MAUL: SHADOW LORD After Show: Episodes 1 & 2

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And already there's a lot of buzz about this show, which is great. We want that. We want people, Star Wars fans, non-Star Wars fans alike, talking about the new Star Wars that's coming on. People saying things like, oh, I think this is the most mature animated Star Wars thing we've ever seen. Maybe. What's Maul really after? Is he looking for an apprentice? Is he looking to reclaim his place as the gangster to end all gangsters, the godfather of the universe? What is he after? We're going to get into all of that here as we analyze the first two episodes, The Dark Revenge and Sinister Scheme. So really looking forward to it. We are going to be taking your calls at the top of the second hour. We're getting things off here about 8 o'clock p.m. Eastern time. So the phone lines will open up probably about 9 p.m. Eastern time. So we want you to soak in all of the brilliant analysis and conjecture and theories before you weigh in. So thank you all so much for hanging out with us here at Rebel Force Radio. Like I say, the after show, Maul, Shadow Lord. And by we, here at Rebel Force Radio, I mean me. My name is Jason, if you're new to the program. And with me, as always, my good friend and yours from Chicago, Jimmy Mack. Hey, Jason. Hey, Star Wars fans. Glad to be back here with an all-new roundtable. Gosh, I think it's been about a year since we did an actual live after show. I think it was Andor. Andor season, too. in May. Did it wrap up in May last year? So here we are back at the roundtable. Three Mandos and two Zabracks walk into a bar. No, I'll tell jokes later. We have a lot of show analysis and story breakdowns to offer you here on Rebel Force Radio for the next 90 minutes, two hours or so. So strap in. It should be an interesting conversation as we talk about all new Star Wars, Small Shadow Lord. Dan, we are coming in hotter than a Wookiee bathhouse. I enjoyed that line. I enjoyed that character, as a matter of fact. And I enjoy the idea of now knowing that Wookiee bathhouses are canon. Right. They don't just exist in Jimmy's fantasies. They're actually Star Wars canon. Right. Dreams do come true, Jason. Beyond the pages of fanfic. Right. Here we are. Here we are. They're atloses. They're legit canon in Star Wars. And who do we have to thank for that? Let's do the tale of the tape. Let's talk about who wrote, who directed these episodes. As I mentioned, we're looking at the first two, chapters one and two. They're going back to chapters here with the Darth Maul series. Chapter one, the Dark Revenge. I should say the whole series, by the way, gets a big created by credit for Dave Filoni, as did the Bad Batch. So a series created by Dave Filoni. And did you notice that his credit comes on before George Lucas's? Series created by Dave Filoni based on characters from the Star Wars universe created by George Lucas. So Dave has billing over George, which I guess that's just how it goes. And billing over the individual show director as well. Yes. Yeah. How did they always roll out those credits anyway? When you think about shows like the Bad Batch. I went back, and I thought I was going to create a big controversy with this, that Filoni is upstaging George with the credit. But I went back to Bad Batch, and it was the same. So Dave got that solo created by credit, followed by, you know, based on characters created by George Lucas. So no scandal here. Well, I don't know. Just because it's happened before doesn't mean it's not happening. Are we going to make it a scandal? Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Wait, no, let's not. I'm remembering some scandals we did create in the past, and it's a lot of work, man. It's just a lot of work, you know. It really is. We're a lot older now, you know. And Jimmy swore off Twitter, so there's no way we can go back to those days. oh by the way yes directed this episode the first episode Dark Revenge directed by all three Stuart Lee Saul Ruiz and Nate Villanueva and written by Matt Migniewicz the follow up episode Sinister Schemes chapter 2 just directed by Saul Ruiz himself again written by Matt Migniewicz and Jim I think we're going to be saying Matt's name throughout this whole series Matt is the showrunner and I believe he is the writer for every episode? Yeah, I believe so. So he's like the head writer? Yeah. They obviously... Okay. No one else got writing credits on these two episodes, and Matt's also the story editor, at least on one, maybe both. So Matt is definitely the guy when it comes to this series. And from what we hear... All the praise and all the blame. will be heaped upon Matt Migniewicz. I think Dave Filoni has a little something to do with this show, too. From what I understand, I read some behind-the-scenes stuff, and Filoni, at the very least, gave them some pretty stern walking orders, things he demanded to see in this series. And Sam Witwer, too, who appears to be rather hands-on behind the scenes beyond just showing up for recording sessions. Sam is a producer on the show. Yes. And he's also been known to spend a lot of time in Wookiee bathhouses. And, you know, the problem with the Wookiee bathhouse is the drains keep getting clogged. So it's tough. They go through a lot of liquid plumber there at the Wookiee bathhouse. You know, when we do the Yoda questionnaire the next time, and we talk about the profession you would least like to have in the galaxy far, far away, I think I have a new answer. And it's definitely the poor maintenance guy at the Wookiee Bathhouse that has to unclog all those drains. Yeah, you don't want to be standing there with a mop in the Wookiee Bathhouse with a bunch of Wookiees looking at you like they're expecting you to do something. Right. No, definitely not. Definitely not. Well, okay, so let's, if we could, Jim, let's set the stage here. And I think there's no better way than to talk about where we are. Where are we? That's how we have to kind of approach any new Star Wars. Where in the galaxy far, far away are we? And from what I gather, you mentioned Bad Batch just a few minutes ago. We're right there in Bad Batch territory. We're somewhere around a year after Order 66, somewhere around a year after the end of the Clone Wars, a year into the Empire's ascendancy would be my guess. Yeah, that sounds about fair. I imagine the events in this show would either happen directly after or concurrently with the events of the Bad Batch. So maybe we'll see some crossover. Maybe Hunter and Omega will find themselves on the planet Janix and get into all kind of wacky adventures with the gong. You know, there were always those missions that Sid was sending the Batchers on. Yeah. And there was always some gangster involved at some point. So you could imagine that Janux would be a planet that Sid would have known about and maybe have some business on. And who knows? Maybe sends the Bad Batchers out there somewhere. Well, we've known it's been a small galaxy for a long time. So there is possibility of that. Hey, did you pick up any mention of the word Janux in these first two episodes? I don't ever recall even hearing them say the planet name. Well, I learned a great trick from you, which is to listen to the audio description track. Yeah. And I believe they say Janix. Okay. But, I mean, in the show itself. But in the show, in the context of the characters, no. And it's surprising because they're talking about the lack of Imperial presence on the planet. That's kind of hanging overhead, this idea they don't want to do anything that's going to attract the Empire, even if it means keeping Maul's presence there a secret. But you're right. I don't remember them saying, well, there's not going to be any Imperials showing up on Janux on my watch, you know, like that. That's right. There's no lines. But, I mean, most of the action was based on the planet Janix anyway. How often do you refer to the planet you're currently on? I don't hear myself making Earth references on a regular basis. Very true. Some people probably think I should maybe get my feet back on the planet. But, hey, as long as you bring up the descriptive audio track, I've got to say, the narrator they have for this particular animated show, he's no good. I don't care for his narrator. This is my first experience doing this because I wanted a way to rewatch the episode safely on my commute. And I thought, well, this is great. Back to those hijinks again. Well, I know I was not watching the video. There was no screen on. But I thought, well, this is a great way to re-experience the episode in a way that's safe. So it was like listening to an audio book. That's the way I looked at it. I did notice that the narrator on the audio, and this is my first experience with audio description, I thought he was a little fast. He talks real fast. Okay, they did a bad job producing this from top to bottom. They artificially have sped up his voice, I guess, because his delivery wasn't quick enough to keep up with the action on screen, or the descriptions were way too descriptive, and it took them too long to spit them all out. That's my guess. But I can tell that he has been artificially sped up, I don't know, by about maybe 10% at least. The problem is he has a very whispery delivery. Yes, I noticed that. He's buried low beneath the music and the sound and everything, and you lose words. And that is completely against the whole nature of having the descriptive audio track. You know, you don't want to bury it in the mix. And then this guy, he sounds like he's doing a bad Martin Sheen impersonation. And I have to listen to this now all season long. He really is. He's like that, Darth Malvin hid behind the starship. And then it's all artificially sped up and buried in the mix. So I found myself. It was a very frustrating experience. Wow. Okay, so I picked a really crappy first try at this. Because, I mean, I did, look, mission accomplished. I was able to, I'm not going to say re-watch because I wasn't watching, but I was able to re-experience both episodes on my morning drive. And it was great. I really enjoyed it. But I did, those nits I think are fair to pick because it was buried in the mix. So I kept playing with the volume and then just trying to, you know, a couple of times I would tap back 10 seconds because I wanted to make out what he was saying. But I do recommend it. It's a different experience. And you do occasionally pick up on things that aren't in the script that make it into the script of the audio description. Right. And I think a lot of the stuff is in the script, but it's not in the form of dialogue. Oh, right. So you're getting a lot of the cues and the exposition. All of that stuff, yeah. And it really helps also when certain ships show up and you don't know what to refer to that ship is. Like, for example, in the speeder chase at the beginning of the first episode, there is a bank transport vehicle. In the audio descriptive track, he refers to it as a modified bank transport. It's very important that we know that it's been modified. It's not just your run-of-the-mill bank transport. Right, right. Modified. So it's like, geez, I've never even heard of a bank transport before, and now we've got modified ones already. Well, the reason that I wanted to start with talking about the timeline is because I was talking to a good pal of mine who is a Star Wars fan, but not like us. He's not one of us. When he asks questions, he just calls me or texts me, and he's like, hey, I'm going to watch them all tonight. This was this morning. He goes, I'm going to watch them all tonight. I just, where, what's going on? Where is he? Why is he? So I did my best to sort of lay it down. And he kind of does his, his markers are the movies, not necessarily the television shows. That's where he wants to know where things fit. And so the way I told it is I said, look, you got Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, you got Phantom Menace Mall, Clone Wars Mall, Shadow Lord Mall, which we're in right now, Solo Mall and Rebels Mall. Did I get that right? I think so. I don't think you're leaving any mall out. You left no mall unturned. So, Janix, let's go back to that real quick. Jim, why do you think Janix matters? If it's a question of just having a location, a planet that is full of seedy underworld, they could have done Coruscant. They could have done any number of planets that we know. They went out of their way, I think, to pick something brand new. And some people are sort of comparing it to almost like it's like Gotham City if it was in the Star Wars universe. Why do you think the planet is being so well sort of curated for us and this particular show? Well, for this show about Darth Maul, that's who we have to look at. Whenever any questions like this come up, you have to just like look at Darth Maul and try to understand what his motivations are. And in the first episode, via the conversation with Rook Kast, it's revealed that Maul has been having visions of the future. that he will train an apprentice. And I think that's what brought him to the planet Janux to begin with, is because the vision sort of pulled him there. Because you can see they don't have a really great hangout, you know. Their headquarters, their hideout, it's a dump. It's an absolute dump. I don't want them all sitting on the floor in the corner there, and he doesn't even have a throne or anything cool like that. And it's just the dumpiest. So you can tell that they probably just moved in and that. It's a fixer. Yeah, it's a fixer. They need a lot of work. They got a lot of work to do. They need several long weekends over the course of the next few years to get that place in the shape. But you can tell it's just like a temporary place for them to set up shop. and they'll probably evolve throughout the show as they grow power by wiping out gang lords and whoever. They'll probably find some nicer digs. But for now, Maul's hideout, or the safe house as they refer to it on the descriptive audio track, it's a real dump. It's just a real dump. So, Rookcast talking to Maul. He says he's been having visions of the future. And I believe that's what makes the planet Janix important, because the presence of Devin Zara, or Devon, they never even say her name in it, do they? No, they don't. Yeah, she refuses to give up ID, so. Right. What difference does it make, she says. Yeah, right. But Devon, Devin, that's going to drive me. Because there's a Devon Avenue in Chicago. Oh, okay. It's spelled the same way. Can we agree on Devin? Devin. Because I'm never going to remember Devon. Devin. Well, see, that's all I can think of as Devin. Oh, geez. I used to live right off of it. Well, you know what? Why can't this just be our version of Han and Han? So you be Han and I'll be Han. And I'll say Devin and you say Devon. Yeah, but Devon sounds kind of pretentious, too. wrong. It's like, why does Jimmy Mack keep calling Devin Devon? What's the matter with him? I don't know. I think it sounds like that Key and Peele sketch, you know? Marquee? Is there Marquee in the... Somewhere Devon or Devin is going, Mr. McInerney, it's Devin, not Devon. I know, I know. I'm just going to call her Darth Talon. How about that? Well, I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff to get into with her. But as far as that's a really, that is not something, because I thought you were going to make all of these allegories about, well, it's a shadowy, seedy planet. They need something that has not yet been taken over by the Empire. The Empire has not expanded so far as to find itself on this planet. But I didn't pick up on the idea that it was the visions that they clearly talk about in the episode that led them to this place. Because what's significant about it? It's the only place in the galaxy that has Devin Indara on it. Or Zara, excuse me. Right. Right. Now, there is the Marvel comic book that acts as a prequel to this show. It's called something like Shadow of Maul or something. I forget what they call it. But they've only released one issue thus far. I think the second issue comes out tomorrow, Wednesday the 8th. Oh, okay. So that might have some explanation. Maybe Maul will say something in the panels of that book. I've been drawn to this planet Janix See he actually says the name of the planet In the comic book Before the show started And it was just I had listened to it so much I watched the shows last night Listened to it while I drive in And I just decided that I should Narrate my life As more And I'm getting up in the morning And turning my alarm clock off Who's going to listen to this narration of your life as done by Clark Maugham? Just going through my head. Is this going to be rushing through your head? Something tells me you're actually going to be verbalizing this by yourself, and your family is going to take you to see the doctor. Well, it finally happened. You've been hanging out with that guy online long enough. I regret. Well, okay, so the first episode opens with this heist. And, Jim, I feel like this pretty much sets the tone for the series in a way where we've got a bank robbery. We're talking about a crime thriller here. We're not talking about Jedi Quest. the visual style here is very gritty dirty and the characters, we'll get into all of those in just a little bit but our just everyday people, we see them sipping coffee and having conversations about their kid and the conversations with their kid this is very average Joe galaxy here. I mean, these are not people that would be, you know, looking at Brander Lawson, someone that would ever think that they would be found themselves swept up in some galaxy-wide conflict that's been going on for eons of Sith versus light side and Jedi and all of that. So I think with this heist, they immediately, I think, set the tone for the show and let people know that this isn't necessarily your typical big epic Star Wars. This is something different. Well, George Lucas always liked to provide viewers with a used universe look to his Star Wars environments. This is a used and abused environment, if you ask me. And it's very earthbound, a lot of the things going on here, like that police station. How many times have we seen that police station on television and movies? Hopefully not in person. Right. Okay. But on TV, on the screen, you know. How many times have you seen that police station? Similar layout to that. Yeah. Whether it's Dennis Franz or, you know, whoever the mustachioed policeman is. In this case, it's Brander Lawson. But, yeah, you're right. It's something we've seen a million times. Even that bullpen where they were bringing Devin into and everything, very, very familiar. Yeah, but, I mean, that does follow Star Wars tradition to a certain extreme. Of course, in the original, back in 77, George Lucas took us to a space bar. It was just your typical bar, but it was filled with aliens and monsters and stuff. So it follows a tradition in Star Wars. Yeah. It's not a departure. Yeah, but office space, who wants to go there? And that's what they do with this show. And they did that with Andor, where they take us to Star Wars office space. And you want it to be a little not so on the nose and earthbound all the time. Yeah. There was nothing in the empire that was going to be. Even complete with, like, the chief that was bawling him out, you know. You're crazy around here, Lawson. You've got to figure this stuff out. You know, every cop has a boss that is just chewing his ass all the time, even Brandon Lawson. Absolutely. That's Brandon Lawson's boss lady supervisor, Chief Kleiss. And she was upset. But from what I understand, I read about her on StarWars.com. Even though she was threatening to reach out to the Empire, she and Lawson do sort of see eye to eye on they don't want the Empire sniffing around in Janik's business. They all sort of share that attitude. But it'll be interesting to see what happens should she find out what Lawson knows about what is actually on Janix. You know, how far are they willing to go to keep Janix from under the auspices of the Empire when they know that they have, I'm assuming that Maul is pretty up there in terms of the Empire's interest in finding him. In fact, when they did the scan on his face, it was like they gave no information. It was like, you know, call 1-800-PALPATINE right away if you find this man. and I'm sure this supervisor Chief Kleiss I'm sure she's done her due diligence as well and probably looked into that hologram herself and realizes that this is a hot target for the Empire so I don't know I really think that she and Lawson share the same knowledge across the board I don't think I don't think Brander is holding back. You don't think he's going to be hiding anything from her here? No, I don't think so. I think that everything's being done on the up and up as far as this goes. Because, like I said, she sort of shares that sentiment with him that we need to keep the Empire out of our business. And so even though she's saying that, she's kind of blowing smoke a little bit. Well, we'll find out more about her, I'm sure, in future episodes. But that's just what it said in StarWars.com. By the way, there's very few humans relative to the droids. There was long periods of time where Lawson was the only human hanging out with all of these police droids. So it seems like manpower on the police force is generally droid. and um yeah there was a guy uh with the droids who they were the first responders to the bank raid at the beginning officer pack and uh he and the other police droids arrived at the site and then i think he was killed by maul right we don't see it maul jumps off of that that boarding ramp and starts slicing and dicing but they don't show us that part they make us wait to see the quality Maul action toward the end of the episode, like putting milk in the back of the store. And I started thinking about the Maul attack sequences, and we got them both in the two episodes around the same time in the episode, sort of in the latter third of the story. And I got to thinking, I wonder if this is going to be how it is for the rest of the series. We'll get our double-bladed lightsaber slice and dice in the latter third of the episode. I started thinking back to the old Incredible Hulk program. And I was young then, but that was on Friday nights at like 7 o'clock. And I would often go hang out with my friends at 8 o'clock or whatever, go to the ice rink or wherever we were messing around at. and so just getting ready you would have the Hulk on and you would always know to stop and start watching the TV stop doing whatever you're doing and start watching it like 20 minutes after the hour and 45 minutes after the hour because he would always transform into the Hulk Bill Bixby into Lou Ferrigno and so you could just stop what you're doing, watch that you see the best part of the show and you're still getting yourself ready to go out for the night. So that's what I think is going to happen to the mall show. It's going to be like we can set our watches to it every episode. Well, we're two minutes away. But this mall, though, despite the fact that he does do the old slice and dice, we see something very restrained with him. Like he will open the proverbial can. But if you look at how he kept Vario alive, despite his rage, and despite the fact that a lot of this was, you know, really, this opening heist was all about getting back at Demas and Vario. But Vario is able to sort of talk his way out of it. And Brander Lawson, who Maul has sort of this moment when he sees him on a screen, almost like he's getting a vision like, okay, this is somebody that's going to impact my life or is going to somehow weigh in my experience. He doesn't kill him. He knocks him out, kind of looks at him, moves on. And so I think this mall is definitely less reactionary. I think he's more calculated. He's more strategic. He doesn't kill just for the sake of killing. It's got to really make sense. Well, sure. And I thought it was sort of puzzling. Why did he spare Brander Lawson when he was wiping out pikes and police droids everywhere? why give Brander Lawson a break and then you think back to when he was watching Spybot and Spybot was broadcasting that speeder chase earlier and he saw Brander Lawson and he stopped and he studied that hologram just like Lawson stopped and studied the hologram of Maul so I kind of like that it sort of echoes each other But so I still just don't understand unless there is some sort of like force connection he's making with Brander Lawson. Like you said, understanding that this guy might play a pivotal role in helping Maul get from point A to point B. And so he spares him. He clearly spares him. He just smacks him in the face with his lightsaber. He knocks him out for a few minutes. So that's it. Right. Now, with Dario, however, or Vario, I'm sorry, Vario, I kept putting in my notes his name is Dario, and I had to go back and change all the D's to V's, and I'm still doing it here now on the show. And Vario, yeah. Vario. Vario, by the way, his first name is Luti. Luti Vario. Luti. And that's something I learned from StarWars.com. They have a whole data bank entry for him. Do you know Demas' first name? Yeah, Demas. That's his last name, actually. His first name is Nico. Nico. So you put it together, it's Nicodemus? Does that sound familiar at all? Nicodemus No I don know if this is what inspired it but there is a character from the classic story and classic animated film The Secret of Nym. There is a wise old wizard rat named Nicodemus. Nicodemus. Yeah, so I just wonder... Well, I think there might be a biblical connection because there was a Demas in the Bible who used to pal around with apostles like Peter, I think. And I think he was like, he betrayed Peter or something. Oh, really? Maybe they're getting all biblical on it. Yeah, well, you know. I don't know if I have that accurately. Maybe somebody in the chat can refresh my memory on demons. Oh, here's somebody, Savage. He's also in the Bible, LOL. Okay, well, do tell. Do tell. Who just laughed at us? I mean, come on. Chaz Bazar says Nicodemus, so he's on the same page as you. Yeah. But, you know, I'm hearing words here. So I'm not the only one who picked up the Bible, the biblical reference. I think Demas is spelled differently in the Bible, but very biblical with some of the names. Yeah, I know. That's what we're saying. And this guy says Nicodemus is from... Wait. I thought he was from Nim. He's not from the New Testament. He's from the Nim. So, all right. Nicodemus defends Jesus to the Pharisees. Pharisees. From the book of Daniel, who stood in the fire. Okay, this is not fun. It's getting all over the place. Yeah, this is like... from the book of Daniel who's sitting in the fire. I feel like I'm standing in the fire right now. This is a guy that went down this vortex. He's having flashbacks. To those who have betrayed me, die well. Rebel Force Radio. I really do like Vario. I was happy to see he was spared. And the reason he spared is because Maul said that they could use him, presumably, to get closer to the Pikes. And this Pike leader, Crim, who Maul has a real keen interest in, because Crim is the guy who really did him wrong. It appears the head Pike, at the end of the second episode, tells Maul that Marge Krim, or is it Marg, it must be Marg Krim. It's Marg. Controls. Marg. Marge. Oh, Homer! Marge Krim! I heard Maul is Wilson looking for me, I guess. No! All right. The head pike, yeah, he tells Maul that Marg Krim controls everything that was once his. So now, Maul is hellbent to get to this Marg Krim guy, and it's our pal, Vario, who can take him there. I like Vario. He's the little guy, like that pod racer. He's the same species. With the gills. Yeah, Rats Tyrell was the pod race. Ah, all right. Rats. And Rats ended up in a splat on a canyon wall during the Boonta Eve pod race. And in the scene when Watto is, I think it's the scene where Watto is paying Qui-Gon Jinn, or something like he says, Kwaeshaan says the thing about the, you always whenever you bet, you always lose or he says something like that, right? You see a couple of the same species behind them walking and they're crying. That's because their dad smashed into the canyon wall. Yeah, it's a little Easter egg. I can see it in the pan of minutes. Let's have his kids crying right here, right over there. Put them over there. That's one of those that he made Noel do after they were reviewing the footage. And he's like, I want the camera to pan all the way over here. I want to see his widow. I want to see her crying. I want to see the babies crying. Makes her feel more like flush out the saga. It's world building. World building. So the species is Alina. They're Alinas. Alinas. Alinas. And, yeah, rats Tyrell. So they're typically small like Ludivario. And then he's running around in the exosuit, which is like, I just love that. Now, we've seen that before in Star Wars, the little guy in the droid suit. There you go. There's a perfect example of what's happening right now. Baby Yoda. So Ludivario is like that. I would love to see, like, a Rock of Sockum Robots, Baby Yoda with IG-11 versus Ludy Dario in his exosuit apparatus. But it gives them height and, you know, helps them hang with these guys. It makes them a more intimidating ganglord. And he's the one who dropped the, yeah, this place looks like a Wookiee bathhouse. So, I mean, he's already, like, endeared himself to me. Yeah, you know, it's going to be a more mature Star Wars adventure when they throw out the bathhouse. Daddy, what's a bathhouse? It's historic, you know, Wookiees. Where you buy baths. That's an easy one. That's just where Wookiees bathe. Yeah, where they, you know. And I liked how Vario did the toast. He said, Chobasa. And then Demas says, Choba. I don't know if we've ever seen that before, have we? That particular toast. Now, there was a toast in the Andor show where they would say Tigrona Seema or something like that. And then you would respond. Oh, right, right. Yeah, yes, for the Mon Mothma's home world there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the two Jedi that we see in this show. We've got Jedi Master Iko Diodaki, which is a great name, by the way, Iko Diodaki, performed by the great Dennis Haysbert, who will always be the president on 24 to Me, and the insurance pitchman. Right, right. But what kept running through my head here, Jim, was how with Indara, why do I want to call her Indara see I'm going to have the same problem with Devin with Devin she's tempted right away right out of the gate we see the temptation of Devin to say wait a minute why should we starve why should you go hungry we can just take we can just take these fruits whatever they are melons or whatever and it's not going to hurt anybody everything will be fine but Jedi Master Gecko Dio Daki, let's call him Master Daki. He says, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. And she does it anyway. So we already see her defying her master. We see her willing to commit a crime, though it's petty theft. But still, we see her willing to do that. But more importantly, we see her willing to defy her master right there in front of him. Now, she does get, she gets pinched, and she gets sent to the police station. But this shows a rebelliousness that is in this character right from the beginning, and we also see the dichotomy with the Master, who is like, even if I am starving, I'm not going to steal so much as a fruit. So we've got this absolutist Jedi Master and this apprentice, who is not, doesn't seem willing to do, to make those big sacrifices. It's kind of like, hey, I'm starving. We're on the run here. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So she is justifying along the way, which I think makes her, obviously, a perfect potential apprentice for somebody like Darth Maul. Right. And that's probably when Maul started having the visions, was when this one started showing a little lack of loyalty to the old Jedi code. Unlike her master, Ico Diodaki, which they never say his name in the show. No, because it's hard to say. Ico Diodaki. It's fun to say fast, Ico Diodaki. Sounds like you're saying something very exotic. Ico Diodaki. Ico Diodaki. Ico Diodaki. so yeah they say fun things in this show too like Spybot who just randomly says things like Boosky-doo sure well Spybot is just Chopper Part 2 is what Spybot is this is very this is very full-only yes I guess so but the whimsical being attached to someone like Darth Maul that seems kind of odd Yeah. But it seems to work, at least in the first couple of episodes, it seems to work. It almost seemed like Spybot was like Darth Maul's pet at the end of the second episode. Yeah, he was petting it at one point, right? Wasn't he? Right. He was kind of rubbing it. Boosky-doo! Darth Maul was rubbing me. I'd yell boosky-doo. So, Master Diodaki, he insists they'll survive thanks to the kindness of strangers, but she goes and steals the melons anyway. Yeah. By the way, what I've learned is that the voice of the guy who had the melon cart was provided by D. Bradley Baker. So, once again, proving you cannot have any Star Wars animation without enlisting the talents of the great D. Bradley Baker. Was he credited? Was he credited? Yes, he was. Yes. And according to StarWars.com, they wanted the fruit to be that famous fruit from Clone Wars, the one that Anakin floats up. The Melodrin or something like that. I thought I would remember it. I didn't put it in my notes. The fruit that Anakin's eating with Padme, right? No, not that one. And I'm talking about, well, maybe it is, but in the Clone Wars. Remember there was a famous episode with C-3PO and R2-D2, and they went out shopping for these melons to bring back to Padme's function. Yeah. And they got kidnapped or something happened. I do remember that, yeah. Well, 3PO ends up having a bad experience. Doesn't R2 end up getting a massage? It was something like that. Yeah. And it was like he was getting a massage at the same place from the Wizard of Oz when they get to Oz and the Tin Man's laying there and they have those brushes coming down from the ceiling. It's like a car wash. The Meliorun. Is that what you're saying? It's called the Meliorun. Meliorun. Everyone is responding in the chat and they're all spelling this thing different. I have Maluron, Meluron, Meluron, Pear, and Jorgenfruit. Jorgenfruit, yes. Jogunfruit, sorry. Wait, you know what? I think he's right. It was Jorgenfruit. Jogun. Jogunfruit. Yeah. You know, we have to really make it a policy from this point forward on RFR. Never talk about Star Wars fruit again. I agree. Because I think you're right. Jorgen Fruit was the one in the Clone Wars when R2 got the massage. That was Jorgen Fruit. I don't know what this Melio Run is or what else. I don't know. I don't know how we ended up spending so much time on Star Wars Fruit. But Melu Run, someone says it. Everyone's telling it different. They all kind of know what I kind of know, what I'm talking about. All right, so moving on. All right. So I think that this relationship between this Jedi Master, now we have some people in chat saying, are you sure it's her Jedi Master? I'm assuming. I'm assuming that it's her Jedi Masters. Yeah. That they escaped Order 66 together. There were a lot of apprentices with their Masters when the, you know what, hit the fan, and they ended up, if they both survived, they ended up together. So do I have absolute proof of this? No. But it's an educated guess that they are master and apprentice. Right. But she is showing a reluctance to accept things as they are that Master Diodaki is willing to do. So they're not on the same page from the very beginning, and he even insists that she, you Now, rather than we saw what the guy's capable of, he upset that that that that vehicle and it crashed. So he could have probably done a Jedi mind trick or. Well, no, they were they were droid police droids that got him. But he could have gotten her out of that. But they have to remain incognito. They can't make a scene. He even says it's not worth making a scene. You're going to have to basically just pay for the year, you know, pay the consequences here. You'll be out in the day, whatever. and everything will be fine. So, like, he's not willing to risk exposing her, exposing him, just to get her off the hook. She tried to steal some fruit. She's going to go pay the piper. So, like, this Jedi Master is still kind of, like, teaching her lessons. And she just seems like she's over it. She doesn't cooperate with the police. And, you know, she isn't willing to really give anybody any quarter, whether it be Maul, you know, her Master. She was very stubborn. So interesting character to watch for sure. I want to talk a little bit about old Brander Lawson. This guy is about... I do want to say I have confirmed. I have confirmed, according to StarWars.com, which is your best friend in situations like this. But Master Ico Diodaki has been a loyal follower to the tenets of the Jedi Order, teaching his young Twi'lek Padawan, Devin Azara. So there you go. Ah, okay. Confirmed. That definitely is. There was no question in my mind. Yeah, it wasn't. Someone on the chat is asking. Someone on the chat is asking. That means thousands of viewers of this show are asking. So I think it's fair that we answer these questions. For sure. All right. Confirmed via StarWars.com. They are indeed master and apprentice. It would make sense because I think what they're setting up here is there's going to be a big falling out, I think, between the two of them. But time will tell. Let's talk a little bit about this Brander Lawson guy. He is about as everyday dude as we've seen in a protagonist in a Star Wars series, Star Wars anything. I mean, he's like a divorced dad. You know, he's got that son, Riley, who, you know, he obviously doesn't spend enough time with. You can tell that he no sooner gets home and starts having a conversation with his son, a difficult one about mom. Mom wants him to come to visit, blah, blah, blah. And he's back on the job again within minutes because Two Boots calls him and says he's got an update. Why Two Boots couldn't just give him the update over the comlink, I don't know. But he had to leave to get the update. Yeah, well, Brander, you know, he intends to be there for his son and wants to be there. But something tells me it's kind of painful to be just hanging out at home with his son and no mom. Mom is gone. According to StarWars.com, once again, Riley Lawson, son of Brander Andrea Lawson. Riley is a young and hopeful resident of Janix, a proficient Bodekin player. That must have been that lacrosse stick he was whipping around. Bodekin. And the ball is a Bodekin ball. Is that what it is? Yes. And I noticed that his... I love this kind of minutia. It just excites me to no end. I think you're speaking tongue-in-cheek here, Swank. But Bodekin. Yeah. And I noticed that his lacrosse stick was sort of a mashup of a lacrosse stick with a highlight paddle or whatever you call that. What do you call the highlight thing? You know, it's a game. I should know this. My son plays lacrosse. I've not heard of a highlight. Highlight is a different sport altogether. Oh, okay. And it's like they kind of mash them up where the end of the stick, like the highlight thing is something you hold in your hand and you chuck that ball around. But lacrosse, you have a stick and with a little net at the end. This appears to have the highlight thing on the end of a long stick. So whatever. Okay. But that's Bodekin for you. and you can bet on Bodekin on FanDuel. Maybe you can. I don't know. People are asking, because I said, I have made, again, an educated guess. I don't know if StarWars.com can confirm or deny that they're divorced, but I got the vibe that they're separated at best. They're separated. Okay. It says here in this entry about Riley, he must often fend for himself after his parents have separated, with his mother moving out of their family apartment and his father diving headfirst into late work hours for the local tactical defense force. So dad is avoiding facing these big life issues of his marriage blowing up. He's becoming estranged from his son, and he's just going headfirst into work. Okay, yeah. So he's looking for any excuse to get out of that apartment because apparently Drea used to also live at that apartment. And so that brings back some bad vibes for Brander. I feel bad for Brander, actually. And I feel bad for Riley. And I feel bad for Drea. I feel bad for all the Lawsons. So that's pretty nice when an animated show can do this, you know, elicit that response out of a guy like me. The name Brander Lawson is killing me. It's like, why didn't you just name him Sheriff Sherriffson or something like that? But whatever, whatever. Sheriff officer. Here's something, if I could pick some nits. The actor, Wagner Mora, he's got an accent. And I can't place it. I don't know what his nationality is. But I will say the accent did get in the way a few times of me understanding. understanding, so I turned the subtitles on because, you know, he's got a very resonant, you know, deep, resonant voice. Yes. But sometimes when the accent comes on, it was just hard sometimes for me to understand him. It was, he wasn't super clear. Yeah. Well, he's from Brazil. He's an actor from Brazil. So he's, all right, I thought it was like South American, like something like that. He starred in the film The Secret Agent, which is a Brazil film, and that was nominated for Best Picture this year at the Oscars. There you go. Well, I wonder if his price tag is going to go up for seasons two and three. Oscar nominated. Right, right. Wagner Mora. But, I mean, Jim, if you think about the long line of Star Wars protagonists, I mean, this guy is, you know, he certainly is an everyman. I mean, there's nothing super about this guy at all. Maul made pretty quick work of him. So they didn't even really try to make him really stand toe-to-toe with Maul. I'm not saying they should have, but, I mean, this guy is at every turn just a regular, normal dude. Right. So what makes him a worthy opponent for Darth Maul? That's the question. What is he bringing to the table? We've yet to see. I mean, he seems like a good guy, but other than that, true blue guy. He's a likable character. A lot of the characters that they present in this show are likable. Yes. Heck, I even like Vario. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Across the board, everybody made sense. Nobody annoyed me. Right. Which is kind of odd. There was no snarkiness. Sometimes they'll put a younger character in and it's just snarky, snarky. Or they put somebody who's just so over the top and overdoes it. But this feels very measured and everything is very palatable. Nothing really irked me to any great degree or, you know, took me out of the story. I was very invested from the beginning to the end. You know, we can talk, and we're going to be opening up the phone lines here in just a minute, but we can talk about the tone of the show and how it stacks up with the other Star Wars, not just the animated series, but the live-action series as well. Some people are saying, wow, this is really, really dark. I mean, like, not just dark tonally, but dark, you know, the way it visually and all of that. Wanted to talk to you a little bit about his partner, Two Boots, because I thought it was a cool extension of this thing in Star Wars about the relationship between, for lack of a better term, a master and their droid. Because I thought there was one little, I'm not sure if you caught it, But they were investigating a crime scene, and you'll notice that Lawson kind of puts his hand on his chin when he's thinking and kind of rubs his chin a little bit. I didn't know that. And I noticed Two Boots was doing it in the background. And I just thought that was pretty cool to show. Here I got a shot of it. That these two have been working together a long time. And I feel like. and the droid has really started to take on some of Lawson's. There's even a scene where they're drinking coffee together. Obviously, he's a droid. He's not going to drink coffee, but he likes the ritual of standing there in the morning or whatever at that particular time of day and enjoying the calf. Thank you. You got it in right at the buzzer there because you said coffee twice, but then you corrected yourself there and said calf at the end. How dare I? so we see Brander in two boots and that's the first mention of calf we get in the whole series how's the calf partner and he says you know I can't drink it I just share this moment with you wow that does show that there's a bit of bonding that has gone on between these two and they're pretty well connected I think we'll be seeing a lot of that stuff go on throughout the episode and it also shows you that Two Boots is of value, obviously, emotional value at the very least, to Brander. Maybe even fills the role as surrogate wife to a certain degree. Now hold up, Swank, before your mind goes there. I'm not talking about Lando Calrissian with the Fleabag voice droid, okay? I'm talking about a different sort of emotional connection. Okay. Where he provides, you know, he provides a companionship element that is missing from Brander's life because his wife is no longer around. I'm not talking about physical stuff. I'm just talking that. I hear you. I hear you. Someone for Brander to lean on. Yeah. Yeah. A pal. A pal. Let's talk a little bit about Rook Cast here. Something that surprised me is she knows that Maul is having these visions, and she doesn't seem to be threatened by them. So she's very comfortable in the role that she has as sort of his right hand. But I just thought it was interesting about, you know, he's looking for, he's actively searching for an apprentice, someone that he can teach, someone that can be an extension of him, and yet here she is, this right hand, but there doesn't seem to be any interest from her about wanting to fill that role, knowing that that's not her role to fill. She seems very content with the station that she has in Maul's organization, which is not very exciting right now as he's rebuilding. well you know she has no known force abilities now in this modern era of star wars they're always trying to redefine how people connect with the force it's gone from a high midichlorian count to anyone can be trained to use the force look at sabine so have we ever had a situation in the past where Rookast tried to levitate a cup or something and just God, she just couldn't do it. So that ruled her out. I don't know what's yet to come up. The connection between Rookast and Maul is really sort of fuzzy and foggy. You don't know what it is other than her loyalty to him. But I think Maul just looks at her as just It's a tool, somebody that he can give orders to, and she works for him, and that's it. It's nothing special, and he doesn't necessarily use her as a weapon in which he intends to use Devin. Right. Right. Yes, and that's the thing, though, is like this new mall, or is it a new mall? I mean, is this, because he's put front and center in the show, it's like, I can't figure out if we're supposed to be rooting for Darth Maul in this show yet, or if this is just, we're supposed to just understand Maul as a result of this show. Because when you build a show around a central character, it's unusual to do it around someone who is just a black and white villain. so when you talk about Root Kast being just a tool if he were just a complete villain with no feeling at all no sense of loyalty outside of power and money then I would say that I would agree with you but there might be something more to that and I'm wondering if he rewards his loyalty the loyalty of others with something beyond just money? Compassion, is he willing to go to bat for them? Would he spring to rescue them if they ended up in custody with the law? Something like that. I'm just trying to figure out where the boundaries are with how loyal Maul is to these folks. I think the loyalty really only runs as far as what you can provide to Maul. And if you can't provide him with what he wants, he just moves on to the next. That's what it's about. That's what it's about. At this point, it doesn't seem like Maul has a large number of reinforcements, though. So these are relationships maybe he is going to cultivate a little more, and maybe there will be more to them just because there aren't that many people there to choose from. nobody is really expendable here in the early days of of mall's return no it's a small band you've got uh you've got icarus and scorn which by the way i don't know if anybody was surprised i thought there was going to be some depth to these guys and they're just a couple of stooges i mean yeah they're just goons despite the fact that they're they could be body doubles for mall to some degree. I mean, yeah, they're just kind of grunt. I mean, Icarus is voiced by Steve Bloom of Rebels fame. Zeb. Zeb Aurelius. And you got Scorn, and I don't know. Yeah, it's Zeb, it's Scorn, it is Rook, and it's Spybot, who seems to be, like, stealing every scene that he's in. He's funny. He's funny. I gotta say he's funny. But when I saw it, I'm like, oh, Filoni doing that old chopper bit again, eh? But he's cool. I don't know of any other named characters in Maul's group. It's very small. Well, there's the two other Mandalorians in addition to Rue Cast. Oh, yeah, right. We see one fix Azara up when she's wounded. Right, yeah. But I think you see some people in the background there at their safe house. But there aren't many people in Maul's operation at this time. Right. And it doesn't seem like Maul is necessarily recruiting people either. No. He's trying to clean the slate by wiping out everyone that he perceives has done him wrong. Yeah. I mean, how long is Vario going to be hanging on? Do you think he'll live to see the end of season one? or do you think he'll endear himself enough and prove himself useful enough that Maul will accept him back into the ranks? Yeah. Vario just seems like one of those characters who has nine lives. Yes. Totally. He can talk himself out of anything. Right. He's like Hondo Onaka. He'll just always be around. Right. Right. Another character that we see very briefly is if I may imply a lady of the night If this is a as I think that old Lawson goes to the red light district and meets up with a contact a source I believe her name is Rena Saul because Vario does spill before he's picked up by the mall gang he does spill this name the Shadow Collective which Lawson has never heard of but he thinks that if anybody would have heard of it, it's just Rena Saul. And he's right. He's right. She knows. Right away when we're introduced to Rena, you know that she has had a history with Lawson. She immediately asks about his kid. Yep. And then they have a drink to Cattelore. and this is some scheme where Lawson was apparently double crossed or something and she was involved in that. So these two have a history. Yeah I wonder what kind of history though. I just wonder maybe she's the reason that he's separated. Oh she is? I'm just saying maybe she is. Maybe she is. You're right about that. But it was a misunderstanding because she's an informant and not necessarily his girlfriend or his mistress or lady of the night, whatever you want to say. But you couldn't tell Christy, what's her name? What's his wife's name? Drea. You couldn't tell Drea that. She wouldn't understand. You could be onto something. She just saw his police cruiser parked outside that building for a long time. And Saul does say she's free for dinner. So she obviously is fond of Lawson. Yes. She wants him to take her out to dinner. So, I think you're right, Swank. I didn't really pick up necessarily on that kind of relationship in the past between these two, but I did pick up that they have a history together. For sure, yeah. Yeah, because she's like, Brandon Lawson. Like, look what the cat dragged in. Right, right. That old dude. I will show you a galaxy for what it truly is. By the way, this is a call-in show. We do have the phone lines open already, stacking up the calls right now. Our call screener, Tyler Page, is hard at work. So 708-866-1737 is the number if you're within the sound of our voices as we record this podcast live. We do this each and every week. We will do it each and every week during the run of the Maul show. So for the next four weeks, for a total of five weeks, ten episodes, two episodes a week, 708-866-1737. All right, so some big themes here in this series. I mentioned one, which is what are we supposed to do with Maul? Are we supposed to root for Maul? Are we supposed to just understand him? and then at the end after he's so quote unquote freed Devin and he never really accepts her implication that she's a prisoner she believes she's a prisoner and Maul's almost like you're no prisoner, you can leave whenever you want and I mean he says you're not going to make it easy so it's essentially a test to see It's a psychological test. It's a test of her Jedi abilities to see if she can actually break out of this cell or whatever this holding that she's in. And then once she does, there's this look of, should I stay or should I go? Because his promise to teach me something that the Jedi wouldn't sounds pretty tempting. I'm going to go back to my Jedi Master where he's going to get mad if I'm starving and I need to steal some food just to stay alive, or I stick around and see what this is all about. Yeah, and also the way Maul is preaching about how times have changed, the Empire is in charge, you have to adapt. Yes, you have to. And to go back to that conversation we were having about her stealing the fruit, that conversation that went off into a tangent about Star Wars fruit. I want to forget that ever even happened. But what I was going to say, before Fruit Talk kicked in full force, was that as Devin has been exhibiting this rebellious attitude and this lack of loyalty to the Jedi Code and kind of pushing back on her Jedi Master. I think those were sending the tremors through the Force, which was giving Maul the visions of an apprentice because he realized it was the Force that was triggering these visions because she has been sliding a little bit as far as the light side of the Force goes. She's been sliding away from it toward the dark side, And that tips the balance. The scales of the Force get tipped out of balance. And she's been leaning more toward dark side stuff just out of survival. She just needs to survive. That's adapting. And that's changing the way she's always been taught. And Maul is picking up on this. He doesn't know what it is. It's just a tremor in the Force. And it's giving him a vision of an apprentice. And it's her. but it's because of the fact she's been pushing back on that Jedi Master that Maul has even initiated the search for her. So that's just my breakdown of how we go and how the ball has already been rolling for her. She has been adapting, but she's been getting held back by Master Deeky Daki Dooky. Well, and another question is, you know, as you were pointing out, that Janix has essentially called them all because that's where she is. That's where Devin is. So is he really? What's his end game? Is he really looking for an apprentice or is he looking to rebuild his criminal empire? Both equally. What's really pulling Maul? Yeah, it's the vengeance thing. He hasn't really expressed any desire to be like the gangster mastermind necessarily. Right, not like Boba who wanted to be the daimyo. Yeah, that was his goal. It's like going for the big promotion. I want to be dying, yo. He came out of that Sarlacc pit thinking big, big ideas. But, no, Maul, I don't know. That's something that I assumed would be happening in the series, that he was going to rebuild his criminal empire, but it doesn't appear that is a priority of his, at least right now. He wants vengeance on everyone from the lowest of the low, like Vario, to the big man sitting on his throne in Coruscant, and that's Palpatine himself, Darth Sidious. So that's the thing that's driving Maul right now. and I think he will loot and plunder to make sure he has the riches to build this little militia of his I assume that's what he's trying to build he's got a master and apprentice situation and they will lead these Mandalorian cast offs and night brothers and they will just slowly march their way through the galaxy getting vengeance on all of Maul's enemies until he gets to Palpatine. And do we think that Maul is willing to actually let Devin walk at the end of this second episode? Is he really offering her freedom? Oh, no. No. It's all a trick and a trap. I mean, he is a darksider. He's not going by the name Darth anymore, nor celebrating the Sith legacy, but he's still a dark sider and dark siders do all kind of dark side things including lie and manipulate they try to always play their victims they always try to very subtly confuse and control and manipulate that's what the Sith do and that's what I think Maul is doing here just to try to condition her to embrace the dark side It's a false choice. He's not offering her a real choice. It's a false choice. Yeah, where's she going to go? Like you said, where was she going to go back to her master and go back to starving and not adapting to the change in times? You know, even Obi-Wan Kenobi was adapting. Remember, he told that guy to bury his lightsaber, forget he ever had it. You know, he was adapting. That was quite a pep talk. Yeah, yeah. What do we do, Master? Let me tell you what you do. You go out in the middle of the desert, bury that face. Yeah, really. It's like, oh. What a disappointment. Imagine how excited he was when he thought he saw Obi-Wan Kenobi. Dang. Oh, my God. He had hope. There's a chance. Well, you know, that guy, he never made it off Tatooine. The Inquisitors finally caught up with him. And he knew he didn't stand a chance. But maybe if you listen to Obi-Wan, he'd still be alive. Yeah. That guy, the Safdie brothers. Which Safdie is that? I don't know. Again, getting back to Maul as a protagonist, there doesn't seem to be any kind of redemption arc possible for him. We know how he meets his end. He still meets his end seeking vengeance. This guy's whole thing is vengeance. I mean, at first he starts out, he'd do anything to get to Kenobi, kills Kenobi's girlfriend, kills God knows how many on Mandalore to consolidate power there, still obsessed with Kenobi. Now he's obsessed with getting rid, well, he's also kind of obsessed with Sidious, but he knows he can't go anywhere near that. Well, he wants to. He states that that's who he wants to. That was his endgame. But he needed a weapon, and the weapon is Devin. He is Devin. So it's all about vengeance with this guy. Nothing but. Nothing but. And the criminal activity and the power and the money and all that comes with that, that's just, like you were saying, tools earlier. That's a tool. That's the means to the end. And really he wants to kill Kenobi and kill Palpatine because Palpatine betrayed him and Kenobi, well, cut him in half. And when he dies on the planet Tatooine in the Twin Suns episode of Star Wars Rebels, again, he's still seeking vengeance. and it just appears, though, by that point in time, the only two who are going to be left on his list are Kenobi and Sidious. Right. Palpatine. Those are the last two. Now, he just needs to get past Kenobi to then go hunt down Sidious. But as we see, he doesn't quite get there. What I do hope we see is him at least attempt it once before he dies, you know, in this series. If they're going to name check Darth Sidious, which they do in the second episode in Maul's Hideout, he tells Rook that he will use Devin as a weapon against everyone who betrayed him, including Sidious. So they name checked him. But that's got to be some foreshadowing as to what we're going to see down the road. An eventual reunion between Maul and Sidious. But by this point in time, somebody else is hanging out in that throne room, and he's a heavy breather. And he's fond of black cloaks and helmets and red sabers. So I would love to see Maul eventually make his way to Palpatine. But instead of finding Palpatine there, he has a showdown with Vader. That would be amazing. And again, everything has to end up with Maul on the planet Malachor hanging out at the Sith Temple. It has to end that way. And he needs to reacquire the Darksaber, too, while he's doing it. which it doesn't appear he has in this episode, at least. In these first two episodes, we see no sign of the Dark Saber. So maybe that's in Palpatine's possession from when he defeated Maul in Savage Opress in the Clone Wars. Maybe Palpatine has that Mandalorian Saber locked up somewhere, and when Maul goes to seek vengeance on Palpatine, he finds the Darksaber then, because he has to have it by the time he ends up on Malachor. So Ezra can steal it, or Sabine can steal it. All right, hold on one second, Jim. It looks like we had a little issue with the calls, but we should be all set here. Let me just reset one thing, and we'll be back with your calls. All right. Just a moment. so we'll be taking calls I certainly will so did you know that the cells that they're using they get referred to on the descriptive audio track as tanker tubes so tanker tubes is what have been repurposed as cells in Darth Maul's safe house and that's where he says to Devin, you've been indoctrinated. Welcome, host. You are now in the host room and can manage your callers from the call-in studio web interface. Oh my God, is that what? What's that? We had to get our call. I do apologize if your call was terminated. We had a little glitch here. Give us a call back. 708-866-1737. It's the first episode, folks. Give us a little bit of a break here. 708-866-1737. All right. So with the sort of the big questions that are looming, we want to hear your thoughts. I'm going to go to some super chats here. We've got Toon Raider. Toon Raider says, addressing Filoni, he created and developed a show with Matt Meknovitz. His involvement lessened when he went to do Ahsoka Season 2, but was still involved throughout. Sam compared his involvement to George's in the Clone Wars. Okay, I've read something similar to that. I've been trying to read all the articles and posts and things like that. There was a big Esquire interview with Filoni. And, yeah, in one of the articles in StarWars.com, it said that at one point Filoni said to them, make this show unlike anything we've ever seen before, make it amazing, and then he just split to go do Ahsoka season two. And everyone was sitting around going, oh, geez. Filoni said we had to make this unlike anything that's ever been seen before. So they came up with the whole idea of it looking like it's been painted, especially with those backgrounds. They look so painted. You can almost see the brushstrokes. You can see the brushstrokes. It's incredible. It's unlike any other animation I believe I've ever seen. From what I gather, what they did was they actually took glass and they painted on the glass to get those brush strokes and then somehow then used that to put it into the show. So they didn't want it to have this crispy, clear, digital, what we've seen with Clone Wars and we've seen with Bad Batch. they wanted it to have this kind of more artsy, grittier look I'm not convinced that I love it to be honest with you I kind of think that because the show was so dark, visually anyway, that the obfuscation of the image even more I think makes it even a little bit too gritty for me I think they have to choose I think either just go make the show very dark, very Batman animated series where it's you very rarely see any daylight at all or do some of your your fancy, you know, putting brushstrokes and lines into the graphics. But I think doing both. It's just I think it's a little bit much. I think it's unnecessary, but they're going to a specific tone and a look. I do have to admit when the Pike ship got redirected to that moon and they showed a brief exterior shot of the moon outside of the ship as the warriors were heading toward the ship. I thought it was like, wow, it's really nice to see a new environment here. We're outside in the daylight. You can see trees. Let's mix it up. After all the action on neon-lit Janix the whole time. Yeah. It just felt nice to see a more natural environment. I guess the deal is with the city, Janix, on the planet. I guess the planet is Janix, but the city there is in a crater. And surrounding the crater is a bunch of untamed jungle. so I assume some of the action will eventually take place outside the city in this untamed jungle area and we'll see crazy creatures and monsters and beasts and things like that but it does get to be a little repetitive seeing that neon lit atmosphere of Janix constantly I'd like to see it get mixed up a little more. Well, let's go to the phone since we have him here. Let's talk to, we've got Jacob, Jacob from Texas. He wants to talk about that Bible quote and make sure that we're attributing Demas. All right, let's go back to Sunday school. Here we go. All right, we got Jacob. Jacob, you're on the line. Hello, Jacob. Jacob let's try talking to Thomas from Salt Lake Thomas nope no Thomas oh well I guess our phones are screwed up or something yeah what are you going to do I can't seem to Yeah, nothing's working. Nothing's working the way it should. Sorry about that, folks. Yeah, it's just not going to happen tonight. We'll take care of that for next week. Hopefully they made some changes in the service that we use. But oh, well. But we do have your super chats. And so if you do have a question, you can just put it in the chat. Or your super chats are always welcome. Peter Beiser is asking, is Dave just making amends here for killing Maul in Rebels? I mean, why did he off him if he knew GL had plans for the character in future Star Wars movies, RFR number one? Good question. Great question. Yeah, I don't think that the timeline really works. I think at the time that Dave was working on Rebels, I don't think... I'm going to go out on a limb here, Jim, and say that I think that George's story ideas for 7, 8, and 9 came together somewhat hastily. Oh, you think? I don't think that this was something that he and Filoni were sitting out on the porch there at the big house and discussing this over the years about, you know, if I ever made these sequel movies, what I would do. I don't think that's what was going on. no he was just looking for ideas that were semi developed already for the animated show and he was cherry picking from that and I think he believed that Darth Maul was such a popular character and everyone complained when he got killed at the end of the Phantom Menace and so George heard the fans and he's giving them what they want by bringing back Darth Maul in the Clone Wars he just basically told Filoni, just bring him back. I don't care how you do it, just make it happen. Filoni came up with the spider legs deal and all of that. But as far as George's ideas for Darth Maul in the sequel trilogy, yeah, I think he just threw that all together because he figured Darth Maul was popular and he was going to utilize and fully realize the potential of the character as a leading villain in one of his films, as opposed to just being the goon for Palpatine in the first one. Yeah, and as far as his death, I mean, what do you think, George cares that he was killed? It doesn't matter to George. He can bring Darth Maul back. They've done it before. They can do it again. So I don't think it was really going to impact anything. If George wanted Darth Maul in those movies, it was going to happen regardless of what happened on Rebels. And there's just varying reports as to the amount of material that George had actually prepped for the sequel trilogy. We know Michael Arndt was writing a script, but do we know if Darth Maul appeared in that script? Or was George saving him for later in the trilogy? We don't really know. I hear something chirping. Yeah, I do too, and I have no idea what that is. I was going to ask you if it's coming from you because I got nothing else plugged in here. I don't think I'm chirping. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm chirping. I was looking at the chat earlier with our live chat, and it seems to be going pretty well over here. Ian Savage asking if we still have that cardboard box for our, you know, which we use to hold all of our gear together and which Filoni used to make fun of us for using the cardboard box. No, our gear is not housed in a cardboard box anymore. All right. We have a plastic box now. Right. And the plastic box is, I think it's melting. Oh, it's melting. Here's Kurt Bearer tattoo. It says, maybe Maul will be the first character to believably survive a saber in the midsection from Lord Vader. Oh, yeah. Loving the show so far. The aesthetic and the tone are great. We are so back, y'all. RFR number one forever. Thank you very much. All right. Well, do you want to see that? I'm sick and tired of seeing people taking lightsabers right through the midsection. and there being really no impact on the story nor the character. You know, it's like a flash moon for the character. And every time they've done it, it has no bearing on the story whatsoever. It just sort of puts an end to the scene. Yeah. I mean, where are you going to take the scene once the guy got a lightsaber plunge through his midsection? Well, we better cut to another scene, you know, and that's all they do. You cut to the scene, Sabine's just sitting in, like, the medical bay, and she's got a bandage on. She didn't even have a bandage. They even showed her scar. It looked like she burned herself on the oven. Remember that she had a little something on her belly there when she was living in the sick bay? Yeah, like she moved a little too close to the flame on the gas stove. Well, she was flipping a grilled cheese sandwich or something. And then you have Reva, the Inquisitor sister. She took the lightsaber right through the midsection, and all it did was end the scene. She showed up in the next episode, and I think they showed, like, maybe they briefly showed a bandage wrapped around her. Come on. Yeah, yeah. Come on. All right. And it does nothing to move the story from. No, we know. It sucks. It's stupid. whether it's Darth Vader doing it to Darth Maul or whomever. I don't want to see it. Majin says, Chut Chut, popping in on my break. Love the first two episodes. Can't wait for more. Yeah, I'm definitely very interested to see where this goes. It's an extraordinarily interesting idea to take Darth Maul and make him a central character. and having to always walk that tightrope. We know we can't be redeemed. This is not a redemption story, which we typically see when we have the bad guy, the villain, as the central character. That's not what they're up to here. But how far can they take it? How far can they walk up to that line to where you want to tune in every week to see Darth Maul, what, just to be a bad guy, just to do nasty things, just to bump off some more gangsters? Or is there going to be something that's going to, I don't know, not go so far as to redeem him, but give him that anti-hero moniker or something? I just find it very curious, you know, coming off of Andor, that the next animated show that we get is very, I guess you could say, sort of and or like and that it's regular people it is um you know certainly well we definitely see jedi power in this so we can't say that this is devoid of like the big star wars themes we've we see lightsabers uh we see the uh the jedi force power we see the master apprentice relationship We've got Maul who's looking to court her as his own apprentice. But everyone around these characters are very, very common, everyday, ordinary droids and people. So you've got a big story happening in this very small setting, I guess. Agreed. Agreed. I'm just flipping through some of the chat here. Well, here's Adam. He says the design for the two Zabrak henchmen are cool. I wonder what their backstory is. You guys are awesome. Well, thanks, Adam. You're awesome, too. I wonder if they're more than just goons. Yeah, are they reanimated like Maul? Where'd they come from? You know, this show does not do a great job. You know, Filoni talked about, I think it was on that, it was a quote from Filoni recently where he was saying that, It could have been Witwer, too. But somebody was saying that you don't need to come into this show with all of the lore and all of the baggage. You could come in very clean. I don't know how true that is, to be honest. That's not true at all. That's not true at all. Yeah. I'll tell you how I know is because I tried watching the show with Michael Mack. And, you know, I used to watch Clone Wars episodes with him when he was a little kid. but he revealed to me that he sort of fell off the Clone Wars bandwagon around Season 3. And unlike his brother Dylan, he has not gone back for a complete rewatch of the series. So he's a little in the dark about the return of Darth Maul. And specifically the return of Darth Maul as a gangster. None of that lands with him. And he found it frustrating watching that first episode because he's confused. How is Maul back? How did he survive? And then what is all this business about vengeance because other gang lords weren't loyal to him? What is all this? He was confused and he felt like the show was not enough about Darth Maul. All of the stuff going on in Janik's, Brander Lawson and Lawson's Kid and Two Boots and the police headquarters and Devin Azara and all of that stuff just really didn't connect with him. He wanted all Maul. He said, I thought this was going to be about Darth Maul. And he feels like the show is not about Darth Maul. And I couldn't get him to watch the next episode. Wow. Come on. It's like under 20 minutes. We can watch it. He's, no, I'm going to bed. And he kept apologizing to me, too. I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry. He doesn't want to disappoint you. He knows how important this stuff is to you and how it was this great source of bonding and camaraderie when he was younger. But, no, these claims, I don't think these creators need to make these claims about walking into these shows cold or clean or blind or whatever, because they're all in too deep. They're in too deep at this point. Now, you know, we see something like a Starfighter. We'll see how it goes. But this show, when you're dealing with a character, this isn't some throwaway character. This is a major icon within the whole Star Wars brand, the whole Star Wars universe, Darth Maul. I can forgive people saying or forgive this series for not going back and talking about how he went from Phantom Menace to being back in this show. But the fact that we don't really know other than Root Cast who any of these other characters are, where did they come from? Where's Scorn? They look like Maul, but there's no answers as to who they are. I don't know that they're even really there to serve that kind of a purpose where we're going to find out where they come from because they just a couple of grunting brutes that happen to look like Maul So then I asking the question well why do they need to be Zabracks Why do they have to be like these weird Maul clones? Exactly. I mean, there has to be a purpose to that. And you'd think maybe it'll eventually lead to some sort of return to Dathomir or some sort of return to the Maul origins as a Knight brother himself. That's what I'm thinking. Because it's not like he ever palled around with any other Zabracks, ever. Outside of Savage Opress. Beyond Savage Opress, no. So how did he hook up with these two? And why are they so loyal to him? These are the questions that I hope their mere presence will lead us to answers. and maybe get a little bit more background on Darth Maul and his resurrection, essentially, by Mother Talzin, who she fixed him up from the mad spider he was, and she gave him his first set of cybernetic legs, which were a little oversized. I think there was a little overcompensation going on there for something, because they were rather large. When the Mandalorians saw him with those legs, you know, clinging on to his life just barely, as he and Savage were tumbling through space in a non-functioning starship, almost frozen to death, they take those two guys and they're looking at those Mother Talzin legs on Maul, going, well, who did this thatching job on this stupid Zabrak? Let's give him some good Beskar legs, which I assume they did. I think when they saw him, they said, these are some big mother-tousand legs. Yeah, what's going on with this guy? They considered, you know, adding him to the Mandalorian national basketball team. But some of the other players, they thought he had an unfair advantage. So that's what the animated series was originally going to be about. That's an RFR exclusive. WTPO says, oh my, excellent analysis as always, sirs. I calculate the odds of you successfully navigating this after show at 100%. Thank you. Yes. Vote of confidence. Our old pal Rich Brendel, great episodes. The only thing that would make it better is the Martez sisters. No, stop it, you. Don't you dare. And what else we got? We got Eric from Phoenix here. Really enjoyed the first two episodes. Two boots? Really? Droid wears two boots and then that's his name? Are there other droids named? One belt, two gloves, one hat, glasses, one backpack? Yeah. I guess that's how they get their names. Well, we have two tubes who hang out with Saw Gerrera. Right. So you get two boots and two tubes. Now it's a thing. Yeah. You know, it's like you're loading up Noah's Ark or something. Dale's Toy says, Chut Chut J&J, even if the phone lines are down tonight, I'm so glad the after show is back. We'll be seeing an Imperial officer named Blake and some fun connections to Crimson Dawn soon enough. RFR number one. Thank you, Dale. Sorry about the phones, everybody, but we'll get them back up for next week. I think this happened once before with an after show. With our first one out of the gate, we had some phone problems. So it happens. Sorry about that, gang. But, yeah, as Jason said, we'll definitely be taking calls. And I'll tell you what, if you have something that's just burning you up and you have to let us know, it's like so mind-blowing, incredibly knowledgeable and insightful, you have to spit it out, leave us a voicemail. And maybe this week on the show we'll get to some Darth Maul, I'm sorry, Maul Shadow Lord voicemail. So, yeah, yeah, please feel free to leave us a voicemail. our voicemail number is that's why I thought you'd say something Jason I don't have it in front of me while you're looking it up we got Tyler Tyler has some notes that he took from as he was screening the calls and some thoughts from some of the folks that were calling in so Tyler what are the folks saying out there even though we can't we can't hear from them on the phones we can't hear from Tyler you're muted Oh, there he is. Yeah, yeah. You're on mute. What am I, at work? Gosh, so rusty. Yeah, so Marty from Georgia, he wants to see a droid beatdown between two tubes, two boots, and Spybot. Oh, two boots versus Spybot. All right. I can get behind that. Boosh-kidoo to that. Thomas from Salt Lake thinks that Lawson used to be a bounty hunter and that there might be some recognition there between him and Maul I would love to hear that theory if he wants to call back. Yeah I want to hear the theory too because I love it. I love it but like I make the claim on the show that this Jedi Master and this Apprentice had this relationship and people are like, where's Swank? Where does it say that? We got this dude who's just like, you know what? That Brander Lawson, even though there's absolutely nothing in the story and nothing on StarWars.com that would indicate this, I bet he was a bounty hunter. Yeah. These theories are crazy, and then people wonder why they end up disappointed. Yeah. Because they can talk to these backstories in their heads. You know what I think he is? I think he's just a career cop that, you know, was married to his job. And his old lady said, you know what? You can't have three in a marriage. So I'm out of here. Yeah, I think it is what it is. It's surface level. And there's nothing to dig deep into. I don't want to discourage people's imaginations because I think it's a lot of fun. but I mean after doing how many of these after shows and hearing all these theories and so much of it is just people just making stuff up that they just would like to happen and 9 times out of 10 I'd say 10 times out of 10 it ends up being exactly what you said it just is what it is there's no hidden codes no how many times do we have to have that happen Right. You know, remember in the sequel trilogy, God, everyone was somebody else or something else. Right. Who is Snoke? What is Snoke? All of that stuff. I'm just exhausted from all of it. What else we got, Ty? We got one last one. It was Pepper Spray Johnny from New York. He talked, he liked to think of this as like Star Wars office space. I think that was brought up earlier. and I don't know, he thought that mall was a lot like Andor. What does that mean, Star Wars office space? What does that mean? You know, you're going to have to talk to Pepper Spray Johnny. I would not do it justice right now. These are the cliff notes of the phone calls that we had in queue. Well, I mean, you took the notes from him. You obviously must have understood what he was trying to say. Yeah, well, I think he put it best when he said, you know, these are real people and they have like they're living real life um and you don't always get that in star wars and i think you guys touched on that a little bit earlier so i think that's where he's getting at um and office space five is probably just like that police department you know oh yeah they're sitting around drinking coffee like they're having small talk you know in the morning talking to the boss checking in yeah it's very uh it's very mundane uh some of the stuff that's going on here you know that's kind of been a trend for star wars if you look at the last year and a half with a show like skeleton crew kids in the suburbs going to school and stuff like that very earthbound very mundane nothing really special about it or exotic you know even luke skywalker was a thousand times more exotic than than the gang on skeleton crew was it was so relatable you You look at Andor, you got people going to their desk jobs and stuff. And then you have the mall show where we see basically real-life cops doing their job. There's no way. They're stripping the exotic quality away from Star Wars. And I think they need to work harder on that. Yeah. This is becoming too humdrum, earthbound, and mundane, really, when you think about it. It's very fortunate that you have Darth Maul running around with a double-bladed lightsaber because he adds that exotic quality to the whole thing. Otherwise. Yeah, Maul's search for an apprentice and, you know, watching a potential falling Jedi fall to the dark side. Yeah, if it wasn't for all of that. But you are right. It is being put within the setting, the backdrop of some pretty humdrum stuff. Now, there's been some really cool action sequences. And, you know, when Maul goes full Maul on these droids and these policemen and gangsters and all that, it does get pretty exciting. But I'm willing to give these first two episodes a little bit of grace because they're doing a lot of establishing character, establishing place, and putting the pieces on the board. But if we're still talking over CAF in a couple of weeks and we're halfway through this thing, then, yeah, then I'm going to be maybe a little bit less generous in my thinking about it. But I like the world building. I like that they're taking their time with it. rolling the characters out, showing that these are real people. But I do have a fear that the creators are listening to a lot of these voices of, we want it dark, man, we want it dark, and we want gritty and real people and real stories. And I don't know. The question is, do you learn the right lessons from your successes and your failures? was was and or successful because it was just about ordinary people or was it successful because it was about ordinary people doing really cool, extraordinary things. I think it's the latter. But, you know, it depends on what voices you listen to. But I but I imagine it's very, very frustrating for the people in charge because they're thinking, wait a minute. All we've been hearing is you didn't like this because it was too it was too light. It was too kiddy. Now we're making it dark, and now it's too dark. You people can't be satisfied no matter what we do. And I guess there is some truth to that in some respects. But I'm with you, Jim. I think it is a little humdrum in places. Let me just make it so earthbound. And Star Wars is never that. It really never was. You know, sure, Luke grew up on a farm, okay? And we can all relate to that. I mean, everybody's met someone who grew up on a farm, but his farm was different. Yeah. It was a giant desert, and there were dewbacks and banthas and Krayt dragons, and they didn't grow crops. They pulled water out of the atmosphere with these cool-looking moisture evaporator devices. And Luke was bored, and it was mundane and humdrum to him, but to us it was amazing. Two sons, you're kidding me, you know? You go into town and go to this bar with all these monsters hanging out, getting drunk, and there's stormtroopers. It's all fantasy. It's all fantasy. You're right. Even the sun in the sky, they take it and they go, all right, how do we make that different? There's two of them, right? Yeah. Oh, he's a farmer. How do we make that different? Are we going to have a bunch of cattle roaming around? No, no, no. They're actually harvesting the water from the sky. Like, he took everything that was earthbound and gave it a twist. Right. And that's what they're not doing here. Right. And that's when George goes to see The Force Awakens or something, and he says, there's nothing new here. And now they're taking even a step further. Instead of creating new Star Wars, they're not even creating new fantasy anymore. They're just making it all very based in Earthbound stuff. The cop on this show is just so Earthbound with his kid at home with the lacrosse stick. That's why you've got to have Darth Maul because otherwise this is where we're going here. And then Skeleton Crew, sure, those kids went off on a wild adventure and saw insane things, but the basis of their existence was being kids growing up in the suburbs like circa 1985 or something. Right. You have to take it. They were spectators. It was almost like they were watching Star Wars along with us in some ways. Yes, yes. And that's clever in its own way. I get that. Yeah. But it does appear to be a trend is starting to establish itself in Star Wars where very earthbound elements are being thrown into the mix. And that was never the case in George Lucas's Star Wars. Ever. Never, ever. Can I get it? I mean, what's the closest you can even think of to seeing anything that would be an earthbound environment? Nothing that wasn't turned or altered to make it exotic or different. If there was something that was extremely earthy. Tyler, what were you going to say? This is like the fourth detective story that we've gotten in recent history with Star Wars, or at least for detectives involved. Ecclite was purely driven by that. Mando had a story about that. Andor has elements of that early on. Like, I don't know. History, espionage. I don't know. I hope we get a little bit more funky with this at some point. There's no Mother Towson here, obviously. But if we want to get there. That gets me up in the morning. Think about that for a second. Think about Brander Lawson, this character, right? And Mother Towson in the same show. Does it work? it really throws your mind it's very hard for my mind to put those two characters in the same show even though we've got Maul standing there with Brander Lawson but that's I'm not one for litmus tests but that's an interesting test to kind of give it it's like alright it's Star Wars if you can imagine this character and this character occupying the same scene if you can't then that one character doesn't shouldn't be in Star Wars But anyway, Tyler, thanks, buddy. I'm so sorry the phones didn't work out. You know how that goes. It's one of those things. But thanks for staying on. Thanks for talking to all the callers. And I know one thing. When we do Mando and Grogu here in Cleveland, Ohio, we won't have to worry about any phone lines. It's going to be you with the microphone out there in the auditorium. So thanks, buddy. Appreciate your patience tonight. Thanks, guys. Definitely. Got Scott St. Louis here with a super chat. 46 days in the bar will join you in Cleveland. Good timing. RFR number one. Hi, Joe, Matt, Eric, Pete, and Turtle Wars. Kurt, Tanya, Ben, Marty, and Chris. Get well, Ian. All right. So, like the end of the old romper room show where we hold up the thing and say, I see Jimmy. I see Rich Brendel. I see. My father, Django, says Rebel Force Radio number one. We love that. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. And the beautiful Tanya with good to be back. Cheers, RFR. Well, it's good to be back here as well on our end. So thank you so much, Tanya. Appreciate that. What else we got here? I have, you know, some people were, I don't have the chat pulled up, but somebody was justifying the lightsaber stabs through the gut, is saying that it has some kind of like some sort of tribute to Shogun movies or stories or something like that. And I'm getting sick of that being used as an excuse for crummy Star Wars. You know, I had some complaints about the Ahsoka show and somebody said to me, well, it's a samurai movie. Can't you see that? I said, well, I thought it was a Star Wars show. Can't you see that? So I just don't understand this forgiveness for anything that has an inspiration from samurai films or Kurosawa or whatever. It doesn't mean it's carte blanche Star Wars, you know. Yeah. Did I use carte blanche correctly? I think I did. I think you actually did. I'm very proud of you. In a few minutes we have left, Jim, I want to let's speculate a little bit. OK, I got some questions here about where we think this is going. Let's talk about Devin real quick here. What's her trajectory? Are we looking at an apprentice or are we looking at an asset? Because I think she's going to be torn between two worlds. Maul's world, not EcoDicoDaya, his world, but I think it's going to come down between Maul and Brander Lawson. And I think the thing that's going to pull her to Brander is Riley. She noticed his picture on his desk. Why do we get introduced to this teenage son? Yeah. I think that Devin and Riley are going to find one another, maybe in a romantic way or something, which is going to cause a complication because she's going to form this attachment and it's going to throw a monkey wrench in things with them all. So just my theory. But if you had to put some money, what are you saying? Apprentice or asset in Devin's future? Well, see, the Sith have always traditionally worked with the rule of two, the master and the apprentice. So there obviously must be some benefit to the master. It must make the master stronger to have an apprentice. It must make the Master have a stronger connection to the Force, to the dark side, as he takes on the Apprentice. So, I mean, they always have one, and a Sith Lord wouldn't be doing something unless it benefited him first and foremost. So, I think that is the deal with the Master and the Apprentice, is that the Apprentice makes the Master stronger in the Force. Now, on the Jedi side of things, they would take along the Padawans, and then that was just another step forward closer to knighthood or becoming a master, as the case is with Jedi. You can't become a master unless you've trained an apprentice. I believe that's been a solid fact from George Lucas since the prequel era. So I think that, yes, there is a reason why these Force users take on apprentices, and it's to benefit themselves. It makes them stronger in the Force. So I think absolutely he wants to train her in the ways of the dark side. and she's going to go that way as opposed to maybe being an asset for Brander Lawson and going undercover in Maul's organization no I don't see that happening no as a matter of fact her knowledge of Lawson's kid makes that kid a target for a kidnapping in a later episode because they'll want to use the kid to pressure Lawson to, I don't know, maybe Maul. Turn the heat down, maybe. Maybe somehow they're able to capture Maul. And Devin's out there, and she goes, I know how to get Maul back. All we have to do is just get his kid. Oh, I like the way you think. Yeah. And how far do you think Maul can rise before all the lore and the canon sort of catch up to him. Right? Because we have to put Maul back on Tatooine, running around, screaming his head off. Hooray! Well, remember, he's in Malachor. When they find him in Star Wars Rebels, they find him on Malachor. Yeah. Old Master. Oh, right, right, right, right. and all that stuff. And then he gradually ends up on Tatooine searching for Kenobi. So the series is going to have to end with him being exiled to Malachor or trapped there. I think he doesn't have a ship on Malachor. That's the big problem. Oh, that's right. That's right. So he's marooned there. Yes. Yeah. So we're going to have to see that happen. But it's not going to happen this season because it finally has been officially confirmed that there's going to be a second season of Maul. Now, that did come down over the last week. And they published it on StarWars.com and everything. I'm hearing people say, yeah, but I'm hearing three seasons. Yeah, that's what we're hearing, too. Yeah, three seasons. so I'm wondering if we're going to see the ascendancy in season one we're going to see him kind of riding high as Crimson Dawn's new leader yeah that has to happen we got to do that and then we're going to have to see the fall and him end up on Malachor so I do hope that they don't leave any more room for more Maul stories I hope that this is kind of it definitively and you'll be able to watch the whole chronology and we'll be I don't want to say we're going to be done with Maul but I mean it'd be nice to maybe close the book on Darth Maul for a little while I predict season two we'll see the Crimson Dawn stuff really play out and we will see Han Solo's girlfriend, Kira appear in the show and she will be voiced by Emilia Clarke. I'm making that prediction now. Love it. Why not? I mean, they obviously have to have her in the series. Kira must be in the series because Maul does take over Crimson Dawn. Same thing with Dryden Vos. We have to see them both in the series. All right, Jim, Pepper Spray Johnny, he's coming in. He says, thanks for catching my notes. If anything funky happens, as Jimmy alluded to, I think Maul will be challenged by and confronted with the light side of the force. Wow. Challenged by and confronted by the light side. And that's coming from Pepper Spray Johnny. Yeah, but I don't think so. I don't think so I think Maul's only exposure to the light side of the force happens when he and Ezra put together the Jedi holocron with the Sith holocron and Ezra's eyes turn into hyperspace and Maul had some he had some solid Jedi insight that no Sith had ever had before and that's why Maul knew about the Chosen One when he died in the Twin Sons episodes. Because he flat out asked Kenobi, is Luke the Chosen One? He says, is he the Chosen One? And Kenobi says, yes, he is. And then Maul dies. But it's like, how would Maul even know about a Chosen One or care about a Chosen One? That's all Jedi dogma. So it would be like folly to a Sith Lord. The whole notion of a chosen one. Yeah, well, yes. So he's going, yeah, why would he be sucked in to Jedi prophecy? Because he would, right, he would have been raised and learned that that's all, yeah, a waste of time. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Qui-Gon identifies Anakin as a chosen one after he tests his midichlorians and sees that they're off the charts. And Palpatine is aware of all of this. So Palpatine obviously is made aware of this. I think he's made aware of the idea of a chosen one. We're not even 100% sure on that, are we? No, but you know, he has such a tight relationship with Anakin. I feel like that would have come up, right? You think, you know, if I'm sitting with you in the opera house, I might have said, hey, they call me the Chosen One. What's that all about? Yeah, they put so much pressure on me, Papi, team. I'm the Chosen One. Well, this has been a great ride. two episodes in already and lots of stuff to speculate. Lots of big questions out there. And is this the most mature Star Wars animated series yet? The Clone Wars had its moments. Sure did. Mature, huh? Yeah. It's pretty brutal. The lightsaber action is brutal in this. And Maul is not holding back. No. So I don't know about mature, but I would say brutal. Yeah. I don't think anything is delivered. Wait, wait, wait. I always go back to those decapitated heads in the Clone Wars movie. That was right out of the gate. Yeah. He's brought those heads into Java. Yeah. I mean, if you want to say mature as in you have a scene about a beat-up cop that is trying to, like, you know, be a good dad and separate. I mean, yeah, I mean, those are mature things. I mean, you're right about that. You're right about that. But, you know, we'll see how this shapes the story as it unfolds because I am feeling exactly what you were describing earlier, Jim, That there's a danger that it's losing its exotic, otherworldly nature. That it's just becoming too, I like what you say, earthbound. Just too much like our own world. And fairy tales are not supposed to look like our own world. fairy tales and myth and legend is supposed to teach us about our own world in otherworldly contexts and scenarios and all of that. So, you know, I can't help but think that we're in an era, and not just Star Wars, we're in an era of entertainment. Not unlike the 70s, where things got dark and gloomy and gritty and everything was so real. And then a guy like George Lucas came along and showed us how to have fantasy again and have fun again and adventure again. And it's just ironic to me that his creation, Star Wars, is now a reflection of the times and the popular culture as opposed to bucking it and creating something new. Stuff to think about as we enter the future of Star Wars. Whether it be Maul, Shadow Lord, whether it be Mandalorian and Grogu film, whether it be Star Wars Starfighter. Stuff to think about. But we'll be here for it, no matter what, on Rebel Force Radio. So thank you all for hanging out with us. Big thanks to Tyler Page for screening the calls, what would have been the calls. I think he did a great job representing the thoughts and the theories behind those calls. Always great to hang out with all of you. We'll be back next week. Two more episodes next week. I don't have the episode titles. I wanted to grab those. I don't know if they give us any clues as to what the episodes are about. these two being the dark revenge and sinister schemes. I guess they're not too descriptive, are they? But we'll be back next week to break it down. I do. I have. Oh, you got them? I got them. What do we got? Next week, Chapter 3, Whispers in the Unknown. And Chapter 4, Pride and Vengeance. Pride and Vengeance. Well, Episode 1, or Chapter 1, was the dark revenge. Now we're going to have Pride and Vengeance. Kind of like Pride and Prejudice, but Pride and Vengeance, who knows? All right. Also, Rebel Force Radio, the flagship podcast, will be, there will be a new episode this week. So two RFRs on the main feed. And, of course, you can go to the Patreon and you can get even more RFR if two episodes are not enough. So, until, well, later this week, we'll see you. Thanks for hanging out with us. Appreciate it. We'll see you next time. For Tyler Page, I'm Jason. I'm Jimmy Mack. For Tyler Page, I'm Jimmy Mack. It made sense in my head. It made sense in my head. Tyler Page, Jimmy Mack, Jason Swank. We thank you all for being here. And remember, the force will be with you always. New gun rate, not in a subsection. Thank you.