2:00 I wonder if they realize that this whale thing basically defines hyperspace for Star Wars. Either we have to believe that these very terrestrial-looking life forms are capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, or this means that hyperspace is something else, like another dimension or whatever. Because that seems to contradict Han Solo’s assertion of why flying through hyperspace is dangerous, and also that light speed kamikaze nonsense from “The Last Jedi.” Unless these hyperspace lanes also somehow touch on the physical universe as well. That might actually explain why they seldom use the suicide crash – that the conditions are rarely right to collide with another ship.

3:31 I’m sorry, Sabine is a grown ass woman. There is no responsibility or fault on Ahsoka for Sabine’s choices. This was not something she needed preparation for. It’s something any rational adult should understand. What’s disturbing is the other ways she is looking at this, as if there is an absolute right answer. Who the heck is Thrawn that letting him return to the Far Far Away Galaxy is inherently evil? He’s not even a force for evil, the way Palpatine is. He has no power other than being clever. The sort of person who has to break moral rules because they are terrified on facing someone solely on the basis of their cleverness is basically Tywin Lannister with the Red Wedding. And the moral rule here is that there is another person at risk, Ezra, who is also trapped. As both a friend of all the significant characters in this story, and an officer in the Republic military, they owe it to him to do all they can to bring him back. At most, the issue of what Sabine should have done is debatable.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that this was a right-or-wrong type situation, and Sabine did wrong. The question is NOT about training or preparation, it’s more an issue of what the heck did you expect, Ahsoka? Setting aside what I remember from the cartoon, which was that she was kind of indifferent to boundaries or rules not her own, what we see in this show is that she doesn’t listen to anyone and has a high opinion of herself, as well as being strongly affected, and not in a healthy way, by Ezra’s loss. She stole the map ball to study it under her own conditions, in spite of being refused permission to do so, regardless of how dangerous the circumstances, and lost the map as a direct result, in a completely foreseeable outcome. Despite “asking” to resume her studies under Ahsoka, she mostly complained about her teachings. Sabine was a walking red flag. If going along with Baylen and endangering the very existence of the Republic and freedom of the galaxy by allowing Thrawn’s return was intrinsically intertwined with the possibility of Ezra’s rescue, Ahsoka should not have let Sabine be involved in this at all. There is also the very strong possibility that Sabine only signed up in order to be involved and have a chance to weigh in on the issue if there was a chance to bring back Ezra, regardless of the stakes.

3:56 See, 10-NT has the stakes right. The only thing to really worry about here is if Sabine did what she did for selfish reasons, such as her attachment to Ezra (ie Anakin’s efforts to save Padme) or selfless, for the sake of Ezra himself.

And when 10-NT brings up something that is troubling to Ahsoka, namely the fear, related to her coma vision in the prior episode, that her pupil might turn to the Dark Side as her master did, she asks him to tell a story, instead of confronting and grappling with that possibility.

4:11 Why would he be telling stories of another galaxy? I thought his stories were all archived from the early days of the Jedi.

5:04 Remember all those shots of Leia, Han and Chewie being bored in their cells in their various periods of imprisonment in the original trilogy? Me either. But we needed like half a minute of Sabine doing it. This show has so much dead time, or shooting things we don’t need to see.

5:18 Did Baylen actually deliver a sick burn? Is the show really aware that Sabine is some obnoxious punk, and not the coolest badass at Jedi High School?

5:32 Sabine, were you really counting entirely on the word of an Imperial operative? Shouting “we had a deal” and banging on your cell makes you look like an idiot child. At best, your going with them should have been seen as a gamble with a long shot chance that they would follow through, and more of a chance to be present to seize on any opportunities. More pragmatically, why would they have you locked up just for lolz? If it was a trick, there’s no reason not to kill you as soon as you were in their power. If they ARE being sincere, where did you expect them to procure Ezra from? How do you even know they’ve arrived? There is nothing yet to indicate that they are NOT following through. And given what happened when Ahsoka left you unsecured on her ship in the first episode, even with the best good faith in the world, putting you in the brig is basic prudence.

Regardless of how little you think your own shit stinks, that brief conversation with Baylen should be an indicator that he does not take you too seriously based on your observed behavior, with his pointed comment about your lack of reflection. All pounding impotently on your cell door is going to do is confirm the worst.

5:38 In the back of my mind, I was entertaining that Sabine was playing into Baylen’s perception of her, but that headshake suggests that, no, we were just getting unfiltered Sabine Wren.

6:09 Baylen’s dialogue in this episode so far SHOULD be setting up an arc for Sabine to grow. Right now, she is an immature person, who proudly rejects the notion of self-reflection and here we see that it makes her vulnerable to exploitation by a wiser adversary. But this is episode six of eight, which is really late for an arc (especially considering Sabine was a major character in several seasons of another show which this one takes seriously, for something so fundamental as “think about what you are doing and why” ), and everything about this show to this point, as well as other shows in which the boss has been involved, suggests that no, at most she is going to learn the lesson in an instant, and only in the most superficial way, and much more likely, she will simply receive affirmation that she is awesome and her impulsive recklessness is actually an asset that makes her unpredictable, especially to white men with gray hair.

6:34 Now a galaxy is a really big place. But this is Disney Star Wars, which seems to conflate the scale of whole planets with that of small towns or islands. Did this intergalactic flight bring them to the exact quadrant, sector, system or even planet, where Thrawn and/or Ezra may be?

7:19 I was about to make a comment about convergent evolution, and the Dathomiri being from an entirely different galaxy but still being humans, but, after all, the absolute first premise about Star Wars is that it takes place in a galaxy far far away. If there can be humans in both the Milky Way, and the Far Far Away, why not a third.

For the record, in the books, Han & Leia’s grandchild was one quarter Dathomiri. So definitely human. OTOH, Twileks and humans just might be capable of interbreeding, so IDK.

7:28 Okay, fine. It makes sense that Thrawn, having come by space whale, would be right at the end of the space whale route, and also that he would not leave the vicinity if he did not have to, knowing that if allies were ever to come for him that would be the place to find him, and if an opportunity came to ride a whale home, it would probably be from here, since this is the one place he knows they come.

One thing that makes less sense, is that these three Imperial Force users are looking for Thrawn, and the vibe I get is of disciples searching for a master or at least soldiers for a general. Why would Force users be all about a military talent? Why do they so eagerly want to serve him? In the actual books where Thrawn first appeared, the Force user he allied with saw himself as the supreme partner in their relationship and Thrawn had to play along, despite having a counter to his powers. On other shows, Moff Gideon and the Hux family are all about adding Force access to their military assets, not the other way around.

The power dynamic of this alliance feels off, is what I am saying.

9:13 Legitimate question: what makes Morgan think Thrawn is here? A planet is an awfully big place to narrow a search down to. Just ask Carmen Sandiego. Every single real life fugitive who successfully evade detection or capture, every single person who got lost and could not be found in history, was limited in their area of movement to a single planet. All they know about Thrawn’s location is based on an assumption that he would not stray far from the end-point of his trans-galactic jump, and beyond that, nothing more than the same fundamental and useless parameter shared by every actual person who was never found in real life.

9:33 Why does Sabine get to come out, at least before they have any clue what they are about to encounter?

10:26 Even Sabine thinks Darth Bangs’ comment was dumb. What did she expect from everything Morgan has said so far?
I will say I took her assertion that Thrawn calls to her in her dreams to be more figurative, than an indication that she literally received communication from the witches back home.

11:22 Literally everyone is better at dealing with Sabine than her friends. Baylen & company keep her manacled in a cell, and now the extragalactic witches put her in laser ropes.

12:33 Anyone notice that no Jedi or Sith wore such visible armor in the actual movies, and their lightsabers could actually kill you? Everyone in the shows recovers from a thrust through the torso, and it takes Obi-Wan three or more blows to kill a stormtrooper, fewer than it takes a slender 5’7” woman in her late 40s to take down two of them barehanded.

14:44 This sounds like the kind of thing that Baylen should have said in his second episode on screen, to set up his arc for the season, instead of episode 6 of 8. We should fully understand the stakes here, and what everyone is after, if not quite every detail of how they hope to get it.

16:17 I guess the whale brought his whole Star Destroyer. Makes sense now that they would have come in a thing that could transport the ship home. I wonder if it is the Chimera? Except that was Pellaeon’s ship in the books, and he was seen back home in the Far Far Away Galaxy in Mando season 3.

17:19 The exterior of the Star Destroyer really looks messed up and on first glance, these Stormtroopers really look like they’ve been through the wringer way out here, cut off from reinforcements or resupply. But they can’t clean the armor?

17:51 Well, the face and voice are a bit underwhelming. It looks a little like Robert Patrick.

17:59 But he’s doing a Brit voice. Remember who the scariest operative of the Empire was in the OT? Darth Vader? Voiced by an American in all seven movies…

18:58 We have a name for Darth Bangs. Shinati. We’ll see how it fits going forward.

19:56 I would think that “after so long” Thrawn would have been thoroughly familiar with the faces of all the Imperial personnel who came with him. Maybe “a face from before” would be a better word choice?

20:42 Sabine should not be questioning that they are going to let her walk out of there – the obvious ploy here is that they are using her to track down Ezra. From what I understand of how Thrawn came to be here, Ezra was responsible somehow. Revenge would be an obvious motivating factor.

21:30 Thrawn believes that he represents the doom of the Far Far Away Galaxy. Given his high opinion of himself, he actually has a very firm basis for understanding Sabine.

23:13 I’d be kind of suspicious about being given a biological mount, instead of a speeder bike or something, especially given the relatively narrow window to get back and catch a ride home, but it could just be Star Wars being derp. In the actual movies, they ride animals for particular situations, like being in a desert, on an out of the way planet, with limited resources, or Utapau, where climbing could be important and some sort of environmental condition that makes living on top of the cliffs prohibitive also makes vehicles impractical as it did initially on Hoth, but the climax of the finale of Book of Boba Fett was all about him riding a rancor, so IDK.

23:45 Yeah, Darth Bangs is definitely a little slow on the uptake. Thrawn’s voice sounds really familiar.

25:54 Wow, Sabine sucks. The only reason she survived that fight is that she had indestructible armor and the other guys both eschewed headshots and eventually engaged her at lightsaber range

26:21 And the answer to the mount question is derp. Despite all the TIE fighters visible in the Star Destroyer, they’re sending Baylen & Bangs out on wolf-horses too.

26:53 The diminishment of one’s own resources has no effect on the number of troops required to achieve an objective. Thrawn is not impressing in his first display of tactical acumen. The best takeaway we can get from this line is that he really doesn’t consider killing Sabine and Ezra all that important (but is still wasting arguably their two best human assets on the chase) and can’t spare a larger number of troops for something so trivial.

27:04 Okay, see, like that. But then why send any at all?

27:32 WTF, Sabine? Your wolf-horse doesn’t have beskar armor! Why should it stick around in a fire fight?

27:53 How much time are we going waste on the interplay of Sabine and the “cowardly” wolf-horse?

30:28 How does Sabine know that it’s a rock and not a space armadillo or something?

32:10 Has Sabine forgotten that she has come looking for a comrade in arms, who might very well have had that same symbol of their faction on his person and this snail man has seen it?

32:23 Finally. I miss when Star Wars lead characters were intelligent. And men.

37:42 Did the Ewok village or Otoh Gunga get such loving attention from the camera in the movies?

40:13 No! She came here on an Imperial intergalactic super-ring-ship, that was built to retrieve Thrawn, whom Ezra was willing to risk sacrificing his life to stop. The ringleader of the operation was a Dathomir Nightsister, who has made friendly contact with her kindred here on Whale Florida, and they are loading a cargo of some importance to take home. Furthermore, these people employ a couple of Force users who were formidable enough to defeat Ahsoka in battle. These are all things Ezra needs to know right away! These are things she SHOULD talk about, and yes, right now! She does not get to just be happy that she found Ezra at the expense of everything else. Even if they decide they can live with being a party to all this stuff for now, there is still the fact that they have a hard window for their departure and ability to return to Far Far Away and they have to make a decision about going with Thrawn and company or not.

Sabine is just the worst.

40:44 So what’s the deal with Ezra and the snail people? Do they rely on him for protection from the bandits? Sabine called them his own band of rebels. Are they engaged in an insurgency against the Great Mothers and/or Thrawn? Are they going to be in trouble if Ezra goes home?

And she does not say anything, although this shot would just that our makeup-addicted wooden-faced heroine is feeling awkward about the issue of going home.

She’s acting like someone who has read the script and knows that no matter how things shake out with the Imperials, Ahsoka is coming in a space whale, so they’ll be fine.

Well, I have some small hope for Thrawn going forward. But that’s about it.

Apparently Thrawn is played by Lars Mikkelsen, brother of Mads, and the guy who played Stregoboar in The Witcher. According IMDB, Wes Chatham is being wasted in the suit of Enoch, Thrawn’s chief henchman, and the three boss Nightsisters’ names are Aktropaw, Klothow and Lakesis.

I am speechless. That's far more lazy than clever.