#i finally started reading the old books with thrawn so there is a possibility he may pop up more frequently

[sssamsondraws]

even when you have a bazillion things to be working on, sometimes you gotta step back, take a break, and make a thrawn WIP

#thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #star wars #star wars rebels #star wars art #star wars rebels art #the thrawn trilogy #star wars legends #my art #fanart #WIP #this will be finished eventually #it will likely become my breaktime art over the next while #i finally started reading the old books with thrawn so there is a possibility he may pop up more frequently #because hoooo boy #yes please #alright i'm done

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

⚠️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

#tye answers asks #not the post youre looking for #thrawn #timothy zahn #thrawn trilogy #legends thrawn #star wars #rebels #lothal #star wars rebels #dave filoni #thrawn ascendancy #chaos rising #greater good #thrawn alliances #thrawn treason #thrawn books #wow this took a while #but I like the way this is looking

[popwasabi]

“The Mandalorian” S2 is a power fantasy with mini Star Wars trailers

The term “Plot armor” is often used by readers and viewers to describe the myriad of ways writers keep their heroes away from any real danger no matter what choices or actions they make in the narrative. It’s typically a derisive phrase for the way a writer’s hero seems to escape death no matter what is thrown at him for the sole purpose of moving the plot forward.

In Disney+’s “The Mandalorian” this term takes a far more literal description in the form of our main anti-hero, played by Pedro Pascal, in his beskar armor which seems to be, by all accounts the most indestructible material in the galaxy far, far away.

(I mean, it still looks really cool too, of course.)

The result of this narrative decision in this series is that action scenes often don’t have real tension to them. In another series you might be able to reasonably believe the hero might be in danger with blaster fire shooting all around them but with beskar it’s almost comically not the case at all. Stormtroopers fire laser blast after laser blast at The Mando and each time they bounce harmlessly off him as if he were fucking Superman. It makes scenes feel devoid of stakes and danger no matter what situation they are in.

The show thus becomes a power fantasy, as action scenes serve as extended highlight reels for the Mando. Where season 1 of the show mitigated the power of the Mando’s plot armor by putting him more often in situations where his beskar alone wasn’t enough to save the day, season 2 goes mostly full power fantasy as The Mando rarely runs into a situation he can’t just quite literally walk through.

(“Aim for his armor, men! That’s his weak point!”)

This isn’t to say the season wasn’t without its high moments or even that it wasn’t enjoyable plenty of times but the series’ devotion to fan servicey action and callbacks to “Hey remember ____” makes it a fairly shallow story. At least for myself.

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” continues the story of Din and his small Yoda-like companion, The Child (later known officially as Grogu), as he looks to complete a quest to return the burgeoning Force wielder to the Jedi. As he seeks to reunite The Child with the ancient Order, he encounters other Mandalorians who are on a quest to retake Mandalore and right on their tail is the nefarious Grand Moff Gideon who is still bent on capturing Grogu for whatever it is he has planned for the Empire.

Let me start this review by saying power fantasies aren’t inherently bad to watch or read. They can be good, cathartic junk food for the soul and can also be compelling, artistic, or even deeply metaphorical in their own way. A movie series like “John Wick” for instance is a power fantasy that aims to reinvent the wheel in action film-making with Keanu Reeves performing perhaps the best gun kata of all-time onscreen. Another film like Paul Verhoueven’s “Total Recall” can satirize the power fantasy to show how ridiculous it is in concept.

So, making your hero an unstoppable killing machine isn’t necessarily always a bad thing if used properly.

(Seriously, this is one of the smartest action films ever made. Don’t @ me.)

Now that that’s established, however, “The Mandalorian” season 2, despite some strong moments here and there, is a power fantasy that lacks these elements for a more interesting narrative. If you believe killing dozens of stormtroopers onscreen while never suffering so much as a scratch for eight episodes equals compelling storytelling then boy does Disney have a series for you.

Through the first four-ish episodes, the new season is mostly just fine and even quite enjoyable. We have the Mando getting a fun side quest with Timothy Olyphant on Tatooine where they get to wrangle a sand worm in a callback to the Westerns that inspired much of the franchise’s aesthetic. The Mando gets to escort a frog lady to her home planet to give birth to some tadpoles and they run into some actual danger in this episode in the form of kyrnknas/space spiders. And we get the return of Bo Katan from Dave Filoni’s “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” cartoon series, with Katee Sackhoff herself reprising the role in a fun Mandalorian team-up episode.

(I’m just so happy to see my girl, Starbuck, again more than anything honestly ;_;)

But the wheels started officially falling off for me in the next episode.

Episode 5 marked the live-action debut of fan favorite Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson, and she meets the Mando by getting the jump on him with her lightsabers. In virtually any other situation we have been told lightsabers can cut through virtually anything. Now, beskar has been shown to be plenty durable throughout the series so far but lightsabers? Surely not.

Well…

It is an overall good episode despite this but it marked the point for me where I badly wanted The Mando to just go the rest of the series without it. Obviously, the writers aren’t going to actually kill our hero, afterall The Mouse needs more money and he can’t have it unless we get 50 more Mandalorian episodes and spin-offs, but at some point I gotta feel like there’s a possibility at least that our hero might actually die or at least is in danger. It is actually super funny to me each time The Mando ducks or seeks cover in a shootout when I know, and the viewer damn well knows, he can literally walk right into the middle of it and shoot all these motherfuckers at his own leisure cause his actual plot armor is the stuff of adamantium and vibranium combined.

Episode 5 is mostly good though, it’s a nice callback to old school samurai flicks and for an old fan like myself it was enough to ignore beskar again saving the Mando’s ass.

(This was cool...This...was...cool.)

If episode 5 marked the point in which the wheels began to come off though, episode 6 is where the show really spun out into the ditch for me. Perhaps, this series worst episode, personally, episode 6 reintroduces fan favorite and series inspiration Boba Fett back officially into the fold and the result was perhaps the most self-indulgent entry of the series.

(I mean, it was directed by Robert Rodriguez so...)

Boba arrives to demand his beskar from The Mando who promptly tells him “no” before they are ambushed by a platoon of stormtroopers. Alongside Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand, the three do battle with the stormtroopers with ridiculous ease. I’m aware that stormtroopers exist to be on the highlight reel of our heroes in this franchise and have a long history of not being able to hit the broad side of a bantha but again, I can only watch these guys die by the dozens onscreen over and over again while our heroes get away without suffering even a bruise before it starts feeling boring and repetitive.

It only gets worse once Boba actually puts on his armor. In a sequence that I would describe as “gratuitously” fan servicey, Boba wastes just about every last stormtrooper in this scene culminating with him destroying their two get-away vehicles in a single shot with a rocket. Considering he was killing them with ease just moments before with nothing more than a battle club and a bathrobe, it seemed almost hilariously needless that he donned his iconic armor.

(It would be tempting to say the stormtroopers fought as ineptly as the Putty Patrol here but even the Power Rangers have struggled a few times against these guys...)

I get that Boba is really important to a lot of fans, based on their perceptions of him in the original trilogy and subsequent books and graphic novels that came out in the following years, but here’s a hot take; this series didn’t need him in it. Maybe they didn’t need to keep him rotting in the Sarlacc Pit but this episode, alongside Ahsoka Tano’s feels more like marketing choices for the story rather than narrative ones. I’ll concede that there is a bit more substance to having Ahsoka there to commune with Grogu but their additions to the plot don’t actually show much of anything about the Mando outside physically helping him in a fight.

The way they tease, in both cases, stories that exist outside the internal narrative between Ahsoka’s search for Admiral Thrawn and Boba taking over Jabba’s palace at the end of the final episode, it feels like Disney threw in mini trailers for fans to nibble on at the expense of telling the Mando’s own story and letting it stand on its own like the first season.

The choice to have these characters shoved into this season again appears to be market driven not narrative. Once more, I get that these characters are important personally to many fans, but the appearance of these characters alone DO NOT equal good storytelling.

(Me when a fan tells me “But Boba was such a badass in *obscurely titled EU book that a handful of general audiences have read*! He deserves this moment!”)

The final episode of the season is truly encapsulating of all these issues “The Mandalorian” has, however. Moff Gideon, played by the always sharp Giancarlo Esposito, has Grogu imprisoned aboard his ship. The Mando and his friends plan a rescue mission to save him and, just like nearly every episode before, it is stupidly easy for our protagonists.

The crew of five, again, walk through every Imperial on the ship. I don’t mean this metaphorically by the way, I mean this literally as Cara, Fennec, Bo Katan and Koshka Reeves (played by WWE’s Sasha Banks) without a single moment of real adversity just blast through every stormtrooper on the ship and never get hit once in the process.

A good action scene needs an element of danger, a sense that our hero might actually not come out of this alive even though we all know they will. An action scene without this has no tension and without tension it becomes booooooooring.

(Even John fucking Wick is capable of bleeding, guys...)

The finale had a chance, however, to add real stakes and danger to the scene in the form of this season’s new enemy; The Dark Troopers. These Imperial battle droids were foreshadowed as these super soldiers at the end of episode 4 and seemed to be billed as a real dangerous match for our heroes to faceup against. When the Mando finally gets himself face to face with one he finds they are not as easy to kill as the nameless stormtroopers from before. To see The Mando briefly face real adversity for a change snapped me out of my cynical mood so sharply for a moment I thought I had turned on another series by accident.

But of course, danger never lasts long in this series as The Mando’s armor again saves him first from getting pummeled to death by the droid’s super fists then he uses his plot spear, cause of course he has one of those too, to finish the job.

Danger over.

Moff Gideon doesn’t fair much better in this episode. This villain who had been built up for two seasons as this calculative monster gets stopped rather easily with Mando and his friends barely breaking a sweat. This character feels wasted because of this, even though I’m sure Giancarlo Esposito will return in the next season. He just feels about as much like a pushover as the nameless stormtroopers in this series.

The episode had one more chance though to show these Dark Troopers meant business toward the end as we found the heroes cornered on the command deck with nowhere to run and a dozen of these droids ready to blast and pound them into the floorboards. But help arrives in the form of a Deus X-Wing Machina.

Without having to face even one Dark Trooper, Luke fucking Skywalker arrives on the ship and kills every droid without breaking a sweat. It plays as inspiring in the moment but again I just found myself bored and irritated. A chance to see the series heroes actually use their wits and show their creativity in a moment of true danger thwarted to please fan boys.

I get that Grogu called out to him in episode 6 but creatively this felt like an extremley lazy way to solve the heroes’ dilemna.

(“Hello my name is Jedi. I enjoy doing...*computes script* Jedi things.”)

This season wasn’t all bad. It certainly had nice production value that made each alien world pop and beautiful to look at. Every actor and actress played their parts expertly well, with what they were given, and made for interesting characters at times. There are also nice homages to both Western and Samurai cinema throughout the season that fans of both will appreciate. And Pedro Pascal is just so good on his own, especially in tender moments with Grogu, that you forget that his character is kind of a Gary Stu.

But the main crux of the issue here that I’m trying to get across is the reason you need to remove the plot armor of your heroes is not just because action scenes need tension and stakes, it’s that when faced with danger these scenes reveal who these characters are. I used to believe that the reason Mandalorians and Jedi had such a fierce rivalry in the lore despite the obvious advantages of wielding the Force was because these famed bounty hunters were just that fucking good at killing. That despite being, on paper, normal people they had great martial prowess, athletic skill, and the tactical wit to outsmart people who can literally sense their feelings. But now with beskar and the way this series is written, it appears the Mandalorians were challenging warriors just because they happened to harness the most OP armor building material in the galaxy.

It makes you wonder how the fuck they were conquered to begin with…

(Maybe they just needed more knee rockets...)

This takes away from the mysticism of the Mandalorians for me. It makes The Mando less interesting to me in the way he fights. Yea he can shoot really good too but really it’s the armor that makes him the fighter that he is and I find that kind of boring. We occasionally get this character to remove the armor during the series, including a whole episode that was easily one of the best of the season, and in every case he’s more interesting once the helmet comes off. I get that fans hold a lot of reverence for that armor, yea it still looks really cool, but making it this impenetrable super material doesn’t add anything to the story.

If anything, it takes away from it.

(Plus how could you not love Pedro Pascal when he’s out of armor? uWu)

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I hate season 2, even though I spent 2000 plus words just now lambasting it but I guess I just want to say I am unimpressed more than anything. I feel like I’ve seen better Star Wars be it in the movies, cartoons, books, video games, etc and I’ve certainly seen better action in the franchise as well.

Considering fan reaction so far appears to be overwhelmingly positive, I am definitely in the minority here and you are welcome to enjoy this series as much as you want in spite of how unimpressed I am with the season. But considering all I have seen of this fandom the last few years, regarding complaints about fan service (“Rogue One”), easily defeated/underdeveloped bad guys (“The Last Jedi”), and Mary Sues (The sequel trilogy in general), I have to ask again what is it actually that fans like or don’t like about new entries in the franchise? It’s not that there isn’t valid criticisms there and “The Mandalorian” is enjoyable in sincere ways too but it has many of the issues I hear commonly said of more divisive entries in the Disneyverse. So why does it get a pass?

I’ve been told it’s not worth my energy to talk too derisively about the fans in one of my earlier write-ups, so I’ll leave it at that but it does make me wonder.

(“Rogue One” admittedly has a simarily self-indulgent action sequence though haha...)

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” isn’t the worst piece of Star Wars media ever created, far from it, and for most part its solid enjoyable Saturday morning cartoon theater but if the series wants to really take steps to become more compelling in the future it might be good to stop bubble wrapping their heroes in plot armor. Literally.

Until then this is the way…I guess…

Me getting ready for the backlash...

#Star Wars #the mandalorian #Mando #Baby Yoda #grogu #Boba Fett #Mandalorians #bsg #Battlestar Galactica #jedi #Ahsoka tanno #The Last Jedi #ROgue One #jon favreau #dave filoni #Clone Wars #Star Wars rebels #Sabine Wren #Breaking Bad #John Wick #Keanu Reeves #paul verhoeven #Total Recall #power fantasy #disney #Disney Plus #TV #review

[dexi-green]

Gotta put together (some of) my feelings and thoughts about the mandalorian S2 finale so spoilers, can’t put it under a read more on tablet but SPOILERs and it’s tagged so:

I didn’t get it until the x wing landed in the hangar... then I started crying in both hope and fear. I felt Luke was the option to go to but I never thought they would ACTUALLY do it. Then it was him on the cams and you couldn’t see the color but the SOUND. Then you saw the glove!!! And then the shot mirroring Vader with the green in the smoke like...wow (also kinda mirrored Vader’s slaughter in rogue one but with less human murder). And so many of Luke’s moves reminded me of Anakin and Vader that it was just undeniable. Like it all just compiled so nicely and it was just amazing. (the cgi on his face was a lil eh but it was still Luke) AND THEN R2!!! I jumped and yelped and cried again. And then of course Din removing his helmet for Grogu... come on... it’s too sweet. “‘let me look on you with my own eyes” come THROUGH FATHER SON DYNAMIC ITS POETRY IT RHYMES!!! But of course the thought crossed my mind when Luke was holding Grogu... his possible fate to Kyle at Luke’s temple... oof. I mean possibly not but ??? ALSO WHEN GIDEON TRIED TO SHOOT GROGU?!?! I HATED THAT SO MUCH! THAT SPLIT SECOND HAD ME REELING,SEETHING. Also I wonder if Grogu is the first kid recruited by Luke? I think that would be such an interesting dynamic, I mean aside from Ben of course but... that is just such an interesting thought for this to be the first recruitment of his temple. The weight it puts on that scene and Luke’s determination to get to him...like come on. The only thing I wanted more than Luke was Leia, because I am dying for more Jedi Leia, but it’s obviously a bit iffy territory to tread, sadly rip queen. Also also I need to see a Grogu/Din reunion. Particularly I think it would be great to see them years later, I mean I would love Din to have constant contact with his SON, but of course a years later reunion would be so interesting to see the dynamic. Do they settle back in? Is Grogu too young rn to be able to be taken away and have a good connection (without taking into account any force connection type vibes) later on? Grogu didn’t get his ball...

Also i was so engrossed I forgot about the actual kind of... inheritance of the darksaber, kinda due to Sabine giving Bo the darksaber in rebels?? and that was just such a moment. As soon as I saw Gideon smiling/laughing at Bo I was like.. wait a minute... The whole time, from Boba and Koska and Bo’s fight/bickering at the beginning, to when Gideon was holding it up to Grogu, I was just like Din doesn’t care about all this he just wants Grogu. And it broke my heart when he was telling her to take it, and she just couldn’t, knowing that’s not what he wants at all (i mean who knows where it will go now with Grogu gone but :/ still doesn’t seem like the rule Mandalore type but he really almost has a no choice.. also high key feel bad for Bo. She was just feigning for Gideon and the darksaber and made it clear but just happenstance and.. not even back at square one but now stuck in this weird place. She knows Din’s not like Gideon so she can’t justify going after him like that. But also lowkey wanted to fight her after she called out Boba as not a real mandalorian, and talking about him being a clone, at the beginning but I guess he doesn’t really care too much sinc he’s so sure of himself and doesn’t need recognition from other mandalorians). I am so interested in how Din moves forward. Also I love how they allowed Luke and Boba to just pass each other lol because 😬 (also is koska dead??) And according to Gideon they already got Grogu’s blood so :/ but also R2/Grogu recognizing each other??

BOBA SUPREMACCYYYY!!!! RIP Jeremy Bulloch 💕 The after credit omg... Fat Bib Fortuna physically taking Jabba’s place on the throne and manifesting the body to go with it lol but I loved how it mirrored Luke’s entrance at Jabba’s palace, and of course as soon as we see Fennec I know Boba was coming along, and I just... oof. The book of Boba... wow... I am so hype for next December. Him and Fennec running the criminal underworld?? Pls let Cobb vanth show up because I would love to see Boba stare down the dude who ‘borrowed’ his armor for a while. Also I wanna know a bit more of Boba’s escape/survival and time with the Tusken raiders, I loved seeing them a bit more this season compared to the very brief glimpses and Ani’s slaughter. Also Dark Troopers so good. Good love it.

I wonder if the book of boba is the next season, so an installment of this series.. that’s what I think it will probably be... but also Bo and Din on mandalore?? But also explore Luke’s Jedi Temple... him finding the force sensitives and how his methods differ from the old Jedi Order. How he changes it and improves or what he sticks to that works/doesn’t?? And of course we got the set up for Thrawn/Ahsoka/ EZRA??!?!? (pls rahul kohli) show and all the other shows which.. while I am hype for book of boba (the best title) I am still OBVI most hype for the Obi wan because baby boy ani and ewan, like if this?!? Had me crying... I am going to get destroyed when that obi-wan show drops. Dubstep droids... Also I really thought there would be something to the “‘pure Beskar” line, like one of the mando’s armor wouldn’t be pure and they get stabbed... listen I came into this thinking someone was going to die.

I have so much Feelings and Thoughts and just needed them somewhere. It felt like Star Wars... it felt like I was in the theaters. I was crying and talking to myself and silently yelling since it was 3am but... it just felt amazing. It was amazing. Like it’s just kind of insane especially when there were so many times when it seemed like Star Wars was gone or changing too much... which isn’t exactly bad but it was just kind of nice to feel like it used to. The nostalgia...and the love and the hope gosh ❤️

Edit: AHSOKA AND LUKE MEET. TALK ABOUT ANI! LET LUKE LEARN OF HIS DAD, LET AHSOKA LEARN OF HIS REDEMPTION! NOW LUCASFILMS🔫

#star wars #spoilers #sw #mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #boba Fett #din djarin #Grogu #text #rant #I’m just not okay rn #but also amazingly happy #mandalorian s2

[emperorsvornskr]

I was thinking about this last night, so I’m gonna post it again because I’m still mad lol.

Rant about Hux and how he was done so utterly and completely wrong, and how he deserved better under the cut. It’s long, I ain’t even sorry.

cw for mentions of child abuse

I honestly don’t even know where to start, so I guess with the background shit?

If you haven’t read the external material (and I’m guessing most of my followers have), the books and the comics established the following:

Hux was abused, definitely mentally, possibly physically by his dad.

He was given control of the original indoctrinated/trained “troopers” by Gallius Rax at the age of FIVE. (said troopers were basically indoctrinated feral children and they killed fully armoured Stormtroopers with crude daggers.)

The first thing Hux did was make them strike each other to see if they really would do whatever he said (They did.)

He made a deal with Rae Sloane wherein he would instruct the "soldiers” to leave her alone as long as she protected him from his father. (Sloane ended up beating the SHIT out of his father and basically said “Train him, teach him everything, and if you touch him again, I’ll kill you”)

Hux ended up rising through the ranks by killing his rivals, overpowering other cadets, not because of his position. He had control over the new system of troopers- they were programmed to listen to him, but he had to earn his rank.

He earned his rank through a mix of killing competition and “technological terror” and was knowledgeable of the operations/system of Starkiller Base and the Resurgent class ships, which lends to the notion that he spent a good bit of time learning a good deal of engineering and knew very well the capabilities of his fleet.

When Hux met Phasma, they ended up becoming very close, and she helped him kill his father by getting a beetle from her homeworld- bites from said beetle literally make you swell up and explode/rip apart- and Hux watched his father turn into a human soup in a bacta tank.

When a Captain found out Phasma had killed Brendol, Hux’s reply was "Cardinal, you're an idiot. My father knew it, and so do I. I know Phasma killed him, and I'm glad the old bastard is dead. We agreed on the right time for it to happen. I told her it had to be untraceable, and it shall remain so."

In his comic, Hux lies to a survivor of Alderaan’s destruction in order to use his relay comm, by telling him how Kylo is Leia and Han’s son, and when Phasma picks them up, Hux just leaves the dude there and says he’ll use the planet as target practice for Starkiller Base.

Hux canonically keeps monomolecular blades in his sleeves.

Multiple times, in the books and movies, Hux has had thoughts varying in degree of treason in that he was desiring to take control as Supreme Leader from Snoke, or wanting to kill Kylo, or even being ridiculously uncomfortable when Kylo mentions a spy- yet either Snoke and Kylo don’t take him seriously, or they cannot read his mind. (There are a lot of instances where Snoke reads Kylo’s mind, but seems to completely ignore or cannot read Hux’s mind)

Where am I going with this-

Hux started out as a great villain in TFA. Scary, ruthless, sadistic white dude leading a fascist regime. He was scary in that he was very realistic, very similar to many fascist figures. He was an example of how vulnerable people can absolutely be twisted into figureheads of hatred and evil, if put in the hands of the wrong people.

In TLJ, he was... made into an evil buffoon. Cocksure and vain but bumbling, and a comedic punching bag for Kylo Ren. But there were, even if they weren’t intention- moments that lent to Hux being very intelligent with technology and knowledgeable of his fleet:

The opening where the Finalizer, and three other resurgent cruisers came into orbit in perfect formation- and then the Fulminatrix, the dreadnaught, coming into position PERFECTLY made me think of how Thrawn used interdictor cruisers and their gravity wells to pull his own massive ships into position perfectly at perfect times to intimidate enemies and to perfectly execute combat manoeuvres.

I suspect this may have been the case in some effect, because it takes VERY specific calculations to drop a ship as big as the Fulminatrix out of hyperspace into perfect formation between ships a third of its size and not have it crash into them or overshoot its intended position. Hux commanded the fleets, that task force particularly, so it was his planning, his calculations, and they were flawless- until he lost his shit over Poe making him into a joke lol.

Hux was literally about to kill Kylo when he found him and Snoke’s body, and his own self preservation that had him putting the blaster away when Kylo started coming to.

People laughed about how Hux repeated all of Kylo’s orders in the command shuttle, but they forget that the TROOPERS are programmed/trained to follow Snoke or Hux’s orders.

It’s been, two hours, three hours tops since Snoke’s death at that point, I seriously doubt there was enough time to rewire an entire fleet’s staff. Sure, the officers are different, and they will obey Kylo because they’re wanting to live but the troopers are not as quick on the uptake because they’re conditioned to listen to HUX. So naturally, Hux is going to repeat the orders quickly so Kylo doesn’t go apeshit on his men- Kylo stabs at Hux in TFA about his men not following orders, and Kylo had just force choked him earlier, so it’s likely a combo of self preservation and the desire to avoid further dissent in the ranks by helping keep the chain of command going, because at this point, is it possible Kylo would lose his shit and take it out on the troopers and cause a massive loss because of his temper? All previous signs point to yes.

And then his reaction to Luke also points to yes. Being flung against the bulkhead- hard enough to injure, even be killed, Kylo didn’t care, that was a line in the book- also pointed to yes.

What made me HOPE for a coup, for a murder attempt, for ANY kind of usurping from Hux was this:

That look of cold, calculated murder. The look of someone determined in that instant to take down the one responsible for taking everything from them. A point could be argued that this is where Hux decided it was better to give the Resistance intel than letting Kylo take his legacy, his fleet, his regime, the credit for all his hard work. I’d buy it- but not when you see what he does, what happens, in RoS.

Here’s where I get angry:

Back to my point a bit earlier- why, in an environment surrounded by Force users (Snoke, Ren, Knight of Ren, and in some fashion, Sheev- who can read Kylo’s mind from a distance in some weird way) but isn’t outed for wanting control, for thinking about shooting/killing Kylo, for being a SPY by these mind readers- it was Pryde who saw through him.

This is... only partially in character for Hux. It’s 100% on brand for him as far as his pettiness and spite, but Hux put his entire self into the Order. He killed his father, slit throats, dealt with a hateful abusive father and the mockery of the OG Imps as he grew up. It is NOT like him to simply betray the Order like that for a simple petty grudge- not without a guarantee Ren would be ousted and he’d retake his rightful spot.

One hand- a fascist, mass murdering war criminal deserves an off handed, end scene no more mention kind of death because why glorify them, right? I get that. But I expected him to die trying to fuck Kylo over and take his spot as Supreme Leader by pointing out the issues and problems Kylo was causing by being linked to “The Scavenger,” which resulted in Rey being able to get onto the fucking flagship and ransack his quarters. Kylo was just as much a security issue as Hux being a random ass spy. I wanted him either going out in combat, or being captured by the Resistance and facing trial for his war crimes, to be held accountable for what he’d done. This death felt like a passive aggressive retcon in favour of Pryde.

Pryde was one of the officers who was friends with Brendol and was very likely one of the OG officers who abused Hux when he was a kid, and it is very upsetting that one of his abusers so carelessly offs him like a gnat and proved Brendol’s opinion of him and I feel like after ALL ARMITAGE HAS DONE, his abusers won and that’s legitimately borderline triggering for me as a kid who grew up in similar situations.

So overall, I’m just really mad because Hux was built up as this ruthless, intelligent, calculating villain who started out vulnerable and was manipulated and twisted into what he became. He also, in TFA and parts of TLJ, also kind of came across as a millennial trying to explain tech to a boomer- especially when explaining the hyperspace tracker to Snoke, or the fact that he had to explain that Kylo felt taking REY instead of the DROID was a better idea for getting a map (That totally ended up being irrelevant ANYWAY and I cannot imagine how pissed off Hux was about that whole thing being a waste of time).

And then he was just made into a comedic punching bag for Kylo, and then just... written off in an on screen, passive character retcon. The fact that people keep putting Hosnian Prime on Kylo is proof of this- Kylo had NOTHING to do with Hosnian Prime (Complicit/accessory by association, yes, but he didn’t pull the trigger) but people hold HIM accountable for it, call him the real villain and killer, when Hux is the one who is responsible for BILLIONS of deaths, and his character arc did not address this.

It’s not just HUX who was done dirty by this, but also the people who died by his hand.

Hux’s death and character arc was bullshit. Fucking. Bullshit.

#General Hux #Armitage Hux #The vornskr barks #Hux Deserved Better #On this blog we stan our ginger general #meta

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About

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Boba Fett has long been one of the most iconic and controversial characters in Star Wars. Thanks to a killer character design that launched a thousand cosplays, Boba Fett has long outlived the importance of his role–and unceremonious apparent death–in the Original Trilogy. But as most Star Wars fans know, those films are rarely the be all and end all of a Star Wars character’s story.

The Legends continuity of Expanded Universe books and comics spent a lot of time exploring Boba Fett’s later adventures after Return of the Jedi, and while those stories are no longer canon, it’s clear that Disney has long wanted to follow suit on screen — originally with a live-action movie and now with The Mandalorian. But it seems the infamous bounty hunter’s return won’t just be contained to one popular Disney+ series.

Deadline reports that there may also be a Boba Fett spin-off series in the works for the streaming service. You might be wondering just what that might look like. Well, we have some theories.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

How Did Boba Get Out of that Sarlacc Pit? 

Ever since Boba Fett revealed himself in the final seconds of The Mandalorian‘s “The Passenger,” fans have been wondering just what he’s doing on the show. Played by Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett and the clone troopers in the Prequel Trilogy, Boba Fett only appears briefly, watching from a cliff as Din Djarin and the Child zoom through the Tatooine desert, a permanent scowl on his scarred face.

It’s impossible to tell from this scene what exactly his motivations are at this point. We know The Mandalorian takes place five years after Boba Fett took a dive into the sarlacc pit, which probably means he’s been roaming the desert for quite a while since his escape. Why hasn’t he gotten his armor back after all of this time? And how did he escape the Great Pit of Carkoon in the first place? The Legends continuity endeavored to answer the latter question and it could possibly hint at the way Disney will approach the subject.

Boba Fett first escaped the sarlacc pit in the 1991 comic book event Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. It’s revealed in the book that the bounty hunter’s armor protected him from the beast’s digestive system long enough for him to fight his way out. In the 1996 short story collection Tales From Jabba’s Palace, J.D. Montgomery penned a story about that very same escape. “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett“ is a far-out story that reveals the bounty hunter was able to establish a telepathic connection with the sarlacc’s consciousness and use concussion grenades to blow up the monster’s insides. Then the 1998 novel The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter explored the direct aftermath of his escape, revealing that it was rival bounty hunter Dengar who found the half-dead Boba Fett in the desert and nursed him back to health.

In the past, Disney has canonized elements of the Legends continuity when they fit the modern timeline (see: Grand Admiral Thrawn), so it’s not too far-fetched to say we could see a version of the aforementioned stories at the start of a Boba Fett spin-off. For example, we’d love to see the show’s creative team adapt Montgomery’s completely unconventional take on the sarlacc escape. Imagine this as your pilot episode: the fierce bounty hunter suspended from the walls of the sarlacc’s intestines while in constant telepathic conversation with the creature that is currently digesting him. Sounds pretty cool, interestingly gross, and a big statement for a first episode. Plus, you’d finally get to see Boba Fett actually blow stuff up, something he didn’t have time to do in the movies that made him famous.

Mrs. Boba Fett & Boba Fett Jr. 

Seeing as in the Original Trilogy he was a true loner who was only really connected to Han Solo, Jabba the Hutt, and Darth Vader, it seems like there aren’t many people left in the saga who’d even remember who Boba Fett was, let alone welcome him back. But if Legends is any indication, it’s possible Boba actually has a family to turn to.

Published in the Legends comic Star Wars Tales #7, the story “Outbid But Never Outgunned“ follows Boba on a mission. But when he comes across Kiffar bounty hunter Sintas Vel, a dual blaster-wielding badass that he simply calls “Sin,” the shape of the tale changes. In a big final act reveal, we learn that the pair were once romantically involved and even had a child together. 

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There’s no reason Boba’s family couldn’t be reimagined for the new spin-off series. Maybe we could learn about a family Boba sired and loved after he escaped the pit? This would explain why the bounty hunter hasn’t left Tatooine after all of these years. Or this could be a story about the bounty hunter attempting to reconnect with his loved ones after his escape. There’s plenty to draw from in the stories that followed Tales #7, including one of my favorite tidbits–that Sintas was frozen in carbonite for almost 40 years and forgotten in the belongings of a space criminal. She was eventually saved by her granddaughter Mirta Gev decades after being imprisoned, so basically there are generations of incredible Fett women who could offer up a new perspective on this line of bounty hunters. 

Could Fett be looking for his family in the spin-off series? Maybe that’s what has put him on the path of Din Djarin? Or could Din’s hunt for fellow Mandalorians lead him to Sintas Vel or perhaps her daughter with Boba, Ailyn? Introducing Boba’s daughter would be a really cool twist, and while it’s unlikely we’ll see the characters directly adapted, many current Star Wars characters are heavily inspired by their Legends counterparts. We only need to look at how similar Ben Solo is to Jacen Solo, Han and Leia’s son in the old continuity, to see how easily Disney could do the same with Boba’s story. 

To the Sand or to the Stars? 

The lone wolf nature of the bounty hunter life means that Boba’s story will likely pick up at least some of the Western and Samurai-inspired storytelling we’ve seen done so well in The Mandalorian. After all, these influences are especially connected to Boba’s origin: George Lucas based the anti-hero on Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name. But if we look at the Legends stories in which Boba featured heavily, there’s also another rather exciting stylistic route that the series could go. 

Many of these Legends stories leaned into the sci-fi space operas–like Dune–that inspired the films. Space royalty, glittering intergalactic cities, intricate politics; basically that good pulpy science fantasy that would set the tone of a Boba show apart from The Mandalorian. With Mando already doing a great job at a Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired Samurai Western, maybe Boba Fett will be featured in more of a pure sci-fi adventure filled with nefarious alien princes, strange creatures, and exotic locales. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The other option is of course to focus on Boba’s career. The Mandalorian is very much a story about a reluctant hero and his beautiful adopted alien son going on a journey of self-discovery, which means there’s still space (heh heh) for a more procedural look at bounty hunting. Star Wars has a long tradition of playing with genre and tone, so it’s possible the spinoff will focus on the assassin/spy element of Boba’s character. A crime or target of the week would be a simple way to give fans the badass Boba Fett that they’ve always wanted to see on the screen. 

Of course, I still dream of an animated Boba Fett series, leaning into the Moebius-inspired 2D aesthetic of his first appearance in the much maligned Star Wars Holiday Special. For now, though, whichever route the creative team takes, it’s clear fans are thirsty for a proper Boba-centric story, especially one that will stay in canon for the foreseeable future.

The post Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[littlebitwriter]

12 DAYS OF STAR WARS: AN ORIGINAL FANBOY-DRIVEN BLOG SERIES “EPISODE I: INTRO”

Welcome to my all-new original twenty episode blog series called ‘12 Days of Star Wars’

With their being twelve days until Christmas I will give you twelve days of Star Wars.

Today is the first day of this new blog maxi-series that will end with the finale/culmination being an in-depth spoiler review of The Rise of Skywalker on Christmas Eve. Each day I will discuss an aspect, a character, a film, a book, whatever that is deeply integral to my love of Star Wars.

On the first day of the twelve days, I will explain my background with Star Wars, why I love it, why it has resonated with me for so many years. On the first day of twelve days of Star Wars I will give to you…. My Star Wars Fan History.

It all started a long time ago… (which I have explained before in a previous blog post) with a five year old boy playing with Star Wars toys coming up with his own Star Wars stories as a little kid and as a Star Wars fan playing with the toys and coming up with stories in my head and to be honest with myself as an adult those stories were really bad. Star Wars was one of my favorite things as a kid next to Marvel and DC superheroes, it was my whole creative world. I used to have the 2002 edition of the Revised Core Rulebook of the RPG which I eventually tore apart and lost because my family and I were moving and I was just a little kid I didn’t take care of my things very well being completely honest. However, recently during this Star Wars-y time of the year with The Rise of Skywalker approaching, I found a copy of it in my local library system and thought I would take a look at it again for research purposes to get myself back into that Star Wars feeling I got when I first saw The Original Trilogy and had that book beside me. With there being this amazingly exciting resurgence of Star Wars with The Mandalorian, Rise of Skywalker, The Clone Wars returning in February 2020, the brilliant Marvel comics, novels like Timothy Zahn’s next Thrawn Trilogy kick starting in May of 2020, all of that being coupled with childhood nostalgia I got goosebumps. I am a fan with I hope is a unique perspective on Star Wars since my first exposure was through not only playing with the toys but also watching the Original Trilogy on VHS and seeing the Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series around the same time when it was on Cartoon Network. Those were vivid memories that encapsulates everything I thought Star Wars was and what I wanted it to be. Then throughout I had a very funny relationship with Star Wars. Even though I loved the Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoons when I saw the Star Wars prequels starting with Revenge of The Sith, which was the first one I saw when it had just came out on DVD and was my favorite out of the prequel films. However I found each of the prequels to be extremely boring and nowhere as entertaining as the original films and my least favorite was Attack of The Clones. Over time I decided to not go back to the prequels for a multitude of reasons it kind of gave me a headache. It sounds awful but that was just my opinion at the age of five-eight.

Around the time I turned nine years old the next iteration of Clone Wars in animation came to be which is the modern Clone Wars cartoon fans have all come to know and love. Produced by the brilliant Dave Filoni and paid a lot of reverence to all of Star Wars and old Star Wars Expanded Universe. Seeing storylines play out such as the return of Darth Maul when I was twelve years old (a young extremely picky middle schooler when it came to entertainment) during the fourth season of Clone Wars it absolutely blew my mind. Seeing that iteration of Maul solidified why he was such a multifaceted and complex character those episodes were some of my favorites. I will probably discuss why those episodes and the rest of The Clone Wars are my favorites eventually through ‘12 Days of Star Wars’.

Around that time, I discovered and delved deeply into the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Reading the Dark Horse Comics (Legacy by John Ostrander and Infinities) and the novels (Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy) through the library and really falling in love with the deep ideas and unique characters explored in those books. Grand Admiral Thrawn, Cade Skywalker, Mara Jade, Darth Bane etc. all of these characters are as well developed and layered and complex as the original cast. Reading these stories did the same as what the Original Trilogy did which is show me a side of the Star Wars universe I had never seen before and really delved deep into the characters and were some of the best Star Wars storytelling ever that stands next to the Original Trilogy. I miss the old Star Wars EU but luckily all of these stories are still in print and are able to be enjoyed by everyone. I also recently bought those reprints fairly recently and am currently digging into all of my favorite Star Wars things.

In December 2015, I was sixteen years old and The Force Awakens was just released. I was beyond excited as all fans were because it was freaking Star Wars! More Star Wars! I couldn’t wait and I was very happy with the fact that we got another Star Wars movie and now we have four almost five movies and a TV show which is absolutely awesome! I’m so glad to live in such a great Star Wars-y time and am highly anticipating more episodes of The Mandalorian since Episode 6 came out today written by the brilliant Christopher Yost and I really dug it. Also of course The Rise of Skywalker, the next season of Clone Wars, The Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney + Series, more Thrawn books from Timothy Zahn, another Star Wars trilogy, etc. Just Star Wars content overload in the best possible way. It’s all exciting, It’s all Star Wars and I am grateful to have access and eventually have access to it all.

“Embrace The Force in all it’s glory and it will Embrace you…”

-LilBitWriter (12/13/19)

#star wars #fandom #the mandalorian #comic books #novels #television #film #star wars jedi #writer

[loopy777]

if you had been the head writer during the period, what would you have done differently regarding the Yuuzhan Vong era of the Star Wars Expanded universe, withouth completely ditching the concept of an invading alien empire?

I’d completely ditch the concept of an invading alien empire. :P

Okay, fine, I’ll see what I can do.

One of my major complaints about the Vong is that they’re the perfect mix of Dumb and Weird to feel more like the villains of some bad SyFy (at the time it was SciFi) television series, except with R-rated gore-tastic violence because STAR WARS IS NOT FOR KIDS ANYMORE IT’S DEEP MOM I CAN READ WHAT I WANT OKAY. At the time, I figured the solution was obvious: just make them a new Sith Empire, and put the violence back down to the level of the prequel movies with their near-bloodless bisections and decapitations.

Except then we got the Legacy comics, followed by the ‘Fate of the Jedi’ book series, and so I learned that Sith don’t automatically make for good storytelling. In fact, where the Vong were too weird, letting the old Legends authors at the Sith meant we’d get nothing but cheap rip-offs of Darth Maul, and even George Lucas thought the character was too thin for anything more than two fight scenes.

I think part of the problem is that these invading Empires really limit the type of stories that can be told. They have to be about a sprawling war, which means anything that isn’t a side-story has to have big battles and characters deciding the fate of the galaxy. That’s pretty boring stuff, most of the time. And when the enemy empire is a homogeneous group -- like every single warrior of the Vong was the exact same “Die Jeedai heretic!” screaming dude -- the story is forced to deal with faceless armies. And the NJO was all that all the time.

There’s a reason Nom Anor stood out. He was the only Vong worth remembering between books.

So, I guess what I’d start to do differently is change the makeup of the Invading Alien Empire so that it’s not homogeneous. I’d probably take the idea that Zahn set up in the ‘Hand of Thrawn’ duology and bring in something from the Unknown Regions, and make it a confederation of various alien factions that themselves have a diverse makeup.

And the goal of this invading confederation wouldn’t be conquest. These guys have no interest in rolling into Coruscant and ruling the galaxy.

I’d make them colonizers. They’re here for galactic resources. They’re competing with the existing galactic denizens, but they’re not using warfare. They’re making trading deals using rare resources that are more abundant in the Unknown Regions. They’re settling sparsely populated planets and quickly becoming a super-majority at each location. They’re subverting the New Republic’s ability to govern with their strange powers, unheard of devices optimized for sabotage and spycraft, and new philosophies.

Now, I admit, everyone is probably reading this and wondering where the narrative is. How can the good guys fight this kind of thing off in a clear story arc?

They don’t. That’s my other big change. The story is not about Good Guys vs Invaders. I’m using this to create possibilities for smaller stories. With the Empire having been defeated, all of this stuff is to create areas of local conflict where new characters can have adventures. My vision for a NJO-type series is one where authors are invited to do 1-or-2-book adventures introducing new Jedi and adventurers. The entry point is meant to be low; they can just invent some new alien sub-faction of the invaders for their story, or use one that’s been established.

At least, that’s how it would work for the first two phases. The first phase would be allowing introductions and invention. The storytellers would have as much freedom as possible. The second phase would be one of refinement, where the better new characters and concepts are allowed to grow, and the lesser stuff is quietly left to fade. This is where the older characters, Luke & the students introduced in the Bantam/YJK books, can come back into things, but not as main protagonists.

Phase Three is where a final villain is introduced, and all the new and old characters team up for a grand adventure that’s bigger than anything that came before. And that would be limited to a single trilogy, maybe with a few non-essential supplemental books or comics.

And yes, I stole that formula from the Marvel movies saga. Endgame made a gagooglzillionbillion dollars because it’s a good formula. And it doesn’t lock audiences in for one thing for five years.

#thekingofwinterblog

[realasunicorns]

honesty hour? smth like that

warning: read at your own risk of not being able to look at me the same way ever again after these astonishing revelantions

[ context! for some reason my hormones seem to be taking over and i just happen to have started reading outbound flight by timothy zahn ]

tbh my brain won't stop spinning at the fact that twenty-something-years-old obi-wan kenobi is in this book... holy fuck (quite literally)

*while on a pause to eat creppes at 3am:*

every time i UNEXPECTEDLY get the calvin klein ad on ig stories i have a heart attack is shawn mendes even legal the answer is no he's too hot bye

like i'm watching the 36836373th digital art story on a row and suddenly

and it keeps happening over and over again and i be just here like

it's a bit of a shocking image, you know? i'm here all focused on the art and then BOOM!!!

not that he isn't art, don't get me wrong, i just--well, you know what i meant.

i just made a twitter thread with all this

did the ad deserve an exclusive thread of my reaction every time i see it the only possible answer is yes

ok i'm back at reading now and i swear i found gffa!me, watch this

SPOILERS AHEAD THO, WATCH OUT

so this Maris is a nice girl/woman/female/idk, kind of an idealist too they say, but actually works for some smuggler who's a total jerk hm

apparently she tells herself it's the right thing, don't ask, and somehow she believes that, oh bb

oh and she's also in a pretty shitty (probably even toxic) relationship with that same smuggler... awful taste in men? can relate, sis

he, Qennto, totally doesn't care about her apart from, well, the usual shit, u know, he's kinda using her and u know, ew ew EWWWW

.........and then they meet thrawn.

"You're going in personally?" Maris asked, frowning.

"I command these warriors," Thrawn said, climbing into the vac suit with sure, practiced movements. "Part of my duty is to share their danger."

Maris glared at Qennto. "Be careful," she said, sounding almost embarrassed.

Thrawn gave her a small smile. "Don't worry," he said.

Slapping the final seal closed, he pulled a helmet and large handgun from the locker. "The vessel is almost likely severly undercrewed, amd Chiss warriors are the best there are. I'll return soon."

she might be kinda crushing on the polite honorable blue alien with growing eyes who's teaching her languages

yup, definitely gffa!me

but now seriously how old is thrawn in outbound flight and most importantly is he single i need answers

honesty hour? more like honesty night lol

aaaaanyway, i hope you had some fun with/at my AMs craziness and that you're not too affected to keep reading my posts after this

if you are i'm not even sorry i'm unapologetically myself i love you all bye

ps: yes i am 28yo no i am not drunk 🦄 this is just me sometimes

ps2: those creppes were super healthy eh! my IBS wouldn't leave me otherwise lol only made of chickpea flour and toppings were melted cocoa (yep, i'm one of those lucky ppl), peanut butter and raisins

#honesty hour #bored #sw #shawn mendes #fangirling #thrawn is bae #im not even sorry #just thank god karrde isn't on this book #then you'd be scared for real #its almost 5am now #not even sleepy but i guess i'll be leaving now #text posts #my posts

[todisturbtheuniverse]

so i inexplicably dove into reading New Canon sometime at the end of last year. it was Leia that really kicked it off. i’d been reading various books as they appealed to me--The Force Awakens and Rogue One novelizations about when they came out, A New Dawn right after Rebels wrapped up, Dark Disciple because Thom was like, “you’re going to like this for x, y, and z reasons and be mad at it for a very big reason.” (and boy was he correct.) after reading Leia i decided, okay, fine, clearly we’re rebooting that time when i was 13 years old and scouring the Barnes and Noble for all the EU books i could find, let’s fucking do this proper.

and damn. it was worth it to get to Thrawn. more blathering, not at all cohesive, and containing spoilers and references to various New Canon books ahead...

my huge hesitance about doing New Canon proper was the, uh. glut of Empire-POV books that i saw on our shelf. (we’ve been buying them for a good six-eight months now to make sure they were all available to us whenever we wanted to dive in.) there was something unnerving about that. i got hit with Lords of the Sith and Tarkin pretty much at the outset of my little jaunt, which was rough at times.

i’m of two minds about these books. i mean, 1) i am definitely interested in anything that gives us more of a look about Vader’s headspace post-lava incident, however narrow. The Clone Wars sold me on Anakin Skywalker in a way no movie has ever managed to, both in making him more interesting and likeable to me and in making his fall seem so much more plausible (don’t get me started on how i would restructure the prequels). so getting a look behind that weird faceplate--finally--is bloody and Very Bad but also interesting. he remembers Ahsoka in Lords of the Sith. he remembers Rex. he thinks on these things, as if he can’t stop himself.

but 2) there’s only so much, ah. rooting. that you can do for the Empire. obviously. i think i’m safe in assuming that’s not the point of these books (and indeed Lords of the Sith gives us a nice look at the early Free Ryloth movement to root for and a truly absurd goal for them to accomplish, so there’s that), but i find myself wondering what the point of these books are. for all that Tarkin cut such an imposing figure (and still does, definitely) my cynicism can’t let me believe that he was more than a good plot tool rather than a particularly complex character--i doubt all this stuff about Tarkin’s backstory, which comes up in the novel, was ever in Lucas’s dizziest daydreams. but i sure got treated to a lot of Weird Tarkin Backstory in Tarkin. is it necessary? is it relevant? i’m having a hard time figuring out how.

but again, the bit of fun i had with this book? it was in Tarkin’s interactions with Vader. specifically his musing on the identity of the creepy fellow in the weird armor, who certainly shares some qualities with Anakin Skywalker. The Clone Wars revealed that Anakin had actually known Tarkin, before the fun trip to the lava seaside. it stands to reason that Tarkin, who at the very least was hailed as Scary As Shit and Good At His Job at the time of the original trilogy, would put some clues together.

so that’s...interesting. maybe its own purpose was to be interesting, idk. i’m probably overthinking what is clearly an enormous cash grab by Disney, or something.

all this to say: this was the kind of Empire-POV stuff i was having a hard time thinking i could get into. because they’re just Evil doing Evil. Vader might think about Ahsoka on rare occasion but he’s not going to stop force-choking people because of it. that redemption ship doesn’t come into harbor for a fair bit.

and then. we get Thrawn.

as i mentioned way up there, there was a time after i’d first discovered Star Wars that i perused high and low for the Extra Content. i think one of the first things i came across (bearing in mind that the EU was not supremely organized or continuous or anything) was the Thrawn trilogy. being that this was nearly fifteen years ago and i haven’t reread them since, all i really remember is that Mara Jade is The Best, Thrawn was a villain like no other villain my child self had come across, and i loved them. a reread is probably in order and will maybe disappoint me, or so i always thought, until Timothy Zahn threw Thrawn and Alliances at me and said, take that, i’ve still got it.

Thrawn sort of gets into some of the same traps as Tarkin, except that they felt way less like traps because i was interested in how Thrawn comes to be part of the Empire. that was always part of what made him interesting, to me; he’s somehow a Grand Admiral, has risen through all those ranks, even though he’s not human. so even though we take these little leaps of backstory through years of Thrawn’s early existence in Imperial space, and it feels like we take a lot of time to catch up to the actual plot--it’s neat as hell, because we’re seeing the Empire through the eyes of not one, but two people who are outsiders to it. and yet, simultaneously have to exist inside it.

it’s so easy to generalize the Empire as this grayish blob of evil. many of the random crew and deck officers in Rebels don’t even have distinguishing facial features; i’ve heard Liam O’Brien’s voice come out of an awful lot of them, with the brims of their caps pulled low over their eyes, their faces cast in an odd grayish light that seems to wash the life from them.

it is evil. it is definitely, definitely evil. but there are so many people in it--people like Eli Vanto, the second individual referenced above--who are just existing in it, trying to make the best of it, because they have no real options (or power) to do anything else. some of these people Get Out and join the rebellion, or just Get Out and vanish, but not many of them have the resources to do that, and that’s the look that, to me, gives this grayish obelisk of evil some kind of complexity worth looking at.

and then Alliances. the neat past-present switch that juxtaposes Anakin/Vader, Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Thrawn. i loved that shit. it showed more new stuff about Vader, probably reminded me of all the reasons i was fascinated by Thrawn as a kid even if i can’t really remember, and best of all, delighted me with various instances of Thrawn just. flat out. trolling. Vader. and not dying. imagine! all these not-at-all-subtle hints that Thrawn knows exactly who Vader is under that mask and the entire book Vader just keeps thinking, no. even this asshole. this tactical genius. cannot possibly know my true identity. it’s impossible. The Jedi is dead. 

(that was another cool thing, btw. Zahn really took how Vader thinks and elevated the shit out of it. having him always refer to his past self as The Jedi was very effective.)

all these dueling loyalties come out to get real ugly on the surface: Thrawn, having sworn to serve the Empire, still manipulating the scene in whatever way he can to benefit his people. (how is Eli doing in the Chiss Ascendancy? I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT TO FIND OUT.) Vader, recalling The Jedi’s past trouble with those dueling loyalties--to his people (the Jedi, the Republic) and to his people (Padme). having now decided that “even rescue” is, as Thrawn once said, not worth sacrificing victory.

but Vader’s loyalties are still in far more flux than he would let himself believe. because he is sure, on the one hand, that Thrawn is walking the line of treason. Thrawn throws every tool he has at this to get his way, to do things and have the outcome he wants, up to and including calling in a debt that Anakin Skywalker owes him--expecting Vader to repay it. and Vader, who has murdered people for far less, lets himself be talked into it, lets his curiosity string him along, lets the probing comments about “the last time we were here” and “we discovered this about cortosis” and all this we, we, WE that refers to The Jedi pass without incident.

all this to say: he sure wishes The Jedi was really dead. that would make his existence so much easier. and i’m probably reading into it, and all, but i think Thrawn and his weirdly opaque analytical mind sees that and is poking at it a-purpose. to what purpose, who can say? Thrawn’s always about a dozen steps ahead of everybody else, by design. he has a long game.

this is just a stream of consciousness ramble at this point about how many Thoughts i have about Star Wars, and it’s very late on a Friday night and i’m tired, so i’ll stop blathering on. TL;DR--i was wary of reading books from Imperial POVs and while not particularly gracefully done in some cases, they surprised me. there are some gems in there.

#universe reads

[scifiliteraryreviews]

Specter of the Past - Zahn is, in my view, the penultimate Star Wars novelist. He started it all, and he continues to offer us memorable characters and plots. The Hand of Thrawn duology was, I think, my favorite offering by him so far for several reasons. 

First and foremost the plot. The idea that Thrawn could have returned, and continued to wreak havoc was thrilling. 

Second the characters, Mara,  Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, Talon Karrade and so many others new and old. Third the whole idea of the Caamas Document and what that might mean, not only to the Bothans and the New Republic, but also to the idea of final peace between the Empire and the New Republic. Fourth, the fact that these are the books that finally, finally brought Luke and Mara together. 

Vision of the Future - Thrawn has returned, or has he? In any case, the threat has plunged the New Republic into chaos, and sparked several separate missions to try and resolve the conflict before all out war erupts. Talon and Shada have gone off in search of the elusive Jorj Car'das hoping he might have a copy of the Caamas Document, while in the Imperial capital Bastion, and base at Yaga Minor, Han and Lando, and Bel Iblis and Booster, respectively, are after the same thing. Leia has gone to meet with Paellon to try and broker peace, and Wedge and Rogue Squadron are trying to keep the Bothan homeworld from falling. 

In the midst of all of this is Luke, who had a terrifying vision of Mara, and has set off on a rescue mission for her. Together, they will face not only The Hand of Thrawn, but choices and emotions surrounding each of them and their lives together. In the end, it will take extraordinary courage, strength and heart on the part of everyone to bring this simmering conflict to an end, and finally, finally, have a chance at true peace. 

This was, if possible, better than the first book in the series. My two favorite aspects were the whole adventure on the Hand of Thrawn, seeing Luke and Mara come together, and seeing Mara finally embrace becoming a Jedi Master, and the Caamas Crisis and how that was resolved. Finally seeing, or reading, about the Peace ceremony was like a reward for faithfully reading the novels over all the years.

#starwars

[dorksideproductions]

It’s been a minute since our last edition of Canon Casting, our ongoing feature where we fan-cast various Star Wars projects. In the past we’ve covered novels like Thrawn, Bloodline, and the entire Aftermath trilogy, as well as Star Wars Rebels (through season three). I’ve got a few Canon Casting projects in the works but figured I’d throw you a bone and tackle the excellent tie-in novel to the game Battlefront II, Inferno Squad, by Christie Golden. And of course ***SPOILERS*** will be prevalent, but I’m sure you figured that.

For those new to the feature and/or those in need of a rules recap, here you go: We tackle a non-film project and fan cast it – with a few rules. Actors have to be alive, and age appropriate. So, in other words, you can’t cast an actor who’s passed away, even if it means a recast. Same deal with not being able to ‘time travel’ to find the perfect actor – no, Marlon Brando isn’t available… Lastly, if one of my current or previous Canon Casting choices actually gets cast in an official Star Wars film, I have to recast them. Yes, it happens, ask Thandie Newton…. Make sense, good? I also approach each Canon Casting project with what I feel is an appropriate budget, etc., as not every story will be made into a billion dollar movie. For Inferno Squad I’ve chosen the route of a premium, direct-to-consumer movie (i.e. Netflix, HBO, Showtime, etc.) OK, let’s get to it:

Iden Versio, Del Meeko, Gideon Hask, and Garrick Versio:

Janina Gavankar as Iden Versio

TJ Ramini as Del Meeko

Paul Blackthorne as Gideon Hask

Anthony Skordi as Garrick Versio

Yeah, these were the no-brainers as each of these roles were cast for motion capture for the game Battlefront II and I love each and every one of them – especially Janina (duh!) and T.J. Ramini as Del Meeko. Let’s meet the actor I chose for the fourth member of Inferno Squad, the one who doesn’t appear in the game:

Seyn Marana:

Kimiko Glenn as Seyn Marana

I went back-and-forth on the casting choices for Seyn Marana for quite a while, and she was one of two characters that held up this post for a week or so. In the end, I kept coming back to Kimiko Glenn, a memorable supporting actress on Netflix’s highly acclaimed Orange in the New Black. Some of this decision was based on Janina Gavankar’s narration and portrayal of Seyn in the audiobook, as I really heard Kimiko in Janina’s voice: fast-talking, slightly high-pitched, and a quick-thinker with perfect recollection. Aesthetically she fits the role perfectly, and in addition to that, based on the perfomances I’ve seen of the young actress I think she is more than up to the task of portraying the youngest member of Inferno Squad with the photographic memory. Here’s to you, Kimiko! Moving on, let’s cast a couple smaller roles…

Zeehay Versio and Lassa Rhayme:

Eva LaRue as Zeehay Versio

Paige VanZant at Lassa Rhayme

These were both small roles (as was much of the supporting cast in Inferno Squad), with one being a must-cast and one being a fun-cast, if you take my meaning. For the role of Iden’s mother, Zeehay Versio, I went with Eva LaRue. The role of Zeehay is small in the book and I went with an attractive actress best known for her work on CSI Miami and the soap opera All My Children (so maybe I’m an old-school soap aficionado, don’t tell anyone..). Iden’s mother is a galaxy-renowned artist responsible for painting Imperial propaganda posters and flyers. She’s described as a very beautiful woman, and much of Iden’s physical features are attributed to her. Eva is a gorgeous woman, and at 51 years old she is old enough to portray the mother of our protagonist and wife of the hard-ass that’s Garrick Versio. For the tiny role of pirate queen Lassa Rhayme I went outside the box and tapped UFC fighter Paige VanZant for the role. Lassa is a beautiful blue-skinned Pantoran with a helluva mean streak, and I have a feeling we will be seeing more of her after having appearances in both of Christie Golden’s Star Wars books – Dark Disciple and Inferno Squad. Time to meet The Dreamers:

Piikow, Dahna, and Sadori Vushon:

Warwick Davis as Piikow

Alicia Witt as Dahna

Will Poulter as Sadori Vushon

Before we get into the fan-casting of The Dreamers, let’s talk for a minute about who they are for those that haven’t read the book. The Dreamers are an offshoot of Saw Gerrera’s Partisan Rebels, formed after the destruction of Jedha in the amazing standalone film Rogue One. They hold steadfast to Saw’s vision of the war, including his tactics which Mon Mothma and the Rebel Alliance leadership deemed ‘extreme’. Above are three members of The Dreamers’ supporting cast that I felt were vital to the story. Let’s start with the diminutive and good-hearted Chadra-Fan, Piikow. I absolutely loved the character of Piikow, and he served a vital role in the book as we see his relationship with Del Meeko blossom to the point of friendship and you as the reader really don’t want anything bad to happen to Piikow, even though it was Inferno Squad’s main objective to eliminate all of The Dreamers… As far as the fan-casting for Piikow goes it was super easy – of course I went with Warwick Davis, as he has to be in every Star Wars project, right? The role of Piikow would give him a much-deserved chance to shine as well, as most of his parts in Star Wars films are small. Moving on to Dahna… I love the character of Dahna, the sultry second-in-command Twi-lek. Dahna is beautiful and was formerly a slave, so she takes to Seyn Marana very quickly, as Seyn’s cover was to pose as a slave to gain entrance into The Dreamers. I also must note that once again Janina Gavankar’s narration of the character of Dahna very much played into my casting choice, and I loved it. For this role I went with Alicia Witt, a versatile actor known for playing diverse characters in TV (Cybill and The Walking Dead) as well as film (88 Minutes and Urban Legend). Alicia is a beautiful actress who also has the range to be sultry and vicious in the same breath. She’ll do nicely… Finally, for the role of Sadori Vushon, the young Kage who falls for Seyn (and vice-versa, with heartbreaking results) I tapped one of my favorite up-and-coming young actors, Will Poulter. Sadori is a large, physically imposing figure, while still having an air of youthful vulnerability. Will Poulter at 6’2″ can certainly portray the physicality of Sadori, and I have no doubt he can play the softer side as well, as we’ve seen this side of him in film before. Also, his height will play well against Kimiko Glenn, who’s only 5’2″, so the differential will look great on the screen. Now for The Dreamers’ leadership:

Staven:

Mark O’Brien as Staven

So Staven…. this was a hard one and is probably most responsible for holding this post up for a few days as I deliberated it. The charismatic-yet-dark leader of The Dreamers first appeared in the amazing novel Rebel Rising by Beth Revis, and popped back up in Inferno Squad as the perceived leader of The Dreamers. I don’t like Staven. I didn’t like him in Rebel Rising and liked him even less in Inferno Squad. Which means the authors did their jobs, because you aren’t supposed to like him. He chided a younger Jyn Erso in Rebel Rising and was a complete asshole in his role as the paranoid and sadistic leader of the remnants of Saw’s band of rebels in Inferno Squad. I went back-and-forth on the actor to portray this pivotal role and almost scrapped the entire post before I had a revelation. I absolutely love the show Halt and Catch Fire, and think it’s one of the most underappreciated shows in recent television history – if you didn’t catch it you should go back and binge it on Netflix. Mark O’Brien plays the role of Tom Rendon in the series and much like Staven, he’s a character you’re supposed to hate. Mark is the man for the job, and he’s a casting choice I’m proud of for being completely out of left field. I have no doubt he would crush it in Inferno Squad as The Dreamers’ leader. Which brings us to the last role I cast for the book…

‘The Mentor’:

Hugh Dancy as “The Mentor” a.k.a. Lux Bonteri

Casting the amazing Hugh Dancy in the pivotal and mysterious role of The Mentor was almost too easy. I loved him in Hannibal. I loved him in The Path. I’ve loved everything I’ve seen him in. Throughout Inferno Squad we get hints of just who The Mentor is, and it becomes obvious he has a long history in the galactic conflicts of both The Clone Wars and the struggle of the Rebel Alliance versus the Empire. When it’s revealed he’s none other than Lux Bonteri, a character that’s appeared onscreen many times in The Clone Wars animated series, it all makes perfect sense. Although not in control of The Dreamers per se, he is responsible for their intel and in turn the man that’s most wanted by the members of Inferno Squad. Lux has lost more than his fair share throughout the course of the wars, including Saw’s sister, Steela Gerrera, who he was in love with. And don’t forget that Togrutan Jedi he had a thing for as well… The way the story plays out, with Iden beginning to sympathize and possibly fall for him as well is a nice touch, as she lets him live in the end after the Squad kills the rest of The Dreamers. That’s one of the great things about this book that author Christie Golden does so well – showing the gray area of the conflict by having three of the four members of Inferno Squad bonding with members of The Dreamers, with only Gideon Hask abstaining (which also plays well with the campaign mode of the game Battlefront II, for those who’ve played it). But back to the casting. I have little doubt that Hugh Dancy will find his way onto a Star Wars project at some point, but for now, he’s my Lux Bonteri.

So there we have it, my Canon Casting for Battlefront II: Inferno Squad. I highly recommend reading this book or grabbing the audiobook (which as mentioned above is narrated by none other than Janina Gavankar herself), you won’t be disappointed.

Got any feedback for me or want to discuss further? Hit me here and we’ll make it happen. As always, thanks for the support and May the Force Be With You!

~Todd

Janina Gavankar as Iden Versio

Hugh Dance as “TheMentor” a.k.a. Lux Bonteri

TJ Ramini as Del Meeko

Paul Blackthorne as Gideon Hask

Kimiko Glenn as Seyn Marana

Mark O’Brien as Staven

Anthony Skordi as Garrick Versio

Will Poulter as Sadori Vushon

Alicia Witt as Dahna

Warwick Davis as Piikow

Eva LaRue as Zeehay Versio

Paige VanZant at Lassa Rhayme

Canon Casting – Battlefront II: Inferno Squad It's been a minute since our last edition of Canon Casting, our ongoing feature where we fan-cast various Star Wars projects.

[aion-rsa]

How The Mandalorian Could Reboot the Most Beloved Part of Star Wars Legends Canon

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

An Imperial Grand Admiral sits in a darkened room surrounded by his art collection. He’s plotting a massive comeback. He’s planning to rebuild the Empire and make this whole New Republic thing look like a massive joke. He’s got blue skin. Did I mention he loves art?

If you read Timothy Zahn’s groundbreaking 1991 Star Wars novel, Heir to the Empire, then you’re familiar with this description of Grand Admiral Thrawn. And now that Thrawn has been name-dropped on The Mandalorian, there’s every reason to believe that some version of his story from Heir to the Empire is being rebooted, and is not-so-secretly happening at the edges of the galaxy while Mando tries to find some more Jedi for Grogu to have telepathic chats with.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

Because of the timing of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka mentioning Thrawn in “The Jedi” puts the character right back where he used to be in the infamously eradicated Legends timeline, which used to be known as the Expanded Universe before Disney took over. Yes, Thrawn has already been re-canonized, thanks to the Rebels animated series and the newer Zahn books that have come out in the past few years, but none of those retcons put Thrawn back in the era that first made him famous. 

The most compelling reason to believe that the events of The Mandalorian could be low-key retconning the events of Heir to the Empire is simply that Ahsoka mentions she’s looking for Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the Disney canon timeline, the last time we saw Thrawn was in roughly 0 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), in the Rebels series finale, in which Ezra and Thrawn jumped into deep hyperspace on the Star Destroyer Chimaera to parts unknown. Five years later, just after the Battle of Endor, Sabine and Ahsoka reunited on Ezra’s home planet of Lothal and decided to go look for their lost Jedi friend. While it’s unclear whether Ahsoka has already found Ezra by the time Mando meets her on Corvus in “The Jedi,” she does know that Thrawn is back and operating somewhere in the galaxy.

Here’s why this matters: the year in which The Mandalorian takes place, 9 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin), is the same year in which Heir to the Empire happened in Legends. It’s hard to imagine now, but back in 1991, Heir to the Empire was the first book that truly opened up the post-Return of the Jedi era. After Zahn’s trilogy of novels, that time period started to get crowded, and by the time The New Jedi Order books were happening in the early 2000s, we knew more about the three decades after Return of the Jedi than we did about the Clone Wars.

But when the Prequel Trilogy hit theaters, Lucasfilm began to invert that trend. Suddenly we knew way more about the pre-A New Hope era than we’d ever known before. And once the new Disney canon took hold in 2014, those three decades after ROTJ that had previously been filled in by the Expanded Universe were suddenly swept away, leaving, more or less, a series of question marks between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Sure, recent games, comics, and Star Wars Resistance fill in the gaps a little bit. But other than stand-out examples like sections of the book Last Shot, or the novel Bloodline, those lost years previously occupied by the bulk of the EU haven’t been “replaced” entirely in the new canon. We assume Mara Jade never existed, and all that stuff with Luke, Han, and Leia fighting a clone version of the Emperor in Dark Empire never happened. But are we sure?

The potential re-introduction of Thrawn in 9 ABY makes a revised version of the Heir to the Empire storyline and some of the EU books that followed possible. In fact, it might all still happen in a modified form under Disney canon. It would be like the Star Wars version of Star Trek’s “Kelvin Universe,” the timeline in which the reboot films exist. What would this look like? Maybe Thrawn is back, and Mara Jade is back, too, but this time around, there’s no Joruus C’baoth, and nobody is using the quaint designation of “Dark Jedi” and they’re just calling people “Sith.” 

A rebooted Heir to the Empire wouldn’t even need to be explicitly remade or rewritten to still work in the new canon. Even if Disney doesn’t reboot this story, you could also just treat it as head-canon and it would still fit in nicely with the rest of the canon timeline. Here’s how: If stories set in The Mandalorian timeline continue to avoid Luke, Leia, and Han and the bulk of the New Republic, it’s easy to imagine everything that happened in the old books still happening up until the events of Vector Prime and the ensuing Yuuzhan Vong invasion that made up the bulk of The New Jedi Order book series.

Sure, some details are already different: Leia doesn’t give birth to twins in 9 ABY, she gives birth to Ben Solo in 5 ABY. (By the way, isn’t it weird to think Ben is 4-years-old during The Mandalorian!!?) But, the larger point stands. The broad strokes, including Thrawn seizing the Katana Fleet and Mara Jade trying to kill Luke Skywalker, can all still be happening out there, somewhere. Again, you might think this sounds nuts, but in a way, The Rise of Skywalker could be sideways proof that some version of Dark Empire occurred in this canon, too.

The most mocked line in all of Star Wars, “Somehow, Palpatine returned,” could suddenly make a lot more sense if this wasn’t the first time he returned. Leia wasn’t surprised. Nobody was surprised. And perhaps that’s because a rebooted Dark Empire happened around the time it did in the old EU, 10 ABY (or 6 years after Endor). Palpatine had somehow returned…before.

And if that’s true, then in Season 3 of The Mandalorian, Din Djarin and Grogu should watch out for those World Devastators. And maybe, now that Boba Fett has his armor back, he can have a moody showdown with Han and Leia on the Smuggler’s Moon of Nar Shaddaa…

Keep up with all of The Mandalorian season 2 news here.

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