The Death Star Human Resources Department: September 8, 2023
Marrok was a smokescreen, fallen Jedi are falling all over the place, the real star of Ahsoka, and a whole lot more.
Hello there
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department newsletter. We’ve got the latest Ahsoka episode to talk about, along with who the actual star of the show is, Taylor Swift and her army, and all the rest of the usual stuff. Quick note for next week’s edition, Due to some personnel issues at Death Star HR it will be a shorter than usual newsletter. Some of you may prefer it that way.
As always, if you like what you’re reading here at Death Star HR, please forward to someone who would like it or tell a friend. Our marketing budget is currently at zero, Palpatine runs a tight ship around here, so word of mouth is the only way we’re getting the word out. Now, let’s get to it.
Dave Filoni is a Master Troll
Marrok is dead1.
His death at the hands of former Jedi Ahsoka Tano on the planet Seatos ends (hopefully) months of speculation about who he was. All sorts of names were considered and discussed in this very newsletter. Candidates included Ezra Bridger, Mara Jada (my preference), Starkiller, Luuke Skywalker, Cal Kestis, and probably a few others that I am leaving out.
We were all wrong.
The idea that Marrok could just be Marrok was almost inconceivable. We’re in a media age where everything has to mean something. Every clue, every Easter egg, every offhand comment by a character or a creator has to be analyzed for clues.
Freud is credited2 with saying “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sometimes a guy in a mask with an Inquisitor lightsaber is just a guy in a mask with an Inquisitor lightsaber.
As Marrok burst into a fine green mist, it became clear who he was after all the months of speculation. A Nightbrother. Most prominently featured in the Clone Wars series, they are warriors who are subservient to the Nightsisters. Morgan Elsbeth is a Nightsister, a witch who could use Dark Side Magick. As Jar Jar Binks would say, explaining everything would be a long o’tello.
Back to the headline for this section, I have no doubt this was just Dave Filoni yanking our collective chains. I don’t know him, I’ve never met him, I doubt he subscribes to Death Star HR3 but he’s not an OG Lucasfilm guy. He was a Star Wars fan who got to live the dream. He knows how we think. And he has to know that a new character in a mask with an Inquisitor lightsaber is going to set Star Wars internet on fire with speculation. So well played.
The Episode With All the Lightsabers
So, how about episode 4 of Ahsoka. That was really something, huh. Maybe it’s just recency bias but I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that was one of the best episodes of a live action Star Wars TV show. Period. You had everything that makes Star Wars fun. Lightsaber duels, droids engaging in fisticuffs, rebel pilots sick of those New Republic bureaucrats, X-Wings locking their s-foils in attack position, surprise (sort of) cameos, and someone having a bad feeling about something. From start to finish, “Fallen Jedi” had it all.
I know I say it often, but we discuss spoilers here at Death Star HR and there are a bunch below. You’ve been warned.
Calling the episode “Fallen Jedi” was a little on the nose. You’ve got two Dark Jedi in Baylan and Shin, the former who was in the Jedi Order. Ahoska who left the order. Sabine who obviously isn’t a Jedi but at least had some training. Anakin who obviously wasn’t following the Jedi for a while. And finally Ahsoka again, is literally a falling former Jedi when she gets thrown off a cliff.
Ray Stevenson is just killing it as Baylan. He brings just the right amount of darkness to the character. He’s not a Sith. But he’s not a fan of the Jedi even if he clearly has some nostalgia for them. He’s seen some stuff since Order 66. He was fantastic at the scene in the end with both Ahsoka and Sabine
Love the red trees on Seatos. It’s like if Vermont fell to the Dark Side.
The Ghost! Looks awesome. Chopper is being criminally underused though.
No surprise Huyang can hold his own against the HK-87 droids. He’s used to training Jedi, a bunch of fancy clankers aren’t going to bother him.
I love the look of Space Stonehenge. But it seems a little silly that in a galaxy that has mastered hyperspace travel you’d need to construct a bunch of stone features and have a map-ball to figure out where to go.
Morgan did the Holdo Manuver with the Eye of Sion before the Holdo Manuver was a thing
It was hinted (fairly strongly) in the first episode that Ahsoka wasn’t above using the Dark Side from time to time. This time we got to see it. Shin isn’t quite the badass she thinks she is when she’s on the receiving end of a Force choke. Wonder if we’ll see it again. Or maybe Ahsoka using Force Lightning?
The fight scenes in the forest has some real Rey vs Kylo Ren vibes.
Also Ahsoka’s duel with Marrok had some Obi-Wan vs Maul in Rebels vibes. It wasn’t the long drawn out battle. Rather the better warrior picked their spot and quickly ended it.
Sabine in her Mandalorian armor out kicking butt was nice to see.
We finally got the split between Ahsoka and Sabine. And a clue as to their falling out.
It seems likely that Sabine’s family, who you met in Rebels, was killed in The Great Purge of Mandalore. Remember Ahsoka is taking place in the Mandoverse. Mandalore has been turned to glass. While Ahsoka and Sabine are doing their thing, Mando and Bo-Katan are trying to get the Mandalorians back together.
Baylan tells Sabine ““Your family died on Mandalore, because your Master didn’t trust you.” What did Sabine tell Ahsoka? What information did Ahsoka ignore or disregard? I’m sure we’ll find out.
Sabine’s struggle on whether do destroy the map like Ahsoka said or follow Baylan to find Ezra was one of the best Star Wars scenes we’ve had on TV. Natasha Liu Bordizzo has been amazing so far.
I think, although I’m not positive, we’ve seen almost everything that was in the trailers. The big scenes from the trailers were the forest lightsaber fights, Ahsoka fighting Marrok on Corellia, and Hera chasing the ship from Corellia. The next four episodes will be fun, everything will be new.
As the episode was winding down I was thinking to myself, “we haven’t seen the World Between Worlds yet.” I even wondered if maybe Space Stonehenge was actually the World Between Worlds and they just changed the look of it for live action.
As soon as that thought had passed, boom. Ahsoka wakes up in the World Between Worlds. Which they absolutely nailed the look of.
“Hello, Snips.” Holy shit! I just about lost it when Anakin said that.
I knew Anakin would be in the show and thought that him appearing via the World Between Worlds was the most likely way. But what a great moment.
Next Tuesday can’t get here fast enough…
Ahsoka: Starring Sabine Wren
We’re at the halfway point of Ahsoka. Four episodes down, four episodes to go. So far the one thing you can say without any doubt is that the real star of Ashoka is not Togrunta ex-Jedi Ahsoka Tano, the title character, but everyone’s favorite Mandalorian graffiti artist, Sabine Wren. Sabine has had at least equal screen time as Ahsoka and so far has had a more interesting story.
This isn’t unprecedented in TV. Jerry Seinfeld was probably the least interesting character on Seinfeld. Of course that may have been by design as he generally played the straight man to the cast of wacky sidekicks. On How I Met Your Mother, main character and garbage human Ted Mosby4 was easily outshined by his friend group. We’ve even seen this in the new Star Wars as Grogu was clearly the star of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. He took a little bit of a backseat in season 3 but instead of letting Mando have the spotlight, Din Djarin had to share it with Bo-Katan.
It’s been a bit of a surprise. It’s not like Sabine was an unknown or disliked character, but Ahsoka is a fan favorite and Disney has been hyping this show up ever since she appeared in season 2 of The Mandalorian. And while the trailers made it clear it’s a getting the band back together kind of show, you’d think she’d be the main character of her own show. A big part of this is we really don’t know what each character has been up to since Rebels ended. If you’re a little deeper instead Star Wars, the was the Ahsoka novel and her story in Tales of the Jedi, the latter may or may not have retconned the former. It’s another thing for Star Wars fans to argue about.
Just go on a side tangent for a bit, this is the problem of trying to get characters from the prequel and Clone Wars era into post-ROTJ era properties. You have to have some kind of explanation as to why these important characters weren’t in the Original Trilogy. The obvious answer is none of these characters were invented yet. There was a clever solution with Ahsoka to have her leave the Jedi Order and wander the galaxy. But what about Sabine? Are we going to get an answer? All we know so far as that Ahsoka at some pointed had Sabine as a Padawan despite, as Huyang pointed out, she has no real ability to use the Force.
Back on topic, other than what was probably a short stint as Ahsoka’s Padawan, we don’t know really know what Sabine was up to since the end of Rebels. I’m not really up to date on a lot of the canon books but I don’t believe there are books featuring her. Episode 3 of Ahsoka seems to imply at some point there was an official New Republic search for Ezra.
She also seems like she’s stuck. The war is over. It doesn’t appear that she’s interested in being a bounty hunter like Mando or rebuilding Mandalore like Bo-Katan and company. So much of the Dave Filoni-verse is about family and Sabine has lost hers. Ezra is…somewhere. Hera, Zeb5, and Chopper are with the New Republic. Kanan is dead. We learned in this week’s episode that her mother and family was probably killed on Mandalore. Sabine and Ahsoka clearly had a falling out, likely over Sabine’s parents death. So now it’s just her and her Loth-cat in the communications tower on Lothal, working on her art and driving her speeder bike around town. The unknown gives a lot of room for growth and so far we’ve seen more from Sabine than we have from Ahsoka. She’s busted out Ezra’s lightsaber and reasonably held her own against Shin, even though she did get impaled in the process. She agreed to resume her training with Ashoka, having to suck it up and ask for it. She’s survived training with Ahsoka and getting back into space combat. And she even put the Mandalorian armor on and went toe to toe with Shin. Sabine’s getting back into being herself. Back to the Sabine we knew from Rebels.
Ahsoka hasn’t been sitting around, but so far she’s been stuck as the wise and stoic Jedi Master. Expressing exasperation at Sabine but finally coming around to the fact they have to work together. At first I was kinda bothered by Ahsoka doing the wise Jedi Master routine, but now I get it. In the show, she’s 47. Sabine is 29 or 30. As someone who is much closer to 47 than I care to admit, I get Ahsoka’s frustration with the young. I wouldn’t want to deal with 30 year olds that don’t listen and have no aptitude for the Force. I just want to find Thrawn (Ahsoka’s goal) and not hurt my back while getting out of bed (my goal).
A Disturbance in The Force Awakens
The Republic stood for thousands of years. It only took ol’ Palpy about what, 40 years to destroy the Republic and install the Empire. The Force Awakens held the box office record for presale tickets for 8 years. Until Finn, Rey, Poe, and company went up against an army even more unstoppable than The First Order.
The Swifties.6
In a fight that can only be compared to Anakin Skywalker vs a bunch of Younglings, the presale ticket sales for the Eras Tour film were $37 million within the first 24 hours, nearly double what The Force Awakens took in back in 2015. It was not a Great War. Current estimates suggest the movie could make $100 million opening weekend.
I know we Star Wars fans like to think we can really move the needle when it comes to dollars at the movies, and don’t get me wrong, we are a force (no pun intended). But when it came to box office records, the Swifties loaded up Starkiller Base and obliterated the Hosniana Prime/TFA box office record. Darth TayTay doesn’t mess around. We’re going to have to shake this one off.
Things My Wife Has Said About Star Wars, Pt 2
A picture is worth 1000 words:
Don’t worry, dear reader. We’re still married.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
Sticking with this week’s theme, we’ve got Sabine Wren Operative Expansion. This from Star Wars: Legion. Which I guess is a miniatures based table top game.
Miniature gaming is an element of nerdom I never got into. If I recall, I had a friend growing up who wanted to get into Warhammer 40,000 but at 12 years old we didn’t have the funds to do it. Anyway, if you like Star Wars: Legion, and you like Sabine, I guess this is for you.
News From the HoloNet
Ahsoka is Undermining the Most Important Cornerstone of Star Wars Canon
Disney can’t decide what to do with the Force.
Ahsoka’s Marrok is None Other Than Jedi: Survivor’s Cal Kestis
This does not seem to be the case
Is Thrawn the Batman of the Star Wars Universe?
Only if Thrawn has the raspy Batman voice.
The KOTOR Remake Will Have To Redefine Star Wars Lore
The KOTOR remake will get released at the same time we go back to Han shooting first.
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe and tell a friend. I’ll catch you all next week, and may the Force be with you.
Or at least as dead as one can be in the Star Wars universe
There is no evidence he actually said this. Also you could probably do a PhD thesis on what Freud would think of lightsabers.
If he does, I’ve got some IDEAS for him
It’s pretty much a fact that Ted was a bad person.
Is Zeb going to show up? I have to think he will since he had a cameo in Mandalorian
Thanks to subscriber “Darth Fullz” for the below image.
Jabbacadoooooo