On this episode of X-Ray Vision, Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight play bocce ball with Lizzo! In the Previously On (1:02) Jason and Rosie react to three new trailers: the DCU’s Blue Beetle, Sony’s Across the Spider-Verse, and the MCU’s Secret Invasion. In the Airlock (14:20), they dive deep (deeep) into the two part finale of The Bad Batch season 2 AND season 3 episode 6 of The Mandalorian, recapping and discussing clone lives vs. the future of the galaxy in Bad Batch and the politics of the New Republic and more in Mando. Then in Nerd Out (1:06:00) Jason and Rosie discuss a listener theory about parallels between Andor and Mando.

 

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Nerd Out Submission Instructions!

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? If you’re sending a theory, feel free to send only a summary of your theory (no audio needed) for Jason and Rosie to react to on air.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD]

 

Jason Concepcion Warning. This podcast contains spoilers for season three Episode six of The Mandalorian and the two episode finale of The Bad Batch Season two.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. Hello. My name is JasonConcepcion.

 

Rosie Knight And I’m Rosie Knight.

 

Jason Concepcion Welcome to X-ray Vision, the Crooked Media podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture.

 

Rosie Knight In this episode in Previously On, its trailer-mageddon. It’s the Blue Beetle Trailer. It’s Across the Spider-Verse trailer. It’s the Secret Invasion trailer. We’re talking about all of them. In Airlock, it’s The Bad Batch season. Season two two Episode finale. You wanted to hear our thoughts on it. We are giving them to you. And because it’s Star Wars all day, every day at the moment, where during season three, Episode six of The Mandalorian and in Nerd Out, a Mando Andor theory from Pete.

 

Jason Concepcion Love that. Coming up, Previously On. Okay first up in trailer-mageddon. Let’s start with the Blue Beetle trailer release date August 18th, 2023. Do we count this as like the first official?

 

Rosie Knight I believe James Gunn said this was where.

 

Jason Concepcion It begins here.

 

Rosie Knight It begins. Even though Superman, which is, I believe, 2025 and we got the Batman, too, that year is the official first James Gunn. He did say in that big announcement that post The Flash, this is the first kind of soft launch of the year of of the DC. And if that looks great, I’m excited for it like it’s very it’s got a real 90s, early zeros vibe. He’s got superpowers and he’s got to deal with them.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s very I love it. It’s a classic origin story, the likes of which we really have not seen in a while now.

 

Rosie Knight And it looks really charming. There’s a lot of humor to it. I love that moment where he gets the scarab and it kind of jumps on his face and his whole family and on your face. Oh, my God. Get it off. And the kind of horror elements of the suit. Yeah, it looks great. I love Show Low from, you know, Cobra Kai. So charming. I love to see him in a role that there’s some glad Warner Brothers was so excited to make it theatrical instead of showering it like Batgirl. Harvey Guillen, is in this movie, and we don’t know who he’s playing. I’m hoping he’s playing Ted Court.

 

Jason Concepcion That would be pretty cool.

 

Rosie Knight Because we get to see Jaime outside the court building. And yeah, I just think this looks like a ton of fun and I love that he makes that big light anime sword at the end It just yeah just all good stuff. I it made me feel really good watching this movie and I wanted to see.

 

Jason Concepcion More I think all listen, if you have a power like the Green Lantern or the Blue Beetle, which allows you to create matter from your thoughts, if you’re not doing a sword every time, then what are we? What are we doing?

 

Rosie Knight Literally, especially, I feel that you hit on one of my biggest issues with Green Lantern, which is every single Green Lantern can just imagine like a fist or a gun.

 

Jason Concepcion Why are we doing fists?

 

Rosie Knight This is it? Like, please, the you have literally the power of your imagination.

 

Jason Concepcion What am I at a carnival like? What is the big fist?

 

Rosie Knight A giant gun that you have? You don’t need that. Come on, guys. So the fact that he, well, kidnaps you, the fact that he’s thinking outside the box and he’s coming up with a giant, bizurk styled sword. I was a big fan. Just looks great. I can’t wait to see it. And I’m very excited at the potential concept that this could be a kind of tone setter for what’s to come.

 

Jason Concepcion Same, same. And very excited to get into the gunn-averse. Next up across the Spider-verse. The sequel to Into the Spider-verse for release date June 2nd, 2023. I mean, I don’t even need to see the trailer. I love the trailer. I don’t even need to see it.

 

You don’t need to see it.

 

Jason Concepcion Because I’m I loved Into the Spider-verse so much.

 

Rosie Knight So let’s be real. Best Spider-Man movie ever made.

 

Jason Concepcion I think so. One of the greatest comic book movies period ever made. And this is going to be fantastic.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. I mean, you’ve got every kind of you got Ghost Spider. A.K.A. let’s be real, Spider Gwen. Sorry, Marvel. Miles Morales. Obviously. Miguel O’Hara, Which is really interesting because that’s, you know, Spider-Man 2099, who we saw at the end of the movie, who we’re now seeing in what seems to be more of an antagonistic role that we saw Peter B. Parker. We saw his baby, May Day Parker. We saw Spider Woman, which is Issa Rae. There’s Spot who’s going to be the villain. Kind of your hilarious, like, unexpected, weird, multiversal villain. There’s so many Spider-Man. Pavotir Parker Like the Spider-Man India.

 

Jason Concepcion Shouts to our good friend Cody “Zig” Ziegler’s Spider Punk in the movie.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, I mean, it looks so good. And I kind of love We didn’t really know much about the story before this because I feel like they knew that we didn’t really need to. You want to go that you want to see that experimental animation that basically changed the game. Puss in Boots. It was taken for Spider-verse The bad guys taken for Spider-verse. Mitchell Best is a machine made by a lot of the same team, obviously taken from Spider-verse. But I love the idea that what seems to be happening in this movie and what’s creating the conflict is the idea that Miles basically has to go through a family loss tragedy, because if you don’t lose your Uncle Ben, you never become Spider-Man. And I love this idea that Miles is going to go against that and it’s going to cause this potential multiversal collapse. We also get a direct reference to the MCU here. They talk about what happened in, you know, Spider-Man, No Way Home. They referenced the real designation, not 616. Not Earth 199999 or whatever it is. So yeah, I just more multiversal fun and the animation looks amazing. I can’t wait to see, you know, Zig and Justin Mason’s Spider Punk up there, played by Daniel Kaluuya. London icon. So I’m happy about that. I mean, looks absolutely unbelievable, the kind of trailer you just want to immediately watch again and achieve both of these, I think.

 

Jason Concepcion I completely agree.

 

Rosie Knight They give you that real good, exciting feeling where you just want to know more. I want to see Mayday Parker. I want to see all the different people because I love actually, another thing that blew me away in this trailer when they introduced Ben Riley, very controversial Spider-Man figure. You know, Ben has been growing on me. Well, they’ve been doing a lot of Ben work

 

Jason Concepcion They’ve been doing a lot of Ben work. Lately Ben, an early clone of Spider-Man, who’s got his own thing going. So it’s kind of.

 

Rosie Knight A huge reveal was that he had been Spider-Man all along and it was really controversial. He has this cool, like very 90s jean jacket. But when they show him in the movie, in the trailer, when you pose it, I mean, it looks like it’s directly 2D out of a comic book. Just the most beautiful, interesting stuff. And so many incredible people worked on this. I can’t wait to see it. It looks absolutely brilliant.

 

Jason Concepcion And then finally on Disney Plus, Secret Invasion release date June 21st, first episode of a six episode series. We didn’t get too much more from this, but I’m very excited for it. It feels like a tonal reset kind of obviously, you know, fury coming back and that kind of Winter Soldier conspiracy, spy Marvel vibe. This trailer dropped kind of concurrently with a big Anthony Breznican.

 

Rosie Knight Vanity Fair exclusive photos. You know.

 

Jason Concepcion That felt very much like, hey, guys, don’t worry. I know there’s been a lot of I know there’s been a lot of bad stories about our our wares out there lately. But don’t worry.

 

Rosie Knight These wares are shiny again. But yeah, it looks very ultimate’s very early phases of Marvel. It’s very grounded. Spy Virgin secrecy. I love Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury is one well, the all time great casting, so I love that. I have to say, look, when I think of Secret Invasion, it’s hard for me to separate it from. The immensity of the comic books and what that meant, which was? Who can you trust? Who is really which characters that you love.

 

Jason Concepcion Have been Skrulls for years.

 

Rosie Knight The whole time and you’ve been supporting them. You’ve been buying those issues, you’ve been following their adventures and it’s not them. I feel like currently what they’re showing us is lacking that impact for me. But Feige has always said this will be a more intimate, small scale espionage thriller, so I’m interested in it. I love that Nick’s not wearing the eyepatch now. He’s just he’s living it up, is showing off the cool, you know, fuckin scar. And I’m sure it’s going to be great. I’m seeing a lot of Cobie Smulders, so I’m still sticking by the fact that I truly believe you are correct and that she will be the Skrull that we all know. I will say another thing that I’m hoping to see them. Some over here. It does look like we’re getting the old classic. There’s a radical and it’s played by a black actor and they both really believable, good goals, but they are going to blow some people up, so you can’t support them. So I’m hoping we get something a little bit different with the Skrulls, but it’ll be interesting. Revealed in that Vanity Fair article that Emilia Clarke is playing Talos’s daughter.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight And not, you know, Abigail Brand, which I think a lot of people thought, though as somebody in the Discord pointed out, she could be Abigail Brand, she could be  her anyway. And also she could be a Skrull in the guise of, you know, so who knows? But yeah, very interesting. I, I think there is a, an immense amount of pressure on this project and I feel like they’re behaving in quite a sensible way that has learned from things like, say, Multiverse of Madness, which I loved, but these movies where they made an on the WASP, where they made people feel like it was going to be a groundbreaking, earth shattering event and it didn’t necessarily live up to that in in the way that people expected. I think going low key with the tone of this and just saying this is just going to be a spy adventure, I think is smart and I think it will eventually pay off. I hope that. This hits in a more impactful way than the Falcon and the Winter Soldier did for me, which is like one of my least favorite Marvel shows. But the fact that, you know, you have Sam at the center is like, you just know it’s going to be a good time.

 

Jason Concepcion Did anything here change your thoughts about who may or may not be a Skrull?

 

Rosie Knight I. My my biggest thought coming out of this was actually that they might not do that at all. I think that they showed.

 

Jason Concepcion That I worryingly felt the same way.

 

Rosie Knight That Kingsley Ben-adir, the character who’s going to be this kind of Skrull rebel leader. It seemed like they were almost doing a mr. Smith thing with him where there were multiple versions of him shapeshifting into the same guy. So I don’t know if they are going to do the Secret Invasion classic iteration, and instead we’re going to see the Skrulls use their shapeshifting stuff in a different way.

 

Jason Concepcion I think what we are going to see in Secret Invasion is the birth of the Super Skrull.

 

Rosie Knight Yes. Okay. Let’s talk about.

 

Jason Concepcion All the lab stuff that we’re seeing is. The Skrulls, the extremist sect of the Skrulls who are invading, who are doing the invasion or taking over various for various powerful people in Earth’s government. I think that they saw the superheroes of Earth and they said, okay, we got to figure that out. Like shapeshifting. That’s cool. But why don’t we have like, why can’t we fly? Why can’t I punch somebody? And I think that they are trying to create powers. And I think we’re going to see that’s who. That, too. Gravity Kingsley Ben-adir is going to be is the first two.

 

Rosie Knight I think that’s right. Now, that seems kind of strange because the super Skrulls are so deeply connected to the Fantastic Four in the comics. But I will say we get a moment with Kingsley Ben-adir, his character grabbing where his arms go towards, and it’s almost like it looks I felt like it looked quite read. Richard Z But as I’ve seen, lots of smart people point out, it looks a lot like groups powers which is kind of this interesting idea. Like though the tendrils going out. So I do wonder if maybe this could be connected to Power Broker. In fact, some people kind of suggested, Agent 13 was actually Skrull in disguise. Maybe this girls have been collecting people’s powers or the DNA of people who have powers and trying to create this, you know, Super Skrull in a new way. Kang also does exist now. That’s a direct lineage to the Fantastic Four. So I think you’re right. I think that the Super Skrull may be the kind of super sciencey element in this rather grounded space.

 

Jason Concepcion I’m sad. I want someone big to be a Skrull.

 

Rosie Knight Me too. Let’s be real. Let’s be real. There’s six episodes. This is the MCU that I that could be a shocking surprise. If we just look at the cast. Right. So you’ve got Everett Kay Ross definitely could be a Skrull. I mean, he’s like he’s a CIA agent.

 

Jason Concepcion Absolutely,  could be a Skrull.

 

Rosie Knight But what it’s not that huge impact. I wonder if we look at who’s actually in this. We know that Rhodey is going to be in this movie. That would be, I think, the only person that they could have that gut punch threat impact. But that would also probably take away from whatever he’s trying to do with armor wars, which I assume they will try to tie into this Crisco war the way things are going.

 

Jason Concepcion Rhodey actually died after the airport fight in Germany.

 

Rosie Knight See that’s the kind of shame that people would be losing their mind. But, you know, there is throughout Skrull history and the way that Skrull shapeshifts, there are people who spend time among humans and become allied with them, and we’ve kind of already got that a little bit with TALOS. So that wasn’t in a shapeshifting form. But I think that looking at the cast, it really either is going to be a big surprise and a character that we’re not expecting. I’m still going for Hawkeye. I truly believe that makes the most sense.

 

Jason Concepcion That would sbe so good.

 

Rosie Knight But I think if if we’re looking at the people who play a major role in this, Rhodey seems like a high contender. And you’re right, you know, how did he come back to life after that? Seems pretty suspicious. Pretty suspicious. I mean, I suppose the other thing now don’t get too excited because I definitely have had a tendency in the past to come up with cool ideas that they would never do, and then people be upset that they don’t do them. But. You know, a Tony actually survived the snap and comes back in this form and then he’s actually a scrawl and you have that be a large part of all of was is Rhodey trying to convince people it’s not really Tony. That would be very very cool and I think would kind of blow people away.

 

Jason Concepcion That would be freaking amazing. All right. Up next, The Bad Batch in The Mandalorian.

 

Rosie Knight <AD>

 

Jason Concepcion Stepping out of The Airlock and into the two part finale of season two of The Bad Batch now streaming on Disney Plus. And what a way to end a season. Well, you know, there’s a lot of Clone Wars vibe to obviously it’s the same kind of the same time period for The Bad Batch but I’m spot I’m talking about like the number of episodes in the kind of up and down nature of it, but like a really strong closing to this season that started very strong also. Episode 15, The Summit and Episode 16, Plan 99. It’s all, you know, 66 upside down and I have a lot of thoughts. But in the end, so in lieu of a recap, it basically all revolves around an attempt to locate Crosshair and to rescue the clones who are being held by Dr. Hemlock, who’s doing something that we don’t know. And all of that results in the unfortunate death of our good friend, Tech.

 

Rosie Knight Sacrifice. I think truly sad sacrifice.

 

Jason Concepcion We will always have the Tech turn that will live forever. We can talk about whether he’s he’s really dead, but I have a bunch of thoughts and first first among them, we got to let Saw Gerrera cook, you guys.

 

Rosie Knight Oh, my gosh. Every time we’ve been saying this, this man is always right. Saw Gerrera is always right. Every single time I feel like that is either going to pay off at some point. Or, this is just one of the few places where this kind of Star Wars storytelling fails because he is not wrong. He is right every time in this moment, he is talking about stopping the creation of the Death Star. Correct. Right.

 

Jason Concepcion So so The Bad Batch is, you know, they’re on the ground. They have invaded this Imperial facility. There’s this huge fucking firefight and they happen to run into Saw Gerrera, who’s also there and is like, Hey, while you guys are here, my what I’m here to do is blow up all this, the Imperial leadership, that’s all here. We have Grand Moff Tarkin This here we got Orson Krennic here, we got Doctor Hemlock here, we got a lot of movers and shakers here, and I’m going to blow up this whole facility and then, you know, The Bad Batch is like, Well, that’s shortsighted because you can, you know, there’s a lot of clones here and we’re trying to rescue the clones. And actually, if you do that and, you know, all this short sighted violence will pay off in the medium and long term because you’ll be able to draw more support to you to do whatever it is you’re doing. There isn’t even a rebellion like, I’m sorry, guys, I get it Bad Batch. You want to save your your brothers?

 

Rosie Knight I love the clones. I would also like to save the clones.

 

Jason Concepcion But I don’t want any clothes to die.

 

Rosie Knight If they had let Saw Gerrera do his thing, Alderaan would still exist.

 

Jason Concepcion It would have at least been like the destruction would have been delayed. I think we could have said.

 

Rosie Knight I think we could say that.

 

Jason Concepcion Listen, I’ve I’ve seen other places say, well, they just would have replaced Tarkin and Krennic. Sure. But with like Krennic was an idiot and so maybe like they heard about it, But Grand Moff Tarkin was like really good at his job. I think it would have, like even if they would have been replaced, who fucking cares?

 

Rosie Knight Let’s think about it. Orson Krennic. He is the one who is keeping tabs on Jyn Erso’s dad, who was the one they actually needed to build the Death Star. Like, you know, we get these big references here to the original trilogy. You get this project, Stardust, which we know is them talking about the creation of the Death Star. We get this huge, kind of monumental. It’s been revealing itself over time, but there’s two big things that we learn here. One, is that this is really been a season about how the stormtroopers came to replace the clones.

 

Jason Concepcion The rise of the Stormtroopers.

 

Rosie Knight Which is huge, and another doing exactly what we love about these animated series, which is expanding on moments that we’re not 100% aware of every nuance that happened in canon. And of course, the proto cloning that we know will end up going towards the sequel trilogy.

 

Jason Concepcion Dr Krennic would not be surprised if if Gideon is.

 

Rosie Knight Baby Gideon.

 

Jason Concepcion Baby Gideon. Young Gideon got his start working for Doctor Hemlock in some form or fashion here.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, it’s very interesting stuff, but I definitely was also overwhelmed by the Saw was right. Again, every time.

 

Jason Concepcion I get it, I really do get it but it and yes it’s you know, there would be some unfortunately people would die in this but like, what are we doing? Are we trying to like, score to like bowl a perfect game against the empire or do you actually want to fight? Because a lot of the big names are here Let Saw do his fucking thing.

 

Rosie Knight That if he wants to do the dirty work. Yeah. Let’s be real, that’s I think is one of the funniest conundrums of these stories, which we love so much. And they add all this great context. When you spend more time with these characters and you have more nuance to the stories, it suddenly becomes a lot more complex than, well, you just blow up the Death Star because you blow up the Death Star ends the empire. Great, well done. But then you get those conversations of what about all the people who worked on the Death Star who weren’t actually, you know, that by choice or were who were Imperial grunts were groomed. It’s that same thing. But in this moment I do feel like more good than harm would have been done if they let Saw do this.

 

Jason Concepcion If you go by Cody’s philosophy, Cody would have said at the Battle of Yavin, Well, we have to evacuate all the people that are on the Death Star that maybe don’t want to do this. You know, their work is just a job, or there might be some clones on there. Can we evacuate? I get it. Sure.

 

Rosie Knight But do you think this is like Dave Filoni punishing us for all those conversations we had about the Death Star?  He’s like, You are Cody now. Like, this is what you’ve all been doing this whole time.

 

Jason Concepcion I think Cody is just. I think Cody, I understand Cody’s rationale here and, and I get it and nobody really knows. Even though they’re all talking about the Death Star, nobody really knows what they’re working on.

 

Rosie Knight No one knows what Project Stardust is. The Death Star doesn’t exist in any way that they understand.

 

Jason Concepcion They couldn’t have known.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion And so I based on the information they have, they made an absolutely reasonable call to be like, Hey, Saw, don’t. That said, I just want to acknowledge once again, Saw was right. He was right again.

 

Rosie Knight He was absolutely right.

 

Jason Concepcion He was right again. He was right again. And his main problem is that he was right way, before anybody else could even guess what the you know, what the what was going on. And so therefore, he seems like a radical when in reality he’s just like 18 years early or whatever it is.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly. If you if you compare the actions that saw takes that people think are so violent and radical, they are absolutely equivalent to the things that Luke does. You know, it’s like.

 

Jason Concepcion If you want a book? Do you want like a 2 million people in the Death Star to die or do you want to kill like the, you know, 500 people that are in this facility right now and stop it from ever happening? It’s like a trade off.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly. So, yeah, I agree with you. That was a big takeaway I had from this, especially because that’s a drum we’ve been beating for a long time. Like, Saw, Saw. Also, can I just say that the last time we saw song, we were talking about how he was right. He was actually the one arguing about protecting his people. So this is not some one sided thing where he just wants to kill people. He is a complex, nuanced man, just like everyone else. But of course, this is The Clone show. Yeah. So they’re on a mission to Save the Clones, and I love that because I do want to save as many clones as possible.

 

Jason Concepcion And I think that the overall conversation about. That has always been inherent with the clones identity. Mm hmm. You know, a personal identity. What does it mean to be an individual when you have been created from the DNA of one person and you look just like all these others? I think that is really fascinating. The Bad Batch within that idea is really interesting in and of itself, because they are the ones, you know, Tech says, I think, right before he dies, you know, when have we ever followed orders like the rest of the clones, you know? And I think that is. That idea individualism within like a wide, a larger kind of monolithic group is really interesting. And I and I love exploring that here. Tech. Is he dead?

 

Rosie Knight I mean, I feel like the answer is no, just because of what we’ve seen in the past with the way that they treat like a clown who dies or goes missing. And they have that makes surprising comebacks to my hope would be no. But it had such a big impact on Omega, I think this one might stick.

 

Jason Concepcion I think it might stick too. And I think you don’t do the slow mo fall.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. That’s a classic.

 

Jason Concepcion Unless you’re going to mean it.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. You can’t like rewind the slow mo for that as it has a context and an impact.

 

Jason Concepcion And I agree with you Omega, man, it really, it really hit omega like that was heartbreaking, actually. Her wanting to go back. They can’t go back. You obviously can’t go.

 

Rosie Knight And also, I think that notion of sacrifice is like, no, no, we never leave anyone behind. And it’s actually that was somebody’s choice to do that so we could move forward. So are you going to take advantage of that or are you going to stay behind and, you know, trying to save somebody who in the end chose not to be saved? I think as well, the thing that you mentioned about individualism and this kind of idea of finding yourself in this clone army, which has obviously been even since the Clone Wars stuff is like so key to the most impactful stuff. We learn that that is at the heart of why the clone troopers end up becoming irrelevant to for what the Empire needs them and why the stormtroopers come through because they realize, Oh, actually you can’t just clone people and expect them to all behave exactly the same way. There’s actually this break out of human spirit, basically people who will go against the grain. And it’s not just The Bad Batch. You know, there are other clones who’ve done that. So I thought that was really interesting and obviously kind of what we all thought, because with the stormtroopers, you’re essentially trying to create an army of people who never question you. But I thought it was nice to kind of see that acknowledged here. And it goes along really well with the greater journey that they’ve been on.

 

Jason Concepcion Your thoughts on the strands that are obviously leading towards, you know, the Palpatine Cloning Project, Project Project New Palpatine.

 

Rosie Knight Well, I will say we were right because I do think it is no coincidence that in The Mandalorian and in this, we now have what are essentially threads here to, let’s say, expand on rather than fix. No matter what our feelings are about Rise of Skywalker, it does feel like. Filoni is once again using this as a space to kind of embroider more detail and more context, because as we know, even Oscar Isaac was tired when he said it. Somehow, Palpatine returned. Here’s the somehow it feels like we’re getting it here. We’re definitely getting in The Mandalorian. I like the idea that maybe there’s some connection to Gideon, even a Gideon mentor who worked for Hemlock or something. That seems like why we’re going. I’m very interested to know how that all comes together, because this is very different to when the Clone Wars was on air and they re rebuilding. That was not a time when we had Star Wars live action TV. It was not a time when there was so much cohesion between these different branches of Lucasfilm. I want to know if we are really going to see these threads from The Bad Batch come into live action Star Wars TV soon. If we’re going to start to see a much more fluid and quicker crossover because we’ve gotten it to a point, but it feels like this could be leading to something that would end together.

 

Jason Concepcion You know, what’s really interesting is, is one of the kind of. Driving themes of the Clone Wars. Is the Jedi Missed it. I missed the rise of Palpatine. He’s right there. He’s like two and a half blocks over from the Jedi.

 

Rosie Knight He’s literally chilling with people that, you know.

 

Jason Concepcion You know, Yoda can’t feel his presence. They have multiple meet face to face meetings with the guy.

 

Rosie Knight And they just think he’s just chillin, just chillin.

 

Jason Concepcion And it really feels like, man, they’re so close and they just missed it. And now with The Bad Batch, you know, with The Mandalorian, you’ve got this, the new kind of thing that everybody missed is Palpatine’s coming back, the cloning drive to recreate more Palpatine. So Palpatine can, you know, be our villain in perpetuity. And it’s really interesting now to see this kind of feeling developing again, where, I mean, Captain Teva is really the only one who’s like, I think there’s something going on with cloning guys and some kind of issue around the outer rim, rim and. Nevarro like what’s going on? It it feels again, although much less pointed but still feels again like, hey, there’s something going on with cloning. Who is going to catch on?

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, and it’s.

 

Jason Concepcion Anyone?

 

Rosie Knight It’s interesting to see that in a more of a real time. Yeah. Rather than something that’s retroactively added. You know like we saw this sequel trilogy reveal that Palpatine came back and now just a few years later we’re starting to see, oh, they missed it again. Like, this wasn’t some super secretive out of realm. Nobody knew about a situation this was going on under their noses while the original Palpatine was still alive.

 

Jason Concepcion The animation style is incredible. This is maybe this is the action in this was unbelievable. There’s some really great like one shots where in particular where The Bad Batch is like fighting through the facility and they like punch this stormtrooper multiple times and then the camera like flips so you can follow them running down the hall. It was freaking great. And by the way, I think this is the best the stormtroopers have ever done in a fight. They look good. They did well.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. This is not your, you know, four generations down stormtrooper missing everything with a blaster. Also, I feel you. I really like. I feel like there’s a great anime influence on this in the way that they’re using cameras as if they’re shooting live action. But you’re doing animation, and I love to see when come what came out. There was just so much hate for that art style and it didn’t help that they did that Short Clone Wars with Gendhi, who’s obviously such a iconic animator.

 

Jason Concepcion I think still. Oh, yes, right.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, that one first. And that that sets this tone. And then you go to this full CG and people have that struggle to connect with it. And then Rebels, you have that different stuff. It’s really nice to see The Bad Batch. Keep the spirit of Clone Wars alive, but just looks so fucking good. Like this has Disney plus money. Do you know what I mean? It feels like anyone can sit down and appreciate this as a prestige TV show, even though it’s animation, which is a really hard bridge to cross. And I feel like this is a really important show to watch. If you love Star Wars, it feels vital.

 

Jason Concepcion I agree. And it’s just. It just looks great. It looks really great. The your thoughts on the Omega meeting adult Omega.

 

Rosie Knight Shocking twist.

 

Jason Concepcion And where were they?

 

Rosie Knight I know. It was very cool.

 

Jason Concepcion It looked. I see pyramids and I was like, Is that Yavin? I don’t know, but like, that is. Obviously feels pretty huge. And the idea that they were we always knew that there might be more Omegas there, but the fact that there definitely is one feels really huge.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, we all we always knew that Omega was basically like the next kind of generation of clone, this enhanced kind of clone, potentially people wondering if she was force sensitive. I was very interested to wonder. Yeah. Basically, I was wondering the exact same thing where the Kamonian stuff has been demolished. So where are they? Where is this intense black pyramid with a kind of in a jungle with another pyramid kind of floating on top of it almost. It looks so cool. And I really think it seems to me that essentially that’s probably going to be like a female version of The Bad Batch that would come out of these and that could come out of these Omega clones that Omega would lead. That’s how it feels to me at the end.

 

Jason Concepcion Really strong ending to the season once again. Shouts to my guy, Saw Gerrera. You saw it? No. You won’t get the respect you deserve, but you saw it. Up next, The Mandalorian.

 

Speaker 4 <AD>

 

Jason Concepcion The Mandalorian Season three titled Chapter 22 Guns for Hire, directed by Bryce Dallas Howard in her bag.

 

Rosie Knight Icon. She’s back again just.

 

Jason Concepcion In her bag.

 

Rosie Knight When will she get the Star Wars movie she deserves? We’ve all been asking for it for so long.

 

Jason Concepcion All the way in her bag. Written by Jon Favreau. We open in space. An Imperial ship crewed by Mandalorian Mercenaries waylays a Quarren ship, The Mandalorian Captain Axe Woves. We’ve met him before, has been hired by some noble Mon Calamari family, to retrieve their lovestruck prince son. Apparently the Quarren and the Mon Calamari they share the planet and their uneasy neighbors. And apparently the son who is in love with the Quarren captain of this Quarren ship has caused some sort of a scandal. And so the Mandalorians have to separate them and bring the son back to his family. The Mandalorians agree with the Quarren Captain, this is very dishonorable and distasteful business. But as a wise man once said, that’s what the money is for. And then once the job is done, they bring they park their fleet back home On Plazir 15 in the outer rim, we go to our friends Bo, Din and the baby. They are heading to Plazir15 themselves because they need to you know they’re the new ambassadors for the rebuilding Mandalore project.

 

Rosie Knight And they’re trying to find Bo’s old crew, you know, who abandoned her and became mercenaries after she lost the darksaber. So this is a quest that makes a lot of sense and puts them on an interesting side quest, which I personally loved and was not expecting. But yeah, but their intention is to find more Mandalorians.

 

Jason Concepcion That’s right. So, ah, they arrive on the planet. And there’s some like delightful 16 bit fanfare music, an announcement about, you know, what Plazir15 is. And a voice welcomes them, you know, to Plazir15. The only direct democracy in the outer rim. Grogu seems to really love the music. They pass some Imperial droids on the way to a.

 

Rosie Knight Yes, very notable.

 

Jason Concepcion Train.

 

Rosie Knight Very notable for what will come to pass.

 

Jason Concepcion And on the train. You know, they’re heading in. They’re kind of being interviewed by the security services of Plazir15 on the way in. Bo is like, hey, we want to speak to the man. We’re here to see my Mandalorian brethren, can we can we speak to them? And the voice is like, no dice. Because according to the Coruscant Accords, no outsider can have direct contact with military assets in peacekeeping zones, whatever that means. Yeah, there’s.

 

Rosie Knight Lots of bureaucracy here. If you love bureaucratic Star Wars, you will be happy because there is some rules that are being laid down by the New Republic.

 

Jason Concepcion And the voice then is like, Can we get your chain code so we can verify who you are? They do. And then all of a sudden this voice is like, Hey, guess what? Bo-katan Kryze and enjoying your presence is requested at a certain place. They give you a place and it’s a feast. There’s a feast going on. And this is a star studded episode of The Mandalorian.

 

Rosie Knight You guys say how they kept these cameos quiet kind of blows my mind. I know that this is just people who probably wanted to work with Bryce and who obviously also wanted to be in a Star Wars because who doesn’t? But it’s really great because you get this feast and you first of all, have this hilarious moment where you see one of the aliens. You know who Grogu was trying to eat? The eggs, the baby eggs. And that was really shocking everyone. And I was like, Oh my gosh, it’s one of those aliens. And then at the top of the table, it’s like, Oh, it’s Lizzo and Jack Black.

 

Jason Concepcion So obviously that’s huge.

 

Rosie Knight Just just casual.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. And so they’re up there playing the Duchess, who is part of this ruling family that is rule Plazir15 for apparently.

 

Rosie Knight Since it was ever settled.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. All of its modern history. And Captain Bombardier.

 

Rosie Knight A perfect name for a character played by Jack Black.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. The the elected rulers. And you know, they sit down Jack Black, I’m sorrry, Captain Bombardier offers them some drinks which are presently secreted by some really gross like sack looking globular alien in a in a jar.

 

Rosie Knight This is classic, interesting Star Wars world building because we really get the sense of that opulent, disconnected wealth that so often exists in the world of Star Wars because of people’s connections to war, or as we’ll find out, the Imperial kind of regime.

 

Jason Concepcion And a Captain Bombardier addresses them. Okay, let’s address the bonds.

 

Rosie Knight Ding dong.

 

Jason Concepcion I was once a facilities planner officer during the war for the Empire, and thanks to the New Republic Embassy program, I was able to help rebuild the Plazir15. And then the Duchess echoes that, saying, you know, Plazir15 really got just really got wrecked during the war and suffered under Imperial rule. And my husband, Captain Bombardier, is really, really done a great job in helping us rebuild and using his skills as an acquisitions officer for the Empire. Which, hey, they were great at acquiring stuff.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, that’s what colonialism got. Good. Good at stealing stuff from other people.

 

Jason Concepcion And certainly they seem to be living it up now. So everything’s going.

 

Rosie Knight Great. Yeah. And they fell in love. Isn’t that great? Well, one magical story.

 

Jason Concepcion You know, what I, I, I hate? I obviously, whenever I see former Imperials thriving, I take I do a double take. But this is for love. And everybody seems happy.

 

Rosie Knight So on the planet.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight I actually.

 

Jason Concepcion Who can argue?

 

Rosie Knight I did expect to see some kind of like secret darker side of the planet. Kind of like what we saw in the Last Jedi. But you don’t really get that. It’s just great. It’s going great is allegedly these people were elected democratically. People seem happy ever. I’m sorry. Have any in some food? There’s some issues with droids that we’ll.

 

Jason Concepcion Get going into that It’s like Neiman Marcus the planet.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah.Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion Like everything is luxurious. Nobody works. Everybody’s hanging out.

 

Rosie Knight Just chillin.

 

Jason Concepcion And buying stuff. It’s shopping all the time.

 

Rosie Knight All the time.

 

Jason Concepcion It seems pretty great.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, it’s it’s tourism, capitalism, but just all day, every day and nobody works, which seems great. I would love to see it.

 

Speaker 2 I’ll just say this. And, you know, I think the amnesty program is not only well-meaning, but good. And a and if it’s imperfect, as we’ve seen in other episodes of The Mandalorian, then it’s imperfect for a good cause. I think it’s probably a net positive. It remains to be seen how things go with the cloning program.

 

Jason Concepcion The idea is, I would say I agree with you net positive because it is worth giving people that second chance who are forced into those roles.

 

Rosie Knight That said, and we don’t know what Captain Bombardier was up to in his previous life as an acquisitions officer for the Empire. I feel like everybody’s always playing down what they did in the empire.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly. And it’s just they’re telling you what?

 

Jason Concepcion That I was an acquisitions officer. Oh, really? Where are you stationed? On the Death Star. Like, where were you working?

 

Rosie Knight Not just that, but like, where Which planets were you ravaging? Like, whose family wealth are you now sitting on? Like playing space croquet and eating delicious feasts? It seems inevitable. I also think there is an interesting statement being made when we look at how somebody like Bombardier is being treated in this amnesty program compared to the kind of low level grunts that we saw who are also living in these halfway houses. And we saw in that same episode of The Mandalorian where we kind of explored where Pershing was at, that there were these wealthy kind of scions who just don’t care whether it’s the Empire, the New Republic, whoever, as long as they can stay fat and enjoy the things that they enjoy. And Bombardier definitely seems to be more leaning that way.

 

Jason Concepcion Although it certainly seems like a great guy.

 

Rosie Knight I mean, it’s like it would be a lot of fun to be at this feast. Love his curly mustache.

 

Jason Concepcion And listen.

 

Rosie Knight He’s married to Lizzo, so obviously doing something right, Right.

 

Jason Concepcion And listen, during the Imperial days, it’s like if you wanted to work, you kind of had to be in league with the empire. So I get. I get it. Anyway, the Duchess then offers Grogu some space sardines and Grogu is like, yes.

 

Rosie Knight Does the flip.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. Does the flip right into her arms.

 

Rosie Knight He is like flip. Never not flipping now.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, it Din is like, I don’t know Grogu.

 

Rosie Knight He’s waiting on straight.

 

Jason Concepcion And all of a sudden Grogu’s like, Well, I like anybody who’s gonna.

 

Rosie Knight Give me some food.

 

Jason Concepcion Delicious seafood. We learned that this whole direct democracy thing, which is basically everybody votes for the person that they want to rule. There’s no voting for a representative Then who’s going to cast a vote for whoever is going to rule you? You vote directly for the person you want. And so this whole direct democracy thing is is pretty new. And that even though the duchess and her family have ruled for all the planet’s history, they are now the duly elected leaders. One, one wonders if if you are the ruling family for generations, what chance any other candidate has.

 

Rosie Knight If you’re already like monarchs. So it seems.

 

Jason Concepcion Like, again, everybody seems happy.

 

Rosie Knight They’re trying their best.

 

Jason Concepcion Everybody seems happy. We also learned that Bombardier’s Imperial Past means that he can’t be in command of any military force and therefore Plazir15 can’t.

 

Rosie Knight Can’t have any military.

 

Jason Concepcion Can’t have a military, so they outsource their military force, thus the Mandalorians. That’s why they are here. They are essentially mercenaries here on the planet.

 

Rosie Knight To me, that feels like a very.

 

Jason Concepcion Loophole.

 

Rosie Knight Obvious loophole that the New Republic could should stop because it’s like you can’t have a nationalist military that is run by people of your country. Agreed. I honestly, military always listens to bad stuff. I get that, especially with the Imperial connection. But just hiring random mercenaries who you pay to commit war crimes doesn’t seem much better.

 

Jason Concepcion It seems like the way it works is they hired them to just be security guards.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, they’re protecting and.

 

Jason Concepcion And they can’t give them any orders beyond that. It’s kind of just like, hey, protect the planet and whatever else you guys are doing, I don’t want to know, like, because, you know, they’re out here doing sidequests for my calamari. You know, people say we love you. Yeah. So Bo is like, Well, I’d like to meet with these Mandalorians I have. I have to talk with them about some very urgent business. And the royal couple was like, That’s a great idea, but we have some things that we’d like you to take care of a first. We’re having issues with our Droid workforce. They say we have a lot of. A lot of droids here, including separatist battle droids. Former separatist managers have been reconditioned for, you know, regular blue collar work. And they’re they’re acting up. They’re either refusing to work or deleting tasks. And it all seemed at first to be kind of innocent. But now there’s been some some violence involved, some assaults. People have been injured. It’s becoming more serious. Ken Bone didn’t look into it. And bones like the Mandalorians things, take care of that.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. No, you didn’t give them an order. You can tell them that. Why would we have to do it?

 

Jason Concepcion But, you know, again, the. The Charter of Plazir 15 stipulates that no kind of armed forces can enter the city. But there’s another loophole because of the multicultural society that they are building here respects the the cultures of the people that are there, which is a wonderful thing. Bow and din can therefore come armed into the city because their weaponry, their armor is intrinsic to their culture and therefore it’s fine.

 

Rosie Knight So as you can see, this was a very cynical invitation. They they knew that this would be useful to them.

 

Jason Concepcion Yes.

 

Rosie Knight And Bombardier Jack Black sells it very well. It’s such a great coincidence. But also, if you want to speak to the Mandalorians, go sort out our droid problem.

 

Jason Concepcion And they offer actually a very, very juicy nugget in return. The deal. That they offer is in return for helping that Plazir15 out with their drug problem plus year 15 would formally recognize the new Mandalore currently repopulating Mandalore as a sovereign system and then would lobby the New Republic to do the same. That’s actually like a huge deal.

 

Rosie Knight That’s a huge deal. Let me ask you a question about this. So this basically establishes that, no question there’s rumors and rumblings of them repopulate Mandalore is out in the world.

 

Jason Concepcion Right.

 

Rosie Knight Because that’s not just a lucky guess. That’s right. Like, they absolutely come to this with the knowledge that this is something that’s going on, which probably means other people are going to hear about it, too. And we can assume as we get into these last two episodes of the season, I think that that will be good because lots of Mandalorians will probably come to Mandalore, but it will also be bad because people will know where to find the Mandalorians and Din and Bo if they need to.

 

Jason Concepcion Bo thinks that this diplomatic deal is really, really great and Din is just like, I just want to kill.

 

Rosie Knight I fucking hate.

 

Jason Concepcion I hate droids. I want to kill them. I like one droid. That’s it.

 

Rosie Knight And he’s dead.

 

Jason Concepcion And he’s dead. And. And all the rest of them can go to hell. So they go to see the security commissioner. He’s basically the head of all their defense infrastructure. And he it’s a star studded episode. He is played by.

 

Rosie Knight Christopher Lloyd.

 

Jason Concepcion The legendary Chris Lloyd.

 

Rosie Knight You really don’t think after they do like Lizzo and Jack Black, but it just feels very contemporary and very you don’t really expect to then just see like Doc Brown. Uncle Fester. You know, one of the most influential character actors and comedians of our generation, especially if you love the kind of stuff we love, and they just casually have him there just being in charge of some droids.

 

Jason Concepcion The droids. 1985. So then the commissioner plays them some of the security tapes of the various incidents, and some of them are comical.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, ruining the shopping trip. Throwing some groceries around. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion And then a crash car. And then a Benihana chef goes nuts.

 

Rosie Knight That was my favorite one. On,e like, who was thinking of putting some general grievous style guy in charge of doing, you know, Benihana cooking? And my favorite part is when he turns, he is wheeled in those cleavers.

 

Jason Concepcion He screams.

 

Rosie Knight The cleavers are going.  Good stuff.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. So Bo asks eight important question, which is like, why don’t just turn them off? Just turn them off. Well, here’s why. Here on a Neiman Marcus planet, Neiman Marcus, the neoliberal jewel of the outer rim, all of our citizens here on Plazir15 live a fucking life of Consumers Leisure. They don’t lift a finger. The droids do everything.

 

Rosie Knight Seems like a problem. Just saying, Look, I feel like there are some moral and ethical issues here.

 

Jason Concepcion We can get into it because there are some obvious issues that become that come to the surface, you know, or at least the subtextual service in this episode. And, you know, essentially the commissioner is like, listen, people don’t want to work anymore.

 

Rosie Knight Honestly fair. I do relate to that.

 

Jason Concepcion And if you turn the droids off, they’re going to have to go to work. They’re going have to work as Benihana chefs. They’re going to work as drivers.

 

Rosie Knight They’re going to have to do shopping.

 

Jason Concepcion They’re going to have to carry people.

 

Rosie Knight They’re going to have to space GrubHub.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, they’re going to have to carry the fucking Captain Bombardier’s like groceries to his house, and they’re not going to want to do that. And society would collapse. And they’re like, okay. Bo and Din are like fine.

 

Rosie Knight And it’s a very big red button. He claims, Well, turn them all out big, extremely ominous button. I feel like that would be a more sensible way to do that. And we will find out later. The button is ominous. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion So Bo and Din go and see the the other. People that do manual labor, skilled labor here in Plazir 15. The Argonauts, the mechanics. You basically keep everything running, keep all the droids running and do a bunch of the other kind of maintenance work around here. Didn’t knows how to talk to them, and he manages to get some information out of them over drinks. The Argonauts insists the droids are not malfunctioning because the Argonauts are very particular about their work.

 

Rosie Knight And to say that is like an insult.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s an insult because you’re saying, Argonaut work is not good, because why else would these droid be malfunctioning?

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, we get a great moment here where Bo, as the princess, she doesn’t know how to talk to normal people. She doesn’t know how to talk to Argonauts, who value labor.

 

Jason Concepcion Captain Barbardier and the Duchess. She’s very at home.

 

Rosie Knight She’s fine. She’s basically a princess, you know?

 

Jason Concepcion I was like, Oh, I just wow, this is great.

 

Rosie Knight But we actually get to see Din showcasing his talent with people, showing how wildly showing the common touch. He’s a man of the people like Logan Roy, you know, standing on those pieces of paper.

 

Jason Concepcion That’s right. And so he managed to get some information out of them. And that information is the location of the droids that have malfunctioned in the past. So Detectives Kryze and Djarin head to a spaceport loading dock, this is where they’ve been sent. And the manager droid says, Hey, how are you? Don’t worry, all our certifications are up to date and all these aboveboard. Roger. Roger, No need for the police here. You can be on your way. Can I see your warrant? And Din Djarin then goes into his good cop bad cop, which is all bad cop.

 

Rosie Knight Only bad cop.

 

Jason Concepcion And says, we don’t need no stinking warrants. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to just physically assault these hardworking droids. I’m going to just kick.

 

Rosie Knight Every single droid until one gets stressed.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, a.

 

Rosie Knight Terrible behavior.

 

Jason Concepcion Awful behavior.

 

Rosie Knight Awful behavior.

 

Jason Concepcion So then he kicks a droid and one droid’s like, Hey defends itself.

 

Rosie Knight Please don’t do that

 

Jason Concepcion And then realizes it’s been outed as one of these droids that now can think on its own runs away.

 

Rosie Knight Bo just tries to shoot it.

 

Jason Concepcion Bo and Din, chase it down and shoot it in the back. Just like real cops. Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Very realistic, actually.

 

Jason Concepcion They shoot this poor droid in the back.

 

Rosie Knight He was just doing his job, just carrying a cardboard box and Din’s there waving a hand in front of him, kicking him. Bad behavior. Not a fan, not a fan. Do better Din Djarin.

 

Jason Concepcion But this is the way things work on Plazir15. And we got to keep this society going. And I get it. Bo finds a spark pad on the Droid’s carcass and it leads them to a droid bar the resistor. And it’s a lively place, you know, lots of happy droids having enjoying some R&R and all of that ground to a halt. As soon as Bo and Din walk in.

 

Rosie Knight They got big snitch energy. You know, that is a problem when they walk in.

 

Jason Concepcion I don’t think they get many of our kind here. Din says No shit.

 

Rosie Knight Now wonder why.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, the bartender is very standoffish until Din turns on the charm by saying, I’m going to dissect your fucking brain.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. And pulls out like a little electronic, like tazer.

 

Jason Concepcion Like a cattle prod. He’s like I’ll cattle prod you, and then I’m going to cut your head off, and.

 

Rosie Knight I’ll just take a little memory card out and, like, melt it so I can find out your secrets. He’s this man has problems he needs to go to, like, armor therapy. Go talk about beskar. If you love beskar so much, how about you treat some metal droids nicer?

 

Jason Concepcion Not exactly. You know, clothing this mission and honor here. We’re just like.

 

Rosie Knight The Mandalorians are struggling with the honor part

 

Jason Concepcion Threatening these mechanical life forms.

 

Rosie Knight They are sentient. Let’s be real.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s not cool.

 

Rosie Knight It’s not okay.

 

Jason Concepcion But. But be that as it may, they do manage to get some information out of the bartender. The bartender offers that. And this is actually a wonderful way to get to understand the kind of texture and fabric of this droid community. He says, Listen, the Droid community here is just as concerned about incidents as anyone else. We have a lot of older models here that would have been decommissioned and scrapped anywhere else in the galaxy. But here they’ve found a place where they can still work and be of use. And if public opinion turns against droids because of all the things going on here, then they’re going to be. Out of home, probably potentially scrapped. And the bartender then says, you know, we want to help humans, human life. It says, quote, Human life is so short, organics created us. It’s the least we can do. And all the droids are like, You.

 

Rosie Knight Don’t kill us. Please don’t kill us, you crazy man. Hey, look how much we love human. We want carry groceries. Don’t taser us. I want to cook for them. I want to chop up vegetables on a hot plate. I want to do it.

 

Jason Concepcion Please don’t let that scrap us, Din Djarin. You could kick me in the in the thigh all you want. So they then, Bo and Din then trace the issue. From this bar using the information from this bartender to tainted Nepenthe, which is this kind of droid lubricant. The droids drink, but it also acts as like a delivery system for like New Coke.

 

Rosie Knight Which is very cool. It’s really, really easily it reprograms them as they drink it. And the idea is to patch the software to keep them in this kind of new program state.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s a delicious drink.

 

Rosie Knight And it’s delectable. So somebody has tainted it and is reprograming them for their own nefarious means.

 

Jason Concepcion So they go to the Droid morgue.

 

Rosie Knight And R. P. P to those Droid.

 

Jason Concepcion R.I.P., to the droids in the Droid morgue and bow and din go there and they have the kind of mortician take some of the liquid that is in this this droid who is fell victim to whatever is in the new pensé and it’s by the way, it is either a B2 that has malfunctioned or it’s the one they just simply shot. But be that as it may, they then analyze the analyze the liquid and there and then it’s like, I wonder if this stuff, you know, is still causing droid some malfunction. And that is answered in the affirmative when the assistant droid in the room goes nuts and has to be chopped in half with the darksaber. Analysis of the liquid reveals that there’s particles in there. These particles are nano droids and furthermore, there’s writing on the nano droid. It’s in the writing is a chain code, and the chain code leads them to the information. These particles were created years ago by the techno union, which is a at an organization from back during the Clone Wars Pre Clone Wars days. That was actually part of the separatist movement. And it was like this union of all the kind of technological manufacturers threatened throughout the galaxy and that someone ordered on space Amazon this this these nano droids.

 

Rosie Knight Not even the dark web it was literally just space Amazon. You can trace it. They find this stuff very quickly.

 

Jason Concepcion His credit card is right there associated with it. And it’s none other than Commissioner Hellgate.

 

Rosie Knight Dun, dun, dun

 

Jason Concepcion Commissioner of security a head of security himself. He ordered the nanotech is he’s behind all this. They go to confront him. And it turns out commissioner’s a separatist. He’s an unreformed Dooku ist. He’s like, Dooku was a visionary.

 

Rosie Knight He’s they say, look, from what we’ve seen in the recent animations is.

 

Jason Concepcion Dooku had a point.

 

Rosie Knight He adds he had some thoughts that I don’t disagree with.

 

Jason Concepcion I d he obviously in a way and I’m saying this in a way that is completely different from Saw Gerrera. He went too far. He did.

 

Rosie Knight It did. He did go too far. But in that Tales of Jedi, You know, we got to see that kind of disillusion that he felt and where both sides.

 

Jason Concepcion He’s about to to like unpack the entire Dooku-ist ideology for Bo just trying something is like, oh, politics.

 

Rosie Knight Oh, she’s sick. I don’t want to get to it. I’m not saying we not don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t you know judge somebody by their name. That can be very problematic. This man’s name was Hellgate. Yeah. I’m just say it like just giving him one extra look. He’s in charge of the droids he’s got a very suspicious, narratively relevant name. Probably shouldn’t have taken you long to get here.

 

Jason Concepcion So we got the guy case closed. Head back to the royal party room where the Duchess is cheating at bocce ball with the help of Grogu. Great time. Does she know that Grogu is helping her cheat?

 

Rosie Knight I don’t know.

 

Jason Concepcion I mean, no one, she’s hitting shots that no one has ever hit in this game.

 

Rosie Knight She is. I think when you are that level of wealthy and powerful, people just say yes to you all the time and they kind of just let you do whatever you do. And they go, Oh, darling, you’re winning. And they move. They move the little hooks, you know, that you play the crochet with and all that kind of biz.

 

Jason Concepcion The Argonauts relegated to the underworld, the way the droids are treated, the fact that the Duchess is like openly cheating at a game and doesn’t give a shit about it. There are some red flags here, but that is it may, everybody seems happy.

 

Rosie Knight You know what though? Grogu, he’s having a great time. Maybe you’re loving it, playing, doing some flips, using the force. You know, the duchess just wants to snuggle him constantly. And he seems very happy about that, too. He’s just having a good time.

 

Jason Concepcion So Bo and Din deliver, Commissioner. He’ll get in there like this is the guy. He did it all. The Duchess offers Hellgate the same compassion that the planet and its society is showed her husband, Captain Bombardier, former former member of the dreaded empire. And, you know, can the commissioner do the same? Can the commissioner forgive Captain Bombardier for his Imperial past and the things that they’ve done? And he’s like, I don’t know, maybe I maybe I’ll get there. I’m an old man one. And so they’re like, okay, well, until you figure it out, you’re.

 

Rosie Knight Exiled to the moon.

 

Jason Concepcion No, you’re going to the moon.

 

Rosie Knight All right, Inhumans, Off you go and live on the moon.

 

Jason Concepcion Bye bye. So, Bo and Din get their audience with Axe Woves and they also get the key to Plazir 15.

 

Rosie Knight Which is over the top, is huge, huge, ridiculous.

 

Jason Concepcion On the ride over, Bo is kind of worried because obviously her and Axe had this falling out and acts in his people don’t really respect her because she didn’t. Win the darksaber in the time honored way. And Din says, Listen, whatever you decide, I will support you. Which is wonderful. They find the Mandalorians drinking space coffee by their ships just hanging out. I’ve come to reclaim my fleet. You know, a bow says and acts is like, Well, I like it. I’m not giving it up. And I challenge you one warrior to another. And it’s on like Alderaan. Great fight. Yeah. And bow wins. But that doesn’t change the fact in Axe’s eyes, in the eyes of all the people that follow him, that she can’t lead because she doesn’t wield the darksaber. And then Din. Is like, Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like Matlock.

 

Rosie Knight Like Columbo. One more thing.

 

Jason Concepcion Hold on. I have some information here that you might be interested in, legally speaking. Now. Officially, I think you could argue that I am just holding the darksaber for Bo because when I was on Mandalore exploring it for a very short period of time before I got Molly wopped.

 

Rosie Knight By a spider.

 

Jason Concepcion By a spider or whatever it was, I lost the darksaber.

 

Rosie Knight To the aforementioned spider.

 

Jason Concepcion The aforementioned spider guy. Bo saved my life, killed the spider. Therefore, by the transitive law of the Darksaber, which is otherwise the space addendum to Elrond lore, is it not true that Bo is the rightful owner of the Darksaber Axe Woves? Axe Woves, what say you? An ax is like you got me.

 

Rosie Knight He’s like, You’re right, because it’s just bone. Didn’t like. Did she not defeat the one who defeated me? And it’s true. And I would just like to say we pointed this out. Our battery is your right. And not only us. We had a listener who, eight days ago Brian emailed us and said he believed this would be the way things played out. And Brian was right and we were right.

 

Jason Concepcion So I’ll see you, Brian.

 

Rosie Knight Shouts to you, Brian.

 

Jason Concepcion Like Saw Gerrera, you see the truth.

 

Rosie Knight So Bo has a baby, The Darksaber is back. And thank God, honestly, because let’s be real. Din was that was like he was not doing it. He needed more time. He did not know how to wield it. It was still very heavy to him. Did not have the connection and Bow is just looking light fresh like it was made for us.

 

Jason Concepcion He was going to hurt his back every time hepulled that thing out.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly. He might have killed the baby. It was looking bad. It was looking dangerous. This was the best option. And I also love that. Really. I think they just wanted Bo to be their leader because, like, it’s very convoluted. Did he did she really win in combat? I don’t know if you could argue that, but she defeated and that just like. Cool. Okay.

 

Jason Concepcion We got the fleet back. We got the old Imperial ships back. This is a wonderful episode. It continues. This show continues to look great.

 

Rosie Knight It feels like all of Disney’s budget is going to this show. Every time I watch, I might. It looks so much better wherever I am is doing over there. Please do that for those MCU movies that aren’t connecting as well with people because these worlds feel so lived and the fights are so brilliant. The creature work is so fantastic. We get so much of that fun. So the costuming and the Duchess’s outfit, that’s kind of this brilliant practical dress, but behind her is this kind of holographic flower. There’s just so much fun to be had with visual.

 

Jason Concepcion I would love to know how the the foot race with the unfortunate, beaten down droid that then gets dishonorably gunned down from behind because that the movement was like, really human like, I wonder if it was mocap or what it was.

 

Rosie Knight It felt like an zoom and it made it hit even harder.

 

Jason Concepcion It looked really, really, really cool. And I think this was like my favorite by far my favorite cold open of the season and maybe cold open. The Cold.

 

Rosie Knight Open is all of the Mandalorian.

 

Rosie Knight It starts  off feeling.

 

Jason Concepcion Like a minixestory.

 

Rosie Knight Is, and it feels like it’s going to be this kind of dry, bureaucratic Star Wars conversation, which we’re so used to and we kind of brag on, but we also enjoy. But it actually was this beautiful, funny Romeo and Juliet story, and I want to read the inevitable, a certain point of view story about I want to read that novella that somebody is going to write about those two because you do believe that they will see each other again. And I love that. Also, it does so much to establish where these Mandalorian mercenaries are at because she says, like, I thought you were honorable. Yeah. And she says, Well, you know, we offer a few credit. And I say, And that’s the real truth about where the Mandalorians are at now.

 

Jason Concepcion What? So we’re how many? Two episodes. Two episodes left. Feels like more Mandalorians to join the fold. Still time for us to see Sabine. And then last episode surely is going to be the assault on Mandalore Yeah, maybe a two parter.

 

Rosie Knight I think that my gut says you’re back with Rick. For me. Our Yeah. Who was the who directed the opening is so great. Those are the last two episodes. I feel like this is going to be your big action story. You’ve had that Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni style, serialized storytelling, lots of side quests, lots of ball episodes. I love that kind of stuff. I think it’s really fun, but I think people do want this big chunky two parter that’s going to reestablish where we find The Mandalorian.

 

Jason Concepcion After seeing what Axe in his people have been up to it, it’s one can only assume. Listen, Mandalorians need to know when we first meet Din. He’s a bounty hunter. Yeah, like this is what? Mandalorians do is they live by their blasters. And so it absolutely makes sense that they would go out across the galaxy, hired out as mercenaries, privateers, what have you, bodyguards. You know what? Bounty hunters. It kind of does leave the door open then. For some splinter group of Mandalorians to maybe have been hired to either capture Gideon or move him from somewhere.

 

Rosie Knight Or who follow Gideon.

 

Jason Concepcion Or follow Gideon like it could I? I thought that that was an obvious frame of.

 

Rosie Knight Me too.

 

Jason Concepcion It. Maybe. I think it probably is.

 

Rosie Knight I think the beskar to me is too obvious.

 

Jason Concepcion Too obvious.

 

Rosie Knight But they couldn’t. You raise a good point. I think there’s a large chance that that could be a splinter group who either follow Gideon, who have some kind of belief that he is still the rightful holder of the darksaber or who have want to punish him for his crimes.

 

Jason Concepcion Because so much of this, the kind of emotional weight of the season, particularly with Bo, has been about no more Mandalorians Fighting Mandalorian since this one.

 

Rosie Knight And she says that today when she fights back.

 

Jason Concepcion That this is what led us to this place. You know, all the tragedies that happened during the Clone Wars, you know, Mandalorian society ripped apart one side of the debate, living on the moon, a conqueror of the rest of us trying to make a go of it on mandalore like that didn’t work. Mm hmm. And it feels like this has been so much about, like, you know, bringing the tribe back together. But I do wonder if that means we’re going to see Mandalorians fighting back.

 

Rosie Knight I was going to say, imagine if the power of, like, Gideon stepping off of a ship with, like, a a new death was. So what do we do with the Mandalorians behind him? That would be huge. And also gives an option for those Mandalorians to still be welcomed into the fold and perhaps turn. So I think I am. I love the frame up. I think it feels like a frame up and I still stick by it, but I am 6040 that there could be this spin off kind of secondary splinter group of Mandalorians. It makes sense, like you said, but the themes also I need to know are these final two episodes going to be an hour long each? It feels like they need to be chunky. It feels like there’s still a lot to kind of tie up here. And also to establish what we should expect to see from the future seasons that are inevitably coming.

 

Jason Concepcion Well, a wonderful episode. Bryce Dallas Howard once again in her bag.

 

Rosie Knight Give her the trilogy. You want a new trilogy, Give it to Bryce when she’s delivered at all times.

 

Jason Concepcion One of our greatest Nepo babies.

 

Rosie Knight One of the most  talented nepo babies.

 

Jason Concepcion Talented Nepo baby.

 

Rosie Knight Made the most of that Nepo.

 

Jason Concepcion Fantastic.

 

Rosie Knight Power.

 

Jason Concepcion Cannot argue with it. Up next, Nerd Out.

 

Rosie Knight In today’s Nerd Out, where you tell us what you love and why, or a theory that you’re excited to share. Peter ponders the Poisoned Planet rumors from both Andor and The Mandalorian.

 

Jason Concepcion Peter writes, quote, I’m curious if the planet is poisoned rumors, warnings on both Canary and Mandalore are inherent parallels or thematic empire propaganda. In both shows, characters make it on and off the planets without dying, despite the threat. I haven’t seen this address and can’t decide if I’m overthinking this or if this is an overarching storyline. I think there’s something to it.

 

Rosie Knight I love that.

 

Jason Concepcion I think there’s something to it.

 

Rosie Knight Think about it. We see these planets that have indigenous populations that are culturally connected to the planets whose planets are raided. And then these rumors are spread about this idea of, Oh, they’re poisoned. You can’t go back, you have to start again. That works for almost every level of Imperial society. Not only does it eradicate an indigenous population and spread them out, but it also works. You need walkers on Coruscant. You need workers in these places. You need to push people into the urban sprawl of the galaxy to keep the cities moving. I believe that this was not the last that we’ll see. I hadn’t actually thought about that, but as soon as Peter said it, I think that just makes so much sense.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, I agree. And I also think it makes sense from a from a kind of economic point of view. It’s cheaper.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s just cheaper. You of course, you could poison the entire planet. That would take a lot of radiation and a lot of bombs and a lot of, you know, chemical weapons, if that’s what you want to do. Or

 

Rosie Knight You can just tell people.

 

Jason Concepcion You just tell everybody that it’s poison.

 

Rosie Knight And the fact that you had already it looks terrible. It looks broken down. People don’t live there. Those rumors spread and then people become scared to go back like what happened with Mandalore.

 

Jason Concepcion I like this idea and it seems like something that a space empire. It just makes sense that you would do it.

 

Rosie Knight Especially we know that propaganda and branding is such a big part of the empire. Yeah, it makes sense that that would go down to economic policy too.

 

Jason Concepcion I completely agree. Peter, absolutely great question. Great idea. Great nerd out. If you have series or passions you want to share. Hit us up at Xray@Crooked.com. Instructions are in the show notes. All right, that’s it for us. Rosie Plugs, plugs, plugs, plugs, plugs.

 

Rosie Knight You can read my work. Go to my website, RosieKnight.com. It links to lots of my work, all different places. IGN, Den of Geek, Nerdist, Polygon, all those kind of cool places. I have a newsletter where I’m recommending cool books. It’s called Rosie Recommends. You can find that on Substack and obviously here twice a week.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. Watch Primo May 19 on Amazon Freevie.

 

Rosie Knight It’s good, it’s going to be very good.

 

Jason Concepcion From the mind of Mike Shore and four time New York Times best seller Shea Serrano, Primo heartwarming family single camera sitcom Only on Amazon Freebie on May 19th. Catch the next episode of X-ray Vision on Wednesday, April 12th for more Yellowjackets and Succession.

 

Rosie Knight And in case you somehow have forgotten, last remind you, we are bringing you two episodes.

 

Jason Concepcion Let’s go.

 

Rosie Knight Two, and you can watch them twice a week on YouTube where you can now see full episodes. Sometimes we’re here, sometimes you’re on Zoom. It’s very cool. Never know what to expect. You can also follow us @XRVPod on Twitter. And check out our Discord, where you can meet loads of cool people who love all the same stuff as us. And me and Jason are even in there sometimes.

 

Jason Concepcion Five star ratings. We need them, we got to have them. You got to send them to us. Here’s one from Lars66542488: The best. The only downside is sometimes I laughed too much to keep doing my chores. A great time every episode. Sorry about that, Lars66542488.

 

Rosie Knight But thank you for sticking with us.

 

Jason Concepcion 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 Fotopoulos. Delon Villanueva and Matt DeGroot provide video production support. Alex Reliford handles social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for our theme music See you next time.

 

Rosie Knight Bye.

 

Jason Concepcion Hey, Mike. This is Histoff from Maureen. I just want to talk about the the droids of Plazir15 today. Mike, you know, listen, I get it. It’s working for everybody. The system is working for everybody. I had I had a you know, I have a timeshare in Plazir 15, and it’s great. You know, I, I play golf. I play space golf out there and and all that stuff. I just want to say Mike, I don’t think the droids are being treated necessarily, right over there, Mike. I. I can’t put my finger on it, but any time I go to a place and all the work is being done by droids and all the, the, the kind of maintenance work is being done by specifically Argonauts, you know, it just gives me a weird feeling of mine, like I’m in somewhere else in the galaxy. The, like, from long, long ago where I it shouldn’t be like that any more. Mike, I again I the Duchess is a nice she’s a wonderful lady and Captain Bombardier, former Imperial guy. You know I don’t like those but they seem by, by you know, everything. I seem to be a sweet guy, but it just rubs me the wrong way. Mike I don’t know something about it. Mike, I. I’m hoping that some of our galactic free press will look into it, Mike Because some, something about it rubs me the wrong way. Mike I’ll take my answer off the air. Thank you.