Star Wars 7x7: A Daily Bite-Sized Dose of Star Wars Joy

"The Phantom Apprentice" is the 10th episode from season 7 of the Clone Wars, and is indeed the crowning achievement for the series. The writing is top notch - especially the monologues of Maul, and Sam Witwer does a tremendous job with them. The lightsaber battles are a cut above anything else - and in fact, they are, as the credits list Ray Park as "Maul Performance" and Lauren Mary Kim as "Ahso...

Did you hear the rumors? On Wednesday, Variety reported that "Russian Doll" co-creator and showrunner Leslye Headland had signed a deal to create a "female-centric" Star Wars series for Disney+. The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline Hollywood reached out to their own sources, and reported that they were hearing the same thing - although Deadline added that it would action focused and with martial ar...

So, "Brothers" and "Revenge" ended the fourth season of the Clone Wars, and "Revival" kicked off the fifth season. You could be forgiven for thinking that Maul was going to be a huge antagonist in season 5, but it turned out not to be the case. He certainly does cause his share of problems in this first episode, though, and not just for the Jedi and Obi-Wan Kenobi. This time, Maul and Savage are s...

"Revenge" is the second part of a three-part story arc, and the final episode of the fourth season of the Clone Wars (episode 22, if you're in to such things). Among the lessons Obi-Wan learns: not everything you slice in half is dead; Yoda keeps secrets from you that will be to your later benefit; watch out for kicks from cybernetic legs; and he and Asajj Ventress could star in a buddy cop comedy...

We're about to spend time with Darth Maul again! Somehow that rascal managed to survive getting cut in half at the end of The Phantom Menace, and - overachiever that he is - wound up in control of Mandalore! But how did it happen? There are three Clone Wars story arcs that deal specifically with Maul between those two points in time, and as we head into the final stretch with the series, I'm going...

So we don't bury the lede: There's been no new announcement one way or the other about Star Wars Celebration since our last update. For all intents and purposes, ReedPOP is still proceeding as though it's going to happen, and that it's going to happen as scheduled, August 27-30, 2020. To that point, there have been application periods related to Star Wars Celebration that are still happening, and...

Our Sunday conversation this week is a new installment of our Star Wars POP! series - that's "Podcasters on Podcasting," in case it's new to you. I had a bit of a bittersweet moment thinking about the introduction to this, because the one in-person time I met Laura from Force Toast: A Star Wars Happy Hour was at Star Wars Celebration Chicago last year. I was introduced to her by Steve Kirk, the po...

This is what we've all been waiting for, and Dave Filoni and company do treat it as a special event. "Old Friends Not Forgotten" kicks off the final story arc of the final season of the Clone Wars, the Siege of Mandalore story arc, the one that connects the TV series with Revenge of the Sith, and also launches Ahsoka Tano into her post-Clone-Wars adventures. From the moment we got the "Lucasfilm L...

In this, the final formal installment in our series of looks at the Star Wars movies through the lens of hope, we're talking about the last movie in the Skywalker Saga, The Rise of Skywalker. It's interesting to note that, similar to Return of the Jedi, the movie starts off in a very reversals-of-fortune way, which is the kind of storytelling form prescribed by screenwriting guru Robert McKee in h...

In doing my research for these "Hyperspacing Hope" episodes, Solo: A Star Wars Story caught me off guard. Of all the movies I've examined so far, Solo is the one in which I got most caught up. I barely stopped the movie at all to take notes, and the notes I took were the least of any of the movies we've discussed to date. I kept getting sucked into the movie and forgetting what I was there for! An...

This the 9th of 11 episodes focused on the nature of hope as it's depicted in the Star Wars movies, and the 8th out of the nine Skywalker Saga movies we're covering as part of this "Hyperspacing Hope" series related to the TEDx talk I gave in November 2019. (For those of you asking - none of the videos from that event have been released yet. When I hear more, you'll hear more!) Today: The Last Jed...

This is the eighth episode in a series of looks at how the nature of hope is depicted in the Star Wars movies. Previous episodes focused on the movies in order of theatrical release, so we've already gone through the Original Trilogy, the Prequel Trilogy, and The Force Awakens to date. Today, we look at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. From the morally good and hopeful center of the movie (Galen Erso...

The second story arc Clone Wars season 7 - which had been known as "Ahsoka's Walkabout" when it was first introduced to fans at Star Wars Celebration Europe (London) in 2016 - is now complete. On today's episode, I'll be diving back into the "Ahsoka's Untold Tales" panel from that event to see how the original version (or, at least, what we knew about it back then) differed from the final version...

If you've listened at all to Star Wars audiobooks, you've heard Marc Thompson's voice. His *many* voices, as it were, as he typically performs dozens of characters in each novel's narration. And if you've been listening to the podcast this past week, you've heard snippets of his performances as Leia, Luke, Rey, Kylo, Palpatine, and others in The Rise of Skywalker Expanded Edition audiobook. (Thank...

"Together Again" is episode 8 from season 7 of the Clone Wars, and the final episode of the story arc that's been known as "Ahsoka's Walkabout" since details of it were shared at Celebrations past. You know what generally needs to happen by the end of the episode - Ahsoka and the Martez sisters need to escape from the Pykes, and the Martez sisters likely need to be able to get away in a manner tha...

In our final deep-dive episode for The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition (the novelization and audiobook, and thanks again to Penguin Random House Audio for sending me a review copy), we're going to reveal the answer to the biggest question of them all - how did Palpatine survive his fall at the end of Return of the Jedi? On top of that, we're going to address the issue of how that factors into...

In The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition, we're treated to some of Ben Solo's childhood memories. Funny thing is, the memories aren't *his*, per se. They're other people's memories of him as a boy. On today's episode of the podcast, we'll listen to excerpts from the audiobook version of the novelization (thanks again to Penguin Random House Audio for sending me a copy of it!) that reveal those m...

Yes, Rey is a Palpatine. Yes, Rey is a very powerful Force user. And yet, it comes as a surprise when she suddenly manifests Force lightning while she's battling with Kylo Ren for control of the First Order transport on Pasaana - you know, the one in which she thinks Chewie's being held prisoner. Well, one of the great things that The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition novelization does is take u...

Anthony Daniels once described The Rise of Skywalker co-writer Chris Terrio as someone deeply steeped in Star Wars lore (I'm paraphrasing, but that's certainly the gist of it). Well, to explain how Palpatine managed to survive the events of Return of the Jedi, they had to go back about 4,000 years into Expanded Universe (now known as "Legends") history to come up with one of the tools of the Sith...

Remember that briefest of brief scenes in The Rise of Skywalker where we get to see Luke training Leia on Ajan Kloss? Well, the "Expanded Edition" novelization gives us more details about Leia's time training with Luke - lessons she learned that she still uses decades later, as well as one specific training session that bears a resemblance to Luke's own training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Bac...

When I was researching what other Star Wars podcasters were doing as I was preparing to launch my own, one of the ones I particularly admired was Coffee With Kenobi. And so it was a particularly special moment to finally meet host and co-founder Dan Zehr - better known as "Dan Z" to his listeners and fans - at Star Wars Celebration Chicago. He was kind enough to say yes to the one-question intervi...

"Dangerous Debt" is season 7, episode 7 of the Clone Wars series, and the third of a four-part story arc. Interestingly enough, the main thrust of this third part is much the same as the thrust of the third episode in the Bad Batch arc - having been pinned down by the enemy in one fashion or another, our heroes need to escape. And although the escape goes better for Anakin, Rex, Echo, and the Bad...

Still not confirmed by Disney or Lucasfilm or anyone else, but Variety is hearing from multiple sources that Joby Harold has been selected as the new writer for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series at Disney+. Indie Wire is hearing the same thing from their sources - but we never know if Indie Wire's sources are different from Variety's sources, do we? But I digress... On today's episode, we'll talk about th...

We've covered the Rosario Dawson/Ahsoka Tano news in depth, and as of today, there's nothing new to report. But there have been a couple of other casting rumors for The Mandalorian season 2 out there - some well sourced and some less so, some featuring characters returning from season 1 and some brand new to the show. On today's episode, I'll dig into all of them, and evaluate how likely these new...

Remember when Disney reset the Star Wars canon storyline in April 2014? Well, the High Republic publishing initiative - formerly known as Project Luminous - is set to do it again. The clues have been in front of us for years, with the reveal about the "World Between Worlds" in season 4 of Star Wars Rebels, and most recently with the reference to it (also called a "Vergence Scatter") in The Rise of...