around her. And she is like, Man, I wish I shouldn’t have snuck away. I shouldn’t have done that. That was really I see how silly that was and how childlike that was. And this extremely grown up and adult and merciless situation happens like that. It wasn’t your fault, you’re a child. You should not have been thinking like that. Inside the safe house, our friends meet Ned B, a loader droid who quote isn’t allowed to communicate, leading us all to expect that Ned B will communicate at some point right now be will there is something to come with Ned B. Maybe Tollett tells our friends that the Empire is hunting for sensitive kids for reasons unknown. We know the reason, at least in part, is to torture them and turn them into Inquisitors. Turn them into the hounds of the empire. Should add that. As part of the Jocasta Nu arc in the Darth Vader comic. The reason that Palpatine wants Jocastaa Nu captured and wants her not to be killed, he tells Darth Vader, he’s like, You got to make sure that nothing happens to her before you take her prisoner is that she has in her possession a list of all the sensitive force, sensitive kids throughout the galaxy. So there’s not that it’s not the first time that such a list has come up. It comes up in Rebels, too. But Darth then gets a hold of the list, but then destroys it. It’s one of those moments where Darth does something good for reasons that are unclear. I think the reason they were meant to think about it in that moment is  Darth doesn’t want any competition, he doesn’t want any kid who doesn’t want Palpatine raising up any junior Darth Vader’s come to take his place. He wants that position all to himself and I’m sure that’s a large part of it, but there’s also the part of it of no more no more killing in my name. I’m that’s we are meant to at least hope that that is part of it. So we understand the empire has been hunting for sensitive kids continue to do so in a secret room at the head of a hidden passage. There is all this graffiti of the people that have come through here and they continue to use this place. And one of the names Ben recognizes, it’s Quinlan Voss. Quinlan Vos who we  know who we know from the Clone Wars and other places is kind of like a Jedi, much like Qui-Gon Jinn was like a Jedi who didn’t adhere strictly to the Jedi dogma dressed in a different way, acted in a different way, was really his own type of person. Really interesting that Quinlan, there’s been other hints elsewhere that Quinlan survived. Again, in the Darth Vader comic, Ferren Barr mentions that it’s rumored that Quinlan survived. I think there’s a mention in Rebels that maybe he survived, but this is. Perhaps our first hard confirmation that Quinlan was out here and Tallis says, Yeah, Quinlan’s actively helping us. He’s been helping shepherd kids through this path. And there’s another bit of Jedi graffiti here that reads Only when the eyes are closed can you truly see. And this seems to resonate with Obi-Wan in that moment and. As they are about to head off down the tunnel to the spaceport to leave. They hear something outside, a commotion. Storm troopers are arriving to search Tallis’ workshop, but they don’t find the secret room or the tunnel. Leia watches Tallis with fascination as she’s, like, gearing up to take them to the spaceport. She’s putting on her holster, putting in her blaster. And it is clear in this moment, this wonderful bit of foreshadowing, we’re getting so much foreshadowing with young Leia that Tallis says something like, I put the holster on the other side and the opposite side that most people do. So I can draw quicker. And clearly, Leia is inspired by the courage, the fierce dedication of this woman in this nascent rebellion. It’s so early on that we don’t even have a word for what this movement is. There is no even word for rebellion. She’s just acting, you know, as like an independent person with other like minded people to try and undercut the empire in any way that she can. And it’s clear that that Leia is inspired by this.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And in a really cool moment, she’s like, Can you teach me how to shoot? Yeah. She’s like, she’s like, Try it. She’s like, and I think I was like, Wow, one day she’s going to be a fighter. You know? It is like you can see Leia in the future with her blaster, like.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah. It’s, It’s really great because, like, listen, the the courage here is Leia’s courage reads as childlike naivete, but all of that is a through line. I was again going back to Rogue One and watching it. It’s wild that Princess Leia went to the battle of Scarif, which, like not this was, you know, the battle of Scarif happened because the Jyn Erso and, and the rest just were like, we have to do this. The rest of the rebellion is too scared to do it. And they went. And that inspired others to go, you know, to go do it. And the fact that Princess Leia was one of those people who’s just like, I’m going to put myself directly in danger in this major battle that is not even really sanctioned by like that all of the rebellion, says a lot about Princess Leia and her willingness to put herself directly into harm’s way, something that we see early on just by who she is.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And it’s so well established here as well, because, like, this is only like nine years away from A New Hope. Yeah. You know, Leia is a teenager in A New Hope. So in Rogue One, it’s like she is still that young woman. And it. And it feels so true to her to see her as a kid. Being that brave. You can understand how she becomes that. That leader.

 

Jason Concepcion: Tollett says to Ben, I can’t believe that the great Obi-Wan Kenobi would be like she would be scared of anything. And Ben, again recoils from that name, insists on being called Ben, and they start to go down the tunnel to escape. But as soon as they do that, Ben feels a malign, evil presence. Darth Vader is here and you hear screams outside as they go to peek outside to see what’s happening. And what is happening is an absolute horror show. Vader is killing anyone who is around in order to lure out his old master, hoping that he will. You know, that’s what we expect from a Jedi, right? Seeing this Jedi would ignite their light saber go out there. But Ben instead says, Listen, you Tala, take Leia, get out of here. And he goes out. But he doesn’t go to face Darth Vader. He just runs. He runs away. It’s in a quarry somewhere near the town. He comes face to face with Darth Vader. But again, he’s reluctant to face him in battle and Ben flees. But he can’t. He can’t go far enough. He knows that he can’t escape Darth Vader. So he ignites his light saber very reluctantly, and he comes face to face with Darth and he says in in terrified, look, what have you become? And Darth says. Heartbreakingly, but really, really evilly, I am what you made me, Darth says.

 

Rosie Knight: It’s like it’s so true and so sad. I when he said that, I was just like, it’s there is writing in the show that’s like it’s so simple, but it’s just that in that, you know, it’s six words that is every guilt and fear and sadness that Obi-Wan has because he knows it’s true.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah, he knows it’s true.

 

Rosie Knight: That is the that is truthful.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yeah. He failed, the jedi failed.

 

Rosie Knight: Last Jedi failed.

 

Jason Concepcion: His philosophy failed. Their ability to do their their job to bring order to the galaxy and fight the Sith and keep them at bay. They failed at it in the most tragic way. They failed this young. This young,  force sensitive Padawan who became a Jedi, who became a Sith Lord. They failed to to help him as long as way. And now not only that, but Ben failed in the moment when he needed to have steel in his heart and he needed to strike Anakin down. He didn’t do it. And now he is faced with the consequences. Darth Vader, who has been mass murdering across the fucking galaxy. It’s also like one of the fascinating things that I think about all the time with with. Star Wars is. It’s also it’s also a little bit of projection like. Anakin, Darth take some responsibility for what you did. I understand that yes, you were working you were under the influence of Palpatine, an incredibly powerful Sith Lord that nobody knew was around. And you were seduced by him and brought into the dark side. And yes, that happened and the Jedi failed, etc., etc., etc.. But also you struck down kids, children multiple, multiple at the Jedi Temple, and you need to own that. And eventually he gets there. But in this moment, he it’s somebody else’s problem. It’s somebody else’s fault. You didn’t this is your fault for making me what I am. And that’s true on some level, but also not true on another level. Meanwhile, the Inquisitors in the Special Stormtroopers, they’re searching town. Riva breaks away from them, heads into Tala’s workshop, where she finds the secret room, finds the tunnel, sees the sign of the Jedi carved into a wall, and something awakens in her. She becomes enraged. Some emotional hit happens.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion: And it’s clear there is some connection with the Jedi, something about them that drives her.

 

Rosie Knight: I definitely feel like that. You know, only with your eyes closed can you truly see that sounds like something they’re telling Jedis when you put on the helmet and you can’t see and your hand. And I feel like there’s something about seeing that sign and see and these words that were probably told to her when she was training as youngling or whatever. It is like a feral rage that she is just overcome with and it is obviously triggered by a trauma response to the Jedi.

 

Jason Concepcion: Absolutely. And there’s also, you know, part of the Sith seduction to the dark side is your eyes have been closed. The Jedi have been lying to you. You need to keep your eyes closed and not see the true nature of the force. So here is this Jedi saying, you know, bit of Jedi wisdom that directly not only hits in an emotional level, but but triggers that torture that she’s gone through, that philosophy that’s ingrained in her, that the Jedi have been lying to you. They’ve been keeping the truth from you. Further on, Tala, at Leia’s urging, some bit of forced persuasion here maybe. Right.

 

Rosie Knight: She does seem like she just tells us what to do.

 

Jason Concepcion: Tells her, go back. Go back and help Obi Wan. She’s just like, yeah, go ahead, go. And Tollet just heads back to face the most dangerous man, the most mass murdering man in the galaxy. And again, this is one of those moments where I agree with you, I. There are these hints that Leia is this very powerful force sensitive and there it is. She just tell somebody to do something and they go and do it. And of course Tala has that will to resist in her. But she, she goes, Darth can feel in the midst of this duel how weak Ben has become with the force. And he’s almost disgusted by it. He toys with his former master. Rather than strike him down immediately. He instead sets him on fire. He sets a fire on the ground. And then holding Obi Wan above it, slams him down with the force into the fire and then drags him across it. It’s brutal. And. But before Darth can take Obi-Wan prisoner to to further torture him is very clear. He’s not done.

 

Rosie Knight: Because he said he was like, I’m not going to keep. Like, your pain is not over yet. No. Like I’m taking you with me. We’re going in.

 

Jason Concepcion: We are going to extend this pain. You are going to continue to feel it. But before that can happen. Tala and her droid, Ned, come to the rescue. They manage to spirit Ben away. They blow up a tank of some kind of explosive crystals. And now Darth Vader and Obi-Wan are separated by this fire, much like they were on Mustafar. Separated by fire yet again. They managed to spirit Ben away. Darth is foiled. He is the classic Darth Vader staring at the thing that he now cannot have and then turning away in disgust. Foiled again. But not for the last time, surely in our story. Tala then a tells, Ned, get the transport ready we’re taking Ben. We got to get Ben to Jibiim. Leia continues down the tunnel where she is to meet her contact that will take her to Jibiim, but instead she finds Riva, who says, I’ll take you from here. Bum, bum, bum.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah. They do such a good job as well, because, like, Leia’s is like, are you my contact? And she says, No, they couldn’t make it. I’ll take it from here. And there’s a moment where Leia believes and then Leia looks to the viewer and sees the dead bodies of the contact and then just tries to breathe.  I don’t see that going well.

 

Jason Concepcion: Truly…man. What a bone chilling episode

 

Rosie Knight: Stunning episode.

 

Jason Concepcion: Stunning, stunning action from end to end. Some questions remain, which we will continue to think about. I think that it’s almost a for sure thing that. At some point. Ben Kenobi will, accept his name, Obi-Wan Kenobi, in some moment of triumph. Right. And I think that. A precursor to that will must be his successfully contacting his old master. Who he failed to contact at the beginning of this episode. Qui-Gon Jinn. He will, he will. We will see Liam Neeson in Force Ghost Form. Right. I feel like that has to happen.

 

Rosie Knight: That’s definitely going to happen. And I think a big journey that Obi-Wan is going to go on in this episode and we’re halfway through the season now. But I definitely do think that he is going to go on that journey to reconnect with the force, and I think that it will probably be somehow connected to an Anakin slash Vader. Like, I also wonder if Vader will, like, mockingly use his name and mockingly call him Ben and he’ll sort of reclaim Obi-Wan. But I’m. Yeah, I’m very interested. Definite force ghost Qui-Gon, which is going to be like they’ll have to do some narrative shifting to kind of and some playing with some stuff to, to make that possible. But I definitely think that’s where we’re headed, especially because right now we know his connection to the force is weak and we’re going to need a really visible way to see that it’s growing stronger. And I think it’s going to be by connecting. Yeah, it’s to that to his master.

 

Jason Concepcion: It is so tragic to see him. This disconnected from this, you know, running from his former student. This is the guy who went toe to toe with Count Dooku went toe to toe with Grievous, General Grievous.

 

Rosie Knight: Yeah, Grievous.

 

Jason Concepcion: Toe to toe time and time and time and time again with Darth Maul. And now here he is. Unsure if he can hold his own with Darth Vader. It’s really, really tragic. But you feel like we’ve got to see him at at the end of this. Obi-Wan will be Obi-Wan again. You mentioned Hayden Christensen, Darth Vader. It feels like, listen, you don’t cast Hayden Christensen just to put him in the Darth Vader armor where we never see his face except like in the back to tank, you know, behind back to bubbles at without even hearing his real voice, James Earl Jones again sounding stronger than ever, doing the voice of Darth Vader, which leads me to wonder. Does the helmet come off? Does it get damaged? Does he take it off? Does Obi-Wan knock it off? Does it come off in the midst of some kind of fight? Or do we get. A flashback, some kind of scene of of of Darth in his own mind connecting with the force and meditating in that way we saw. There’s a wonderful panels in the Darth Vader comic of Darth meditating. And you see him on some kind of force realm force plane surrounded by fire and red angry energy, but also these little blue force butterflies, which we are meant to interpret as like the little kind of pin pricks of the light shining through in the darkness. I wonder if we what we see to allow us to understand why he has been cast in this role.

 

Rosie Knight: I think we get versions of both. I think that there’s almost certainly going to be some kind of human connection between the two without the mask. I think that’s likely. But I also think that some kind of force plane we talked about World Beyond World.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: I think that there is this bigger notion of what the force can do and how it can connect us. We saw it with Ray and Kylo when they were force like FaceTiming each other and being in the same space. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a version of that where Anakin is Anakin is Hayden and Ewan McGregor, and that is where they connect and where they speak to each other, some kind of meditative force plane where they both still see him in that way, which would make sense. Also flashbacks. But I do think that because of the nature of the prequels and them existing and them being so key, I don’t know how much literal flashbacks we’ll get, but I definitely think that it’s not just going to be Hayden standing for a moment as a in his cloak, you know, like we saw in this episode. I think there’s definitely going to be more to his role, and I’m really excited to see where they go with it because they’re definitely leaning into the emotion of this story, that kind of means so much to fans and also is so key to kind of why people love Ewan so much as Obi-Wan.

 

Jason Concepcion: Riva. We got to find out what her deal is with Obi-Wan connection to Darth Vader, whatever that is. What you know, what kind of special relationship she has with Vader seemingly has with Vader, what the nature of that is. But also it feels like, listen, what is one of the core themes, devices of Star Wars is someone in the dark, being pulled back to the light. And Darth Vader tells her, listen, you can be the Grand Inquisitor, if you succeed. But if you fail, guess what? And it feels like Reeva is. At the end of all of this, we know that the Grand Inquisitor spoiler is still alive because he exists in Canon going forward and he’s still in that position. So it feels like Riva doesn’t get the job. i.e., she fails. Meaning, at some crucial moment, does Riva turn away from the dark side, do something good, finally, and is struck down by Darth Vader, someone dies and that turn to the light, it feels like. I think that will happen. It feels like we got to see that.

 

Rosie Knight: I think that’s really likely. My hope would be that she gets to live on in some kind of Obi-Wan esque self-imposed exile rather than dying, you know, like that. But she does that good thing in it, it pits her against Anakin, and it seems quite likely that she may die. But I think that they’re trying to recontextualize how they kind of play into those tropes. So I hope we could see something else, but I definitely think a turn to the light side is is likely, especially because, like you said, the Inquisitors are not Sith, they are dark side users. Yeah, they are. And that is long been a controversial space in the in the Star Wars canon of this, like someone who can use both sides of the force. And and what does it mean to do that? And I think it’ll be really interesting to see. I think that the blue butterflies is a great nod of of of this importance of the light side that’s still able to be there. I think Disney actually did like a kids cartoon that had Kylo Ren, and he was playing with blue butterflies when he was a baby. And there was a lot of talk about like, what did that mean and what did the blue butterflies mean for somebody who’s going to turn from the dark side and eventually turn back to the light? So I think that’s a really great I wouldn’t be surprised if a few fluttering by. But yeah, I’m really interested to see where Riva’s journey goes because it feels like it feels like her anger towards the Jedi is likely very justified. I think that I.

 

Jason Concepcion: Jedi fucked up in a million different ways, so we could go on and on.

 

Rosie Knight: The story of nature of the Jedi is is key to the show. Even Obi-Wan talks about it for the first time, we really hear someone say, you know, I was taken away from my family as a child and I was raised by the Jedi and they became my family. But that’s still not a great way to to run a society or like a strange elite force. So I’m really interested to see where Riva’s story goes. And also, Riva’s seems to me like a character who’s ripe for like a comic book and a book and all kinds of things. Exploring that story more so, I’m excited to see how that gets expanded out in Canon.

 

Jason Concepcion: And then finally, you know, we’re in this age of bringing in these characters from the extended Star Wars universe into the live action space. We saw Black Krrsantan, of course, in Book of Boba Fett and Black Krrsantan, of course, is known to work closely with Doctor Aphra the kind of independent and fierce and and a trash talking archeologist who’s kind of in a moral gray area, but a really fun and independent character. I think all of us are expecting at some point in time and we were expecting in Book of Boba Fett, that maybe Dr. Aphra would show up. And the. I think other people have said this, but we’re we’re waiting for Maya Erskine from Pen15 fame to show up in this story. And it feels like. If you wanted to cast Dr. Aphra. You could do a lot worse than Maya Erskine. And the timeline is right. The time the timeline is right. If if that were to happen and.

 

Rosie Knight: Yet and when you said this, I was just like, I need this to be the case because that casting would be so brilliant. And also it speaks to why you would have to have Hayden.

 

Jason Concepcion: Yes.

 

Rosie Knight: Because if you have Aphra, then you’d likely have a relationship between her and Vader, an antagonistic alliance of survival that needs. And that would be a very interesting use of Hayden. And it would also deal with one of the biggest issues with doing Aphra in live action, which is she needs to be alongside Vader at some point. So if you do it now, if Hayden doesn’t necessarily want to come back and be Vader again, you don’t have to deal with that issue. You can just have Aphra and you’ve already established that connection here. I love this casting. I am like crossing my fingers because he is very under the radar. You would like I’m sure people have said this and I Googled it and maybe like two or three places and not like the usual the usual kind of suspects said maybe this was could be the case. So I am I am crossing my fingers because that Pen15 is so great and Maya is just like one fucking talent and it would just be such good, cool, funny, smart casting.

 

Jason Concepcion: Really funny, really casting. For those of you not up and Doctor Aphra, check out some of the Doctor Aphra comic books that the Marvel Star Wars comics. She’s got her own title. And I’ll just say that her relationship with Vader, we talked about these unlikely alliances that Vader strikes for reasons that are hard to unpack sometime, they seem like purely ambitious to further. He’s evil end.

 

Rosie Knight: But they always seem to hint at something.

 

Jason Concepcion: But they also seem to hint at something else and the relationship they have and Aphra’s courageousness in the way she deals with Vader is really unique, and then it would be great if that was in Aphra here.

 

Rosie Knight: That would be such an interesting counterpoint to the fear that Obi Wan Kenobi currently has to have that kind of fearlessness and it would be an interesting reflection of Riva too. This kind of person who can align themselves with Vader when they need to. Yeah, I am hoping that’s like my biggest one. I mean, everything else about this show, like, unless it’s going to be some weird deep cut thing that only I care about, they’re already delivering like the young Leia. That’s the introspective Obi-Wan. So that’s now my that’s my pet theory. I am. I’m manifesting Maya as as Doctor Aphra.

 

Jason Concepcion: Well, we can’t wait for the next episode. Check it. Check this space. Check us out a week from Friday where we’ll talk about the next episode of Obi-Wan. We’re super excited about it. Up next, Nerd Out. In this week’s Nerd Out, a recurring segment where you tell us what you love and why. Heidi pitches us on the Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. The first novel and the remembrance of Earth’s past trilogy. It’s a great sci fi.

 

Heidi Hello. X-ray vision, physics fans alike. My name is Heidi and I teach university physics, which is why I’m excited to share with you my love and excitement for the Remembrance of Earth’s Past Novel series or commonly referred to as the Three-Body Problem. I was first introduced to the novel while listening to one of Jason’s many COVID sucks. I’m stuck in the house and you’re stuck in the house. So let’s talk about nerd stuff. Twitch Streams. He highly recommended the novel for its mind bending hard science fiction rendition of Earth’s first encounter with an alien race. At the time, I was a master’s student studying space systems operations and was craving more space based sci fi content. And this epic tale checked all the boxes. This Hugo Award winning novel series is the product of Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu. In today’s world, China is a country that is quietly making considerable gains in the realm of space, both scientifically and militarily, which drew me into the work. In the novel, citizens of Trisolaris have found a way to contact the people of Earth through a virtual reality game that transports its players to the horrors of the experience living on a planet stuck in the three body system. End body systems refer to three or more bodies interacting with each other gravitationally. In orbital mechanics, two bodies will predictably orbit each other. However, when a third body is introduced, the number of variables becomes unmanageable and physics begins to break down, creating what scientists refer to as a chaotic state with two suns in one planet. The scenario, Trisolaris finds itself there are periods in the worlds orbit or the planet is near a single star and can exist as expected and other times where it is near both or neither stars causing unsurvivable periods of immense heat, radiation or no light and heat at all. The aliens are left desperate and need the earth to save its race. The three book series spans immense tracts of time and space. It is a fusion of science, philosophy, world politics, physics and conspiracy that plays out in a page turning epic that makes you earn for more. The novel series uses fairy tale like analogies to present problems faced by the world that allows the readers to unfold the science in a natural way that brings understanding to the most novice of science fiction readers and experienced scientists like. The author also continuously calls out the Chinese government of today for its idiocracy, but does it in a way that feels his true meaning. The same way his characters attempt to trick the Trisolarans, which I find hilarious as China outwardly raves about the novel’s success. The best part of the series is that you can look forward to none other than our boys Benioff and Weiss adapting the novels in an upcoming Netflix series. Filming has already begun, and you can look forward to a star studded cast that includes John Bradley and Liam Cunningham of Game of Thrones and Benedict Wong from the Marvel Universe. The book in many ways is touted as unfilmable, but that did not stop D.B. before. The other good news is that the trilogy is complete. It hosts one of my favorite endings in all of literature, masterfully written as if I was already watching it in IMAX 3D. I’m excited to see the story come to life on our screens. And with filming wrapping up in August and a potential release in 2023, at least plenty of time for you to read through the three novels of the series before its cinematic debut.

 

Jason Concepcion: Thanks, Heidi, for submitting if you want to be featured, send your Nerd Out pitch to Xray@crooked.com. Instructions are in the show notes. Well, folks, it’s been a big Star Wars episode. And it’s a big thank you to Rosie Knight for joining us on X-ray Vision and Rosie, what do you have to plug away?

 

Rosie Knight: I the same as, you know, Instagram. Rosie Marx, Letterbox is the same. Lots of cool pieces coming out at Nerdist, especially IGN and Polygon, some cool anime stuff, queer comics stuff for Pride. Also, I’m going to be all over that Ms.. Marvel stuff. As we said last week, we had our kind of first reactions and we were definitely fans. I’m also going to be on the upcoming episode of June Pod, talking about Logan’s Run. Yeah, all good buds at the June pod. So talk about Logan’s Run, one of the weirdest, like, funniest seventies movies. That’s like a stallwart of British culture for some reason. It’s like, been in my life, like, my whole life. So that that was really fun and they’re friends of the pod, so definitely check that one out.

 

Jason Concepcion: Folks. Don’t forget to check out our videos on the uncultured YouTube channel and the shownotes. And to check our shownotes for the listener’s guide to X-ray vision, where we provide details on all the stuff we talk about. We help you figure out and identify what all those references are that we that we make all throughout the episode. Catch the next episode on June 10th. What we’ll be diving into Miss Marvel and of course, more Obi-Wan Kenobi. Don’t forget, we want the five star ratings. Give us those five star rating rate and review us. X-ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy Girard. Our editing and sound design is by Vasilis Fotopoulus. Delon Villanueva and Matt DeGroot provide video production support Alex Reliford handles social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for a theme music. See you next time. Bye bye.

 

Jason Concepcion: Eh? My guess is the Marine I want to talk about. The Inquisitor is here today. Mike, listen, I know that Inquisitors.

 

Jason Concepcion: They’ve run up an incredible score, Mike. They they’ve been the winning team, part of a winning franchise for almost a decade by the time we meet them in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Mike But I tell you. Mike, That’s the regular season. Mike Those are the no name. Jett No disrespect to them, but it’s the no name Jedi, the no name model on the force sensitive kids. Those were the easy ones to pick up. Mike You know, the clones did most of the heavy lifting in the early days, Audio 66. Now we’re in the, you know, to use a sports metaphor, Mike, we’re in the postseason now is the playoffs now. MIKE And this is the this is Cain and Jerry’s. This is Cal Kestis. This this is Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I got to say, Mike, that the Inquisitors, they’re not up to the task. Mike And it’s about that chemistry. Mike They’re arguing among themselves, they’re stabbing each other. That locker room is a mess. Coach Vader has been has been coaching from afar. Palpatine put this team together and I’m not sure he did it in the right way. Vader needs to come off the injured reserve and he needs to coach this team, Mike. And now he’s doing it. Maybe we’ll see some turn around, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I’ll take my answer off the air. Thank you, Mike.

 

Jon Lovett Hey, everybody, it’s Jon Lovett.

 

Tre’vell Anderson And Tre’vell Anderson.

 

Jon Lovett And we are so excited to team up to let you know what Crooked is up to this Pride Month, we’re bringing you incredibly queer content across the entire Crooked network that includes What A Day, Lovett or Leave It, Keep It, Strict Scrutiny and more.

 

Tre’vell Anderson Plus, we’re fundraising for Trans Lifeline, Equality Florida and Trans Education Network of Texas, all of whom are working tirelessly to support the queer and trans communities nationally and locally.

 

Jon Lovett To get the scoop on all of it, head to Crooked.com/pride.