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Tag: Jedi

  • These Star Wars Strains Will Give You The Perfect Escape

    Looking for something to distract you and make you feel good? These classic Star War strains will help you kick back and enjoy the wonder of the universe.

    Need a little escape from the world around you? Want to slip in a new yet familiar environment? As of 2023, the Star Wars universe had a worldwide box office revenue of about $10.3 billion. Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015) is the highest-grossing Star Wars movie of all time. It is ranked number one on a list of fandoms, ahead of Marvel. Will, the Star Wars strains will give you the perfect escape to let you take a breather from the world?

    Be a Skywalker

    Skywalker was created by the Dutch Passion Seed Company. They crossed two of their award-winning Indicas – Blueberry and Mazar – to produce Skywalker, which they intended to be “one of the best Indicas in the world.” The top flavors and aromas of Skywalker are earthy, woody, and spicy, with hints of sweetness and fruitiness.

    Skywalker OG is a Sativa dominant, marijuana hybrid. Skywalker OG is well-known for its relaxing and euphoric effects, making it an excellent choice for stress relief and pain management. This strain is often used to alleviate symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. The Kush is highly potent, with THC levels up to 21%, on average.

    Skywalker OG Kush (“No. There is another… Sky… walk…errrr.”) is an Indica derived from Skywalker crossed with an OG Kush. Vape it with a Skywalker OG 710 KingPen.

    RELATED: Great Fall Whiskeys

    Sour Skywalker (“That name no longer holds any meaning for me.”) is a half and half Sativa/Indica strain. Its ancestry is Sour Diesel crossed with Skywalker OG. It has a dank, pungent smell of earth and lemon, as well as a sour flavor with fruity notes of citrus and lemons. It has an intense yet calming, indica-driven body buzz matched with intense, euphoric cerebral effects. It’s an effective treatment for muscle spasms, chronic pain, insomnia, and stress.

    Photo by Flickr user Irudayam

    Favorite Characters

    C-3PO is a Humboldt County hybrid that was created by Petrolia Farms. With the smell of fresh pine, C3PO delivers relaxing effects with mental clarity due to its high CBD. It has low 1% THC count and high 12-15% CBD count. C-3PO’s levels making it an excellent choice for medical marijuana patients suffering from depression and stress, just like its robotic, neurotic namesake.

    R2-D2 Kush is an Indica-dominant hybrid strain, that smells reminiscent of Pine Sol, which come to think of it, is probably what R2-D2 smells like when he needs an oil bath. It is hard and quick hitting to really whisk you into a different place.

    RELATED: Marijuana Use And Guy’s Member

    The Jedi Masters

    OG Darth Vader is a strong, Indica marijuana hybrid that induces an intellectual high, combined with an opiate-like body relaxation. The effect is deep and long lasting. The Vader Force force comes through in its effects, which provide complete body relaxation and sleepiness. Ideal for treating insomnia, this strain may not knock you out immediately, but it will definitely quiet the mind and put all major productive plans on hold.

    OG 1 Kenobi is an is an 80/20 Indica-dominant marijuana hybrid, with 18-23% THC levels. It is a cross between Master Kush and Skywalker OG hybrid, and is often mistaken for Skywalker OG. The force is strong with Kenobi. This strain is not for pot padawans. It might knock you out, just like Kenobi knocked out Anakin Skywalker before he fell into the lava pit. Although, if you have serious, chronic pain, you might say, “Help me, OG 1 Kenobi, you’re my only smoke!”

    Master Yoda is cross between OG Kush and Master Kush. Yoda is an Indica dominant marijuana hybrid. he original Master Yoda would know, and the sativa side of this mostly indica buzz has just enough of an uplifting balance to please just about anyone.  Relax you will!

    Jedi Kush (aka OG Jedi) is a pure Indica marijuana, with a 2% CBD count and THC levels between 19-25%, on average. Jedi buds are spade-shaped, like Star Destroyers, with orange and purple undertones, like Mace Windu’s lightsaber. The effects are almost comparable to micro-dosing.

    And of course…the ultimate

    Death Star is a fully operational 75/25 Indica dominant hybrid with a high THC content. It is a cross between Sensei Star and Sour Diesel. Just like the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, this hybrid hits hard, so it is better for evening and nighttime use. Crush it up in a Death Star inspired grinder.

    Anthony Washington

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  • ‘The Acolyte’ Episode 7 Recap: The Jedi Blame Game

    ‘The Acolyte’ Episode 7 Recap: The Jedi Blame Game

    Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

    One day you’re doing some surveying, gathering moss samples, and searching for a Force hot spot with your metal vergence detector on a seemingly uninhabited planet. The next day, you discover that the planet has inhabitants after all. And the day after that, it goes right back to being almost uninhabited, because you kinda killed your new acquaintances. Oops! What a whirlwind.

    After Episode 3 of The Acolyte gave us Osha’s side of what went down on Brendok 16 years before the series’ present, we knew another flashback was coming. As expected, it arrived in Episode 7, “Choice,” which featured the same director (Kogonada) and one of the same writers (Jasmyne Flournoy, along with Charmaine DeGraté and Jen Richards) as the first flashback. And wouldn’t you know it: While nothing we saw in Episode 3 was strictly false, most of it was true only from a certain point of view.

    The series took its sweet time getting to the big Brendok reveal—and I’ll take my sweet time getting to the part of this piece where I discuss the season’s structure—but now that we’ve watched a more comprehensive account of the coven’s demise, we can finally play the blame game. The Jedi did indeed behave badly, but they weren’t the only ones. Let’s assign responsibility, via bullet points and percentages:

    Sol: 51 percent (a symbolic majority share)

    • Bizarrely obsessed with saving twins from imagined danger, an impulse that ends up placing them in danger.
    • Contradicts the Council’s instructions to stop meddling in the coven’s affairs: major main character syndrome. Shows no respect for the chain of command, family relationships, or private property.
    • Kills Aniseya, who was seemingly just trying to whisk Mae away. (After this episode, can anyone explain why Mae suddenly decided to turn herself over to the Jedi in Episode 4?) Granted, it’s easy to misinterpret intent when the witch standing next to you starts making like the smoke monster from Lost, but still: He started it. Aniseya appears to have been unarmed; is that why Mae’s master demanded that Mae kill an unarmed Jedi to complete her mission of vengeance? (Or did he demand that she kill a Jedi without being armed? It’s still tough to say for certain.)
    • Mistakes Mae for Osha, just as he does on Khofar 16 years later. His whole “I feel a connection to Osha; … I feel she is meant to be my Padawan” stance would be a bit more persuasive if he could tell the twins apart. (In fairness to Sol, because the twins are two halves of the same consciousness—hence their creepy rhyme—they’re even more alike than regular twins or clones.)
    • Showed piss-poor telekinesis skills in maxing out at one twin saved from the falling bridge. For Sol, size seems to matter very much. (This is the guy who goes on to train the next generation of Jedi?) But, hey, it’s OK: You don’t have to hold the whole bridge up. Just grab the twins! How hard can that be for someone who’s reputed to be as powerful as Sol—even a younger Sol who hasn’t made master? Are you telling me this man’s max lift is one little girl? (I get that this is a stressful situation, Jedi abilities vary, there could be complications from proximity to the vergence, etc., but it would be nice if Star Wars stories were slightly more consistent about what their space wizards can and can’t do.)
    • It wasn’t his idea to lie about what happened, but he didn’t mount much of a protest. (That goes for Kelnacca and Torbin, too.)

    Indara: 10 percent

    • Sure, she wasn’t the instigator—if Sol and Torbin had followed her lead, all would’ve been well—but she let herself be swayed by Sol at first. As the ranking Jedi on the expedition, the buck stops with her. She’s the one who’ll have to file the very vague incident reports.
    • Her “That’s why I have a Padawan and you do not” crack apparently put Sol on tilt.
    • Waited seven weeks to tell her Padawan why he was wandering around Brendok saving seed samples. Which was handy for the writers of The Acolyte, who got to treat Torbin as an audience proxy as they explained the concept of a vergence, but seemed inconsiderate otherwise. I guess that was part of “teach[ing] him to seek the answers for himself.” No wonder he wanted out.
    • I don’t think she meant to kill almost the entire coven when she forced the witches from Kelnacca’s mind, but, well, that’s what happened. Which, on the witches’ end, seems like a serious flaw in that particular Force power. Excuse me, Thread power. Speaking of which, what happened to that “the Thread is not a power you wield” rhetoric from Episode 3? Desperate times, desperate measures, but maybe the witches would’ve been better off practicing what they preached. Or, you know, not practicing. I suppose it’s possible that the witches died not when they were booted from Kelnacca’s brain but in the subsequent explosion, but regardless, the result is the same: carnage of the kind the Nightsisters suffered at the hands—er, mechanical claws?—of General Grievous.
    • She’s the one who perpetrates the cover-up—ostensibly because Osha, who’s already lost everything else, won’t get to fulfill her dream of training to be a Jedi if the unvarnished truth comes out—but we can’t take this quartet at their word when it comes to their “noble intentions.” In this case, the crime is worse than the cover-up, but both are bad.

    Mother Aniseya: 10 percent

    • In an attempt to drive the Jedi away from Brendok, turns Torbin’s desire to get back to the bright lights and big city into a pressing need, which backfires when he comes to see the twins as his ticket home.
    • Like Sol, puts her emotional attachment over what’s good for the group—though at least the girl she’s emotionally attached to is her daughter, as opposed to someone else’s daughter whom she met yesterday.
    • It’s good to give your kid some autonomy. But if she’s still a minor—even a Force-sensitive minor whose consciousness was split into two identical bodies by a vergence—you don’t have to let her leave to be “raised by an institution instead of a family.” Especially when you’ve foreseen—maybe through the vergence’s vision-granting power—the destruction of “every Jedi in the galaxy.”
    • In the midst of a tense standoff, a heads-up about the smoke monster transformation probably would’ve been wise.

    Torbin: 10 percent

    • Dangerously homesick for Coruscant. Torbin, buddy, I know the feeling of wanting to head home after an interminable business trip, but I draw the line at trespassing. Of course, Torbin might have too, if he’d been in his right mind. Honestly, Torbin is sort of a scapegoat and pays a disproportionate price. Not only was he the only Jedi not to escape physically unscathed, but he also had the decency to withdraw from the world in penance (after he made master, anyway). Though now that we’ve seen what part he played, the decade-long Barash Vow, followed by a poison snack, seems like literal overkill. You were just a Padawan, acting under the influence of a Force witch. These are major extenuating circumstances! Give yourself a break!

    Koril: 10 percent

    • Clearly spoiling for a fight from the start; flouts Aniseya’s prohibition of violence. Definitely not trained in de-escalation techniques.
    • Tells Mae to “get angry,” which helps spark (so to speak) the catastrophic outcome. I must have skipped that page in the parenting playbook.
    • Suspiciously absent after the brief, one-way melee with Sol—“Fight me!,” she screams, anticipating Mae’s “Attack me with all your strength!”—and thus seemingly the lone member of the coven to survive, aside from the twins.

    Mae: 5 percent

    • So, no, she didn’t mean to start a fire, but she did practice poor fire safety after locking her sister in her room and seemingly sealing everyone else inside the base.
    • Also, all those midi-chlorians and much-ballyhooed blocking abilities, and you can’t extinguish a tiny fire before it mysteriously rages through a stone settlement and blows up a big generator? (By the way: The Jedi frame Force potential in terms of “M-count.” Does the coven call it Thread count?)

    Kelnacca: 4 percent

    • He sliced the coven’s elevator. Indara told him to, but still, rude.
    • He allowed his head to get hijacked by the coven, even after seeing the same thing happen to Torbin. Amateur move.

    The tragedy on Brendok doesn’t directly implicate the order itself: The Council actually rebukes the quartet for meddling too much even before the body count climbs. One could chalk this disaster up to the actions of a couple of rogue Jedi, and one wouldn’t be wrong. But the roots of the conflict extend deeper.

    Because of their past wars with the Sith and their present primacy among Force users, the Jedi are both wary and dismissive of other Force-sensitive sects. Hence Sol’s instant suspicion of the witches and concern for the twins, even though there’s no real evidence that the latter are in any trouble. (Granted, the two quotes from Mae’s mom that Mae cites at her entrance exam—“Everyone must walk through fear” and “Everyone must be sacrificed to fulfill their destiny”—might raise an eyebrow over at CPS also. And then there’s the virgin vergence birth.)

    Likewise, while we still haven’t learned the coven’s origin story, we’ve known since the third episode that they were “hunted, persecuted, [and] forced into hiding” because “some would consider [their] power dark.” No wonder they’re on high alert when the Jedi show up. The Jedi and the witches on the scene started the fire, yes, but this is more of an “It was always burning since the world’s been turning” scenario; the powder kegs were pre-supplied.

    A lot of ill-advised actions have to be taken for this worst-case outcome to occur, but then, a lot of real-life disasters do arise from dumb mistakes. And it’s not as if there’s no reason for these characters to make missteps like these. Although there’s been some speculation that the Sith may have masterminded this confrontation and conflagration, there was no sign of them this week. Nor were they needed. Bias, bad blood, and intergenerational trauma could have caused these tragic misunderstandings without Sith assistance.

    In Episode 3, we saw the same events through Osha’s eyes. This time, we seem to be seeing a wider-ranging version of events—perhaps some amalgamation of the content contained in Sol’s confession to Mae and Osha’s vision in Qimir’s cortosis helmet. If so, it’s possible that we won’t actually see him come clean to the twins next week. But we’ll certainly see the aftermath. When Sol said “I got you” and pulled Osha up from the edge of an abyss in Episode 3, it seemed like a rescue. This time, it seems like a capture. When we reunite with Osha next week, she’ll probably be viewing her whole history with Sol in a new light, too.

    Next week, by the way, is the season finale. (Though not the series finale, Leslye Headland hopes.) We can’t fully assess the season’s structure until we see how it ends, but so far, I can’t say it’s working that well for me. I give The Acolyte’s creators kudos for trying something nonstandard for Star Wars—not a shocker, coming from the cocreator and Season 1 showrunner of Russian Doll—but the pacing, timeline hopping, and hoarding of reveals have hurt the spectator experience, at least as a week-to-week watch.

    The first full-episode flashback came when we were still familiarizing ourselves with the world of the show, and it didn’t add a lot to our understanding of the present time frame. Saving other big beats for the penultimate episode forced the writers to stall in the interim, withholding or parceling out morsels of information in ways that sometimes seemed contrived. Worse, it meant that we watched most of this season knowing that we didn’t really know the main characters: Our foreknowledge of a deep, dark secret that was due to be unveiled prevented us both from bonding with anyone in the interim and from being surprised when we learned what the storytellers had been holding back. Thus, I’ve watched much of The Acolyte at an emotional remove—which, if nothing else, simulates the Jedi lifestyle. Throw in the abrupt endings to episodes that seemed like they could have been trimmed and combined (especially Episodes 4 and 5) and the momentum-killing absences of core characters during the protracted flashbacks—this week, Manny Jacinto’s mesmerizing “Stranger” remains one to us—and the overall flow seems disjointed.

    Let’s hope next week’s big finish smooths it out. But for now, let’s also end in a disjointed fashion: with some stray observations.

    • Well, we finally saw a live-action Wookiee swing a lightsaber on-screen, albeit for a less-than-heroic cause. I’m glad Kelnacca got to do some slashing and hacking, however misguidedly, which fulfilled a fan desire that George Lucas supposedly opposed. (Wookiee Jedi are scarce in the current canon, especially outside of The High Republic.) His fighting style is suitably brutal. But I still say Star Wars needs to let the Wookiees win—not by choking Torbin, but by speaking in an intelligible fashion. Why do Star Wars movies, shows, and comics subtitle the speech of crime lords and low-budget bounty hunters but not the most faithful and forceful of walking carpets? It may be tradition, but it ain’t right.
    • There’s such a stark disparity between the combat in The Acolyte and … well, almost everything else. That’s not to say the series has no other redeeming qualities, but the fight choreography is the one aspect we can confidently point to and pronounce The Acolyte the best in class in Star Wars during the Disney era. If that turns out to be the most lasting legacy of the series—and if some of its influence rubs off on future projects—there are worse ways to be remembered.
    • I’m still a little confused by an Indara line from Episode 3 that we hear again this week: “Mother Aniseya, you cannot deny the Jedi have a right to test potential Padawans. With your permission, of course.” Does this “right” extend to non-Republic worlds? And if it is a right that Aniseya “cannot deny,” then what good would withholding permission do? Presumably, the “permission” part is just a fig leaf obscuring the power dynamic that enables the Jedi to do what they want.
    • “A hundred years ago, this planet was cataloged as lifeless because of a hyperspace disaster,” Indara says about Brendok. That’s one of the series’ rare references to the High Republic books and comics—in this case, a shout-out to the aptly named Great Hyperspace Disaster, in which a freight transport ship broke apart in hyperspace, with devastating consequences. The pieces emerged from hyperspace unpredictably, bombarding various population centers as part of a terrorist plot by an enemy organization known as the Nihil. It’s an extremely long story.
    • Two of Sol’s lines from the Ascension ceremony in “Destiny” are missing in “Choice.” In Episode 3, between Mother Aniseya’s promise, “The scouts will bring Osha to your camp at midday,” and Indara’s response, “We appreciate your cooperation,” Sol interjects, “Both girls. Her sister, too.” In Episode 7, he doesn’t. This omission probably doesn’t reflect anything other than the creators’ desire to limit the amount of repeat material in this episode—which they did a decent job of, given that the format makes some rehashing inevitable—but it does reinforce the impression of unreliable narration. More obviously, Mae didn’t say “I’ll kill you!” to Osha this time. Memory is malleable!
    • Is Sol deluded in thinking that he and Osha are meant to be together, or will he turn out to be right, in a roundabout fashion? The Force works in mysterious ways; maybe Osha was meant to be Sol’s Padawan, despite all the pain their pairing has caused. Osha was seemingly created via vergence; Anakin Skywalker was a vergence. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s mentorship of Anakin didn’t have a happy ending, but as Qui-Gon Jinn anticipated, it worked out for the best for Anakin to leave his mother to join the Jedi, bringing-balance-to-the-Force-wise. (Just forget about the countless people killed by Darth Vader before balance was temporarily achieved.)
    • Now that the Jedi’s lies! and deceptions! have been laid bare, what’s the biggest remaining mystery and/or source of intrigue heading into the finale? Osha confronting Sol about how he misled her? Osha and Mae making up? Which one, if either, becomes the titular acolyte? The question of Sol’s survival, seeing as he may have to take his knowledge of the Sith’s existence to an early grave? The details of Mae’s survival on Brendok, and, relatedly, the whereabouts of Koril? More backstory about the Brendok witches, what the Ascension ceremony does, and whether Sol was right about the vibes being off? The potential for the Stranger to make clear how he fits into the history of the Sith and/or Knights of Ren? (Is that Darth Plagueis’s music?!) Vernestra confronting the Stranger, her possible Padawan of old? (We haven’t seen those characters interact at all, so I’m gonna go with “no” on that, though the prospect of Darth Teeth/Biceps vs. a lightwhip is tasty.) The potential for more of Jacinto to make it past the prudes at Disney? There are plenty of items of interest on this list, but Episode 7 didn’t do much to tee them up.
    • A pop song playing over Star Wars credits? Sure, why not? We’ll have the same song play us out today; take it away, Victoria Monét.

    Ben Lindbergh

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  • There’s a phantom menace lurking in The Acolyte

    There’s a phantom menace lurking in The Acolyte

    Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte has earned praise for simply existing outside of the Skywalker Saga — after 47 years of stories set in the same stretch of timeline, a jump back “100 years before the rise of the Empire” to the shinier High Republic era is enough for aching Star Wars fans. But even with a prohibitively old setting and a cast of characters divorced from Anakin and Luke, The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland is still finding ways to pepper the drama with Easter eggs. Episode 4 gave those in the know a whopper: Plo Koon.

    Plo Koon, the Kel Dor Jedi known for his chic oxygen mask, first appeared in scenes of the Jedi council in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and grew into a fan favorite when he took on an action role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Plo’s biggest fan might be The Clone Wars creator Dave Filoni, who has made his passion for the B-tier Jedi extremely clear to the Star Wars fandom over the last 20 years, having cosplayed at conventions as the Jedi, snapped photos with fellow cosplayers, and showed off his Plo Koon toy collection on social media. His “personal life” section on Wookieepedia is entirely facts about his Plo Koon collectibles. Despite him being one or two levels removed from a Glup Shitto, Dave Filoni is all in on Plo Koon.

    I believe Filoni when he says he has talked extensively about Plo Koon with George Lucas. Reportedly, when the animator was pushing to beef up Plo’s part in the The Clone Wars, there were plans to cast an actor who sounded like Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai to give the Jedi a samurai feel. But Lucas thought the character was goofier than that and wanted a Jim Carrey type. Filoni landed on actor James Arnold Taylor because of his Gandalf vibes. The Lucas-versus-Filoni Plo-off doesn’t end there; at Star Wars Celebration 2023, Filoni admitted that he made the case to his boss that Plo Koon, due to #skillz, obviously would have survived Order 66. Lucas shot down the canon alteration request, but Filoni stands by his defense.

    None of this was relevant to The Acolyte… until now. For a split second, standing in a drop shop with Osha on their way to meet the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him appearance by Plo Koon, who has not actually appeared in live action since Revenge of the Sith. How could Plo be alive during the High Republic era? That’s very human of you to ask, but just like Yoda, he is technically old enough to be around kicking; nerd number-crunching based on decanonized Legends materials puts him around 382 years old during the time of The Clone Wars, which should make him already a seasoned veteran of the Jedi in The Acolyte.

    For a hot second, it sounded like Filoni may have snuck his guy into The Mandalorian. Leaks hinted at a potential reveal in the season 2 finale, but as it turned out, early storyboards and VFX footage were all an elaborate scheme to hide the return of a de-aged Luke Skywalker. “All it takes is one person treating the film in color correction, one person who goes on social media and says, ‘Guess what I saw today?’” Mark Hamill said in the Disney Gallery making-of doc centered on the episode. What no one seemed to care about at the time was how mad Filoni’s fellow Plo Koonheads must have felt!

    Technically, The Acolyte is one of the few Star Wars projects that Dave Filoni does not seem directly involved with; he doesn’t share any writing or directing credits on the series, nor does he hold a general producer credit. (By all accounts, his attention is fully on Ahsoka season 2.) And maybe it’s THE Plo Koon. In theory this unnamed Jedi is just another Force-sensitive Kel Dor.

    But c’mon, it’s Plo Koon. And it makes sense why Headland would want the cameo. As the showrunner has said, she purposefully set up her writers room to represent a broad spectrum of Star Wars fandoms and surrounded herself with people who could bring their own Easter egg wishlists to the table. So while longtime fans may have prayed at the altar of George Lucas, others involved were weaned on The Clone Wars — and Filoni’s pro-Plo brand of fandom. So it’s no surprise that The Acolyte would find ways to nod to the OT, the prequels, and even the cartoons that have little in common with its world: If you are on the right side of Star Wars history, you make room for Plo Koon.

    Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Plo Koon last appeared in live-action in The Phantom Menace, but his final live-action appearance was in Revenge of the Sith. We’ve edited the article to reflect this.

    Matt Patches

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  • The Essence of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Was You Made the Experience

    The Essence of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Was You Made the Experience

    A year after the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser took its last flight, here’s a look back at the best of Disney Parks’ bold venture into the immersive entertainment space—and why in the end, it couldn’t quite work.

    James Mangold on his Future Star Wars Film | io9 Interview

    At io9, Star Wars and fantastical realms of sci-fi coming to life are a major component of what we write about through films, shows, and theme park experiences. And that’s because bringing to life some of the idealized futuristic worlds we hold dear presents a lot of challenges—particularly when they’re brought into a very real world that may only really share themes of banding together with civil unrest against a fascist tyranny. In Star Wars the people find ways to come together and play a role to defeat the bad guys; in real life things are far more complicated.

    To many Star Wars fans who were able to check out Galactic Starcruiser during its short-lived existence, the attraction presented a chance to act on the frustration many share in their day to day lives of watching atrocities happen and feeling like there’s little we can do about them. There was an irony in this, since Galactic Starcruiser was part of Disney, a major corporation that prioritizes its financial bottom line.

    And indeed, Galactic Starcruiser’s exorbitant cost turned off a lot of folks who thought it was a hotel—which it never was, instead more resembling a fancy theater camp where you could wallflower it or actively participate in your own corner of Star Wars. Hotels are generally built around recreational, relaxing areas like a pool or a spa; the only amenities that reflected a familiar Disney vacation aspect aboard Galactic Starcruiser were the dinners and the Galaxy’s Edge excursions at adjacent Walt Disney World. On a surface level, that’s what probably misled regular folk—vacationers who don’t actively follow the immersive experiences niche—into thinking Galactic Starcruiser was a Disney Cruise on land. Coming on board to realize it was not, and that you had to get involved in ways that could be compared to pretending to be a coach for your fantasy football league, in a realm where you’re in the game, threw the unprepared off. That’s a big part of what ultimately led to Disney shutting down the attraction, which at its core was a community-building endeavor born out of Imagineering and Lucasfilm’s story trust to inspire at least a portion of people to feel like if they could be a part of a story like Star Wars, then perhaps they could take their experiences from it to the real world, in small and big ways.

    While there’s a lot of outrage out there to deconstruct the pared-down end result that came from an ambitious idea, many folks who got to visit Galactic Starcruiser enjoyed the experiment, whether they saw it as an imaginative interactive playground to bring their loved ones to or experience on their own. It was a sandbox: if you wanted to be there to cosplay while trying funky-looking food and drinks, that was a path you could take; if you wanted to embrace the childlike wonder of lightsaber training and blasting baddies into space, there was that too. And some people just wanted their kids to play and meet their heroes.

    The milage varied on how open and social you were willing to be to find the path of best enjoyment. On my own visit, I went in as a disenchanted space witch on her honeymoon, and with the intention of leaving behind how limited I felt in being able to change the real world. I quickly made an alliance with some reluctant scoundrels to help the good guys out, playing up some Cassian Andor vibes (I pretended to be a relative). I had some issues with having to be on my “data-pad” (what that really means: one’s own phone) to do the more gamer app stuff around Galaxy’s Edge; that was not for me as a non-gamer. But I found that character interaction and roleplay on board the ship to be a highly rewarding experience. I befriended other guests, young and young at heart; moved smuggled goods about (how did they know I’d be down to hustle the Empire?); and when my beloved and I needed a romantic space moment to share our vow renewals, the in-room droid—D3-O9, who encouraged me to help the Resistance—performed a whole ceremony that makes me cry to this day, because right after, she sacrificed herself and got attacked by the First Order.

    That event, like in any hero’s journey, quickly radicalized me and I was able to find the Rebel princess for the people inside me I’ve dreamed of being since I was a little girl. Then it was on and along with the Padawans in training we led stormtroopers to their own imprisonment by pretending to lock up Chewbacca, used a fake proposal to move precious cargo, and stood tall with a galactic pop-star along with our fellow Resistance members to back up Rey when Kylo Ren showed up for the epic finale. And finally—when the good guys won—I was able to step into my power and begin the Jedi (witch princess) training I’d felt I long abandoned hope for. As soon as I ignited my lightsaber on that last night, I was ready to fight again.

    Oh—and here are the vows D3-O9 recited for us:

    D3-O9: You have come today to declare your promise of devotion to your chosen partner.

    Please repeat after me:

    …We vow to share our triumphs and troubles…

    …No matter what difficulties may come…

    …We share in each other’s successes…

    …Not with jealousy, but with joy and admiration…

    …We promise each other a life cycle…

    …Filled with curiosity, humor, and adventure…

    …We pledge unquestionable devotion…

    …for we are worthy of each other’s love.

    You are destined. The galaxy has connected you amongst the millions of other inhabitants. Though you may have once traveled singular paths, you now travel united, and stronger for it. Cherish your bond, and seek to share it, for your bond shall inspire others to seek their own. From love to love, the galaxy grows stronger. And you are now a part of that great and unending chain.

    Like those who did find the best of our experiences to outweigh the kinks that had so much potential to be ironed out, it is nice to feel a part of that “great and unending chain” with those whose lives were enriched by the experience of the Galactic Starcruiser.

    Read more about io9’s invited visit to Galactic Starcruiser here.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

    Sabina Graves

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  • Meredith Salenger on Barriss’ Big Moment in Tales of the Empire

    Meredith Salenger on Barriss’ Big Moment in Tales of the Empire

    As Tales of the Empire digs its way through the story of Barriss Offee—and her quest to survive the rise of the Empire, at any cost—there comes a moment that climaxes a decade-plus wait for fans who’ve wanted to see what happened to the former Jedi Padawan after the shocking conclusion of her story in Clone Wars. It’s a moment long in the making, and one that was crucial to the actress behind her as well.

    Cop-Proof Your Phones Right Now

    That moment comes at the climax of the second of Barriss’ three episodes in Tales of the Empire, “Realization.” Having already accepted—and survived—the offer of joining the new Imperial Inquisitorius after the Republic’s fall, while on a mission to hunt down a Jedi in hiding alongside the Fourth Sister (Rya Kihlstedt), Barriss is horrified by the Inquistors’ violence and chooses to go rogue herself, flinging the Fourth Sister off a cliff face with a push of the Force, and throwing her own helmet down with her.

    In the next episode, “The Way Out,” we meet Barriss as we’ve never had the chance to see her before. An undisclosed number of years later, she has had the chance to live and grow older. She’s cut her hair, and on a distant, icy world, she has become a spiritual healer, a wise woman who cures and advises the people who seek her in need. It’s a huge moment, not just to see Barriss flourish and thrive, but to see her committed to the the ideal of the Jedi—the ideal she’d so fiercely believe the Order had fallen away from in its participation in the Clone War—and become someone who knows when to fight and when to offer an open hand. She’s a long way from being a young woman so shocked and horrified by what she saw the Order becoming, her only response to its participation in interstellar war could be violence in kind. And for Meredith Salenger—who has thought about the choices Barriss made in Clone Wars for as long as fans have—it was a powerful moment to be a part of.

    Image for article titled Meredith Salenger on Barriss' Big Moment in Tales of the Empire

    Screenshot: Lucasfilm

    “I mean, I think it’s like in life—as you go through your life, when you’re a teenager you’ve got this energy to fight, to become combative, and I think for Barriss, she was always so… methodical and conservative in her training and wanting to do the right thing, playing everything by the book,” Salenger recently told io9 about getting to see Barriss grow and become the wise woman we meet in “The Way Out.” “I think as you grow and learn, and as you get older, Barriss makes mistakes—wanting to do things the way they’re done—but all of it can only change if there is an underlying love for everyone and wanting to shift people’s perspectives to being more caring and more healing. Instead of doing this by violence, let’s do it by changing people’ hearts and minds and showing compassion. Helping.”

    It’s a shift in perspective that gives Barriss an opportunity to be explored further in Star Wars’ future. In a mirror to the climax of “Realization,” when the Fourth Sister finally tracks Barriss down for her betrayal, their encounter culminates with the former accidentally managing to stab the later—and in doing so realizing that Barriss’ pleas to her to change and see a new path were possible. Tales of the Empire concludes with the Fourth Sister, reclaiming her former identity as Lyn Rakish, carrying a wounded—but seemingly still alive—Barriss to aid. It was a long time coming, but at last, Star Wars fans got to see what became of the wayward Padawan… and how she became a Jedi far beyond anything the Order she grew disillusioned with could imagine.

    Star Wars: Tales of the Empire is streaming on Disney+.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

    James Whitbrook

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  • The Best, Freakiest Little Guys From Star Wars

    The Best, Freakiest Little Guys From Star Wars

    Image: Lucasfilm / Disney / Kotaku

    The Star Wars universe is massive, filled with hundreds of books, games, TV shows, and more. And let’s not forget the movies, which started all of this wild nonsense back in 1978 with A New Hope. Throughout all of Star Wars, from all the fan fighting over Last Jedi to people going wild over Grogu, one thing has remained true: The galaxy is filled with freaky little guys.

    When Star Wars Jedi: Survivor landed from EA and Respawn last year, the internet fell head over heels for Turgle, a frog man that is a perfect example of a freaky little guy.

    What is a freaky little guy? Well, it’s an alien that doesn’t have to necessarily be a male, they just need to be a bit freaky. A little weird. An oddball, if you will. The kind of character that shows up and you think to yourself, “What a freaky little dude, huh?” There’s really no specific definition or criteria. It’s more of a vibe they put out rather than a checklist of requirements that need to be met. Based on those vibes, we’ve collected this list of the 10 freakiest little guys in all of Star Wars.

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Hasbro’s New Star Wars Toys Embrace the Dark Side

    Hasbro’s New Star Wars Toys Embrace the Dark Side

    Image: Hasbro

    Star Wars products love a theme moment—Force Friday, Triple Force Friday, whatever the Force Friday equivalent for Rogue One was called. Maybe they just love Fridays, but now Lucasfilm and its merch partners are capitalizing on a whole month to sell you things, with a specific villainous twist.

    This March is now Imperial March, because, well, duh, and Lucasfilm is planning a bunch of new merchandise announcements with a suitably evil theme. Hasbro is leading the charge with a wave of new figures from Jedi: Fallen Order, Ahsoka, and classic Star Wars across its 6″ and 3.75″ toy lines, and although “Imperial March” will be long done by the time any of them come out, it’s still nice to see what’s in store for the baddies on your shelves this year.

    The Jedi: Fallen Order three-pack (featuring the vision of an Inquistor Cal Kestis, the Second Sister, and a Purge Trooper) will release this spring exclusively through Amazon for $75, while the Vintage Collection Captain Enoch and Night Trooper pack ($55), as well as the individual Darth Vader and Stormtrooper releases ($17 each), will be available from Hasbro Pulse and other retailers this summer. Click through to see pictures!

    James Whitbrook

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  • Cop Holding Baton Like He A Jedi

    Cop Holding Baton Like He A Jedi

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  • These are the Strongest Jedi Ranked by Power and Ability | The Mary Sue

    These are the Strongest Jedi Ranked by Power and Ability | The Mary Sue

    The Jedi of Star Wars are like the knights or samurai of the future (but also somehow in the past). Many regard them as heroes who defend the galaxy against the evil Sith with their trusty glowing blades. They have a strong connection to the Force and can use it to manipulate the world around them. To be a true Jedi, you must follow a strict code that eschews strong feelings and personal attachment.

    Even though the Jedi can be a flawed group, we all have our favorites. Although all the Jedi have their strong points, some are more powerful than others. I have a theory that Jedi only get stronger with the next generation because the Force keeps building. Some Jedi have to walk, so others can run. So, going off of canon Jedi, I have compiled a list of the most powerful folks to wield a lightsaber.

    15. Grogu

    Grogu like what i
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Grogu isn’t technically a Jedi, I know. He trained only for a short time, then went rogue. But he is very powerful in the Force. Since we do not know much about Grogu and Yoda, it may be that they are all this strongly connected to the Force, especially at a young age. Either way, Grogu could rank higher on the list if he ever goes back to training.

    14. Aayla Secura

    Aayla Secura in Star Wars.
    (Walt Disney Pictures Studios)

    Aayla Secura is a Twi’lek Jedi Master featured in the prequel movies and The Clone Wars. Her powers with the Force may not be extraordinary, but her overall skills as a warrior are. Sadly, she led a group of troopers when Order 66 occurred and the brainwashed clones murdered her.

    13. Kit Fisto

    Kit Fisto Attack of the Clones Jedi
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Kit Fisto had a lot of skill with a lightsaber. Because of his genetics, not only could he fight well on land, but he could also take that same skill underwater. However, his connection to the Force didn’t seem much higher than the average Jedi.

    12. Plo Koon

    Plo Koon in Star Wars
    (Walt Disney Pictures Studios)

    Plo Koon is another Jedi Master who sadly died during Order 66. Like several of the other Jedi, he was a skilled warrior and pilot. Unlike the others, Pl Koon seemed to have a stronger connection to the telekinetic abilities. Too bad we didn’t get to see more of his skills.

    11. Ezra Bridger

    Taylor Gray as Ezra Bridger in Star Wars Rebels
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Ezra Bridger is considered to be a prodigy in the Force. He’s a character that we have now seen in the animated Rebels show and the live-action Ahsoka where he had some impressive moves. His training hasn’t been consistent, otherwise, he would probably be higher on the list. Something unique about Ezra and the Force is that it allows him to connect with animals. Just that power alone could do great things.

    10. Count Dooku

    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Before Dooku fell to the dark side, he was one of the best Jedi with a lightsaber. He matched Mace Windu in ability and only Yoda could defeat him. But he went Sith and ruined his chances of being higher on the list.

    9. Quinlan Vos

    Quinlan Vos Clone Wars
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Quinlan Vos had a lot of skill with a lightsaber. But his power ranking more lies with his Force ability. Not only could he use Force telekinesis, but he connected to the Force on a deeper level, where he could feel a person’s thoughts or emotions from an object they had touched. Using this, he could track people with ease. Also, he used the Force to hide that he had turned to the dark side. But his betrayal of the Jedi code forced him lower on the list.

    8. Ahsoka Tano

    Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano on Disney+'s The Mandalorian.
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Trained in the Force by her two dads, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano is very powerful in the Force. She uses the Force to increase her agility during duels (that she does with two blades) and can use telekinesis with skill, including using a Force choke.

    The Force even came to her through visions of the future and this allows her to communicate telepathically with other Force-sensitive beings. If she had stayed with the Jedi longer (and I support her decision in every way), and if Order 66 never happened, she may have surpassed more Jedi on the list.

    7. Mace Windu

    Star Wars Mace Windu Lightsaber
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Besides just being cool (and having the only purple lightsaber), Mace Windu is one of the top Jedi duelists of all time. A powerful handle on Force telekinesis, Windu also mastered the Jedi mind trick. Maybe because of his ability to see the future, he never trusted Anakin fully, knowing he would eventually fall to the dark side. Although Windu is exceptional, he just doesn’t reach the same level as the other Jedi on the list.

    6. Obi-Wan Kenobi

    obi-wan pierogi
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Obi-Wan Kenobi (a.k.a. Ben Kenobi or Daddy-Wan Kenobi) is the grand-padawan of Count Dooku, the padawan of Qui-Gon Jinn. He trained both Anakin Skywalker and Anakin’s son, Luke. But Kenobi was more than a trainer. He used the Force (and his silver tongue) to mind-trick people and help negotiations during the war.

    Also, he used his deep connection to the Force to lift large objects. With his power and lightsaber dueling abilities, he even defeated Darth Vader (not Anakin because those two would never fight). I also stand by the theory that Vader didn’t kill Kenobi. Kenobi just stopped existing since he was sick of dealing with Skywalker-related drama. One man (even a master Jedi) can only take so much.

    5. Ben Solo

    Adam Driver as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Before Ben Solo thought his Uncle Luke Skywalker was out to kill him, he was on the path to becoming an ultra-powerful Jedi. As the child of Leia Skywalker, the Force was strong in Ben. Lucky for him, Luke was there to teach him. Ben’s power could have met that of Luke’s, but egos and daddy issues got in the way, as they tend to do in Star Wars. Although Kylo Ren is still powerful, his chaotic anger never equaled what his power good have been if he stayed on the path of the Jedi.

    4. Anakin Skywalker

    Anakin Skywalker Revenge of the Sith
    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Many great Jedi believed Anakin Skywalker was the chosen one to bring balance to the Force. His connection to the Force and skill with a lightsaber exceeds most Jedi. Watching Anakin duel is a thing of beauty, especially when he combines his physical skills and the Force.

    If the Jedi understood Anakin’s raw power more, or if he had more hugs from Obi-Wan, he could have outranked all the other Jedi. However, his emotions and power were not channeled correctly (I could literally write a Ted Talk on this), and we got Darth Vader instead of an ultimate Jedi.

    3. Yoda

    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Yoda is a lean, green Force machine. The oldest and wisest of the Jedi, Yoda has had 900 years to hone the Force to his needs. Whether it is lightsaber battles, telekineses, or feeling the will of the Force, he’s got it all on lockdown. He trained many of the legendary Jedi, including Dooku and Luke Skywalker. Yet even with his advanced age, his ability didn’t eclipse some younger Jedi.

    2. Luke Skywalker

    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Luke Skywalker was born to be a Jedi (like his father before him). The son of “the chosen one” and trained by two Jedi greats, Luke easily found his feet as an amazing Jedi. It is like the power of those before him, added to his strengths and abilities.

    After training others, Luke found ancient Jedi texts to further his own knowledge. As we saw when he used a Force projection (also called Similfuturus) to travel through space. This is honestly one of the coolest moments in Star Wars history.

    1. Rey Skywalker

    (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios)

    Much like Luke Skywalker, Rey was born to be a glowing center in the Force. It makes sense that she would take the Skywalker last name. As the daughter of a clone of Darth Sidious/Sheev Palpatine and trained by Luke Skywalker for a short time, Rey had the basic skills to become one of the greatest Jedi ever.

    With only a short training window and being a young age during that time, Rey still performed amazing feats with the Force. Her Force telekinesis outperformed many Jedi before her. And her power connected with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren to create a legendary Force Dyad. We only saw some of Rey’s power, so with her, the sky is the limit.

    (feature image: Walt Disney Pictures Studios)

    Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

    D.R. Medlen

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  • Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Director Departs From EA

    Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Director Departs From EA

    Stig Asmussen, the director behind Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its recent sequel has left publisher Electronic Arts for unspecified reasons.

    10 Creatures We Wanna Ride In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

    2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was a huge hit, selling millions of copies and garnering rave reviews from critics and fans. Earlier this year, the game’s sequel, Jedi: Survivor, debuted to equally positive reviews and sales. Both games were seen by many as a huge improvement over EA’s previous Star Wars output, which included multiplayer shooters and canceled projects. And now, the man who helped lead development on the Jedi games is no longer with Respawn or the studio’s parent company EA.

    According to a new September 13 report from Bloomberg, Stig Asmussen has left EA, with the Madden and Battlefield publisher confirming the news with the outlet.

    When asked about the departure, EA provided Kotaku with this statement:

    After careful thought and consideration, Stig Asmussen has decided to leave Respawn to pursue other adventures, and we wish him the best of luck. Veteran Respawn leaders will be stepping up to guide the team as they continue their work on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

    The specific reason for Asmussen’s departure is not yet known. His exit from Respawn, at least from the outside, does seem surprising, as the Jedi games have been considered huge successes for EA and its stewardship of Star Wars. His sudden exit seems even more surprising when you consider that, according to Asmussen, the Jedi series of games was always meant to be a trilogy, implying a third game is coming in the future.

    In March, a month before the launch of Jedi: Survivor, Asmussen told IGN that he “always wanted to see [the Jedi saga] as a trilogy.” He explained further that the team had “ideas of what we could do beyond [Jedi: Survivor].”

    While it’s very likely EA and Respawn will develop a third game in the popular franchise, completing the presumably planned trilogy, it will seemingly be without the director who helped make the first two chapters memorable.

     .

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Ahsoka Episode 1 Review: It Really Is Star Wars: Rebels 2

    Ahsoka Episode 1 Review: It Really Is Star Wars: Rebels 2

    You could certainly accuse creators within the Star Wars franchise of needlessly injecting their media with heavy doses of fan service, and Ahsoka series creator Dave Filoni might be the guiltiest of them all. There’s a reason a tweet from April 2023 sharing a fake page from a Filoni script that follows the famous “and my ax” format from The Lord of the Rings but with Star Wars characters is so funny—because it feels, in part, like something the man blessed with George Lucas’ trust would try to pull off.

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    Read More: Your Essential Ahsoka Refresher Before The New Star Wars Series

    There are moments throughout the first episode of the new Disney Plus Ahsoka series that feel a bit like that tweet, and a bit like Filoni, who helmed the animated Star Wars: Rebels series, just wanted to finish telling that show’s story. But even though the frequent nods to content and characters from that beloved series may sometimes make Ahsoka feel like it’s only for the initiated, it still manages to be a compelling standalone story in its own right—maybe not as well as Andor does, but far better than, say, The Book of Boba Fett.

    Stream it now: Disney+

    The start of the Ahsoka series

    Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati in a promotional poster for Ahsoka.

    I can fix her.
    Image: Lucasfilm

    Ahsoka begins with something that makes me genuinely squeal with delight: a traditional Star Wars opening crawl (though in a striking red font), filling you in on the key story beats you’ll need to know going in. This is a brilliant move by Filoni—not only does it help Ahsoka feel more like a full-blown film (which it does throughout the first two episodes that aired on August 23 thanks to fantastic VFX and excellent pacing), but it gives a little bit of context for fans who may not have sat through some 200 episodes across two different kids’ shows.

    The crawl tells us that Morgan Elsbeth, an ally to Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, has been captured by Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and is being transported by the Rebel Alliance. Cue a giant Rebel ship sweeping into view, and a nice look at how the new government is running—a ship sending out an old Jedi signal is asking to board, but the Rebel captain thinks its passengers are bluffing. Most of the Jedi were wiped out during The Clone Wars, remember?

    The captain was right to suspect them, because it turns out they’re two red-lightsaber-wielding bad guys named Baylan Skoll (RIP Ray Stevenson) and Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). Both Stevenson and Sakhno shine in their respective roles—Stevenson playing Baylan like a classically trained Shakespearean villain, Sakhno imbuing Shin with a feral, twitchy energy like a corner feral cat. They kill everyone on the ship and release Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto, who first played the role on The Mandalorian), who tells Baylan that there’s someone after the “map”: Ahsoka Tano.

    This is an early reminder that Filoni likes the toys in his sandbox a bit too much, as Inosanto’s somewhat bizarre line-read (she just says the name “Ahsoka Tano” before it cuts to the show’s title card) would have been so much more powerful if she never said it all. Instead, we just get snapped right to the name of the show. Listen, Ahsoka is Filoni’s best girl (and mine, too), so I’ll let him have this one.

    Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni and Rosario Dawson onstage at Star Wars Celebration 2023.

    Dave Filoni loves Ahsoka Tano.
    Photo: Kate Green / Disney (Getty Images)

    Then we see Ahsoka herself, walking through the ruins of what appears to be an old Jedi temple. It’s great to see Dawson physically embody the role—she is reserved, almost stoic as she moves through this space, but still occasionally offers flashes of playfulness that remind us of a younger Ahsoka. And, thankfully, her fucking lekku are finally the right length. In a scene that feels straight out of Indiana Jones, Ahsoka uses her dual lightsabers to slice through the ground and drop straight into a secret room that demands she complete a puzzle to get the object she’s looking for. She does so with ease, but when she tries to communicate with Huyang (a Jedi engineer droid voiced by David Tennant), she realizes something’s not right.

    She’s attacked, and we get our second lightsaber fight of the show before we even hit the 15-minute mark (hell yeah). The fight is choreographed well, and it’s clear that the team made sure Dawson’s movements (and that of her stunt double, Michelle Lee) echo Ahsoka’s competency with many fighting styles—she can move swiftly and lithely when needed, but stand tall and powerful to deflect hard hits or blaster shots as well.

    It’s a great fight, but it’s the scene afterwards that gives me pause—Dawson, clearly trying to embody an older, more stoic Ahsoka than the one we know from the animated shows, can occasionally feel stiff, a stark contrast to the lively take that voice actor Ashley Eckstein brought to the character. This could, perhaps, be because this is a much older Ahsoka Tano than the teenage girl in Clone Wars (she’s certainly more reserved in Rebels, and she’s in her forties now), but it feels jarring, especially since she is such a beloved character. As my partner said during the first episode, “Those contacts don’t help, do they?” Dawson feels the most like Ahsoka when she invokes a sort of bemused disdain, which we luckily get more of in the second episode.

    Ahsoka and her rebels

    Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren rides a purple and yellow speeder bike.

    I love a motomami.
    Image: Lucasfilm / Entertainment Weekly

    Ahsoka believes the map will help lead her to the location of Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), the last leader of the Empire and its heir apparent. At the end of Rebels’ final episode (which aired back in 2018), Jedi Ezra Bridger used hyperspace-traveling space whales called purrgil to banish himself and Thrawn to the remotest corner of the universe. Ahsoka hopes that the map will find them both, so that she can save Ezra and also prevent Thrawn from retaking his mantle as imperial leader and plunging the galaxy back into war.

    She’ll need help, however, so she turns to two of her oldest and closest allies: General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Here is where Ahsoka slows down a bit too much for some, as it tries to give the audience a better understanding of the dynamics between these three women, which were properly fleshed out across 75 Rebels episodes. Ahsoka used to train Sabine, a Mandalorian warrior and close friend to Ezra, as her Padawan, before it became clear that the two weren’t a good fit, and they both fought alongside Hera (who lost her partner, a Jedi named Kanan Jarrus) in the rebellion for years.

    Unfortunately for Dawson, her reserved approach to Ahsoka only makes it harder to fully dig into her relationship with Hera (who Winstead plays like a concerned but feisty aunt through several pounds of some of the worst FX makeup I’ve ever seen) and Sabine (who Bordizzo portrays beautifully as a brash, angsty riot grrrl who uses her cool speeder bike to do an Akira-esque slide when you first meet her). Whenever they’re interacting, she feels more like an exasperated mom than a former pain in the ass herself (which Ahsoka was, just ask her older master, Anakin Skywalker). It’s unfortunate, but I’m hoping that the three women stretch and flex into their roles in future episodes.

    Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla, standing in a bomber jacket and goggles.

    Awoop, jumpscare.
    Image: Lucasfilm / Entertainment Weekly

    Aside from the trio’s dynamic, however, Ahsoka looks and feels great. The lovingly recreated locations from the animated series (Ahsoka’s ship, the planet Lothal, Ezra’s crow’s-nest home that Sabine now lives in), all look amazing, like something out of a full-fledged Star Wars blockbuster. The animatronic Lothal cat has dethroned Grogu as the cutest Star Wars puppet in my opinion, and aside from Ashoka’s contacts and Hera’s far-too-cartoony outfit, the costuming and set-dressing are all top-notch. The lightsaber battles crackle and snap—there’s energy in every swing of the sword or blaster deflection that feels purposeful and well-directed, and the ASMR-heavy moments (Ahsoka twisting and turning stone columns to complete a puzzle, Sabine shifting a metal sphere to reveal a map) are tactile and almost sensual.

    The episode ends with a fantastic lightsaber fight—Sabine, ever the stubborn one, takes the map off of Ahsoka’s ship despite her protestations, and discovers exactly where it leads before she’s attacked by Shin and her droids. Sabine gets a saber straight through her abdomen, something that Star Wars doesn’t do all that often (I gasped so loud I woke up one of my cats), and it fades to black. We know Sabine survives, but will her already fractured relationship with her former master, Ahsoka?

    There’s love in every Ahsoka detail, like a jade heart sewn into the pocket of your jeans. You just have to allow for the hope that, like all things, it’ll get better with age.

    Stream it now: Disney+

    Alyssa Mercante

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  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Is Coming To PS4, Xbox One

    Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Is Coming To PS4, Xbox One

    Respawn and Electronic Arts’ popular single-player Star Wars sequel, Jedi: Survivor, is making the leap from current-gen to the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles.

    The Sims 4’s Free Infant Update Can’t Compare To The Growing Together Expansion

    Launched in April, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. In this most recent Star Wars adventure from Titanfall devs Respawn, players again take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge during the end of the Clone Wars as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire’s clutches. This very good follow-up originally skipped last-gen consoles in order to, in the words of the game’s director, offer up a “true new-gen experience.” But now, Cal Kestis is coming to a PS4 near you.

    During Electronic Arts’ August 1 earnings briefing, the publisher revealed that Respawn was “in the early stages of development” on PS4 and Xbox One ports of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

    EA didn’t specify when these last-gen ports would be released and declined to offer any extra details to Kotaku.

    The publisher clarified that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s current versions weren’t going to be left behind, and confirmed that “additional performance improvements” for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC still remained a “top priority” for Respawn. It also promised to share more about these improvements “as soon as the next update is ready.” This is good news, as the game still suffers from performance issues after previous updates helped, but didn’t quite fix, framerate drops and in-game stuttering.

    A surprise, to be sure...

    For many, the news that EA is bringing Jedi: Survivor to PS4 and Xbox One will be surprising. While it makes sense from a financial standpoint—those older machines still have millions of dedicated players in 2023—it seems at odds with what Respawn said before the game’s launch.

    Specifically, the game’s director Stig Asmussen explained the reason for skipping PS4 and Xbox One was so the team could deliver a “true new-gen experience in the Star Wars universe.” It seems Respawn is also willing to lower the resolution and framerate limits to accommodate the older hardware.

    It’s also interesting that the game is coming to older, less powerful machines since Jedi: Survivor seemed to push the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S harder than most games. I’m curious how well the game will run on much older hardware, in particular the base Xbox One, which is rather long in the tooth. These consoles are almost a decade old, now.

      .

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • The Story Behind Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Infamous Fan-Favorite Boss

    The Story Behind Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Infamous Fan-Favorite Boss

    Rick the Door Technician might not be the most powerful or dangerous enemy in Respawn’s fantastic sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. But he is a fan favorite who, in a game filled with great boss fights, provided one of the game’s most memorable and shortest.

    10 Creatures We Wanna Ride In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

    Fairly late into Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s main campaign, while exploring a large Imperial base, your protagonist, Jedi warrior Cal Kestis, runs into a single stormtrooper. Right before this, Kestis had to fight off a large garrison of Imperial baddies in one of the game’s biggest, toughest fights. After surviving all that, and likely injured with no checkpoint, you encounter a new boss: Rick the Door Technician. While another boss encounter seems like an unfair challenge after such a big fight, this lone trooper is really just a joke character who Kestis can defeat with one hit. So why is he here? Well, according to Respawn, he was created to make you laugh and feel better after a tough fight. Isn’t that nice of Rick?

    In an interview with IGN, Jonathan Wright, the lead encounter designer at Respawn, explained the origin behind this odd “boss fight.” After that very large fight, players were stressed out, as Respawn purposely designed that section to be even tenser by not including a checkpoint. This makes players nervous about what’s coming next, as they desperately search for a checkpoint. While this all worked to create a tense moment, Repsawn wanted to eventually provide something that would “be a release of all that built-up tension.” Its solution: making players laugh.

    Fuzzy Bearbarian / Respawn

    “Players have just come from an extremely hard fight. Players are more than likely very low on health at this point, and are probably very stressed with finding the next meditation point so they can rest,” said Wright. “The moment with Rick allowed us to build up another moment of tension as players think they are in for another hard fight, but then release all that built-up stress when they fully realize the moment with Rick. It’s a good emotional reset to prepare players for what is to come.”

    This is all part of Respawn’s effort to balance the mostly serious narrative and events in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor with moments of humor. According to Wright, this balance is what makes the jokes “land.”

    “The seriousness of the rest of the game is what makes the more humorous moments land,” said Wright. “The contrast between funny and serious elevates both kinds of moments. We knew that the moment with Rick was important because of this.”

    Respawn didn’t expect people to fall in love with Rick

    However, nobody at Respawn could have predicted how fans would react to Rick, quickly embracing the character and creating fan art, mods, and other content based on the lonely stormtrooper who tried to stop Cal Kestis. The character has become one of the most talked about moments in the game, and has players asking for more of Rick the Door Technician. (It would probably have to be in a prequel, considering what happens to him…)

    Wright told IGN that seeing all the fan love and community support for Rick has been “indescribable” and that he “never imagined [Rick] would explode in popularity to this extent.”

    “To me, there is no greater achievement than something you had a hand in creating [then inspiring] other people to be creative,” said Wright. “All the comments on videos from people describing their experience with Rick’s heroic last stand, all the jokes and the memes, the videos and stories, it’s all a spark of creativity that started with Rick and I think that is amazing.”

    As for if Rick will return, as so many Star Wars Jedi: Survivor fans have asked about, Wright told IGN that it isn’t his call, but he added that he doesn’t think more Rick content is “needed.”

    “Rick’s story already has a valiant ending,” said Wright. “The explosion in popularity and fan creativity shows that we already did a good enough job with Rick. Let players have fun with it and let people be creative with Rick’s backstory in their own minds.”

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Is Really That Good, Seriously

    Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Is Really That Good, Seriously

    Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is really, really good. You’ve probably heard this already. Our own review and other reviews of the game have praised it quite a bit. But this isn’t a review. Instead, this is just us reaffirming that, yeah, it really is as good as so many other people have claimed. In fact, some of us at Kotaku are already penciling it in for our Game of the Year list.

    The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule

    The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule

    And don’t worry, no spoilers below.

    For those just tuning in, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. And just like before, in this latest adventure from Respawn and EA, players take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire. Oh and also try not to get caught by all the people hunting them down. (And there are a lot of people after them.) To bring down the Empire, outrun their enemies, and save the day, Cal has to do a lot of jumping, sliding, climbing, fighting, and exploring. And in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor all of this—every jump, lightsaber swing, wall climb, and more—feels great.

    Jedi Survivor is one of those games that just feels fantastic to play. Controlling Cal quickly becomes effortless while either platforming or fighting. You stop thinking about pressing buttons or whatever and instead Cal feels like a natural extension of your own body. And to be clear: The first game played really well. But Survivor just feels more honed in, with every part of the game seemingly built to be fun and satisfying to play.

    EA / Lucasfilm

    Whenever folks playing the game at Kotaku talk about Jedi: Survivor, it usually evolves into people just gushing about the latest sequence they experienced or just trying to describe how awesome combat or platforming felt during their last play session. A lot of the time people don’t even say full sentences, instead going “Ahhh, man… so good” or “Uhhh it’s sooo great” or making other noises that aren’t words but convey how much they are enjoying it.

    I’ve heard some complaints about how animations look in the game, and I get that sometimes they might look janky, but this is just because Respawn has clearly prioritized input and feel over how it looks. So yes, watching someone play as Cal as he jumps around platforms might look odd, but playing it feels heavenly. I’m not sure about others, but I rarely fast-travel in this game because moving around the planets you visit is such a blast that fast traveling often feels like I’m missing out on one of the best parts of Jedi: Survivor. When simply moving and jumping in a game feels this good, you know you got something special.

    Jedi: Survivor Is Way Better Than Just A Star Wars Game

    It can be easy to assume that all the hype around this game is just because it’s Star Wars, but even some non-Star Wars fans around these parts are having a blast with the game. Again, when you start to drill down into why, it ends up coming back to how mechanically satisfying and fun Jedi: Survivor is to play. You don’t need to know or care about the Clone Wars or Jedi or the Force to enjoy Cal sliding down a cliff, leaping into the air, force-dashing further, and then grabbing onto a distant rope to swing over a group of enemies that you eviscerate in seconds with your laser sword. That’s just universally cool stuff.

    And while I just said it’s great not just because it’s a Star Wars game, it’s still an awesome Star Wars game. I’ll have more to say about this in the near future, but something I appreciate about Survivor is just how Star Wars-y this game truly is. Crusty alien cantinas, weird but loveable characters, dangerous bounty hunters, cute droids, excellent music, genuinely charming friends, cool ships, and all the perfect sound effects.

    EA / Lucasfilm

    This is Star Wars at its finest (and weirdest), and an example of how AAA games can be big and yet still feel like each aspect was designed with care. In other words, they can still be incredible if done right. Other devs, take note of sequences like everything leading up to and directly following the moment you get the crossguard stance, or the amazing escape sequence on Jedha. More of this, please!

    Sure, the game has some performance issues, but even those can’t stop us (and the rest of the internet) from playing and enjoying this latest and possibly greatest Star Wars video game. Good luck to everything else coming out in 2023!

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Star Wars’ Mantis Is Such A Good Ship

    Star Wars’ Mantis Is Such A Good Ship

    In Respawn’s Jedi series, one of the constants across both games is the Mantis, a starship that’s kinda yours, but also not yours, but you use it enough that it may as well be. And I think, more than the combat or the jumping or the surprisingly Star Warsy tone of the games, it’s my favourite thing about them. At least in terms of what it brings to the table.

    The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule

    The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule

    Partly because it’s such a cool ship! Just look at it. It’s got a kind of “weird design presented in a surprisingly functional way” thing that Star Wars does so well, like a B-Wing but bigger, only it’s a “wing” that’s also kinda like a keel or a sail that pivots “upright” while in flight (there’s no upright in space, I know, but it’s upright relative to the rest of the ship) and then rotates flat when landing. A little excessive, I know, but it used to be a luxury yacht, so it’s allowed a big flourish or two.

    STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order Stinger Mantis Interior

    That “surprisingly functional” thing continues through to the details and interior of the ship. Despite its premium heritage it’s a heavy and dense vehicle, with cables and pipes and vents everywhere, and landing gear that would look more at home on a bulk freighter than an Old Republic Roadster. The inside, meanwhile, is as far from luxury yacht as you can get; it was designed with the series’ rugged adventures in mind, with a team of Respawn and Lucasfilm artists looking to old submarines and the Millennium Falcon for that mix of adventure and cramped practicality.

    I mostly love the Mantis, though, because of the way it ties the games together. The Jedi games are based across distinct levels, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply shuffle the player from planet to planet with nothing but a loading screen in between.

    Instead, moving between levels in the Jedi games is a whole process. You end up at your ship at the conclusion of a stage, from where you can walk onboard, do some stuff, check out some relics and chat to your friends. Then you walk up to the ship’s map, select where you want to go (you don’t really have a choice, but the illusion helps here) and you’re away. The ship will take off—in real-time, leaving the completed world behind, which always looks cool—and then zoom into hyperspace. Only when the player sits down in their co-pilot’s chair will the ship exit lightspeed, the new planet will fill the windows and you’re ready for your next adventure.

    Stars Wars: Jedi Fallen Order Traveling To All Planets On The Stinger Mantis Ship 4K UHD

    It sounds so pedestrian, but I am 1.5 games into this series and it has been an absolute delight every time it happens, no matter how repetitive it threatens to become. The simple act of turning the end/beginning of a level into a whole thing, rather than just a cutscene, transforms the game. I don’t feel like I’m moving from one set of video game challenges to the next; I feel like I’m on an adventure, one that’s truly galactic in scale.

    I sometimes, in the dead of night, wonder why I like the Jedi games as much as I do. When I break them down into individual components I’m not really a huge fan of almost anything that goes into them. I hate Souls games, the Tomb Raider/Uncharted stuff is fine but again, far from my favourite video gaming space, and I’m nowhere near as into Star Wars as I used to be.

    But then I think about this ship, and the way it speaks to stuff I am very into, like Elite and Mass Effect and Privateer and Wind Waker (and even Assassin’s Creed’s ships and trains), games that have a central focal point for your journeys that serves as everything from a transport to a conversational hub. There are no Jedi games without Mantis, because so much of the game’s story, character and action revolves around it. Kinda like that whole ship revolves around that one, weird wing…

    Luke Plunkett

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  • Fans Are Embracing Cal’s Mullet In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

    Fans Are Embracing Cal’s Mullet In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

    Image: EA / Kotaku

    I still haven’t gotten around to playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order or its new (apparently fraught) sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, but the more I see of the game’s extensive fashion and customization options for protagonist Cal Kestis, the more tempted I feel. However, one Jedi rebel hairstyle is getting a lot of attention online, and that’s the mullet. It turns Cal from a spacefaring twink into a good, ol’ fashioned (still spacefaring) lover of beer, blasters, and the Second Amendment.

    Let’s Talk About Gotham Knights’ Predictable Ending

    Though I’ve seen all the movies and played several games, I’m not a Star Wars fan. But I am a fan of Shameless actor Cameron Monaghan, who both voices and performs the Jedi and provides Cal’s face. As a gay man who lived in the rural south most of his life, I find his Shameless character Ian Gallagher incredibly relatable as he sorts through his identity, the conservative expectations of Middle America, and how he deals with patriotism in a country that does not care about people like him. Because I latched on so heavily to his character during my ongoing marathon of the show on Netflix, I’m drawn to Jedi: Survivor for the actor at its center more than any of the other good things the game has to offer. But looking at Monaghan with a mullet and mutton chops feels like looking into an alternate universe in which Ian never overcame the expectations enough to become his own person, and fell hard into some right-wing, gun-nut mentality. It’s unsettling, but I can’t look away, especially as jokes about the mullet are spreading online.

    Cal looks extremely silly with the mullet in context, but that hasn’t stopped fans from latching onto the lewk and making jokes about the intersection of Star Wars lore and conservative, good ol’ boy politics.

    The quote retweets on this tweet showing Cal in his full space redneck persona are full of zingers.

    Ultimately, as much psychic damage as it does to me to see Ian Gallagher with a mullet, the jokes have been very good, and it does speak to how much customization Jedi: Survivor allows. Between this and the game’s scene-stealing alien, Turgle, I keep finding new reasons to maybe jump into Respawn’s take on a galaxy far, far away. Maybe after I finish Shameless and the rest of the Summer Games Hell is over.

    Kenneth Shepard

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  • VR Star Wars Game Looks Absolutely Incredible

    VR Star Wars Game Looks Absolutely Incredible

    Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was first released in 2002. It was, and remains to this day, one of the best Star Wars games ever made, a near-perfect blend of the original Dark Forces’ FPS combat with third-person lightsaber combat that even modern games could take notes from.

    Suddenly, Everyone Wants To Remake Dead Space

    If you went and played the game as nature intended in 2023, it would be great! But this standalone port/version, provided you’ve got the hardware, looks like a huge—and decidedly more modern—improvement. It takes the original Jedi Outcast and gives the player full VR support, along with the ability to wield your lightsaber via motion controls and use force powers via hand gestures.

    I need to be clear when saying the original was a very good video game in every respect. But people’s lingering memories of it, especially in the wake of Fallen Order’s all-ages combat, was the way you could absolutely go to town on Stormtroopers with your lightsaber, something this trailer is very aware of:

    JK-XR: Outcast – Jedi Knight II VR – Release Trailer

    It’s called JK-XR, and was created by fans as a “standalone VR port” of the original, which means this is a complete reworking of Jedi Outcast’s engine with an all-new download (though you’ll still need a copy of the original for everything else). That explains why the team have been able to cater this so specifically to VR, down to the new weapon and force power menus.

    You can download it here if you’ve got the hardware (Pico 4 and Quest 2/Pro) on PC and want to try it out. The available demo can be played on its own, no extra download required, but like I just said if you want to play the full game you’ll need a legal copy of the original, which is still available on all major PC digital shopfronts.

    Luke Plunkett

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  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Already Has Better Lightsabers Than Fallen Order

    Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Already Has Better Lightsabers Than Fallen Order

    Screenshot: Lucasfilm / EA

    New gameplay from the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Survivor seems to reveal that, unlike in the first game, the sequel will finally let Jedi Cal Kestis slice up stormtroopers and other human enemies. And that’s a good thing, as this much-wanted change makes lightsabers feel powerful and deadly again.

    The lightsaber is one of the coolest pieces of Star Wars tech and genuinely one of the best fictional weapons ever created. Instantly iconic, the weapon and its sounds are so ingrained in our minds that when grown adult actors in Star Wars movies or shows are handed a prop lightsaber they make all the hums and whoosh noises like they were eight years old again. And I don’t blame anyone for loving the lightsaber. It’s a powerful laser sword that can cut off limbs, slice through metal doors, and it comes in rad colors. What more could you want? But for a long time, most Star Wars games—including 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order—haven’t let you really slice and dice with these iconic laser blades, treating them more like glowing bats.

    Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Combat Stances Explained

    However, in new gameplay released by IGN yesterday, we see that this doesn’t appear to be the case in Survivor. In a neat video going over how the game’s combat stances work, the devs showcase Cal fighting different enemies while explaining how his various moves will work and how stances factor into combat.

    That’s all fine and dandy. But more interesting to me is what happens during the fight against some Imperial scout troopers at around 4:14:

    Gif: IGN / EA / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

    Look at that! Cal just cut a dude’s leg off. And if you look around the floor at that point in the video you can see at least two more cut-off limbs, likely from earlier in the fight. This is exciting!

    Kotaku reached out to EA and Respawn about this dismemberment and was told “The footage is what it is” and that the publisher wouldn’t provide any additional comment.

    For many years now, Star Wars games have made lightsabers feel pretty weak as it can often take dozens of hits to kill a random enemy and you never get to cut off limbs or do real damage to your target unless they are a droid or random animal. In an interview in 2019, Respawn senior designer Justin Perez seemed to imply Lucasfilm and Disney weren’t okay with lightsabers cutting off arms or legs. This was further backed up by people who worked on season 7 of The Clone Wars, which is also mentioned in that IGN interview from 2019.

    So, I had assumed that was just how things would work. Cal could kill all the innocent animals and aliens he wanted, but he couldn’t chop any limbs off of stormtroopers. But it appears that Disney and Lucasfilm have either relaxed this rule or given Respawn a pass.

    Either way, I’m excited to play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and cut off some legs when it launches on April 28, 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight Levels Remade In Unreal, Actually Playable

    Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight Levels Remade In Unreal, Actually Playable

    Screenshot: YouTube

    This is now, by my count, the fourth time we’ve posted about a Dark Forces x Unreal Engine remake. It is, however, the first time I’ve been able to post about one that is downloadable and properly playable by you, today, right now.

    Previous attempts have either been graphical showcases or tech demos, but this latest effort—by Ruppertle—is fully interactive, containing not just two storyline missions from Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, but some sandbox and endless modes to enjoy as well.

    “The goal was to recreate one of my favorite games back from my childhood while keeping the base look, feeling and gameplay”, Ruppertle says. “After nearly 3 years of development the project is finally at a point where I feel ready to share it with you.”

    You can find download links to the project in the description of this YouTube video, with the files containing “2 official levels from the original game, 4 survival levels, sandbox mode, 3D model viewer, bonus level for testing and some secrets…”

    Here’s a trailer showing not just the graphical changes but some gameplay as well:

    Jedi Knight – Dark Forces 2 – Unreal Engine – Release 1.0 – Free Download

    I’m not 100% sold on some of the visual changes here; some of the environments look a little too busy now, where their previous sparseness had a certain Star Warsy charm to them. The characters and weapons look great, though, even in third-person.

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    If you want to take a look at some of the other Dark Forces/Jedi Knight projects I was talking about, they’re all worth a look because they’re all trying something different. This one, for example, imagined the original game with a modern interface, while this one went to town rebuilding the first level of the original Dark Forces with some very fancy visuals.

    Luke Plunkett

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  • You Probably Aren’t Catching Andor’s Awesome Nods To Deep Star Wars Lore (And That’s A Good Thing)

    You Probably Aren’t Catching Andor’s Awesome Nods To Deep Star Wars Lore (And That’s A Good Thing)

    A poster shows Andor's characters, including Mon Mothma, Luthen and Andor himself.

    Image: Lucasfilm / Disney

    As you may know, I’m a big ol’ Star Wars nerd. And one of my favorite things in Star Wars media is all the tiny references and Easter eggs embedded everywhere. But sometimes this fan service goes overboard and derails a story in a way that alienates or bores non-fans. Andor, the newest TV show set in the Star Wars universe, not only avoids this problem, but also finds perfect ways to utilize nerdy Star Wars lore without making it tedious or annoying for folks just wanting to watch a good show.

    Andor, which premiered in late September on Disney+, is the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise and is set before the events of the original Star Wars film and the movie Rogue One. It follows the life of Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, as he navigates a galaxy controlled by the evil Empire. He’s not yet the rebel we know from Rogue One, but over the course of this season and presumably the next season, he will evolve into the man we met in that popular spin-off.

    Disney / Lucasfilm

    People across my timeline have been loving Andor. Even people who’d previously sworn off Star Wars entirely are back and enjoying every minute of the series. Many of them happily point out how the show isn’t a giant excuse to do fan service every week. But funnily enough, Andor has some of the coolest and most interesting bits of deep-cut Star Wars lore out of anything Star Wars-related in years; it’s just handled so well that most folks miss it all.

    A great example comes in how the show handles Cassian’s home planet. In the first episode of the show, we learn that Cassian was born and raised on the planet Kenari. It’s newly created for Andor, which allowed showrunner Tony Gilroy more freedom to do whatever he needed with it and its people. But, technically, we already knew of Cassian’s home planet, and it wasn’t Kenari. Back when Rogue One came out, Lucasfilm released various book tie-ins. One reference tome listed Andor’s home world as Fest, an old Star Wars planet that first appeared in the game Dark Forces. So, at first, I thought the show had simply retconned that origin away. I wasn’t too annoyed by this, as I always prefer when Star Wars media focus on story over lore.

    But then, in Andor episode two, we learn that Fest was a lie that Cassian and his adoptive mother told everyone to hide the truth of where he was really from, Kenari. For most viewers, that scene wasn’t that big of a deal: Cassian lied because he was trying to hide where he came from, got it. But for Star Wars nerds like me, it was a fantastic way to retcon something using Star Wars lore while still honoring a reference book from years ago. And it didn’t interfere with the show at all, allowing normal, non-Star Wars sickos to enjoy the show without rolling their eyes at some forced bit of fan service.

    Lucasfilm / Star Wars Explained

    Andor is filled with Star Wars lore and connections like this that it sneakily deploys in ways that make sense for general audiences, but which have deeper, interesting connections to the franchise’s decades of prior material. And unlike the last Star Wars show, the fun (but not nearly as good) Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor doesn’t get tangled up in fan service that distracts from the actual story and characters. The refs are there to find in Andor, if you care, but it’s totally fine if you just want to enjoy the thrilling ride instead.

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    For example, Mon Mothma’s daughter, Lieda, isn’t a brand-new character, but instead a very deep-cut one who barely existed in the old Star Wars Extended Universe. So her popping up in the show not only brought her into canon, but was a very fun bit of fan service that didn’t stick out to most viewers.

    Similarly, the kyber crystal Luthen Rael gives Cassian as payment for helping with a heist has its own subtle connection to old Star Wars lore. Sure, many viewers probably know vaguely that a kyber crystal powers lightsabers. And many also probably recalled that we previously saw Rogue One heroine Jyn Erso wearing a similar necklace. But while folks were looking at the crystal and going, “Oh that’s a thing I kind of know about…” Luthen drops one of the coolest bits of lore in the show, explaining that the crystal “celebrates the uprising against the Rakatan invaders.” That might have set off alarm bells in the heads of any fans who played Knights of the Old Republic.

    A screenshot of a comic book showing a Rakatan alien warrior screaming in space.

    That’s because the Rakatans were created for that game. They were an ancient race of super-powerful aliens who possibly invented hyperdrive and at one point controlled the galaxy as part of their Infinite Empire. Technically, they’ve been mentioned in canon before, but this is really the first big re-introduction of the species. Pondering how they could work into future Star Wars stories set far in the past has me very excited.

    Speaking of video game references, in Luthen’s shop—which is chockablock with fun Easter eggs that could fill a whole separate blog—we see what appears to be a suit of Sith Stalker armor as first seen in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That game and its main character, Starkiller, are no longer canon, and this armor popping up in Andor doesn’t change that. But it could hint that perhaps one day parts of Force Unleashed will be reintroduced into the modern Star Wars universe. I mean, if Jaxxon is canon these days, anything can happen.

    Read More: Lego Star Wars Is The Antidote To Years of Toxic Fan Culture

    But all of these deep-cut references and bits of fan service were likely never spotted by 90% of people watching Andor, even though some of them directly connect to the plot or the show’s characters. That’s an impressive feat to pull off, and based on interviews with the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, a lot of this was included by Lucasfilm nerds and not himself. He recently told Variety that he works closely with lore experts like Pablo Hidalgo to make sure he’s not doing anything that breaks the Star Wars universe. But for him, his real focus is on Andor’s story and its characters, not references to manuals or old video games.

    “The art department will sneak in all that crap into Luthen’s gallery,” Gilroy told Variety. “I had no idea. Like, ‘Oh my God, the thing in the background!’ and people are blowing it up. That’s the art department. So many cool people work on the show. There’s a deep geekdom in Pinewood, believe me.”

    That’s how it should be. If Disney wants to continue to create amazing Star Wars productions like Andor, it should bring in more creators and directors like Gilroy. People who, sure, might not be the biggest Star Wars fans in the world, but who have interesting stories to tell. Let those people create cool stuff while the nerds at Lucasfilm fill in the gaps with fan service that weirdos like me can get excited about, while never ruining the show for everyone else.

    I admit, this is a hard balance to strike, and I don’t expect all future Star Wars projects to be like Andor. In fact, I would prefer a world where we get both shows like Andor, which are for everyone, and shows like Tales of the Jedi, which are good but clearly target Star Wars nerds like me. Star Wars can’t grow if it only focuses on its big fans, and Andor shows that when you expand the franchise and do something different, you not only end up pleasing longtime Star Wars nerds like me, but also reach a whole new audience that might never have cared about Star Wars in the first place. Plus, Andor is just really entertaining, so more shows like this sounds like a good thing to me.

    Zack Zwiezen

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