Huzzah!!

Jango Fett: “She's a Firespray Pursuit Special…one of six prototypes manufactured for the prison. She's the last of her kind now.”

Ros: “Hey, did you name that new ship of yours yet?

Jango Fett: “She's called Slave I.”

Lando doesn't think the name is PC .

Just watched the first two episodes of Rebels - Season Four - The Heroes of Mandalore. Wow! It is very cool to see Bo-Katan again.

Man of all the scenes they either cut or edited this should have stayed in the film.

Wow, that was outstanding. It was obviously cut for running time, as that movie was insanely long as it was. Too bad. That scene really fit in well as the Phasma that we saw in her novel.

This is on level of George Lucas cutting out Mon Mothma, Senator Organa and Padme coming up with a plan to kickstart the rebellion in Attack of the Clones. They could have kept that scene with Finn and Phasma and cutted out the scenes at the casino.

New Star Wars live-action tv show announced! In production under Jon Favreau!!

I have been hearing about a live action star wars tv show for a while now. TBH, I am a little uncertain about it. Star Wars seems better suited to animation. You can do anything in that format. But doing it live action, and making it look good, is going to be a very expensive and time-consuming process.

Do we know what era they are doing it for? Probably just be the Empire era since it’s “safe”, but Khajiit would love Old Republic!

Beware the eyes of Wicket.

Exactly what I worry about!

Something else that occurs to me is that with a live action show, it will be difficult to portray established characters like Lando, or Han, or Palpatine, etc... They have to either re-cast the role with a new actor, or use the very expensive (and not entirely perfect) process of digitizing the original actors faces on top of a stand in. That would be a good reason to set the series in a completely different time period.

OTOH, doing it live action means they can go for more mature stories. The problem with animation is the perception that only kids watch it. So shows like Clone Wars and Rebels were always made for ages 7+. I am sure they want to do a show more like Game of Thrones or Westworld, with lots of sex and gore. That is what sells these days.

I’m completely on board with that. Except Star Wars doesn’t need to have gore or sex to be great. It wouldn’t fit, at least the sex part. There’s been tons of questions like that on Reddit of SW should be more marked and the answers, well, a good 85% at least are all in favor.

I’d prefer a more nuanced tale, stepping away from the usual tropes we see that are prevalent in the films.

Gimme dat KoTOR show fam

So has anyone noticed all the triangles in Rebels? Zeb has one painted on his right chest. Kanan has one under his throat. In the episode where Ezra infiltrated the cadet training school one of the cadets (Jai) had one on his helmet. The Mandalorians serving the Empire have them on their helmets. That is just what I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of other people and items they show up on as well.

Could this be a Star Wars Illuminati thing? Or maybe someone in the art department just likes triangles? (Wolf imagery appears a lot because Dave Filoni likes wolves, that's also the reason for the Loth-Cats).

Yes sir! This is a must.

So... First rule about Star Wars triangles, is no one talks about triangles? I get it...


In non-triangle-related Star Wars stuff, today I noticed that two new Han Solo books are coming out shortly. Last Shot is a Han and Lando novel. It is out April 17. Most Wanted is a Han and Qi'ra story (she is the hottie in new Solo movie). It is out in late May. So those are things to keep an eye out for.

Well Khajiit has never noticed the triangles thing and so has never formed an opinion as to what they might mean.

Lol that’s kind of funny: Last Shot
You know because of the first shot controversy

Star Wars: Resistance may be the title of the next Star Wars animated project. The name implies a series set in the Resistance/First Order period, which I think will be cool to see. Unless this is what the live-action show will be.

I have been reading some of the Prequel era books lately. I started with Cloak of Deception. I was a little disappointed, because I thought there would be more Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in it. Still, it was ok. It is set shortly before The Phantom Menace, basically a prequel to the prequel.

It mainly shows Palpatine's maneuverings behind the scenes to set up the crisis in Phantom Menace. He puts Nute Gunray in control of the Trade Federation by assassinating the other members of its ruling Directorate. At the same time he engineers the whole issue of taxation of free trade zones, sets up an excuse for the Trade Federation to get approval to arm its ships and create a droid army, and even sets Chancellor Valorum up for his eventual fall by making it appear like he is taking bribes from the Trade Federation.

All of it was interesting, and fills in a lot of areas otherwise left fuzzy by the movie. Thanks to it I even rewatched the prequel films. This time I was able to actually tell the Neimodians by name, thanks to the novel.

Cloak of Deception leaves a dangling plot thread in the form of a Neimodian from Gunray's inner circle who has gone rogue to sell what he knows of Sidious to the highest bidder. I thought that was followed by the Darth Maul: The Wrath of Maul book, so I read that next. Turns out not. Instead it is basically follows his life from childhood to defeat by Obi-Wan. It was ok, but again, not great.

Right now I am almost finished with Darth Plagueis. It is interesting in that it too fills in a huge amount of backstory for not only Palpatine's rise to power, but also for the Post-Bane Sith in general. But again, it is hard for me to really love, because there are no characters for me to really like. Still, it is some fascinating stuff. It shows how the Jedi's ability to read the future became clouded by the Dark Side. Mostly by Plagueis and Sidious performing some kind of rite that tipped the galaxy-wide balance of the Force in favor of the Dark Side. But there is also mention of a Sith Lord several generations before who likewise created a Dark Side nexus that also began poisoning the galaxy and the Jedi. Along with that we also see how the Sith's machinations created the greed and corruption within the Senate that so plagued the latter days of the Republic, and also slowly created the rift between the Outer Rim and the Core Worlds that eventually became the Clone Wars. We even saw how Anakin was created by the Force itself, as a direct reaction of Plagueis and Palpatine's tipping of the balance.

What has really struck me though is the failure of the Darth Bane's Rule of Two. I know, it sounds kind of crazy to say that at first, since it did ultimately result in the Republic falling and becoming a Sith Empire, and the Jedi Order being wiped out (except for a few survivors hiding out in sticks). But the problem with the Rule of Two is that it means each Sith Master is training his or her murderer. All for the eventual hope that somewhere down the line someone will finally win big against the Jedi. Not many are really content to do that. Selflessness is not a Sith ideal, and that is precisely what the Rule of Two requires for all those Sith before Palpatine. Because they are expected to do their one little thing for the Grand Design, then die and pass on the mantle to the next generation.

In the end, the two Sith who did finally succeed both rejected the Rule of Two. Plagueis felt the whole antagonistic relationship between Master and Apprentice was wasteful and pointless. He planned to share his power with his apprentices. I mean that in the plural, because Palpatine was training and using Maul while he himself was still Plagueis' apprentice. Instead of seeing that as a sign that Palpatine was planning on teaming up with Maul to kill him. Plagueis saw it is a good idea, because it gave them an extra resource to use when assassinations were called for. Since Plagueis had learned the secret to manipulating midi-chorlians to resurrect people, he had defeated death. He fully intended for him, Palpatine, and Maul to live forever. There would be no future generations of Sith to follow them.

Yet while Plagueis was content to share his power, he of course was always going to be the Master in the arrangement. As we all know, Palpatine is not one to share power, or remain anyone's second. So naturally Palpatine murdered Plagueis. When he was Master, Palpatine likewise had no intention of training his eventual successor. Like Plagueis, he was going to live forever, though his method was essence transfer. He was resolved that there would be no Sith Masters after him. So he continually pit his apprentices and proto-apprentices against one another, like Dooku vs Anakin, or Vader vs Luke, and had them train their own apprentices like Ventress. One apprentice was not enough, because he needed to keep them off balance by pitting them against one another. That way they could not focus on him (something really effective dictators do).

Next up I am going to try Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. That one is supposed to directly follow up the events of Cloak of Deception, as Maul hunts down the renegade Neimodian.