Yeah, I feel that people are projecting the "cute and cuddly" aspect of a pet/human baby a bit too much onto Baby Yoda considering we actually don't know what Yoda's species is like when it's reared in its usual habitat. He's effectively the Nibbler of the setting right now.
Well, The Child eating a sentient creature's offspring being played for laughs certainly is horrifying
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that!
Spoiler:
I’m starting to get a real creepy vibe from the child; an uneducated force sensitive is a very dangerous individual and I think they’re going to explore that.
agreed. veeery creepy. I mean you look at what the kid sees with the Mandalorian and he's seeing a LOT of violence at a young age, that's gonna leave scars.
Glad to see I'm not the only one puzzled by the 'no hyperdrive' thing, though I may have some of the building blocks for an explanation:
The Tatoo and Geonosis Systems are close to each other, bizarrely close. Per Padme in Attack of the Clones, "Geonosis is less than a parsec away" from Tatooine, an explanation supplemented with a little graphic on a computer screen indicating they may even be in the same system - but RPG books made before and after Disney acquired the franchise (though if you're discounting Disney canon's explanation for a work set in Disney canon why are you even here?) make a point of saying they're different systems so close together they share the same dot on the galactic map.
Now, a parsec is 3.26 light years, still utterly impractically far for a ship moving at slower than light speeds, but thanks to the 'less than' disclaimer, it really can be anywhere within that 3.26 light year range, even much, much closer.
My theory? The Tatoo and Geonosis stars are either close enough to each other that space travel between them is viable at whatever speeds ships can make without hyperspace, or the both of them are part of a dense stellar cluster with systems in between them that are viable to reach without hyperspace, and for whatever reason Frog Lady ended up going into labor while waiting for her connecting flight.
LordofHats wrote: The New Republic being a handful of planets was a wtf moment. If the New Republic was just a handful of planets, why did the First Order even care? Why did anyone care? That would represent a total failure of the Rebellion's goals and would have already made them irrelevant in itself.
Per the books they've been putting out I think we have a pretty solid timeline of the state of the New Republic and how it collapsed due to the First Order:
Spoiler:
-New Republic demilitarizes and shrinks their war assets
-Member systems take care of their own defense rather than contributing forces to a centralized army
-Systems like Kuat alienate their neighbors, cause gridlock, push the narrative that the New Republic is useless.
-Kuat succeeds from the New Republic, along with a bunch of likeminded systems and starts calling their alliance The First Order, denies cooperating with a bunch of radical imperial remnant forces based beyond the borders of wild space.
-First Order suddenly and unexpectedly declares war on the 'corrupt' New Republic, blows up Hosnian Prime, its current seat of government.
-New Republic member states are left in a state of confusion, coordinated resistance fails to form in the wake of the sudden power vacuum
-First Order declares war on individual New Republic member systems, claiming they're 'plotting against us', telling other member systems they'll be left alone if they stay out of it
-They regularly threaten to use Starkiller Base too, as word hasn't gotten out that it's been destroyed
-Early victories include Corellia, Mon Cala, and other planets with major galactic industry footprints to deny any eventual opposition the means of producing ships and weapons
-Member systems of the former New Republic try to focus on their own defense, those that try to form a larger coalition are given priority on the First Order's blitz list, planets they can't or don't want to occupy have their populations exterminated
That was the extent of it in the leadup to Rise of Skywalker, which I think retroactively changes some of it (hard to believe the First Order as presented in the books is really so hard pressed to need 'a fleet' all that bad) but by and large we have a clearer picture of how that war went than we did in the run-up between AotC and RotS. I definitely wish the movies had covered it more...
But anyway!
Big Mac wrote: Forgive me for not being a Star Wars close followers, is the timeline for the Mandalorian = when Yoda was young or long after the Empire has fallen? I get all these young Yoda, then there is supposedly Baba-fett...
Baby Yoda is just the nickname people give him because it's a baby, and we don't know the name of Yoda's species. The Mandalorian takes place after Return of the Jedi and around 9 years after the original Star Wars, or 9ABY.
The Child scoffing the eggs also suggests something of its background.
We know it’s a hungry little bugger, as he seems to eat whenever the opportunity presents.
Being a Force Sensitive, that suggests trouble ahead, and greater agency to get him to a Jedi for appropriate training etc. This is of course Audience Knowledge, rather than Mando’s Knowledge.
As for the first two being fairly quiet? Opening episodes of the second season, probably to be expected. Shows off the Cool of the setting, without being plot dense for newcomers. Because there will be people (such as my Lass) who didn’t watch Season 1, but might be watching Season 2 “on sufferance” with friends or partners. Hopefully they’ll serve as a subtle catalyst to encourage them to watch Season 1.
We also know from Season 1 with the Crispy Roast Monkey Lizard that in the Mando's area of the galaxy, eating things which are at least semi-sentient doesn't even raise an eyebrow. So in-universe, Mando's resigned attitude seems reasonable. Life is cheap in Star Wars.
Graphite wrote: We also know from Season 1 with the Crispy Roast Monkey Lizard that in the Mando's area of the galaxy, eating things which are at least semi-sentient doesn't even raise an eyebrow. So in-universe, Mando's resigned attitude seems reasonable. Life is cheap in Star Wars.
But still felt a weird thing to play for laughs.
in fairness whike the EU noted monkey lizards where possiably sentient I'm not sure disney canon has said they are. sure Salacious crumb laughed a lot but so does a Hyena.
Hyenas don't "laugh". It's a sound they make like a dog barking that we think sounds like a laugh. Salacious Crumb see's something bad happen to someone and literally points and laughs at them.
Lance845 wrote: Hyenas don't "laugh". It's a sound they make like a dog barking that we think sounds like a laugh. Salacious Crumb see's something bad happen to someone and literally points and laughs at them.
that seems to be the case, but I'm noting it could be a learned action, no differant then a parrot. or even simply a natural sound it makes.
A fairly fine filler episode. I get some of the issues... if only the script had said "you want me to travel in realspacei?" to leave a bit of wiggle room in the lore.
The mother didn't seem too worried about some missing, and neither am I.
The scene where the x-wing patrol switch channels and then 'lock s-foils into attack position' one at a time was a good one. And I liked the idea that antique spaceships are exempt from otherwise required modern features.
MarkNorfolk wrote: A fairly fine filler episode. I get some of the issues... if only the script had said "you want me to travel in realspacei?" to leave a bit of wiggle room in the lore.
The mother didn't seem too worried about some missing, and neither am I.
The scene where the x-wing patrol switch channels and then 'lock s-foils into attack position' one at a time was a good one. And I liked the idea that antique spaceships are exempt from otherwise required modern features.
species that lay large amounts of eggs do so specialy because only a few are expected to make it so..
MarkNorfolk wrote: The scene where the x-wing patrol switch channels and then 'lock s-foils into attack position' one at a time was a good one. And I liked the idea that antique spaceships are exempt from otherwise required modern features.
The thing I liked from that scene was..
Spoiler:
the "May the Force be with you" "And also with you" line, as something Republic people say. There seems to be an in-universe disconnect in public awareness between the Republic, the Force, the Jedi, and the sorcerers the Mandalorians fought. I wonder if this season is going to be the Mandalorian joining the dots...
MarkNorfolk wrote: A fairly fine filler episode. I get some of the issues... if only the script had said "you want me to travel in realspacei?" to leave a bit of wiggle room in the lore.
The mother didn't seem too worried about some missing, and neither am I.
The scene where the x-wing patrol switch channels and then 'lock s-foils into attack position' one at a time was a good one. And I liked the idea that antique spaceships are exempt from otherwise required modern features.
My only quibble is they announce which channel they’re turning to, as though he couldn’t follow them over and listen in still, but he didn’t so....
AduroT wrote: My only quibble is they announce which channel they’re turning to, as though he couldn’t follow them over and listen in still, but he didn’t so....
Not that odd.
Channel codes don't necessarily tell you what frequency they're using, just that they have a channel called such and such. I find their demeanor to be the more egregious part of the episode.
gorgon wrote: They were unfertilized eggs. What, none of you eat eggs?
I think it's that there's a distinction between eggs that are made to be eaten, and eggs that someone is explicitly trying to get fertilized and apparently considers their last chance to not die out.
gorgon wrote: They were unfertilized eggs. What, none of you eat eggs?
I think it's that there's a distinction between eggs that are made to be eaten, and eggs that someone is explicitly trying to get fertilized and apparently considers their last chance to not die out.
I'd offer that no animal lays eggs specifically to be eaten; they're all made explicitly to be fertilized. The fact that other animals eat them (fertilized or not) is simply a part of the other species biology. That said... you'd expect there to be a difference when the species laying them and the species eatng them are obviously thinking beings but I don't think Baby Yoda is developed enough mentally to make that connection. He likely just sees them as yet another tasty snack similar to a human baby will try to chew on a dog's ear without considering the consequences. About the closest human adult comparison would be swallowing after... you know...
gorgon wrote: Chickens aren't sentient? They can't feel pain or emotion?
I wasn't aware of the dictionary distinction between a sentient and thinking/reasoning being. From being a lifelong scifi fan and the colloquial use of the word in that genre, I assumed incorrectly that the words were interchangeable. Thanks and good to know!
The mother didn't seem too worried about some missing, and neither am I.
Pretty much my take on it. If the Child had been eating actual alien kids, it would have been all sorts of wrong. Here, they're unfertilised eggs, and while it's obvious by the end of the episode that Mrs Frog isn't too happy about it, she also doesn't make a big deal of it. Given that she's shown as not being afraid to flip out at the Mando when she feels its justified, the obvious conclusion is that while her eggs are important overall, she's not particularly attached to them individually, and the Child eating some is more an irritation rather than horrifying...
And I liked the idea that antique spaceships are exempt from otherwise required modern features.
Takes me back... We had a car when I was a kid that had the same deal, with no seatbelts in the back. With vinyl bench seats. Corners were fun.
Christ, I've still got the scars from getting into my mates' dad's car after a day at an airshow, in shorts. Those bastatds were black as well just to really make it sting.
But at least we didn't slide about going home, we were stuck in place.
1) They are the eggs of a self-aware lifeform. It's not quite on par with say, eating a human's eggs, because you'd have to do some 'surgery' to get at those, but it's still clearly immoral.
2) It's played for laughs.
3) Someone came up with the idea, pitched it, the idea was accepted, filmed, and no one had a problem with it. How does that happen? What does this add to the story?
Kowakian monkey lizards get eaten in SW.
They are at least self aware.
Eating sentients isn't something "forbidden" in that setting.
Slavery is immoral, yet it happens, too.
It was also "illegal" inside the bounds of the old republic, but rarely acted upon even then.
What is "immoral" for you, may not be for something not even of your species, let alone religious ideology. Terran human "morality" is more or less irrelevant in this setting.
FWIW, this wouldn't be the worst thing done in that vane. There was a Dark Times comic where a rich nobleman treated himself to a special lizard delicacy once a year. In that issue, it was revealed that this particularly heinous foodie's last treat was the missing daughter of one of the main characters.
What is "immoral" for you, may not be for something not even of your species, let alone religious ideology. Terran human "morality" is more or less irrelevant in this setting.
Edit: To clarify. Can you identify a moral position that occurs in the Star Wars films that both deviates from modern Western morality AND is at least implicitly condoned by the protagonists?
gorgon wrote: Chickens aren't sentient? They can't feel pain or emotion?
I wasn't aware of the dictionary distinction between a sentient and thinking/reasoning being. From being a lifelong scifi fan and the colloquial use of the word in that genre, I assumed incorrectly that the words were interchangeable. Thanks and good to know!
Lots of Sci fi writers use sentient and sapient interchangeably, so I got what you meant.
And while the child is just a baby, the Ana do is not: after the first one, he couldn’t be bothered to lean forward and take the other eggs away from the baby before they were eaten? He didn’t even try. Even from a “life is cheap” angle, I would expect him to protect the eggs just so his passenger wouldn’t have a good reason to shiv the kid while Mando is sleeping.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As for the monkey lizards...cooking one would play differently if we spent time getting to know it or it’s parents before seeing it roasting on a spit.
Lots of Sci fi writers use sentient and sapient interchangeably, so I got what you meant.
And while the child is just a baby, the Ana do is not: after the first one, he couldn’t be bothered to lean forward and take the other eggs away from the baby before they were eaten? He didn’t even try. Even from a “life is cheap” angle, I would expect him to protect the eggs just so his passenger wouldn’t have a good reason to shiv the kid while Mando is sleeping.
I see your autocorrect is as strong as mine! Earlier today it changed "farseer and warboss" to "career and waffles" on me.
TBH, I'm basing my previous post on generalities as I haven't seen the show (only some short youtube videos) so don't know how the Mando responded. I would also expect him to be stricter with Baby Yoda given the trouble it causes when he doesn't pay attention. Not necessarily actually care about the eggs (regardless of whether they're actually fertilized or not) but rather just the mission/goal.
-A dark joke they can use to keep interest during the luls in the journey and break tension during the survival scenes
-Foreshadowing for how the threat in the cave is revealed
-An opportunity to show the Mandalorian learn what kids will do when left unattended for any length of time (and the stages of shock, horror, frantic correcting, and despairing acceptance all new parents learn)
-Shows the audience that, marketing hype aside, the Child is not a Muppet Baby version of Yoda - it's a living creature with traits and behaviour we don't fully understand, not a pet, or plush toy.
Also, and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not - I think it shows that Jon Favreau has creative control of his work, and isn't necessarily beholden to a table full of gunshy suits like a lot of the nay sayers have suggested during the lead-up to Season 2.
chromedog wrote: What is "immoral" for you, may not be for something not even of your species, let alone religious ideology. Terran human "morality" is more or less irrelevant in this setting.
Edit: To clarify. Can you identify a moral position that occurs in the Star Wars films that both deviates from modern Western morality AND is at least implicitly condoned by the protagonists?
1) They are the eggs of a self-aware lifeform. It's not quite on par with say, eating a human's eggs, because you'd have to do some 'surgery' to get at those, but it's still clearly immoral.
2) It's played for laughs.
3) Someone came up with the idea, pitched it, the idea was accepted, filmed, and no one had a problem with it. How does that happen? What does this add to the story?
Well, its partly played for laughs. Even in season 1 they were playing up the Dark Side tendencies of this brat. It does straight up try to kill people.
As for #3, you can't really be serious. There is a lot of reality-based moral squickiness accepted and filmed with zero problems (the list of that kind of thing is possibly endless). Even many ostensibly children's shows sail right past the moral event horizon if you spend even a few minutes thinking about it.
Space fantasy alien eats another alien's eggs? I can completely understand why people thinking about it would find it repugnant; but I also can easily see why it would be filmed with no questions asked for the type of show this is. [Space opera with several layers of gritty and a more than a touch of grim dark]
----
As for SW moral issues protagonists don't object to:
Droids. Pretty much the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
Human slavery. Its an issue for the protagonists only because they want something, not because they find it particularly objectionable. [I'm not even sure that the prequel Jedi characters even did find it objectional. They just treated it as a state that people came in, and potentially thought it was useful for separating extraneous family members]
Deadly force/heinous maiming first. Maybe with a warning that they know won't be taken seriously.
As for SW moral issues protagonists don't object to:
Droids. Pretty much the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
Human slavery. Its an issue for the protagonists only because they want something, not because they find it particularly objectionable. [I'm not even sure that the prequel Jedi characters even did find it objectional. They just treated it as a state that people came in, and potentially thought it was useful for separating extraneous family members]
Deadly force/heinous maiming first. Maybe with a warning that they know won't be taken seriously.
Also:
Chosen One: "I slaughtered an entire tribe of people because some of them killed my mother!"
Most Ethical Person in the Senate: "Oh, you poor thing. Give me a cuddle..."
Debatable. I wouldn't call Anakin or Luke's relationship with R2 that of Master/Slave. It's more like Master/Servant. It's also not the best example because there really isn't a coherent agreement in western society as to whether or not AI is sentient/sapient.
2) Human Slavery.
I wouldn't say the Jedi condone it at all based on the films. It's more of we can't fix everything at once.
3) Deadly Force/Maiming
Honestly, there is a large segment of the population that thinks this okay if in self-defense.
4) Anakin slaughtering the Sand-People
Padme was visibly disturbed by this revelation and the way that plot point was handled is one of the most criticized aspects of the PT.
Honestly, I think the Republic's treatment of the Clones is a better example than what you guys provided.
Edit: And Voss, I am completely serious. Especially after the DT. I expect better from Disney.
1. The direction and/or exposition could’ve been handled better in Episode 1. But
2. The Jedi Order were peace keepers. They were not galactic enforcers. They are not a government agency. They don’t have a free hand (at least at that point) to simply intercede. So the Jedi Order simply didn’t have the agency or authority to shake down slavery rings of their own volition.
3. This is reflected in the Senate’s sheer weight of Bureaucracy and corruption. For anything to do truly done, the Senate would have to vote for it. That they do nothing suggests a lack of general will at best, or active support in certain, influential corners, at worst.
Remember. At that point, the Republic had no centralised military. Indeed that’s the whole plot of Episode 2.
So say the Senate did vote to do something about outer rim slavery rings. How do you smash it, without going to war against the Hutts? And how do you maintain that new status quo should you win?
I’d argue it’s those very injustices that start to lead Anakin down his dark side path, at least in terms of things for Palpatine to exploit.
Also, they are her eggs, but they are not yet fertilised.
This is why she was taking them to her mate.
Sentient species or not, an unfertilised egg is not self-aware.
BY was just eating them like we eat chicken eggs.
Edit: To clarify. Can you identify a moral position that occurs in the Star Wars films that both deviates from modern Western morality AND is at least implicitly condoned by the protagonists?
No, because "morality" is not objective.
Also, as it's been covered already.
Droids are slaves.
The gonk in ROTJ gets tortured and SCREAMS. Thus, droids feel pain. It's played for laughs.
Droids are tools. Manufactured. Devices to do or help do the work of others. They are pulled apart and reassembled with no consequence (C-3PO) and even jettison their own internal parts (R5-D4). The tortured power droid is seemly a one-off. They are programmed and reprogrammed and they have no problem with that, like your desktop computer or smart speaker. Their personality is an illusion, to make them easier to work with. Like K9, this doesn't stop being cute or good for comic relief.
Star Wars is a space fantasy action adventure movie. Nominally for kids, it's not the right medium for exploring the moral arguments of the rights as citizens of artificial beings. That's more the territory of Blade Runner or Human.
Well, The Child eating a sentient creature's offspring being played for laughs certainly is horrifying
My wife and I both had problems with this. It pretty much ruined the episode for us.
It's pretty irredemable. And so unneeded. Like the sub light comment which in the end had nothing to do with the plot, the scene could just have easily had Baby Yoda lick his lips and Mando yell no! Same laugh without crossing the red line of
MarkNorfolk wrote: Droids are tools. Manufactured. Devices to do or help do the work of others. They are pulled apart and reassembled with no consequence (C-3PO) and even jettison their own internal parts (R5-D4). The tortured power droid is seemly a one-off. They are programmed and reprogrammed and they have no problem with that, like your desktop computer or smart speaker. Their personality is an illusion, to make them easier to work with. Like K9, this doesn't stop being cute or good for comic relief.
Star Wars is a space fantasy action adventure movie. Nominally for kids, it's not the right medium for exploring the moral arguments of the rights as citizens of artificial beings. That's more the territory of Blade Runner or Human.
Don't think about it, it's not for that?
Sorry, that doesn't work for any kind of media. In this particular case, the two droids are presented as the point of view characters for the OT (and somewhat dragged back into the sequels). They have more a sense of personhood than most of the human beings in the film, and that carries over to the other droids in the setting.
They have thoughts, emotions, wants and desires; they aren't merely just tools, regardless of being manufactured. Star Wars is actually better at showing this than blade runner, I, robot, or a lot of 'high philosophy' media that's actually 'about' the subject.
Yet they're bought/sold, tracked, limited, discriminated against and treated like non-people in dozens of ways that would be completely pointless to show if they're merely 'supposed to be' tools rather than persons.
Not sure how were are feeling on spoilers here, but RE: baby Yoda and the eggs:
Spoiler:
OK, I think the entire plot about baby Yoda eating the eggs was not really interesting or ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it was said explicitly that the eggs were unfertilized, so while crass, uncouth and still likely unacceptable, baby Yoda wasn't eating anyone's children, or babies.
No different than when people in the real world eat chicken eggs or caviar. Now, if you want to make a case that those are unacceptable too, or that the distinction that the Frog Person's status as "sentient" or whatever, changes things, that is all well and good. But still, given what we are told in the episode, I find it hard to buy the idea that baby Yoda was actually eating children. But what he was doing was still (likely) morally unacceptable, because he was destroying/diminishing the Frog Person's chance/opportunity of procreation.
In other words, that isn't really murder, as far as I'd think I'd be willing to call it. But it fairly to be said that it is immoral, since Mando establishes the normative stance of respecting the wish to not jump to hyper so as to not destroy the eggs viability.
And yes, I am being overly technical/pedantic, that is just my MO.
The eggs being unfertilized would be more of a saving factor if the sapient mother hadn’t said this batch represented her last chance to have children. When people have fertility issues, it can be devastating, and as anyone who’s gone through IVF can tell you, (for humans at least) you need as many eggs as you can harvest, and your odds of having children still aren’t great. Now I admit we were affected more than most people would be due to our medical history, but when a woman is struggling to conceive and her ovary (unfertilized eggs) is damaged, it’s pretty far from a laughing matter.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The eggs being unfertilized would be more of a saving factor if the sapient mother hadn’t said this batch represented her last chance to have children. When people have fertility issues, it can be devastating, and as anyone who’s gone through IVF can tell you, (for humans at least) you need as many eggs as you can harvest, and your odds of having children still aren’t great. Now I admit we were affected more than most people would be due to our medical history, but when a woman is struggling to conceive and her ovary (unfertilized eggs) is damaged, it’s pretty far from a laughing matter.
Well, I did mention that what happened is fairly convincingly immoral and that the plot line is poorly done and likely completely unnecessary. But I really fall well short of personally being able to call it murder, or the like. Seems more like, to me, it was an attempt at a "cheap joke" which was crass and poorly done. I don't think the "unfertilized" factor "saves" it, since it still is rather uncouth, but it does lower the stakes a bit as far as I am concerned.
Yeah but there is also a difference when you have a species that has spawnings like that. Some animals only spawn once and then die (salmon). Others have a couple spawns in their life and then it's done.
The frog person saying this was her last spawn doesn't mean she has fertility issues. She is just going through her last biological chance to spawn and make a whole gak load of kids all at once.
I wouldn’t call it murder, either. It’s just something unexpectedly unpleasant in an otherwise okayish episode.*
*On another Star Wars site I check out for the analysis, the use of “sublight” rather than “slower than light” or “real space” is seen as some kind of wiggle room. Otherwise, this would be a scale blunder of JJ-Wars proportions. Or else Tattooine is part of an overfull binary system in a very dense cluster... sure, that’s gotta be it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lance845 wrote: Yeah but there is also a difference when you have a species that has spawnings like that. Some animals only spawn once and then die (salmon). Others have a couple spawns in their life and then it's done.
The frog person saying this was her last spawn doesn't mean she has fertility issues. She is just going through her last biological chance to spawn and make a whole gak load of kids all at once.
Just because she had a lot of eggs doesn’t mean they would all end up hatching successfully. She seemed to have some K-selected mothering instincts. Her previous egg laying(s) didn’t yield any children.
*On another Star Wars site I check out for the analysis, the use of “sublight” rather than “slower than light” or “real space” is seen as some kind of wiggle room. Otherwise, this would be a scale blunder of JJ-Wars proportions. Or else Tattooine is part of an overfull binary system in a very dense cluster... sure, that’s gotta be it.
It's been a problem ever since the Falcon limped to Bespin without a Hyperdrive.
At least in TESB, you could imagine Luke spent a lot of time studying with Yoda. Or that the Falcon had a weak sauce backup hyperdrive like a spare tire to get them to the nearest mechanic shop.
I'm still going with the egg-eating being deliberately disturbing & creepy for a reason that will be developed later in the series. There's too much care and attention being paid to other aspects of this series for it to be inadvertent to me.
gorgon wrote: They were unfertilized eggs. What, none of you eat eggs?
I think it's that there's a distinction between eggs that are made to be eaten, and eggs that someone is explicitly trying to get fertilized and apparently considers their last chance to not die out.
I'd offer that no animal lays eggs specifically to be eaten; they're all made explicitly to be fertilized. The fact that other animals eat them (fertilized or not) is simply a part of the other species biology. That said... you'd expect there to be a difference when the species laying them and the species eatng them are obviously thinking beings but I don't think Baby Yoda is developed enough mentally to make that connection. He likely just sees them as yet another tasty snack similar to a human baby will try to chew on a dog's ear without considering the consequences. About the closest human adult comparison would be swallowing after... you know...
Actually some amphibians do, laying eggs specifically to be eaten by their own tadpoles some are infertile (eg https://frogblogmanchester.com/2014/03/), some cold develop given he right conditions (can' find a link as here are too many how to keep tadpoles for schools on google, but they do exist)
Edit: To clarify. Can you identify a moral position that occurs in the Star Wars films that both deviates from modern Western morality AND is at least implicitly condoned by the protagonists?
No, because "morality" is not objective.
Okay, I'm going to attempt to remain as civil as possible, but you are the one that started us down this road.
What part of my post suggests that I believe morality is objective?
Secondly, what part of that question is overly complicated? Multiple other people were perfectly capable of understanding and responding to that question with reasonable examples and yet by some thought process that I can not understand your response is:
No, because "morality" is not objective.
Can you please walk me through how the question I posed leads to that answer? I specified modern Western morality. Not Judeo-Christian morality. Not Islamic morality. I literally stated in the question that morality is subjective and you have the gall to respond with that nonsense.
I don't get the fuss with the eggs. They are unfertilised eggs. To me it's like being pissed at having someone eat my nail clipping or suckling at a used tampon (gross, but certainly not immoral). You can't even argue that he's eating a fetus since they aren't fertilised so its more like eating a placenta. Plus, do you seriously think that this frog lady is going to raise three dozen children? Of course not, most of her youngs will probably either never hatch of die shortly after of pretty much anything and all the better for her since she can't really take care of so many social and intelligent children. Plus, the wishful mother herself didn't make a fuss or any mention of it even though she lost at least three eggs. If they were that precious, she would keep close tab on their numbers and would have noticed. She spawns. She doesn't care about a couuple of eggs here and there, especially unfertilised ones. She cares about her brood in general.
Mind you we are talking about the morality of a baby eating unfertilised eggs without asking permission while 20 minutes earlier, the Mandalorian killed four guys in front of the Child, including one after "making a deal with him" and an episode prior, he basically lied and left a bunch of alien dogs tear a guy who tried to kill him appart. The Mandalorian might not be a psychotic killer, but he isn't "a good guy". He is a bounty hunter, a killer for hire, with some personnal code to make him palatable.
Man, if this isnt Star Wars fans in a nutshell.
Taking a small part of something meant for laughs and jokes....and blowing it up.
Its a tiny little baby alien eating the eggs of another alien.
Just enjoy the joke. drama between him an Mando lol
hotsauceman1 wrote: Man, if this isnt Star Wars fans in a nutshell.
Taking a small part of something meant for laughs and jokes....and blowing it up.
Its a tiny little baby alien eating the eggs of another alien.
Just enjoy the joke. drama between him an Mando lol
hotsauceman1 wrote: Man, if this isnt Star Wars fans in a nutshell.
Taking a small part of something meant for laughs and jokes....and blowing it up.
Its a tiny little baby alien eating the eggs of another alien.
Just enjoy the joke. drama between him an Mando lol
Small part strikes me as being an understatement. How many times did he eat eggs?
Also, just because it was meant as a joke does not mean it is in good taste or even funny.
Ok. So, of those people here who did think this was actually funny (rather than, at best, an attempted joke which didn't land for some and downright offensive for others) who thinks it was funny enough to make actual merchandise of it?
Graphite wrote: Ok. So, of those people here who did think this was actually funny (rather than, at best, an attempted joke which didn't land for some and downright offensive for others) who thinks it was funny enough to make actual merchandise of it?
I thought it was cute and humourous. I can understand them making merch' out of it.
Graphite wrote: Ok. So, of those people here who did think this was actually funny (rather than, at best, an attempted joke which didn't land for some and downright offensive for others) who thinks it was funny enough to make actual merchandise of it?
I thought it was cute and humourous. I can understand them making merch' out of it.
Graphite wrote: Ok. So, of those people here who did think this was actually funny (rather than, at best, an attempted joke which didn't land for some and downright offensive for others) who thinks it was funny enough to make actual merchandise of it?
It’s part of The Child’s character.
Again, it’s a signifier to the audience, rather than the Mando, that the kid is fairly, well, I’m not quite sure amoral is the right word for one so young. But he’s clearly still to learn right from wrong.
So far, he’s used The Force a handful of times. First to assist against that Mudhorn, lifting it into the air whilst arresting its charge, allowing the Mando to take it out. He then sees the egg the Mando was after being unceremoniously scoffed by Jawas.
He next (if memory serves) used it to Force Choke Cara Dune, perceiving her as a threat. Mando intervenes, and all is well.
Then, we saw him deflect the flames, saving the group at the end of the last season.
He also likes his live food. And bone broth.
Whilst the Mando does say “no, don’t eat that”, there’s a classical parenting fail of not explaining why.
The kids need morals. He’s currently a (hungry) blank slate, with a Toddler like mentality.
For the record, Chapter 10 of #TheMandalorian makes it clear that the Frog Lady’s eggs are unfertilized, like the chicken eggs many of us enjoy. But obviously, chickens aren’t sentient beings and the Child eating the eggs is intentionally disturbing, for comedic effect.
Graphite wrote: Ok. So, of those people here who did think this was actually funny (rather than, at best, an attempted joke which didn't land for some and downright offensive for others) who thinks it was funny enough to make actual merchandise of it?
I thought it was cute and humourous. I can understand them making merch' out of it.
To change things up, I’m really loving my Fridays right now, despite lockdown. In order of watch priority, I’ve got....
1. The Mandalorian
2. Star Trek Discovery
3. Walking Dead The World Beyond
I’d also have 4. Supernatural, but I was watching that as “our show” with my lass before lockdown, so I’m holding off until we can see each other. Maybe have a slob day in bed watching it to catch up.
My last comment on the egg eating. I'll grant it this much...Jabba feeding dancers to the Rancor was and is much more vile and that physically upset me as a child. Luke milking the creature during TLJ was nastier in a visceral way.
we know that the frog lady needs to keep herself, and her eggs warm.
We also know there's a lot of concern about the canister failing, with angry blinking lights.
Assuming Frog Lady is in the next episode, I think the Canister is going to fail, all her eggs will die.
Then, all of a sudden, Baby Yoda starts choking and squeaking and... out comes all the eggs its eaten. This is followed by a comment along the lines of "second stomach..."
trexmeyer wrote: My last comment on the egg eating. I'll grant it this much...Jabba feeding dancers to the Rancor was and is much more vile and that physically upset me as a child. Luke milking the creature during TLJ was nastier in a visceral way.
I think we can agree that Jabba's not meant to be remotely sympathetic and his actions play into illustrating how vile and repulsive he is as a person, not just by association with his position as a galactic ganster. I know there's a lot of contention about the milking thing but I always took that to be deliberately demystifying the idea someone living off the land as a hermit.
I want to be clear here: I appreciate that we're able to discuss the content of this episode and whether or not it goes too far based on how we feel about it. We may not ultimately agree but at least we're arguing based on the merits of the work, which Star Wars doesn't always get. I went on twitter trying to find the release date for the Alphabet Squadron book and stumbled upon this long thread of people bragging about having never read it because a character on the cover has an undercut (actually a mohawk, but wahtever); literally judging a book by it's cover and bragging about it.
Anyway, next episode's going to have a boat, yeah?
we know that the frog lady needs to keep herself, and her eggs warm.
We also know there's a lot of concern about the canister failing, with angry blinking lights.
Assuming Frog Lady is in the next episode, I think the Canister is going to fail, all her eggs will die.
Then, all of a sudden, Baby Yoda starts choking and squeaking and... out comes all the eggs its eaten. This is followed by a comment along the lines of "second stomach..."
I could see that in a series with a lighter tone overall (it would have worked in any of the animated shows) but would feel off here.
I doubt Mrs Frog will have much of a presence in the next episode. I'm expecting more that her story is done, and they'll start the next one with the ship landing and her scuttling off into the crowd with her canister.
trexmeyer wrote: Luke milking the creature during TLJ was nastier in a visceral way.
Are you vegan?
Honest question, as I can't see any other reason that scene would be 'nasty', and that reaction to it has always puzzled me.
No, but I don't drink milk.
1) That creature was nasty. Cows are not.
2) Raw milk is unsanitary.
3) The way Luke drank it was the Anticipation of Homelander's Fetish.
Edit:
I do sympathize with vegans because I'm not terribly fond of slaughtering animals for meat. Both because it causes the animal pain and because it's disgusting. Everything stinks inside. The sole problem I have with veganism as a diet is that it's nearly impossible to achieve with only locally sourced products. The end result is that the consumer is still relying on what I consider to be excessive shipping in order to get your food products. Meat or fish can be locally sourced pretty much anywhere.
trexmeyer wrote: All farm animals are gross, but at least cows aren't giant amphibious things with creepy trunk faces that stare into your soul.
No, they're much, much worse....
Also, fwiw, I've definitely seen the "city folk" reaction when they see cows being milked. Usually from the same kind of people that can't tell the difference between a chicken and a duck.
we know that the frog lady needs to keep herself, and her eggs warm.
We also know there's a lot of concern about the canister failing, with angry blinking lights.
Assuming Frog Lady is in the next episode, I think the Canister is going to fail, all her eggs will die.
Then, all of a sudden, Baby Yoda starts choking and squeaking and... out comes all the eggs its eaten. This is followed by a comment along the lines of "second stomach..."
The eggs are definitely setting something up. As rumor has it:
Spoiler:
The child will be captured by Moff Gideon and sent to an Imperial detention facility staffed by a merciless captain and his guards. However, the child's carefree spirit and determination -- in one example, it consumes over 4 dozen eggs in a single sitting on a dare -- inspires the other prisoners.
I wouldn't worry, it won't happen til the last ever episode and Mando is totally buying the farm to complete his quest. They'll never be apart in the sense of "breaking up."
trexmeyer wrote: All farm animals are gross, but at least cows aren't giant amphibious things with creepy trunk faces that stare into your soul.
No, they're much, much worse....
Also, fwiw, I've definitely seen the "city folk" reaction when they see cows being milked. Usually from the same kind of people that can't tell the difference between a chicken and a duck.
I truly hate ducks and that I can identify multiple species. Chickens > Ducks. Mallards do look pretty neat though.
we know that the frog lady needs to keep herself, and her eggs warm.
We also know there's a lot of concern about the canister failing, with angry blinking lights.
Assuming Frog Lady is in the next episode, I think the Canister is going to fail, all her eggs will die.
Then, all of a sudden, Baby Yoda starts choking and squeaking and... out comes all the eggs its eaten. This is followed by a comment along the lines of "second stomach..."
The eggs are definitely setting something up. As rumor has it:
Spoiler:
The child will be captured by Moff Gideon and sent to an Imperial detention facility staffed by a merciless captain and his guards. However, the child's carefree spirit and determination -- in one example, it consumes over 4 dozen eggs in a single sitting on a dare -- inspires the other prisoners.
epronovost wrote: I just realise that when the Mandalorian and the Child will have to split. I'll probably cry. They are so cute together.
they are but the egg example is just the most obvious case of whhy the child really NEEDS a better caretaker. this isn't to say the Mando's a abd guy, but he's the wrong guy to be a father... at least to this child.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, it's weird given how Star Wars usually tries to make such wholesome family arrangements.
Just to highlight exactly how bad it is:
Spoiler:
Anakin was a slave taken away from his slave mom when he like 8 and his mom was bought by a dude that "freed" and married her. Then she got captured and died in captivity so Anakin went HAM on a village.
Anakin choked out his wife who proceeded to die from sadness after having twins while he became The Big Bad's Dragon.
Luke was raised by his Aunt and Uncle who got wasted like thirty minutes into the movie.
Leia was raised by rich politicians who got blown up by her daddy's coworkers.
Luke's 3 day mentor got returned to the force by his daddy.
Luke and Leia share a passionate kiss.
Daddy cuts off Luke's hand.
Daddy finally does something decent and kills the Big Bad.
Leia marries Han and they have a kid, but split up for reasons.
Kylo decides to join the Dark Side for reasons and helps chop up his Uncle's students.
Kylo kills his dad.
Luke dies after becoming a projector to stall Kylo from finally going through with killing his mom.
Palpatine gets killed by his granddaughter?.
So out of the Skywalker family (Anakin's mom, Anakin, Padme, Luke, Leia, Han, and Kylo) exactly one of them dies of natural causes.
Although, to be fair, aside from the whole 'being orphans' thing, Luke and Leia did at least supposedly have fairly ok upbringings up until their respective guardians were killed.
trexmeyer wrote: All farm animals are gross, but at least cows aren't giant amphibious things with creepy trunk faces that stare into your soul.
No, they're much, much worse....
Also, fwiw, I've definitely seen the "city folk" reaction when they see cows being milked. Usually from the same kind of people that can't tell the difference between a chicken and a duck.
Not milked, but I can definitely say that video of slaughter houses and such turns my stomach. I still eat meat. Call me a sissy, I love the taste but I don't have the courage for how it's made XD Might be why I'm totally sympathetic to vegans and vegetarians. I get it.
Chapter 11 was rather good, if a wee bit short at just 35 minutes.
Will need to watch it again, but for all it’s brevity, it didn’t feel rushed nor incomplete. Which I guess is to be applauded. If you can spin your tale in 35 minutes, why pad it to a “series average”?
Re-watched the episode - the egg thing is less horrifying second time around. But I think I've worked out why the tone seems so "off" to me.
A lot of comic relief in Star Wars is at the expense of droids, who if we (out of universe) think of for even a few minutes will realise are slaves and that we're being invited to joke along with a pretty downtrodden underclass. Human or other "biological" life form slaves are never the butt of jokes in Star Wars.
However, people "in universe" in Star Wars have a slightly odd attitude to Droids. They either like them almost as pets (in the best case) or almost treat them as glorified can openers.
There's a bit of a disconnect there - we know that, if Droids were real in our universe, the way that they're treated in the Star Wars universe would be utterly reprehensible. Because of the disconnection between the two, there's a level of suspension of disbelief, reminding you (or me, at least) subliminally that it's just a movie and hence it's OK to laugh. It's like Tom getting hit on the head with an anvil while chasing Jerry. In reality that wouldn't be much of a laughing matter.
The thing with the eggs is that, IN UNIVERSE, the Mando thinks that this is unacceptable behaviour. This is a man who disintegrates Jawas for Grand Theft Auto. Who strings people from lamp-posts to be eaten by dogs. Who, in the opening scene of the entire series, cuts someone in half with a door. And when he discovers what the Child's up to, it's not a "sigh, that was against the contract, bit of a nuisance" - it's a horrified "How many did you EAT???"
In the Star Wars universe, something is regarded as unacceptable. In our universe, if there were frog people, it would likely also be regarded as unacceptable. That (to me, at least) is what makes it difficult to find the humour. There's less suspension of disbelief. YMMV.
Thought it was a good episode for 35 mins, but in my opinion felt a little rushed. The episode definitely doesn't suit new viewers as has been the case for most of the series so far.
Spoiler:
Well now I have to go and watch the Clone Wars again and Rebels to remind myself of all these characters. I thought it was very cool to see the differences between the Mandalorians removing their helms vs not and it seems that Din Djarin seems to have missed the whole Mandalorian Purge and doesn't know anything of the Jedi, which I find a little odd considering he learned their creed.
That was episode was like when your max level friends run you through a dungeon but you're the only one with quest item to summon the final boss.
One writing thing that I have started to hate is how the Mandalorian will make some comment that amounts to "There is a 95% chance we are going to die horribly in this situation" and then 5 seconds later goes and does it with no further thought or planning. Maybe he's supposed to have a personality like Eeyore or he's suicidal, I don't know, but it's off putting when it feels like every episode turns into 'Well, hope I don't die!"
Edit: Maybe don't watch the episode with subtitles on, it spoilered a character name for me. This was the most eventful plot episode of the season.
The episode at least provides a bare bones but productive answer to all the ways Mando clashes with past Mandolorian characters that I appreciate given the recent discussion of the franchise's lack of consistency.
Spoiler:
He's basically a cultist XD It's bare bones but it works. Maybe we'll see character development and he'll actually take his helmet off from time to time.
Watching this show makes me want to go roll a Bounty Hunter on SWTOR again.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: The episode at least provides a bare bones but productive answer to all the ways Mando clashes with past Mandolorian characters that I appreciate given the recent discussion of the franchise's lack of consistency.
Spoiler:
He's basically a cultist XD It's bare bones but it works. Maybe we'll see character development and he'll actually take his helmet off from time to time.
Also,
Spoiler:
there's a clear gap in their method of operating based on the ship attack where Mando was lagging behind. I wish they had done fire and movement, but Star Wars is never going to use RW military tactics.
I wasn't too thrilled by this one, there was a lot of exposition and it all came out quick like they were pressed for time - but the episode is on the shorter side already - there's a scene in the concept art montage not present in the final episode, maybe it was going to be a setpiece that would have padded out the runtime and was cut for some reason?
trexmeyer wrote: Watching this show makes me want to go roll a Bounty Hunter on SWTOR again.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: The episode at least provides a bare bones but productive answer to all the ways Mando clashes with past Mandolorian characters that I appreciate given the recent discussion of the franchise's lack of consistency.
Spoiler:
He's basically a cultist XD It's bare bones but it works. Maybe we'll see character development and he'll actually take his helmet off from time to time.
Also,
Spoiler:
there's a clear gap in their method of operating based on the ship attack where Mando was lagging behind. I wish they had done fire and movement, but Star Wars is never going to use RW military tactics.
As an aside;
Spoiler:
Was that Sabine with Bo-Katan, cause that girl has hair suspiciously similar to Sabine's mom but she clearly doesn't have Sabine's artistic sense so I'm not sure.
Was that Sabine with Bo-Katan, cause that girl has hair suspiciously similar to Sabine's mom but she clearly doesn't have Sabine's artistic sense so I'm not sure.
I completely did NOT recognise Katee Sackhoff in that episode at all. With Battlestar, Flash, Star Wars, all she really needs now is Star Trek to complete the collection.
It definitely felt like a hurried episode, there could certainly have been a few more talky bits in it.
Aside from that though, I had *huge* Dark Forces vibes from it. Definitely more than a few times I felt 'this is Star Wars' from it.
I have to wonder why she hasn't had more/better opportunities...along with most of the BSG main cast. Did that series have critically acclaimed acting or am I losing my mind? You'd think that having a series noted for good acting would require good actors...and that other producers/directors would want said actors.
trexmeyer wrote: I have to wonder why she hasn't had more/better opportunities...along with most of the BSG main cast. Did that series have critically acclaimed acting or am I losing my mind? You'd think that having a series noted for good acting would require good actors...and that other producers/directors would want said actors.
There's usually more things to it than that, not everyone gets to be a superstar.
For example, Michael Hogan, who played Saul Tigh, has suffered such a bad injury that his family has had no choice but to start a gofundme. - And he was, no doubt, a long running successful character actor. Yet, still not enough to fund his healthcare in America.
trexmeyer wrote: I have to wonder why she hasn't had more/better opportunities...along with most of the BSG main cast. Did that series have critically acclaimed acting or am I losing my mind? You'd think that having a series noted for good acting would require good actors...and that other producers/directors would want said actors.
It was critically acclaimed. And it was ace. Yet.......snobbery.
Despite being a clear political thriller, it was SciFi. And as attractive as Katee is, she made the big time on Bsg, as a surprisingly masculine character. Seems casting directors struggle with such persons.
I suspect she’s still making a pretty decent living off the residuals, and she’s now one of the most constant and (in-universe) long lived characters in Star Wars. In fact, I think only Chewie rivals her?
trexmeyer wrote: I have to wonder why she hasn't had more/better opportunities...along with most of the BSG main cast. Did that series have critically acclaimed acting or am I losing my mind? You'd think that having a series noted for good acting would require good actors...and that other producers/directors would want said actors.
It was critically acclaimed. And it was ace. Yet.......snobbery.
Despite being a clear political thriller, it was SciFi. And as attractive as Katee is, she made the big time on Bsg, as a surprisingly masculine character. Seems casting directors struggle with such persons.
I suspect she’s still making a pretty decent living off the residuals, and she’s now one of the most constant and (in-universe) long lived characters in Star Wars. In fact, I think only Chewie rivals her?
I also sincerly doubt this is the last we'll see of her.
Spoiler:
She's clearly engaged in a long term conflict with Gideon.whom is basicly the "series antagionist" so I expect she'll return,
The Mon-Cal mechanic was played by Tom Spina (under the mask) - who is a RL FX prop and makeup guy. One of the puppeteers was Janina Gavankar (Iden Versio) - she was in control of the nostrils.
He finally got to work on a SW project "officially" in front of the camera.
Ashoka will help broker an alliance to take down Moff Gideon.
Bounty Hunters (via Greef), Rebel Veterans (via Cara), and a semi-unified Mandalorian people’s.
Likely covered in Season 3.
I haaaave spooooookennnnn.
I think that's a pretty good guess and not bad pacing.
S1 - Introduce the protagonist and the Child, as well as some key secondary players. Character development for Mando. Wraps up with introducing the first? Big Bad.
S2 - Introduce more key secondary players and flesh out the world more. Mando learning more about the galaxy is important. Will probably have another conflict with the Big Bad that is the impetus for the alliance. Season ends with the alliance being discussed or formed.
S3 - The alliance starts to turn the tide against the Big Bad's forces. Season wraps up with the Big Bad being defeated. Possibly ends with a new Mandalore being established and the next antagonist (First Order?) being revealed.
Edit: Follow-up thought. All of our key members of this potential alliance already have a reason to fight Moff Gideon.
Greef and Cara are now wanted by Gideon's forces.
Mando wants to continue to protect the Child.
Mando's 'tribe' was massacred by Gideon's forces. Any survivors will want vengeance even if they are currently in hiding.
Ahsoka will want to protect the Child unless her character is dramatically different.
Bo-Katan and her Mandalorians have pre-existing beef with Gideon.
Given that Sackhoff apparently filmed her scenes nearly a year ago I think the writers already have it all planned it out and have done an excellent job.
Guess it comes down to pragmatism for the parties.
Whilst we don’t yet know the true extent of The Great Purge, we may be able to infer from the events shown in Rebels that at least some Mandalorians sided with The Empire.
Unless of course the purge was triggered by those former collaborators turning coat.
Perhaps S3 will cover that, with the fight against Moff Gideon occurring in S4, maybe even S5?
And if there’s one thing I can say about Mr Filloni? He’s not one to allow a show to outstay its welcome. But he’s also happy to meander a bit.
In regards to different sects and clans of mandalorians existing:
Spoiler:
It's not a reveal that there are sects of the mandalorians, that has been established for a while. I also took them saying he was of 'the watch' as meaning death watch which were fairly widely covered in the clone wars.
Nice episode. Didn't feel that short to me. It did bring home to me that people seem willing to go into space in some really dangerous junk piles. (And I did get a Serenity vibe at the start and finish.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: In regards to different sects and clans of mandalorians existing:
Spoiler:
It's not a reveal that there are sects of the mandalorians, that has been established for a while. I also took them saying he was of 'the watch' as meaning death watch which were fairly widely covered in the clone wars.
Spoiler:
Deathwatch took their helmets off all the time though. Maybe Mando's sect is some kind of distant off-shoot that separated around the time Maul took over Mandalore and went even more hardcore into the old ways? They might be even more distant though. It's hard to imagine anyone in Death Watch circa the Clone Wars era treating Jedi as a long ago story.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: In regards to different sects and clans of mandalorians existing:
Spoiler:
It's not a reveal that there are sects of the mandalorians, that has been established for a while. I also took them saying he was of 'the watch' as meaning death watch which were fairly widely covered in the clone wars.
Spoiler:
Deathwatch took their helmets off all the time though. Maybe Mando's sect is some kind of distant off-shoot that separated around the time Maul took over Mandalore and went even more hardcore into the old ways? They might be even more distant though. It's hard to imagine anyone in Death Watch circa the Clone Wars era treating Jedi as a long ago story.
Spoiler:
The Deathwatch splintered at the end of the clone wars, and their whole MO was to return the original warrior culture of the mandalorians, which included not removing helmets.
It's also apparently the deathwatch that rescued Din Djarin when he was a child, though I'm unsure if this is actual canon, it is the earlier deathwatch uniform/colour scheme though
The Deathwatch splintered at the end of the clone wars, and their whole MO was to return the original warrior culture of the mandalorians, which included not removing helmets.
It's also apparently the deathwatch that rescued Din Djarin when he was a child, though I'm unsure if this is actual canon, it is the earlier deathwatch uniform/colour scheme though
Spoiler:
We see Bo-Katan and Pre Vizsla take their helmets off during the Clone Wars series.
That said, the armor in Mando's flashbacks in season 1 is the right colors for Deathwatch.
Matbe the not taking off helmets is a thing being used for surviving.
Allows for more anonymity and the possibility of slipping away more easily that the deathwatch adapted.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Matbe the not taking off helmets is a thing being used for surviving.
Allows for more anonymity and the possibility of slipping away more easily that the deathwatch adapted.
That seems.... counterintuitive.
The most survival oriented thing (especially since most of them don't have the magic unobtanium armor anymore) is... to walk around like normal people.
Walking around cosplaying as Mandalorians 24/7 is the worst possible survival strategy, because it doesn't actually help them in any way. it just makes them easier to spot.
You want survival: go to a large cosmopolitan trade hub with a lot of traffic, adopt current fashions. No one will look at you twice.
Go anywhere and refuse to let anyone at all see your face, wearing an armor style nigh-unique to one specific group or culture: suspicion level rises.
I think Din's group is a bunch of extremists that split off Deathwatch because they thought Pre Viszla's approach was too soft and involved too many compromises. As a consequence they'd split off before the Jedi action came to Mandalore and did their own thing recruiting new warriors for when they were ready to take over Mandalore, regardless of the success of Deathwatch proper.
Religious dogma coupled with avoiding seeing Jedi in action during the Clone Wars would certainly go a long way to explain why the Armorer only knows of them from song and Din never heard of them.
It did occur to me in Season 1 that the Mandalorian Covert had left behind a huge big heap of VERY expensive armour, when they were wiped out... and no corpses.
Who says that they didn't just walk away? By The Watch sect rules, they wouldn't be Mandalorian anymore - but the Beskar would still be with the sect, ready for another group of foundlings. And if that's happened before, it would explain the total lack of continuity of knowledge except from the Smith.
Thought this episode was decent, but having not got around to watching all of TCW/Rebels (God the first series of TCW is a slog. When does it start to get good?) a lot of the joy of The Mandalorian was missing for me - the fact that Out Of Universe, we the audience know a hell of a lot more about what's going on than the Mando does.
I originally thought that keeping their helmets on in public would be a good way of hiding their numbers, but you can tell them apart by the difference in armour.
Graphite wrote: It did occur to me in Season 1 that the Mandalorian Covert had left behind a huge big heap of VERY expensive armour, when they were wiped out... and no corpses.
Just started watching S1 again with my daughter and the same thought came to me as well. He left all that armor behind after they were wiped out. That could have paid for a new ship or two.
The Razor Crest follows in the Star Wars tradition set by the Millennium Falcon that we, the audience thinks all spaceships are cool, but the people in the story just see hunks of junk. Seriously, though, how many more times will the Razor Crest be destroyed and rebuilt over the course of the show?
More to the point - everyone knows the stuff is REALLY expensive. Why didn't whoever killed the Mandalorians take it? How did the Smith survive? It's all very suspicious.
Mando's not going to sell it to buy a new spaceship - it's holy. Neither is the Smith. But some random stormtrooper in a failing empire maybe thinking about stashing a few creds for retirement? And any random Imperial officer is going to "confiscate" the lot and pass it back to his superiors (after taking a small cut for his troubles, of course)
They could have used disintegrators to kill the mandalorians. Maybe disintegrators don't destroy Beskar?
There was that weapon in rebels (that was a one off weapon) that could disintegrate the body without destroying the mando armour, indicating there are weapons capable of doing that.
Finally, not all the armour plate(s) they wear are Beskar, just like Mando at first, all of his armour wasn't Beskar.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: They could have used disintegrators to kill the mandalorians. Maybe disintegrators don't destroy Beskar?
There was that weapon in rebels (that was a one off weapon) that could disintegrate the body without destroying the mando armour, indicating there are weapons capable of doing that.
Finally, not all the armour plate(s) they wear are Beskar, just like Mando at first, all of his armour wasn't Beskar.
Beskar might depend on how long they’ve been Mandalorian.
Season 1 amply demonstrates that the Empire plundered it pre/during/post the Great Purge.
It could simply be that Din came of age after the fall of Mandalore, so he didn’t have Beskar. Contrast and compare to Bo-Katan, who clearly states her armour is a family heirloom.
Now, the balancing act. Din is of course a Foundling. Bo-Katan is from a Noble House, and her personal host-the dates back to the early days of the Clone Wars. So there is considerable wiggle room for Beskar armour to be super-duper rare all the same, or only to be particularly rare for Foundlings to have in the modern day.
Deathwatch, which are currently of unclear relation to the Children of the Watch certainly seem to have had Beskar in the Clone Wars, and I can’t see that having changed much since (barring members being captured and their gear confiscated), given heirloom status.
It could also be that the Children of the Watch are particularly impoverished in that specific area, and their members have to earn/seek out Beskar, rather than simply inheriting it?
From the first series, it seems that each foundling gets at least some of the Beskar - Din is always sure that a portion should be set aside for that, presumably for a helmet.
If the Children of the Watch are all foundlings - and it's strongly implied that a lot of them are - there's nobody for them to inherit from, if the Order's only existed for a few decades, and usually in hiding.
Add to that that they only went out one at a time to "hide their numbers" - who are they hiding their numbers from? The Empire, or other Mandalorians?
Looks pretty certain that, regardless, Din is going to have to come to terms with the fact that The Way is not the only Way.
My assumption behind not removing helmets was to pass the mantle when someone retired or was killed. In theory, if Din winds up with the Darksaber and leads a new Mandalore, he could be their leader forever as long as no one knows what he looks like under the armor and his replacement follows suit.
I don't think that's where the story is going, just what I thought the purpose behind it was.
LunarSol wrote: My assumption behind not removing helmets was to pass the mantle when someone retired or was killed. In theory, if Din winds up with the Darksaber and leads a new Mandalore, he could be their leader forever as long as no one knows what he looks like under the armor and his replacement follows suit.
I don't think that's where the story is going, just what I thought the purpose behind it was.
Ah...the Dread Pirate Djarin, then.
"Good night, Sabine. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."
Graphite wrote: More to the point - everyone knows the stuff is REALLY expensive. Why didn't whoever killed the Mandalorians take it? How did the Smith survive? It's all very suspicious.
Mando's not going to sell it to buy a new spaceship - it's holy. Neither is the Smith. But some random stormtrooper in a failing empire maybe thinking about stashing a few creds for retirement? And any random Imperial officer is going to "confiscate" the lot and pass it back to his superiors (after taking a small cut for his troubles, of course)
You're assuming that any Stormtroopers walked away from that attack. The fact that the Armourer was still there suggests they quite possibly didn't.
Having said that, my impression was that most of the armour in that enclave wasn't actually beskar.
Graphite wrote: More to the point - everyone knows the stuff is REALLY expensive. Why didn't whoever killed the Mandalorians take it? How did the Smith survive? It's all very suspicious.
Mando's not going to sell it to buy a new spaceship - it's holy. Neither is the Smith. But some random stormtrooper in a failing empire maybe thinking about stashing a few creds for retirement? And any random Imperial officer is going to "confiscate" the lot and pass it back to his superiors (after taking a small cut for his troubles, of course)
You're assuming that any Stormtroopers walked away from that attack. The fact that the Armourer was still there suggests they quite possibly didn't.
Having said that, my impression was that most of the armour in that enclave wasn't actually beskar.
not to mention the armorer was resmelting the beskar when Mando found her amidst everything. So they didn't leave the armor behind so much as they decided to melt it down into easier to carry shapes. lol
Well - she decided to melt it down. Maybe she's decided that things have got a bit too hot with Gideon in the vicinity, and is off to some other planet to start a new Covert/Cult/Orphanage/Brainwashing Cell
I wonder if there's potential for the story to lead Din Djarin to become the Lord Mandalore of old should anything end up happening to Bo Katan and he manages to get the Darksabre. Might be a bit of a hot take though.
I kinda feel like it's more likely that Bo-Katan could achieve her goals and in game of thrones terms, over Din as a position of effectively Kingsguard.
But, of course, since this is a space Western, it will of course end with Din flying off into the sunset and another adventure.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I wonder if there's potential for the story to lead Din Djarin to become the Lord Mandalore of old should anything end up happening to Bo Katan and he manages to get the Darksabre. Might be a bit of a hot take though.
It’s not impossible. But remember in Rebels Sabine handed the Dark Saber to Bo-Katan, recognising shed just make a better Mandal’ore.
I can see that bit of history repeating. Or, perhaps more interestingly....
Din’s cell defeat Gideon, and refuses to hand over the Dark Saber, leading to further series shenanigans about the actual nature of what it is to be Mandalorian?
I suspect they’ve a few future plot lines in development, and will decide based on viewer reaction/reception to whatever is currently set in stone (so S2, which is in the can, and probably S3).
Uh yeah THIS is the main thing you shouldn’t be taking at face value btw ...
As to the eggs:
The Child is depicted doing something the audience will find transgressive to demonstrate that Din MUST starting taking a more active parental role. But of course he is hardly equipped to do so!
In Season 1, we saw a lot of “This Is The Way” without much looking into WHY it’s the Way. Pretty much every character, even quite minor ones, are presented from a moral perspective. They all have their codes, sometimes more and sometimes less flexible.
The major exception to this is obviously the Child ... because it’s a child. Blankly repeating “This is the Way” or “I have spoken” may be fine for adults summing up their ethics but that kind of laconic attitude is useless when you need to TEACH the difference between right and wrong to a child.
Notice that S2 has already introduced some major themes along these lines. Cobb Vanth in S2E1 had to reconsider his worldview to work with the Tusken Raiders. In S2E2, the frog lady asks whether the vaunted Mandalorian code is “just stories for children.” And then in the latest episode, Bo Katan demonstrates that not all Mandalorians share the same values.
As Din grows and develops, he will have to take a harder look at his own sense of what’s right and wrong. We’ve already seen him change (rethinking his hatred of droids and his preference for being a loner) but he needs to get to the point where he can teach the child why it is not okay to eat the eggs of a sentient being.
Absolutely superb. Lots to unpack, and definitely a raising of the stakes. Plus strong hints as to just what Gideon is up to...
Highlight for me?
Spoiler:
Arquitans Class, fully rendered. Mmmm. Though it does beg the question, especially in the context, is that Gideon’s flagship (entirely possible), or merely his Research Ship, and he has a larger, as yet unseen, fleet
Another good episode, loads of cool easter eggs in this one again.
Spoiler:
This all but confirms that the Child is used for the creation of Snoke as a tie in to the sequel trilogy (Snoke was vat born, M-count mentioned is mitochlorians) or that it's not just the child but many experiments are ongoing with force sensitive children to develop a force sensitive "clone". Something I am not enthused with but nevertheless, Favreau has done a great job with helping me to enjoy the prequel trilogy through the Clone Wars so this should help the sequels a little bit, as I feel the sequels aren't as redeemable as the prequels. Or they're just cloning Sidious...
In relation to the arquitens class, I think that's probably the flagship, the imperials post-death star II took a hell of a beating and it wouldn't surprise me larger class ships wouldn't be as common.
Felt like the final scene with the TIE fighters against the Razorcrest was cool but also a bit naff, Tie fighters are meant to be super agile and these dudes just flew in a straight line and got gunned down.
EDIT: yo, were those death troopers or something at the end?
Those Tie pilots would have to be seriously upping the game of storm trooper bad marksmanship to whole new levels of incompetence if they followed that tank all the way from the other side of the moon and never managed to hit it once. Not to mention the speed/distance Mando’s jet pack can cover.
I agree that the planet size doesn't make a lot of sense (unless it's somehow a Little Prince planet made of insanely dense material to generate enough gravity to keep the atmosphere).
But I think it's a deliberate choices from producers to handwave away stuff for cinematic effects.
Mando jetpack is already a little bit insane, I can accept a further stretch and that it is powered by an perpetual engine. He is basically an Ork Storm Boy (am I wrong, or in some other SW product Mandalorian board flying ship with them? That's serious altitude and speed).
I appreciate more and more the horizontal structure of the series. Episodes are still indipendent, but there is a single element in each that justify their position in the series. That was my biggest fear entering in S2
Felt like the final scene with the TIE fighters against the Razorcrest was cool but also a bit naff, Tie fighters are meant to be super agile and these dudes just flew in a straight line and got gunned down.
EDIT: yo, were those death troopers or something at the end?
I don't think they were death troopers - I re-watched the scene and there are these chunky bits around the torso, these tubes everywhere, and their helmets look like cylons... they might be a new type of trooper - or maybe even Dark Troopers.
It ties into what we saw on Tattooine, post-fall of The Empire, in that there was a distinct power vacuum, seemingly filled by anyone with a black heart and a blaster.
But as Greef said at the end of Season 1, they’ve seen off all the scum and villainy, allowing Nevarro to grow and develop.
And all without the aid or fiddling of the nascent New Republic. When we think about it, even in the Outer Rim this is the first time since at least the beginning of the Clone Wars they’ve not been interfered with.
Apply to the wider Galaxy, and Mon Mothma’s decision to not simply pick up the Imperial reins looks like a shrewd move. It allowed the New Republic to be comprised of entirely willing systems. This in turn helps that government to stabilise, and get things going. That done, they become a more attractive proposition to systems that were perhaps more on the fence.
I’m hoping we see such other snippets and curtain pull backs here and there, as they flesh out the Galaxy and it’s inherent politics without making it the focus of the show. They’re nice little tidbits for nerds like me, but don’t leave the casual watcher baffled.
My first thought, since SO Much of this episode also gave me Dark Forces and Jedi Knight vibes,
Spoiler:
was that they were Shadow Troopers.
So the experiments with the child are maybe he's trying to create force sensitive soldiers.
This then ties back into some old material about how Mandalorians were very good at fighting Jedi, so setting up how Mando and Bo-Katans group are the best opposition for them.
Captain Joystick wrote: So apparently, the narrator says something interesting during that last scene in the episode if you have descriptive audio enabled.
I can confirm it's there, but I don't want to spoil the surprise.
Compel wrote: My first thought, since SO Much of this episode also gave me Dark Forces and Jedi Knight vibes,
Spoiler:
was that they were Shadow Troopers.
So the experiments with the child are maybe he's trying to create force sensitive soldiers.
This then ties back into some old material about how Mandalorians were very good at fighting Jedi, so setting up how Mando and Bo-Katans group are the best opposition for them.
Spoiler:
Audio description says dark troopers although my copy of the episode didn't come with them
I have two issues with the show in general so far:
Spoiler:
1) The quality of the action sequences is too inconsistent. One episode it's amazing (Krayt Dragon battle, Mando team-up was okay) and the next (like the most recent) it's hot trash. Also, is there a reason that Mando basically never uses his flame-thrower or other gadgets? Budget reasons?
2) Some of the casting is questionable. The X-Wing pilots don't look military, professional, or even like rebels. They look like IT desk jockeys. On the other hand, all of the Mandalorians look like they actually fight and lead physically demanding lives.
Basically, it's been pretty uneven for such a high-budget project. I don't recall GOT or The Expanse ever having these issues in terms of quality (at least until the GOT writing jumped the shark around s6).
One of the pilots is played by Dave Filoni, the main producer on Clone Wars and Rebels. The other one is played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, a Canadian actor and comedian who cosplays ... a hobby he is pretty darn serious about.
In S2E4, Lee’s character Carson Teva tells Cara Dune that he was serving back when the Empire destroyed Alderaan. Greef addresses Teva as “officer” and indeed Teva and Filoni’s characters definitely act like cops, although the basis of their jurisdiction in the Outer Rim is unclear. Anyhow, point is, these guys seem to be GCW veterans now in pseudo-civilian service, so the casting makes sense.
I agree that the action scenes are inconsistent. But sometimes I think this is intentional. In S2E3, Bo Katan and her buddies demonstrate a fight style straight out of the PT-era/Clone Wars (like dance choreography) that makes Din look pretty clumsy by contrast. Din and other “normal people” characters (like Cara and Greef) fight in a more, for lack of a better term, realistic way closer to what we saw in the OT.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Dear Disney, more of that please and fewer side quests.
Dude what are you talking about? S2E4 is definitely a side quest. The “main quest” is Return The Child (optional: Raise The Child). The whole thing only happens because Din needs to “pull over” for repairs.
Felt like the final scene with the TIE fighters against the Razorcrest was cool but also a bit naff, Tie fighters are meant to be super agile and these dudes just flew in a straight line and got gunned down.
TIEs have always been rather ponderous in atmosphere. The old X-wing books went into this in some detail, explaining that the solar arrays play havoc with their aerodynamics due to wind sheer.
trexmeyer wrote: I have two issues with the show in general so far:
Spoiler:
1) The quality of the action sequences is too inconsistent. One episode it's amazing (Krayt Dragon battle, Mando team-up was okay) and the next (like the most recent) it's hot trash. Also, is there a reason that Mando basically never uses his flame-thrower or other gadgets? Budget reasons?
2) Some of the casting is questionable. The X-Wing pilots don't look military, professional, or even like rebels. They look like IT desk jockeys. On the other hand, all of the Mandalorians look like they actually fight and lead physically demanding lives.
Spoiler:
1b) I assume he has limited access to reloads for them without The Armorer.
2) Always been a thing - look at Porkins.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Dear Disney, more of that please and fewer side quests.
Dude what are you talking about? S2E4 is definitely a side quest. The “main quest” is Return The Child (optional: Raise The Child). The whole thing only happens because Din needs to “pull over” for repairs.
Yes and I was afraid of that but we got the return of Moff Wasshisface, a direct answer to why the Empire wants the Child and a teaser of the big bad. Everything tied back to the main plot instead of the politics of small town Tatooen or whatever.
Felt like the final scene with the TIE fighters against the Razorcrest was cool but also a bit naff, Tie fighters are meant to be super agile and these dudes just flew in a straight line and got gunned down.
TIEs have always been rather ponderous in atmosphere. The old X-wing books went into this in some detail, explaining that the solar arrays play havoc with their aerodynamics due to wind sheer.
also these aren't the TIE/LNs we're used to but Outlander TIE fighters. which are sort of a post endor varient of the TIE. the known modifcation we know is landing gear, which may have by itself resulted in a heavier fighter. it's also not unreasonable that they're made out of more rugged easily obtainable materials instead of the high performance parts they would have been able to work with in the empire's hayday. all leading itself to a fighter with over all inferior performance but one that offers advantages given the empires stratetic situation
I stopped trying to 'explain' to myself how or why things run the way they do in Mandalorian.
Sometimes the story or a shot just goes with what they felt looked good without a second thought of in-universe logic.
Frog lady not being able to take her eggs via hyperdrive is a plot device. I'm okay with that. Even better they didn't try to justify it, which would I think have gotten very complex and raised way more questions. I can just accept that Frog eggs can tolerate HD.
On the other hand, it mildly irritates me that folks riding around on a dusty planet on a speeder don't wear goggles...or you know...that Mandalorian helmet they have.
I assume this is actors or directors not wanting to cover the faces of their stars. But it is a little immersion breaking. Have them talk over comms...you know so they can hear each other over the howling wind and engine noise.
But we often seem to get Shot being more important than logic ...that occasionally just doesn't work at all.
The battle with the sand dragon was a prime example, as it suddenly tunnelled at high speed through what looked like solid stone so that...there could be a shot of it rearing up (which looked daft) or we could have the guys use their jet packs?
I enjoy the series overall, this is the only thing I dislike about it. But it really bugs me.
Austin Powers wrote: Austin:
So, Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumeably, I could go back and look at my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the '90s and traveled back to the '60s?
Austin:
Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
Basil:
I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself.
I'm beginning to think that I actually DON'T like Star Wars as small stories which have no effect on more than two or three people, because the two standout episodes of this series so far involve something that would quite likely have eaten an entire village and the whole entirety of Episode 4 which is setting up for an absolute hum-dinger of a fight down the line.
I'm thinking the plan is to make the Sequel Trilogy irrelevant. Use the Mandalorian to set up something that will have a payoff years after the events of the ST don't matter anymore. In addition by tying into Clone Wars and Rebels, they're making the Prequel Trilogy irrelevant too.
Maybe even get Luke involved and somehow be a positive influence on The Child so his legacy can be redeemed.
Afraid the sequels are canon, and likely to stay that way. Whilst I enjoyed them, I do prefer Dave Filoni’s tales. Mind you, he has hours and hours of screen time to play with, compared to movies being far more capped in that regard.
As for the sequels I just watched Star Trek 12 was it? The Wrathier Wrath of Khan and I think it's time to just say that Abrams is not very good at his job. I would in fact say he is kind of bad at his job and really needs to stop getting these major jobs.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Whilst I enjoyed them, I do prefer Dave Filoni’s tales. Mind you, he has hours and hours of screen time to play with, compared to movies being far more capped in that regard.
Filoni has a plan and an understanding how to develop Star Wars. Abrams did not. That's the relevant difference. It's simply a matter of competence. If you afforded Abrams as much time as you get out of several seasons of TV shows, you'd just draw out the waste of time.
You can compare good directors/producers and how they use denser or spread out story telling to their advantage, and you may come to the conclusion that shows are a better medium than movies because you get to see more of the things you like and they can take time to build things up. It's certainly a factor in why I like the Star Wars shows so much and why they improved the whole Star Wars experience for me.
J.J. Abrams, however, operates on an entirely different level. It's just no comparison.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: As for the sequels I just watched Star Trek 12 was it? The Wrathier Wrath of Khan and I think it's time to just say that Abrams is not very good at his job. I would in fact say he is kind of bad at his job and really needs to stop getting these major jobs.
It's funny, back when the new Star Trek movies came out I thought Abrams should make Star Wars movies instead. He might be better at it considering what he tried to stuff into Star Trek.
Abrams has been pretty consistent in being a good ideas man who can put out something decent and memorable when he's excited about a project who fizzles out quickly when he loses interest.
But at this point its becoming all to clear that 'decent' is about the best he can do.
I won't go ranking the sequels because I don't want to start a fight (and frankly if we wanna have that discussion lets make a dedicated thread for it instead of dragging down Mando) but of the three JJ-Trek movies the best one was directed by Justin Lin, and the Duffer Brothers did what Super 8 tried to do, but better.
For me, he’s forming into a ticking time bomb of a highly potent and untrained force user. No, not a Sith, as such. But a significant danger to those around him.
First, he doesn’t really seem to know right from wrong. Not only does he break and eat eggs, but he’s a wee tea leaf, as shown in Chapter 12. Sure, they were only Space Macaroons, but theft is theft. Worst, he used his powers to steal them.
Secondly? He’s growing up around violence, and has even participated in his own way (ref the Mud Horn intervention). His cheering and enjoyment of the dog fight in Chapter 12? That’s.....that’s not especially encouraging. Literally every problem so far, he’s seen fixed with some form of violence.
I really do think it’s being carefully curated to become a far larger problem for all involved. After all, if he does go Full On Dark Side....the flip are you going to do about it?
Don't you mean the electrical perils of The Child? That might be a more immediate threat after this episode.
Parenting issues aside, Baby Yoda is just a young kid. The show does a good job of setting up the stakes to the audience (not so much Din who has no concept of what letting a powerful force user slip to the Dark Side might mean), but for now it's just a reminder that Baby Yoda could go anywhere since he has no guidance, and why we should be rooting for Din to find a Jedi to set the little blighter on the right path.
I wouldn't call him a time bomb just yet because he has no capacity for moral or immoral action at this time. Using Force powers to get what he wants is no different than using his arms or voice. It's the means at his disposal that exist without any moral concept attached to them. When he's older and able to tell right from wrong, and still does that, that's when he is in danger of falling to the Dark Side.
Also, let's be real. The Child wasn't cheering for the destruction or violence. He was cheering because he was on an awesome rollercoaster. Some of you have never taken a kid on a roller coaster if you think that was what the kid was excited about.
Hulksmash wrote: Also, let's be real. The Child wasn't cheering for the destruction or violence. He was cheering because he was on an awesome rollercoaster. Some of you have never taken a kid on a roller coaster if you think that was what the kid was excited about.
This, jeez.
You might as well say he puked at the end because he was horrified by all the carnage and the damage.
The Child is depicted doing something the audience will find transgressive to demonstrate that Din MUST starting taking a more active parental role. But of course he is hardly equipped to do so!
In Season 1, we saw a lot of “This Is The Way” without much looking into WHY it’s the Way. Pretty much every character, even quite minor ones, are presented from a moral perspective. They all have their codes, sometimes more and sometimes less flexible.
The major exception to this is obviously the Child ... because it’s a child. Blankly repeating “This is the Way” or “I have spoken” may be fine for adults summing up their ethics but that kind of laconic attitude is useless when you need to TEACH the difference between right and wrong to a child.
Notice that S2 has already introduced some major themes along these lines. Cobb Vanth in S2E1 had to reconsider his worldview to work with the Tusken Raiders. In S2E2, the frog lady asks whether the vaunted Mandalorian code is “just stories for children.” And then in the latest episode, Bo Katan demonstrates that not all Mandalorians share the same values.
As Din grows and develops, he will have to take a harder look at his own sense of what’s right and wrong. We’ve already seen him change (rethinking his hatred of droids and his preference for being a loner) but he needs to get to the point where he can teach the child why it is not okay to eat the eggs of a sentient being.
It struck me when Bo-Katan referred to Din as a 'Child of the Watch'. Because in many ways he's still acting as an obedient child and not an independent adult. But parenthood can certainly change that. Human beings often have a lot of our identity tied up in being someone's child UNTIL they become someone's parent. Although Din is a grown man biologically, I feel like the story arc is about him growing up emotionally/mentally/etc.
Graphite wrote: When does any problem in Star Wars get solved by anything except the business end of a blaster/light saber? This ain't Trek.
Gambling, mind tricks, deception, heroic sacrifice, and tugging on heart strings have all worked to memorable effect in solving problems during the first two trilogies. Cummulatively though they're still outnumbered by blaster/lightsaber though.
The Child is only a ticking time bomb in the way that any child is when brought up by crap parents. He (is it a he?) uses his powers to get what he wants (yay! biscuits!) or to clumsily try and help, sometimes in a good way (controlling fire, levitating space rhinos) sometimes not (force choke).
Delivering The Child to the Jedi (as much as they exist here) would be they way to leave it with more responsible 'parents', and mark the end of a quest, to replaced with another unless the powers that be choose to end the series there.
Graphite wrote: When does any problem in Star Wars get solved by anything except the business end of a blaster/light saber? This ain't Trek.
There was that time our heroes decided the fate of two slaves by heroically cheating at dice?
A dice roll that could have easily gone double or nothing to also win Shmi. She would then have never gotten captured by raiders and Annie could have avoided that whole murder spree.
Graphite wrote: When does any problem in Star Wars get solved by anything except the business end of a blaster/light saber? This ain't Trek.
There was that time our heroes decided the fate of two slaves by heroically cheating at dice?
A dice roll that could have easily gone double or nothing to also win Shmi. She would then have never gotten captured by raiders and Annie could have avoided that whole murder spree.
Based on Watto's reaction, he was not expecting that result at all. He went into that wager expecting to win. I think he was using loaded dice.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I really want T-Shirt And Jeans Guy to become the Ice Cream Maker Man of the Mandalorian series. Short stories need to be written.
He will become a trusted sidekick to Jcpenney sweater moncalamari, the halfbutted mechanic.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I really want T-Shirt And Jeans Guy to become the Ice Cream Maker Man of the Mandalorian series. Short stories need to be written.
He already has almost as much character development than Rey did in the first two sequel movies. He needs a trilogy... get Ryan Johnson working on it pronto!
There is an entire galaxy of characters. Why does everyone in Starwars live on the same block? Please... PLEASE... do not have Mando meet Luke Skywalker. That kind of gak is the WORST thing we can have happen. We don't need everyone to meet everyone else.
AegisGrimm wrote: I agree. No original trilogy characters, ever, please. Ahsoka and the like are ok, because they are lower tier.
You need to use "ghost tech" to make a replica of oung Mark Mamil's face and voice to have him in the show. Luke is like 30 during the Mandalorian which I think is like 5 years after Endor. It sort of would make sense to have Luke since he is, as far as we know, the only other living Jedi beside Ahsoka, but they will settle on only the later for reason of logic. I wonder if Ahsoka and Luke ever met or if Bo-Katan and her will face their death within the Mandalorian story line.
gorgon wrote: It struck me when Bo-Katan referred to Din as a 'Child of the Watch'. Because in many ways he's still acting as an obedient child and not an independent adult. But parenthood can certainly change that. Human beings often have a lot of our identity tied up in being someone's child UNTIL they become someone's parent. Although Din is a grown man biologically, I feel like the story arc is about him growing up emotionally/mentally/etc.
“Child of the Watch” has a triple meaning.
For us, the audience, the meaning is what you perceptively explained.
In terms of the setting, the phrase refers to the practice of adopting foundlings into the culture.
And as a matter of characterizing Bo-Katan, she uses the phrase to trivialize and undermine Din as part of her attempt to groom him. It’s a subtle dig that she very closely follows with praise. She’s trying to manipulate him. She’s ruthless and untrustworthy.
Din gets tricked all the time in this show. He is a guy who somehow expects scum to deal fairly. But seeing her take her helmet off made a really bad impression on him.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Delivering The Child to the Jedi ... would be they way to leave it with more responsible 'parents'
The Jedi? More responsible parents? Yikes, you must be new to SW. The Jedi are uniformly scummy dead beats.
A dice roll that could have easily gone double or nothing to also win Shmi. She would then have never gotten captured by raiders and Annie could have avoided that whole murder spree.
Watto flatly refused to include both slaves in the wager.
Based on Watto's reaction, he was not expecting that result at all. He went into that wager expecting to win. I think he was using loaded dice.
Yes, the novelisation points that out, although it was fairly obvious in the movie anyway.
epronovost wrote: You need to use "ghost tech" to make a replica of oung Mark Mamil's face and voice to have him in the show. Luke is like 30 during the Mandalorian which I think is like 5 years after Endor.
Graphite wrote: When does any problem in Star Wars get solved by anything except the business end of a blaster/light saber? This ain't Trek.
There was that time our heroes decided the fate of two slaves by heroically cheating at dice?
Or when they tried to sell robots into slavery to save their real friends?
Yeah, the mark (Jabba) said no, and yes they expected it (or at least Luke did). But that whole infiltration Xanadu gambit could have easily ended with several dead or enslaved friends and an enslaved sister. Good times.
Or that time Luke surrendered and for some reason expected Darth Dad to believe he wandered onto Endor on his lonesome and not search for the friends he 'endangered.'
Or setting up a fake god to get primitives to fight and die for their mission. Classic!
Eh. I'm blaming that on autocorrect or being tired. Xanatos Gambit, obviously. Though creepily, a Xanadu gambit would probably also end with slave Leia in a bikini
The whole infiltration of Jabba's base is basically set up as a string of unlikely ploys that are guaranteed to fail so they can win: Luke gifts the droids in advance, Leia sets Han free but gets captured so Han can be placed with Chewie and Luke can kill the Rancor so that Jabba is enraged by everybody and decides to kill them all by taking them out to the Sarlaac pit where R2 will be in position to get the lightsaber to Luke (because obviously he'll be serving drinks on the barge rather than maintaining spaceships or something like an R2 unit) so they automatically win 'just as planned.' Every choice of Jabba's leads to the Luke being out in open air getting a lightsaber launched at him.
Its sad and cheap storywriting that it works, but from a character point of view the whole thing is extremely arrogant and immoral.
It also basically works because its all on the Evil Overlord list as things not to do. Had Jabba just had them shot or dismembered them in the throne room and stuck their heads on spikes outside the gates, it'd be much more reasonable.
I'd quite enjoy an appearance of Kyle Katarn when the plot takes a turn at destroying the dark troopers. A slight cameo of smuggler Mara Jade would be great as well, pre her meeting skywalker.
I want Luke, Han, and Chewie in an episode. No interaction with Mando or anyone in the story. Just sitting together in the background of some crowd/bar scene chatting. Don’t make any effort to draw attention to them.
AduroT wrote: I want Luke, Han, and Chewie in an episode. No interaction with Mando or anyone in the story. Just sitting together in the background of some crowd/bar scene chatting. Don’t make any effort to draw attention to them.
Or setting up a fake god to get primitives to fight and die for their mission. Classic!
Whilst you do raise some good points, that wasn’t their plan, so much as using Threepios mistaken identity to get them free, allowing them to continue their mission to take down DS2’s planetary shield.
It’s also arguable that Han’s team even knew the Ewoks would join them. I’d point to Han’s somewhat stunned look when the fur balls encircle the Imperial troops as near cast iron evidence.
The question there is did Threepio persuade the Ewoks to intervene? That I’d say is very open to debate. It could be he did, working his Godly ticket. Or, it could be the Ewoks made that determination on their own, and Threepio simply followed their lead. But I’m confident that Han and his team weren’t in on it.
A dice roll that could have easily gone double or nothing to also win Shmi. She would then have never gotten captured by raiders and Annie could have avoided that whole murder spree.
Watto flatly refused to include both slaves in the wager.
I will never understand why Padme didn't go back and just buy Anakin's mum later. It makes absolutely no sense. Even if the Jedi were doing their whole "cut off all attachments" thing, she could have given her a job on Naboo.
Eh. I'm blaming that on autocorrect or being tired. Xanatos Gambit, obviously. Though creepily, a Xanadu gambit would probably also end with slave Leia in a bikini
Spoiler:
The whole infiltration of Jabba's base is basically set up as a string of unlikely ploys that are guaranteed to fail so they can win: Luke gifts the droids in advance, Leia sets Han free but gets captured so Han can be placed with Chewie and Luke can kill the Rancor so that Jabba is enraged by everybody and decides to kill them all by taking them out to the Sarlaac pit where R2 will be in position to get the lightsaber to Luke (because obviously he'll be serving drinks on the barge rather than maintaining spaceships or something like an R2 unit) so they automatically win 'just as planned.' Every choice of Jabba's leads to the Luke being out in open air getting a lightsaber launched at him.
Its sad and cheap storywriting that it works, but from a character point of view the whole thing is extremely arrogant and immoral.
It also basically works because its all on the Evil Overlord list as things not to do. Had Jabba just had them shot or dismembered them in the throne room and stuck their heads on spikes outside the gates, it'd be much more reasonable.
I'm still not familiar with it but I like my crossover idea better. The House of Mouse owns all and pays none!!
Eh. I'm blaming that on autocorrect or being tired. Xanatos Gambit, obviously. Though creepily, a Xanadu gambit would probably also end with slave Leia in a bikini.
Eh. I'm blaming that on autocorrect or being tired. Xanatos Gambit, obviously. Though creepily, a Xanadu gambit would probably also end with slave Leia in a bikini
The whole infiltration of Jabba's base is basically set up as a string of unlikely ploys that are guaranteed to fail so they can win: Luke gifts the droids in advance, Leia sets Han free but gets captured so Han can be placed with Chewie and Luke can kill the Rancor so that Jabba is enraged by everybody and decides to kill them all by taking them out to the Sarlaac pit where R2 will be in position to get the lightsaber to Luke (because obviously he'll be serving drinks on the barge rather than maintaining spaceships or something like an R2 unit) so they automatically win 'just as planned.' Every choice of Jabba's leads to the Luke being out in open air getting a lightsaber launched at him.
Its sad and cheap storywriting that it works, but from a character point of view the whole thing is extremely arrogant and immoral.
It also basically works because its all on the Evil Overlord list as things not to do. Had Jabba just had them shot or dismembered them in the throne room and stuck their heads on spikes outside the gates, it'd be much more reasonable.
Wait.
So, you’re suggesting that everything was planned to happen that way?
So “Jabba rapes Leia” was, like, step 9 on the plan? Did she know when she agreed to the plan?
To be fair, there was probably a case for not wanting to kill Jabba if they could help it, as setting his gang up against the Alliance would introduce a lot of unwanted complications. Luke may well have been willing to trade 3PO and R2 for the opportunity to negotiate with him, with each subsequent action low-key putting the important players in place but Luke all the while holds out hope Jabba will listen to reason, because it was the 80s and heroes were stupid like that.
Of course this begs the question, if Leia's plan was to bring in Chewie in order to sell her credentials as an effective bounty hunter, sneak in and spirit Han away in the dead of night... were they just going to leave Chewie there?
With all that said and done, I think HISHE had a solid alternate plan they should have considered:
A sci fi magazine from between Empire and Jedi put out the theory that Han would kill Jabba and, by the pirate code or whatever, become king of the Space Pirates.
He would then marry Leia, uniting the Pirate and Rebel fleets to overthrow the Empire.
Somehow their fan theories are better than what we got.
Except for the part about Jedi being clones of Jesus.
Captain Joystick wrote: Of course this begs the question, if Leia's plan was to bring in Chewie in order to sell her credentials as an effective bounty hunter, sneak in and spirit Han away in the dead of night... were they just going to leave Chewie there?
Lando already was in place as one of the palace guards or enforcers or whatever. I figure the idea was to get Chewbacca out alongside Han because they had an undiscovered inside man with the keys to the castle.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: A sci fi magazine from between Empire and Jedi put out the theory that Han would kill Jabba and, by the pirate code or whatever, become king of the Space Pirates.
He would then marry Leia, uniting the Pirate and Rebel fleets to overthrow the Empire.
Somehow their fan theories are better than what we got.
Except for the part about Jedi being clones of Jesus.
I had it in mind that was an earlier draft for the plot? Chances are it’s just me getting confused though.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: A sci fi magazine from between Empire and Jedi put out the theory that Han would kill Jabba and, by the pirate code or whatever, become king of the Space Pirates.
He would then marry Leia, uniting the Pirate and Rebel fleets to overthrow the Empire.
Somehow their fan theories are better than what we got.
Except for the part about Jedi being clones of Jesus.
See that would have been much better. Would also show why Jabba was feared so much; guy had a literal army at his beck and call.
honestly I'm willing to over look a plan coming together due to an unlikely series of coincidances when the source of the plan is a Jedi. They are after all guided by the plot.. I mean the force
We know nothing about The Child prior to Din kidnapping him.
Yet, we’ve seen him using The Force in particularly advanced ways, such as force pull and force heal.
Now, we can reasonably deduce from what’s gone before that force users have at least some innate control over their potential abilities.
Starting with Luke, he actually saw relatively little Force use prior to training with Yoda. If memory serves, he clearly witnesses Jedi mind tricks on Tattooine. But other than that, he only really sees Obi-Wan feel a disturbance in the force, identify the TIE as a short ranged fighter before anyone actually sees the bugger, plus his short stint of lightsaber training. Yet, in ESB, with no further training (Obi-Wan’s “get your skinny arse to Dagobah, fool” seemingly being his first physical manifestation). Plus, he certainly channels it in the Trench Run, as Vader remarks, and Obi-Wan then encourages)
Rey? She picks things up on the fly from Kylo (so arguably taught by him?), before tuition with Luke, and studying the ancient Jedi texts.
Anakin? It’s made clear his skill as a pilot comes directly from his strength in the force.
The Child though....is it possible he’s had at least some tuition? Possibly by his parents (if he’s not a Clone himself). Yet he’s the second Force User we actually see on screen using Force Heal. And why was he being so heavily guarded, and by whom?
I was wondering that the other day. There's a LOT of Mercs guarding the child. From conversation with Kuiil, they've been there a long time and neither Din or IG-11 are the first bounty hunters to take a crack at getting him. It's turned the local area into a minor war zone, and Kuiil wants them gone.
And as we've seen, Gideon actually has quite a lot of troops - why the cloak and dagger stuff? There's enough mercs there to take down bounty hunters and raiders, but a company of Stormtroopers are going to roll right over them. Who's in control of them that Gideon didn't want it known that the Imperials had nabbed The Child?
Multiple factions wanted Baby Yoda as well. Don’t forget IG’s job was kill him on sight, not retrieve. Isn’t BY supposed to be like fifty or am I misremembering that tidbit?
1. Mercenaries are cheap. Dead mercenaries are even cheaper. You can send as many as you like as you only need pay the successful one.
2. An action like that might draw unwanted attention. For the moment, we don’t know the extent of Gideon’s forces. It may simply be that one Arquitens in terms of a fleet, or he may have significantly more hidden away. Either way, whatever he’s working on, he’d be wise to be very, very wary of tipping off the New Republic.
This also fits him issuing the bounty via The Client, who is of course revealed to be a cat’s paw.
The unresolved question remains....who was guarding The Child, and the all important why.
In Galactic terms, Imperial activity seems to draw New Republic attention fairly quickly. Blue and his squad show up within hours or days of Greef reporting the destruction of the science facility.
I can imagine the sort of scrutiny a full scale operation intended to capture one individual would draw down!
Gideon also has quite a few other irons in the fire. He's definitely engaged in some serious Mandalorian hunting, and has been for some time. If he's part of an Imperial resistance he's definitely not operating alone, and has a sector he's responsible for. No matter how important baby Yoda is to us, or ultimately may become to his experiments, he's just one source of midichlorians.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Given he’s 50 during the Mando (9ABY), The Child would’ve been 22 when Order 66 was enacted (19BBY).
Are we actually sure about that? I thought the 50 years of age specifically referred to the locator codes Din is given. If I remember that right it doesn't necessarily mean Baby Yoda is that exact age. Whoever put him with the pirates or mercs or whatever may have played the long game (not dissimilar to Palpi setting up the Clone Wars and the transformation of the Republic for over a decade) and got different pieces of the puzzle at different times.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Is it possible he was a Youngling then? Could the person who placed him on Arvala-7 have been a Jedi?
Careful now. You're making Anakin all twitchy suggesting he may have missed a youngling.
SERIOUSLY DO NOT READ MY SPOILERED TEXT BEFORE YOU’VE SEEN THE EPISODE.
Spoiler:
MDG FTW! Grogoo was Jedi trained before the dark times! And yes, Grogoo has a name! It’s Grogoo! Quite a bit of the wean’s background cleared up, but gaps left.
Also, Ashoka and Michael Biehn, in the same episode! Mr Filoni, you are really spoiling us!
In terms of the actual plot? Appreciating the Straight To Business approach. No long tease, just “look, you know who she is, and here she is, and yes she’s a bad bottom. Enjoy!”
Oooh....typing as I watch....did Ahsoka perhaps think Din might be force sensitive? ]
Some solid world building thanks to Ahsoka knowing her historical onions.
Are those Droids Old Old Republic? I’m not familiar with them or that era.
And some of the best live action Jedi stuff I’ve seen in a while.
Is the baddies Boss Moff Gideon? Probably, but maybe not. Could be another baddie thrown into the pot. HOLY POOP SOCKS!!!! I’ve got a fiver saying Gideon is Thrawn’s catspaw
Really, really cool to see Beskar being Beskar, doing what Beskar does best.
Also, interesting that Ahsoka’s sabres make a different sound?
Like Ashoka was looking for Thrawn. this implies that by the 7 ABY point she still hasn't found Ezra...
and of course the new quest being to go to tython. it'll be intreasting to see how they square it and Ach to
Maybe she has found Ezra, just not Thrawn? And a quick Google shows Tython is in the Deep Core. That’s somewhere we’ve not really seen explored on-screen beyond Coruscant, as Clone Wars and Rebels etc largely focussed on the outer rim.
Very excite! And if I could, I’d buy Mr Filoni a pint. The highest accolade a Brit can bestow. I mean, sure the Queen gives out OBEs etc, but she does that every year. How often do you think she buys someone a pint?
Given how plot dense this chapter was, spesh for those clamouring for Ahsoka, the very drab and neutral colour palette really, really works. It means we the audience can better focus on what the characters are saying and doing, rather than drinking in the background spectacle Star Wars is rightly known for.
Alright I’m back. Yep, that was pretty cool. Except the assassin droids. Those were some real bargain bin assassin droids.
I was surprised nothing was in the water. I was expecting her to have a pet monster of some kind.
I’ve not seen the final season(s?) of Clone Wars, or Any of Rebels so I’m missing some bits. I know who Thrawn is. I don’t know who Ezra is. Also how did Ahsoka survive 66 anyways? Just being that awesome or some quirk? Any other things I’m missing that I should probably know?
Woo that was a good one! Full of plot, full of information on The Child.
Spoilers in the spoiler bit:
Spoiler:
I really wasn't expecting Corvus to be burnt to a crisp but that was an excellent nod to the imperial war engine destroying planets for the sake of resources. I was expecting something lush and vibrant but this felt dark and dagobah-esque.
Also loved the fact Ahsoka wouldn't train Grogoo due to his attachments to Din, an interesting dilemma that Qui Gon had when he discovered Anakin and obviously that scene was a nod to Anakin's fall.
That Beskar spear is a great thing he'll have to use against Moff Gideon for that showdown.
I reckon Tython sets things up for either Ezra to show up if he's still about, or maybe we'll see Mace Windu as so many have theorised recently.
Also how did Ahsoka survive 66 anyways? Just being that awesome or some quirk? Any other things I’m missing that I should probably know?
Major Clone Wars spoilers
Spoiler:
Shortly after catching Maul in the Siege of Mandalore, Ahsoka and her clone troopers led by Rex are on a Star Destroyer heading back to Coruscant when order 66 is invoked. Rex tries to fight it at first and tells Ahoska to find out about Fives a clone who had discovered the truth about the Inhibitor chip in all the clones heads after 1 malfunctioned and the clone Tup killed his Jedi commander prematurely. Ahsoka escapes the initial attack but is stuck on the Star Destroyer as Rex has jettisoned all the escape pods and the clones control the hangar
She lets Maul lose to provide a distraction and then finds out about the inhibitor chip from the records about Fives . She captures Rex and has a medical droid remove the chip which gets him back on side. Rex tries to convince the other clones Ahsoka is no Jedi (technically true as she was expelled from the order and stripped of her Padawan status before reaching the rank of Jedi Knight and she refused an offer to rejoin even after being cleared of wrong doing) but Jesse points out Rex's initial order was to specifically kill Ahoska. They turn on him a well. Ultimately the Star Destroyer crashes into a moon, Maul escapes in a transport and Ahsoka and Rex escape in a Y wing, everyone else is killed. Ahsoka leaves her sabers in the wreckage which Vader finds a few years later and it's assumed she died in the crash.
Also latest theory doing the rounds about future events
Spoiler:
They may introduce Luke through Grogu reaching out to other force users at the Jedi Temple on Tython, then again it may be a different Jedi, force user or an agent of the dark side or all of the above
One of the thing I like the most about this show is that they release one episode a week which is cool because it let's you time to process it and maybe watch it again. The thing I hate the most about this show is that they release one episode a week and I can't binge watch the thing because it's awesome.
PS: I wonder if we'll see the Armorer again or how the hell will the Imperials manage to follow the Mandalorian through what should be Republic space.
Pretty sweet episode, and good I think for building the mythos. Referencing <you know who> puts footing down for future programs and makes the universe feel larger than just Mando and Baby because other things are going on that don't directly involve them. It's an aspect of world building where a lot of things kind of fail, which inadvertently makes their main characters seem mary suish because everything ends up seemingly revolving around them. Part of me wants to see more of this, and I'm not sure if it'll come back up in Mandolorian or be used to spring board some other live action show. Either way, I think it's the kind of episode a franchise needs to grow and is the kind of episode many franchises today utterly fail to conceive.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: They are quite possibly angling after a CW type array of shows which can interconnect, without having to interconnect?
Hopefully they learned a lesson from Agents of Shield on how not to do it. I'm on board with criticizing the Arrowverse for being very samey across each show, but as a large continuity involving multiple shows it worked for the most part. I'd be on board for something like that in Star Wars though as long as they avoided crossover series that required me to hunt down the crossover episodes on four different shows. I'd definitely like to see more Ahsoka and more Thrawn. Finding out what happened to Ezra or Hera in this time period would also be nice.
Serious, serious respect to everyone involved in bringing The Mandalorian to our screens.
It’s the first live action SW tv series. We’ve waited decades for this. And let’s be honest. It’s SW, on Disney+. It would always have had an audience.
Yet this isn’t even remotely phoned in.
But looking at the production costs, it was still a risk for the House of Mouse. So the higher ups, despite Favreau and Filoni’s obvious talent and track records, could’ve insisted on a more conservative approach.
Thankfully they didn’t, and the risks taken are paying off in spades. Sure, us Sad Nerks who probably know more about SW than our jobs are loving it - but it’s still remained accessible to the casual viewer.
I wondered if the planet wasn't supposed to be the one from Splinter of the Mind's Eye, with everything going on with Foster. Sure looked like the cover art and description.
Still sigh...
Spoiler:
I hate Thrawn with great hate. Such a Mary Sue villain, he even has glowing red eyes. Fie on him! Fie!
And...
Was it just me or were Asoka's horns made of foam rubber? I could not stop seeing the wrinkles in them. I thought they were supposed to be bone. Should have used some solid prosthetics.
That was a very cool episode. I got some amusement out of the fact that Ahsoka acts more 'jedi' than pretty much any jedi we've seen on the screen so far, other than possibly Obi Wan in ANH - the way she just radiates calm, and then bursts in action. It's beautifully done.
They may introduce Luke through Grogu reaching out to other force users at the Jedi Temple on Tython, then again it may be a different Jedi, force user or an agent of the dark side or all of the above
Spoiler:
There have been rumours for a while now about Mace Windu popping up at some point. Not specifically tied to this series, but it would probably make more sense here than having it be Luke, if only because it would be considerably easier to cast...
The show looks cheaper than it's budget on a pretty frequent basis.
Spoiler:
It's supposedly $15mil per episode. Babylon 5 was roughly $800k. That comes up to $1.5mil~ today.
The Mandalorian looks better...I'd go so far as to say objectively better...but it's much more inconsistent. I never lost the feeling of verisimilitude with B5 and I loose it frequently with The Mandalorian.
Was it just me or were Asoka's horns made of foam rubber? I could not stop seeing the wrinkles in them. I thought they were supposed to be bone. Should have used some solid prosthetics.
They're tentacles, not bone. I assumed the wrinkles were deliberate.
Was it just me or were Asoka's horns made of foam rubber? I could not stop seeing the wrinkles in them. I thought they were supposed to be bone. Should have used some solid prosthetics.
They're tentacles, not bone. I assumed the wrinkles were deliberate.
They didn't look like skin either, they looked like foam rubber...
I don't think Ahsoka ever met Yaddle. Padawans didn't often get to interact with the council of masters.
Yoda, yes. She often had one-on-one dealings with the small green one and had met several other masters, as well as "council" members (Plo Koon being the first one she'd met, since he's the one who "found" her.).
insaniak wrote: Yaddle retired from the council somewhere between Ep1 and Ep2. It's entirely possible that Ahsoka never met her.
Retired? More like dead in a flashy bang.
It was in one of the YA series of novels they did; admittingly, that's non-canon nowadays. But it was Anakin's fault, so you can add that to his list of screw ups.
Loved the no messing around with the episode. No, big drawn out hunt before the pay off that we've been waiting for - straight to the bottom kicking bit. Cool.
Like Mad Doc, I thought that I'd got a handle on who she was trying to find. Have to admit, a rather rude word was said when we found out who it actually was.
The only thing that I want out of this show is for it to get released on Blu Ray in the future (once the Mouse is convinced that it's squeezed all of the subscription money out of it). I'd like to have something more permanent and tangible to preserve it because it's the best thing that I've watched, like, forever.
It was in one of the YA series of novels they did; admittingly, that's non-canon nowadays. But it was Anakin's fault, so you can add that to his list of screw ups.
Yeah, the current canon is that she stepped back from Jedi business, and nobody knows what actually happened to her.
This show just gets better and better. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the real sequel series.
I’ve got a couple of issues with
Spoiler:
Thrawn
as a character though:
Spoiler:
He’s a non human imperial. A high ranking non human imperial. A non human imperial who almost looks human but not quite. And an admiral, a military officer, who acts more like a sort of spy master. I mean that can happen yeah but...
All these things together scream to me ‘dodgy fan fiction’ material.
I think Ashoka's head business cannot be bone. She wouldn't be able to move her head if it was. They have to be some kind of malleable. While yeah it looked like foam rubber, it's basically impossible for us to know what alien whatever the hell that is is supposed to look like. Especially when going from 3d not super detailed animation to live action so I give it all a pass.
No, the Montrals are the top two cones. The Lekku hang down.
Togrutas were a sentient species from the planet Shili. They were characterized by their colorful skin tones, large montrals and head tails, and white facial pigments, which served to hide them from predators
Future War Cultist wrote: This show just gets better and better. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the real sequel series.
I’ve got a couple of issues with
Spoiler:
Thrawn
as a character though:
Spoiler:
He’s a non human imperial. A high ranking non human imperial. A non human imperial who almost looks human but not quite. And an admiral, a military officer, who acts more like a sort of spy master. I mean that can happen yeah but...
All these things together scream to me ‘dodgy fan fiction’ material.
Almost didn't put this is spoiler tags, but I realize it actually addresses the episode in question, so...
Spoiler:
Now, the non-human part is not as much of an issue as it could be, depending on how they're following the sea of ink spill on RPG books, games and novels. Somewhere in that mess, 'non-humans' and 'near-humans' got lumped into distinct categories, and get different levels of discrimination. But Thrawn is also functionally a semi-secret Grand Admiral, and is defending the Empire against unspecified things out in the dark reaches of the galaxy and would have been wasted against the Rebellion because secret threat reasons. [Which probably got explained at some point, but I honestly don't care]
But Thrawn _is_ dodgy fan fiction. He's a 'super genius' that basically got his position by being favored of the Emperor.
In the books where he's introduced, it starts absurd, and gets worse. He can predict military strategy by studying a species art. In one example, by studying holo-recordings of a species' art, he knows that they 'always turn left' when exiting hyperspace. Even though most of the art he was studying was pre-spaceflight, and how he knows the commander is making the precise judgement calls on navigation and etc. So he's able to ambush them... its just weird, wacky crap. Every alien races is completely one-dimensional, so he can formulate exact strategies against them that only fail when an unknown variable is introduced. Basically if he can spend a couple weeks in the National Gallery of Art, he can out maneuver any army or fleet. Even if the commander's themselves have no particular knowledge of or connection to their art movements, or are from a different sub-culture or background. If a Rodian grows up on the streets of Corellia, who's art tradition matters?
Add the super assassins he got from Vader, and the magic ability to utilize tech in ways no one thought of over the course of 10,000 years of galactic history, has secret bases and clones, and ugh... Thrawn. All the cliches.
trexmeyer wrote: No, the Montrals are the top two cones. The Lekku hang down.
Togrutas were a sentient species from the planet Shili. They were characterized by their colorful skin tones, large montrals and head tails, and white facial pigments, which served to hide them from predators
My understanding is Lekku are very sensitive organs that serve a very particular purpose for the Twilek species. Nerves in them amount to extra neurons like how a octopus has most of it's neurons in it's arms. What Ahsoka has is not Lekku. They very well might be some kind of "head tail" but that doesn't make them that very particular organ. And nothing in that link says that they are.
trexmeyer wrote: No, the Montrals are the top two cones. The Lekku hang down.
Togrutas were a sentient species from the planet Shili. They were characterized by their colorful skin tones, large montrals and head tails, and white facial pigments, which served to hide them from predators
My understanding is Lekku are very sensitive organs that serve a very particular purpose for the Twilek species. Nerves in them amount to extra neurons like how a octopus has most of it's neurons in it's arms. What Ahsoka has is not Lekku. They very well might be some kind of "head tail" but that doesn't make them that very particular organ. And nothing in that link says that they are.
Dude, really? Maybe Wookiepedia is wrong. I don't know, but according to that source, Togruta have lekku.
Lekku (singular lek), also referred to as head-tails, were long, fleshy appendages that protruded from the head of all Twi'leks, Togrutas and male Ozrelanso. The Togrutas sported three of them, while the other species had two (occasionally four, in the case of Twi'leks).
The name "lekku" was also used to describe the striped head-tails of the Togrutas. That species, however, had three such appendages: two lekku to the front, falling over the chest, and one thicker lek that was centered at the rear base of their skull.[9] As seen on Governor Roshti, a male Togruta's lekku were shorter than those of a female.[10] The color of a Togruta's lekku was determined by their DNA,[9] and they grew as their wearer matured. In adolescence, the head-tails extended only slightly past the collarbones, but could reach below the waist by adulthood.[11]
Y'know the bit in Rogue One, where Darth Vader tears through the reble troopers and shows just how utterly terrifying the Sith are against normal people?
In terms of Grand Admiral Thrawn, is this revealing a bigger big bad than Moff Gideon?
I’m 50/50 on that count. For a start. I’m not sure who holds rank in that duo. Moff Gideon may pip Thrawn, simply because a Moff is in charge of a sector/sub sector. But post-Endor, one suspects authority is primarily derived from one’s assets.
My other ‘hmmm’ thought basically boils down to Willy Waving. There’ll be Imperial warlords all clamouring to become the new Emperor. So there’s nothing to say Gideon and Thrawn would work together anyway.
There’s also, canonically, Thrawn’s rather dubious dedication to The Empire. Sure, he was loyal to Palpatine, but only because Thrawn was Up To Something. He is ultimately loyal to himself, then the Chiss. At least that’s my impression - but I think I’m a book or two behind?
Then we have repeated (but as far as I’m aware, currently unsubstantiated) rumours of a Rebels sequel show?
The more I think about this, the more theories pop into my head. So will leave it here for now! Feel free to chime in though.
In terms of Grand Admiral Thrawn, is this revealing a bigger big bad than Moff Gideon? .
I don't think so. I'm expecting an Ahsoka spin-off, with Moff Gideon remaining the big bad for the Mandalorian, at least until Bo-Katan fights him for the darksaber. Then a new big bad introduced as the current boss of Mandalore for the Mandalorians to gang up on.
I could also see them introducing a Deathwatch boss to go up against Bo-Katan at some point along the way, to give Din one of those 'Where do your loyalties lie?' quandries.
Ahsoka was designed as a cartoon but I think the character transferred to live action mostly successfully. A big part of the success was the design of her clothing. She seems to be essentially wearing hakama. This gave her a genre-appropriate and interesting profile.
Manchu wrote: I despise Thrawn. What a worthless character.
Having no exposure to him outside of Rebels, I thought he worked well there as an actually capable Imperial officer.
He did seem over the top only in comparison to the hilariously incapable officers the Empire is usually shown to have, but on his own I have no issues with him. That said, the description earlier in the thread from his novels doesn't sound all that great.
Given how Rebels ends it makes sense that subsequent shows would feature him in some capacity. Frankly I'm very happy with how Filoni's shows have recurring appearances and establish continuity that way. Having the shows and movies from Episode 1 to Mandalorian mesh into one continuous story appeals to me.
Voss wrote: [Which probably got explained at some point, but I honestly don't care]
For anyone who does care:
Spoiler:
When Thrawn's fanfictioning got to the point of "was actually the hero all along" we learn he was defending the Galaxy against the Vong, who probably wouldn't have destroyed the Galaxy if they had just let the Thrawn run the Empire.
I'm of two minds on Thrawn. For one, I get and appreciate his initial appeal. He was a big subversion on his release, being a bad guy who was competent in an era of incompetent evil. He would run away when outmatched rather than blindly pursue heroes that posed no real threat to his plans. That was his appeal but for a bunch of people this translated into "the most brilliant strategist that has ever existed". Similar to the Sherlock effect this got worse the more people tried to replicate this feeling. He's a good bad guy, but like many of his ilk, his reputation in the fandom can greatly exceed his reality.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Voss wrote: Add the super assassins he got from Vader]
These are so funny simply because they're a great reminder of how much the franchise changed after his inclusion. These things were actually written to be Sith because back when the book was written, Sith, much like Darth, was a term that had no specific meaning. Both were just cool titles attributed to Vader, but neither had any actual association with the Dark Side beyond sounding vaguely evil. So Zahn decided the Sith were these assassin aliens and Vader was their dark lord and then Lucas said no because he was writing the prequels and that was probably going to be the name for evil Jedi and Darth was going to be a title for mastery in that order which were things a lot of fans had kind of decided for themselves but didn't have any official answer on until the prequels. In all reality Darth was probably just the first name given to the character initially. Darth Vader, son of Bob and Sara Vader.
I enjoyed Thrawn. He was a bit ridiculous, but he needed to be in order to seem a threat in a galaxy of space wizards and robots. As a space opera big bad, I still prefer him to any of the prequel or sequel villains.
That said, my favorite Thrawn story is the duology where Thrawn was dead the entire time.
I never watched most of the Clone Wars series so I dont know how they portrayed thrawn in them, but the original thrawn from the EU was an amazing villain.
I know the first of the "disney canon" thrawn novels was pretty good. in that it's clear to me that he was being written as "what if sherlock holmes was an Imperial admiral?"
Earlier today it changed "farseer and warboss" to "career and waffles" on me.
