The Death Star Human Resources Department: June 30, 2023
Rebels season 5 is officially here, a show actually ends, the dress is a dud, and more.
Hello there
Welcome back to the Death Star Human Resources Department newsletter. As always, if you like what I’m doing, please forward the email or the link to a friend. Or an enemy. I’m not picky, I’ll take some hate-reads.
This week’s newsletter is slightly shorter as there are some real-world events that have cut into my writing time.
Spoiler Alert: There Are Spoilers That Will Spoil Things
It is the official policy of the Death Star Human Resources Department that we will post spoilers. Not because I get off on ruining things for people but it is very hard to discuss things like TV shows and movies if you can’t actually talk about what happens. Part of the reason I publish on Friday mornings is due to Disney releasing new episodes on Wednesdays. Thus giving the reader time to watch something and not have me ruin the surprise. I know that many of you are busy with things like jobs and younglings and maybe just don’t have time to watch seven seasons of The Clone Wars. I question your dedication to Star Wars, but I understand.
The Rebellion Will Never End
I’m currently in the middle of re-watching Rebels, just as a refresher before Ahsoka comes out in a just under two months. I’ll have more thoughts on Rebels once I finish, currently I’m about half done with season 3. As a quick note, I will say I forgot just how well done Rebels really is. Especially for a cartoon that is, at least officially, considered a kids show.
Rebels ended after four seasons when Ezra Bridger and the Purrgils (aka Giant Hyperspace Whales) jumped into the Unknown Regions to try to stop Grand Admiral Thrawn. It was a nice ending. Sabine did a little voiceover/montage and it seemed like everything was cool. Until Ms. Tano shows up on Lothal to tell Sabine they’re going to look for Ezra. It’s Jake and Elwood sitting in the Bluesmobile saying:
“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
“Hit it.”1
The Star Wars version of that would be:
“It’s 12 parsecs to Kessel, we’ve got a full tank of Coaxium, half a pack of death-sticks, it’s dark, and we’re wearing blast shields.”
“RAWRGWAWGGR”2
The trailer for Ahsoka makes it very clear the show is going to get the band back together. Parts of it nearly are a shot for shot recreation of the end of Rebels, the scene where Ahsoka meets back up with Sabine is pretty close…
Last week in an interview, Rosario Dawson stated that head honcho Dave Filoni has seemingly confirmed Ahsoka is in fact season 5 of Rebels; telling Total Film:
‘It’s hard sometimes to tell with the things you read online whether that’s actual fact or just some fan fiction,’ says Dawson. ‘But I’m pretty sure Dave said that this is basically like the fifth season of Rebels. So it felt nice to feel that sort of continuation with these people she’s got such a rich history with. You can see that with her mission that she has, going after Thrawn, and believing that he’s still alive, and holding Ezra in her heart because they have a really beautiful, long history as well.’
I’ve thought about this as I’ve been re-watching Rebels the last few days and my feelings are more mixed than I thought they would be. On the one hand, this story line has been fairly obvious since the Ahsoka episode in Mando season 2, where she demands to know where Thrawn is. And look, Rebels is awesome. The trailer for Ahsoka looks awesome. Thrawn is a great villain and I can’t wait to see him in live action. The character Ahsoka Tano is Filoni’s baby, so to speak, so you know he’s going make sure everything is top notch. Rosario Dawson was a fantastic casing choice and really brought Ahsoka to life in Mando and Book of Boba. The stars are aligned for it to instantly become a top-tier show. I mean we’re going to get live-action Chopper!
Also a live action series just about Chopper has moved up to number 2 on my list of “things Disney needs to do ASAP.”
Yet at the same time I can’t help but be a little disappointed that it’s season 5 of Rebels and not going in a new direction. The three best pieces of work since Disney took over are Andor, Rogue One, and season one of The Mandalorian. The through line on the two movies and the show is you can watch and enjoy them with minimal knowledge of Star Wars. Of course it helped if you had at least a passing knowledge of the Original Trilogy and Star Wars is at a point of such cultural mass that it’s likely impossible to not know at least a little bit about it. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. You’re the weirdos who know too much about the Jedi Code, not me.
Which brings me to the next reason those three work so well. Minimal Skywalker involvement. Look, Space Wizards with laser swords are awesome, there’s no two ways about it. But limiting yourself to just Skywalker and Skywalker-adjacent stories is boring and it’s lazy. The galaxy is is big. It can be as big as Disney allows it to be. It’s not constrained by the laws of physics like our galaxy is. There’s room for stories of dude on Ferrix who starts a rebellion or a Mandalorian and his weird looking adopted son. To bring it back to Ahsoka, not everything has to be connected. As great as I am certain the show is going to be and as much as I am truly looking forward to seeing the crew from Rebels in live action, it might have been nice to send Ahsoka Tano on a new adventure.
The Bad Batch Reaches its Omega
You see what I did there? It was announced recently that Season 3 of the Bad Batch will be the last one. There’s no release date yet other than it will be sometime in 2024. This is, as far as I can tell, the first show of the Disney+ era with an announced ending date. It’s likely we’ll see shows that go on as long as they can, The Mandalorian is the most likely candidate here. And there will be shows that just never another season. While nothing is confirmed Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett seem like possibilities to just never return. Obi-Wan more than Book of Boba, simply because Book of Boba at least takes place at the same time as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka so it would be easy for our heroes to take a quick detour to Tatooine to see how Boba Fett cosplaying as Space Don Corleone is going.
The Bad Batch follows the adventures of Clone Force 99, a squad of Clone Troopers each with a special ability due genetic mutations during the last days of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. The show more or less follows the same pattern as the other major Star Wars cartoon series. Young protagonist, older adopted family, and the tone of the show gradually gets darker as the series progresses. See also: The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Resistance.
On it’s surface it’s just a show about a bunch of Clones doing a Three Men and a Baby bit while going around the galaxy and trying to survive. Dig a little deeper though and there’s a lot there. As the series explores the Empire moving away from the Clone Army to the Stormtroopers, it asks when the war is over, what do we as a society owe the soldiers who did the fighting? The question is even tougher when you had a Sith Lord manipulating the Galaxy into war. Sith Lords aren’t exactly known for providing a generous retirement plan.
Two of my all-time favorite TV shows, The Simpsons and The X-Files hung around way longer than they should have. Or in the case of The Simpsons, are still hanging around. Who is actually watching new Simpsons episodes? I feel like that’s an X-Files type of mystery. Anyway, hopefully with the decision to wrap up after season 3, The Bad Batch will avoid jumping the proverbial shark, or in the Star Wars universe, jumping the Firaxan. Season 3 has a lot it needs to explain. Will Crosshair stay with the Empire? Is Tech still alive? After all, no one is every truly dead in Star Wars. The Rise of Skywalker made that perfectly clear, JJ you hack. And most importantly, even though she was raised on Kamino with the smooth talking Nala Se as her BFF, why does Omega have an incredibly thick (at least to American ears) Kiwi accent?3
“By crikey! Now this is podracing, mate!”4
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
Earth. Yup. My home, and presumably yours was part of the Star Wars universe. At least to a certain extent. In the pre-Mouse days there were tiers of Canon. Maybe there still are, not sure. Movies and anything straight from the mouth or mind of Grand Emperor Lucas was the highest level of canon. Then there were various levels all the way down to non-canon events. Anything George came up with was Prime Grade Canon while, for example Angry Birds Star Wars is not considered any level of canon.
The little blue marble we’re all stuck on until the tech bros take us to Mars first showed on the Star Tours ride at the Disney theme parks, which I have a vague memory of going on at Disneyland. From there it starts to get a little weirder, which is what we’re here for. The 1993 book Monsters and Aliens from George Lucas featured concept art on various aliens. It also included a Weekly World News style bit about two Duro newlyweds were were abducted by humans, taken tot the planet “Urthha” and eventually escaped using a blender. Not sure what they were passing around the Lucasfilm offices that day, but it seems like it was potent.
Never one to pass up some synergy among it’s properties, Earth was featured in Star Wars Tales 19, a 2004 comic book from Dark Horse also featured Star Wars meets Indiana Jones. I have not read the comic myself, but the summary says Han and Chewie crash the Millennium Falcon somewhere in the Pacific Northwest (of Earth, not Endor). Han ends up getting killed by Native Americans and 126 years later, his remains are found by Dr Henry Jones who is looking for the legendary Sasquatch, which is actually Chewbacca.
Sadly, there is nothing in the current canon with Earth. Which begs the question, if Earth isn’t canon, do we even exist?
News From the HoloNet
Princess Leia’s dress from the end of A New Hope doesn’t sell at auction. It was expected to get $2 million.
Rey’s Star Wars movie generating fake news
If you can’t trust random unsourced internet rumors, what can you trust?
Robert Englund could have been Luke Skywalker
Nightmare on Ewok Street. Also I could not think of a single street name in Star Wars.
Michael Shannon on turning down Star Wars
Says he doesn’t want to be in giant movies. I suppose being in a DC movie actually counts as being in small movies.
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe and tell a friend. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
Jake telling Elwood they’re getting the band back together is closer, but I’ll take any excuse to post the 106 miles to Chicago line.
That’s Wookiee for “Punch it!”
I mean, I know why. Michelle Ang, the voice actress is a New Zealander and used her real accent as an homage to Temurea Morrison. It’s just funny.
When I went to search if New Zealanders do in fact say '“crikey”, Google’s auto fill suggestion was “Do New Zealanders speak English?” Sheesh.