Transcript
Speaker: There has been a tragedy in our community today, unfortunately. Oh, did you said you that you had banter. I thought this was going to be something fun. No.
Speaker: going to be something nice. No. I mean, everything about her... was perfect. um We're recording this on August 25th and earlier today we lost an American icon, Dolly Parton.
Speaker: I was reading some of like the various stuff online, like tributes to her online. like She truly was the last great uniter in American culture.
Speaker: you have like all sorts of queer folks, all sorts of lefty folk punk bluegrass musicians talking about her and her legacy.
Speaker: And then you have that dude in the White House who calling her an icon and ordering flags to half mast for a week that's the one cool thing he's ever done that's pretty great that's pretty awesome like yeah right twice a day i guess e the grand old opry called her a true country music icon Yeah, I don't have like too much to say about her, but she was an incredible musician, left an incredible impact on American culture, on country music, on bluegrass, on pop, on style.
Speaker: As you said in our group chat, we cannot forget that she donated a million dollars to ah COVID vaccine research. Pretty early on, too. She was really... She was out there. And i remember her very publicly, you know, getting vaccinated and speaking about its importance. So i I was never, like, a huge... I just don't listen to a lot of music. I wouldn't consider myself particularly a Dolly Parton fan.
Speaker: Just in the sense that I don't think that I'm that much more invested in her music than anyone else's. But I do think she was a very cool lady. i especially appreciate the COVID stuff because... It feels like we live in a bizarro world where we're all pretending that COVID didn't happen, which can sound kind of cutesy when I say it like that, be like, oh remember to wear a mask, kids.
Speaker: But genuinely, really, it feels like everyone's pretending it didn't happen, and it's really fucking with my mind in a fascinating way. so It's deeply strange. To remember that Dolly Parton was involved, that's cool.
Speaker: She also had her, what was it called? I want to call it the right name. Hang Yeah, she had Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which would send free books to kids once a month, which was really cool and sweet.
Speaker: Yeah, just like an awesome great lady and it's very sad that she passed. She was only 80 for some reason. I thought she was way older. Oh, yeah. She was super outspoken.
Speaker: She was also outspoken like in support of gay rights, in support of trans rights, you know particularly like Nowadays, in an industry that is not necessarily conducive to that.
Speaker: and And, yeah, super... Clearly was devoted to health and children's literacy. Apparently, her husband was just, like, a super down-to-earth guy.
Speaker: this is um who you know, she got to be an international megastar. And he... ran a road and driveway paving business and was just chill with that good for him think apparently according to parton he saw her perform only once does she say when that was was that like early on or at like no occasion she also said in interviews that even though it appeared they spent little time together it was because nobody saw him publicly he often visited dollywood by himself and toured the park unrecognized
Speaker: She also would like wear a disguise because that wasn't her real hair. That's blonde hair. That was a wig. So she would just go out looking normal and people wouldn't recognize her. She, from what I understand, did maintain a pretty normal life outside of being a megastar. Which is really admirable.
Speaker: Yeah. Particularly in this day and age. You know who could never... in a million years, be nearly half as perfect as Dolly Parton? Mother Talzin.
Speaker: but free And welcome back to another episode of The Fandom Apprentice. My name is Rin. I'm one of your hosts. I grew up with Star Wars and with The Lord Rings and with a bunch of other nerdy media read to me, shown to me, explained to me by my father.
Speaker: And as an adult, I've returned to all of these pieces of my childhood in a fit of nostalgia and made it my mission to foist these upon my friends.
Speaker: particularly my friends who did not grow up with these sources of media. Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. I did not grow up with Star wars any more than the average person who lives on Earth and knows what Yoda looks like.
Speaker: But I think I'm pretty, pretty well in the thick of it now, getting into some of the more slightly more obscure side characters now that we're deep in the Clone Wars.
Speaker: Yeah. And today we're talking about just six episodes, which is a change from, I think it was 13 episodes we discussed a couple a couple weeks ago.
Speaker: yeah But that's because these two little three episode arcs are very, very dense. Mm-hmm. We are talking about season three, episodes 12 through 17, which consists of the Nightsisters arc and the Gods of Mortis arc.
Speaker: So anything we want to talk about before we dive into the fog? No, I think we should just get started. so Season 3, Episode 12, Nightsisters.
Speaker: Every night is Ladies' Night on Dathomir. Ventress returns to her home planet to recover from Dooku's betrayal. There's a lot here. Uh-huh.
Speaker: we start with a little Zoom call from Palpatine and pointing out to Dooku that Ventress is getting more powerful and Palpatine thinks that Dooku is training her to take him down. So he orders him to kill her, which is not great. And I was very unclear about the mechanics of this fight. I don't think it's really super important.
Speaker: But she crash lands on some ship. I don't know if it's a separatist ship or a Republic ship. It's a separatist ship. I had to go back and watch that too.
Speaker: Why is she crashing on her own side's ship? I think just because that was the hangar that was there. Yeah, I don't know. It was very confusing.
Speaker: But it doesn't super matter because she's in this catastrophic crash and she is calling to Dooku for help and he's saying, you are no longer my apprentice and now you shall die. and I wrote, that's what I think will happen when I disappoint someone. when I'm having a bad brain day and I do something wrong, I think that I'm going to get a hologram call from Count Dooku being like, now you shall die.
Speaker: Never. will We'll support you. this Literally this morning, i had Miles hyping me up because I had a catastrophic car issue.
Speaker: and I had to go pick up my car from the dealership because it had been repaired at a slightly earlier time than I had initially told them I would be there. And so I had to have them hype me up to go, okay.
Speaker: I am allowed to go to the dealership at a slightly different time than the time I said I would be there. I can do it. It's fine. I'm the type of person Googling, am I allowed to get a haircut at the hair salon?
Speaker: You can just think of me and Miles as your as your two little invisible witches supporting you in your assassination of the evil hologram. That's so beautiful. Queer relationships are amazing.
Speaker: They're perfect. Yeah. So she gets picked up by some pirates after this crash. And apparently she lost her skirt in the fight because before she was wearing this incredibly unwieldy, dragging on the floor length skirt. But now she's wearing leggings.
Speaker: So, okay, she's in different clothes, I guess. But the really exciting thing about this episode is we get to Dathomir, which is Ventress' home planet. And it has really cool visuals. It's all kind of red and foggy, and it's giving sort of... jungle temple kind of vibes and once she's greeted by all her creepy cult sisters and she's getting their spooky magical treatment we get a bunch of flashbacks that basically just speed run her backstory
Speaker: so apparently they were forced to give ventress up to protect their clan why how ah that was unclear to me who were they giving her up to why was she given up to a pirate it's not super duper clear to some pirate who threatens the clan If they do not give him something. And I think she's essentially the protection payment.
Speaker: Which I'm curious because they're obviously extremely powerful. What could this random pirate possibly have over their magic witch character?
Speaker: society. I don't know, but she was given away as a baby and she gets rescued from that situation by a Jedi. And then as a teen, she has this really cute purple lesbian undercut.
Speaker: And I just love it so much. She was adorable. She was such a cute teen. i love it. And I'm sad that we only get, i don't know, probably 30 seconds of screen time of her being happy. But then her Jedi master dies and Dooku preys on her need for revenge and takes her under his wing.
Speaker: But that's why she's like that TM, which like, yeah, makes a lot of sense. Mm hmm. Okay. So Ventress has her magical therapy. Mm hmm.
Speaker: And then wakes up, she's cured of some of her trauma, I guess. And Mother Talzin, who is the head of the Nightsister clan, gives Ventress a poison dart and a potion that turns her and two other warriors invisible to go attack Dooku and gives them Jedi lightsabers to do it so Dooku will think it's Jedi trying to kill him if they ah don't succeed.
Speaker: Which is pretty awesome. And they go and there's this whole sneaky dropping into his chambers. Little side moment for Dooku's jammies that are basically just robes.
Speaker: Which I guess when your regular clothes are already pretty similar to pajamas, it's kind of hard to distinguish them. But he is just laying like a corpse in his bed, completely still on his back and then suddenly alert when they come in.
Speaker: But then there's a cool... epic, invisible lightsaber battle. And her cult sisters very nicely, i thought, hold off on killing him to give her the opportunity to strike the final blow because it's her revenge. and that's very thoughtful. And I know that we are supposed to be scared of this very scary cult's that she comes from but honestly so far they seem pretty nice they well they were suspicious of her when she landed on the planet but then immediately mother tells and goes no no she's one of us and they heal her with magic give her a cool dart to give her a cool invisibility potion these other warriors who she has presumably never met before today are deferring to her and listening to her and everyone's supporting her on her epic revenge quest, they seem pretty supportive.
Speaker: Yeah. The Nightsisters are just super fucking cool. They've existed in like one form or other in various Legends content. There are non-Nightsister witches of Dathomir as well.
Speaker: But Dathomir as a planet is seeped in the dark side of the force. And so the the witches are able to channel it to some extent, but it's different than the way like the Jedi and the Sith wield the force.
Speaker: I have a couple of pieces of Nightsister history and Mother Talzin's history, but I think some of that can wait a little bit. Sure. So speaking of Talzin... She gives Dooku a little call and says, oh my god so sorry about your assassin. she died. That sucks so much. Let's get you another one from our planet.
Speaker: But we'll get you a male because they're easier to control because you couldn't tame the female. but So we'll we'll get you a replacement. No problem.
Speaker: I have a lot of thoughts for, honestly, all of these episodes. There's a bunch of visual stuff that I fucking love. I love Dathomir. It's big, creepy hours.
Speaker: As one of the salvagers who picks up Ventress says, nothing there but fog and witches. Sign me up. Take me to a planet of fog and witches. This sounds great.
Speaker: That sounds actually fucking incredible. The aesthetics of the witches are incredible. They have little dress-up fairy wings on the back of their leotards, yeah which is just fantastic. um Thigh-high stockings, leotards, and swords and energy bows.
Speaker: listen Is this not what every preteen girl imagines as a secret fairy ah warrior thing? i mean, that would be pretty fucking amazing.
Speaker: i'm sure if you hang around the playground long enough, you can find someone imagining that exact scenario. Oh, God, yeah. Mother Talzin has just a fantastic echo. yeah To her voice.
Speaker: So fucking cool. You shall, sister. We will see to it. Charis and Nalith are the greatest warriors of our coven.
Speaker: They will help you destroy Count Dooku. That's an effect that they use pretty sparingly overall in the series so far. There is a lot of it in the second arc that we're going to be talking about today. But it's definitely something that distinguishes you are dealing with a very powerful character if they have the mysterious echoey voice.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. This is one of our first introductions to Force users who aren't Jedi or Sith or Sith acolytes. I don't think we've gotten any other Force users so far.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think so. So, yeah, it's interesting to get a sense that not only... Are there more Force users out there?
Speaker: It seems that basically everybody on Dathomir has, to some extent, some ability to sense or wield the Force.
Speaker: Some might not have a lot, but everyone seems to have at least some. Yeah. And then you get characters like Maul and Ventress who have and later will get Savage Opress. Ugh, stupid fucking name. Stupid fucking name, but they clearly have more of an aptitude, particularly Maul and Ventress.
Speaker: And then like clearly Talzin... has a major aptitude for this Nightsister magic. So a couple of pieces on Ventress's history just to fill out in the gaps, apparently. Yeah, she's handed off to some pirate who gets killed.
Speaker: She is then rescued by Jedi Kai Narek. Kai Narek has been stranded on the planet Ratatak. Apparently he is then stranded there for like 20 years.
Speaker: And so he takes baby like five-year-old Ventress, recognizes that she's strong in the force and trains her to be a Jedi. According to Wikipedia, she's just I think like 21 he 21, 25, like somewhere in her early which does not match up with the teen ventures that we see.
Speaker: But you know what? We're going to just shove that off to the side and we're going to ignore it the same way we do about any of this. But yeah, you're correct. That is a baby lesbian with the purple undercut and the dog collar and all like that is. I missed that part.
Speaker: Was that part of her look? the call Yeah, the collar, the choker was absolutely part of her look. Yeah, and somehow, so supposedly after Kaineric is killed, like she goes on a massive murder spree and kills every freaking warlord on Ratatak and just like takes over the planet, which that's what brings her to Dooku's attention.
Speaker: Yeah. And she then becomes Dooku's assassin, Somewhere in the nebulous lines of time. Two other design pieces I noticed. The tactical droid at the beginning.
Speaker: The tactical droid is pink and has little lipstick markings so we know she's a girl tactical droid. yeah Yeah, I noticed the markings because it reminded me of like flapper makeup of like the little tiny rosebud lip painting style.
Speaker: But it also didn't occur to me that it was a girl droid. I was just thinking, oh, those markings look kind of like lipstick. That's interesting. I'm not going to assign a gender to this droid.
Speaker: We assign genders to almost all the droids. When Dooku commands the tactical droid to destroy the entire capital ship that Ventress is on and all the droids and assets on it just to kill Ventress.
Speaker: Massive expense, as we know. The tactical droid says, by your command, which is a reference to the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Dooku is not Sith material.
Speaker: No? Why not? No. And I think this this episode alone proves it. Dooku speaks to both Ventress and Savage as if they are his apprentices. He refers to them as his apprentices.
Speaker: And it is the nature of the rule of two that the apprentice will always eventually attempt to destroy the master. If they are successful, they become the master. Mm-hmm. And Dooku very clearly regrets proving his loyalty, quote unquote, to Sidious.
Speaker: He doesn't want to kill Ventress. Ventress is a powerful weapon. And he immediately is trying to start over on his attempts to become the Sith Master.
Speaker: But there's like no attempt at subterfuge. there's no Now, i mean Sith stab each other in the back, and Sith acolytes, and you know they they they stab each other in the back all the time. That's kind of that's the whole reason there's only two of them is because there were enough wars between the Sith themselves that they almost got themselves destroyed. And so Darth Bane created the rule of two.
Speaker: Yeah. And they still fucking stab each other in the back. So Dooku's sort of immediate acquiescence to Sidious and like Dooku doesn't really do any of his own...
Speaker: secret maneuvering and Sidious knows this Sidious is just waiting for a better apprentice yeah right now Dooku being the Sith apprentice is useful to him but he's gonna get cast aside I wonder who the new guy could possibly be.
Speaker: I wonder, gee, who the fuck knows? And then the other thing that I noticed when Ventress limps her way home, we have our line of witches standing on either side and they all look pretty similar. Some of them don't have a hood. Some of them do have a big pointy hood.
Speaker: Some of them have sleeves on their little leotards. Some of them don't. The big thing that I noticed that differed was the bottom of their leotards. Some are in like more of like a high-cut hipster look. Some is more of a classic brief. There's one in boy shorts. Everyone's got their preference.
Speaker: Nothing cheeky, though, because this is a kid's show. Well, yes, and you wouldn't want a wedgie that would really interrupt your chanting and assassinating and all the other things.
Speaker: Brewing of potions. But they do all have very defined ass cheeks. Yeah, I was not looking at their asses, but I will, for science, go back and check. It wasn't a primary point of viewing, but it was noticeable. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of, I don't know, whatever the fuck is going on on Dathomir. Yeah, so Season 3, Episode 13, Ventress's elaborate fetish scenario has the side effect of finding a guy plant as Dooku's new apprentice.
Speaker: There's a lot of stuff... here But I just kind of want to skim forward to the elaborate fetish scenario know that is the entire planet. So Dooku shows up on the planet and he's trying to get the Nightsisters to pledge allegiance to the Separatists, which seems very stupid. He's coming in hot saying, pledge allegiance to us.
Speaker: You're on their planet, surrounded by their powerful magic, talking to their leader. Maybe don't come on so strong and so cocky. That's obnoxious. Not a good look when you're trying to get them to give you a free warrior mail.
Speaker: And apparently Talzin owes him one because he did something for her a long time ago. what that is kind of unclear but apparently there are some living males in mall's bloodline so they're extra ferocious they keep all of their men on the other side of the planet and talzan is telling him men are easy to acquire hard to control tell him sister
Speaker: And I was really hoping, I truly thought that the quote unquote new apprentice would just be Ventress in drag. I was really, truly hoping that that's what it was going to be. But apparently like they are actually going to find some man who they can puppet around. But I was expecting a Mulan situation.
Speaker: You know, they disguise her up real good. and go, here you go. Here's your new apprentice. Give her horns. Yeah, i I really thought that was going to be it, but I guess not. So we go to the area where the men live, which is this depressing, angular block world where they're all wearing tattered robes and fighting in the streets. And they have names like...
Speaker: feral and savage which sure it's savage whatever we know what it actually is and mall yeah you know mall is from this planet So this selection is she's saying, you know, send me your strongest warriors so I can pick one out that I like is the beginning of the elaborate fetish scenario. So these men are all lined up in rows in front of her and she's going around sort of aloofly evaluating them and occasionally just like stroking their cheeks in the really weird, uncomfortable way that men do to women in movies all the time.
Speaker: and She's also just beating them up and verbally berating them in a way that so many lesbians on Tumblr.com are so into. I can think off the top of my head of usernames of individuals who would sign up to be part of this experience. so You texted me last night.
Speaker: You were like, am I supposed to have literally any other interpretation other than this is a fetish scenario? Am I such a queer freak that I have forgotten what normal sex is? I think I may have forgotten what sex is. I think I may have abstracted it to a point that it is no longer recognizable. But to me, with eyes to see...
Speaker: It's pretty clear. And I actually do have other sources that I want to talk about after the end of this chunk. But so after she's done...
Speaker: separating the wheat from the chaff as they say in church she assigns a bunch of tasks and trials to these men to see which one is the best so the first one they're all standing around her with weapons and she's unarmed and she beats them all up and then the second challenge is the top four from the last one battling her in the dark and the third one is a big spooky maze with the last two.
Speaker: And as she's introducing all of these challenges, she's lording over them with this condescending dominatrix tone, explaining what they're going to have to do if they're not pathetic weaklings.
Speaker: And in the big spooky maze, one of the guys... She literally lifts him up and force chokes him against a wall. And then afterwards he's making these huge sad puppy eyes at her, which granted is because he's sad because she almost killed him. But again, i can think of people who would sign up for this experience. And then she spares that guy because he's too pathetic and weak for her. And she goes for the other guy who's his brother.
Speaker: And while she's stepping on his neck, he's looking up at her going, my life is yours, which it's that's very sexual. And then she brings him home to show him off to Mother Talzin, who just weirdly grabs his tit for no reason. She's also feeling him up. It's very weird, but I can't really think of any other way to read it.
Speaker: Yeah, my whole notes for this section are we get a fight scene that is 100% a stand-in for sex. listen There's no music over the beginning of the fight scene, just the sounds of blows landing until Savage gets knocked out of the ring.
Speaker: And that's when we start getting percussion. Yeah. Oh, I forgot about... The other part that happens after the tit grabbing is that Talzin gives him a little mind control boop and then all the ladies give him cosmetic surgery and then force him to kill his own brother. Yeah, they just juice him with magic.
Speaker: That's great. He gets literally hornier. Yeah, his horns get fucking huge. He gets fucking huge. And so now he's reintroduced to the world Savage Opress, which is a bit on the nose.
Speaker: They hand him off to Dooku and Dooku gives him a little test to capture a temple. And he just starts mowing guys down. No problem. killing machine it is kind of implied through some little side smirks that he does that he might retain a little bit of his free will and turn on dooku eventually but mostly it seems like they're ordering him around pretty effectively against his will I think it's more like he is now a weapon for Talzin and for the time being he has been loaned to Dooku. And so he'll do Dooku's bidding and be a weapon until he's needed. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, couple of thoughts for this episode. Savage is 100% a weapon for Talzin, not for Ventress. Yeah. This is the background that I found out through Wikipedia and some other research, but Talzin is Maul, Savage, and Farrell's physical mother.
Speaker: Oh, indre I thought she was just kind of a metaphorical mother. See, that's what I thought. Because mother is her title. And it's sort of hard to tell. It's like, are the Knight Brothers, which is which I have in my notes as Knight Borders because I mistyped and i'm leaving it as it's.
Speaker: you know, do they refer to each other as brother just because that's how they speak to each other? Or are Feral and Savage actually brothers?
Speaker: And according to Wikipedia, they actually are brothers. Talzin was... sort of just a general Dathomiri witch at one point.
Speaker: She had Maul and became head of her particular clan, and that's when she was forced to give up Ventress.
Speaker: And then at some point, Sidious comes to Dathomir, because as we've noted, Nightsister magic is not the same as how the Sith used the Force. And so he wanted to learn from her. And in exchange, he would make her his apprentice and she would become Sith.
Speaker: Except he noticed Maul. m And noticed that Maul was strong in the Force and easier to shape than Talzin. And so he kidnaps Maul.
Speaker: Having learned a bunch of Talzin's secrets... And leaves. Damn. So Talzin is like, yeah, no, ah I'm gonna fucking kill you.
Speaker: And swears revenge. And Dooku, it's a little unclear. But it seems like she and Dooku met years ago when Dooku was a Jedi.
Speaker: And as a result of that experience, but particularly as a result of that experience, followed by his fall to the dark side and allying himself with Sidious, he has earned her ire.
Speaker: isn So she is seeking revenge against him. In part because it's Dooku, but it seems like mostly as a way to get back at Sidious. Yeah.
Speaker: And so, you know, she, with the three of them being her sons, watching one of her sons kill one of the others in front of her, I have to think sort of like with the way this next episode ends, Maul is the eldest, Maul was her first, Maul was her favorite.
Speaker: And or because he was kidnapped, he's just so fixed in her brain. That every other child she's had, every other piece of maneuvering, every choice she's made has been about getting revenge for Maul.
Speaker: Yeah, damn, that definitely changes my perspective on it. Yeah. And I feel like that's kind of how I have to read it because otherwise it's a little bit, she's a little bit of a one dimensional kind of evil, but like evil in her own way character.
Speaker: And that also ties in to some themes of the next arc that we will be discussing and makes it even juicier. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Speaker: Mm hmm. So a couple of last pieces from this episode. As we are introduced to Savage, Savage Opress is played by Clancy Brown. ah We have seen Clancy Brown before.
Speaker: He played Berg, who's the like devil dude in The Mandalorian. Yeah.
Speaker: clancy brown is just an incredible fucking actor he's done lots of like live action and voice stuff he was the main antagonist in highlander since starship troopers shoshank redemption pet cemetery twoi the laramie project nightmare and el streak cowboys and aliens john dies at the end John McChapter 4, Dukes of Hazzard, ER, r Star Trek Enterprise, Law and Order, Leverage, The Flash, Daredevil, The Punisher, The Crown, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Legend of Korra. Like, and damn, with a voice like that, dude can go wherever he pleases. Yeah.
Speaker: It's just so deep and rumbly and rich. Also, the fight between the Jedi and Savage at the end is incredible.
Speaker: We are getting... um The fight last episode, too, was really, really interesting to watch. But we're getting more acrobatics, more... hard to describe, but it's like you can tell that the animation has gotten better.
Speaker: They have gotten some access to new technology here, and they're showing off. I noticed that in the last one when Ventress is wearing that impractically long skirt, and it was actually moving and flowing, unlike that time that Ahsoka was wearing a poncho that just looked like a piece of cardboard.
Speaker: The apprentice, who is killed by Savage, is a Nautilun with vitiligo, which is just a really cool design. isn my one other other note for voices is barbara goodson plays mother talzin i don't have a ton of notes for her but she has done a fuck ton of anime and i'm not an anime watcher so i didn't like recognize really anything from her resume but i was just like scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling like she's been in everything yeah good for her h anyway which is the mist
Speaker: Yes, season 3, episode 14, Witches of the Mist. The Jedi get involved, and Ventress gets into a lightsaber fight with Dooku. So finally the Jedi are taking notice of, you know, Savage doing his thing and mowing down their people.
Speaker: And... Obi-Wan says, this is not the work of a Sith Lord or a Jedi, but a reckless, impulsive animal. Obi-Wan, I love you, but we cannot be calling people animals. We cannot do this. No, and no no, no, no, no. He keeps doing it and it keeps happening.
Speaker: We can't. We cannot do that. Do i need to explain to you why this is bad, Obi-Wan? Explain on the podcast for the listener. I mean, it's literally dehumanizing. We don't call people animals because that you literally, yeah, it's literally dehumanizing. It also has a very long racist history, especially if we are dealing with a big warrior guy with designs on his face whose name is Savage and we're calling him an animal.
Speaker: Not a great look. From a white British dude. Yeah. So it's, it sucks and is disappointing, but yeah, I don't really have more articulate on that. Just like, come on, Obi-Wan.
Speaker: Yeah. In this scene, we are introduced to clone commandos. They're wearing very interesting armor. Yes, they are wearing different armor. I noticed this.
Speaker: This is not, it's not stated outright in the episode, but this is Delta Squad, made up of Boss, Fixer, Scorch, and Sev. The one in orange who talks is Boss.
Speaker: ah The one on with the red on his face is Sev. The one with the gray with the big backpack is Scorch. And the last one is predictably Fixer. This is based off of Slash is the Squad from the 2005 video game Star Wars Republic Commando, which got relegated to Legends, but apparently Dave Filoni loves that game.
Speaker: And so this was him reintroducing them into canon. We don't see commandos very often. I think there's like maybe one other place in Clone Wars that we see them and a couple of places in Bad Batch.
Speaker: And they're usually a really bad sign. Are they just like, for when things are wildly out of control, you gotta call in the commandos? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, okay, the ARC troopers can't handle this, but it's not quite Jedi level.
Speaker: Yeah. Who do we put in the middle? I have a note here of like, the animation is smoother. o feel like it was, I really noticed it this episode. And I think in part it's because we're spending so much time with characters now that we've seen before.
Speaker: Yeah. I also have more questions on timing in this episode. How long are these training montages... How long since Ventress was killed? like So just to quickly contextualize the training montage that is happening, because we haven't actually moved plot-wise from that scene in the ship.
Speaker: So Dooku is giving Savage force lessons, and he's making him lift these giant stone spires that Dooku does effortlessly, of course, and then Savage can... kind of wiggle them and lift them a little bit. But then he goes, it's impossible as he's, you know, falling down in despair.
Speaker: and All I could think is that that is how I feel when my pole instructor tells me to do a hard trick that I actually am fully capable of doing, but I just see her do it flawlessly. and then I'm just wobbling around going, it's impossible. I can't do it. like But at least I don't get tortured with force electricity. Force lightning. But maybe my inverts will get better if I connect with my hatred. So I'll try and we'll see how it goes.
Speaker: Do it. But yeah, the timing of this training montage, unclear. I have to think it is again, months and months, because otherwise it seems like it's been somewhere between three days and two weeks. Like, there's got to be some amount of time passing.
Speaker: And at some point when he's deemed ready, Savage has to go to Toydaria and bring Dooku their king. And so Obi-Wan and Anakin go to meet Mother Talzin and she tells them where to find him.
Speaker: And they're talking about the situation and Obi-Wan saying Dooku sent his assassin to exact revenge on the Toydarians. And then Anakin goes, we'll make him pay for it.
Speaker: Do you see the irony in the thing that you just said, Anakin, about revenge and how that's kind of his thing? Uh, what's the line from... The swiftest path to destruction is through vengeance, is the Jedi fortune cookie for Nightsisters.
Speaker: o yes Ventress shows up to exact her revenge on Dooku Reveals that she is there And she taps Savage on the forehead And now the two of them are fighting Dooku And there's four blades to his one And he's still gonna beat the shit out of both of them yeah Except somehow in the fight Savage turns on the both of them And now it's a three-way fight And Savage ends up fleeing and returns back to Dathomir, which is 100% what Talzin was planning for all along.
Speaker: And if we can wipe out Dooku in the process, great. But mostly i need to send him off to get a little bit of Sith training and then come back. To get Sith training. But also, okay, so is Maul alive or not?
Speaker: Because Pausen is showing him... a i am fucking blowing out the audio on my microphone right now. She's showing him this swirly vision in some pondering orb.
Speaker: And that looks like Maul, baby. She's saying, oh, there's somebody who can teach you his magical ways or whatever. he got chopped in half but it kind of seems to be implied that he's alive unless he has an identical twin yeah so yeah because savage goes home and it's like i you know i have no purpose and talzin is like here go find your brother And we have Maul's swirly face.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think I can Maul is alive. How? How is he alive? Does he not have a spinal column that needs to be intact?
Speaker: All will be explained. I'm so mad. I'm so... But I am also, I guess, satisfied because if we recall way back when we first met Maul in whatever movie he was in,
Speaker: I was saying, you know, I feel like I really remember him being more of a presence. He's not in the movie for very long, but I think of him as being a much more major character in Star Wars.
Speaker: Because he's fucking alive because he wasn't dead. Yeah, because he's just he's such a cool fucking villain. Yeah. And speaking of him, well, unless you had anything else about.
Speaker: No, nothing on this one. So there were a couple of themes in these episodes that were really interesting to me. There was the whole, you know, elaborate fetish scenario angle, but...
Speaker: The gender politics and the whole gender situation Dathomir is very interesting to me. This is obviously not the only or even the most notable example of a society in fiction that is completely segregated between binary genders because everyone loves to do this all the time. But especially the really egregiously sexual dynamic between the men's village and the women's village made me think of a couple of different things. I don't know if you ever were familiar with Hyman Restoration Project on Tumblr.
Speaker: Hyman Restoration Project slash Bethany Rage. This is a term that I have heard before, but I can't remember whether I've heard it from you or not.
Speaker: So I actually i actually saw Bethany Rage organically on Tumblr, but then... Very shortly after that, saw the Strange Eons video unpacking her whole deal. But Hyman Restoration Project is a now deactivated Tumblr blog that was basically a performance art rage bait character piece. In which you have this character, Bethany, who is 16. She lives in Wisconsin. She has alcoholic parents. She is Swifty.
Speaker: She is a raging bitch. And she believes that the world should be reshaped into her ideal society called the feminarchy. in which all women are in charge of everything and men are, to paraphrase strange eons, kept around for breeding purposes and otherwise live in the gulag.
Speaker: ah There is a separate area... Non-binary people can choose if they want to live in the feminarchy or in the gulag, or if they want to go to a special third place that exists just for them. And this whole project ah was made by this trans woman named Ivy, who Strange Yun interviews in her video, basically talking about how she made this character as rage bait. To be what is the most provocative thing that I could possibly say? Restoring a hymen? Who would do that? What does that mean? This is a thing that people will see and immediately get angry and fired up about.
Speaker: It sounds like some ridiculous, like, like born again Christian thing. Yes, there is a lot of the character of Bethany goes to Catholic school and there's all of this.
Speaker: Ivy was talking about all of the repressed sexuality in her vision of the feminarchy of denying that she could possibly be deriving any pleasure from this. And this just saying, no this is just the ideal society and this is how it should be. And how dare you accuse me? of getting anything sexual out of this idea because I'm a proud virgin and we should be virgins forever. And sex is weird and gross and bad and corrupting and all of these other things that she just explores so fascinatingly in such a bizarre and funny and weird and sad way.
Speaker: Like I said, the blog is now deactivated, sadly. But the Strange Eons video, Hymen Restoration Project, I would highly recommend because she does a lot of dramatic readings of the posts and then the interview with Ivy at the end about, you know, explaining her motivations for creating this and like exploring these absolutely dogshit gender politics.
Speaker: Great video. It's awesome. But it reminded me a lot of this dynamic. It also reminded me of another gimmick Tumblr blog. ah Do you know about warrior mail?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that one I know. So I would just like, for the people who may not know about at Warrior Mail on Tumblr, I'm going to read you his bio.
Speaker: This site celebrates the manly warrior mail in the ancient Greek tradition. We are men who train and fight daily. We can be found in all walks of life, just like the ancient Greek, p what is it?
Speaker: Palas... Palastra? Palastria? We train in the fight gyms, working on perfecting our technique depending on the fight tradition chosen, and there are many worldwide. Some of us imitating the Greek tradition also fight each other nude. We have a strict moral warrior code with humility, integrity, selflessness, self-control, and always showing respect in high regard. We always put train training and fighting first before hedonism and money. Where money is prized, manliness is despised. Copyright material will be removed upon request.
Speaker: And so Warrior Mail will just reblog pictures of men fighting. And this is just a random, I'm just going to scroll and stop when I find a random post.
Speaker: Fighting is a test of manhood. Warrior Mail. Men need to fight. It strengthens and hardens their bodies. It enriches them spiritually. Hardness is good. Warrior Mail.
Speaker: Warrior Mail is also very trans-inclusive. So don't worry. And he has also expressed that, you know, the virtues of manliness can be attained by anyone. As long as you value training and fighting, you can be a warrior male like warrior male.
Speaker: But just thinking about this, you know, very literal warrior male society, which obviously is a little bit more toxic than our good friend, warrior male dot Tumblr dot com.
Speaker: But then swinging back to another media reference, and I promise this is the last one. You and i both just read Make Sure You Die Screaming by Z Carlson.
Speaker: Oh my god. What a fucked up piece of literature. i loved it. I rated it five stars. It's one of those five star reads that I don't think I'd recommend to anybody ever.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying people should pick it up as a casual read because it's a lot. But there is a whole, and I guess spoilers for make sure you die screaming.
Speaker: Skip ahead to a time stamp that will be in the description if you don't want spoilers. But the main character's dad gets sucked into this right wing manosphere cult where he and a bunch of his Nazi buddies go live in the woods and create their own ideal male society.
Speaker: And that obviously is a much more difficult and honest reckoning with what this kind of rhetoric actually does to people and saying, okay, you want to have your gender segregated man society? What kind of person is attracted to that philosophy and what kind of society do they make together and what is that like filtered through our very unreliable narrator but i guess i just wanted to put that in there as well as another example contrasting against these kind of more satirical funny options because it is a really dark and weird and fucked up thing to contemplate
Speaker: And because this is a children's show and we're silly, ha ha, horny gay freaks, I immediately want to focus on the funny fetish scenario angle.
Speaker: But I think for the majority of people contemplating these scenarios, it's not in a... queer, consensual, fetish scenario way. It's a I-have-some-deeply-fucked-up-beliefs-about-gender way.
Speaker: And seeing the extremes that people can take those ideas to is, if nothing else, interesting and illuminates the way that people think about themselves and society. And so I did want to just take a second to take that idea a little more seriously because it's fun to joke about it, but also it's like...
Speaker: what the fuck is going on on this planet ah yeah well and i think it's it's also like meant to be shocking that the women are the ones in charge yes definitely but and that was such like a i was like oh i didn't even point that out so i'm like surely everyone knows the feminism 101 angle of this but no i can't take that for granted unfortunately no no but so thank but then you also you know fold in the sort of it's kind of a standard fantasy thing in these sort of very heavily gender segregated societies in which you have women who do magic or are archers because clearly you don't need to be strong to be an archer which is a fucking lie you need to be incredibly fucking strong to be an archer and the men have big spiky weapons and they fight hand-to-hand combat okay cool what the fuck
Speaker: Yeah. Also, the spiky thing extends even to that. Like, I think we mentioned this ah a previous episode, but Dathomary Zabraks have some major sexual dimorphism.
Speaker: Yes, we have discussed this. Yeah, that's not seen in other Zabraks. There are non-Zabrak Nightsisters. There are humans who are part of the clan, apparently, but most of them are Zabraks. And so, like, usually, Iridonian Zabraks, who don't have this sexual dimorphism, everyone's got horns.
Speaker: Everyone's got horns. But in death of mary's abrax the males have like red or orange or yellow skin and big horns and the females have gray skin and like some face markings that's it so you know on the one hand I wonder, in a species that has serious sexual dimorphism like this, how much more sense does this sort of sex segregation make?
Speaker: I don't know. i Also, how do they reproduce? Because there's an offhand comment about Ventress taking Savage as her mate, which, if they're siblings, ew.
Speaker: She is not related to him, I don't think. Oh, okay. So then how does mating work in this society? Because someone makes an offhand comment about Ventress taking Savage as her mate. So is the practice that the women just go over and pick one out? Do they take the guys home and then return them to man world? How how are they making more?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I mean, when Ventress comes for the selection, I get the sense that that is like... That is how people choose their mates.
Speaker: This doesn't seem to be like something special for specifically for choosing an assassin. This seems to just kind of be a routine thing that all of them are expecting.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just it's selection time. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, is there constantly a yeah flow of back and forth?
Speaker: Yeah, do people just come over for sex? Do people... do i Like, I don't. Yeah, it's unclear, and it's not going to be made clear, because it's a children's show.
Speaker: Speaking of so many fucking questions, like, so many... Season 3, episode 15, Overlords? Yeah!
Speaker: Okay. Anakin is summoned to a strange planet to test out his Chosen One abilities. There's an ancient Jedi distress code that's encoded in some transmission, and this distress code hasn't been used in over 2,000 years.
Speaker: That's summoning all of our guys to some location in space, but it has some fuckery going on. Because Rex is there with his cruiser and Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan are in their ship, but the two groups can't see each other. They appear to be in completely different places, but also in the same place.
Speaker: And before we can contemplate that too long, there's a big scary thingy. It's yeah kind of unclear. added it as giant Borg rhombus.
Speaker: Yeah, so the white light inside the big scary thingy absorbs our friends and they land on a pretty planet with jungles and floating rocks with no memory of how they landed because they all passed out.
Speaker: The ship is intact, but nothing is working. It's very weird, but Ahsoka props to her, checks to make sure the atmosphere is breathable before they all get out.
Speaker: And so then they get out on this planet and they meet the daughter, who I thought for a minute might be a force angel because she's very pretty and very mysterious, but I think she's a different type of thing.
Speaker: Yeah. Obi-Wan says we'll be fine as long as we stay together. So we immediately know that's not going to happen. Yeah. The daughter reminds me of the mom from Ponyo, which is maybe my favorite. over did I love Ponyo. I should make you watch it with me sometimes. Studio Ghibli movie about a fish who turns into a little girl. And her dad is this scrawny little wizard who somehow bagged an ocean goddess and she's huge she's like 900 times his size and she has this perpetually flowing hair that's very similar i'll find a gift to show you just there talk about sexual dimorphism i'm ah horribly undereducated on studio ghibli movies unfortunately yeah i'm just i sent you a gift so that's her and then the dad is standing on the prow of the boat
Speaker: Well, it'd be great if this loaded past the, oh. Yeah. Oh. So she's, she kind of reminds me of that, but she can make herself smaller.
Speaker: Interesting. Fascinating. But anyway, she reminds me of the mom from Ponyo and she's very beautiful and has this kind of perpetually flowing hair and glowy light. And apparently the force is very strong in whatever this place is that they've learned. Yeah, very strong. And the daughter's very mysterious. She says, we are the ones who guard the power.
Speaker: And i went, what power? power hey You remind me of the babe. What babe? Also, just in this first section, I was struck by so a lot of like sci-fi parallels.
Speaker: One, two, historical Star Wars. The structure that they are absorbed by, the giant... Borg Rhombus is very Thoyor.
Speaker: Thoyor, which is a um giant colony ship that was created by the Jedi Order, which who were the precursors of the Jedi, over 36,000 years That's a big number. previously Yes.
Speaker: So it was the first... arrival of Force-sensitive beings on Tython, where the Jedi Order was founded. But there are also these like giant rhombuses that were you know giant colony ships and carried people for generations through space.
Speaker: The structures on this planet also deeply remind me of some of the habitats in Mass Effect Andromeda. And the other piece that I was sort of thinking about, the planet inside the giant Borg rhombus, it's sort of very like Meridian, I guess, in Mass Effect Andromeda, kind of like a Dyson sphere, but encompassing a planet instead of a star. It's a Dyson rhombus.
Speaker: I don't know what that is. A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical superstructure. That fully encompasses a star, thereby capturing almost all of the energy output from that star to supply the massive energy needs of a space-faring civilization.
Speaker: But then how would they get the energy to... Do they use it to charge their space battery? Yeah. Are they wirelessly charging their ships through wormholes? I have questions about how this works. Well, yes, and that's why it's a hypothetical. you know there's Some images of a Dyson sphere are like a solid superstructure, which apparently the physicist who came up with the idea does not think is possible, but he suggested more of like a...
Speaker: refers to as a Dyson cloud, which is like a bunch of tiny little things that form essentially a giant sphere around the star. Because like when we have solar energy, we're catching only a fraction of a fraction of the energy that our sun puts out.
Speaker: and So if we had the energy needs of a massive intergalactic civilization, we could supply that, you know, I guess, to our massive space batteries by Dyson sphering a star.
Speaker: But the giant superstructure that encompasses an entire planet is... I guess very, very Dyson sphere-esque. Dyson rhombus.
Speaker: Yeah, I get you. Anyway. Meridian. This planet also reminds me of Havarl in Mass Effect Andromeda, but continuing onward.
Speaker: Yes. So Anakin is, of course, immediately separated from Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. It's the work of some mysterious evil brother. Meanwhile, the ship completely disappears.
Speaker: Anakin goes to the monastery and meets some old man with a cool echoey voice. let Everyone is. see I said old meditady Gandalf in my notes.
Speaker: I thought you were saying small titty Gandalf to contrast against Big Naturals Gandalf. Which I do constantly forget is an internet, specifically Tumblr invention, and is not actually real because I do just kind of believe Big Naturals truther. I believe in Big Naturals Gandalf.
Speaker: Anyway, I'm only going to be able to call him little natural Gandalf. So stupid. You're welcome. The father. meets the father. the daddy. Honestly does have very Gandalf-y, old-timey wizard vibes. He's fun. He's got a cool pointy hat.
Speaker: And so we're bouncing back and forth between that perspective and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka in a crystal cave getting force visions of Qui-Gon, which is cool. And the Qui-Gon vision tells Obi-Wan that there are three beings on this planet who all want Anakin for different reasons.
Speaker: And everyone is taking turns getting force visions. Anakin gets one of his mom, but it turns out to be The sun shape-shifting and trying to manipulate him. Ahsoka gets a force vision of her future self warning her about the dark side within Anakin and saying that she should leave him.
Speaker: Be warned. You may never see your future if you remain his student. Leave this planet! Which is a hell of a warning. yeah In that scene, to just massive animation flex, we have a reflection of the fire, the campfire in her eyes.
Speaker: Incredible. Yeah. I do also love, and we'll see this more with other visions that the sun causes later on. It's kind of unclear if every vision is the sun being manipulative or if some of it is just the force manifesting, but clearly not all of these visions are lies. Yeah.
Speaker: It seems for the most part, you know, obviously they're manipulated to show a certain version of things, kind of Palantir style. But it is true that Anakin has the dark side within him and Ahsoka will die if she stays with him. The horrible visions of the future that Anakin sees later on...
Speaker: do come true they are real so lots of fascinating existential quandaries posed by this whole situation but anakin is very over the mysterious wizard guy and points his lightsaber at him which the father grabs the lightsaber in his hand And just pushes it away because apparently he and his children are force wielders and hu they are trapped on this planet that he has trapped the three of them on this planet because otherwise his fucking kids would destroy the universe with their powers and they have to be contained. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, this is this is like this is the closest thing to gods we've ever gotten in Star Wars. Yeah. And I mean, they seem to have pretty total control over the planet.
Speaker: It's pretty fucking godly. I don't know how they've managed to stay confined to this planet, but... whatever the fucking dysonrois does keeps them locked within i suppose because they can't get off without a ship yeah Apparently.
Speaker: They needed to bring Anakin to see if he is truly the chosen one. So there is a trial where the kids...
Speaker: kidnap Ahsoka and Obi-Wan and you have to save one who will you choose and then Anakin of course finds a way to save them both but the reason that we need to know if Anakin is the chosen one is because the father is dying and he wants Anakin to replace him because he's the only one powerful enough to keep his children in balance hit Yeah. the The use of Ahsoka and Obi-Wan as pawns, we see this in a lot of like science fiction and fantasy. like The supreme being that just completely does not value the lives of those beneath them isn until they do.
Speaker: They value the lives of the one that they need. Everything else and everyone else are tools. Yeah. The whole premise of this test is very strange to me because the father is saying that choosing one of them will free Anakin from his guilt.
Speaker: How? How will it free him from his guilt by making a choice that he will feel guilty about forever? Yeah, that one did not. I had a hard time like coming up with an explanation for this one.
Speaker: The only way that I could make it make sense is... in the diagnosed anxiety disorder version of Making Sense, where I will try to articulate this as best I can.
Speaker: So Anakin's central guilt about his life is the fact that he wasn't able to save his mom. Right. But that was through no fault of his own.
Speaker: And so it went poorly and also he was helpless. In this situation... if he makes the choice to save one and sacrifice the other of his friends, it's still bad, but at least then there isn't the uncertainty of him being helpless. Like he had some weird form of agency. He made some choice that made it happen, which sometimes if the world feels like it's operating in ways that are
Speaker: totally beyond your control without any clear set of rules, even just feeling like there was a cause and effect relationship between something you did and something that happened can be weirdly comforting even if the thing is terrible. It's like a very self-destructive impulse that also could weirdly potentially make him feel better. But I think that's some very complex and stupid brain fuckery that I don't think is what they intended. I'm not giving them that much credit.
Speaker: But something about the agency to self-destruct could maybe be in there. But even then, I don't see how that would resolve his guilt about the mom thing. I think the other piece...
Speaker: the make your choice, the choice that Anakin makes is both. Is this time I get to save everybody. Mm-hmm. Thereby showing Anakin that, yeah, if you have enough power and you put yourself in this position, you can save everybody and you will never need to feel guilty again.
Speaker: Yeah. Because if Anakin chooses one or the other, then he's clearly not the chosen one. But if he makes the choice he does... than he is. and it is a really beautiful scene with these stunning visuals. He kind of reaches his hands out To each of the children in, i don't think I mentioned their beast forms.
Speaker: They each have a beast form. So the daughter is this griffin and the son is this kind of bat hybrid thing. And so he's reaching his arms out day and night are rapidly spinning overhead. The gravel under his feet is turning into stars. He's dying.
Speaker: forcing the daughter and son to the ground de-shape shifting them and literally bringing them to their knees with the force so it's not just yeah oh you're letting my friends go you dropped them it's a whole production controlling the universe so it's without a doubt and he's the chosen one yeah it is it is an absolutely gorgeous scene I also think it's a really interesting, there's there's some interesting parallels between our trio and these godlike beings.
Speaker: Anakin, obviously, as the time goes on, comes to represent the sun, right? more than he represents the father. The father is trying to make Anakin represent the balance.
Speaker: But it becomes rapidly clear that that's not what Anakin is for. But it is ultimately, for now, Ahsoka who holds him in the light.
Speaker: Not Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is somewhere in the middle, I guess, kind of... But I mean, Ahsoka is and becomes literally the embodiment of the light side.
Speaker: Yeah. But as we say at the beginning of this episode, as the so as the sun notes, you know, interesting that you think that one could exist without the other. Where there is light, there is always shadow.
Speaker: And where there is shadow, there must be light. And so ultimately it is Ahsoka and Padme and all of Anakin's poles towards the light that are going to drive him into the dark.
Speaker: Season three, episode 16, Altar of Mortis. Anakin tries to leave the spooky planet, but is yoinked straight back down and fucks up the entire balance of the universe.
Speaker: Oof. So, like I said, he's trying to leave. And Anakin has this dream sequence where he meets himself, but it's actually the sun promising to destroy both the Sith and the Jedi and helping Anakin achieve his goals.
Speaker: The son then kidnaps Ahsoka and they crash the ship trying to rescue her. Anakin is flying off the handle, Obi-Wan trying to point out that they are in the middle of something that they don't understand, that there are powerful beings who are clearly trying to manipulate them. And also they're smack in the middle of a place that is strong with the dark side.
Speaker: So maybe calm down, which Anakin does not want to do. Ahsoka is in this prison cell where there's this creepy thing that bites her.
Speaker: I don't think that's the sun. I think that's one of his little hench beings. I think it is the sun. Oh, it is the sun. Okay. is the sun. He transforms afterwards. There's nothing on, they mentioned in the first episode, there's no life.
Speaker: So there's nothing on this, like, despite the plants, I guess they're not sensing the force from the plants, maybe, but. Oh yeah. There's no animals. Yeah. There's no animals. Everything on this planet, both the physical forms, but also, honestly, the like the whole physical landscape, I think every single thing is a piece of these three.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense. Who are all at their core a piece of the one. And we learn that the son chose the dark side and is totally sucked in by it.
Speaker: But he's not inherently evil. He's not inherently dark. He's just selfish. And that selfishness draws him to the dark side. But the daughter is saying, you know, he fell to the dark side, but he isn't necessarily purely created of the dark side.
Speaker: Which is kind of interesting. i don't really know what to make of that specifically, but it's something that she says, so it's worth noting. Apparently it's also forbidden for the children to interfere with the Force, which I don't know exactly what the parameters of that are, because everything they do is manipulating the Force, but apparently correcting the brother requires a greater degree of interference that would mean the daughter and Anakin are working together to stop the son.
Speaker: So the daughter takes Obi-Wan to a secret volcano altar so he can get a magic sword that can kill the sun. And then Ahsoka, who has been taken over by the sun's creepy vein disease, has this whole little villain monologue that she gives to Anakin.
Speaker: ah It's so good. He's right. Right about everything. You must join him. He only wants what's best for the universe.
Speaker: Hey, what's wrong with you? Always with the criticism, Master. Never really believing in me. Trusting me. Well, I don't need you anymore.
Speaker: Ahsoka. Ahsoka, listen to me. He has done something to you. Snap out of it. This isn't you, Ahsoka. Isn't it? feel more like myself than I ever have.
Speaker: He asked me to give you a message. And it ends with a threat that if Anakin doesn't join with the sun, the sun will force Anakin to kill Ahsoka. Which sucks.
Speaker: And then before we get to the two battles, do you have anything about Ahsoka's monologue? Evil Ahsoka's voice? I have her noted down as evil Ahsoka. Evil Ahsoka's voice echoes with the suns in the background.
Speaker: Ooh, I didn't notice that. Yeah. Also, when she ignites her lightsaber, she wields it overhand and with none of the finesse that we usually see from her.
Speaker: So it's it it's very clear, like just from her physicality, that this isn't actually her. This is entirely the sun. Mm hmm.
Speaker: She switches to her typical reverse grip when she draws her second lightsaber when Obi-Wan joins the fight. But for that first piece, it's all in a standard grip.
Speaker: Also, yeah, she's just so creepy. All of her physicality this whole time is just so creepy. Big eyes and big, you know, exaggerated look how innocent I am, but it's corrupted.
Speaker: Yeah, haunted doll in a horror movie, kind of. Exactly, that's what it is. And so while she's fighting Anakin and then Obi-Wan gets in the mix, the siblings are also fighting each other because the daughter realizes what the son is trying to do.
Speaker: And so the siblings are having a battle and their battle goes to a second phase in their beast form, which is awesome. And the father comes and intervenes. He doesn't have a beast form that he shows us i'm sure he could do whatever he wants but he does have wings which is cool and so he flutters his wings a little bit and then ahsoka gives the sun the sword which they also refer to as the dagger even though it's giant and then he tries to use that to stab the father But the daughter jumps right in front of it in the last moment, so he ends up murdering her instead. And the whole balance of everything is totally fucked. But at least Anakin can, with her permission, siphon the last of the daughter's life force to bring Ahsoka back to life. Thereby making Ahsoka literally a receptacle of the light.
Speaker: Literally the embodiment of the light side of the force. I don't know if any of that will linger in her personality and choices later, or if that's just a one-time thing. Oh, you're making a little devious face. listeners I am making a devious face.
Speaker: I am being devious because i don't have to do anything about it. I just get to sit here and watch you realize things. Yes, you do. Good for you Ghosts of Mortis? Ghosts of Mortis.
Speaker: Next episode, season three, episode 17. Anakin has a vision of the future that fully turns him to the dark side, but a magic boop from the father makes him forget about it. For now.
Speaker: Get booped, motherfucker. This is not related to the grand conflict, but Ahsoka has become a really good mechanic, and I'm proud of her. She is down in the guts of the ship, honestly reminiscent of Chewie.
Speaker: Yeah, she's a gearhead. Yeah, she's got her little goggles on and she's doing the techno babble about all the things that are broken and need to be replaced. She's good at everything. And I love that for her.
Speaker: And Anakin feels like he needs the father's blessing to leave the planet after everything that happened. He doesn't want to just dip. But the father is basically begging him to leave, saying, do not stay here.
Speaker: You've made your choice. i need to handle my affairs here, you need to go and make sure that my son can't steal your ship. There is a very heartbreaking scene of the father burying the daughter and tucking in the sword in her hands and telling her to sleep well.
Speaker: ah that's fucking devastating and then it's very pretty there's a there's an interesting symbol etched on her tomb which i know i've seen somewhere before there is so much in these two arcs that has been pulled from legends this is a lot of like restoring certain legends content to canon or like bringing it officially into canon while also, i guess, creating some stuff that's new and making sort of a more coherent story because Legends is all over the fucking place.
Speaker: So, like, I know I've seen this symbol somewhere and I could not find it. But we have sort of a like a star with like four arms each and each of the arms has like three points on it.
Speaker: And it's there's like a four lobed flower around it. When we go down the volcano very shortly to see the sun and have a big confrontation with the sun, it's reversed. There's a tiny little flower in the middle with the big four pointed star on the outside.
Speaker: just etched in lava into the floor of the volcano. Yeah. But yeah, we have that we have the burying of the daughter and Anakin goes down the well of the dark side.
Speaker: Yes, because he gets a vision from Qui-Gon because the father feels like he has no choice but to kill the son now because it's the only way he can bring back the balance. And so he tells Anakin that he needs to go and receive a vision, so he does.
Speaker: And Obi-Wan finds out that Anakin is doing this very stupid and dangerous thing and where he could very easily be tempted. And he's chastising the father for choosing to let this happen and sending Anakin to a place where he knows he might be corrupted.
Speaker: And the father says, i have done nothing. I am merely letting the will of the force take shape. to Which I say, Yeah, that's your problem is you are really, and maybe this is shallow of me because he's a god and he's dealing with things beyond our comprehension and whatever. But yeah, you're not really taking a very active role in this. You're confusing balance with being passive and just letting the force do whatever it does.
Speaker: And so then they talk a little bit and... The father tells Obi-Wan not to interfere. And Obi-Wan says, the way I see it, if we were not supposed to interfere, Ahsoka and I wouldn't be here in the first place.
Speaker: So if this is all the will of the Force or whatever, the Force willed me to also be here and to pull Anakin's head out of his ass. So I'm going to go do that.
Speaker: Yes. But Anakin's head is shoved into ah into a helmet, actually. so the son... tells Anakin that he will show him the future.
Speaker: And Anakin says, I'm not going to fall for your tricks. And then he falls for his tricks and he sees the vision of all of the atrocities he's going to commit and all the suffering that he's going to cause in the future. And there's people popping in and out of the clouds, wailing and suffering and all of that good stuff. But it ends with Anakin like on his knees And totally surrounded by these swirling red and gray clouds and the giant Vader mask just hovering over him. Not like a little one floating above his head like an angel halo. huge one almost completely overtaking the screen like an anvil about to fall and crush him and it's and the vader breathing it's so good whoever storyboarded that did a great job because that's such a good shot and then i just wrote catapasis baby We are all up in the catapussy in these episodes.
Speaker: um Yeah, no, I mean, this is this is absolutely Anakin's Catawbasus arc. This whole I mean, this whole arc is absolutely a whole somewhere between Catawbasus and a journey to Mount Olympus itself.
Speaker: Other pieces from this confrontation with the sun. When Anakin, like, sort of agrees to follow the sun, he says, will we bring peace?
Speaker: And the sun goes, of course, and hands Anakin his weapon. Almost the same type of shot as in Jedi Crash.
Speaker: where we zoomed in on Isla Secura's lightsaber when she's talking about being a bringer of peace. Are the Jedi bringers of peace or are they warriors? This is our central question of the Clone Wars and of the death of the Jedi Order is you cannot have it be both ways. What does it mean to bring peace?
Speaker: Clearly to the sun, it means peace. By eliminating all competition. Yeah. um And that is why, you know, we know that not only has the sun fallen, mean, he's the embodiment of the dark side, he was always fallen.
Speaker: But we know that the Jedi Order has also fallen. Mm hmm. They are bringing peace through eliminating all opponents. The other piece, in addition to the incredible visuals and the breathing over this scene, there's also little portions of the Battle of Heroes.
Speaker: which is John Williams creates a new theme for every Star Wars movie. And the Battle of Heroes was his creation for Revenge of the Sith. So I'll like put the little teensy clip in here, but we won't hear that again until Revenge of the Sith.
Speaker: We are seeing in real time, we are also seeing Anakin's future and we're hearing it in the soundscape as well.
Speaker: In the full Battle of the Heroes piece, we also get elements of the Imperial March, we get elements of Duel of the Fates, and so we get you know some of that in Anakin's future vision as well.
Speaker: Again, this is just another moment in that Duel of the Fates for Anakin's soul, and once again, the dark side wins. Yeah. The father ends up giving Anakin a magic boop to forget the vision so he can be okay with leaving and not falling to the dark side.
Speaker: And both the son and the father highlight how the future is changeable. But by simply masking Anakin's dark side potential, have we actually changed anything?
Speaker: To what extent was the sun's warning actually effective? Or could it have been actually effective? Yeah. Anakin didn't want to leave when he knew what he was capable of.
Speaker: But if you had continued, if you'd let him leave with a knowledge of how the dark side might tempt you or what's possible, can you avoid it? But then, of course, that falls into...
Speaker: the tales as old as time which is that trying to avoid fate inevitably will land one on that path to fate isn you cannot defeat prophecy i was going to ask you a question that i think i i know what you will say but i'll ask it anyway because think it's a fun experiment would you want to see the sun's vision because At the end when ah the father is talking to, and forget if he's saying this to Obi-Wan or to Anakin, but saying, you know, he showed Anakin something he should never have seen.
Speaker: Oh no, he's saying this to Anakin. He's like, yeah, this is, he showed you something you should not have seen. So I removed your memory of it and we'll never know exactly what it was that he showed you, but it is for the best that you no longer have this knowledge.
Speaker: If we accept the premise that the sun's vision's are true or potentially true, would you want to know? Because i think there are definitely times where I have found things out and gone, okay, yeah, actually, maybe my life would have been better if I hadn't known that.
Speaker: But in general, I feel like I'm so curious. I would want to know. And it would be bad. i would regret it, obviously. And like there's definitely times...
Speaker: Where I pride myself in being a very honest and forthright person and not withholding things from people, but especially working with kids, often there are things that it's better for them not to know.
Speaker: And that always feels like a difficult choice to make. They're like, oh, do you know, the ethical quandaries of honesty. But would you want to see the son's vision if he offered you a vision?
Speaker: That's a hard one. Because you love free will. You love free will so much.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. No, I have um major beefs with the idea of fate or destiny of any kind. Predeterminism.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like no. Yeah. I am intensely curious. I have a lot of anxiety about the future. is one of the big things that I've worked on in therapy over the last several years is the, you know, the, like, how do I make the right choice for the right outcome?
Speaker: isn Fuck if I know, dude. Big truck listeners, you can contemplate this for yourself as well. yeah ah Send us a message. Sound off in the comments. Yeah, let us know. Would you accept the sun's vision?
Speaker: But it's just fun to think about. That is the question. Is the sun's vision the worst possible outcome? Is this a Palantir situation, like I said before, where we're getting things that technically could happen, but is designed to get you to feel a certain way?
Speaker: Is this the vision in Galadriel's mirror? But the father doesn't have to worry about contemplating any of this because plot twist, he kills himself so that Anakin can then kill the son. The father has a whole explanation about how his powers and the sons are connected. So by killing himself, he weakens the son. And then as they're embracing in this moment, of because he's like, I'm sorry, my son, i love you. And you think he's going to kill the son, of it then he actually stabs himself. And one of the properties of this sword seems to be that it kills you slow enough to get some good last words out.
Speaker: Everyone has time for a little bit of a final monologue. And then as they're tearfully embracing, Anakin runs them both through with his lightsaber. Which, of course, we had seen previously that they were, at least the father, was totally immune to the lightsaber. And both the daughter and the son were able to shut off everyone's lightsabers.
Speaker: So now they're vulnerable to it and he's able to kill them. And the father's death is such an amazing sequence. This is another really beautiful one. Like you said before about the planet being manifestations of these three beings as the father dies. All of these things that seem like natural features and that are obviously architecture are all just crumbling and exploding in this really...
Speaker: phenomenal exciting way and then we get shoved back into normal space and time which we can believe because they have super duper force magic but it does feel a little bit like a cop-out because it has the vibe of it was all a dream and that's the question was it all a force vision I hope it was real.
Speaker: i like when things have stakes. I don't like when it was all a dream. There's a couple of last words from the father. Beware your heart, which again, feels very Jedi.
Speaker: Be careful. It feels Jedi, but it's balanced. It's be careful of your attachments, not Beware having attachments is going to pull you to the dark side.
Speaker: It's beware your heart. Watch that you're not leading yourself solely with your heart and not with your head. And he also says you have brought balance to this world.
Speaker: By killing all of them? Right. Right. Did balance require total destruction? Once the daughter was dead, was there any way to save this? Was there any way to salvage this?
Speaker: And this is much like how the Jedi Council decided that they were going to train anakin to be their pet chosen one people keep trying to use anakin as their pet chosen one and that ends up not working out very well for them because it is the results partially of other people trying to manipulate the prophecy and manipulate him for their own ends even if they feel like those ends are noble because the jedi believe in their cause and the father
Speaker: is very obviously clearly keeping his children in line and they pose a real threat to the universe so i think it's reasonable of him to try to get the chosen one but when he is contemplating his own future the father he's talking about how he's gonna spend the rest of his days mourning his children and the choices that he made because he ultimately caused all of this suffering that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't brought Anakin to the planet, but also he was trying to do what he thought he needed to do.
Speaker: So it's all just... If you try to... Again, it's it's the you know trying to manipulate a prophecy always backfires. Yeah. You are trying to dictate the time and place of the fulfillment of this prophecy.
Speaker: So, you know, our question ultimately as we watch this whole story, is does Anakin fulfill the role of Chosen One and how?
Speaker: We know he falls to the dark side. you know, how does whatever comes of all of that when we watch Return of the Jedi and everything that he touches ultimately bring balance to the Force?
Speaker: How do Luke and Leia factor into this? How does Ahsoka factor into this? How does Palpatine factor into this? Is it 100% something that Anakin must do with his own two hands?
Speaker: Or is it Anakin through his actions causes a ripple effect that ultimately brings balance? Questions that we will not get answers to for quite some time.
Speaker: Listeners, you can contemplate this while you wait for our next episode. So I think that's going to do it for this evening. That is going to do it for this evening. So just for our listeners who are watching along with the podcast, next time we will be going back to covering a couple of more episodes.
Speaker: We will be covering season three, episode 18 through season four, episode three, which is the Citadel arc. the Padawan Lost, Wookiee Hunt arc, and the Water War arc.
Speaker: So until then, you can always go through our backlog, follow our podcast wherever you're listening to us now, on any other podcast site if you like as well.
Speaker: Leave us a five-star review, leave us a comment, leave us a written review if the podcast platform you're on allows that sort of thing. We have a very extensive backlog of Lord of the Rings, of Murderbot, of Beowulf, of the Father Christmas letters.
Speaker: If you have things you'd like to see from us in the future, if you'd like us to watch through some Studio Ghibli, and Sam can finally be the expert, we can do that.
Speaker: I'm not even an expert. I just like and i have like three Studio Ghibli movies that I really like. Well, it's more of an expert than I am. So yeah, let us know. You can always send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. You can also comment, interact with, follow us at our social media at fanatpod, F-A-N-A-P-P-O-D on any of our social medias that we are on.
Speaker: Tell a friend about us. That's always a good way to bother more people, make friends, break friends, not friendships, just your friends.
Speaker: I was going to say, if you're using us as part of your elaborate fetish scenario, don't tell us. Yeah, that's an example of knowledge that we would prefer not to have. You do you. We don't want to kink shame. If this is doing something for you, we got to get some money from that fandom of Freitas Onlyfans.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye. See you next time. Bye.
Speaker: The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Baeruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
Speaker: Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.
Speaker: Speaking of doing things. Okay. I really, really quickly, I know we just like signed off entirely. No, this will be the stinger. It's fine. No, I do want to talk about the voice actor for The Sun.
Speaker: This is Sam Witwer. I know Sam Witwer most from Battlestar Galactica as Crashdown. I watched the entirety of the US-Canadian version of Being Human. He was Aiden in that. He has also, in various other things, played Mr. Hyde and James T. Kirk and also done a shit ton of Star Wars stuff. He was Starkiller in the Force Unleashed games.
Speaker: He has played Emperor Palpatine in a bunch of Star Wars stuff after the death of Ian Amarcrabbe in 2012, whenever Sidious is not being played by Ian McDiarmid, the live action actor.
Speaker: And then, of course, in any Star Wars animation, video game, and even recent-ish live action, he's Maul. ah Oh, I see. see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's also a massive nerd. He's super fun on social media. He got expelled from Juilliard. Okay. And apparently got into Juilliard with an impromptu, memorized that morning Shakespeare monologue. So...
Speaker: good You know what? Good for him. But honestly, Maul might be the biggest factor of my voice kink. So if you want to hear more about our elaborate fetish scenarios, come back. ah Not next week, not the week after, not even the week after that, but eventually. Yeah, the waiting is part of it.
Speaker: We'll get there.
