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Ep 3.3-Okay, The Helmet Can Come Off This Once
15 Plays21 days ago
Whoops! We took an unintentional break in there but we're back with the last two episodes of the Mandalorian Season 1! We discuss the weather, the music, production, whether droids have souls, video game main questlines, Giancarlo Esposito as the Perfect Villain, and Armor Mommy!
Covers Episode 7: The Reckoning and Episode 8: Redemption of The Mandalorian Season 1
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Political Commentary
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't think that we've explicitly said fuck ice on the podcast yet. I don't know that we have, but um fuck ice. Yeah, now we've said it.
00:00:11
Speaker
In case that wasn't implied by our whole deal, fuck ice, fuck them so hard. But also remember the words of wisdom from the Dyke March, never make a cop come.
00:00:23
Speaker
So true. That is wise. I'm so glad that everybody had a nice break from us talking about politics. um We're back now, motherfuckers. Hell yeah.
00:00:36
Speaker
Yeah. So the the fascist state do be fascisting. he We're recording this at the beginning of February, 2026. And just to reorient you in time, if you're listening to this later down the line from, again, your bunker underneath rural idaho or something i don't fucking know this was when ice invaded minneapolis and shot three people and killed two of them so far kidnapped children and used them as bait among other atrocities that's just off the top of my head you know pepper spraying seniors so oh there's whole host of but you know aside from the normal ice bullshit
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, aside from the normal, already unconscionable detaining of human beings that they were doing, just also more. Yeah, aside from the already kidnapping neighbors and friends and throwing them in concentration camps.
Fascism and Online Safety
00:01:42
Speaker
So yeah, we're we're in Star Wars now. And we're go to be talking a lot about fascism. Yeah. Because the Empire are space fascists.
00:01:55
Speaker
I feel like we should be providing some kind of supplementary reading on our social media of like, here's like some actual, I don't know, some real political theory or like some good substacks or something.
00:02:09
Speaker
i To our massive audience. I should be doing more reading. The one that the little tiny pamphlet ah that occurs to me off the top of my head is Umberto Echo's How to Spot a Fascist.
00:02:22
Speaker
Not that like... Yeah, that's not going to do much for you right now. But my I guess my two cents that I'll contribute practical advice is to be smart about your online presence. Friends, if you are attending virtual anti ice trainings, if you are communicating sensitive information. anonymize yourself to the degree that you're able. Don't talk about sensitive shit on discord or God forbid, Facebook messenger kill, kill Facebook messenger in a fire.
00:02:53
Speaker
WhatsApp is technically encrypted, but like I avoid sensitive things on WhatsApp because it is still owned by meta. And like, I felt the not paranoid because last year I read careless people, which I think I talked about on the podcast. It was a yeah memoir by some lady who used to work at Facebook And that made me so much more aware of like how all of your little cookies and everything are being used and made me so squicked about it.
00:03:20
Speaker
But we've always been kind of careful about like, especially on our book club discord server, you know, if people are talking about things that seem like sensitive and specific and identifiable, we'll be like, Hey, move this to a secure platform, please. Not because we don't want people to talk about it, but because we're just aware of data usage. And i was like, oh, this feels like paranoid, but I know it's the right thing to do. And then Discord fucking added AI scraping bots to all servers that you then had to go in and manually remove because you had their like specific user
Personal Stories and Reflections
00:03:51
Speaker
IDs. And I'm like, oh my God, we're we're not being paranoid.
00:03:54
Speaker
I hate it here. Yeah. I mean, well, now we're openly yelling about this shit in our podcast, but. But, you know, this is, it's different. Here were public figures.
00:04:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yay. it's It's a terrifying time to be an American for our non-American listeners. hi and i I know it's also a terrifying time to be non-American. I talk to my non-American friends and they're like, we can't avoid your fucking politics because...
00:04:25
Speaker
your fucking politicians do shit like threaten to invade our countries here and or actually invade our countries are they talking about fucking greenland for some reason now unemployed in greenland that's a princess bride reference we'll get there eventually one day someday what's what's new in your life bestie I bought my first heels for pole and I'm really excited. They're coming this weekend. They probably won't come before class on Saturday, which is sad, but I can show them off next week because I've started going to a new studio in addition to my regular home studio because I needed another space that had higher ceilings so I could climb higher because the ones that I usually do, I think those are, and my God, how call did the girls say they were? Like 10 and a half feet?
00:05:17
Speaker
But the other studio that's actually closer to me has some that are 14 feet. And so I wanted to practice my climbs really high. And all of the girls there are so beautiful and wearing such cute outfits. They just like look amazing. And they're like doing the most bonkers things.
00:05:35
Speaker
Cirque du Soleil shit that you've ever seen in your life. While also just like looking kind of bored. One girl was just fully 180 degrees flipped upside down. And I like looked at her and thought that she was on her phone texting. Just couldn't be bothered.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I did talk to her after. She was really nice. But they all have their like cute little outfits and their cute little shoes. And i was like, I want to have cute little shoes. So I ordered them. And they're coming soon. And they're going to make me six three And that's going to be I will still be shorter than my younger sibling, who is six five but you know, I'll be taller than I currently am. Well, and you're not a short person.
00:06:18
Speaker
No, no, I'm five seven im a i am a respectable height. I am taller than a good many people, but I will be even more tall and powerful, and I'm excited. Amazing.
00:06:29
Speaker
You know where you can also climb higher than 14 feet? Where? Where? My gym, my rock gym.
The Mandalorian Recap and Analysis
00:06:37
Speaker
yeah you're so Depending on what you're doing, you're strapped into a thing. But I did post in book club saying, listen, rock climbers, I know 14 feet isn't that high, but for pole dancers, it's very scary. You climb up 14-foot featureless steel pole, you see how you feel.
00:06:56
Speaker
no I mean, it is, as as one of the folks in our server pointed out, that that's where like a lot of bouldering walls top out at. And you get to the top of a bouldering wall and you're not fully secure and you're like, yeah, that is actually scary. I have, in fact, fallen from that height. It's not fun.
00:07:14
Speaker
and there's padding underneath you. Not a hard wooden floor. Yes, exactly. You know who also does a lot of falling and really athletic shit?
00:07:26
Speaker
The Mandalorian. Oh.
00:07:45
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Fandom Apprentice. My name is w Rin, I'm one of your hosts. I've been a lifelong nerd. I grew up with Star Wars and a number of other various fantasy and sci-fi media.
00:08:02
Speaker
And as an adult, I've made it something of a life mission slash malevolent cause to... foist this media share this media with friends who did not grow up with it okay yay i'm sam i'm the other one i am also a nerd i am having this foisted upon me and i am enjoying it so far i think our extensive backlog of episodes uh has proved that at least i haven't quit yet
00:08:34
Speaker
And today we are finishing season one of The Mandalorian, which I had mentioned, I think, in every other episode that we've done about this. I have seen this season before. These last two, i completely forgot.
00:08:47
Speaker
Absolutely no memory of anything that happened in them. It was all totally fresh. So this was very fun. Well, just for your information, these last two episodes of them oh they' never mind these last two episodes of the Mandalorian came out December 18th and December 27th of 2019.
00:09:09
Speaker
So these were still before. I mean, I know that you ended up like watching it during lockdown. So I suppose that could explain some of your... forgetting pieces here and there.
00:09:21
Speaker
It was also just a show that I didn't care that much about. I watched it and it was fine, but I was not super invested. i said, okay, this is fun. Baby Yoda's cute. It's over. And then I did something else and I didn't really think about it afterwards.
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah. So plan for today, ah we're going to go through the last two episodes, episode seven, The Reckoning, and episode eight, Redemption, or chapter seven, The Reckoning, chapter eight, Redemption.
00:09:53
Speaker
And then we'll talk about sort of this first season of the show as a whole and what we're doing next. Excellent. Do we want to just dive into chapter seven?
00:10:08
Speaker
Sure. They are technically chapters. I've been calling them episodes because that's what they are. But if we want to be correct, this is chapter seven, The Reckoning. so we open with... what We have one with Mando on the ship. He gets a transmission from Grief Karga, who in my notes, I just referred to as the manager guy because I kept forgetting his name. And then I thought, this is a recorded medium. I really should take the three seconds to Google this guy's name. So now I have it in a tab so I don't forget.
00:10:39
Speaker
Played by legendary actor Carl Weathers. I only know him from this. This was just such a fucking GLaDOS-ass talk from him.
00:10:51
Speaker
This was, it it was so, you know, I hear you're alive. How disappointing. Cor. Listening to this, having also kind of forgotten what happens in these episodes, it was like, this has trap written all over it.
00:11:07
Speaker
Yeah, they did shoot at each other last time. They did not leave things on good terms. He delivers a whole bunch of exposition, which is basically that the client has taken over the city and the guild wants Mando back to kill him.
00:11:22
Speaker
So... Yeah, and well, and and Mando's not naive. Mando's like, ah I'm bringing backup to this shit. And so he goes to collect Cara Dune.
00:11:37
Speaker
who is in a tavern, naturally, so plot will happen. And she's doing this fight with this cool energy belt connecting her to this other guy so they can't get too far away from each other. I thought that was very fun. i and I don't know if that's an existing Star Wars thing, but it seems like a very effective mechanism for Bloodsport.
00:12:01
Speaker
There are, like, forms of wrestling and things where you end up, like, tied to your opponent somehow. You know, and there's cage matches and things like that.
00:12:11
Speaker
And the actress for Cardoon is a wrestler. Well, that makes sense, then. So that's that's her background. But Mando picks her up, gives her one last job. Mm-hmm.
00:12:26
Speaker
And then they go to get more backup. They go to, again, the first the first planet to pick up the Ugnaught that they met there.
00:12:37
Speaker
I think his name is Quiel or Kiel? Quiel. Queel, I will try to remember that. And also while they're on the way to get him, Grogu, oh, but I don't know that his name is Grogu yet. I can't say that. Or can I?
00:12:52
Speaker
i mean, you we it is it is now, i guess, like popular knowledge that the baby's name is in fact Grogu. But yeah, when this season was coming out, we got all the way to the end of the season and did not know the baby's name.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, I've just been referring to him as the baby at this point. It slipped out. Oh, shocker. I know the common knowledge name of the baby. The baby tries to pilot the ship at some point while the grownups are talking and it goes horribly. There's just all of these red warning lights and sirens blaring. And it's like, oh, my God, are we being attacked? Is something horrible happening? Nah, he's just up there pressing buttons. Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
This was, as we're doing this sort of like go back and collect all of your allies, it was like, this is such a fucking video game ass season. It really is. You have your character, your character levels up, gets cooler armor.
00:13:47
Speaker
Your character goes, at or your character goes, does the introductory like main quest line job. levels up, gets cooler armor, comes back, fucks off to do all the side quests, and then goes, oh fuck, I guess I'll finish the main quest line. And of course, the main quest line takes you back to like all of the other characters you meet through the story.
00:14:12
Speaker
There was a point where I had noted in the last episode, there was just like, this is the safe point before a big boss battle where we're all just catching our breath. We're restocking our armor. You know, it's very, it's very video gamey. Get all of your, Hmm. There's a random, uh, chest here with like seven potions.
00:14:33
Speaker
Hmm. Lots of potions of healing, two potions of speed and a damage potion. I wonder why that's there. Hmm, the game just autosaved. Should that be concerning?
00:14:45
Speaker
yes So they're talking to Quill and the bounty droid from, was it the first or the second episode? Very early on. Like the first episode. Yeah. From the first episode brings them some tea and it turns out that Quill gentle parented it back to health after the big battle.
00:15:05
Speaker
ah And there's a really cute montage of him teaching it to walk, teaching it to be gentle with animals and pick things up delicately and pour water into a cup and it's just really cute but do we trust it with the baby the answer is mando absolutely does not no and then there's kind of no of course not listen there's kind of an existential discussion about the nature of droids that continues throughout the end of the last episode too
00:15:41
Speaker
which is are they fully neutral tools reflective of the person who made them, which is Quill's perspective after he reprograms the bounty droid, or do they have what is effectively a soul, an evil soul, if you ask Mando, do they have some essence that transcends their programming or whatever people do to them, whatever they're made for, even though this droid has been fully wiped and reprogrammed? What's our To be a now it's calling itself a nurse droid, which is cute.
00:16:15
Speaker
You know, are we still capable of trusting it? Is it going to revert back to its original programming? We don't know. It's very existential, very philosophical. And that does also come up in the last episode too, which we will talk about more. But it's very interesting that they made this whole sort of deep and thoughtful plot line with what could have otherwise been just a bit character.
00:16:40
Speaker
Well, and i I want us to think about this and just keep this in the back of our minds, because this is going be one of those like overarching grand sci-fi questions that Star Wars is going to keep addressing, is to what extent are droids independent thinking and feeling beings?
00:17:04
Speaker
And I think this is also really interesting for us in the age of ai to think about and discuss too because like when you know when george lucas made the first star wars movie it was 19 fucking 77 no one had thought of a goddamn llm computer programming was still done on punch cards Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
Like, so this is, this is very, so i think this is something that we can keep touching on as we go through the rest of Star Wars, because there definitely are droids that will meet that have this intense personality. And then there's other droids that it's like, oh, it's just their programming, yada, yada. Some droids get reset and their memory wiped and their personality changes. Right. But then some droids never get memory wiped. And so they're like fully thinking and learning beings. And is that just the LLM has such a wide learning learning basis, whatever, to draw on And is that the same as...
00:18:11
Speaker
anthropomorphizing animals. You know, some droids have a personality that is obvious to us, but maybe the ones that don't have a personality that's obvious to us, maybe they exist in some way that's meaningful to them. If you listen to our Murderbot episodes, there's a lot of continuation of themes from those. It's a very interesting question.
00:18:31
Speaker
h I also love that Quill is, you know, insisting that the droid come with him and explaining what role he will accept in going on this mission with everyone. And he ends his little speech with none will be free until the old ways have gone forever. You fucking tell him i have spoken that rules.
00:18:55
Speaker
Well, he does that. He does that. And then goes, the blurgs will join me as well. And it goes, the blurgs. I have spoken while walking off.
00:19:06
Speaker
That was just a killer shot. They're so good. And the blurgs on the ship, so funny. And they must smell bad.
00:19:16
Speaker
Just any kind of big lizard. If you... I guess maybe most people don't know as many fun facts about Komodo dragons as I do. Maybe this is not a common knowledge. You're a lizard parent. Yeah, it's true. Komodo dragons smell terrible. They big big reptiles they can be so stinky so I can only imagine whatever the fuck a blurg is even if it was just three big mammals if this was three yaks or something that would smell awful but these things are clearly like smell really terrible carnivorous like they just have to and I'm sure they had to bring buckets of their slop you know whatever it is they eat it's gotta be so nasty and it is extremely funny uh Kara and Mando are arm wrestling
00:20:05
Speaker
And Kara's winning. Yeah. Until the baby fucking force chokes her. Which I love. It's the cutest force choke you ever did see.
00:20:21
Speaker
We arrive back on Navarro and meet up with i general manager Grief Karga and his two middle managers. Yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
Nothing more sinister than administrative hierarchy, bureaucracy. That's what i'm looking for. oh and fucking everything he's saying this whole time, like, sounds villainy.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah. You can see this trap coming from a mile away. Shit is tense as hell as they're walking along and you know, the the fucking two goons are walking in the back of everybody.
00:21:02
Speaker
Don't like it. No. There is, as they're like camping for the night, we have the shot and they show the alien, like the alien goat in the foreground.
00:21:13
Speaker
And then the next frame, it's like clearly roasting on the spit. It's a continuous theme of just these cute little animals getting roasted. That was an ugly ass little animal.
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, fair. And I did like the little tiny detail because they're in these lava fields. And so they're scooping up chunks of hot rock and using that as the fuel for their fire to roast this goat thing.
00:21:38
Speaker
i thought that was very fun. That was cool. um There's an incredibly awkward silent dinner where everyone is just kind of giving each other shifty looks and grief carcass saying something about the baby.
00:21:52
Speaker
And this made me wonder why does everyone feel think the baby is a pet slash some kind of animal. like He's tiny, but pretty obviously a sentient being. Everyone refers to him as a child. And this is a world where literal slavery exists. So I guess that tracks that, you know, like, and like we're talking about with droids, you know, personhood, who knows? Who cares? Clearly not everyone cares equally, but I'm always surprised
00:22:24
Speaker
When people see the baby and go, oh, is this your pet? is is the Does the client want to eat it? like It's obviously a person. Well, and big because like in the larger realm of Star Wars and thinking about the this story narrative, we know this species because we are familiar culturally with Yoda.
00:22:48
Speaker
There is a reason this thing was called Baby Yoda by the entire populace of the world. So like, we know what this thing is. And we know that Yoda is a great teacher with his backward speech and shit.
00:23:03
Speaker
Clearly, these things have been like these people have never seen ah it any any member of this species. He's wearing clothes. Well, yes.
00:23:14
Speaker
And we have, um you know, you put your dogs in little sweaters, right? Like this is true. So there's there's that. And then also there is we see them at one point briefly in one of the I'm not sure in which episode exactly.
00:23:31
Speaker
The Kowalkian monkey lizard. Yeah, those he does kind of look like a Kowalkian monkey lizard a little bit. Yeah, getting roasted over the spit. And, you know, the character name of the of one of the Coalkian monkey lizards. And I don't know if it's not confirmed whether the Coalkian monkey lizard in the show is Salacious Crumb, who is a character from from Return of the Jedi.
00:23:55
Speaker
But it's not not Salacious Crumb. But anyway, but yeah, so like I can see how it like in a galaxy where anything has any shape.
00:24:09
Speaker
this could be intelligent or not. Like it's hard to tell. Yeah. but I guess that makes sense in the bigger Star Wars context. And that does also in a slightly more tangential way, make me think about real human babies because real human babies, I get to see a lot of them in my job and they are so cute. Like little, little tiny, like less than six months old babies, fucking adorable. And there is of course a primal urge to be like, I want to pick up that baby. I want hold that baby.
00:24:39
Speaker
But I think there is also a very reasonable large trend in parenting right now to say, please don't touch my fucking baby. No one touches my baby. No one picks up my baby. I see sometimes people will have little...
00:24:55
Speaker
hanging tags on their car seat carrier things that say like, please don't touch me, please don't kiss me. Because ultimately, that's a guy. That's a person. It's really, it would be so weird to just go pick up and touch and kiss some random person. It's not a puppy. Like, yes, they are cute and we have an instinct to hold them and nurture them.
00:25:18
Speaker
But yeah, that's a person that would be so weird to just demand to be entitled to be near them. That's bizarre. And once I started thinking about it that way, every time I see a baby, I just go, that's just a guy.
00:25:33
Speaker
That's a guy in there. He's just a little guy. Yeah. But this is, this has very, there's like light conversation and very, Nothing can go wrong. And then the giant flying thing steals their food and then a blurg and then one of the bounty hunters and then another blurg. Yeah, they're fucking dragons.
00:25:53
Speaker
yeah fucking wyverns in the middle of this just yeah sure why not just some dragons and so the grown-ups fight them off and the baby goes nope heart emoji and closes his little pod which mando had asked quill to build for him because he shows him his little makeshift car seat thing and very awkwardly la if anyone has read anne of green gables the part where Matthew asks Mrs. Rachel Lind to sew Anna dress. And it's very awkward because he doesn't understand young girls or fashion, but he's trying to do something nice. And Mando goes, can you make this more comfortable for the baby to sleep? And Quill goes, I fucking got you
00:26:35
Speaker
And builds this beautiful pod carriage thing for the baby. It's just so sweet. So he's in his cozy little cocoon, not having to worry about getting eaten by dragons.
00:26:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So we reveal that, well, so Grief Karga gets scratched by one of the things, and there's venomous claws, clearly. Yeah, it's a nasty, this is a deep wound. This is a gash. It's a deep wound, and it's been, it like, he's been envenomated. Like, he doesn't have long to live. Mm-hmm.
00:27:10
Speaker
And so... Like he's, you know, basically preparing to die and the baby shows up. And he just toodles over. and if we remember when he wanted to heal Mando, but Mando wouldn't let him because he didn't understand what he was trying to do. I got so excited. he was going, is this his moment? Is this his time?
00:27:32
Speaker
yeah And he does some like force healing shit. And then after that, he just flops down on his little butt because he's tuckered out. He scrunches up his little face and reaches out his tiny little three-fingered hand and then just plops on the ground because he got sleepy.
00:27:49
Speaker
And... Is this a thing? I realized at this point that I don't really know what the force does. I know you can choke people with it and you can move stuff with it.
00:28:02
Speaker
And maybe it's what makes lightsabers work, but there's also crystals. I don't know if that's related. I don't know if healing people with the force is a thing. Is this a thing? So what the Force does is going to be a point of contention o throughout the entirety of Star Wars.
00:28:23
Speaker
A touchy subject. It is, you know, it's one of those things that whenever somebody like brings in a new Force power in some Star Wars property, all the fanboys like, the Force can't do that.
00:28:37
Speaker
Well, clearly it can. Yeah, they did it. There are, so i have played some of the extended universe stuff and we'll die we'll talk more about Legends, Expanded Universe, etc. stuff at some point, but i played a lot of Star Wars The Old Republic.
00:28:57
Speaker
And like there are, within particularly within the within the expanded universe and like abilities within Star Wars The Old Republic, like there is force healing. It is a thing that can be done.
00:29:09
Speaker
But I don't think that we've seen it on screen prior to this. And this actually, this tracks with a lot of things that we're going to see later. that like Dave Filoni is responsible for throughout the whole series because he fucking loves pulling in shit from the expanded universe because the whole expanded universe was George Lucas never considered it canon.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah. We've talked about this. Right. And, and when Disney bought it, it basically went, well, that's just like fanfic now. And so, you know, Dave Filoni, who's been responsible for a whole fuck ton of star Wars stuff.
00:29:48
Speaker
property. Like he was behind Clone Wars. He was behind Bad Batch. He was behind Rebels. He's now one of the, you know, main, main voices behind the Mandalorian, you know, has been behind a bunch of shit since like he clearly, i mean, he's a massive Star Wars fan. So he clearly was like, I'm going to pull this and this and this and this and this, and this is mine now. And this also belongs here and I can make this canon and this is fun too. And here we go. yeah,
00:30:14
Speaker
so Yeah, I mean, like, when you have the ability to play with your toys the way that you want to play with your toys.
00:30:26
Speaker
Why not? Exactly, yeah. So, because of that, Griefkarga cannot go through with killing Mando and Kara. Yeah.
00:30:39
Speaker
He confesses that that was his plan. and We all go, duh.
00:30:45
Speaker
Like, yeah, we knew, buddy. So they make a new plan, which is they're bringing the empty carriage in to meet the client. And Quill's going to go back to the ship with the baby.
00:30:59
Speaker
And IG-11 is already back the ship because Mando absolutely refused to have him come along. Mm-hmm. And Mando's going to go into town with Karga and Dune and kill the client.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah. And specifically, Dune is going to be posing as a bounty hunter and Karga is going to be escorting a cuffed Mando, which there's a fantasy there somewhere.
00:31:25
Speaker
I did think of you when I saw that. I was like, yeah, I'm sure Wynn's going to have something to say. And I noticed as they're... going in stormtroopers that are guarding the client are wearing different helmets than the stormtroopers who are in the town. And in these last two episodes, there's a lot of different flavors of stormtrooper.
00:31:45
Speaker
Does this mean anything? Does it indicate anything about them? Or is this just the armor that they had? And that's what they're using. The stormtroopers guarding the client at and the stormtroopers in the town initially, like they are the same helmets. it's But the stormtroopers in black, those are death troopers.
00:32:05
Speaker
Well, there's some that have the more sort of square helmet. Are they not stormtroopers? Are they something else? With the more sort of square shaped helmets. And then the ones that are guarding the client have the more classic sort of round. I think of them as like jowly helmets.
00:32:20
Speaker
I can provide receipts. Hang on. Yeah. I mean. Maybe they aren't stormtroopers. Maybe they're a different thing. And I don't know what that is. But I am sending it to you now.
00:32:31
Speaker
So these are like the more square ones. oh Oh, you're talking about the scout troopers. Okay, so that's a different thing. And I didn't know that. Okay, scout troopers, not storm troopers.
00:32:43
Speaker
We heard it here first. yeah Technically, they are storm troopers, but they're like light armor, like, you know, scouty type. you know, motorcycle cop stormtroopers. Okay. And I have things to say about them later, but okay, cool. So they are scout troopers. They are a different thing. And then there's also the ones in black. And then in episode eight, there's also one with red paint on it and he just gets to hold the big gun, I guess.
00:33:07
Speaker
But definitely or yeah. Yeah. Well, um that one is again, an example of the star Wars fans who make this plucking something out of, you know, previous star Wars media and going, this is canon now.
00:33:23
Speaker
That is the incinerator stormtrooper from the 2008 video game Star Wars The Force Unleashed. he And you know, he does incinerate. And the, the ones in black, those are death troopers. They first showed up in rogue one and, uh, they're like the elite of the storm troopers. They're supposed to be the scary ones. And there's some, one of the books in one of the books I read, they it's implied that there's some crazy fucked up stuff that happens to them during training. And they're like, not really completely human anymore.
00:33:59
Speaker
um i I mean this in the best possible way about both Star Wars as a franchise and about eight-year-olds. But I feel like a lot of Star Wars was made by an eight-year-old. Like, yeah, these are the death troopers and they're all in black. And then later episode eight, Mando goes in his jet pack and does epic moves on the spaceship. And it rules. Like, it's awesome. I do not mean this in a negative way at all. But I hear Death Trooper it and I'm like, yeah, an eight year old named Kyle would make that up and it would be awesome. And then we would all play Stormtroopers. Well, maybe we shouldn't play Stormtroopers because they're the bad guys.
00:34:40
Speaker
You make the kid you don't like to be a Stormtrooper. It's like, I want to play. I want to play this on the playground. I want to play toys. I get it. I see the appeal deeply.
00:34:53
Speaker
<unk> And again, in an extremely positive way, I love it. Like, hell yeah, death troopers, that that rules. Yeah. But we go and we meet the client.
00:35:05
Speaker
h And, you know, Werner Herzog does his Werner Herzog thing. Yeah, about how Mandalore resisted being improved by the Empire and he monologues and we get the, I would like to see the baby line. But saved by the bell, he gets an important call.
00:35:26
Speaker
from somebody is it from moth gideon is it from somebody else john carlo esposito and that was when i when he showed up i was like oh they're so fucked they are so fucked is john carlo esposito is a googling him i'm duck duck going him because i don't use google Okay.
00:35:48
Speaker
Giancarlo Esposito is a pretty brilliant actor who has made a lot of appearances as villains. He has a beautiful smile. He does. And, you know, from everything I've i've heard, he's apparently a super nice guy He's played all sorts of villains.
00:36:10
Speaker
You know, one of couple of the famous ones, he's played Sidewinder in Captain America, Brave New World. He was... He was Ra's al Ghul in Son of Batman. Let's see. He's been, i know him as mocap and voice and also face for, oh for El Presidente Anton Castillo in Far Cry 6.
00:36:35
Speaker
who He's the villain. m ah you know He's got an incredibly long resume. And he's a phenomenal actor, but he's one of those actors where he shows up and he doesn't he doesn't play good guys.
00:36:51
Speaker
no So he shows up and you're like, oh, you're so fucked. We thought Werner Herzog was like, you know, the dramatic Shakespearean bad guy.
00:37:02
Speaker
No, Werner Herzog was... the set dressing. If you've ever heard the phrase describing somebody as sucking all the oxygen out of a room, I feel like that's the effect that he has. He comes on screen and nobody else in that scene matters anymore.
00:37:21
Speaker
with he does that like as a hologram, as a tiny little hologram. He shows up and you're like, oh, he's in charge. Oh, this is bad.
00:37:32
Speaker
Before like he appears on screen. So like he shows up and basically is like, you fucked up, didn't you? To Werner Herzog.
00:37:44
Speaker
And then the fucking bar explodes. Yeah. And we pan outside and the there's death troopers there. They just shot up the bar. Moff Gideon killed his own fucking number two and a bunch of stormtroopers that were in there to prove a point.
00:38:02
Speaker
And he comes in in some kind of ship that I have seen before but don't know the name of. And my note is someone important must be in there. And obviously it's him, but I didn't know that at the time that I was taking this note. So what is it called, the little ship?
00:38:17
Speaker
thing That is a TIE fighter. TIE fighters. Okay. That's a thing I've heard before. And the folding wings is new. That's, that's cool. We've never seen that before. And my notes, you know, and a TIE fighter lands, Ooh, folding wings. That's new dramatic fucking entrance. He
Cultural Impact and Musical Influences
00:38:34
Speaker
is the moment. He is the drama redlined black cloak.
00:38:38
Speaker
And then he steps out, you know rises out of the TIE fighter, steps down and then goes, you have something I want. We're flashing back and Mando is trying to call Queel and be like, are you back at the ship yet? And the fucking transmission gets picked up by the scout troopers.
00:38:59
Speaker
Who zoom the fuck off and the blurk is so slow compared to the speeder bikes which are going at like a hundred something miles an hour. And it's clearly a chase scene while we get Mando calling and then we just see the bundle of the baby on the ground and the scout troopers scoop it up and we flash to Quill's dead and smoking body. That was so sad. I loved him.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the last shot we get of the episode. He just wanted to be free and make sure everyone else could be free. He's a good guy. Chapter 8, Redemption.
00:39:40
Speaker
so We are back with the scout troopers on their speeders. They literally just shoved the baby in a not even all the way closed bag, just like a messenger bag that they have. You would think that they would have some kind, and I know that they just dashed out because it was the last minute.
00:40:01
Speaker
They would make some effort to, to secure this valuable package but no he could just fall out at any moment and i guess they don't care and then one of them hits the fucking baby and as the scout troopers are bantering later one of them wants to see it and he goes shouldn't we check and see if it's still alive you hit it pretty hard why the fuck are they hitting him because they're fucking nazis They are. And this actually is a perfect segue to the thing that I wanted to say about the scout troopers.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah. There is an extended scene of them basically just kind of shooting the shit while they wait for authorization to go into town. And they are very obviously two guys just doing a job, having a boring day, waiting for some middle manager to give them the stamp to go back into town and they're annoyed to be doing this, whatever.
00:41:02
Speaker
And, It humanizes them in a way that reinforces how fucked up they are. The note that I made was reinforces their evilness. And I know that good and evil are like a whole thing and it's Star Wars and I have to embrace being able talk about good and evil. But I don't like saying that people are evil. I like saying that people are capable of making atrocious choices.
00:41:25
Speaker
And that reminded me of this photo that I feel like makes the rounds on Tumblr pretty frequently. And it's this just like sort of cheerful picnic group photo of a bunch of Nazi officers during World War II. Like there's officers, administrators, there's some women in there. And there's like the whole context behind this picture that like, you know, if you don't know who these people are, it just looks like a bunch of smiling, happy people having a nice day. But all of these people who are friends and neighbors and family members are are clocking into their nine to five every day and committing unthinkable atrocities.
00:42:02
Speaker
They are capable of making the choice to participate in some of the most horrible things you can imagine. And you have to remember that any human being is capable of being brought to that point and writing people off as just like, you know, you are an inherently evil monster and I could never be like you.
00:42:27
Speaker
That's the fucking dangerous way of thinking. We are all responsible for each other. and Yes, yeah you absolutely could. If you were scared enough, if you were hungry enough, if you were if you were hurt enough. like Everyone is capable of evil. this is This is very the banality of evil Yeah. So it's like, it's not in a way that makes them good or makes them like sympathetic and we should feel for them. That's like, no, you have to keep your head on a fucking swivel and make sure that you don't become like this or that the people in your life don't become like this because it can fucking happen because they're all humans under the fucking helmets.
00:43:07
Speaker
It makes me scream. And i thought I thought it was really well done. Well, and, you know not only are they they all humans, it's it's they don't even really like recognize what they're part of and you know some of that might be know i guess where they came from the empire has existed for 20 some years at this point more or less like in total it existed for like 25 years i'm gonna fucking keep harping on time in the star wars galaxy it's a whole thing not that long no it doesn't it seems like it but the nazis didn't exist for very long either hmm true
00:43:45
Speaker
The Nazi party, I think it was like 1923 they were founded or something like that. They rose to power in 33. The war started in 38, went through 45. Yeah, that long. Not a long time.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, this like little buddy cop moment we get with them is like kind of funny. And yet also, know, like you're saying, they're just, they're two dudes doing a job.
00:44:13
Speaker
And whether they recognize it or not, that job is serving evil. Like you're literally kidnapping a baby.
00:44:23
Speaker
Or if you're not recognizing it's a baby, like a cute animal, which is still, you know, even even if you don't care about the broader systems you're enmeshed in, most people wouldn't hit a cute animal.
00:44:38
Speaker
But even even that, they're like, they don't give a fuck. And then they hit him again. Well, and then IG-11 shows up and fucking mercs them. yes It introduces itself as the child's nurse droid and immediately breaks one of their arms and smashes the other one into his own bike, which is Chef's Kiss.
00:44:59
Speaker
And then puts the baby in, like, a baby Bjorn. Mm-hmm. And zooms off. The only one who has properly carried this child in this entire series so far. i mean, yeah, you can just carry kid by holding them. But if you are going on a speeding bike, i put it in a fucking thing. Strap it in.
00:45:22
Speaker
But we flash back to... Moff Gideon doing his villain thing because god damn is that a villain like full-on villain monologue the note that I had for this impression was seriously who is this guy his cape is flapping in a way that makes me imagine someone just off screen holding a small fan Well, and one of the things during the scout trooper moment is when they check in, they're like, you know, any progress? And the person on the other end is like, no, and he just shot a dude for interrupting him. So it might be a minute. So I would not put it past him to like purposefully be standing in front of the air like output and for the TIE fighter.
00:46:05
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure. And he goes like, oh, like basically I know who you people are. you know, Kara Cynthia Dune of Alderaan, which bestie, do you know anything about Alderaan?
00:46:18
Speaker
Nope. I know it's a Star Wars place. That's it. This is, is, this is, Alderaan is why she's this way.
00:46:29
Speaker
Why she is who she is. Why she's like that. Why, why when Mando was like the dude we're going after his empire, she fucking dropped everything. Mm-hmm. Yeah, which you'll find that out next episode. ah And then we get a name for the Mandalorian, Din Djarin.
00:46:49
Speaker
And then he also proves that he knows who Grief Karga is. And Grief Karga, by the way, is just sitting here fucking doing shots. Yeah, which I mean, he thinks he's about to die. He's already been about to die several times in the last couple hours. So like, you know, we all cope in our own ways.
00:47:07
Speaker
And so Mandalorian is like, oh, fuck, I know who this guy is. There's only one way that he could have known my name. And he says, like, he we we knew he was a foundling.
00:47:19
Speaker
But like he says, he wasn't born on Mandalore. Because Mandalorian isn't a race. It's a creed. a And we go back and we get shots of droid gunships and the super battle droids.
00:47:33
Speaker
And clearly baby Din Djarin being carried by his parents who are running from explosions and the slaughtering of civilians and many, many war crimes being committed here. We get like...
00:47:47
Speaker
Basically, why Mando hates st droids is he was almost killed by the super battle droid. This is, you know, and then he was rescued by a Mandalorian. A bunch of Mandalorians show up and save the day with fucking Van Halen ass guitar as the Mandalorians fly in.
00:48:19
Speaker
I was watching and thinking, wow, this would be really good recruitment propaganda for Mandalorians. If I saw this and Mandalorians were real, I'd be like, oh, hell yeah. They're rescuing babies. It's awesome.
00:48:30
Speaker
at The insignia that's on the shoulder of all of them and the color of the armor is an Easter egg. Or not like an Easter egg. it's it's a It tells us who they are. Who are they?
00:48:41
Speaker
It tells us that they're Death Watch. Again, something an eight-year-old would come up with and I love it. I love it. Yeah, they're Death Watch, and we'll get more into what the fuck Death Watch is at some point. But this also, it also places us in time because, you know, for Star Wars fans, the existence of Super Battle Droids and when Death Watch was most active was during the Clone Wars.
00:49:08
Speaker
So Mando is, if this is nine years roughly after the Battle of Yavin, and the Battle of Yavin was roughly 19 years after the Empire was established.
00:49:19
Speaker
So he's like in his 30s, he's 40 something. Like he's just a dude. He's because he's maybe he's probably somewhere between what, like 8 and 12 in that flashback.
00:49:34
Speaker
right? So then you add 20 years onto that, 32, another 10 years on, like he's in like his early 40s. Yeah. I have thoughts from the flashbacks. One of them is serious and emotional and one of them is stupid. So the serious one is now we get why he wants to protect the baby so bad because he, like, I know that we know that he was a foundling, but it just hits different watching him be picked up and carried and rescued by this Mandalorian. Like, Of course he cares about protecting the baby because that was like his life and that's their whole thing is taking in boundlings. But they've been bonded by this experience that we can see how similar their childhoods are and its oh it just gets me in the heart and I love it.
00:50:18
Speaker
The unserious thing, but that I cannot let go is this is my version of like in the Titanic, they could have both fit on that door. So Djarin's parents were, put him in this kind of hatch, a slightly underground dugout storage container. There was absolutely room for all three of them in there. And there's no reason that his parents couldn't have gone in there with him. You know, they're probably not thinking clearly because they're being shot at, but there's plenty, especially, you know, their family and they're in an emergency. They can squish, they can snuggle together in there.
00:50:58
Speaker
And it would have made no difference. I don't know why they felt... Because it's not like they were being targeted more than he... I don't know, maybe there's backstory and his parents were like super important people that were that had extra targets on their back. But from what I can see, it's just indiscriminate blasting everywhere. They could have all very easily hidden in there, but they didn't.
00:51:22
Speaker
He's by himself. So... Not saying it's his parents' fault not to victim blame, but they could have tried. But as this flashback subsides, IG-11 fucking shows up, comes in guns blazing on the speeder.
00:51:40
Speaker
And the baby is having the time of his life. Meanwhile, they've set up a giant fucking E-Web repeating blaster, which we've seen it.
00:51:53
Speaker
Or something similar before already in the series because we're about to see the second time that Mando's going to wreck shop with this in this seat in this season alone. um Because he wrecked shop with it you know out in front of where he found Baby Yoda to start with.
00:52:10
Speaker
Ah, okay. Yeah. And I did have to... ask at one point because during when there's you know they charge out and start shooting some of the stormtroopers when ig11 shows up and i was like where the fuck are all these death troopers coming from because we saw five lined up they were the firing squad we saw three get killed by ig11 we saw another two get killed by mando and then three more show up and there's like five again standing there so where the fuck are they all coming from
00:52:41
Speaker
See, this is what I was talking about before, too, about just not worrying about how many there are. Just there is whatever number is required at the moment. They just spawn. Well, and that's kind of the whole point of having these masked, faceless soldiers is you can just...
00:53:00
Speaker
keep throwing them at your heroes. You don't need as many extras. You can just keep putting them in different helmets. I have commentary about that in a little bit. Okay. But they're hiding in in the bar and we see the incinerator stormtrooper show up.
00:53:21
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And start to burn shit down as they're trying to escape through the grate to the sewers. And ah Mando's injured. It's like, you should just leave me.
00:53:35
Speaker
The incinerator trooper is about to set them on fucking fire. And baby Yoda does this slow-mo concentration, hold back the flames with the force. Yeah.
00:53:49
Speaker
And shove it back at the stormtrooper and blow him the fuck up. Which, the first time I watched this, I actually hadn't watched the last season of another show where something similar to this happens yet. And this hurts so much more now that I know that this is a reference bit, that essentially this is a reference to another episode.
00:54:12
Speaker
a star wars show oh dear but mando's like yeah i'm fucked just leave me go car is like we can take off your helmet and heal your traumatic brain injury and he's like you know i'm gonna have a warrior klingon death here no one can see my face h but ig11 says you all need to go i'll stay with mando and there's a loophole because no living thing has seen Mando without the helmet.
00:54:45
Speaker
IG-11 goes, I'm not alive. Exactly. And this is more drama about, you know, droids, personhood. Why should it not count? Because initially Mando's extremely resistant.
00:55:00
Speaker
It's only after IG-11 goes, hey, look, I'm not alive. This is fine. Let me heal you, you big dum-dum. You won't get in trouble. I'm not going to tell anybody this is fine. I'm a droid. Take off your stupid helmet.
00:55:12
Speaker
But he has to be talked into it. So and obviously we've seen that Mando believes that droids have some kind of soul essence, something that makes them people enough to have this rule apply to them. But I don't know. I need some Mandalorian ethicists to to weigh in on this.
00:55:33
Speaker
Or more to the point, I think Mando's fear of droids is that they can be programmed to do horrible things and like they don't think about it. Yeah. Because they're not actually thinking.
00:55:45
Speaker
And that is also and you know incredibly vulnerable to take off your most important thing that you never take off in front of this thing that has guns built into its body. you know I can see having some hesitation about that.
00:55:59
Speaker
Well, that is also actually a thing and with like modern AI, too. is you know it it gets a lot of flack in our circles on Tumblr, but like any technology, it is not inherently good or evil.
00:56:13
Speaker
you know I've worked with people who have worked on AIs that are used to recognize cancer cells in pathology slides. It has a lot of potential for like instantaneous translation.
00:56:28
Speaker
there There is a lot of potential to AI and then it it is also can be you know used for surveillance and weaponry and you know data collection. and like it is it Like any technology, it is only about how the technology is used.
00:56:50
Speaker
And so it is only about how the droid is programmed. Would IG-11 have stayed to help Mando prior to reprogramming? Probably not.
00:57:01
Speaker
Would Sec Unit have stayed to help all of the helpless people before it hacked its governor module? I don't know. It would have gotten fried if it tried. Thankfully, Mando does agree and lets IG-11 spray some magical healing spray on him. and then in a few minutes, he's totally fine. So that's great.
00:57:22
Speaker
e you have suffered damage to your central processing unit you mean my brain that was a joke to put you at ease
00:57:32
Speaker
know but also the robot jokes yeah so again personhood personality anyway we're gonna keep coming back to this theme i love it love an ethical quandary But they go down into the sewers where the Mandalorians had their covert, their little hideout.
00:57:54
Speaker
And we find a pile of helmets. Which somehow feels more graphic than all of the bodies we've seen up to this point. Maybe just because we've spent so much time explicitly talking about the importance of their armor and the importance of the helmet. Seeing them all not just scattered, but like stacked up.
00:58:16
Speaker
in a big pile in the middle of the floor. who like gave me chills. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And this was a thing when I first watched this ah show that like, this is really when it coalesced for me that, you I, I was wondering so much what the fuck happened to the Mandalorians. Yeah.
00:58:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because the last time it we saw the Mandalorians in canon, because again, as ah as i I alluded to, i hadn't watched the last half of Rebels yet when I first watched this show. And there's there's more on Mandalorians in the last half of Rebels.
00:58:54
Speaker
But even then, even in that last half of Rebels, there's... a whole planet of them there's multiple planets of them so like in between you know 2 bby and 9 aby which is before the battle of yavin and after the battle of yavin it's how we distinguish things in the star wars universe never heard of it it is a very important battle it's not used within within the universe but it's used by the fans to distinguish timing we'll talk about it next episode oh okay
00:59:25
Speaker
But yeah, the last time like the last time we've seen them in canon, there were multiple whole planets of them. The last time that I'd watched them, there were whole planets. There was some political stuff going on and some like inter-Mandalorian conflict.
00:59:40
Speaker
It was more of like a Cold War type thing. What happened in that 11-year period? You know, we have the Night of a Thousand Tears is mentioned. Oh, no.
00:59:53
Speaker
That's bad. You know, and, you know, the, the, God, what do they, what do they call it? Yeah. And the great, we've had the Great Purge, um which, you know, clearly was some form of genocide.
01:00:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But also, we have Din Djarin saying, you know, I've never removed this helmet since I swore the Creed when I was a kid. But that was during the Clone War.
01:00:17
Speaker
And we've seen Mandalorians on multiple planets since the Clone War. What the fuck happened? Who are these people? Are they actually Mandalorians? What the fuck happened?
01:00:28
Speaker
Ooh, that's upsetting to consider. Uh-huh. So, like, i'm I'm sitting here, like, where... with With so many questions that won't be answered.
01:00:40
Speaker
you know And we learned a little more because in season seven of The Clone Wars, which came out in 2020, so we didn't even have that at this point, which is the Siege of Mandalore, which is right at the tail end of The Clone Wars. and But that still didn't explain what the fuck happened here, because we still see them in Rebels, which is you know a decade plus later.
01:01:04
Speaker
So it there were so many questions here and so many concerns. Clearly. No, I have concerns. You've given me new concerns. You're welcome. That's what I'm here for.
01:01:19
Speaker
yeah I told you, I told you, and I may have told our listeners that I have put together an order for watching this, this as much Star Wars as we would like to for maximum emotional damage.
01:01:31
Speaker
Yep, I think you are well on your way to achieving that. But in positive news, Armor Mommy is back. And she gives some background and tells the gang that the Imperials killed most of the other Mandalorians. Maybe some others escaped, maybe they didn't. She doesn't know.
01:01:50
Speaker
Mando offers... to take her with them as they're escaping, but she needs to stay and salvage the remaining Beskar. And watching her take the pieces from this pile that obviously she has constructed, and put them back into the forge is so funerary. It feels like you're watching a reincarnation. It's very beautiful. I love all of the stuff with her at the forge. I think it's so cool as a religion nerd. it's I love it.
01:02:21
Speaker
She's asking about the baby and commenting on it and saying it looks helpless. And then he just looks up and gives the tiniest little squeak. just Just so cute because I haven't said how cute Baby Yoda is yet this episode. God, he's adorable. think you have, bestie. Maybe I have. I don't know. I forgot. He's really, really cute. Okay.
01:02:43
Speaker
We hear the word Jedi for the first time in the series. Apparently they used to fight the Mandalorians. Oh yeah, that's a big historical point. So that's not good.
01:02:56
Speaker
ah Armor Mommy says Mando has no choice but to search the galaxy for the home of this creature and deliver it to a race of enemy sorcerers, as ah Mando summarizes. And she says, yep, until it is of age or reunited with its own kind, you are as its father. And then the baby makes a little optimistic gurgle.
01:03:18
Speaker
And it's very cute. He has been assigned daddy. a yeah because we hadn't already assigned this man daddy. Now he's canonically daddy, and that's beautiful. And he finally gets his mudhorn signet, and she says, you are a clan of two, which, tears, so cute. I think that she's my favorite character. And I had made this note before.
01:03:45
Speaker
before the scene after this one where she's even more badass but she's great she gives mando his jet pack that he wanted so bad the rising phoenix which apparently he will bond with in a horse girl movie style montage at some point because it won't listen to his commands until he knows it so they have to he has to attune to the item i guess he gets some more weapons this is the part that was very safe point before a boss fight and you know they're just they're stocking up this is very like where like you thought you were in the final boss fight again fucking video game core with how this was all designed
01:04:31
Speaker
you know You think it's the final boss fight, but it's a battle you're not supposed to win and you get your ass handed to you. h And then there's a cut scene where like instead of dying, like you just get defeated and shoved off because you're not really even worth killing yet.
01:04:49
Speaker
And you have to come back better and stronger and with a jetpack. Exactly. And after they leave, we get this beautiful shot of, I have just abbreviated her to AM, Armor Mommy, because I don't know what her name is. The Armorer. The Armorer. That that doesn't really roll. Armorer.
01:05:10
Speaker
Armorer? hardly know. Anyway, with her kneeling in front of her forge, we see her back and she has two of her tools crossed kind of ritualistically over her chest. looking like she is just awaiting death because she knows the stormtroopers are coming.
01:05:29
Speaker
They obviously come. They burst in after our gang has gone. She beats the shit out of them, shoves one of them into the forge, beats them all senseless.
01:05:41
Speaker
I love her so much. She's the best character. is ah she's so cool. Murder is good if a strong woman does it.
01:05:52
Speaker
I support women's rights and women's wrongs. Meanwhile, the party is escaping. They escape down to the lava river. it Again, very video game, he which, yeah, just also very Star Wars.
01:06:07
Speaker
Again, think genres that influence each other. i am glad that I am not whatever kind of scientist deals with volcanoes.
01:06:18
Speaker
or like rocks or the earth. So I don't have to worry about how impossible or possible it is to have a lava river. i don't know about lava. I don't know how it works. So it doesn't bother me, but I would love to know if this is in any way physically possible as just the environment that is being shown to us. Would love to know, but I get to live peacefully and have it not be my problem.
01:06:43
Speaker
I think the answer is no, but I'm a biologist, not a geologist. I don't know. So they sail down their little lava river and in a tragic turn the the nurse droid, what's his name? IG11. It has to sacrifice itself by self-destructing because there's this logic loop where it still has the programming that it can't be captured so it has to be destroyed and then Mando says well your new
01:07:16
Speaker
objective is to protect the baby so that supersedes your other programming and it says yes but there's no situation in which I survive and the baby survives and so I have to destroy myself and it's all this very tragic circular logic so it goes off and destroys itself takes out all the stormtroopers at the mouth of the tunnel so our gang can escape and I know that this is not the main thing the main thing is the sacrifice and it's beautiful and it's sad especially after they've reconciled But everyone is looking directly at this giant fireball. I know they're a distance away.
01:07:52
Speaker
And Mando has his helmet, so maybe he's good. But everyone else is going to go blind for sure. Just staring into these giant explosions as they happen. I may not know much, but I know you're not supposed to fucking do that.
01:08:05
Speaker
i mean There's a lot of little logistical things in these two episodes that just made me mad. And that was one of them. I think I just couldn't. like Don't look at it. Look at the giant fireball.
01:08:19
Speaker
But whatever. They escape. They do but of course Moff Gideon is there in his TIE fighter, and so there is a dodging the TIE fighter scene, and then Mando jetpacks up and blows the wing off which for the bombs. Love it.
01:08:42
Speaker
It was great. And the TIE fighter crashes, then... We have our denouement as they get back to the ship.
01:08:53
Speaker
Barry Quill have their thanks and goodbye moment. And Mando's going to go off and help find the baby's people.
01:09:06
Speaker
hmm. But Kara's going to stay and ah Grief's going to stay and they'll, you know, figure shit out, repair things.
01:09:18
Speaker
There's a very nice little shot when Grief is saying, you know, your reputation is restored amongst the guild. If you ever want to come back, you'll have your pick of all the quarries.
01:09:29
Speaker
And then immediately it cuts to the baby demanding uppies, just raising his little hands. And so it's like, yeah, he has the pick of all the quarries. And he literally picks up the baby because that's the choice that he's making.
01:09:43
Speaker
and they fly away and it's very sad, but it's also very sweet. Mm-hmm. And they go off and the baby has Mando's necklace with the mythosaur skull on it.
01:09:56
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And we close out, we go back to the wreckage of the TIE Fighter. And there's a bunch of Jawas crawling all over the TIE Fighter. i was fully expecting to see one hanging off the back of the Razorcrest because they had mentioned at some point earlier that there were a bunch of Jawas on the lava fields. And I thought it would have been so funny if as they're flying away, you just see one lose its grip and fall down. But thankfully, they are trying to strip the TIE Fighter. So we we get our Jawa fix. Because I've decided I like them. They're really cute.
01:10:29
Speaker
Oh, they're fun. But something happens to the TIE Fighter bestie. Yeah. so Moth Gideon, it doesn't look like a lightsaber.
01:10:42
Speaker
But it's not not a lightsaber. He has something. He has some kind of cool... laser sword that he uses to cut a hole in the side of his ship and you kick it out dramatically.
01:10:57
Speaker
I don't know how he survived without some kind of horrible concussion. I'm going to choose not to worry about it. But yeah, he's totally alive because I have learned my lesson that you taught me that unless we see a fucking fully incinerated body, we have to assume everyone is always still alive.
01:11:17
Speaker
So he's alive and he does this cool, you know, it's evil villain standing moment. But the sword seems important. I have never seen one like that before. And I think it's probably a safe bet that that's not really a thing.
01:11:32
Speaker
are they a thing? I don't know. You're making a face. It's not a if it's you have it in your notes as not lightsaber. What would you call it, Bestie? I don't know, a lightsaber, but it's different because it's not like a tube. It's a sword shape. It's shaped like an actual blade instead of a a tube.
01:11:50
Speaker
ah i don't know. it' It's very, very important to Mandalorians, especially. and honestly, I'm not going to get into it right now. We're going to save that one.
01:12:03
Speaker
Because i see as we established, I don't know what the force is. Don't you need the force for lightsabers? That's like a Jedi thing. But this guy, I don't think. No, you don't? Okay. I thought you needed the force to like activate them. I don't know how. This is the point of the show is I don't know how these things work. And so I am left to speculate and nitpick about things like how many people could fit in a little hatch because I don't understand what's going on. yeah And I have to fill airtime on the show.
01:12:32
Speaker
But that is the end of season one. Am I allowed to watch season two or do I have to wait? Is it part of the order? no you got to wait. Okay. and' Sorry, Bestie.
01:12:44
Speaker
I think we will come back. We can do a like one episode after we've seen a bunch of shit. We'll come back and like do one episode again on the season for you to be like, ah, yes, now I get all the Star Wars shit before we go on to season two.
01:12:59
Speaker
There's a lot. I still have a bunch of notes. to go through a couple of things. But first off, I want to check in with you as a non Star Wars person.
01:13:12
Speaker
There is so much to love about this series because it is Star Wars. Mm hmm. And it is so very Star Wars. And there are so many little homages to the rest of Star Wars.
01:13:24
Speaker
How does the story and the visuals, how does that all hold up to you knowing jack fuck about Star Wars? I think it's cute. I think it's charming. I feel like I probably...
01:13:38
Speaker
am a very good type of person. I'm sure that there's broad appeal, so I wouldn't say I'm the target demographic, but person who lives on Earth and has heard of Star Wars before has vague positive associations with it.
01:13:57
Speaker
ah You know, i can I know what a lightsaber is. i get Well, maybe I don't know what a lightsaber is, but you know it's not entirely foreign to me. This is not something that has been pulled off of you know a parallel universe and put in front of me. I know enough to go, okay, sure, it's Star Wars. And that vague nebulous impression can fill in a lot of gaps.
01:14:24
Speaker
And if people are talking about stuff, I don't know, i can just assume, Oh, that must be a star Wars thing. It's start. There's a lot of star Wars, so I don't need to worry about it. If it existed completely in isolation, I'm not sure. i would still like it. I would still be charmed by it, but I would be wondering about what was meaningful what was not meaningful would you know if this was the only season of some new fucking streaming original series I guess it is a streaming original series but you know totally new universe never been seen before internet original show and you know you don't know are there going to be more seasons is there going to be more content is this all there is if it existed totally in isolation I'm not sure how well it would work
01:15:11
Speaker
But I think just because there is sort of miasma of Star Wars that exists in the universe, that helps kind of smooth things along. And I liked it. I thought it was very fun.
01:15:22
Speaker
But I think that if there are more specific, I don't know, critiques or things to be appreciated, or obviously many things that I'm missing, that didn't detract from my experience.
01:15:35
Speaker
um Because I was I was watching some of the like making of the Mandalorian interview show things. And there were a couple of points where they mentioned, you know, there's a lot of like fan service shots.
01:15:49
Speaker
They replicated, honestly, like, there's a lot of shots that are almost one to one from the original series. Yeah. In the very first episode, where the speeder is going along, that's designed to look like a long shot of Luke's speeder in A New Hope.
01:16:07
Speaker
When you have the X-wings, that's designed to look like certain shots from the fourth movie. When the speeder bikes are going along, that's designed to look like shots from episode six. So for you then, as an experienced Star Wars fan, is that fun? Does that get old?
01:16:25
Speaker
Do you wish that they would be a little more original? Because it doesn't bother me because I have nothing to compare it to. But maybe so much fan service I could see maybe being a little annoying.
01:16:37
Speaker
yeah i And I would agree. But the thing about how they do the fan service is it's not like, they're not like lingering on it. It's not like holding the shot like, hey, hey, did you get it?
01:16:52
Speaker
Did you fucking get it yet? h Look, it's the same thing from this. You know, when we're in the Mos Eisley Cantina, you know, yeah, the props department rebuilt the whole fucking Mos Eisley Cantina as we see it in A New Hope.
01:17:11
Speaker
down to the coloring on the like drink dispensers. Reds on the left, greens on the right. But that's just because they love Star Wars and it makes sense for their story. Mm-hmm.
01:17:25
Speaker
When I was watching the little like making of thing, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were talking about how when they were making the story, they were like, oh, we could pull this thing in here. We could pull this thing in here. But if it didn't make sense to use, they didn't do it.
01:17:42
Speaker
It was only if it made sense with the story, only if it made sense with the shot. Like, yeah, this shot's fun to include. We can do it this way. But if it's not going to be a good shot, they're not going to use it.
01:17:55
Speaker
But then they're doing so many like minor little details. There's a droid that goes by at one point that is... which I didn't fucking notice when I was watching this. I only noticed when they were talking about it in the making of, which is that droid is supposedly named R5.
01:18:13
Speaker
And R5 at one point in A New Hope has a blown motivator. And so part of his little head poofs and, you know, he's on Tatooine. And so Dave Filoni was like, I don't think it ever made it off Tatooine.
01:18:26
Speaker
And so R5 is still there. 15 years later and around the area where the blown motivator was they like painted some grease going down the back yeah it got that replaced but like it wasn't ever fully cleaned oh it's like a scar essentially there buddy you know and r5 also features in like expanded universe stuff and you know the minor details have put the red thing on the right and the green on the left or whatever, the reverse. um Make sure the tubing looks right.
01:19:00
Speaker
Put this droid in here because we saw this droid on Tatooine before. These little details that are fun for the people making it too.
01:19:11
Speaker
See, what that stresses me out to think about. That feels like so much pressure to get everything right. you know I mean, I know that they're doing it for the love of the franchise and it's fun for them. But I think just the way that I personally engage with creative storytelling, stuff like D&D is much more improv-y, vibes-based, not really worrying about having every single little detail right.
01:19:39
Speaker
And obviously, we understand the fun and the appeal of picking apart every single little detail. But the thought of having to be responsible for that seems so stressful. You basically have to have a history degree in pretend history.
01:19:57
Speaker
There's so much. are. There are people like at Disney whose job is Star Wars lore master. like That's their whole thing, to know shit about Star Wars. If they do not turn up to work wearing fucking robes, if they don't work in some kind of torch-lit underground sanctum, I do not want to see a Star Wars lore master...
01:20:24
Speaker
in a graphic tee they have to chant i need to present blood to enter their again their sanctum they they cannot have coffee and donuts in the break room they gotta to have seed cakes and mead or something that my mental expectation is so high see it's the high expectations and i'm not even really a star wars fan yet So, I mean, I think they they were talking a couple of things about like how they have to stay true to the vision of Star Wars because they're operating within the idea of Star Wars. But they also wanted to make it accessible to people who didn't have a Star Wars background.
01:21:08
Speaker
And so, you know, they wanted and they wanted to make it clear, like, they're telling their own story. this is This is a new story that exists within Star Wars.
01:21:21
Speaker
And so you're going to see and understand recognizable Star Wars things, but this is its own thing. you know And they did that through like just the general vibes, the shots, the props, some of the ways they did some of the props. Like, yeah, it's clearly been 10, 15 years since we saw this type of technology. Yeah.
01:21:43
Speaker
you know something's changed and or this is really fucking old. And now it's been through an extra 15 years worth of wear and tear since we saw it last.
01:21:53
Speaker
And they were using inspiration, not just from Star Wars, but as we've talked about from Kurosawa, from Seven Samurai, from Yojimbo and from Westerns, from Man With No Name, from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
01:22:06
Speaker
And then the other piece that really made it both connected to Star Wars as a whole, as well as its own thing, was the music. So, sidebar into the music, I guess not sidebar, because this is, this is, like, the main thing for me. Yes. um So, the music for this series was composed by Ludwig Gorenson, who is a Swedish composer.
01:22:35
Speaker
He is also known four Black Panther, Oppenheimer, Venom, Creed, all the other Black Panther movies, Tenet, and ah Sinners. Ooh, I haven't seen that one yet, but I've heard the music is very good.
01:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, so he's known especially for working with director Ryan Coogler, who was the director for Black Panther and for Sinners, because they were roommates at USC.
01:23:06
Speaker
That's so fun. love that. And he talked about, you know, his whole process. He said like he locked himself basically in his studio when he got the assignment for like a month with just instruments, no computers, just a bunch of instruments and,
01:23:27
Speaker
And he said he ordered a kit of recorders in like different sizes for different tones. And so that the first opening that we hear.
01:23:42
Speaker
that is a like, but I'm not sure that's a baritone or a bass recorder. And so he was talking about like, how do you bring in the feel of Star Wars? Because John Williams is a force.
01:23:56
Speaker
John Williams is in and of himself, the history of film scoring. According modern night three of film scoring according to my classical music radio station that I listened to, because I'm very cool. he is looking spry at 93, which was very funny to hear. i wish I could recreate the tone that the presenter used to say he was looking spry. But yeah, he's still kicking. He's still conducting.
01:24:23
Speaker
who So, Ludwig Goranson was saying he was pulling on John Williams, but they didn't want to use any of like the Star Wars music.
01:24:36
Speaker
h because this was its own story. This is connected to Star Wars, and we get that through the visuals, but the sound is different. It's his own story. And so he said he was drawing on Ennio Morricone, who is the composer behind The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is one of the most iconic Western soundtracks of all time. He was listening to, again, Kurosawa films.
01:25:00
Speaker
He said he found like old 70s synthesizers that like computers can't replicate the sounds that they make. o So he could use those. And then he also had an 80 person orchestra to work with. Oh, shit.
01:25:16
Speaker
And so there's these big orchestral moments, which we're used to in Star Wars, as well as these like, you know, van like I was saying, these Van Halen-esque guitar moments.
01:25:28
Speaker
When the Mandalorians show up in the flashback and, you know, these otherworldly vibes of a recorder played inside his bathtub.
01:25:42
Speaker
But one of the fun things he learned about the orchestra is his wife was the concertmaster for the orchestra, of first year violin.
Behind the Scenes of The Mandalorian
01:25:52
Speaker
And she was also pregnant at the time.
01:25:55
Speaker
So their child was getting exposed to all of this in the womb, but also having a Grammy and Emmy winning composer father and an incredibly talented violinist mother clearly is not going to make the kid musical already. Yeah, it's going to be no pressure for piano lessons for the child.
01:26:17
Speaker
So then there were other things that I noticed getting full, like he used like blaster sounds to fold into the music and mesh in with like synthesizer. So, then he, he was also talking about, he had to make the music, especially emotionally evocative because we don't have a face to rely on.
01:26:42
Speaker
Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Right. And so the music has to tell us what sort of emotions we're feeling in this moment. And so when we get like the montage scenes of Mando learning to ride the Blurg or IG-11 learning to walk again and be a nurse droid or Quill running from the scout troopers.
01:27:05
Speaker
um I mean, granted, Quill, we have a face, but like, you know, or of Armor Mommy and Mando standing there looking at each other where there is no facial expression between the two of them and they're barely fucking talking.
01:27:21
Speaker
We need the music to tell us what's going on. And so he was like, it's such a he was saying it like it's such a tall order. It's essentially three full feature length films.
01:27:33
Speaker
worth of scoring. It's eight episodes of television. It is so much work. But i think I think the music was the first thing that I noticed about this show. yeah and And granted, it is so prominent right in that very first episode when the door opens and you get the ah and you get the theme.
01:27:54
Speaker
You're like, oh, i this is something I've never heard before. like this is We're already sort of very clearly within Star Wars. this This is pretty obviously Star Wars just from the visuals right out the bat, but we're about to enter into something completely new.
01:28:12
Speaker
And he does that in the first like five notes. And the the combination of the visual and the sound there making you know as a Star Wars fan, like welcome to a new era of Star Wars.
01:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's so cool. That is so incredible. And that was the kind of thought, you know, listening to all of the directors and the producers talk that went into like every single shot of every single scene here.
01:28:40
Speaker
Deborah Chow, who's ah directed a couple of the episodes, was saying, you know, like, They got so much time on every episode preparing before they started shooting because they were using all sorts of new technology.
01:28:54
Speaker
They had um the volume, which is like a big like video stage, essentially. So they could, instead of, you know unlike with like blue screens or motion capture, they can do lighting.
01:29:08
Speaker
Ambient lighting works from this stage. And all the actors were saying it's so much easier to work with. because they have visuals to focus on.
01:29:19
Speaker
Yeah, you have an environment to act in. Right. And so they were using so many practical effects. um They made a miniature of the Razorcrest ship because they were like, well, we can use it to like think about some lighting. And then they used it as like in actual shots in space.
01:29:36
Speaker
Which is just calling back to the original Star Wars because they use miniatures all over the fucking place. And there's you know people on the team with ILM who are still working withff on The Mandalorian who worked on the original trilogy.
01:29:52
Speaker
And so you have that through line of knowledge. The whole way through, all the practical effects give the actors more to work with. But then they'd also been working, apparently, Jon Favreau was saying he, when he did Jungle Book and Lion King for Disney, he did the live actions of those.
01:30:12
Speaker
They were working with a bunch of new technology, particularly with video game engines. Hmm. So they used video game engines to like build out the environment and then move cameras around like in VR, which I don't understand how it really works.
01:30:29
Speaker
But you could like decide on the angles of shots and lighting based on like your pre visualization done in a video game engine. That makes a lot of sense now that you explain it. Yeah. Ahead of time. And so, you know, basically when, once they had this all planned out, like you get on set and you're just going.
01:30:50
Speaker
Tamara Chow was saying, know, she said like, normally you have like eight or nine days on an episode it heard before you start filming and then you're shooting. She was like, she was saying for her, one of her episodes, she was on it for two months and they'd previs the entire episode. Yeah.
01:31:06
Speaker
you know And then then they're filming. And so she was saying, like you've had time to develop the material. You've had time to make edits. And then you know when you're actually there, some things are going to be different. You're going to have to make some adjustments and some changes to your shots.
01:31:19
Speaker
But you're not trying to figure out everything on the day. And because the volume is there, you have to create all these virtual environments ahead of time, which means like the the effects people are involved from the very beginning with the combination of sort of these half sets and the volume and then creating the video game world.
01:31:41
Speaker
to vr fill preset shots somehow and that was all easier apparently because dave filoni comes from animation background and between clone wars and rebels and before that avatar the last airbender hell yeah he was on avatar the last airbender everything becomes so much more seamless.
01:32:05
Speaker
They were talking about on some of this this stuff, they did some like mocap with the stunt people to then put it in previs to then actually film it on the day.
01:32:19
Speaker
Makes sense. There was multiple, multiple steps of everything. you know talking And they were talking about too, like there are times when Baby Yoda's a puppet and controlled by like four different puppeteers. And there are times when Baby Yoda is CG.
01:32:32
Speaker
And certain things are partial sets. Certain things are CG. Certain things are all CG. I couldn't tell.
01:32:43
Speaker
It's so seamless, the flow in between all of these effects working together. And Star Wars has always been at the forefront of filmmaking technology. but it was really interesting to listen to all of these directors and producers talk about like just how they're pushing the boundaries with this show. Yeah.
01:33:02
Speaker
And how they're trying to pull what worked from 50 years ago, the original Star Wars movies, and the new technology that we have now to make the best show that they can. Not just the best Star Wars show, but the best show.
01:33:20
Speaker
Let's see. Is there anything else in my notes? I guess, yeah. Two other things. One, the stormtroopers. You had mentioned people dressing up as stormtroopers. Yes. That is a thing. ah The 501st Legion is the like world's largest fan costuming group.
Star Wars Legacy and Future Plans
01:33:40
Speaker
And so apparently when they were trying to set up the last couple of episodes, they were like, well, we don't have enough extras and enough costumes to like get the effect we wanted. So they put out a call to the 501st Legion, who are all massive Star Wars nerds who make their own armor.
01:33:57
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And then do like charity events and hospital good you know hospital visits and all sorts of things all around the world. And something like 30 of them showed up. And so now they've got 50 stormtroopers.
01:34:11
Speaker
With people who have studied how to make stormtrooper armor, how to look like a stormtrooper for various events. And so they don't have to be like taught how to move.
01:34:24
Speaker
Now, do they just do, does the 500verse, do they just do Stormtroopers or do they do other costumes too? Because there's a um sewing crafting YouTuber, ah Rachel Maxey, who I am a big fan of, who is a huge Star Wars fan. And I remember there was a time when she was trying desperately to get accredited admitted into some kind of star wars cosplay group that has like you're talking about like obscenely high standards and if you want to do like hospital visits or charity stuff you have to be just the most completely perfectly screen accurate wildly intense
01:35:07
Speaker
So I don't know if this is the same group or if it might be something. It probably is. And I think they do do things other than stormtroopers that I've so i've seen, but I think they are like, their thing is they are mainly like stormtroopers. Yeah.
01:35:20
Speaker
Which makes sense. Yeah. And, you know, Lucasfilm will ask them to show up for big events or parades or things. But so, and, you know, obviously they can't tell these people what they're doing before they get there.
01:35:35
Speaker
And so you just had a bunch of people like be like, yeah, I'll do a Star Wars thing Lucasfilm is asking me to do. And they show up and they're going to be in a Star War. That's so fucking cool. That has to be just, I know we say this every episode. It's got to be the best day of their life.
01:35:51
Speaker
is it is it And I wanted to start with this season, in part because you'd seen it before. i wanted to start with everything that you know gotten out of the way so we can really start blank slate fresh going into the main body of Star Wars.
01:36:08
Speaker
But also, Star Wars fans talk about this, Dave Filoni talked about this in an interview, that every generation of kids has their own Star Wars. There's people who grew up with the original trilogy. There's people who then grew up with like the expanded universe novels.
01:36:25
Speaker
There's people who grew up with the prequels. There's people who grew up with the Clone Wars. There's people who started with the sequels. And now there's the Mandalorian and the TV shows era, um where there's now...
01:36:37
Speaker
Two. Like seven or eight like live action TV shows? Mando, Boba Fett, Acolyte, Ahsoka, the like Goonies-esque one, which is the name I can't remember right now. There's there's a bunch.
01:36:54
Speaker
So Mandalorian... was the beginning of this new era of Star Wars. And watching it back at the end of 2019, I was both so hopeful for more stories that were not connected to the main Star Wars storyline that we had known previously, and also really interested to see how they were going fold this in.
01:37:20
Speaker
And I love that they've done a little bit of both. On the one hand, I'd have loved if this series had never touched the main storyline. Like, no crossover characters, nothing that gets near it.
01:37:35
Speaker
Just more people existing in the Star Wars galaxy. But also, I understand that they are living within the Star Wars world, and they have to make that work for fans.
01:37:46
Speaker
Yeah. But they didn't shy away from the fact that, like yes, this is its own thing. This is its own new story. And so as we start out on our this next phase of our journey, I wanted to start here to then go all the way back to the beginning.
01:38:06
Speaker
There is plenty more we could talk about. There is... so many props and so many pieces of lore. Oh, I did want to also shout out besides, besides Pedro Pascal in the armor, the Mandalorian was also frequently played by Brendan Wayne and Latif Crowder as stunt doubles.
01:38:29
Speaker
And it's seamless. You know, who's in the armor, who the fuck knows? Yeah. I didn't notice. Yeah. So, know, obviously all the voicing was done and by Pedro Pascal, but that is, you know, there are three men actually doing the moving about.
01:38:50
Speaker
So where do we go from here? Well, a long time ago in a back lot somewhere in LA County. and I say a long time ago, because it was in fact almost fucking 50 years.
01:39:06
Speaker
Next time, We are going to be talking about 1977's Star Wars, later retitled Star Wars A New Hope. Yay!
01:39:17
Speaker
We're going to go all the way back to the advent of Star Wars. Next couple of episodes, just for if you're watching along. We're going also out of our way to find the original theatrical cuts.
01:39:30
Speaker
to watch because they're basically impossible to get now what you see on Disney plus has been edited and changed and there was there were changes back with different DVD releases and Laserdisc releases and such but we're going out of our way to find the original theatrical cuts if we can possibly do it So if you watch along with the show and you're watching along on the high seas or on Disney plus, and when we're talking, it's not quite the same as what you saw. You've seen an edited version.
01:40:04
Speaker
That's cool. It's all star Wars and the changes are very minor, but they're important for the, I think the core of starting from the beginning of from starting from nothing. Yeah.
01:40:19
Speaker
So we're gonna watch A New Hope. We'll be watching Empire. and then we're going to all the way back to the beginning of the story. and we're going to watch Phantom Menace. So that's going to be our next three episodes, unless we choose to divide them up into pieces, depending on how much we have to say.
Engagement and Conclusion
01:40:38
Speaker
Because as you can hear, this has been a nice long episode.
01:40:44
Speaker
So if you would like to come along as go through the core of Star Wars, you can subscribe to our podcast wherever you're listening now or on another podcast platform if you'd prefer that one. If we're not on your preferred podcast platform, preferred podcast platform, say that four times fast, let us know. Reach out to us. We'll do our best to get onto it.
01:41:09
Speaker
You can always check out our social media. We are at fanapppod on any social media that we are on. That's F-A-N-A-P-P-P-O-D. Our Tumblr is pretty great. ah Our Instagram is rarely active, but it's there. Our blue sky is fun.
01:41:25
Speaker
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01:42:02
Speaker
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01:42:18
Speaker
Always try to exist ah without damaging your environment as best you are able. So true. I'm losing the plot. It's been a long episode for us too, and it's getting late.
01:42:30
Speaker
Anything else, Bestie? No, we're done. Fuck ice. We'll see y'all next time. Yeah, we're going to be talking a lot about fascism the next few episodes and forever fucking more on this podcast.
01:42:47
Speaker
So, yeah, never make a cop come. That's our new song. We'll see you next time. Bye. We'll see you next time.
01:42:58
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 Bayruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
01:43:11
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.