TV

I Was Wrong About Darth Maul

I am one of those all things considered Star Wars fans. I have seen every movie, I watch and I am currently watching all of its TV series, and I have played a fair number of the videogames, and read some of the comics and novels. But it is easy for fans such as myself to forget that there are millions of people – possibly even billions – for whom Star Wars is just the live action films (though this might change post Mandalorian). Earlier this year, I decided to marathon all of the completed works in Star Wars: the saga films, the two spinoff features, The Clone Wars and Rebels. And as I finished watching Solo, I once again tried to put myself in the shoes of the casual fan during that inexplicable Darth Maul cameo. There had to be a lot of people out there scratching their heads and going “Hang on; isn’t this guy dead?” I also love how the almost Force-free Solo just can’t resist having Maul summon his lightsaber and ignite it right before ending his call with Qi’ra despite having no real need to do so. Maybe Disney was worried audiences would forget that they were watching a Star Wars film if there wasn’t at least one lightsaber scene.

Onetime prequel trilogy lackey Darth Maul became canonically alive but not quite well a decade ago (Holy shit!) in Clone Wars‘ third season. Having survived both getting chopped in half and falling into a bottomless pit at the end of The Phantom Menace, the ex-Sith lord ended up on a junkyard world and over the years turned himself into a giant metal spider cyborg while also going completely insane, consumed by his hatred of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his abandonment by his master, Darth Sidious. Maul’s Wookiepedia page makes it all sound so much cooler.

I don’t remember when exactly I became aware of Maul’s resurrection, but my reaction was an ESPN-esque “C’mon man.” He was never exactly my favorite character; five years ago, I went on this deeply un-charitable rant:

“Hey, speaking of not being able to let go of stuff, what the hell is up with the continuing presence of Darth Maul in secondary Star Wars media? Have you seen that dense, spoiler-filled trailer for the second half of the current Star Wars Rebels season? Guess which spike-headed, full-body tattoo enthusiast with cyborg legs is STILL kicking around a mere five years before ANH? Seriously, fanboys, what is the deal with your obsession with Maul? I get that he was the only cool and edgy thing (in strictly visual terms; film Maul had as much personality as a sock drawer) in a movie that was overflowing with pandering little kid crap but your drawn out attachment to this vastly overrated character is getting insane. Let. Go.”

That was not nice of me. And it leads me to the point I made right up there in the title: I was wrong about Darth Maul. I considered him a one-note edgy badass, good only for generating action scenes – admittedly great ones. I believed that his returning to life was moving Star Wars closer to something like the DC or Marvel Universe than I would of liked; a franchise in perpetuity where characters die and come back to life with alarming regularity, where status quo changes are only ever temporary, and where progression as a concept just doesn’t exist. But Maul as a character was made so much better for it. In fact, its why he’s even a character at all and no longer just some guy who does flips and has a rad sword.

Due to the cancellation and resurrection of Clone Wars (Noticing a pattern here? It’s like poetry; they rhyme.), Maul’s character arc was assembled piecemeal. And while it took years and came together out of order, it works splendidly. It’s not groundbreaking to have a villain motivated by vengeance, but key ingredients to making Maul 2.0 work were bitterness and vulnerability. His near death at Obi-Wan’s hands reduces him to a crazed, broken mess. There’s also this lovely little moment when Maul (out of the loop concerning events in the wider galaxy for a decade plus) finds out that the titular Clone Wars are in progress and he says “So it started without me.” It’s a brutal realization of how little he actually mattered to Sidious’ designs. And this is where Maul’s other motivation kicks in. He desires revenge against Obi-Wan for obvious reasons but he also seeks to throw a wrench in his uncaring former master’s plans.

Since Revenge of the Sith exists, we know that Maul does not succeed at either of those things. He does not, however, give up his pursuit of Obi-Wan (cue this meme). While nowhere near as destitute as he once was, Maul is at another low point when he resurfaces again in Rebels, having lost all of the wealth and material power he acquired from the underworld. But Maul is far from helpless, and here is where he showcases that he learned more than just martial prowess from Sidious. His manipulation of Ezra Bridger would probably have made the Emperor proud if he and Maul were still on speaking terms.

Star Wars: Rebels is the unsung crown jewel of Star Wars‘ Disney era. While the series would have been S-tier even if it didn’t bother with wrapping up Maul’s story, this scene here is perhaps one of the saga’s finest, made all the better by how simple and short it is. While it is a duel – a brief one – Maul’s passing almost feels like a mercy killing. His strange and arduous journey has ended and he is finally at peace. Obi-Wan acts without wrath, despite all that Maul has taken from him. Maul is held by Obi-Wan in his final seconds of life; they share a moment where they accept that their respective parts in this grand galactic tale are at an end. This is further driven home by the following scene, where Obi-Wan passes the Lars homestead and hears Aunt Beru calling Luke.

This not something I ever expected to write but here it all is. In the absolute best possible way, I was wrong about Maul. At the rate that Star Wars is now redeeming one-note, style over substance badasses, I may have to write a spiritual successor to this essay once The Book of Boba Fett has wrapped up.

Watching TV is a Chore

One of my roommates being a couch potato. Photo by me.

My roommates recently made the decision to cut our cable without consulting me. Far from being mad about it, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. On top of all the stuff I watch on streaming services, there are roughly three to five network TV shows that I follow throughout the year and I try to be a good American by watching at least some football. But as you get older, you can’t help but to notice how little time you actually have outside of your various commitments (kids, jobs, grad school, etc). This has slowly dawned on me for the past five years and it has led me to this very unpleasant conclusion: watching more than two shows at a time is basically a second job you don’t get paid for.

Things are going to get very “first world problems” going forward, so buckle up.

In 2010, The Dillinger Escape Plan released their fourth studio album, Option Paralysis. Whether intentional or not, its title essentially foretold the entertainment landscape of the decade that followed, which will almost certainly continue until the end of time. I call this a “problem” only because I don’t know what else to call it: there is too goddamned much entertainment. There’s a million shows on every streaming platform. Network TV is still putting up a valiant fight and some channels – CBS and CW come to mind – are basically trying to be streaming platforms. You like books and comics? The barriers to publishing are lower than ever (and to be clear, that is largely a good thing) and you have access to far more options than there were just 10 years ago. Music has been taking a similar route. And while I’m glad that the video game industry still caters to people who are only interested in single player, every single player title that gets put out now is a 100 hour commitment at least.

A few years back I tried to do a complete, front-to-back re-watch of the entire DC Animated Universe and it fell apart miserably around Justice League Unlimited. The odds of me ever sitting down to watch an all time classic series like Breaking Bad or Mad Men is slightly less than zero. I’ve been sitting on an Amazon Prime membership for several years now and haven’t the slightest interest in watching The Boys or Jack Ryan (though I might crack and cave in once that Lord of the Rings show comes around). I somehow manage to drag myself to the gym three or four times a week despite strongly disliking excercise but I begrudgingly see the necessity of it. Spending more than a couple hours a day watching TV is much harder to justify (please don’t “OK, boomer” me).

It feels more manageable to only follow one or two streaming shows at a time and it helps that I’ve been gradually losing interest in the Arrowverse and every other network show I’ve watched. I’m not sure how I’ll watch football but there’s the rest of the year to figure that out. Life is too short to waste on mediocre TV. As far as I’m concerned, Avatar: The Last Airbender is already the best show ever made and everyone else is just competing for second place. And even then, they’ll probably have to settle for third because I’m certain that The Venture Bros. will be the second best show ever once it wraps up.

It’s still too early to tell how our new cable-less life will effect my weekly productivity. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic; maybe I’ll have time to write more? I dunno, I better go stare off into space and think about it some more…

All of My Wrong ‘Game of Thrones’ Predictions

A forlorn Jon Snow. Image: HBO

I was one of those people who waited until after watching The Lord of Rings before trying to read it. Roughly a fourth of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, I decided that the most profound difference between the books and the films was that if you took the number of speaking roles in Peter Jackson’s adaptation and multiplied them by 10, you would have a near enough number of how many characters are in J.R.R. Tolkein’s magnum opus. Almost a decade later, I began reading A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin – the “American Tolkein,” per Time magazine – in between seasons one and two of its hit HBO adaptation, Game of Thrones. I loved the show and I really liked Martin’s books, but they had the same issue that the LotR books have: characters from the adaptation times 10 equals the number of book characters.

I have now been reading ASoIaF on and off for at least seven years. As of this writing, I have three chapters left in A Feast for Crows. I should be finished with A Dance with Dragons by no later than 2023. My attention span has gotten considerably worse as I’ve gotten older and finishing books has become a chore, even when they are good. Sometimes I’ll set something down for so long that I’ll forget what’s going on in the story and have to start over; such was the case when I read Kevin Smith and Phil Hester’s Green Arrow run (Smith’s comic book dialogue is as dense as his film dialogue). But the sheer bulk of Martin’s tomes makes that strategy impractical. If I started from scratch every time I lapsed on an ASoIaF entry, then I wouldn’t finish any of them. A Wiki of Ice and Fire is an absolute godsend for the uneven reader who can’t remember this or that character or event.

I’m not a big fan theory guy; not in the sense that I don’t like them, rather I’m just not very good at coming up with my own. And a lot of that comes from me being unable to pick up on obvious clues. I was pretty certain that Harry Potter was not a Horcrux, even as many other fans figured out he was immediately after finishing the chapter that introduced the concept. But over the course of my attentive GoT watching and sporadic ASoIaF reading, I managed to come up with some theories of my own. I’m not sure if “theory” is the right word; maybe “prediction” is closer to the mark? Idle speculation? Stuff I wanted to happen? Whatever they are, I invite you to laugh at them with me.

1. I thought Ramsay Bolton would turn himself into the Night’s King I’m leading off with this one because it’s a doozy; my only huge, go-for-broke crackpot theory I conceived for this series. You have to hear me out on this one because A) I built it off of information from the books that ultimately didn’t make it into the show and B) I came up with it in between seasons three and four. There is a Night’s King in ASoIaF but he’s a different character than the Night King (that spelling difference is important) on GoT. The Night’s King was the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch who fell in love with a woman whose description matches that of a White Walker (“with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars”) and the hookup turned him evil and crazy. He ruled over the Watch from the Nightfort and committed numerous atrocities during his tenure as Lord Commander before he was defeated by a coalition of northmen and free folk. I had no reason to think this would happen; it just sounded cool to me and Ramsay was certainly crazy enough to take a White Walker as a lover. But alas, this was not to be, as the legend of the Night’s King didn’t make it into GoT, even though Bran, Jojen, Meera, Sam and Gilly were right there in the Nightfort at the end of season three. I doubt this will happen in the books at this point but it would be awesome.

I thought Asha/Yara Greyjoy and Jon Snow would hook up This was my only ship of the series and like the above, I had no reason to think this would happen. It struck me as a cute and incest free pairing and such pairings became distressingly rare as the show went on. I thought Yara and Theon would help Jon defeat Night’s King/Ramsay and in the process she and Jon would develop feelings for watch other. I’m shocked I didn’t write fanfic of this.

3. I thought Jon would become King-Beyond-the-Wall Jon does go back to the Wall at the end of GoT, but he merely rejoins the Night’s Watch. I predicted he’d be a king, just not of the Seven Kingdoms. I didn’t think Daenerys would die (and certainly not by Jon’s hand) but rather they’d jointly rule Westeros with Jon taking all of the territory north of the Wall. I even thought Yara would join him (the Iron Islands would be decimated by the White Walkers in this scenario). Tormund would of course be his Hand.

4. I thought the Night King put a backup copy of himself in Bran As you can no doubt tell, this is the only recent one I came up with. I thoroughly enjoyed the often hard to see spectacle of “The Long Night,” but I was still disappointed in how the Night King got demoted to a Disc One Final Boss. That was way too easy, I thought. Surely that can’t be it for the massive existential threat this series has been building up to since literally the first scene of the first goddamned episode? Then I remembered when the Night King touched Bran while he was warging in season six. He turned Bran into a Horcrux! I theorized. The Night King has a back up plan! As it turned out he did not and Bran became king of Westeros. I really over thought this one.

I don’t think I’ve ever put so much mental effort into being so wrong. I totally called it on the Iron Throne getting destroyed though.

‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ Take 2

I never thought we’d see it happen, but I’ve been hoping for awhile now that someone would take another stab at a live action Avatar: The Last Airbender. Evidently, series co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and the folks in charge of Netflix feel the same way because that’s what we’re getting. Not a sequel series, such as the almost as great Legend of Korra, or a prequel or a spinoff. A full on remake.

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender is every bit as terrible as you remember – though also kind of hilarious – but personally I feel like it still doesn’t catch enough shit for whitewashing its leads. In their statement, DiMartino and Konietzko give us the assurance of a “culturally appropriate, non-whitewashed cast,” so at least that base is covered. As for everything else wrong with that movie, being better than TLA is an extremely low bar to clear.

I totally missed out on Avatar the first time around; hell, I saw TLA first. I didn’t check out the series itself until 2013, when it became my go to for Netflix-and-chill on hungover weekend mornings. I am living proof that being late to a party is better than not showing up, because I was all in before even finishing the first season. I don’t love Avatar quite as much as Star Wars, Harry Potter or The Incredibles, but at this point it’s planted firmly in my personal canon of “Shit that is Awesome.” Hell, it even inspired one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever written.

The world of Avatar has magic (“bending”), hybrid animals, spirits, otherworldly dimensions, steampunk vehicles and huge cities and continents. I’ve no idea how Netflix is going to visualize all of that, though they did pretty awesome work on the new Lost in Space; maybe they’re ready to step up to the next level. I’m just trying very hard to not think about that other Netflix series that featured mystical kung fu and the occasional dragon. It went…poorly.

The world doesn’t need another live action Avatar adaptation, but I’m choosing to be optimistic about it for the following reasons:

It could not possibly be worse than The Last Airbender. DiMartino and Konietzko would have to actively try to make their live action version shittier and the effort involved to do so would kill them.
No one named Jackson Rathbone will appear in this series.
It could grow the fan base and maybe get newcomers to check out the original show and Korra; like, for instance, certain family members who have weird hang-ups about watching cartoons.
A whole new generation will get to here the words “then everything changed when the fire nation attacked.”
I will probably like it more than the four sequels James Cameron is still making for his Avatar.

See? We have so much to look forward to.

‘Rebels’ No More

A mural of the Ghost crew. Image courtesy of io9.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about who Star Wars Rebels is for. It’s ostensibly an animated kids show on a Disney network but new episodes air at 9 in the evening, a time block fitting for a cable drama series. Think about it like this: you have to stay up later to catch Rebels than to see a new episode of Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead. That’s kind of ridiculous.

My own nitpicks aside, Rebels’ three part finale was an excellent closing that answered most of our questions and gave us some new ones to ponder in a satisfying, anticipatory manner. Ezra’s journey has been delightfully weird and unpredictable, and since there was no way in hell Disney was going to kill off a 15-year-old, having him ride off to God-knows-where with some flying whales (I like to think that whoever created the Purrgil is a Gojira fan) dragging Thrawn along seems like a satisfying answer to “Where do these characters go once the OT kicks in?”

Personally, I feel like the galaxy’s most evil art critic/ultimate cultural appropriator should of just been killed off, like his lackey Governor Pryce. This isn’t because I dislike Thrawn; on the contrary, I find him to be a terrific antagonist, which is why I thought his annihilation would give Rebels the most triumphant possible conclusion. But I get it; fans love him and creators are going to want to use him for future stories. And just like everyone else, I desperately want to know how his unwilling voyage with Ezra and the Purrgil will effect him.

The last minutes of “Family Reunion – and – Farewell” jumps forward to post-Return of the Jedi to give us a peak at the remaining Ghost crew members. It took me a few seconds to wrap my head around the implications of Jacen Syndulla‘s existence and so, uh…yeah, that happened (Kanera shippers all of over the world let out an audible sigh of relief). It’s easy to say in hindsight, but of all the good guy characters on Rebels, Kanan always had the highest chance of dying. And while we all miss him dearly, at least he and Hera’s “will-they-won’t-they” business has some degree of resolution.

Speaking of shipping, Zeb and Kallus had a nice little moment together in which Zeb brought the Imperial agent – turned – Rebel to Lira San to show him that the Lasat had survived the Empire’s extermination. There’s quite a few people in Rebels‘ fandom that are pulling for these two to get together in the romantic sense. I’m not against that per se, but I always thought that the whole “Kallus tried to wipe out Zeb’s people” thing would just be too much for love to overcome, even though the genocide didn’t succeed. I’m not in any way an expert on LGBTQ issues, so what I have to say here carries little weight. For what it’s worth, Dave Filoni is down with your Zeb/Kallus ship.

“Family Reunion – and – Farewell” saves the best and most intriguing for last. Sabine has settled on Lothal (per my headcanon, she totally runs a DIY punk venue in Lothal City) and right before the episode cuts to credits, she meets up with Ahsoka – cosplaying as Gandalf the White, it would seem – to go search for Erza, who is still absent.

Rebels has been through a pretty astonishing amount of change in its four season. It’s crazy to think that it started out as this relatively low-key story about a localized piece of the Galactic Civil War and now it’s giving us space whales and time travel and shit. Even more so than the new movies (which I like), Rebels has really been expanding what we thought was possible in the Star Wars galaxy. Speculation is already rampant on what the next journey of these characters will be and what form it would take. As much I hate to dash people’s hopes and dreams, I don’t think the Rebels crew will make the jump to live action any time soon. No one has ever come out and officially said it, but I strongly suspect Rebels has the same relationship to the Star Wars films that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has with the wider MCU; the TV shows can pull stuff from the movies to work with, but not vice versa. Our burning questions about Ezra, Sabine and Ahsoka will likely come in the form of comics or another animated series.

Then again, Saw Gerrera showed up in Rogue One, so you never know.

Watching Star Wars Rebels has been a pleasure over these last four years. If you are one of those Star Wars fans who hasn’t been feeling Episodes VII or VIII, maybe give this show a shot? It couldn’t hurt.

Grading The Defenders

Marvel’s Netflix experiment will be getting its first real test on Aug. 18, when The Defenders graces our small screens. At the moment, this train is carrying quite a bit of hype and its fair share of baggage as well. I’ve overall enjoyed this corner of the continually growing Marvel Cinematic Universe, but, uh…yeah, we’ll get to that soon. Below are my rankings of all the Marvel Netflix shows we’ve gotten so far, from worst to best.

Iron Fist Let’s get this shit out of the way first: Iron Fist sucks hard. Danny Rand (Finn Jones) was a thoroughly unlikeable lead, the plot kept stretching into 10 different uninteresting directions, the villains were non-entities and the characters who weren’t completely awful were subjected to some extremely stupid twists (Colleen Wing is in The Hand, but they’re actually good! No actually they’re bad but Colleen is still good! Joy Meachum was behind everything the whole time!). Any time IF seemed like it was getting into a groove, something dumb would happen and knock it off course. As much as people complain about the abundance of superhero origin stories, I actually think strictly following that route could have at least made this show a little bit better. Watching Danny learn magical Kung fu in a legendary hidden city would have been much more fun than watching him run around barefoot in NYC, get in board room arguments and talk about Chi. It’s nothing short of criminal that this fun character and the world he inhabits got turned into such a boring chore of a show to watch. It you’re looking for a good Iron Fist story, read this instead. Grade: F
Luke Cage In retrospect, the cracks were definitely starting to show on Luke Cage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty good but Cage‘s meandering second half certainly foreshadowed some of the problems that doomed Iron Fist. I didn’t dislike Diamondback as much as other people did; Erik LaRay Harvey’s scenery chewing was delightful and that powered suit he wears in the last episode is bonkers in that awesome comic book sense. But having him show up out of nowhere midway through the series and giving him a personal connection to Luke’s past that is never previously alluded to didn’t do Diamondback any favors. But occasionally wonky second half aside, there’s a lot to like in Cage: awesome soundtrack, superbly executed flashbacks, fun action scenes and a solid supporting cast. Mike Colter is terrific in the title role, possessing charisma that borders on Chris Evans as Cap-levels of brilliance. And the guy can rock the hell out of Carhartt. Grade: B-
Daredevil Vincent D’Onofrio and Jon Bernthal are beyond amazing as the Kingpin and the Punisher, respectively. There’s really nothing more I could say about those two that hasn’t already been said better elsewhere, so I’m just going to focus on all the other stuff I like about DD. First off, it has the best action scenes of all four of these shows, by at least a mile. And for how much he gets overshadowed by certain other cast members, Charlie Cox is a damn good lead when he gets a chance to shine. For one thing, it’s pretty astounding how effectively he channels Matt Murdock’s Catholic guilt without ever having it spill into melodrama (though the writers deserve credit for this as well) and he sells the hell out of all the lawyer stuff. DD certainly has its share of missteps: the pacing, the Hand business, and Daredevil’s over-designed suit all come to mind. But it set a strong foundation for this Netflix sub-universe while still being pretty great in its own right. Grade: A-
Jessica Jones The key to an awesome Marvel Netflix series is to have an alliterative title, I guess. So how exactly does one go about topping Daredevil? You just take most of what it does well and simply execute it better; Jessica Jones is tighter and more dialed in than its predecessor while also covering much more ground. I’m kind of embarrassed by my complete lack of familiarity with Krysten Ritter’s work prior to JJ, on account of how phenomenal she is here. Maybe it’s because I don’t watch enough TV, but I feel like we rarely get to see women play those tough, abrasive, take-no-shit-from-anyone types that a lot of people seem to like. Ritter as Jones is all of those things, and it helps that she faced off with the most skin crawling-ly evil bastard that the MCU has ever coughed up. David Tennant’s turn as Kilgrave is just…damn. I’m pretty sure I pumped my fist in the air when Jessica annihilated that POS in the final episode. JJ was a blast from start to finish, and I’m both thrilled for its second season and wracked with anxiety over how the showrunners are going to top this incredible debut. Grade: A+

Star Wars Trailers! Star Wars Trailers! Star Wars Trailers!

The problem I have with Star Wars movies is basically the exact opposite of the problem I have with upcoming DC films: I tend to get so excited for them I have to actively fight off impossibly high expectations. And with Star Wars Celebration in full swing (Why am I not there?! Agghhhh!), the hype machine is in overdrive and so is my fanboyism. There’s all sorts of Star Wars news breaking at the moment, but below I’ve outlined my big three takeaways from Celebration so far. Let’s get cracking:

My enthusiasm for gaming tends to go through extremely dramatic and unpredictable ebbs and flows so I have no idea how interested I’m still going to be by the time Star Wars Battlefront II (curiously, it’s the second such game to be called that) is available to play on Nov. 17. But for the time being, this looks cool as hell. It’s supposed to be the first Star Wars game in the new continuity to explore a post Return of the Jedi setting and it appears to also set up the rise of the First Order. I’m a bit iffy on video game stories being made into franchise canon (good riddance, Force Unleashed), but Battlefront II gets the benefit of the doubt for now.

I was totally wrong about Star Wars Rebels concluding with its third season despite appearances to the contrary, but I wasn’t off by much. It’s been officially announced that it will end with the upcoming season four. Truthfully, I didn’t expect this show to last; in addition to the fact that cartoons for kids don’t usually have deep runs, the five years before A New Hope time frame didn’t give its storytellers tons of wiggle room. Nonetheless, the pieces of an emotionally satisfying conclusion are in place, especially since Hera’s somber narration doesn’t imply a happy ending. We know from that Easter Egg in Rogue One that she’ll probably be okay. My credits are on Kanan buying the moisture farm, since I don’t think Disney is about to kill off any 15-year-olds. I’m pretty sure Thrawn will go down too, which would take him “off the board” during the events of the OT. At any rate, I’m glad Rebels will get to end on its own terms, rather than get abruptly yanked off the air like Clone Wars did.

And that wolf! I don’t know what it is, but I love it already!

I’ve saved the best for last: the first trailer (it’s April; there’s going to be several more) for The Last Jedi. I’m super bummed that the elderly versions of Luke, Han and Leia won’t get to share the screen but it’s nice to have Luke back even though the last 10 or so years haven’t been kind to him. Luke took on a mentor role in some of the later post Saga books in the now defunct EU and getting to see that version of him onscreen is going to be treat, especially since Mark Hamill is really selling it with that magnificent beard. The only major plot point we can cull from this is that a despondent Luke, haunted by his failure with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, will be ending the Jedi Order. Everyone – me included – thinks this means Star Wars is trying to move past the Light side/Dark side dichotomy (Luke’s “It’s so much bigger” line is lending that theory major credence). The idea that the Force has more than just two paths was touched upon in the previous season of Rebels via the Bendu character and hopefully it will get explored further in TLJ. I stand by what I said about Star Wars needing to take creative risks and this feels like a step in the right direction.

The Last Jedi comes out on Dec. 15.

Star Wars Rebels is Back on Saturday

Part of me kind of dreads the return of all the fall TV series. I mean, sure, I like Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Timeless, Supergirl and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D but all that viewing feels burdensome at times. Between going back to the gym regularly (hello 2017) and Final Fantasy XV my non-work hours are rapidly eroding. I’m in for a long winter, even without the imminent presidency of the Tangerine Troglodyte.

But Star Wars: Rebels? Hell, yes, I have time for that. The above three minute trailer heralding the second half of season three is a jam-packed doozy. I’m a fan by default at this point, but if you’ve just seen Rogue One (fantastic, by the way) and you’re still craving Star Wars, then start watching this show.

Season three has really expanded the scope of Rebels, something this series badly needed after mostly two seasons spent meandering about Lothal. It looks like that trend is continuing as season three comes to a close. I’m guessing Rogue One really lit a fire under the asses of executive producers Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Greg Weisman because it sure looks like big things are a coming and…possibly the end of not just this season but the whole series?

From what we can gleam from the trailer, the various Rebel cells are coalescing into a larger whole, there’s some familial drama with Sabine, her mother and the other Mandalorians (the darksaber from Clone Wars is back) and oh, shit, that Obi-Wan reveal…hopefully Old Ben will finish Maul off for good this time. This all looks conclusive; now we just need to know what will happen to Kanan and Ezra. Are these dudes even still alive during the events of the OT? I don’t think it likely but we shall see.

Star Wars: Rebels is back this Saturday (Jan. 7). Order a pizza, grab a six pack of some delicious beer and tune in at 8:30 p.m. if you’re on the West Coast.

All Hail the Millennial Nostalgia Industrial Complex

The Millennial Nostalgia Industrial Complex is real.

It reared its head over the holiday weekend in the form of not one, but two marathons. The Harry Potter marathon on the channel formerly known as ABC Family wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but coupled with the Disney channel airing every single one of their original movies, it created a force of devastating nostalgia overload.

Millennials on the older end of that generational spectrum are no doubt already aware of this, but if you’re in that sweet spot between late ’80s and early ’90s? This might be news to you; you are now just old enough to notice that the “Hey, remember how awesome this old shit you loved as a kid is/was?” marketing apparatus is now being pointed directly at you. We saw the beginning of this with the launch of Pokémon GO, and there is only going to be more of it as we get older.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but seeing as Generation X has had to deal with a deluge of hot donkey shit made from adaptations of stuff they loved, we should absolutely be prepared to deal with it. The new Power Rangers movie could very well be awful enough to generate multiple existential crises. Accepting that possibility now will make coping with it later much easier. In the first grade, I used to sprint home from school (we lived in walking distance) to catch episodes of Power Rangers and sometimes I would practice their fighting moves while I watched. Nothing will take those memories away from me; not even a shitty Power Rangers movie.

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend, regardless of what you were doing. If anything, we should feel lucky Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon didn’t decide to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon. That would have been a bloodbath.

On ‘The Flash’s’ Metahuman Problem

The Flash has a serious metahuman problem. That much is a given but the one I’m referring to depends entirely on how invested you are in the show. I like The Flash a great deal and I’m still fully onboard with it even though I’ve been less than impressed with the last few episodes. It’s because I like it so much that I’d like to see the writers tackle this telepathic gorilla in the room: what is up with Barry Allen and his friends running a secret prison under S.T.A.R. Labs?

This is something that’s been an issue since season one, but now that the captured meta population has doubled in light of this week’s episode, in which Flash and the gang subdued all of the rampant Earth-Two villains, it’s laughably impossible to ignore. There are now a substantial number of super-powered people imprisoned in a high tech dungeon without due process by four STEM geeks, only one of whom has any connection to law enforcement (Barry is a forensic scientist). No one on the show appears to be aware of this moral quandary.

What the hell, Flash? Assorted musings below:

These cells are very small and they do not have beds or toilets.
There is no reason to believe the imprisoned metas are getting any sunlight, which is awfully harsh. There’s no yard for these guys to shoot hoops or lift weights in. They’re just living in a glass and steel box 24/7.

Do you know what else regular inmates have that these prisoners don’t? Showers.

S.T.A.R. Labs must have some extremely powerful ventilation and air refreshers; because there’s no way that the metas aren’t pissing and shitting in the corners of their cells.

Are the metas even getting fed? What about water?

Provided they haven’t perished from a gruesome combination of malnourishment and dehydration or asphyxiated from the fumes of their own bodily waste, all of these prisoners have most certainly been driven insane.

Can we please get a whole episode devoted solely to the starving, smelly, now insane prisoners of S.T.A.R. Labs? I’d be fascinated to know more about their day-to-day existence.

Maybe The Flash actually takes place in Earth-Three (or the Anti-Matter Universe in Post-Crisis comics) and Barry and his friends are all villains except their evilness is only manifested through their brutal and callous treatment of captured badguys? Eh…I’m really reaching on that one.

Listen, Flash writers, I get it; this is another one of those things you just don’t want to deal with because it might slow down the story and maybe you guys didn’t even realize the implications of the S.TA.R. Labs prison, but at this point it can’t be glossed over anymore. I know I have zero right to give professional TV writers advice, but you guys really ought to address this in season three. And if you think that’s a boring waste of screen time, know this: one of the all-time greatest DC graphic novels has a substantial chunk of its plot devoted to the imprisonment of rogue metahumans. If Mark Waid and Alex Ross can pull a mesmerizing tale out of that, I don’t see why Flash can’t.

Season three’s finale airs this upcoming Tuesday. Here’s the preview: