With special guest Timothy Zahn!

Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric and I'm here with my co-host Torvald. Howdy. Today we are going to be talking about the Zoniverse. The Zoniverse. The Timothy Zoniverse. The expanded universe. Well, mainly his first trilogy. He wrote a lot more than that, so we're not going to touch very much on his other books. Dude, I'm wearing my Ponda Baba shirt. Dude. I don't like you. Oh, I don't like you either. I know, I need a matching Dr. Avazin shirt. I have a death sentence in, what was it, like 13 systems or something? I don't remember how many sentences. 12 systems. 12 systems. Man, it was the Kessel Run was 13, right? 13 parsecs, yeah. There you go. I feel like in modern Star Wars, for some reason, they call it a death mark. But he definitely called it a death sentence, right? Yes. He called it a death sentence. i have the death sentence on 12 systems yeah he used the term on that's true on those systems

well you know maybe he means like he's speaking like legislatively like bureau in the bureaucracy of things he's like the death sentence has been placed on you know on on the books in those systems i don't know wait speaking of star wars i have a legitimate question for you that's actually been on my mind for some time now who would win in a fight leia organa or mon mothma well yeah i think you mean leia organa solo yeah well that's a question i was gonna ask you later but no um who would win i mean this fight could be happening before she got yeah yeah yeah exactly during like uh empire strikes back time i don't know um but yeah i mean it's uh it's a tough one because like leia you know she's scrappy she killed jabba the hut right like but yeah no one beats mon but she has way more combat experience yeah mon mothma she's she's mon freaking mothma she's like an old lady right no but you've you've seen she does have like her secret lover exactly

Manny Bothans. Manny Bothans. He would come to her aid. Who died to bring her that information. He died. He died for the rebels. He's a hero, man. And she's so choked up about it. You could hear it in her voice. And she announced it. She's like, Manny Bothans died to bring us this. Oh, poor Manny. Poor Manny Bothans. The reason I'm asking you is because you have seen. Andor? You've seen Andor, and she's in Andor. so you know better than me what mon mothma is capable of but mainly i think it's like art critique if i remember correctly from your summary that's what she's capable of she goes to the art dealer who's actually you know an agent for the rebellion um who's like way more radical than mothma which i was annoyed by i just thought i was like why why is it so much about this this other guy like i want this to be the mothma show i mean it's already got andor's name on it for some reason it should be called mothma oh if it was called mothma i would have so watched that i

would oh of course i would watch anything everyone would have oh wait no probably just us well no everyone would have mon mothma she's she's og she's original trilogy everyone knows mon mothma wow yeah and the actor that they got to play her in the prequels and are still using looks just like mon mothma oh man i love that george lucas somehow popularized the cinnamon buns on each side of your head hairstyle like yeah i assume that was just his attempt at making like a futuristic hairstyle right like so there were actual mexican rebels and you can find black and white photos of them that have leia's hairstyle and that's that's the rebel hairstyle that is like the canonical historical rebel there's cool women from mexico you can you can see the in the pictures they're wearing like bandoliers of bullets and they've got like two pistols they look like cowboys but they got the buns on either side of their head that's so cool oh my gosh it's

like i think they fought during the mexican revolution um i don't know much about it but There you go. One point for Leia. She's got the hair. She's a revolutionary. What other hair is she going to have? But today, we're going to be talking about the expanded universe. Well, yeah. Today, we're going to talk about the trilogy that never was. We're going to talk about the Heir to the Empire trilogy. I assume you mean because it shouldn't be termed a trilogy. It's only enough content for one movie. I know. But we'll get to that. But I just want to give a quick introduction because if you've never heard of Heir to the Empire, that is Timothy Zahn's lauded book trilogy that was released not too long after the conclusion of the original trilogy of films. And it's absolutely crazy looking back because the first book, Heir to the Empire, that is the book that started it all. that is the book that is the birth of the expanded universe like that book is so old it's crazy it

came before the sequels of course it came before the tv shows came before the mandalorian the clone wars the droid adventures you know like the droid cartoons it came before the prequels it came before the comics and i'm not talking about the new marvel comics i'm talking about the dark horse comics i'm talking about the ancient stuff where they had like obi-wan they were showing there are some really old comics where they've got like uh essentially prequel stuff before the prequels and they've got obi-wan like young obi-wan going around doing jedi stuff but they didn't know what jedi stuff was yet so he they just like dressed him in luke's jedi outfit which is just like black right yeah so he's like walking around in all black like looking like some kind of jedi superhero bro. It's really good. But yeah, this is before those. This is before those comics. It even came before all of the other books. It came before all the other novels. All we had at this point was

the original trilogy and nothing else. And it is so interesting. And the holiday special. That's true. We did have that. Oh, for better or worse, mostly better. If you ask Akatukchuk, If you ask Chewie's dad, very much for the better. It's so crazy. It's very interesting reading Heir to the Empire and then the two sequels and noticing all the incongruencies that have been introduced or erased or changed by the new canon. And when I say new canon, I mean like the old canon, like the sequels and TV shows. It's really, really fun. Anybody who has not read Heir to the Empire, I highly recommend it. The first book, Heir to the Empire. It has probably the greatest title of anything Star Wars related ever. It's a great title and it's just the perfect title for the sequel. So much that when they just like mention it in the new shows, you're just like, oh. The first book, Heir to the Empire, it's setting the stage for everything.

We've got, you know, Thrawn with his Islamiri meeting Savioth. They set off on their big plan to steal a bunch of ships, restart the war, and begin using Savaioth's hypnosis powers to essentially lead the fleets into battle, while also making use of some ancient technology like cloning and cloaking. It's planting the seeds for the next books to come. In the meantime, we've got Luke getting wrapped up in exploits with the Empire. His X-Wing gets disabled, and then he has to escape. i thought that scene was pretty cool i liked um luke making use of some like crazy maneuver that essentially destroyed his ship but got him one hyperspace jump away i thought that was fun that was cool um all right but then just stranded him all right his ship was destroyed he couldn't do anything one will ever find so he's like i guess i'll just meditate until i die poor luke but no and then uh luke meets up with mara jade who is another force sensitive person who wants

to kill him luckily because of the last command yeah the last command led her to where luke is because she needs to kill him and she's working for talon card the king of the pirates another amazing character and just all kinds of fun exploits i mean in my opinion i this is just me i think that heir to the empire was nothing but fun it was a lot of really fun stuff being set up with fun new characters. And I just loved it. I loved every minute of it. Well, at Comic-Con, I was able to catch up with Timothy Zahn and was able to hear him talk about his, you know, his books and also was able to even ask him a question or two. And so you might be hearing portions of that recording throughout this episode. So we have three theories that we'll be examining today. One that I do want to touch on briefly, which is actually the biggest and most popular theory um but we don't have much to say about it is uh just that the zoniverse or the

original heir to the empire trilogy is being reincorporated into the new canon well it is popular among um among the fans they they like to sort of fans like to theorize that uh the whole heir to the empire is going to be redone well i don't know except with like they try to match it up like ahsoka's going to be luke and uh harrison doula is going to be i don't know leia um i mean i don't know if the whole trilogy will be redone but definitely parts of it and there are rumors that zon himself is even involved uh so we'll talk about that the next theory is that i know in the sequel trilogy so like you know the last jedi force awakens i know why luke was the way that he was oh of course many people have not liked luke's depiction in the sequel trilogy and i know why he seems so different from the luke that we knew in the original trilogy so you can explain why luke went from the ever optimistic farm boy who just wants to protect his friends

and will throw caution to the wind to get out there and help them to the unbelievably cynical hates his friends, wants to be a hermit, never wants to talk to anybody ever again, never even sees his friends ever again, and then dies. And also tries to murder his nephew for no reason. Oh, you know why he made that change. I can explain why he's like that. And it relates to the Heir to the Empire trilogy. Okay. Interesting. This will be fun. Now the last the last theory is something that you introduced me to, Torvald. Which is at Thrawn. This is my favorite theory from the old canon. Well, not canon, sorry. From the old expanded universe, which it revolves around the character of Thrawn. And I got to say, I love Grand Admiral Thrawn. I think he is an amazing character. And I think, and this is major kudos to Timothy Zahn, I think Grand Admiral Thrawn was exactly what Star Wars needed if it was going to continue after the original trilogy.

And I think that essentially not having Thrawn or not having an equivalent of Thrawn was Disney's biggest misstep because it couldn't continue without someone like that. He needed to be menacing. He needed to be powerful. He needed to be essentially a match in every way for the main characters without just being a repeat of the Emperor and Darth Vader. And Thrawn is all of that and more. Thrawn is amazing. He is a fantastic character. And you might say that he's such a fantastic character because he is not necessarily a completely original character. So there's a very old theory, and this is ancient. Ever since fans first started reading Heir to the Empire and the following books, including Grand Admiral Thrawn, some people started to notice that Thrawn shares some very stark similarities with a certain Sherlock Holmes, A certain consulting detective we all know and love. I've heard this theory.

I never really fully bought it until I read Heir to the Empire. And I can say with 100% certainty that Thrawn is Space Sherlock Holmes. He is Space Sherlock Holmes. There is no doubt. And it's not because he's Holmes, but it's because of Pellion. It's because of his right-hand man. Captain Pellion, Thrawn's right-hand man in these books, he is Watson. And I'm going to prove that Thrawn is Sherlock Holmes and Pellian is Watson. Timothy Zahn said that when they came to him to write this Star Wars trilogy, a new Star Wars trilogy, no one thought it would do well. No. And no one even knew that there were still Star Wars fans. They didn't think that they existed. It's so crazy. Like, looking back, the world was a different world back then. It's insane. I know. I guess it's because, like, you know, things came out of theaters once, and then you just didn't see them again, maybe. I guess. I don't know.

He said that they ordered 100,000 copies to be printed, which is not much. That's not enough copies. That's not enough copies. Because they didn't know if there were Star Wars fans. Oh, my goodness. And I do get people saying, I restarted Star Wars, or I brought it back from whatever. The fact of the matter is that, okay, they printed up 70,000 copies of Heir to the Empire hardcover because nobody really knew whether there were Star Wars fans out there yet. Because white fans look exactly like no fans at all. So they wanted 100,000 hardcovers. They got enough bookstore orders in for 70. So the bookstores weren't convinced there were any fans out there either. And those 70,000 were gone in about two weeks, and they were scrambling at Bantam to print out more copies. Yeah, I was going to say, even from a certain point of view, like that new Star Wars anthology garbage book. It's not garbage. It's got some fun, interesting things.

But even that one, I think, sold like a million copies. I mean, come on. What are they doing? Well, I mean, now we know Star Wars just prints money, anything with that on it. But he said he did not restart Star Wars. So rather than restarting, I think of it more as I got to stick the fork in the pie crust and show how much steam there still was underneath. Whoa. Timothy Zahn said he knew from the beginning when they got him to write it that he knew it was going to be a trilogy. And as he was planning it, he thought, OK, I think I can get that long of a story out without it dragging anywhere. Well, I wouldn't. I don't know. i don't know if he was right but he did get that long i think it drags a little here and there so with that theory in mind that thrawn is uh inspired by sherlock holmes that he's sort of somewhat based on sherlock holmes again i i sort of had heard it i didn't buy it because essentially

in my mind i was like people are just misinterpreting not blue well yeah and he doesn't have red eyes come on are these are these people stupid like there's no way dumb morons no but also um i was like people are just thinking oh hyper intelligent character who's very good at deduction that is sherlock holmes and i was like it's not that simple it's you know come on you can have super intelligent characters who are observant who aren't sherlock holmes however there's one thing that does make Thrawn into Sherlock Holmes and that like I said is Pellian his best bestest best buddy Captain Pellian sealed this for me and what's crazy is I had never even heard of Pellian um yeah I've heard of Thrawn for years like for decades since I was a kid I've heard of Thrawn but never Pellian and he is key to this theory he is what makes the entire thing work without Pelian. No, Thrawn is not Sherlock Holmes. With Pelian, he is. And I'll tell you why. In order

to make Sherlock Holmes so smart and so cool and so unbelievably intuitive without coming across as just like bad writing, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he came up with this ingenious idea. And I'm being sincere it's absolutely ingenious um this crazy idea of inserting watson into the books yeah basically the easily impressed sidekick yeah exactly he is the impressed sidekick no no but this is it we we the readers we cannot be allowed to see the adventures from holmes's point of view or we would never be impressed right we would just read his thoughts and know everything if the books were told from his point of view. The mystery must be hidden from us and revealed so that we get that sort of feeling of being impressed. So instead of seeing it from Holmes's point of view, we get to see the stories from Watson's point of view, the super impressed best buddy, right? But, and this is very important, Watson, he can't be some dumb idiot. Watson has to be astute. He

has to be observant he has to be even intelligent and he is watson is a doctor he's specifically written as like in a figure of authority who you would normally look to for you know good advice and solid intuition because he is the reader and when he uh just like overstates his absolute astonishment at holmes's mind-boggling powers of deduction when this intelligent you know well-rounded man says no it can't possibly be this time holmes you've gone too far and then is immediately proved completely wrong like hopelessly wrong because holmes is just completely right and watson is left utterly and completely speechless and ineffective in every way compared to holmes's greatness right then we find ourselves in the same situation we can't help but see the wonder that is Sherlock Holmes and acknowledge that he is just one of the smartest, coolest, most amazing people ever. And the same goes for Thrawn. He exudes the same persona, the same feeling that Sherlock

Holmes exudes, and it wouldn't work without Pelian. We need Pelian, who is an incredibly competent, intelligent, and self-assured captain. We need him to be making good observations, good decisions only to be undercut by Thrawn which happens over and over and over again every scene that Pelian and Thrawn are in Pelian will say some intelligent things and he'll be like I think we need to do this in the battle or I think we need to investigate this or I think the rebels are going to be doing this bad idea and then he will be undercut by Thrawn who will say no actually the rebels are going to do this or actually we need to do this in the battle and And then Pelian will say, but Thrawn, this time you've gone too far. That can't possibly be what we need to do. And then Thrawn will calmly and kindly rip him apart with his advanced and completely supernatural intellect, right? For the first thing coming after the original trilogy, you know, essentially the Empire is dead in the water.

We don't have the Emperor. We don't have Darth Vader. What is the Empire going to possibly do? They shouldn't be a threat. No, they shouldn't be a threat at all. And yet somehow Thrawn steps in and from like page one, the New Republic is on the back foot. Like they don't know what to do or what is going on. And Thrawn seems to be in control. Like he seems to have the power, even though he's literally just like a guy who just flew in from the outskirts of space with like one ship. He's got like one Star Destroyer. And yet somehow he's keeping them on their toes. And it works. It's just so good. It's like, whoa, Sherlock Holmes would be so evil if he was evil.

Thrawn is great. And he's the only reason that the remnants of the Empire even seem remotely intimidating at all. I mean, and I also love the way Timothy Zahn doesn't give him any special powers other than Sherlock Holmes' borderline psychic powers. He doesn't even understand the force. It's just a weird thing. He doesn't have the force. he doesn't have that many troops at his disposal he doesn't have a super weapon he doesn't he doesn't my favorite part he doesn't even have death troopers or like uh uh what's it called a dark saber like he doesn't have anything he doesn't have anything no one of my favorite parts uh from one of the books i forget which one it is i think the second one third one um is the way he tricks them into thinking he has a super weapon by having a cloak ship under the shield and then a ship over the shield firing while the cloak ship also fires so it looks like he has a ship that can

just ignore shields yeah he can fire through the planetary shields they're like oh no what do we do it's pretty good i think you know he's evil sherlock holmes and that's that would be something to deal with because evil sherlock holmes is always one step ahead of you he knows exactly what you're gonna do somehow i mean along with that i've also heard some people saying he's not space sherlock holmes he's space moriarty because he's evil and sherlock holmes isn't evil and i say no he's definitely not moriarty moriarty doesn't have a watson he's he's got a watson he's sherlock holmes end of story proof positive we don't need to prove it anymore arthur conan doyle's like storytelling device of watson was ingenious it's so good and it's great that timothy zahn always uses that i know even in the the new trilogy the thron ascendancy trilogy that he wrote that is canon um you know he has another character exactly so i was going

to mention this in the in the new thron trilogy which everyone should check out because this is timothy zahn's like uh legendary comeback right like he's back and better than ever and he gets to tell the origins of Thrawn which is crazy that Thrawn essentially just like sprung into being fully formed like you know 30 years ago back during Heir to the Empire right it's just this brand new character here he is um but no we're finally learning his origins and um it's a good trilogy I haven't read the whole thing I'm working on it so far so good it seems like uh they're having Ensign Eli Vanto take the place of Pelion which I personally wish and in my mind this will always be canon but I wish that Eli was actually a young Pelion who grew up in the empire alongside Thrawn and they became fast friends and stuck together through decades of war you know rising the ranks together and still after all these years Pelion continues to be astounded by Thrawn's

wits and intelligence. I would love that. That would be amazing. And I'll always believe that Ensign Eli Banto just changed his name later and he actually is Pellian. Because I love that. I love their undying friendship. I love that it lasted decades. And that's part of the new Thrawn trilogy is like Thrawn keeps going out of his way. And again this is also proof that the Watson mechanic is in full play and that Thrawn is Sherlock Holmes. In the first chapter of the book Thrawn goes from like an alien outcast to like having infiltrated the empire and then being a captive but then manages to turn it around so now he's like got an audience with the emperor and they're like delivering him personally so that he can like join as a general right um and the whole time he's like none of this will happen unless you send me along with that ensign. He needs to be with me at all times. And it's, he has to, because he's Watson,

right? Like Thrawn can't work without a Watson. He needs a Watson. It reminds me of Breaking Bad when he's like, I need him. I need Jesse. He doesn't need Jesse. The only thing Jesse is good for is making Walt seem smart, right? That's all he's there for. Jesse is Walt's Watson, just like Eli Vanto and Pellion are Thrawn's Watsons. I was able to ask Timothy Zahn about the Sherlock theory, and he was, first of all, he said, You are not the first person to bring that up, actually. There is a lot of Sherlock Holmes in Thrawn and a lot of Watson in, well, you get Pellion and then Eli Vanto and all the others. I mean, that's partly a device to let the reader know things that are going on. It's the same reason Doctor Who has companions. So you can explain things to them, and the reader or the viewer also then gets brought in on the same page.

The big difference between Holmes and Thrawn is that Holmes was always impatient if you couldn't do what he did. There are a couple of instances of the stories, which I reread every year or two, by the way. I love those stories.

There are a couple of times when he asked Watson, okay, what can you get from this? And Watson will deliver some thoughts, and Holmes will say, oh, okay, you missed everything important. But at least you tried, basically that sort of thing. If you're willing to learn, Thrawn is willing to teach you. You see that with Pelion, with Eli Vanto, with Commodore Farrow, with some of these fellow Chiss. If you want to learn, he'll teach. And he won't just teach you how to do what he does. He'll teach you how you do what he does. But you probably won't be able to learn it because Thrawn is just so advanced. You know, he's so far beyond you. No, that's why Thrawn's cool. That's why he's such an imposing villain, because unlike Vader, he doesn't rule with an iron fist. He doesn't kill you if you fail. He teaches you if you fail. And he doesn't, well, sometimes, and he doesn't, you know, send you off to your death in some

stupid, you know, dumb ass plan, right? If you've succeeded. Instead, he rewards you if you've succeeded. He puts you in a position where you can succeed again. He's an actual good leader and a good strategist. One other thing Zahn said, the reason he had Thrawn be so into studying a species art is that, I think he literally just said, I needed something different from Holmes. Yeah, that makes sense. Like it couldn't be just details. So I had to make it like he can understand how you're thinking because of the art that your culture, from the culture that you're from. Yeah. No, to me, kind of felt maybe a little shoehorned in there that he's always observing these people's art. But it's not bad. It's totally okay. And it gives him sort of this mystique. It gives him his own thing. Right. And he's able to understand the psychology. Right. And that's cool. That makes sense. So I'm not against it.

I think it's fine. Regarding the scene where Thrawn does kind of do a slight Darth Vader and have one of his men killed for doing something wrong, he said that he's not ruthless. Thrawn is not ruthless. He's not like Darth Vader at all. He wasn't doing that to intimidate anyone or show his power. He's simply doing it because that person had made that mistake before. Exactly. He made the mistake before. He didn't learn. He's dead. Sent him out in the trash. And Thrawn values people who are willing to learn, which is why later on, there's that guy who makes a mistake and Thrawn promotes him because he tried something new and it didn't work. But he was trying something new because he was learning from the mistake where they lost Luke earlier. And he was like, well, that wouldn't work. So I didn't do the same thing that didn't work last time. I did something else and it still didn't work. But Thrawn promotes him.

That was such a good scene. I love that callback scene. I thought that was so fun that like two books apart. Right. Like the first scene you're referencing happened in the first book and the next scene happened in the last book in the trilogy. It was just such a good mirror of that first scene showing that, no, Thrawn is like, he's a little more complex. He's not just going to kill you for failing. He's going to promote you for failing sometimes.

Might make your man even more nervous around you because they're just like, I don't know what to think about it again. Should I fail? Will that get me a promotion? I mean, okay, did you happen to ask Zahn, when you spoke with Timothy Zahn, did you happen to ask him how to pronounce the name Jorus Kabaoth? Because some people pronounce that word Sabaoth, which I never in a million years would have ever even dreamed of that pronunciation. So I assume that the Mark Thompson reading is correct because... It's got to be. He's Mark Thompson. Mark Thompson don't miss. He knows what he's doing. Zahn talked about being in the room while Mark Thompson was reading it and just being amazed by him. Dude, man. No one asked about how to pronounce Joris or Jaruus Sabaoth, but someone did ask about how to pronounce the name of Thrawn's ship, the Chimera. Oh, well, it's Chimera. Yeah, it's Chimera. I mean, I wouldn't pronounce it chimera when I was little, but it's definitely chimera.

Timothy Zahn said, it's pronounced the way Mark Thompson says it in the audio. Dude, okay, there you go. It's pronounced Savayoth. Okay. So we mentioned Joros Savayoth. I actually want to talk about him because I think he's a very interesting character. I think he's actually a really good character. I like him a lot. I think he's a great villain. Anyways, I like him as a bad guy, at least equally with Thrawn. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Because it's like the opposite of Thrawn. It surprised me. He doesn't think. He's just complete emotion. He's just an insane weirdo. Yeah. No, he's really fun. And he must have been fun to write. And he was a lot of fun to read. I just wish he had a better name. Because his character design is awesome. Like, he's so good. Oh, yeah. He's like wearing a robe. Freaking ripped. And he's unbelievably jacked. He's so ripped, man. But he's old. I love it.

Like he's ancient, he's got a huge beard. He's got this medallion on his chest that is described multiple times. I don't know what it is or why he has it. It's just there. And then he reaches for the sky and lasers erupt from his fingers. Are we going to talk about the cover? The amazing book cover for Heir to the Empire? Heir to the Empire has the greatest cover of anything ever made. I actually think as far as the books go, I like the second two books better. But Heir to the Empire has the superior title. and cover man like that cover is just marketing gold like oh my gosh that cover blows all of the movies out of the water it's so good is that it's it's a total callback to the original it is you know star wars poster with luke just ripped for no reason now it's an old man why is he so ripped and then luke has a laser sword that just goes on forever this guy has laser fingers that just go

on forever well and i love it because that was intentional duh like of course it was intentional but it was especially intentional because in the book he does not shoot lasers from his fingers he shoots lightning he shoots like he just does what palpatine does yeah exactly they clearly made a conscious decision to have it reminiscent of the laser sword in that original poster all right my mind every time he shot lightning he was shooting lasers that wasn't lightning coming out of his fingers those were lasers savaias shoots lasers i know that from the cover you'll never tell me otherwise but no i i really liked him i was surprised that i liked him so much because i thought okay here we go again you know another evil jedi dude this guy is unlike he is unlike any other evil jedi he is not a sith he is not a jedi he is just crazy he's nuts he is a he's really cool i really like sabayath we find out that jorus sabayath actually is jorus sabayath

he's got like two u's in his name and the reason is he's actually a clone in this book we find out that for whatever reason any clone in the star wars universe will spell their name with multiple u's like the letter u will be repeated well i don't know why i don't know why that's a thing but either way we find out that he is actually like this old man this old jedi is actually a clone of a jedi master he's a clone of joris he is actually yeah and that is also why he's insane because this was before the prequels nobody knew how cloning worked the only thing we knew was that there was an offhand reference to the clone wars which seemed to be something that happened and now there weren't clones so most fans took that to mean that clones had been outlawed right that there was something horrible about clones and now they weren't allowed because there are no clones in the original trilogy. This trilogy, the Timothy Zahn novels explain it

as clones typically have mental problems. They go insane. Like they go completely crazy. They're unstable and you just can't really stop that. Which I think is really cool. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. That Zahn, also mini theory that Zahn is Thrawn. It's like he put himself in the book because he's so cool and smart and his name sounds the same zon thron dude you're right no anyway what does that have to do with what i'm sorry i so uh timothy zon said that superman without kryptonite is boring yeah and i think it's really cool that zon put in these these kryptonites one of which is that the reason we don't see so many clones anymore is because they're unstable and that to me makes sense yeah that makes sense why because why aren't why aren't they still making clones you know exactly like in the like bad batch show they kind of explained it away as the kaminoans were more or less the only ones who knew how to do it yeah and the empire

killed all the kaminoans so no one else could make an army against them okay basically um but i like it better that you know like clones are just really unstable yeah you just can't make a good clone they're always gonna go crazy and then of course the other kryptonite he introduced is the islamiri yeah like which i think is i think they're important because jedi are just so powerful and that's the reason why they're not in the original trilogy yeah there's so like if there were tons of them like it'd just be crazy exactly down all the time well it kind of is yeah now that there are jedi everywhere uh i also wanted to talk about mara jade just because she's a new character and i feel like she deserves a bit of an introduction she is the most uh tsundere character to ever grace the star wars universe and if you don't know what tsundere means it's it's basically a really nerdy japanese term for somebody who is in love with you but they don't

want to show it right they they'll say like it's not like i like you you know but i just i'm just hanging out with you because i have to you know um and that is essentially mara jade's entire personality she's so soon daddy i i kind of hated her at first not gonna lie but now i am absolutely head over heels for her no i i love mara i love her background i love that she is so consistently and constantly antagonistic towards luke and she's always like okay i'll help you this time but i'm still gonna kill you right well not just idiot she's like every other sentence she's like it's not gonna stop me from killing you though i'm gonna kill you and then she meets leia and she's like okay leia i kind of like you but i'm gonna kill your brother yeah i'm still gonna kill your brother mara stop saying that you don't need to tell everyone you can just do it i love it she's so honest and and i love that the emperor taught her nothing like we learned that she was apparently

the emperor's hand she was like his right hand man what was her job she can't do anything she's so useless she doesn't even seem to know what her job was no well i mean i love that because first of all i love that she's great a force user who has no idea how to use the force there should be more of those because like right i hate powerful force users because they're just too powerful you This is another thing that existed more in the expanded universe but doesn't really exist anymore now that the canon has expanded itself. There used to be an idea of force-sensitive people, right? And you would find them in the novels and you would find them in the Star Wars role-playing game where you could essentially class yourself as a force-sensitive person. You couldn't use force powers, but you would get some bonuses, essentially, right? And I like that idea. i like that there are people that are just force sensitive and that's it they'll never learn to use

the force but they can feel it they can feel the force right i think that's fun yeah and that's something that um the west end games sort of codified the west end star wars role-playing game yeah which did exist it was like the one thing that existed before heir to the empire and that's where timothy zahn said he got all of his information and yeah had like consultants That was his only source. Who would just tell him, you know, how things work, what the rules are. I wanted to say about Mara that I love that the Emperor didn't train her at all because he wouldn't. He killed all the Jedi. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't want more Jedi. He might want a skilled Force-sensitive woman around, but he wouldn't train her like the Inquisitors, like the stupid Inquisitors. Exactly. And this is something that still rubs me the wrong way about new Star Wars is that in old Star Wars and the expanded universe and somewhat in the prequels and everything around that, the Emperor hated Jedi.

He hated force users. He wanted them all dead. He wanted it to be just him and Vader, essentially. And so he didn't have Inquisitors. He killed Inquisitors. Anyone who had used the force, he killed. They were all dead. And so the only way he could have had a force user working for him is if he wasn't teaching them to use the force, which I have mixed feelings because like that's to me, that's how it should be, because that's how I grew up with it. But on the other hand, it kind of makes sense for him to want to use that power in other people. Right. And it also it fits with the rule of two, which is like my favorite thing ever. He would have to be training potential apprentices if he is a true Sith, because that's what Siths do, right? He has to have himself and his apprentice and then several other potential apprentices who can at any time take the place of his apprentice. So he would have to be doing it.

So like the Inquisitors do make sense from that perspective. Yeah. Except that Vader is the leader of the Inquisitors. Yeah, and that should not be. They should be secret from Vader if they are potential. be in control of them because that's just saying hey kill me vader so i will never flip on my position on the inquisitors i hate the inquisitors i think they're dumb i think they should get out of the cannon i don't like them i think the inquisitors are just garbage they're just stupid yeah um i think they could have had other you know potential apprentices um i just think that yeah the inquisitors are horrible i don't like them i hate that they fly around with their helicoptered jedi lightsabers yeah they only do that like once is too many times they should never do that it's stupid i have a theory about mara jade my theory is that she actually was one of java's dancing girls she is confused she was not the emperor's hand she got hit on the head

she got amnesia she remembered luke she got something mixed up and now she thinks she works for the empire and that's the only way any of this makes sense because how could she not have ever been trained to use the force she can't even knows all the back doors yeah i know it doesn't make sense but speaking of it turns out everybody every single person at java's palace was actually somebody else in disguise secretly betraying him, right? Most of them, yeah, were plotting to kill him. There were so many assassination plots going at the same time, and then Leia did it. Exactly. This is the crazy thing. We've got the ones that we know of from the movies, right? We've got Lando, who was secretly Lando, pretending to be a guard. We've got Leia, who was pretending to be a bounty hunter. Now, in the expanded universe, we've got Jade pretending to be a dancing girl. Then we've got back in the other novels,

in the other Expanded Universe novels, we've got that girl from the Bounty Hunter War. Right, the Bounty Hunter Wars. You've got Nila. Nila, yeah. Who was actually the heir to Kuat Drive systems and Kuat Drive Yards. And we've got beyond that. I forget why, but was hidden at Jabba's Palace. Yeah, she was like hidden at Jabba's Palace. Where she might just like get eaten by her rancor. I know, it's not a good place to hide anyone. Like, especially as a dancing girl. Well, yeah, everyone's hidden there well i know we've got manoroo we've got size dancer girl who was ready to try to kill jabba for dangar at any point yeah well like all those random aliens that you see in the movie every single one of them was actually planning to kill jabba except for ifent mon ifent mon ifent mon is he he's loyal he's the only loyal he loves ride or die for jabba um he's big fan of java uh the only reason java's alive because he's the head of security he is he protects java

ostensibly salacious crumb as well he would never hurt java he loves java for our listeners not well versed in the expanded universe we are referencing things from the novel of short stories tales from java's palace as well as the bounty hunter wars by k.w jetter right and not just that but we're referencing random aliens random named characters with no lines that show up in uh the empire no sorry in the return of the jedi you don't know if it mon is yeah what's wrong with you no he's just a random background character that somebody gave a name in a backstory um and beyond that we've got characters with lines that are actually not what they seem we've got size noodles who seems to be a singer she's actually a bounty hunter she's a freaking bounty hunter specializes in assassinating uh-huh yes and she's there at his palace and he doesn't No. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Java's palace is like...

That is canon, by the way. It is. It's canon. 100%. That's from the Clone Wars show. Yes. I love it. I love how wildly infiltrated his palace was. There are a few other characters that are introduced in this series. There's Niles Farrier, an enterprising ship thief. Are we jumping into Niles Farrier? I know. There's a lot to say about Niles Farrier. There's so much to say about Niles Farrier. He's a, oh, I hate Lando. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill Lando. Niles Farrier shows up at the beginning of the second book, Dark Force Rising. Yes. And turns out to be a, like, way more important character than you would think. Because he's, like, just some dude on this planet. He's a random ship thief. It seems like he's a side plot waiting to happen, right? He's, like, nobody. He's just. Right. And Lando just recognizes him. Yeah. The thing about Niles Farrier is he's the only person in the universe who smokes a specific kind of very pungent cigar.

Everyone can smell it. It's not tobacco. Nobody else smokes it. No one smokes it. Only him. And he smokes it all the time. He never stops. So if he's ever around, you'll smell him. I love how it's like, it's tobacco. They're like, tobacco, sabacc. Sabacc. No, it wasn't. I think it's tabac is what they called it, not sabacc. but it's like fuck anyway niles farrier is an interesting guy he is a dude who just really really hates other dudes who try to help him he doesn't like that he hates so this yeah this scene makes no sense so lando sees niles fair is like uh well i think luke sees him but whatever Dude, Luke uses his Jedi Rewind vision Luke can rewind things He turns his head into a video cassette Yeah, this is what he looked like It's really good And the Jedi have so many cool powers in this And so they catch him Yeah, he's breaking into the New Republic shipyard And he's gonna like steal a bunch of ships

And give them to the Empire And Lando is like I recognize this guy we met once he's like my good friend and then niles farrier is like who the hell are you i don't like you i don't know you i don't know you i don't remember you and yeah lando's just like i know you remember we were best friends we did that thing that one time on that one mission 20 years ago niles has no clue he's like i don't know who you are and i want you to die loves this guy though because lando's like look we're gonna cut you a deal and i kept thinking as i was reading this i I was like, what is Lando going to get out of the deal? And his deal is, we're going to let you go. And we're not going to tell anyone you were here. And you get to go scot-free. That's the first part of the deal. And then Niles gets mad. He's like, I don't like this deal. He's like, why don't you make it better? And then there is no second part of the deal.

No, then Lando's like, okay, I'll sweeten the pot. And he makes it even better. And he's like, tell you what, if you can't steal these ships, because they're ours i understand how that might be sad for you so i'm gonna give you the coordinates of several other ships that i know that you can steal and here's how you can do it lando essentially tips off a thief to help the empire i don't know why he's doing this and and then this guy's like niles ferrier is just mad about it he's just like i'll kill you next time i see you lando And I'm like, Lando's been nothing but kind to you. Don't do me any more favors, seriously. He's acting as though Lando gave him a bad deal, that somehow he had to give up something to Lando, and he's like, something bad is happening to him. Lando saved him. He kept him from getting arrested. I guess he didn't get to steal the ships here. He wouldn't have gotten to steal them anyway.

He would have gotten arrested. Like, Luke would have come after him. And the whole time Luke's just standing here like, well, gee, I guess I better let Lander. Lander probably knows what he's doing. And then I love how Luke later thinks back on this a couple of times and he's like, man, that was kind of underhanded what we did there. I don't know if that was really the Jedi way. Should we have let that ship thief who was working for the Empire leave? I don't know. Oh, I think so. Okay. So in all truthfulness, this is a ridiculous moment. Everything about it is ridiculous. But at this point, they are on a planet that is having to repair a bunch of ships because the climax of the first book, which is one of the reasons I think the first book isn't actually that good, is just like they're using a bunch of like mining drills to just drill into ships. Like that's what Thrawn is doing. That's his whole plan.

So here's the thing is that for each book, Timothy Zahn had to come up with some master plan that Thrawn could implement. and it had to be not a secret you know a secret doomsday weapon right it couldn't be a secret magical power it had to be a secret intellectual plan right so in the first book his plan is to steal a bunch of mining ships and then use them to mine into the uh new republic ships to you know climb aboard and take control of them it's uh it is what it is you know it's functional for the purpose of the plot so i didn't really want to dig that much into it but yeah it's a bit of a silly silly moment my main complaint with that is that um when they get to the fight where where the ship drilling is happening uh han solo and luke are together on the millennium falcon and they are towing luke's uh luke's x-wing right because his x-wing got disabled and then they get there and they're like oh no a big fight's going on he's like oh hey luke i guess we're gonna have

to join this fight and luke is like but i can't join the fight because my x-wing is broken and i thought oh boy luke's gonna go climb into his disabled x-wing and han is gonna tow him around the battlefield so luke can like shoot all these guys i was like this is gonna be like fast five with the unstoppable safe with the unbreakable cable that they're just using to kill all the policemen but no they didn't do that and i was so disappointed i was like man we could have had fast five in space luckily wedge is there wedge helps him out and i love mark thompson's wedge voice yeah he's so good only does it kind of sound like wedge but it's it's just really cool yeah no wedge is a good character all around i love wedge he's great well yeah wedge is just great because he's just so like loyal yeah and just like simple he just wants to fly his ship and protect people well and he's really good at flying his ship and protecting people that's like

his thing he is wedge is legitimately the best pilot in the galaxy no one's a better pilot than wedge anakin got nothing on wedge poe dameron got nothing on wedge ain't nobody beating wedge right well and people talk about how like um like vader his biggest mistake of the entire trilogy was that when wedge flies away he says ignore that one stay on the leader that was it destroys the second death star along with lando yep wedge don't need no force the force protects him i also wish that when lando had shot because lando's the one who kills vader when he had shot that shot that kills everyone in the death star he should have said i have altered our arrangement or some big one-liner this time i have altered our arrangement you know a lot of people would have probably thought that was pretty corny if he said that but i would have loved it awesome i would have i would have eaten that up that would have been amazing dude it's the you just

don't even realize as lando's doing that this is the ultimate revenge i mean vader took lando's planet now he's taking vader's space station uh no that would have been almost as epic as if in the obi-wan uh miniseries if leia had been like who are you who are you she keeps asking who are you and he never says it what should he have said he should have turned around and he should have said i'm obi-wan kenobi and i'm your only hope because she keeps running away from him she doesn't want to do what he says and she should have just stared at him in awe that is just like that moment imprinted into her brain forever that would have been the most amazing thing ever which is ostensibly how they came up with the idea for this prequel like everything about it actually makes sense because it's like this is why obi-wan kenobi is the only one who could save her because as an eight-year-old it would have been absolutely perfect if he had said that line if he had said

i'm obi-wan kenobi and i'm your only hope i would have forgiven everything that dude that would have made that that mini series perfect it would have been perfection because then all of a sudden 20 years later when leia's captured and she needs someone to come save her then you would have understood why she sent the message help me obi-wan kenobi you're my only hope because little eight-year-old leia still somewhere deep inside of her crying like we gotta go luke we gotta go right now exactly and that would have explained obi-wan's action so well because he doesn't care about luke he doesn't care about the rebels he cares about that little eight-year-old girl who he saved all those years ago and he's like she remembers me she remembers i'm her only hope we got to get her man that would have been perfect it would have changed the entire a new hope if he had just said that line it would have in somehow it would have enhanced a new hope beyond what it

already is we've got to like ai deep fake that in there dude yeah i know i'm already working on it at the beginning of dark force rising luke's x-wing is disabled and he needs to get it fixed but there was just a battle so the people on this planet i forget what it was called um they're like we can't fix it it's not like the first in the queue we got to work on these other ships so the one thing he gets out of farrier lando gets out of niles fairy is that niles farrier somehow managed to hack into or sorry slice into this they don't have the systems here and um and lando's like if you'll give us your slicing codes then we can put luke's ship at the top of the fixed list and i'm like this is so he doesn't need a random ship thief to do the luke is a war hero exactly there's gotta be another way i mean wedge offered luke his ship i know you don't they don't it's like it's a pity off like he's lando just loves niles farrier

he wants to let him go well while conserving a little bit of his dignity so he's like look yeah Yeah, he's like, you've got to give me something. Like, throw me a bone here. And Niles is like, I'll chop your head off, you dirty rotten. Like, Niles hates him so much. Niles is like, I'm going to kill you next time I see you if I remember who you are, which I won't because I barely, I don't care about you at all. One of the other important things that they get from Heir to the Empire, which I feel like isn't the most important book, is Talon Card, who is voiced by Antonio Banderas. Well, he wishes. No, he's... Oh, Mark Johnson does like a Puss in Boots voice for him. He's even better. Yeah, he's doing his very best Puss in Boots. And I love Talon Card. Like the three new characters... I'm a little busy right now. He's so good. I love Talon Card. He's amazing. The three new characters that Zahn introduces are all great.

They're great, yeah. Sorry, that Zahn introduces are all great. There's Thrawn, there's Marjade, there's Talonkard, and then Talonkard has his own whole crew of people. Well, there's also Joru Sabaoth. I mean, there's at least four fantastic characters. There's also Niles Farrier, I mean, a legend in his own right. He's not just some random dude who keeps coming back for some reason. Dude, so important. Well, that's one thing that I was really disappointed about because I do think these books are actually really well written. I was disappointed about it, especially in Heir to the Empire, but in the other ones too, is that one thing you don't do, you learn as a writer, is that you're allowed one really insane coincidence. And you should usually have it at the beginning of the story. There's a lot of insane coincidences in these books. Yeah, like you just, you don't do this. What Timothy Zahn does as a writer, you shouldn't.

People are constantly showing up at places where other people are. No, no, not places. Planets. Like specific towns. In the galaxy. Specific buildings in towns on planets in this wider galaxy where these people were not present. And they've all happened to show up at the same place. It's crazy. It's insane. Han Solo is just at this random mining planet. And Lando just happens to be there, who he knows. He doesn't know Lando is going to be there. Which I guess kind of makes sense. I can forgive that because it's a mining planet and Lando likes mining schemes. Yeah, he's doing mining stuff. But then Luke also just happens to show up there. Luke shows up that same... Luke who's doing something completely different. He's not on the same mission as Han Solo. Within the hour that Han Solo showed up, so does Luke. He's doing something completely different. It makes no sense. He has a very... We're talking galactic timescales here.

It's crazy. Yeah, we already talked about how... Wait, did we record this? We didn't record this. No, we didn't record that. Oh my gosh. Why didn't we record that? Should we talk about it? The way that you travel within the Star Wars universe is up for debates as well. Right. Well, so I want to introduce, like, the confusion. And it comes from the second movie in the original trilogy. Yeah. Which is... Empire Strikes Back. In the second movie, Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrives are shot. They don't work for pretty much the entire movie. This is a major plot point. It's not something you can just brush aside. It's like why the movie is happening. They cannot leave Hoth's system because of this problem. That's why they have to hide in an asteroid field. And he drifts away with all the debris as the Star Destroyer leaves. And he says that they can make it to the Lando system.

The Lando system, yeah. Which, it seems to be a different system because Leia assumes that it is. Yeah. And he says that, yeah, it would take us a while, but we can make it. Presumably with no hyperdrive. So the question is, where is Bespin, Lando's planet? Is it in the same system as Hoth? Bespin could be in the same system as Hoth. I don't think so, though, because Leia kind of assumed it wasn't. And she's looking at the same screen as Han. The next one is that the galaxy in the Star Wars universe is very small. It's a small galaxy. I like that explanation because it kind of makes sense how all these planets are so interconnected. they get around so fast it does make sense it accounts for everything in the universe being so highly trafficked it accounts for so many people ending up on tatooine all the time yeah well and it helps to explain the mandalorian in in the uh the what was it the the egg no the

mother the passenger that was season two right because he has to make that whole trip from whatever planet to tatooine he's on tatooine no yeah from tatooine he's on tatooine yeah and he has to get her to a different planet without without using hyperdrive because that will kill her eggs right and from how luke described it that should be impossible because he described tatooine as the furthest planet away from everything as you could possibly get right so this only makes sense if galactic distances are much smaller than we would perceive them to be if this universe works different than ours and things are just closer together and maybe gravity works different too which is why all spaceships have like innate gravity and i think they say he's taking her to another system the only other explanation for that is that because it's a binary system the fish planet that he's taking her to orbits the other star it could be well and

tatooine orbits one star and the fish planet orbits the other so it's kind of the same system And that's why he can limp there after getting like beaten up by ice spiders. Oh, yeah. Everything went wrong for him. And that little stint he had as an Uber driver turned out to be his most dangerous contract. We would have thought a bounty hunter could drive an Uber. All he has to do is get someone to a place. Just drive this pregnant lady home. That's it. Drive her home. If the galaxy is small and that's how in Empire Strikes Back, they got to Bespin, they could have traveled at light speed. So not hyper speed. Right. Lightspeed. And it took them like a few months. And that's why Luke can train so much with Yoda, because a lot more time passes for Luke. Right. For them at light speed, they don't age at all. There is no current canon official explanation for how he got to Bespin without a hyperdrive.

However, there was an old canon explanation, and that's that all ships have a backup hyperdrive. And that hyperdrives are rated based on how much faster they can go than light speed when they're going in hyperspace. And they start at 10, 10 being the worst. And most backup hyperdrives are a 10 rating. And it will take you a long time to get anywhere, but still faster than light speed. So rather than taking like 100 years, it takes like a few weeks, a couple months, something like that. A really fast ship like the Slave I is rated at like 0.75. Right, then you get into like the fractions of, yeah. Right. And then Han Solo's is rated at 0.5, which is why he says to them in the cantina, it can make 0.5 past light speed. Right, 0.5 past light speed. Which doesn't sound like he's talking about the rating of a hyperdrive. No, and it also doesn't sound like, I don't know, yeah. It also doesn't sound that fast.

A larger number would be more impressive. It sounds like he's saying it's only like one and a half times the speed of light, which would take a really long time to get places still. No, he's actually saying that his ship is like legitimately the fastest ship in the known universe. There is nothing faster. His hyperdrive is insane. Nothing has a 0.5 rated hyperdrive. It's like if you were talking to like a delivery driver, he's got like a big semi, like a massive semi truck. He makes deliveries across the country and you're asking him for a ride and he's like, I can get you there fast. And you're like, oh, really? And he's like, yeah, my truck can do 600 miles per hour. And you're like, what? He's like, yeah, yeah, no worries, I can do it. Well, that's why Obi-Wan just kind of rolls his eyes. Exactly.

Essentially, this man is driving, like, one of those rocket cars that you can only drive on, like, the Salt Lake Valley because if there's any bumps, it will just, like, fly into the stratosphere because it's a legitimate rocket. Yeah, Han Solo's ship is pretty cool. And yet it still just looks like a beat-up semi. Yeah, it just looks like a semi. All right, well, back to Talon Karr. Talon Karr is great. He's a good character. No, he's like one of my favorite characters. He's so cool. I love how good he is. He's such a good person. He's like the best good person. He puts Han Solo to shame. Han Solo is just scum, just utter scum compared to Talon Karr. Talon Karr is also a smuggler and also kind of like a pirate. He's like the king of the smugglers. Yeah, he's like smuggler royalty or something. I don't know. And yet he's just like the best person ever. He will never abandon his friends.

He will never abandon his guests. He will never abandon his prisoners. He won't abandon anyone ever. He bends over backward to protect Luke, his prisoner, from Thrawn. Well, Thrawn doesn't even know he was there. His prisoner for Thrawn. That's why he has Luke. I legitimately don't understand why he's not giving Luke to Thrawn. That's why he got Luke to give him to Thrawn. Right. Well, in Talent Card's mind, he seems to just firmly and I believe delusionally believe that he is neutral. He is not on anyone's side. He's very clearly on the New Republic's side. Very, very much on the New Republic's side. He helps them constantly. Yes. He loves them. He never helps the Empire. But yeah, he seems to think that he's very, very neutral. And he's, I'm not going to take sides. but actually i'm taking sides no he's a cool guy i like him um well and i love that he is like they portray him as like very intelligent very logical very calculated and every possible

like juncture he makes the entirely wrong decision and conclusion and thrown out with him completely every time it's weird because like talon card is essentially thrown level intelligence he's always predicting what everyone's going to do the dude is so smart and yet he's all constantly duped like just beaten by thron yeah i love it he's like don't worry if we hide behind this specific asteroid there's no way anybody in the universe will know we're here and then thron out of the corner of his eye sees the asteroid he's like there they are go send a star destroyer to that asteroid. And Pellion's like, a star destroyer? We're in the middle of an assault. We can't scare a star destroyer? And he's like, no Pellion, it must be a star destroyer. And he's right. The only reason they get away is because Mara Jade is the force user. Yeah, stupid force powers, force plot, the armor. She's just like, something is not

right. So what did you like so much about um the dark force rising because i well i i just want to ask you i didn't mind the book but why does this book even exist i felt like it was pure filler it's like the the stupid katana fleet why do they matter oh they don't they never matter again like it doesn't matter that uh that thron gets them uh garm bell iblis who we spend like 50 000 chapters on i hate bell why does he matter why does bell iblis matter his whole thing is just like yeah mon mothma sucks yeah i know i'm like he only exists to like drag mon mothma through the mud because i'm so freaking seriously even han solo's like i love you okay i have your autograph i know can i lick your feet i know like why why why is there like well everyone's just constantly like yeah mon mothma she's kind of a bitch i know it's so stupid i can't i couldn't believe that i'm just like shut shut up i know i love mon mothma yeah why would i care i was like why would you create a character

just to drag mon mothma like everyone's favorite character through the mud and why already talked about so yeah luke goes to sabayath's planet and sabayath is trying to turn luke to the dark side And I actually legitimately liked that he has no plan for how to do that. I didn't mind that. And he doesn't even come close to turning Luke. Luke is just sitting there the whole time. Luke's very confused. He's not seduced by the dark side. He's just confused. He's like, this poor, senile old man is crazy. He's like, how can I help this man?

No, I really like Luke in this book. He's just like feeling sorry for him. Luke's just, he's so genuine. I do want to talk about Councilman Phalia. Why does Timothy Zahn hate Bothons so much? What did Bothons do to Timothy Zahn? I know. What does he have against Bothons? That's what we already talked about, Manny Bothons. The only thing we know about Bothons is that they saved the New Republic. They saved the rebels. They sacrificed themselves to get the plans for the Death Star 2. But no, I feel like Timothy Zahn does this a few times. He does it with throwing Mon Mothma under the bus with Garmbel Iblis. he does it with councilman failure throwing the entire both on race under the bus and then he does it in the same book with everybody's favorite bounty hunter dangar roth who like shows up to capture mara jade and then she just effortlessly murders him and i'm like you can't murder dangar

he's like the best he's like the coolest bounty hunter ever he wears toilet paper on his head luckily that's not canon no but also turns out that was just an impersonator because the right accent though oh he did it's true you knew what he was doing but no turns out dengar is so cool that he's got fans and groupies and impersonators just wandering the galaxy pretending to be him scarred toilet paper head wouldn't be so great that like yeah no there's a there's an impersonator who's like yeah people think i'm cool if i go by dengar last command it had more plot why does the emperor put all of his cloning stuff and all of his cloaking stuff in one place on a planet called weyland like either that is the emperor's planet of everything you need or and this is my personal theory i think that that planet is his file cabinet for the letter c that's where he puts cloaking and cloning and sabayath because sabayath

starts with a c i mean they definitely did sort of so this planet is depicted um as being more like a vault of like storage so it probably is letter c yeah yeah it's letter c he's got other planets too the third book the plot is that he's trying to crew his ship of his dreadnought fleet that he stole in the second book and they're like, how is he going to do that? He doesn't have the troops. The empire is destroyed. He's got like a handful of stormtroopers and they find out that he actually has the ability to clone because he has this like vault inside a mountain on a planet called Weyland where Emperor Palpatine kept a bunch of secret projects. One of which was cloning. First of all, just want to point out this planet is called Weyland and planet Weyland where they do cloning stuff is now canon it was it was in the bad batch gives credence to your theory that they are re-canonizing all of the timothy zoniverse that's not my theory okay to

the theory you mentioned just a theory another thing i was going to ask you about uh which kind of rubbed me the wrong way uh and was a big part of the third book was um delta source so just to recap for our listeners delta source was a source of information that they alluded to throughout i think all the books um where somehow thron was getting information directly from coruscant we found out in the third book that the this delta source was actually a listening device built into the trees on coruscant um or coruscant however you pronounce it which was essentially absorbing the sound of the vibrations that were hitting the tree bark and then it would take that and convert it into an electric signal deep underground where it would be sent to uh to throng completely undetected first of all they're like but we scan for mics and mics are all electric so how could we not seen this and they're like oh it's because the trees themselves are the

mics the trees are taking the vibrations and translating it into signals i'm like no that's what all mics do mics are acoustic by nature they don't need to be electric you need to have electricity if you want to do anything with the vibrations but the act of taking sound vibrations and you know using those that's that's purely physical there's no need for electricity i thought that these dumb color changing acoustic trees were unbelievably stupid compared to the amazing uh sound absorbing acoustic lichen slime object from the war of the bounty hunters i don't know if you remember it but at one point they're using this it's Dengar goes to the Mos Eisley and starts blabbing about Boba Fett being alive and then there's this weird slime thing that's like crawling around Mos Eisley listening to people and it's not even sentient it's just like this ancient lichen that evolved on this planet and what it does is it like feeds on seismic activity like

this lichen grows deep in the crust of the planet and every time there's an earthquake it absorbs the vibrations and gets bigger also happens to absorb people talking well it absorbs any sound right like and so now people use it as a listening device so they just stick it in the corner and it absorbs all that sound gets bigger and bigger until it's big enough to crawl back to you and then you take it and you squish it and all the sound comes out yeah i remember that and someone accidentally like steps on it and a couple of words come out of it it's one of the one of those sisters um that they never had like a yeah they never had a a figure made of them until recently i though that lichen was way better than these stupid trees these trees have no reason to be acoustic what like that lichen was explained in great detail as to why it absorbs seismic activity therefore sound why is winter the character winter why is she even in these books

is she just a massive red herring because the whole series i was expecting them to reveal that she was actually delta source and she was working against them all along no i know like literally the first scene she's in which is one of the first scenes of heir to the empire i was like either she's here to betray leia or she's going to die yeah one or the other motivate leia well and like she didn't do either one of the first things they say about her is like leia's in a meeting with some people and they're like we have to figure out where the leak is and leia's like it's not winter winter is beyond any suspicion and i'm like okay it's winter though turns out she's basically an acoustic tree acoustic lichen well no even absorbs everything and remembers yeah well it's true but anyone who doesn't know the big surprise of the timothy zahn trilogy is that uh-oh we've got luke in the picture and i pronounce it that way because it's luke with two

letter u's in it um luke is a clone of luke skywalker he was cloned from luke's missing hand that got chopped off by darth vader chopped off and what really blew me away is knowing that luke is gonna be in this trilogy man he really shows up at the 11th hour of this trilogy and literally does nothing like he did not show up until like the last chapter of the last book which that i mean i felt like this character could have been the basis for an entire trilogy but no he's just a five minute fight evil luke yeah that's exactly what luke was afraid of becoming i know doesn't want to be darth vader it's the dagovah prophecy it came true mara gets to kill luke i love that part because because we finally figure out what the last command refers to it turns out being in command of the fleet it turns out the last command the titular last command was actually uh the friends we made along the way it was the command that was being told tomorrow

over and over and over from the first book um that was the last command the last command of emperor palpatine and the best part is finally got to do it he wasn't saying kill luke skywalker he was saying kill luke skywalker yeah i like that little loophole because apparently mara herself is like a droid and just well yeah that was her own personal order 66 right she had to do it yeah couldn't we haven't even talked about them but i was crushed that the book ended with the nogri taking out thrawn i know my gosh and here's the thing so i hated the nogri before i ever read this trilogy which is crazy i did it before it was cool that's because they were canonized they show up in bad batch and rebels right in rebels yeah what's his name um thrawn has rook and sends him out yeah the thing was because i'd never read heir to the empire i was like who is this rook why are they introducing him like i should already think

he's the coolest thing that ever lived i know why like they they're they're acting like i should think he is just insane like i should be afraid just because he's here and i never even heard of him because i hadn't read cool zon's through trilogy yet and also i'm like and i don't think he's cool because he's like the ugliest stupidest looking alien i have ever seen like they're not cool looking the nogri they look stupid they are described in zon's book as somewhat cat-like but they did they certainly didn't make them that in no they're just like weird gray nothings in yeah they're like bad trandoshans like ugly ass trandosh and trandoshans aren't necessarily pretty to begin with. Hey, hey. Now you, you stopped right there. I'm sorry. Ain't nobody going to say nothing bad about my Bosk. He's a work of art. I couldn't stand, like, because they brought him in, like, Thrawn is like, I'm going to bring in,

like, the most amazing hunter who ever lived. I'm like, oh, man, here comes either Dengar or Boba or Bosk. Yeah. Right? And then it's Rook. I'm like, should I? know this person who the crap is rook anyway so i hated him and i hated that he didn't die i was like this guy's gonna die right and they don't even kill him and now i understand why because they were they were he was like an actual character yeah right i didn't know that so anyway but the nogri suck hardcore i like okay so here's the problem right thron loses because of the nogri And I saw that coming because, well, that's actually one thing Timothy Zahn said was that Thrawn will only lose. He can only ever lose when there are things that were beyond his control that he just couldn't have predicted, like space whales. Right. Yes. Space whales are his Achilles heel. Those are the main thing that is his undoing. So here's the thing. It's totally fine if Thrawn loses to animals, things that he just can't predict.

right but when his thing is understanding culture exactly art exactly i felt like he should have predicted somehow didn't know that the entire culture of the nogri is centered around the fact that they worship princess leia why is he sending the nogri after darth vader's son and daughter the one person in the galaxy who would know you don't send the nogri to get leia of all people i just i don't even i i failed to understand why he was even sending the nogari at all ever because he's got better troops the nogari fail every time they don't even use blasters they use like daggers they're not even fibroblades like rope they're like rope spitting blowguns right like they're these weird long blowguns that shoot out unbreakable ropes that was the nogari yeah that was oh my gosh i thought those were little ewoks i know i was picturing them as ewoks it was it was a little i got a little confused too it was because they were on like a planet of little

ewoks and then the nogri also showed up i thought that some of those ewoks were evil no it's just the nogri well they never used those rope things again no they didn't there was just that one scene like if i could see the nogri's betrayal coming then thrawn definitely should have been able to see it especially when their betrayal was centered in their worshiping of princess leia in particular um is such a butthole that i was like at least he's gonna remain an evil one right right exactly the other nogri will kill rook and then maybe thron right rook is the one who gets to kill thron are you kidding me i know it's a freaking little butthole well and why would thron trust his own personal protection to this race that is only indebted to darth vader in specific to darth vader like they don't care about the empire they don't care about yeah tell us tell us about the nogri i want to hear about the nogri i love them i don't know 60 of

this whole trilogy is devoted to the nogri that's what it feels like at least i want to cut it out but they are a race of aliens who is indebted to darth vader and they just worship darth vader they will do anything for darth vader or the people that work for darth vader which is the right so essentially they're being subjugated by the empire but specifically darth vader is who they're indebted to anyway so the nogri work for the empire except wait they don't because actually their culture is that they just work for whoever is is vader's people and hey they find leia and they recognize her scent and they're like is well they don't find leia they are sent by thron to kidnap leia sends them to kidnap which is the dumbest thing you could ever do the worst thing he could do he picked the one species in the galaxy that worships leia and he's like go get her for me so i can kill her what they fail to get leia but leia realizes hey this guy like

basically worships me maybe i should go talk to his people and get them to work for me instead which she essentially does she does it and they work for her thron just doesn't know that this happens never finds out and then as all the important like the crazy like thron's barely even in the last book the crazy fight between sabaoth and luke and mara han solo is there freaking talon card is there with his two dogs isn't that weird he shows up with his dogs how crazy was that uh you got lando's there chewy's there even an entire platoon of nogri show up because they got to be in every scene all the time yeah no such freaking scene stealers like everything has to relate to the Noghri. Anyway as the whole big fight with Sabaoth is happening, Sabaoth by the way is really not a threat the dude's insane and he fails at virtually everything he does now he can control mines and he's got some clones now so that is a bit of a threat

still Thrawn's the main threat right and then what happens as they're doing the big fight with Sabaoth Rook the Noghri just randomly kills just kills Thrawn. Yeah and it bugged me so much because like with thrawn's last words being like it was so artistically done i'm like oh my right so you cannot include that about your own book right because well first of all he's excusing himself because like he has to know that this is a bad way to kill thrawn and then he but he's having thrawn say the opposite like it's okay because it was just so artistic exactly he's he's using thrawn which is like the end-all be-all he's the smartest person in the galaxy saying this is good and at the same time he's bringing back and reminding us of the reason that this shouldn't have worked on Thrawn because he loves art and the reason he loves art is because it helps him figure out a species specifically a species culture

exactly what they will do in any situation he can predict exactly what the Bothans are going to do because he knows their art he would know that the freaking Nogri are going to freaking kill him and he shouldn't have them for him he just needed to know their situation with Vader which he knows why is he using them Why is he even using them? Just leave them on their planet. Don't ever touch them. They're a security threat. They're not something you should ever use. And I just hated, hated, hated that literally anytime the Nogris are in the scene, they win. They don't even have blasters. But like Chewie against a Nogri, Nogri wins. They're like four feet tall.

Chewie's gigantic. No matter what, he could just sit on the freaking Nogri. He doesn't even need skill. So how in the world does this trilogy of books somehow explain Luke's personality in, you know, The Last Jedi, in the new sequel trilogy that is canon? Oh yeah, that was the theory you said you were going to explain. How does it explain that? I don't see anything in this trilogy. Luke doesn't turn evil. He doesn't get jaded. He does get jaded. Jade! Mara Jade! Oh, is that where you're going with this? Oh, man. the theory is that um luke from the sequels that we see is actually luke the clone what now wait but he died how could we possibly know this now first of all we have to open our minds a little bit because obviously some stuff has been decanonized and some stuff has been recanonized right but we know that they're trying to bring back bring in stuff from the old timothy zahn series in the

Timothy Zahn trilogy, they never tell us how Palpatine had Luke's severed hand. He just has it. He just kept it as a little trophy. We don't know. But I believe that Palpatine certainly had the means to recover it, unlike anyone else. Literally no one else could have done it. But he, first of all, he owned Bespin after they took over. And he has the, I think, sense of humor to want it well and he has the absolute motivation to want to clone luke he loves using skywalkers he wanted nothing more than to bring luke over to his side right since before uh the war even started he was already researching how to clone people with force powers to the point that he was actually kidnapping younglings bringing them to wayland and then trying to essentially clone them to figure out how to preserve for sensitivity across cloning. In the sequel trilogy, though, we have the original blue lightsaber, Anakin's lightsaber,

that was passed on by Ben to Luke. So Maz did it. And who has it? Maz. Maz Kanata? Yeah. Maz Kanata doesn't ever say how she got it, but she does say that's a story for another day. That's a story for another day. Meaning they were setting it up. Expanded universe stuff. an important story for another day so maz being the you know she's an underhanded thief that she is must have somehow helped emperor palpatine if she has a lightsaber that means the hand must have also been recovered and since we know palpatine was the one controlling bespin at that time it had to have been palpatine who ended up with the hand and we know he was doing cloning experiments ergo it's totally reasonable that he could have cloned a clone of luke well and he would have been highly motivated to do that yeah like he wanted more skywalker apprentices this makes perfect sense you can't get well he wanted luke as an apprentice to begin with like he wanted

him to kill vader exactly so anyway the clone of luke must not have come about until after the war was over wait when's the next time we see him as the last jedi right oh no that's actually not we see him one more time before the last jedi wait you're talking about funny-faced luke from the mandalorian right there's a luke who shows up who just doesn't look quite right like maybe he's sort of a copy of luke uh-huh so luke shows up in the mandalorian and oh it's luke he but wait he's acting a little weird first of all he's just indiscriminately killing people yeah without even talking to them yeah and then he's just like kidnapping kids yeah like just just just takes them from their from their fathers yeah just like see ya when i watched that scene with my kids they were really like worried about baby yoda and they did not trust luke one bit they were like this guy dressed in all black coming in just right because yeah they were like why is he sending baby yoda

with this guy how how can they trust him how do they know he's not lying and i was like you know what they really don't something's clearly wrong with that luke he's not acting right he doesn't look right well yeah his face is all just like weird five two weeks later he's like i don't want this kid anymore i'm just gonna put him on a ship and hope he makes it home yeah he literally just put him on a ship all by himself it's like a baby i mean he's like 50 years old so he should be able to find his way but right he's older than luke yeah or way older than luke okay so uh yeah he shows up in the book of boba fett and he still looks a little weird he doesn't look quite as weird maybe he's had a little work done but his voice sounds really weird i don't know if anyone else noticed but like i i don't know what was going on with his voice uh in the book of boba fett but um luke doesn't sound right and i think that's a you know a side effect of him being a

clone it was a side effect of mark hamill aging and them getting someone else to like impersonate the voice maybe yeah i know i think they were using like some ai thing to like make it sound more like mark hamill i don't know or make mark hamill sound more like young him so then the next time we see luke or perhaps luke is in the last jedi yeah and is he so happy to get his his lightsaber back no he just throws it on the floor he's like that's the thing that was in my severed hand that they cloned me from that i don't want that i don't want it and then he's like i don't want any part of this war i don't know these people that's not my sister leia you know you're right and this explains why he tried to kill um kylo ren he isn't he's not his his uncle yeah he started his own little thing which is what he wanted to do well that's what sabaya thought exactly well the emperor but no and also luke like he's an unstable clone he was never quite

finished he you know his face was all messy and unformed like of course his brain isn't fully formed too he's gonna like be irrational died during the cloning project probably like look at Snoke that that just proves that if you're a clone sometimes you will have like a CG face that doesn't look good yeah and like a big head with a massive like hole in it I caught up with Timothy Zahn after his panel and asked him about this this is about to get embarrassing for us that's a weird fan theory I did some years ago I did an April Fool's Day thing yeah from luke talking about how that crazy jade woman killed the wrong one that luke that thrawn was now making up clones that he was trying to get it's still online someplace it's funny he did he wrote a short story and in that short story it's luke talking and essentially the short story is called an apology by timothy zahn yeah but it's luke talking and he reveals he's the luke

who's still alive right yeah he reveals that he's actually luke and mara killed the wrong luke wait so this is luke talking to mara saying i am luke i've been luke all along sort of just like apologizing to the readers i think um but yeah he talks about how mara uh killed the wrong one And the Luke we've known since then, it has been Luke, the clone. And he talks about how Thrawn or Thrawn, Thrawn's a clone now, Thrawn has been doing more cloning. And Thrawn has been trying to essentially create his own collection of characters from Star Wars that are all clones. And the only one Luke thinks the only people he hasn't gotten in his collection yet are Han and Leia, who are still real. Everyone else has been replaced with clones of themselves. And he's like, even Boba Fett, he's like, I can't remember if it's Boba Fett with three O's or Boba Fett with four O's, because he's been cloned so many times.

Which I think, because this was written in 2012. Yeah, this sounds like a meta commentary on the state of Star Wars merchandising. and stuff right like right that's fun that's really fun oh i don't mind that yeah so basically he also says what he's telling us too that we didn't really know before is that if you're a clone you'll get a double of one of the vowels in your name and if you are a clone of a clone it just keeps getting more of that yeah you get more and more okay so what you're saying is what we saw in the rise of skywalker may have been like emperor pal patin yeah like he was many times cloned i think it's a good theory because it explains a lot of things this is fantastic and if you didn't like luke just know that that wasn't luke if you didn't like luke in the sequel trilogy that wasn't luke that was luke and there's a reason he's not acting how you wanted him to okay the last theory so in the mandalorian they say the phrase heir to the empire in ahsoka they

say the phrase heir to the empire yeah dave filoni has been slowly incorporating things from the timothy zahn books yeah um harris sindula's kid is named jason sindula which was the name of jason solo uh was an important character in the old eu he brought back the planet weyland um and So basically, and we know that he's going to be making some Ahsoka movies. There's going to be a Mandalorian and Grogu movie. Also, of course, he brought back Thrawn, of course, and Rook. And he had Thrawn come back with like a lost fleet. Yeah, he's back with the space whales. Somewhat reminiscent of the Dark Force. Anyway, so a lot of fans are believing that Filoni's trilogy is essentially going to be the Heir to the Empire trilogy. And they're just going to kind of swap some characters out. So instead of like the ones we love, it's all of Filoni's crap characters. No, I'm sorry. People like his characters too.

It'll be like, you know, instead of Luke, it'll be Ezra. You know, instead of Han Solo or Leia, it'll be Harrison Doola. Yeah, Ahsoka. And then we've got Ahsoka as well. Sabine Wren might be Leia because she's the one who's still learning how to use the force, which Leia was. I would actually love if this one happened, that Boba Fett was being set up to be Talon Card. Oh my gosh, that would be so cool. That's why they gave him his own, like, I don't know, like, pirate. Like, that's why he took over a crime lord syndicate. I mean, that would be a better reason than anything I can come up with. So I hope that was the reason. You know, and yeah, and that's the popular theory among fans is not only that that is what they're doing, But also that they're like, this is even more theory, that they're bringing Zahn in to help. That Zahn is like consulting or in some way, or that maybe they'll even let him have some creative control.

Well, I'm here to put that theory to rest because he did talk about that at Comic-Con and he said, They have shown me a couple of things in advance of what they're doing, but they have not asked for input of any sort yet. I wish they would because you get two good minds on something that's better than what the single mind would do. I can help that same way editors make my books better. The editor, copy editor with Star Wars. I also have the Lucasfilm editor and story group kicking in, looking everything over and checking for problems and offering suggestions. And the more of that I get, the better the book will come out to be. So I would like to think I can certainly, I could help in that same way with anything involving Thrawn. But until they invite me in, I stay with my books and that's about it. He said, I could pitch them 10 things tomorrow if they would let me. And he said, we've reached out to them so many times, but they have never reached out to us.

Well, he's a great author. He's not, maybe not the world's greatest author, but he is a great author with a lot of fun ideas. Well, and he's good at just creating a big overarching story that is consistent, which is kind of all we want right now. That's all I need, consistent and fun. And I mean, he's... Well, and also, like, he's an author, so he knows how to do the research. Like, he went to the West End games people and had them help. He didn't just make his own crap up. You know, he was really trying to be in the universe rather than what they ended up doing. And the way he said I could pitch them 10 things tomorrow to me sounded like he wants to write shows. Like, I think he wants to do like a Thrawn show. Yes. Like, OK, so seriously, read his Thrawn Ascendancy series. He wrote it as a TV show. Every chapter is an episode. Seriously. That's my own personal theory. He clearly wants to just get a show, which why wouldn't he?

Oh, my gosh, that's what I would want if I were in this position. Everyone wants that. For some reason, they keep giving it to the world's biggest loser idiots, though. to people who like don't want it and like hate boba fett basically what i'm saying is i'm sorry fans zahn is not well he's not involved anyway and he confirmed that but i do think now they are pulling from the the expanded universe and canonizing random things but in certain ways like dave filoni said and he could just be being being coy but he said like some of the things like uh Like the name of Jason Syndulla. He said, that's just an Easter egg. It's nothing else. He's not going to be, he's not going to fill the role that Jason did in the old Expanded Universe. I mean. So it could just be they're throwing in Easter eggs for the fans. They're referencing. I buy that. It is just an Easter egg. But also like he can't fill that role because that story doesn't exist.

He'll fill a role in the new story, which is going to be probably kind of similar in some ways. What do you think of the theory that Thrawn and Pellion are actually space Sherlock Holmes and space Watson? Does that hold any water? Yeah, confirmed. Iron Man's on is clearly a Sherlock fanboy. Do you think that the Luke that we see post the original trilogy in the sequel series is actually Luke the clone? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. mean the so if you think about it unbeknownst to us the viewers the sequel trilogy what were they actually about they were about cloning that was literally the plot of that trilogy we just didn't know Snoke was a clone he was a failed clone of the emperor the whole entire plot the big bad it turns out is that the emperor has cloned himself and is still alive that was the plot yeah therefore yeah i mean luke coming back and being a completely different guy makes a lot of sense

i gotta ask you though why does he have a robot arm uh luke didn't lose his arm well you know but because they used the um the stuff from that arm oh to clone him so he couldn't regrow that stuff to regrow that arm oh i didn't know cloning worked that way wow i don't know someone chopped it off no they chopped it off because they wanted him because they they're using him to impersonate luke right so he's that dedicated he's like all right gotta lose the arm bye bye he didn't want to be reminded of that arm anyway he doesn't like being a clone that's the clone but we know that because he threw the lightsaber down that that arm held that's true you're right do you think that they're they're going to recreate the the zoniverse i sure i hope to god that they are i that would be better than anything they're doing now so please people listening to the outtakes we're almost at four hours wow yeah that's true you can you where can you where can we get our

outtakes where could someone listen to that oh yeah if you want to listen to the outtakes um it will be on patreon if you subscribe to us on patreon man you can have so much extra content well yeah if you just can't get enough of what we talk about and you want to hear more and more about star wars we apparently could talk for like 72 hours straight about star wars so i mean And besides that, make sure to like, subscribe, share our episodes with your friends. Until next time, make sure to remember, the popcorn isn't real.

real, the popcorn isn't real.

Chasing clues through the silver screen, wishing for a tale that's unseen. Hold my hand through this hazy spiel, the popcorn isn't real. Behind the curtain, there's nothing to feel. The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real The craft of fiction within fiction's mind Searching for secrets we'll never find Every clue, just a future we steal the popcorn isn't real we whisper theories but they all fade a fleeting ghost in a midnight parade holding on to that surreal appeal the popcorn isn't real behind the curtain there's nothing to feel the popcorn isn't real caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real

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