#canon is a clone and I'm Dave Filoni

[jo-harrington]

Luminous Beings - Episode 4: Order 66

Art by @monologichno || Beta Read by @undead-supernova Part of the @eddiemunsonbigbang

Summary: The Dragonborn is plagued with tension and uncertainty as Thalia's secrets finally come to light.

Word Count: 9.8k

Pairing: Eddie Munson x OFC (Thalia Trieste)

Warnings/Themes: Star Wars AU, Fluff, Budding Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Torture, and Death, Miscommunication, Distrust, Minor Canon Inaccuracies/Adaptation, Galactic Politics, Criticism of Government and Authority, Criticism of the Jedi, Betrayal, Depictions of Order 66 and the Jedi Purge

Note: This chapter made me nervous, I'm not gonna lie. There have been so many depictions of Order 66 in so much Star Wars media but when you fold such a huge canon event into a fic like this...UGH. I truly hope I did it justice. Thanks to @courtingchaos for giving me a second look at that little snippet and giving me some extra courage, I feel so much better. And yes, if I ever decide to write Thalia's story, I will be pulling a Dave Filoni and writing it again.

Thanks again to everyone for reading.

Luminous Beings Masterlist - Jo-Harrington's Masterlist

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Thank you for reading. Enjoy!

Hyperspace, 10BBY

The atmosphere in the Dragonborn was tense.

No one said a word once they'd gotten off Outpost 86 and jumped to lightspeed.

None of them knew what to say, least of all Eddie.

They'd all witnessed what happened—the Guavians had too—and Eddie knew that he should have said something to his crew at least. He knew he should have gone and said something to Thalia. But as soon as the boarding ramp was shut, he had stomped up to the bridge, barking orders to his friends to get to their stations so they could get the hell out of there.

Now, safe and sound, Eddie’s mind began to race as quickly as the streaks of stars and nebulae that soared past them. He kept flipping switches and turning knobs to keep himself from facing the inevitable. To keep himself from facing the truth.

Thalia saved his life.

Yeah, that was one thing.

And she was a Jedi.

That was the other.

He was almost hesitant to think those words, but once he did, all of the pieces seemed to fall into place. All of the odd things about Thalia that he noticed suddenly made sense. The feeling of calmness that surrounded her, the connection he felt with her.

Did that mean she had read his thoughts? Or manipulated him in some way?

No, that wasn't it. Was it?

He would've known. Wouldn't he?

However, those realizations, those answers, seemed to raise new questions.

Because...she wasn't really a Jedi, was she? She was around his age, if looks were anything to go by; she must've been a Padawan at the time of the Clone Wars. He remembered seeing the names and faces of Padawans on the Holonet, wanted by the newly-formed Empire, and how horrified he'd been when he realized the implication that they'd be hunted down too.

She couldn't have been accomplice to any sort of treason against the Republic then. But there was suddenly no wonder why she had a negative opinion about the Empire now.

If she was a Jedi Padawan, that is.

And if she wasn't?

He'd been around the galaxy a few times. He'd heard whispers of Force-users in hiding, ones who weren't Jedi. They'd been hunted down by the Empire, too. Maybe she was one of them?

He'd never know unless he asked.

He rose from his seat and ordered G'areth and Dayv to keep an eye on things. Then he made his way down to the medbay.

Thalia, of course, wasn't alone when he got there. While he’d rushed off to the Bridge, Jeff had gone to tend to his blaster wound.

Admittedly, the guys didn't know much in the way of medicine. Bacta, stimpacks, and synthskin bandages. That was what they had, what they felt comfortable using. Anything requiring more than that, they could go planetside and seek medical attention.

That was the extent of healing that Eddie expected Jeff, who was a notorious crybaby when he was hurt or sick, to receive. But there was something to be said about having someone take care of you, instead of injecting yourself with a hypo-syringe.

Eddie leaned against the entrance to the medbay and crossed his arms over his chest as he watched D5-TN pass kolto patches for Thalia to apply to Jeff's injured leg. All while Jeff softly, but animatedly, told a story that Eddie—and Dustin, for that matter—had heard a thousand times.

"...and then I said to him, 'Strono, I know I just made you the best cup of Caf you've ever had, but you cannot propose to me. You can have the recipe though.'"

Thalia snickered at the tale Jeff spun, but kept working.

Even from a few yards away, Eddie could feel the calming energy emanating off of her, which caused the bitterness to rise within in him.

The story telling continued, along with hums and beeps and the ambient roar of hyperspace, until Thalia announced, "Alright, you're set." She clapped her hands together as Jeff swung his legs off the bed. "How does it feel?"

"Good as new," he grinned, attempting to jump to his feet, only to falter and nearly fall. She grabbed him as he gripped the edge of the bed tightly, and they worked together to haul him back upright. "Ok, maybe not as good as new, but close enough."

"To be fair," Eddie piped up, startling Jeff and D5-TN but somehow not Thalia. "You weren't in that great a shape to begin with. I've put you in the crosshairs enough times."

Then, for some reason, Jeff turned his attention to Thalia when he said, "Ed gets us into all sorts of trouble, but we've all made mistakes. Ask G'ar about the time he broke his wrist."

"I'm the reason G'ar broke his wrist," Eddie insisted.

"You tell yourself that, captain," Jeff scoffed. "Hey Dusty, you mind helping me up to the bridge?"

D5-TN whistled and honked; he teased about running Jeff over if he fell, which earned a deadpan laugh from Jeff.

Before long, though, they were gone.

And then Eddie and Thalia were finally alone.

The medbay hadn't ever really felt like a sterile place of healing, but it had come a long way since Eddie and his friends had taken their first excursion across the galaxy. If Thalia complained about having kolto over bacta now, she would've had a conniption back then. They barely even had a bandage and a bed to their name.

But now the small medbay had taken up a new purpose since she'd been onboard. It had only been a few days, and she didn't have much by way of luggage or belongings, but the room held the same energy she did.

A cot was set up in the corner, one she insisted on instead of the medibed, and a few changes of clothes set out atop a nearby cabinet. A datapad, a small commlink that he didn't realize she carried, and a handful of credits that, even from a distance he could tell, were a mix of old republic dataries and new imperial ingots.

The pack she'd brought with her to the Outpost lay on the floor by her cot, slumped and misshapen; with everything that was strewn about the medbay, Eddie wondered what might still be inside.

"Is that why you don't carry a blaster?" he asked once he finally found his voice. "Because you have a lightsaber?"

"No." She shook her head.

"So you don't have a lightsaber?"

She paused as she cleaned up the supplies she used for Jeff, then glanced up at him. She inhaled slowly. Pensively. 

"Now you're just putting words into my mouth."

Any joy or excitement that the child that still lived inside Eddie might've felt at the prospect of there being a real lightsaber aboard his ship was immediately extinguished when he began to demand answers from her.

"Why didn't you just tell me? Us," Eddie questioned desperately. "We're outlaws too. Criminals. It's not like we'd have delivered you to some imperial labor camp on a silver platter."

"Ignoring how...absolutely idiotic you sound to even suggest that," Thalia began with a scoff. "Say I did trust you not to sell me out; how would that conversation have gone? 'Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm in need of your services and, oh, by the way I can use the force and need to hide it from the empire?'"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then how would you have liked to find out a secret that countless beings need to keep in the name of self preservation? Because I think saving your life is a pretty appropriate method. You're welcome, by the way."

He took an involuntary step back at the venom in her words, but recovered quickly.

"Thank you," he said softly, then pivoted back to the original topic. "I don't know another way that wouldn't have made me question everything, but some kind of indication that I was working with a fugitive Jedi would've—"

Thalia immediately squared her shoulders and crossed the distance so she could press a finger into his chest.

"I want to make one thing clear," she said, practically through gritted teeth. At this distance, her eyes even looked glassy with unshed tears, and Eddie felt his stomach drop, knowing that he was the one who caused them, in one way or another. "I am no Jedi."

Wait.

"What do you mean, you aren't a Jedi?" Eddie scoffed. "Of course you are. You just said you had a lightsaber...and you saved my life...and there's that feeling of—"

"There you go again, Moonsun," she said, voice more lighthearted than it had just been, as she poked fun at him. And she quite literally poked him again, prodding the same place that she'd jabbed him to get her point across just moments ago. "Putting words in my mouth. I didn't say I had a lightsaber. And I didn't say that I didn't have one."

"Do you have a lightsaber?"

"Not with me." Eddie clapped his hands together and just about shoved his finger in her face in triumphant mockery, but she continued. "But that doesn't mean I am a Jedi. And I have never been one either. I know...in the lift, you said that you'd always dreamed of becoming a Jedi...and I'll admit I had that dream fed to me once...but I don't understand how anyone would have dreamed of that life.

"The Jedi were the heroes of the galaxy...and I'm no hero." She held her hands out in front of her and then clenched them into fists. She looked back into his eyes. "But I'll do what I must to keep people safe, Eddie. To keep people alive."

If Eddie had been demanding answers from Thalia in the medbay the night before, his friends were absolutely relentless come morning. It seemed like the chance to let their thoughts and feelings simmer meant that they didn't carry the same chip on their shoulders as he did; they'd not only had time to process what they'd witnessed on Outpost 86, but also what Eddie had told him when he'd returned from confronting Thalia.

To be fair, after they'd parted ways, Eddie also cooled down and cleared his thoughts.

And Thalia answered their questions good-naturedly, as she had before. As if they were still asking about simple things, how the weather was on Dantooine, instead of questioning the workings of the force.

"Can you float things?"

"Sometimes."

"And can you read minds? What color am I thinking of right now?"

"Blue."

"Woah."

"But that's because you're staring at my hair, Dayv."

"Oh, kriff, you're right."

"Have you ever met Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

Even Eddie looked up from his bowl of oats at Jeff's question.

Thalia was frozen in her seat, spoon just inches away from her mouth; her eyes darted around the table to each of the guys as they stared expectantly back at her.

"Eddie has a great impression of General Kenobi," Jeff added, as if the context would help. Thalia's eyes drifted to Eddie and she lifted a single brow in question. "Uh...well...he used to. When we were kids."

"I probably do a better impression of the Emperor now, to be fair," Eddie snickered and ducked his head back down to his breakfast. Still, curiously, he glanced up at her through his bangs. "So...did you ever meet him?"

"I'm..." she put down her spoon and ran a hand through her hair nervously. "No. I didn't."

The questions became more rapid fire after that, especially from Eddie as he picked up where they'd left off before.

"Who did you meet?"

"What did you do?"

"If you weren't really a Jedi, did you live in the temple?"

"If you weren't really a Jedi, how do you have a lightsaber?"

"What really happened when the Jedi betrayed the Republic?"

That seemed to be where the line was drawn for Thalia though, because she slammed her cup of blue milk on the table. She sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest.

The galley went silent, save for the shameful coughs and scraping of utensils along the bottoms of bowls. None of them were brave enough to meet her scathing gaze, especially not G'areth, who'd uttered the fated question in the first place.

D5-TN, who'd been sitting at his charging station in the corner of the little galley, was the first to pipe up. His blunt binary beeps questioned why Thalia looked about ready to murder when the Jedi were supposed to be peacekeepers. That immediately cooled her down.

"Supposed to be, is the key phrase there, Dustin." She let out a dry laugh. "Everyone is supposed to be one thing, and then they turn out to be something else. I'm the living proof of that. I'm supposed to be hiring you guys to haul something to Coruscant for me."

"Does that mean we can dump that container right into hyperspace?" Dayv chuckled.

"Does that mean we're not getting paid?" Eddie added, much more seriously.

"The Jedi were supposed to be peacekeepers,” she continued, ignoring their questions. "Not soldiers for the Republic. But that's exactly what they became, little by little. The Clone Wars were a catalyst for the downfall of the Order, but it had been a long time coming. Hundreds of years, not just over the past few decades. And this wasn't the first time in their history, either."

She got a faraway look in her eyes, and a bitterness in her voice.

"What made a good Jedi was that you could be a good soldier. That's how younglings were chosen as Padawans, even before the Clone Wars. Even before the possibility of war was on the galaxy's doorstep. And I wasn't fit for being anyone's soldier."

"So you weren't chosen?" Eddie asked. "And then you...what'd you say? You worked at a diner on Coruscant?"

"No." Thalia's brow furrowed. "No, that...came after. If someone didn't pass the Initiate Trials or they didn't get chosen as a Padawan, most of the time they got foisted off into the Service Corps to keep them useful. Education Corps...Medical Corps—"

"Well, we know you're not Medical Corps," Jeff interjected and then patted his leg. "You did a better job than any of us could've but, uh, if that was your job, I would be concerned."

The mood in the room lightened as everyone laughed and returned to their meal.

"No," Thalia continued serenely. "I was in the Exploration Corps. We would travel across the galaxy, scouting and surveying planets. Transporting Knights and Masters to different temples."

"So you've always been a sort of flight attendant," Dayv noted, along with D5-TN whistling his own question about what in-flight snacks were served aboard Jedi Order transports.

"You know," she snorted, "now that you mention it, I guess this was my destiny after all.” It got a laugh out of everyone. “I was assigned as an assistant to the researchers looking into ancient secrets of the Force. I'd always been interested in the history of the Jedi...in the deeper meanings in the ways of the Force. That's why I was shocked that you'd gone on a trip to Moraband. It's a forbidden planet."

"Forbidden?" Eddie smirked and leaned back in his seat. "Sweetheart, nothing is forbidden when there are credits to be had. Moraband is an untouched goldmine."

"It's full of tombs," she argued. "Corruption. Relics connected to the Dark Side of the Force. Even now, the Empire forbids travel there."

"Some senators love their tchotchkes." Eddie shrugged. "They buy, we'll fly."

"It's the ancient Sith homeworld, flyboy."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

Thalia let out a noise of frustration before pointedly turning in her seat so she faced the others more than she faced Eddie.

"Anyway, shortly before...before the fall of the Republic, I got partnered with a Jedi Master named Eno Cordova, who'd been researching ancient force-sensitive civilizations. It wasn't much in the way of travel, so, yes, I still lived in the Jedi Temple to access the archives."

"And your lightsaber?" Jeff scooted closer in his chair. Everyone leaned a little closer, even D5-TN, who rolled off his charging station so he could join the others.

"Was the one that I built as a youngling, ahead of the Initiate Trials," Thalia explained. "It's back on Coruscant. Someplace safe."

"Wait a minute," Eddie butt in again. "Hang on. You're a former Jedi whatever, with a functioning lightsaber, who's in hiding from being hunted down by the Empire...and you live on the Capitol? Right under the Emperor's nose?"

The others made noises in agreement and concern.

"Hidden in plain sight," she offered as an excuse, along with a shrug. "It always made the most sense."

She got a faraway look in her eye then, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

"The Empire..." She squinted her eyes a little in thought. "They might be looking for whoever they can to make an example of now. But back then? After…” She trailed off for a moment. “Well, they weren't interested in someone like me."

Before the others could ask anything else, she excused herself from the table and practically ran out of the galley.

"You know there's nowhere you can hide that I won't find you. This is my ship."

"I could try."

"Well, you happened to pick the one place in the ship where I go to practice the guitar alone," Eddie explained. "So you didn't try very hard."

The escape pod was small, and if Eddie was honest, it probably wouldn't do much in the event of an emergency. It's why they weren't too concerned with blocking it with their cargo. He'd had D5-TN run diagnostics on the life support systems and controls many times, to no avail. And they'd always been so eager to move onto the next job or planet that there hadn't really been time to test it in the safety of a spaceport.

But it was a small little space, away from the rest of the ship, where you could be alone. And they'd all taken advantage of that more than any of them cared to admit.

G'areth had even come to have a little personal time once, back in the early days. That's when the "no jerkin' it in the escape pod" rule was enacted.

It was astounding how quickly Thalia had acclimated to the habits of everyone on the ship, though, if she was here. Either that, or she'd scraped the idea of it from one of their heads with her Force abilities.

"It doesn't work like that," Thalia spoke, as though he'd said the last part aloud, earning a skeptical look from Eddie as he sat on the small seat across from her. "You were projecting that one, Nerfhead."

"Hey," Eddie scoffed. "Bantha brains? Yes. But nerfhead? Absolutely not."

He grinned at the little laugh she let out.

He waited for her to talk, to say anything; usually, he'd be the first one to pry, especially when that thousand-parsec stare that she currently had, appeared on one of his friends faces. He took a different approach this time, though. More along the lines of something his uncle Wane would do when he was lost in his thoughts or his worries.

Usually, for him, it had something to do with his dad.

For Thalia, though, it seemed like the Jedi were the sore spot that sent her into a deep spiral of thoughts.

They sat silently for a moment before Eddie hoisted his guitar onto his lap and began playing a soft trill of notes. A lullaby Wane used to play for him when he was little, right after his mom died and his dad ran the first time, so he could sleep without nightmares.

He closed his eyes as plucked at the strings. He let the sound flow through him, resonate with the space around him. One note after another, time passed slowly but surely, and suddenly Thalia was humming along with the slow melody.

He opened one eye and glanced at her as she watched his fingers move, humming in anticipation of each note to come.

"Do you know this song?" he asked softly as he continued playing.

She made a non-commital noise in response and then shook her head. "I'm not very musically inclined either. Don't ask me to sing. But...there are echoes...in the force. Usually they're tied to objects. Sometimes they're tied to people. Your music amplifies your ties to the living force. It's hard to resist."

Eddie wasn't sure what most of that meant, but knew that he wouldn't try to cheapen it by making a joke about how irresistible he was.

Instead, he said, "That must mean I am a pretty good musician, if the force likes my playing."

She cracked a small smile, but stayed silent as he continued strumming.

"Do you want to know why I find it hard to trust people?" she asked, unexpectedly, after a beat. Eddie was about to answer, but she added, "I would've told you. Eventually. But...do you want to know why I couldn't, at first?"

"Because I don't seem the trustworthy type?"

"Because I've been betrayed by people I thought I could trust before." She looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. "Because even I've betrayed people who've trusted me before."

"Well, I'm not a snitch. None of us are. My friends have kept quiet about worse things than someone being a Jedi before."

"I told you, I'm not a Jedi."

He ignored her, and instead chose to joke with her. "So who did you betray? Do I have to worry about you giving us up to the Empire, instead of the other way around?"

There was a sadness in her eyes when she looked up at him.

"G'areth asked what really happened," she stated, "when the Jedi betrayed the Republic. The Jedi failed the Republic, and were betrayed in return. Which only led to more pain, more betrayal."

"That's cryptic," Eddie whispered. He winced and stopped playing, setting the guitar aside. "Sorry, that was insensitive of me."

"It's ok," Thalia assured him.

She offered her hand out to him, palm flat and facing upwards.

He thought it was just a gesture of peace, so he placed his hand in hers.

And suddenly Eddie wasn't on the Dragonborn anymore.

He was in a library, surrounded by rows upon rows of shelves containing glowing holobooks. Thousands of them.

The last time he'd seen a library of this size...well, he couldn't recall. The Academy on Bracca had a small library, and he had always liked to read, especially when he was younger and looking for escape from his mundane life. But anything he wanted, he could load onto his datapad from the holonet. There was no need for holobooks and no real space for them in his and Wane's flat.

Whoever had amassed this collection must've been very interested in knowledge. Or power.

But how did he get here?

He spotted movement in the corner of his eye, the flash of a shoulder disappearing down one of the aisles.

"Excuse me," he called out. "Could you help me? I think I'm lost."

He tried to take a step forward, but through his body, another body emerged. As though he was made of mist. A phantom.

The figure, decidedly human, took a few steps forward and then stopped and looked back at him.

His heart stopped.

It was Thalia, but younger. Much less worry on her face, lips upturned into a gentle smile.

Her hair wasn't blue, instead an unremarkable, muddy brown and it was longer, pulled into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder. She wasn't dressed in the travel attire he'd gotten used to seeing her in, or the traditional robes that would immediately bring a Jedi to mind. She wore something that was a marriage of the two—a tunic with an unfamiliar emblem emblazoned on the breast, and fitted utility trousers tucked into boots.

"Come on," she nodded her head in the direction she'd been headed. "Keep up."

"Wh-where are we going?" he demanded, but followed nonetheless.

Suddenly, there were more figures around. Jedi Knights and Padawans, he realized as he saw the lightsabers attached to their belts. Thalia had a lightsaber on her belt too.

They weaved in and out of the aisles, sitting at the tables in the middle of the room. The library, which had previously been silent, was suddenly consumed with ambient sounds of whispered conversations alongside the beeping and whistling of droids whirring around.

Was he...was this the Jedi Temple? On Coruscant? It had to be.

He was filled with that deeply-buried giddiness that he'd been trying to hold down since the truth about Thalia came out.

He was in the Jedi Temple. This was the place where the heroes of his adolescence walked and slept and ate and lived. Being able to witness inside the temple walls was everything he’d ever dreamed of. 

He couldn't wait to tell the guys about this.

He tried to take it all in, but was quickly disappointed when the details, the faces, were all blurry. Unfocused and unimportant here.

In this memory, he realized.

Since exploring on his own was futile, he caught up with the younger Thalia, who spoke with an elderly woman in a set of decorated brown robes.

Their conversation meant nothing to Eddie, really, but he tried to keep up with unfamiliar names, places, and titles of books. Zeffo, and The Tales of Light and Life, and something about Master Cordova. Hadn't that been the Jedi that Thalia said she'd been assisting? Did this all have to do with him?

The older woman seemed to get irritated by the end of the interaction, though, as a tight tight smile stretched across her wrinkled face. She still kept her voice peaceful as she offered, "Perhaps if Master Cordova needs all of this information, he could be bothered to return to Coruscant himself, but I'll see what I can do, Miss Trieste."

"Thank you, Master Nu." Thalia bowed respectfully and then turned and continued on her way. Eddie figured that he was undetectable, but he also felt the urge to clumsily bow to Master Nu before he followed after Thalia.

They walked out of the library and out into a wide atrium with marble walls that stretched upwards for hundreds of feet to a domed glass ceiling.

"What did I say about keeping up?" Thalia questioned impatiently a few feet ahead of him.

"Excuse me for wanting to get a good look at things," Eddie scoffed, but closed the distance.

"You'll see more soon enough," she insisted. "We just need to get there first."

They walked through endless halls and down winding staircases. Eddie noted how Thalia would nod and greet certain Jedi respectfully, and how most of them ignored her outright. Only a handful had stopped for a word of greeting, most of them as young as she was—Padawans she must have trained with as a youngling.

"Why don't the others say anything back to you?" he asked.

"Because I'm nobody," she explained. "At least, it felt that way."

"But—"

"W-will you shut up?"

As the words spilled from her lips, a feeling descended upon Eddie, like an inescapable wave from an endlessly deep ocean. A rumble of building anticipation, like boots stomping in tandem, and then a sudden crash of emotion that nearly brought him to his knees.

Pain, fear, panic, despair.

Death.

An explosion as bright as a thousand supernova, then nothing, as uf it was snuffed out in an instant.

Ripples of catastrophic energy hit him again and again. Suddenly the vastness of the Jedi Temple that he had been in awe of began closing in on him as this world attacked him.

Then came the blaster fire.

Thalia seemed to have quick reflexes, and she was able to duck behind a pillar as that first bolt was released from the blaster of an approaching clone. But others weren't so lucky. Eddie, in his incorporeal form and frozen with the assault of his senses, remained in the middle of the hall.

He witnessed the relentless approach of the clones from an intersecting hallway, the flurry of sizzling blaster bolts, and the ignition of at least a dozen lightsabers as their owners quickly sought to defend the onslaught.

It didn't help though, and bodies fell quicker than Eddie could really keep up with. One mis-timed slash of a lightsaber, and suddenly a new wave of pain shot through him. One blaster bolt deflected, ricocheting off a wall, and found its way into the poorly protected neck of a clone trooper, and he was assaulted by another wave.

Screams and cries echoed around him, not just from Thalia or the surrounding Jedi...but from all directions. Every hallway, every corner of the temple.

Every corner of the galaxy.

It was a barrage of the mind. Of the soul.

And Eddie realized that he wasn't simply confronted by his own emotions, his own fear and despair, over witnessing all of this, but also those of beings surrounding him.

His eyes finally shifted from the massacre, to Thalia who was also frozen in fear as she cowered behind that pillar.

No. He wasn't the one being hit with those emotions.

Thalia was.

He only felt it because he was here in her memories.

Blaster fire, clones, and an attack on the Jedi Temple. He had a memory of this night as well, the horror he felt at the news. But his memory of this existed in the safety of his datapad screen. Thalia had lived this firsthand.

She had to survive.

He finally found the courage within him to move. He took several steps towards her and knelt down to her level to offer a hand.

"Come on," he urged. "Let's go."

She ignored him. Looked past him.

"I said let's go."

Her eyes followed every blaster bolt that passed until they slowed, and then stopped.

Eddie could feel the barrage of emotion start to lessen as Thalia took deep breaths and waited. After a few beats of silence and stillness, coldness was all that remained. Emptiness.

And an echo of fear.

"There is no fear," she whispered to herself. Or maybe to Eddie, as her eyes finally focused on him. "There is only peace."

"Well, I'm plenty scared," he whispered back to her.

She hoisted herself to her feet and slowly stepped back into the center of the hallway. She tip-toed over the bodies where Eddie just walked atop them. Through them. She didn't have the luxury of being a ghost here; this was real to her.

Thalia's booted feet toed at lightsaber hilts that fell from limp hands, and she paused in consideration, before she reached the first clone that had fallen in the hallway. She knelt down and pried the blaster from its hands.

"I thought you didn't like blasters," he commented.

She took another deep breath and began, lip quivering. "The force is everywhere. It binds us. Surrounds us. If we focus on it, it can help us find the answers we seek."

She pointed the blaster at him, through him, down the way the clones had arrived. "There are more of them down there." Eddie turned his head and then looked back at her.

"It doesn't take a Jedi to figure that out," he deadpanned, but she ignored him. Then she turned and pointed in the direction they came.

"They're also that way," she explained. "I can feel them. Can you?"

"I don't know, I'm not—" He stopped short as there was the slightest tickle in his mind. Outside of the cold emptiness, he felt the looming presence of danger. The despair, the pain that had assaulted him earlier. Not just the individual feeling of the clones themselves as they attacked, but the carnage they left in their wake.

Yes, if he and Thalia doubled back the way they came, towards the library, they'd encounter clones. But not as many as they would if they soldiered ahead.

"Lead the way, then." He gestured forward to young Thalia, and then followed her as she began to navigate through the sea of corpses. "Why don't you use your lightsaber?"

"I'm out of practice," she explained. "Members of the Service Corps still wear them, but they're more for show. I'm not a soldier, remember?"

"But you'll fire a blaster."

She ignored him again and kept creeping further down the hall. Until she came to a crossroads where several living Jedi ran past, scrambling for their weapons as they fled. Or maybe ran towards the attacking clones to try and defend...

Their home.

"Was this your home?" he asked Thalia.

"That's a stupid question." There was obvious annoyance in the way she flicked her braid over her shoulder and held her blaster at attention.

"There are no such things as stupid questions."

"Just stupid people." It felt like an insult. It was probably meant to be one. "Don't try to distract me."

They kept walking, confidently. Thalia was able to take out a few clone troopers as she came across them, but she had been right. She wasn't a soldier. She was sloppy with her aim, but she was quick to anticipate their movements.

"Why don't you use the force?" he asked as she ducked behind another pillar.

"It doesn't work that way!" She shouted at him.

The momentary distraction led to a blaster bolt hitting the pillar, close to her head, and she fell to the ground as it exploded in with shards of marble and dust.

Eddie felt as disoriented as she was, heard the ringing in his ears that she must've heard. But when it cleared and she sat up, she was immediately alert and attentive.

Especially when she spotted the two figures dispatching of the troopers that had taken the shots.

"Steev! R'sshekh!" Thalia shouted and scrambled to her feet once the coast was clear. They both turned towards her—a young human man and a trandoshan, both with disheveled robes and lightsabers drawn—and started in her direction.

She pivoted, blaster in hand to make sure the coast was clear, before she ran to join them. The human padawan deactivated his saber and pulled Thalia into a relieved hug.

"You're alive," he said, words muffled by the shoulder of her tunic. "They...the clones...they're killing everyone."

"I know, Steev. I saw Master Pace try to seal off the East Wing. There was only so much blaster fire he could deflect."

R'sshekh said something in Dosh, unintelligible to Eddie, but Thalia and Steev seemed to understand. They parted from one another.

"You're right," Steev nodded. "We need to get to the hangar. Get a ship, go to the senate."

"Are you crazy?" Thalia practically screeched. "I'm sure they'll have the hangar guarded. And the senate? The clones aren't acting alone; someone ordered them to attack. We need to get out of the temple as quickly as we can."

"And how do you suggest we do that?" Steev asked impatiently, hands falling to his hips.

R'sshekh spoke again, but Thalia talked over him.

"The service ducts," she said. "The ones we used to explore. If we find the right one, it'll spit us out into The Works."

Steev wrinkled his nose in disgust and scoffed. "Those dusty old tunnels are full of the rotting husks of ancient droids. I'm not going down there again."

"Then do you want to take your chances trying to go out the main entrance?" Thalia asked, voice laden with sarcasm, as she gestured down an adjacent hallway. "I'm sure the coast is clear."

Steev and R'sshekh glanced at each other and then gestured for Thalia to lead them onwards. She looked past them at Eddie and then tilted her head to get him to follow as well.

As if he even could wander off on his own.

The journey was a blur. More winding hallways and stairs, more troopers firing, but Thalia could trust one of her companions to defend her. Especially that Steev kid, who'd jump to her aid and then scold her for being reckless.

At one point, Eddie skipped ahead and tried to whisper in her ear, "Is he your boyfriend?"

"Jedi aren't allowed to form attachments," she snapped at him defensively, then paused. "But yes, he was my friend. And R'sshekh. We were all from the same crèche."

"Well, Steev kind of seems like a jerk."

Thalia looked over her shoulder at Steev, and then sighed. "Yeah. He was."

Eddie noticed her use of the past tense, and he felt a pit open up in his gut.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"No!"

"We've been walking forever."

"The kid has a point," Eddie piped up from the back of the group, earning a scathing glare from young Thalia. "We have been walking forever."

R'sshekh seemed to agree with Eddie and Steev as well, if their intonation was any indicator, and Eddie gestured at the Trandoshan in an "I told you so."

"Thank you, Thalia, for getting us to safety," Thalia said, deepening her voice to match the timber of...well, truly any of them. "Thank you for having the good sense not to follow us blindly as we got ourselves killed." She made a crude hand gesture to them all to punctuate her point and then kept going.

Eddie had lost all sense of direction by this point. Up, down, left, right. They were in a hallway that didn't seem like a hallway anymore. He wasn't even sure they were even in the Jedi Temple, but the distant sound of blaster fire and the ignition of lightsabers assured him that, yes, they were.

The three older teens had picked up some stragglers along their stealthy escape from the temple. Another padawan with a wounded shoulder, her arm now stabilized and tied to her torso with a ripped piece of Steev's robe. They’d also found two younglings cowering behind a pile of twisted trooper bodies. R'sshekh took to holding each of the small children's hands as they continued on their way.

Eddie felt aware of every step he took, felt each of their weariness and the sting of any injuries, because Thalia felt them.

And when fear suddenly gripped her, he felt it too.

"Go on ahead," she told the others as she stopped in her tracks. "The old tunnels start up ahead. And then we keep going until we hit the pipeworks. We can take a break there."

All the kids groaned but kept going.

Until it was just Thalia and Eddie.

"You wanna show me something?" he questioned.

"Not specifically," she responded with a sigh. "But I had noticed something then...so you need to see it, too, now."

She waved him over and revealed the vent she had hidden behind her. It was a small grate, big enough for one of the younglings to crawl through maybe, if that was the reason she noticed it. But as he got closer, he saw that it overlooked, what he believed to be, the vast Great Hall of the Jedi temple.

He couldn't even enjoy the majesty of it—the towering statues or aurebesh carvings that lined the ancient walls, or the way that the rising sun streamed in and made the marble pillars sparkle—because it was full of the dead. Jedi and Clones alike. And there was a whole legion of clone troopers spread throughout the hall, armed and ready for any living Jedi to be taken care of as they attempted to escaoe.

"Turns out these tunnels weren't such a bad idea, after all," Eddie stated lightly.

"Watch," Thalia hissed.

Two cloaked figures strode through the hall then, from the far threshold that led into the depths of the temple, back towards the steps that led out to Coruscant.

A cloud of darkness seemed to follow them, as dark as the cloaks that they wore. Eddie could feel it, even from the distance, with half of the Great Hall and the thick marble walls separating them. It slithered up his throat, grabbed him, choked him.

But he couldn't look away.

One of the figures stopped and surveyed the devastation, and they toed at the leg of a nearby body, before cackling. Twisted hands raised towards the sky in vile jubilation, and then returned to their limp position before the hooded figure.

"Good, Anakin, good," the familiar, rasping voice echoed through the hall. The other figure dropped to one knee, and dropped their head in deference. "You have done well, my new apprentice. Now, go and bring peace to our Empire."

Eddie felt a chill in recognition. He knew that voice. Everyone knew that voice—

Chancellor Palpatine...The Emperor.

—And he knew that name. Or maybe he didn't, not really. Not at all.

Anakin Skywalker, one of the greatest heroes of the republic.

Eddie recoiled from the vent and shook his head.

"No," he forced out through gritted teeth. "No. It can't be."

"I thought so, too," Thalia said sadly, and when she finally turned to look at him, he saw tears dripping down her cheeks. Kriff, he felt his own tears begin to sting the corners of his eyes. "But it was true."

Anakin Skywalker. General Skywalker. The poster boy of the Republic. The Hero With No Fear. How many interviews had he done on the HoloNet, how many times had Eddie and his friends hero-worshipped Anakin alongside his fellow Jedi? How many times had Eddie considered spending the few measly credits of allowance he got from Wane on a war bond just because Anakin's face had been plastered on every screen in the Terrace?

"He wouldn't betray the Jedi."

"He did."

"He was a hero."

"He was seduced by the Dark Side."

"He wouldn't do that...the Jedi were his family. His friends."

Then there was an echo in the air, as Thalia spoke to him through the Force.

"Anakin betrayed his friends. And so did I."

He was about to ask for clarification when was thrown from the tunnel, and the world swirled around him. Images flashed before his eyes of the ragtag group of kids climbing out of a filthy pipe in The Works on Coruscant. Their slow trek across the city to CoCo Town where they found refuge at a diner. Dex's Diner. The days and weeks that they stuck together to care for each other.

He felt like he was going cross-eyed at the sheer speed and volume of the information being filtered directly into his mind; it was almost painful, and Thalia was in control. He didn’t understand what she was trying to convey, until he followed her younger self through the day her world changed.

The moments leading up to it were deceptively quick. A day as uneventful as any, as she volunteered to venture out alone and find supplies. But she’d made a stupid mistake. Sympathetic to the cries of the younglings who missed the only home they’d ever known, she’d ventured back to the Temple through the tunnels they’d escaped through to fetch belongings that couldn’t be replaced. And upon her return? She was chased down winding streets by the Coruscant Security Forces and captured.

Then he was in a room, lit by only a faint, red light emanating through the grated floors. He couldn’t move, no matter how much he thrashed and shook. His arms and legs were locked in place; he could see Imperial interrogation droids floating in his peripheral vision, and a scan grid hanging menacingly overhead, waiting to be lowered onto him.

“Let me go!” He tried to yell, but the voice that came from his mouth was not his, but Thalia’s. “Help! Help me!”

A blast door opened and clone troopers filed in, along with a ghastly figure dressed in black and red. A Pau’an male who looked sickly and monstrous, but grinned menacingly as he approached. 

“You’ll tell us where they are,” he droned in a terrible voce. “It. Is. Inevitable.”

More images flashed before Eddie’s eyes, of this same man. Healthy and friendly, Hen-ri, a Jedi Temple Guard that had known Thalia and her friends; how had he become…this thing? Corrupted by the Empire? A slayer of the Jedi, instead of a protector of them.

Just like Anakin had been.

“You’re gonna have to kill me,” he…Thalia…spat.

“If that’s what it takes,” he droned and waved to the troopers.

He couldn’t dwell on his emotions for much longer because pain was the only thing he felt. Shocks and burns from the scan grid, injections from the floating interrogation droids. 

They starved her, beat her.

Until she begged them, whimpered for them to stop.

Until she gave them the location of her friends.

Eddie felt the hot, burning pain in his heart as he felt the words fall from her lips; for a second, he couldn’t blame her, as his head drooped weakly and the world went dark.

But when his eyes opened again…there stood a beaten and bloody Steev standing across from him. Across from Thalia. He was being held back by troopers, Jedi robes drenched in blood, as he thrashed and screamed and bared his teeth.

Thalia blinked once. Twice. And then her gaze shifted back down at the ground, and saw the bodies of the children–the younglings and R'sshekh–strewn about the floor. Dead.

There was a flash of light, burning and hateful and shockingly red.

And Eddie was thrown from her body as she screamed, as chaos reigned as her control of the Force became untethered. The sight of the walls of the room caving in on themselves was last thing he saw before he returned back to the real world.

He gasped for breath as he was shoved back into his body in the escape pod. Back with Thalia, the real Thalia, older and wearier and with blue hair. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he immediately rubbed his eyes to get them to stop.

He felt sick, the images of those kids burned into his eyelids. The sound of Steev and Thalia’s screams echoed in his ears.

"What was that?" He barked out the demand, voice scathing and viscous. "Why did you show me that?"

Thalia pulled her hand back to her lap; she cradled it in the other hand, as though she was protecting it from further harm.

Maybe she was...but not harm to herself. Harm to him. Harm that she caused him; he still felt the phantom pains of her torture. And he didn't want to snap at her again, after feeling the barrage of her anguish, but he did.

"Thalia!" She jumped at his bark. He demanded answers. "Why?"

"Because you had to know!" She snapped back at him. "I betrayed them."

"You...you survived." He shook his head incredulously. "You had to survive, you were just a kid too. But why would you show me that way?" he questioned. He got to his feet and stood over her. "Why would you take me though the day that the order fell...and then..."

"How else could I tell you about the most shameful days of my life?" she asked, getting to her feet as well. "I've relive those days enough. Constantly. My mistakes. My weaknesses. You think I just survived? I…I chose to survive rather than die for those kids…for my friends. Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't die for your friends?"

She breathed heavily and stared directly into his eyes, daring him to lie to her. When he didn't answer, she grabbed the front of his jacket desperately.

"Your friends trust you. Just like my friends all trusted me. And I let them down."

"It's in the past," he muttered. "You have to move on. You can't fix it...can't change it."

"And that's exactly what I'm doing," she nodded. "It's what I do next...how I fix those mistakes...that's important.

"I showed you that day because I needed you to...to know. You found out what I am before I got the chance to tell you anything, Eddie. I wish...I wish I could've told you the truth but I needed to know I could trust you with all of it. You're still...you're still angry, still confused abut why I couldn't; I can sense it in you.

"But I need you to understand that the capability for betrayal lies with more than simply trusting someone. I betrayed my friends…I brought them to certain death, even though I said I would die for them. Which is why I did it this way, why I had to make sure I could trust you with my secrets before I revealed them to you."

Why would she do that? Why would it matter?

He was not a jedi. He was just a smuggler. He was nobody, nothing, a stranger. He wasn’t a part of her journey, wasn’t a part of anything. And she'd deliberately put him and his crew in danger. Even more danger, now that he knew that she'd escaped...not only the purge of the Jedi Order, but the clutches of the Empire itself.

So why had this experience shaken him as badly as it did?

He took a breath, swallowed, and steeled himself; he still wasn't comfortable with Thalia being able to read him as easily as she was able to.

"Well, thanks for trusting me with that," he said dismissively. "It's been nice to meet the real you, Thalia. It'll just be a few more days until we'll arrive on Coruscant and you'll be on your way."

"Eddie, please—" She stared at him with pleading eyes but he refused to look, refused to understand what it was she was trying to convey.

"And you don't have to worry about me or any of my crew keeping this a secret. We know how to keep our mouths shut."

"But that isn't enough," Thalia snapped.

"What do you want then?" He shook her hands off of him and stomped out of the escape pod. "Do you want...absolution? Is that what you're looking for? You can't forgive yourself? Well newsflash, I can't forgive you either; I don't even know you. You know what? You want my help? I've heard there are cults in the Unknown Regions who do things like that. We can change course right now."

"I need you to listen to me!"

"I think I've heard enough!"

There were aggressive beeps and the sound of footsteps walking down the ramp to the lower deck.

"What's going on down here?" Dayv demanded.

"It sounds like you let a bunch of Rancors fight," G'areth added.

D5-TN rolled over to Thalia and questioned if she was ok through a series of gentle whistles.

"If she's ok?" Eddie scoffed. "What about me? I'm your captain."

"Hey." Jeff crossed the short distance and slapped a hand on his shoulder then shook him a little bit. "It'll be ok, just take a few breaths. Why're you so upset?"

"Let Miss Mind Meld over there take you on a journey across time and space and you'll understand why I'm upset," Eddie scoffed and threw a hand out at Thalia. "But I'm sure if she did, you'd all want to toss her out into deep space. I think we were better off when she was still keeping secrets!"

"Did she tell you what's in that container?" Jeff asked.

"No!"

"I was about to, actually," Thalia cut in. Her brows were raised expectantly and she had her hands on her hips in a stance that, Eddie recognized, mirrored Steev's.

"Well, I wish you wouldn't," he told her weakly. "I can't deal with anymore...emotional turmoil today."

She muttered a few choice words under her breath and then began walking down to the cargo bay. D5-TN was hot on her heels, and Dayv and G'areth were soon to follow.

"C'mon," Jeff urged Eddie lightly. "It can't be worse than...whatever that was."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Eddie grumbled, but let his friend push him forward.

"The day the Republic fell," Thalia recounted as she stepped around the container, pressing seemingly unassuming panels at random intervals until a small panel slid aside and revealed a Datapad. "I led a bunch of younglings and initiates to safety. And a few weeks later, I was the reason they were captured and killed by the Empire. I would've died too...but...you know, when you witness something so harrowing as your friends dying...something inside of you dies, too."

She tapped the screen of the datapad over and over, typing long strings of code into it.

"I escaped and I honored my friends by surviving. But I vowed never to use the Force again. The thing about that is that the Force has other plans for you sometimes. So, a year ago...I was presented with a new...opportunity. Not only to live, but to do some good. To protect force-sensitive individuals, the way that I couldn't do when I was younger."

The front of the container hissed and then popped open. It slowly creaked forward, like a door.

"And so, I smuggle things...along with a network of other freelancers," Thalia continued, striding towards the front of the container. "Taking precious cargo, like this cargo, someplace safe."

She stopped at the opening and waved her hand towards herself.

"It's okay," she said softly. "You guys can come out now."

The crew of the Dragonborn stood frozen as almost a dozen figures emerged from the cargo container.

Two adults, a short togruta woman and a towering Nikto male. And then...kids.

Two adolescent togruta boys who hovered behind who was obviously their mother. And a little Zabrak girl who held the Nikto's hand. A twi'lek boy and girl, obviously siblings if their coloring gave them away; the older sister held the boy back when his eyes lit up at the sight of D5-TN. After them stomped out a short Theelin female with bright red hair and an awful attitude if the expression on her face was anything to go by.

And then humans. Run of the mill humans. A brother and sister who seemed to be bickering. And a tall girl who was probably more of an adult than a child, but her gangly limbs and round cheeks gave her more of a childish quality.

They all stopped and stood under the scrutiny of Eddie and his crew as Thalia went to each of them and reassured them that everything was safe and they were going to be ok.

"They have food and other supplies in there." She then turned to the group of smugglers. "And they've all traveled a long way, along this...thing...called the Hidden Path. To keep surviving Jedi and other force sensitives safe from the Empire. They could've been sent anywhere but they, unfortunately, got stuck with me for the last leg of their journey."

She held her hands out beside her, as if to say Here I am, take it or leave it.

Everyone turned and looked at Eddie then, who stood there in silent shock. He, of course, was a mess of conflicting emotions. Anger lingered, confusion, relief that this was what they were hauling across the galaxy, and then, deep down, fear. Because, as he had pointed out earlier, they were heading to Coruscant.

The seat of the Empire.

Teaming with Stormtroopers and, oh yeah, The Emperor.

And suddenly he wasn't just faced with the reality that Thalia was the one they had to keep safe from possibly being found. But all of these people, too. People he hadn't even realized had been on his ship.

People who were packed into that container like a can of burra fish.

He couldn't put any words to what he was thinking, so he simply raised a hand to cover his mouth, and he shook his head...confused.

"I have some friends and a ship waiting for me on Coruscant to take them to their final stop on the journey," Thalia explained. "To this planet...Bogano. It's an abandoned planet that Master Cordova had...rediscovered. Before the fall of the Order. Before the Purge. The only others who knew about it were his assistant...and his datapad. Both of which are conveniently on this ship."

She smiled a cheeky little smile at her own joke, then went somber.

"Master Cordova...well, he's one of the Jedi who are still unaccounted for. But...I have hope."

The gangly girl laid a comforting hand on Thalia's shoulder and gave her a shaky smile.

"We have hope, too," she said softly.

Thalia patted her hand thankfully and then looked back at the guys.

At Eddie, specifically.

"It's not much," she said with a sense of finality. "But it's a start to fix what it is I did...all those years ago. I have a list of people that can be saved, and I will do everything in my power to save them. To honor the ones I couldn’t."

"Wait a damn minute," G'areth piped up, voice laden with confusion. "If you had another ship...a crew on Coruscant, why couldn't they have just met up with you and the Assob's on Nar Shaddaa? Taking these guys straight to this...Bonago."

"Bogano," Thalia corrected him.

"Whatever." G'areth rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, and does this really mean we're not gonna get paid?" Jeff added.

"You're going to get paid," Thalia assured him.

"Then I don't see why we need to ask anymore questions," he joked. "We're on course to Coruscant, end of story."

"Well, I wanna know," Eddie finally spoke. He stepped out of the group with his friends and eyed each of the newcomers—if you could call them that—aboard the ship, then at Thalia. "I want to know why you needed our help with this. Why you sought me and my crew to help you haul a bunch of...runaways halfway across the galaxy, incognito. Instead of using your own ship. Your own crew."

"They're not really my crew," Thalia argued, but Eddie's brows jumped as high as they could and he grit his teeth impatiently as he waited for an answer. "Alright. I did my research, I sought you guys out. I sought you out, Eddie, because these kids...are not the only people I'm trying to keep safe from the Empire. They're not the only Force sensitives I'm trying to save."

She took a step closer to him, putting them practically nose to nose, and dropped her voice low.

"You told me on Outpost 86 that you'd always dreamed of a day that the Jedi would come and tell you that you belonged with them. That they'd take you away from your miserable, boring life," she whispered.

His heart dropped into his stomach, anticipating what she might say next.

Still, he had the audacity to whisper back, "I don't think I used the word miserable."

Thalia, of course, scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Then she said, "Eddric Reckless Moonsun. Consider yourself rescued."

Next Chapter: When Ambush Comes to Shove

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[digitalwizard01]

I'm so conflicted about Dave Filoni rn cause on one hand I do really appreciate and enjoy a lot of what he's done in Star Wars like Clone Wars and Rebels but at the same time I'm getting a little tired of his method of "pulling toys out of the toy box" and putting characters in stories where they don't really belong and his tendency to overwrite other canon stories from the books and comics. Like why did he change Kanans Order 66 backstory in Bad Batch when he already has an established story in the comics? How is Ventress alive in Bad Batch when she died in Dark Disciple? Why are we detouring to a jedi temple to have a full episode revolving around Luke and Ahsoka in a show about Boba Fett becoming a crime lord? Like I get you wanna play with your favorite characters, but at least try to make it make sense in the story and stay consistent with what has already been told

[david-talks-sw]

The fact that Dave Filoni called Anakin “the greatest Jedi ever” is proof that he’s bias AF. His anti-Jedi rhetoric is bupkis.

I wonder if he means "the greatest" in terms of in-universe fame...?

Dunno if this is the case in Canon (then again Dave Filoni blatantly ignores any *non-motion* transmedia elements in Canon so meh), but in Legends he's:

"Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with no Fear™, handsome, dashing, the face of the Republic's army during the Clone War, the only Jedi who tried to resist the nefarious Order's coup and was treacherously murdered for it".

And I seem to remember that, in Canon, he's like the Jedi Temple's superstar anyway, every Jedi recognizes him on sight. I mean, that line from Baylon about "Anakin speaking highly of Ahsoka" must have some meaning beyond artificial personal stakes.

So from a fame and a "power level" standpoint... sure.

He's the greatest.

I'm giving Filoni the benefit of the doubt.

While I've talked about why Filoni's entire headcanon about the Jedi doesn't track with what George Lucas' intended narrative, I think it's worth acknowledging that Filoni's bias comes from part of his duties while directing The Clone Wars was.

One of the goals of TCW was humanizing Anakin, expanding upon his character make him go from "a character whose only purposes is to embody the themes presented in three movies based on the matinee serial format" to a relatable person, a good man, the hero Ben mentions to Luke in A New Hope.

I think it's normal that he'll see Anakin in a more positive light.

Also (and full disclosure this is just me theorizing I am no authority on any of this so if turns out I'm wrong just come right out and say so)...

I'm pretty sure that Filoni, Lesley Headland and most of the recent Star Wars authors are all Gen X, raised by baby boomers forced to conform to society, obey authority and have proper decorum (boys don't cry!) all of which they strove to rebel against. Add to that the corruption they witnessed growing up and coming out of high school, and you see a kind of jadedness emerge. "The rules aren't as black and white, the world is grey."

So while most of them and the boomers despised the Prequels upon release, a few of them projected a more individualistic headcanon onto those movies that fit with where their head was, at the time.

As such: Anakin isn't interpreted by them as a cautionary tale about what happens when you're greedy. He's a misunderstood rebel, a non-conformist who has his flaws but is ultimately good at heart. Which isn't entirely inaccurate, but it is very clearly an embellishment of a character who will one day become a space nazi.

The fact is... the Prequels were made by a boomer. One with very liberal values and who was himself a rebel, but a boomer all the same. The whole point of his story is...

"we all must come together and fight as one, if push comes to shove; we must all be compassionate and selfless if we are to survive; don't be greedy, let people go when it's their time to leave".

And then he makes the Jedi say that, making them beacons of truth and good and compassion in his fairy tale, now aimed at Gen Z kids.

Gen X-ers hear/read that and project all the boomer BS they had been told onto the Jedi...

"oh, so the Jedi are saying you shouldn't love yourself, you shouldn't be yourself, you should give up on what makes you an individual to fit in, you shouldn't feel any emotions"

Because nobody is that good, realistically, right?

This happened in other mediums. The one that comes to mind on the spot is the relationship between Mufasa and Scar.

In The Lion King, Mufasa is strong and noble, Scar is weak and conniving. Simple enough. Around that same time, in A Tale of Two Brothers, young Mufasa is shown to be pretty nice with Taka (Scar), who is framed as a spoiled brat to begin with.

Skip to the 2019 remake, and it's hinted Mufasa gave Scar his wound, and in The Lion Guard they explain that Scar got his nickname from Mufasa mocking him for a misadventure.

He went from being a noble king to a bully who had it coming, Scar is an underdog who got picked on. Because again: nobody is that pure, right? Fairytales be-damned.

Nothing is black and white, it's all grey.

So yeah, long story short I do think that Filoni being part of the generation that wasn't the target demographic but was old enough to retcon the crap out of the Prequels also plays a role into his view of Anakin.

[bg-11]

Ripping into TCW's A Friend in Need, in which every character is awful.

I'm going to be upfront about this: I do not care for TCW, I never really have. See, I've always been a big stickler for continuity, even as a kid, and by this point there was *plenty* of Clone Wars related content that had been set across the whole 3 years of the war. The big issue of course was always Ahsoka, who of course just couldn't neatly slot into that timeframe at all because there were already plenty of comics that made it clear that Anakin never had a Padawan. She was a square peg the writers of TCW had jammed into a square hole. Of course, Ahsoka wasn't the only example, it was clear the writers never really gave a shit about what other, better writers had already established, and so retcons and continuity errors were rife with the series, only increasing as it continued. Exactly the kind of thing I was leery about. I was willing to give it a chance when it first came out, but that optimistic goodwill didn't really last too long.

I watched it on-and-off when it came out to check it out, I didn't want to judge it without having seen it. It was the same when I heard about how obnoxious Karen Traviss' Republic Commando series was, I wanted to see if that was as bad as people were saying it was (it was worse). By Season 4, I was pretty ready to write it off, the retcons were getting bigger and bigger (Even Piell getting killed off before his Canon death in Coruscant Nights, changing Asajj Ventress' backstory and fate contrary to what it was in the Republic comics, treating the Nightsisters as if they were literal witches who could use actual magic, the list goes on, but those were my biggest gripes). One episode that stood out to me though, was A Friend in Need, an episode in which pretty much everyone except for Artoo is stupid, malicious or both. At the time, I thought it was the worst episode of TCW yet. Has that changed since then? Yeah, but I'd still count this episode as the dumbest.

For whatever reason, the episode popped into my head recently after...I don't know how long its been, relatively shortly after the episode aired, I guess? And, I don't know, I guess I wanted to take a jab at picking it apart? I've never really done this before, there've been a couple of times when I've wanted to examine bad media, but for whatever reason, I never really got to it. So, fuck it, better late than never, I guess. So, I rewatched the episode to get it fresh in my mind. As the old EU was still Canon when this aired, I'm putting it through the lens of it still being Canon when I talk about it.

There's a good reason why my friends call me a masochist, I guess.

Things start out on Mandalore, where Ahsoka is escorting Padme, Bail and Mon Mothma in talks with representatives from the Separatist Senate when Lux Bonteri walks in. When I first watched A Friend in Need, I had missed Lux's Introductory episode which also introduced the Separatist Senate, so I was a little confused here. Confused because prior to TCW, there wasn't a Separatist Senate, the Confederacy was solely ruled over by the Separatist Council. Now, there's commentary from Filoni that apparently, the EU writers had misunderstood the purpose of the Separatist Council, that no, they weren't the leaders of the CIS, and that the megacorporation's who made up the CIS were just neutral parties. I have two issues with that, first being that I trust Dave "I sincerely believe this man wants to fuck wolves" Filoni's word about as far as I can throw his furry ass, and two, that isn't how it comes across in the movies at all.

The leaders of the Trade Federation, Intergalactic Banking Clan, Techno Union and Commerce Guild are all present, outright saying they're pledging their alliance and their armies to the Separatist cause. That they're apparently neutral, uninvolved parties doesn't gel at all, it just seems like a clumsy retcon to me. One of many.

But anyway...

Lux busts in and causes a scene, accusing Count Dooku of murdering his mother, so the Separatist senators have their guards drag him away. Ahsoka, concerned, gets permission from Padme to follow him, as long as she's discrete. Lux is dragged back to the Separatist's shuttle, where a hologram of Dooku appears to gloat a bit, before telling the droids to execute Lux. Why he doesn't just use the Force to choke him, I don't know, all you need is line of sight.

Now, I'd actually misremembered how this scene went down. In my memory, Lux dropped an ion grenade to disable the droids and *then* Ahsoka showed up. Apparently my flawed memory made Lux more competent then he actually is in the episode. How was he actually planning on getting away? We'll get back to that in a moment, but for right now, he's at the battle droid's mercy.

And then Ahsoka intervenes.

Here's another issue I had with Ahsoka, her characterisation. There were a couple of moments that stuck with me that I think are relevant here.

Season 1, episode 19, Storm Over Ryloth: Ahsoka has to learn not to be a reckless, headstrong idiot because she gets her troops killed.

Season 2, episode 1, Holocron Heist: Ahsoka has to learn not to be a reckless, headstrong idiot because she gets her troops killed.

This episode? Ahsoka is a reckless, headstrong idiot who forces her way into a hostile situation, gets the attraction of a bunch of armed droids and leads them back towards the Senate Guards who are stationed at the Republic shuttle, quickly alerts the unaware men that some pissed off droids are on her tail, then boards the shuttle, takes off and flees back to Coruscant, abandoning the Senators she was supposed to be escorting *and* the Senate Guards who are now taking the heat for her.

Ahsoka is such a shitty bodyguard, Jesus Christ. Getting Lux to safety is a priority, fine, but why does she need to board the ship herself and flee the system entirely? Why not just have Lux board the ship, then go back to help the Senate Guards deal with the battle droids that she *led* there in the first place? They're not just regular battle droids either, they're droid commandos who are supposed to be a lot tougher and smarter than the standard B1 battle droids. We don't see the outcome of this fight, so I presume the Senate Guards won, which, good thing. Because Ahsoka abandoned the Senators she was supposed to be watching over, and I genuinely wouldn't put it past the Separatists to pull something now that these peace talks have collapsed because of what Ahsoka did. They were never going to work out anyway of course, given Sidious' whole purpose behind the Clone Wars, but the characters aren't aware of that.

Anakin gets in contact and when Lux tries to apologise with "Master Jedi, I'm sorry if I've caused you any trouble." ("If" you caused trouble? "If"?)

Ahsoka tries to brush it off with "It's nothing." Uh, no, it's not. See the above paragraphs for why it *is* a big deal, and I can't see Anakin of all people being too happy with Padme being left in a dangerous situation like that. But I guess we're brushing past that, cool.

Ahsoka points out how dumb Lux's plan was, saying he would have been killed if she hadn't intervened (true). Then Lux says no, actually, he *did* have a plan, then he pulls out a taser and stuns Ahsoka. Seriously? His plan was to go in, confront Dooku, hoping that he'd send a transmission just to gloat (apparently he "knew" he would, but why? He could just have easily been shot by the battle droids), and he went in there armed with a dinky little taser? Brilliant plan, I'm sure that would have done *wonders* against a squad of droid commandos all armed with blasters.

Ahsoka wakes up hours later aboard the shuttle with just Artoo, her lightsabers missing. She goes out to talk to Lux and finds out the contacts he's meeting are the Death Watch, that Mandalorian supremacist group of terrorists who are awful even by Mandalorian standards.

Jesus Christ, Lux is so fucking stupid.

Despite Ahsoka attempting to tell him that they're bad news, he keeps brushing it off because they *also* hate Dooku, so it'll be fine. Back aboard the ship, Artoo finds Ahsoka's lightsabers tucked away in a random drawer. So, if she had bothered to look for them, she would have found them in the space of five minutes. My God, she is useless. These two deserve each other, I swear.

Oh, and we meet Bo-Katan for the first time.

Awful, *evil* Bo-Katan.

On the ride back, Lux reveals he had a way to track Dooku's location through his communication.

Serenno. He was probably on Serenno, his homeworld of Serenno, where he has a mansion on Serenno, Serenno on which he is a Count. This isn't exactly hidden knowledge.

They go back to the Death Watch compound. see them using kitbashed battle droids as target practice and Ahsoka is marched off while Lux talks to their leader, Pre Vizsla. Apparently, he has beef with Dooku now and the Count gave him a scar. Which, first thing, if Dooku had wanted him dead, he'd be dead. Second, I actually don't remember those two falling out, so I looked it up and apparently it happens entirely offscreen between his last appearance and now, so whatever, I guess. Also, Vizsla threatens to cut up Lux if he doesn't hand over the tracer, and Lux seems pretty fine with that. Brilliant, that one, real smart.

Ahsoka gets thrown in with a hut full of enslaved women from a nearby village. Great people, those Mandalorians. Artoo, meanwhile, is taken to the droid shack and told to fix up the damaged battle droids so they can be used as target practice again. They don't even slap a restraining bolt on him, they just leave him to his own devices. Which, in this case, happens to be a room full of battle droids, several of which actually still have blasters in repairable condition as we'll see later.

Well, the Mandalorians are rock stupid, so I suppose I can't complain *that's* out of character.

Big feast is held, now Lux can see with his own eyes that the Death Watch are using the local women as slaves...but he doesn't seem to give much of a shit about it, even as Ahsoka keeps trying to point out how awful his allies are. It's at that point the village elder shows up and demands Viszla let his people go. He did this unarmed, with his only support being two other unarmed villagers, walking into a camp full of hostile people who had already taken the village's women as slaves and expected things to go well for him. When Vizsla agrees in the most sinister way possible, with several other Death Watch members openly snickering about it, the elder thinks all is well and Lux even says: "You see? They're not the butchers you make them out to be."

I...Jesus Christ, they were using the local women as slaves, but you're fine with that so long as they take them back when they're done? Lux has to be the stupidest character in this series, I swear. There is exactly one smart person this entire episode and it's Artoo.

Next day, the Death Watch take the enslaved women back to their village, the Elder thanking him for it.

And then he takes out his stupid edgesaber and stabs the man's granddaughter in front of him. Can't help but feel this would have been more impactful if obvious sacrificial lamb character had more than a minute of screentime, but okay, its awful and its typical Mando behaviour. For good measure they start torching the village and maybe set one villager on fire. And much to my shock, Lux finally gets it. I was half expecting him to brush it off as them setting fires to keep the villagers warm. Ahsoka seems to impale a guy with a blunt pole, before getting tied up. And then they drag her back to their camp from their speeder...yeah, Ahsoka should be dead.

Then Lux says this...

"I believed you had honour, but you're just murderers."

What possibly led you to think that conclusion, you absolute dumbass? This whole time, Vizsla has been acting as blatantly sinister and creepy as Dick Dastardly, if he had a moustache he'd be twirling it. Lux seems like the kind of character who needs to be told not to drink drain-cleaner, I swear to God.

As Vizsla is preparing to deal with Idiot and Useless, Artoo shows up with an army of kitbashed droids...and like I said either, a few of them have working blasters. Literally the only competent character, I swear. Artoo gives Ahsoka her lightsabers back, and Vizsla decides to duel her one-on-one, because like every Mando, he has a totally unearned superiority complex. She ends up slicing his jetpack and he doesn't even notice until Ahsoka points it out to him. How did he not hear her hit it? How did he not feel that? In the confusion of the exploding jetpack, Dumb and Dumber manage to escape, chased by Bo-Katan, but they get away.

Then Lux fucks off in the escape pod, the end.

And apparently the next time Ahsoka runs into Bo-Katan, they're besties and join forces to free Mandalore. Guess Ahsoka kinda forgot about the whole slavery, village torching and innocent people she murdered, huh? Yeah, guess so. Bo-Katan fucking sucks, she doesn't get a redemption, the narrative just wants you to forget all the atrocities she commits because she doesn't want Maul to be her leader. Zuko she ain't.

Ahsoka majorly screws up her assignment, puts senators in danger and gets some guards killed, Lux is so braindead that he blindly trusts the most obviously evil pack of killers he could find. I'd say he needs a helmet, but I don't think its possible for him to get anymore brain damage.

TCW is massively overrated, this is a hill I will die on.

[nibeul]

i really love your bad batch redesigns and i am super disappointed in the show for whitewashing and also the voice acting of the clones, but i'm confused because you seem to hate the show? the show is problematic but it must have given you some inspiration or happiness in order to begin drawing the characters, right? 😅

only asking because i enjoy (some parts of) the show while realizing that it could have been so much better, but it seems like you just don't like any parts of it so i was curious about that. also, i will for sure check out your rewrite!

I do hate the show lol, I find that it has pretty much no redeeming qualities and I think the writing room—if there even was one—was probably the equivalent of an improv comedy club going "yes, and" to every suggestion someone made. the original reason I made the redesigns and started the rewrite back before the show even came out (so basically when the bad batch episodes of tow s7 dropped) was because I was pissed with the whitewashing and had come to the conclusion that nothing good could come out of a show that had its narrative built off its racism ("these white guys are genetically superior to regular clones btw").

I think it would be wrong to say that it "inspired" me, except maybe if you want to say it motivated me to remake it because I simply believed I could do it better. Not in a self-jerking off way either, as I truly think even a 12 year old with nothing more than a box of markers and a stack of printer paper could write something more interesting. I do genuinely enjoy the characters as I have written/drawn them and I'm having fun with the story that I'm making from it, but the inception of my version came from frustration and a wanting to fist fight Dave Filoni in a parking lot, and the characters that I've drawn/written exist separately in my head from the versions in canon. Also, I appreciate that people like my designs 🤙🏽

[intermundia]

Hey, I saw your critic about the latest Star Wars show. As a pro Jedi fan which Star Wars show would you recommend? I only saw OWK because I love Obikin. <3

tbh i think the short answer is that the earlier seasons of the clone wars (2008) are your best bet for canon, and the legends clone wars (2003) for flavor. i'm racking my brain but... that's about it. none of the disney+ shows for adults are really very friendly to the jedi order (except obi-wan), most of them are set during the period where it is already gone, and few of them seem to mourn its loss.

the showrunner dave filoni, without lucas's oversight, does not tend to flatter the order in his stories. his characters are at odds with the order, or deny being part of it, that sort of thing. he thinks qui-gon and ahsoka are better than temple jedi, despite being pretty consistent to them ideologically. kanen and ezra in rebels are obviously not part of the order, ahsoka says loudly that she is no jedi in rebels, and the ahsoka show was baffling and frustrating. the brief appearance of luke in the mandalorian was disappointing.

other than filoni's shows.. not many other options exist that have jedi in them. there were no jedi in andor, and the order doesn't exist during the bad batch. the acolyte frankly felt like an order hit piece. if you want good jedi content, you pretty much have to read it about it in books and comics.

(or, well, the young jedi adventures lmao which are a series of moral parables for preschoolers, but at least the life lessons taught like compassion and self-discipline accurately reflect the values of the order and the show depicts the order in a good light. i can't in good conscience recommend it for adults as watching it can give you a headache and there's no depth of plot, but it's nice to know there IS an age demographic that gets to enjoy the jedi and have force adventures. it's just... apparently reserved for 5 year olds. adults don't get to have fun lol)

[paperback-rascal]

I wonder WHO put the notice into the system... hm?

what if two schools of thought clashed together during Clone Wars - due to the high demand for clone trooper production, Kaminoans had to cut corners but also didn't want to do it because they're perfectionists BUT also ever since the war begun the cloners had to work more closely with Jedi who are humanists, and were very displeased how rigorous Kaminoans approach clone production (<- A/N of course I'm 80% sure it's part of canon/legend).

To humor the Jedi (and dodge possible inspection from their employers - the Republic) special evaluation board was created to settle whenever "problematic" clones should be decomissioned due to their mutations/defects/injuries/etc. or not.

Kaminoans didn't treat this idea seriously - it was just for the show. The cloners didn't treat Jedi seriously in overall - at best they viewed them as nuisance that interfere with their job. Also since Jedi are now heavily involved in warfare, it was believed the evaluation board meetings would be a minor setbacks in clone production.

Having to choose between Shaak Ti and Ro (Two Jedi masters stationed at Tipoca City), Kaminoans chose Ro for the job as they believed they found themselves an ally - a man of science amongst the Jedi.

Ro is Jedi healer who is very skeptical of the Force (especially Force healing) due to him being terminally ill (no amount of healing trances, healing crystals and mediation could cure his progressing illness). Thus having nothing but wait his approaching demise, desperate, he turned to science to deepen his knowledge of death and is now renowned coroner.

However working at Tipoca City morgue, Ro found a lot of… discrepancies. Not ALL of the cadavers at the morgue came from battlefields… and some freak accidents at Kamino training facilities… were more… suspicious than accidental.

Still kaminoans, especially at the beginning, didn't treat Ro seriously as well. Thus the second person recruited for "defective clones' physical and combat ability evaluation" was Kaminoan scientist - doctor Tanga Sa-Nayon. Tanga was young (barely graduated his internship), naive, full of himself and simping for Nala Se. He volunteered to work with Ro just to be noticed by mistress Se.

Ro immediately picked up Tanga's aloofness and he retaliated accordingly by being difficult just out of spite. Also Ro personally hated when he was taken lightly especially when judged by his deepening disability. Not to mention he can't stand incompetence and Tanga Sa-Nayon leans more toward being a buffoon.

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See more posts about 347th regiment here -> [LINK] <-

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STAR WARS: The Clone Wars/The Bad Batch © George Lucas/ Dave Filoni/ LucasFilm/ Disney

[waywardsou2]

I just finished The Bad Batch. Season 3 Episode 15. The finale. Man that was a wild ride. And it was amazing, seeing Wreaker work though all of that pain he was in, seeing Hunter get yeeted by scrap metal, seeing Crosshair's FUCKING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. All of them working so hard, Echo working with all the clones to fight for his brothers and sister. Emery deciding that she was going to try and do better and work with her brothers and sister. AAA.

WE SAW A SNIP IT OF TECH. Im sad we didn't get to see him for real but it was good enough, I knew as soon as Hemlock takes about project necromancer I suddenly knew where Tech was!

Older Omega and Hunter at the very end

CROSSHAIR AND HUNTER EXHAUSTED AND SO FUCKING SHAKY GOING AFTER AND FINALLY FUCKING SHOOTING HEMLOCK. THAT BITCH.

Seeing Wrecker break out of the confinement was some of the coolest shit I've ever seen. I was hocked watching the progression oml.

OMEGA BREAKING THE ZILO BEAST OUT. O H M Y F U C K I N G G O D S some badassery right there. I love her so much.

I'm so glad the kids got out too, I was so attached to them. holy heck I'm so glad they are ok.

DUDE THIS WAS MAD AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT

I cannot believe when it first came out I watched about 4 episodes and got bored. I come back to it a year or so later and BINGE THE WHOLE THING AND IM SO GLAD I DID.

I love The Bad Batch so much. I'm so happy for them that they got to have a family in the end, even if Echo was still out there and Tech wasn't with them. They got to be a family. I would do anything to be a part of that squad.

I would sell my organs just to get a hug from each of them. You have no idea. How much they mean to me.

I've never been that big on Star Wars, the premise was amazing to me but I just could get into it. BUT DAVE FILONI HAS RESTORED MY FAITH. His work has got to be my favourite out of the entire franchise.

I need to draw so much art of these guys soon and probably some one shots or head canons. I'll definitely be hoping for requests on my writing blog so if you wanna request something go for it.

Oh my god, this was a huge ramble but it needed to happen. I am so happy right now. The amount of stimming and how much I bit myself while watching that was insane and the dopamine is rushing through my veins right now.

[anidaladefencelawyer]

The "B..but...Muh Two Marriages!" argument from Jedi Positives/Uncriticals gets problematic the more you think about it

Old but good analysis particularly regarding how the choice between love and duty, and Anidala being unequipped emotionally to make that choice in a way that would allow them to find happiness together, or even have the means to even want to step away from the galactic chessboard altogether, while facing peer pressure to focus on their duties(and I don't mean in a way where they can achieve the best of both worlds together) and being brought up in environments where they can't really say no; this ultimately leading to tragedy.

On this note, I do not know where this argument crawled out of, but I going to say on that note that I've never found the arguments from modern Star Wars Jedi-positive/uncritical fans that Anidala is inherently toxic because of the fact that supposedly, to paraphrase said fans, "when you get down to it, it's an asshole with a inherent fascist impulse from day one and his moral depravity enabler(yes, this is literally what some of the more virulent Jedi-uncriticals reduce Padme to when literally Palpatine is around the corner) literally wanting to have everything, duties be damned" to be very compelling, and I frankly find it really problematic given the state of modern society.

So many of us, as the contradictions of capitalism drive the world to the abyss, have to work extremely tough or low paying jobs, or have to spend so much time doing what society expects of us, are we somehow assholes if we decide "ah fuck it, I'm going to try to have both". I've personally found Anidala to be the struggle between following one's heart vs. adhering to the dictates of society at large—which is honestly really relatable in the era of late stage capitalism, and being stuck in a situation where one is unable to harmonize passion with duty(which resonates a lot considering how multiple canon and EU material show them to be a very good team, but they are always separated) albeit one that ended very tragically. While others may have the emotional control to hold as long as possible, not everyone can go down that path.

Overall, I don't even consider their marriage decision(which likely came from Padme tbh) selfish even through the idea of selfishness is framed into the narrative, it's less "selfish" and more "shortsighted" for me, shortsighted because they get pulled into a war and never get to truly develop as a couple, leading to them having no time to talk to each other, growing paranoia, and eventually the tragic conclusion of their story. But is it the sign of a toxic or selfish belief that existed from day one because of an powerhungry asshole with a fascist gene embedded into his DNA wanting everything? I honestly don't think so.

[impossibleprincess35]

Hello, I'm watching the clone wars again. and it had not caught my attention satine kryze until now, could you explain to me about his personality and character. Thank you for reading

Hi there!

Factually, Satine Kryze is the Duchess of Mandalore, and she is a pacifist, representing the New Mandalorians who have turned from the violent ways of their past. Without bias, it's pretty safe to say that she has a relatively high approval rating among her people, and she has done some incredible work rebuilding Mandalore following years of civil war among her people. Famously, Satine does not align Mandalore with the Republic or the Separatists in the Clone Wars, and instead, forms the Council of Neutral Systems, for other leaders who also eschew taking sides in the conflict. She is the daughter of a warlord (Duke Adonai Kryze, though other than his name, we know little of), and she has a sister, Bo-Katan Kryze, and a nephew, Korkie Kryze.

There are lots of little crumbs of information that Dave Filoni, Pablo Hidalgo, and one or two others involved in the making of "The Clone Wars" have dropped over the years in regards to things such as the age difference between Satine and Bo-Katan, and if there is another Kryze sibling to explain the nephew (who, it has been confirmed, is not Bo-Katan's child), but basically, nothing is established as canon, so we're all out there theorizing our asses off. :)

Also, when she was younger, she was put in the protection of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, for a year. During this time, she and Obi-Wan fell in love, but they went their separate ways, choosing Mandalore and the Jedi Order over each other. (It's canon that she nicknamed him "Ben." Also, a big fan theory is that Korkie Kryze is actually Obi-Wan's son, but it's not canon, so.. *shrugs*)

All this being said, Satine's fascinating. She's haughty, she's ill-tempered, she's snippy, but she's also compassionate and she's scrappy. She loves Mandalore fiercely, enough to take principled stances that make her unpopular with the rest of the galaxy, and she shows mercy to even domestic terrorists who bomb her city.

In my humble opinion, she is a vastly complex character that deserves so much more exploration, but because there's very little about her in canon aside from her episodes in TCW and a few small mentions in books, most of what you'll find is fandom content.

But those who love her love her dearly, and those who hate her really fucking hate her, and you'll find most people feel strongly one way or the other.

Thanks for the ask and I hope this helps! If not, or if you have anything further, don't hesitate to reach out! I'm happy to answer/help/guide you in the right direction! :)

[tobytost]

Indeed, the lamentation echoes through the stars: why, oh why, is Ahsoka Tano, once a beacon of hope and passion, now reduced to a mere shadow of her former self? Her existence in the current Star Wars productions is a puzzling enigma, for her motivations are shrouded in obscurity, her spirit dulled to a mere flicker.

We, the faithful fans, mourn the loss of the vibrant Ahsoka we once knew, the spirited apprentice who stole our hearts in the Clone Wars and continued to inspire in Rebels. What purpose does this hollow version serve other than to capitalize on her past glory? The Ahsoka we fell in love with was defined by her heart, her tenacity, her unwavering spirit. Now, she stands before us with crossed arms, slow movements, and dry quips—a mere caricature of her former self.

Is this the fate you envisioned for her, Dave Filoni? If you truly cherish her as you claim, grant her a worthy narrative, one that befits her legacy. Spare her, and us, from this pitiful existence. If her story must end, let it be a warrior's death, a blaze of glory befitting her spirit, rather than this prolonged descent into mediocrity.

For the fans who have journeyed with her, we beseech you: do not insult her memory or our devotion with this feeble portrayal. Let her legacy be one of strength and valor, not a pawn in the pursuit of viewership and profit. Give us the Ahsoka we deserve, a character whose brilliance matches the stars themselves, and not this muted echo of what once was.

we're really in it now manifesto anon aren't we

I hard agree with you!! I don't recognise Ahsoka in current canon, and it makes me feel so bitter about what is going on

I'm not a huge fan of her but I really adored her character in tcw and rebels:( I have more thoughts but I'm soooo nauseous right now 😭

[slotmachines-fearofgod]

hi! just have read your fic with cody&soka bonding dynamic(and planning to read more ur stuff), and do im interested, have you any h/c or any thoughts on how canon could represents cody/ahsoka in some arc/case /etc or even other SW's characters you inetersted in

in general, just wanna to hear you and your thoughts, no rules or restrictions . thanks a lot for the things you have done to fandom

with the best wishes, your reader

oh man that's a good question and i have a long answer so here goes:

so cody and ahsoka never actually interact in canon (devastating), however we do see some similarities in their bonds with the people around them. for instance, they're both close with rex (confirmed by rebels and dave filoni in cody's case) and have earned his close confidence and trust. they both look to obi-wan as sort of a pillar of what a jedi should be (confirmed by bad batch season 2 & literally all of clone wars) and they're comfortable within the bounds of their respective relationships with obi-wan. i think, if there ever were an arc in which they got to be together/cody got actual screen time, it would realistically look close to what rex and ahsoka's relationship looks like.

things we canonically know about cody:

he and obi-wan were very close friends due to needing to spend most days together

he and rex were close due to their command positions and assumed training together

he feels comfortable giving up his command to a different person so long as he finds them experienced and ambitious enough to take on the challenge

the last thing he wants is to fight in a war

so obviously a very short list. ahsoka's would be much longer, which is why i'm not writing it, but from a character standpoint that already gives us a pretty solid platform on which to start. cody isn't lenient, ahsoka isn't used to people letting her mess around (too much) so they'd work well together in a battle/training environment. cody isn't so insecure that he feels as though he NEEDS to be in control, and even verbally hands the reins over to rex in the initial domino/rishi moon episode, whereas Ahsoka's character arc is about learning to take control and become confident in her abilities. that gives us a good in for chemistry, as cody is a strategist and can read people fairly accurately. he wouldn't feel threatened by ahsoka because he knows that any command position she assumed would still defer to his station. so now cody is at ease around her. but what makes ahsoka be at ease around him?

my big argument for that one is the aforementioned relationships with rex and obi-wan. these are two people that ahsoka trusts and holds very close, and thus seeing someone else earn the same level of respect as her would automatically lower her hackles so to speak. she knows obi-wan or rex would warn her off if cody was a real danger to her, and she trusts their judgement of character, so upon being introduced to the guy who's obi-wan's closest friend outside of the jedi and rex's Brother (capital B brother because he has a lot of brothers but not a lot of Brothers), she'd probably be eager to meet him. Ahsoka is very excitable in the series because she's a young girl, and it's only in the later seasons that she stops being as excited to meet new people and go new places.

TLDR: the ties to obi-wan and rex would lend ahsoka to viewing cody favorably, whereas ahsoka's discipline and dedication to peace/the jedi order would lower cody's defenses enough to let her in

[electricprincess96]

The amount of misinformed that exists about the Star Wars Expanded Universe is insane to me.

Firstly "it was never canon" then why was there a tier list of canon at Lucasfilm in which George's movies were at the top and it went down through T-Canon (Television Canon so The Clone Wars TV Show), C-Canon (Continuity Canon where the books and comic books and most games fell) and then so on and so forth. If none of it was ever canon, you'd have never needed this you'd just ignore anything that wasn't in the movies. Basically, if the piece of media didn't contradict anything in a tier above it, it was canon, which contrary to popular belief didn't happen as often as EU hater will tell you it did. And many of the contradictions that DO exist, existed because books were written years before the prequels and maybe had one off hand reference to something that's touched on in the prequels that is slightly different to how George ends up portraying it. Although he did deliberately refuse to allow EU writers to write about the Clone Wars because he knew he'd eventually try and make the prequels. If the books were never canon, whyd he need to stop people writing about the Clone Wars when it wouldn't matter if their version was wildly different from his. Unless he was deliberately trying to keep the overall continuity of the universe as coherent as possible.

George Lucas might not have viewed the EU as being AS legitimate as his movies BUT he wasn't stupid, without the EU through the 90s we'd have never got the prequels, they kept Star Wars alive, The Thrawn Trilogy reignited an interest in Star Wars. George regularly commented on EU material, he wrote the forward to Shatterpoint and gave ideas for The Darth Plageus novel. Just because they weren't AS canon as his movies doesn't mean they weren't legitimate.

And before people go "but George Lucas and Dave Filoni SAID" I don't care about what they said. Firstly Dave is irrelevant here he was an employee of George, he is not his legal representative stop rolling him out to speak on George's behalf. Secondly I care about actions and the ACTIONS at Lucasfilm throughout the existence of the EU makes it very clear it was considered a form of canon, yes it was lower than George's own works but they weren't published fanfiction, George regularly looked to the EU for influence, taking full characters from the EU and putting them in Revenge of the Sith for example. Words are meaningless, if your actions imply the opposite. And George's words aren't even consistent on this, so if he's said both that it was never canon and sometimes has said it was then the only thing I will go off of is what his actions tell us and that is that he clearly considered it canon that was built off what he created and yes he had the power to overwrite it but he tried very hard to make sure things fit together as well as they could.

Lucasfilm literally had a continuity guy who started out as an EU writer. You wouldn't need one of those if the EU wasn't canon.

Also the people who I see say the EU was just shit are always people who admit to not reading any of it. They haven't touched Darth Bane, Heir to the Empire, Darth Plageus etc. Like sure there was some crap (although ironically some of the worst like the Ewoks and Droids cartoon and the Holiday Special comes straight from George Lucas himself) but not as much as people who've never read any of the EU claim there is. And the arguments against the EU is always to somehow prop up Disney Star Wars and I'm sorry but that's got plenty of crap in it too so let's not pretend you've got the high ground here. You are not Obi-wan.

And because the EU had a tier list of canon it wasn't as confusing as some people claim it is to figure out what really happened at some event in universe. EU had 30+ years and managed it's canon very well for something that existed for that long. Disneys own Expanded Universe is 10 years old and already books are being overwritten by TV shows just cause Dave Filoni wants to, despite Disney promising that in their Star Wars there would be no need for canon tiers since everything would be made in collaboration and be considered equal.

The amount of blatant history revisionism and blatant wrong takes i see perpetuated about this topic will forever annoy me. You don't have to like the old EU, but to act like it was never important to the world of Star Wars is mental. The World of Coruscant originates from an EU novel that predates the prequels by years for fuck sake.

[niobiumao3]

Hmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

My thoughts in no particular order:

Okay so, they answered The Question, and their answer is, 'There's no such thing as being Force Sensitive. Using the Force is like any other skill in terms of people being able to learn, just some possess a natural or early aptitude and some do not. In the same way many (most?) Art Schools wouldn't accept an applicant who has never once attempted a single bit of art, so the Jedi Order only sought out those with obvious talent from an early age.'

This tracks with Ahsoka's comment to Din that if Grogu simply stopped using the Force he would gradually forget how; likewise, not speaking a language or using a skill causes it to atrophy, and re-acquiring it can be difficult.

I'm back and forth on this. On the one hand you can argue Lucas always intended this because you'll notice in the movies proper the term Force Sensitive NEVER ONCE comes up. It's always 'strong with the force' or 'the Force is strong in my family', the same way you'd talk about a family where the parents and kids and grandkids all go into music or something. The concept of it being a Special Thing Someone Has or Doesn't Have is a later bit from the Extended Universe, and was arguably never once canonized.

On the other Lucas never really decried the concept of Force Sensitivity and in fact the midichlorian BS almost made it worse. Except even then he talked about it like 'everyone HAS midichlorians, some just have more than others'. So again with the concept of natural aptitude vs. learning it from nothing.

And on my third hand which I lost in Avengers: Endgame I can get why some people are upset by this development, because it implies well literally ANYONE can be out here using the Force. Does that make any sense?? And I agree it's a bit messy in the world building, because I cannot in fact use amazing artistic skills to literally mind control someone into letting me off without a speeding ticket. (Well, okay, maybe I could, but there's way more steps involved than 'Officer please fuck off' and him just doing it.)

Whatever. Guess what guys: DAVE FILONI SAYS FORCE SENSITIVE CLONES!

NO MARROCK oh you're fine. Damn it he's going to die soon and we won't know anything about him.

Baylan I am going to be so sad when this series is over and you're not dead but they have to kill you off screen.

PURRGILLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!

oh shin hates morgan like she fucking despises her and wants to kill her I love it. I love my savage goth wolf girl.

sabine and ahsoka making an awesome team at the pewpew, yes please

Huyang is basically Tech. I said what I said.

The bit where we're explaining the star whales now feels like it needed to be in episode 1 or 2 but whatever.

I am...on the fence about Jacen. The hair looked like...yeah. Does he have pointy ears? That will fix a lot of things.

Are we never going to mention Kanan. What was this with Sabine being like 'omg how can I possibly' her first master was blind!!!!! are we going to act like he's just not real?? ugh anyways.

aaaaah why does the episode end HERE???????? FUCKKKKK

[moinsbienquekaworu]

i'm sorry for spamming your inbox please tell me to stop if i'm bothering you--

what even is the whole official star wars stuff. like except from the... nine? main movies that i all watched many times (i mean... "many" is for the first 6 but whatever), there is uhh rogue one? and solo right? i don't think i watched it. but like. there are shows too right? i never heard of those except that there is so much star wars lore that probably comes from ✨️ somewhere ✨️ (i hope). so what do i need to watch?? is there an order?? is there like. idek. things i have to know before diving into this? i feel like if you try to go away from the 6 (9) main movies you're immediatly going to get lost in the most crazy shit ever and never return from it and i'm ✨️ scared ✨️ and ✨️ lost ✨️ and ✨️ need help ✨️

also i spent the whole day reading kylux fics, like that's literally all i did, i'm way too prone to addictions it's scary (i'm glad the exams are behind me lol)

i love ✨️ sparkles ✨️ btw

One of us one of us ONE OF US!!!! I got you!!! Comme quoi it pays to be insane about stuff you like online. Anyway. Never worry about bothering me I am mentally ill about things on here for people to come up to me and say hi me too. I rewrote this a few times but it shoouuld be somewhat coherent.

Okay first there is objectively too much SW stuff for a normal person coming in right now with stuff to do during the day to go through in its entirety. The main stuff are the 6/9 main movies, which you've seen so you're good on that... and now I'm going to establish the concept of canon vs legends. If you've heard people talk about the extended universe/univers étendu, that's the old name of legends, but basically they're two different timelines. Canon is the 9 main movies, the The Clone Wars stuff, and everything serious Disney has done since they bought the franchise: Rogue One and Solo, and the TV shows Rebels, The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian (& The Book of Boba Fett), Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor. This is the timeline you're familiar with, but it's recent. Before this became the accepted canon, the 'official' 'true' version of events, there was just the extended universe/legends stuff, basically authorised fancy published fanfic, and sometimes one of the concepts created in those books/comics/games/role-playing games was made canon by being included in the more official, Lucas-made stuff, or was considered canon by the fanbase because most people were aware of the thing and liked it (like Mara Jade, Luke's wife in the legends timeline, who doesn't exist in canon). Basically if Lucas/Disney made it OR it's super popular it's canon otherwise it's just kind of fanfic that's tolerated as long as it doesn't contradict the canon stuff. I hope that was clear enough lol

So there's the main movies, and after that the most popular movies & shows are The Clone Wars (2008). There was a Clone Wars 2D series in 2003 but we're talking about the 2008 3D film and the following TV series here (though Anakin's design is funky in 2003 CW, but it shows different events because it's a legends series not a canon one). The movie is set at the start of the Clone Wars, a little after episode 2, and it introduces one of the most famous SW characters that's not even mentioned in any of the movies. Ahsoka Tano is Anakin's Padawan, she's a cool looking alien, chatty, she's like 5 years younger than him, and she starts out cringey but the general consensus on her is everyone likes her (that's because her creator, Dave Filoni, was in charge of most of the series, and you can tell he really played favourites with his OCs, and since she's not really a Mary Sue she's just extremely cool). If you're interested in the Prequels era you have to be aware of her at minima. You've probably seen art of her, her design is super cool. Ahsoka appears in TCW, but also in Rebels, the Mandalorian & Book of Boba Fett, and she's going to get her own series this year.

The thing with TCW is the first like, 3 seasons are generally "lighthearted" fluff about Jedi life and the war and the clones (as lighthearted as you get during a war, let's say it doesn't feel Super Serious because you know they all make it), but seasons 4 and 5 are closer to the end of the war and get more serious episodes, and then seasons 6 and 7 I haven't seen yet but they're I presume even less lighthearted and even more plotty. There was also a huge gap in when the seasons came out, which explains the tone differences, notably for S7 which is kind of not about the war anymore but just about Ahsoka and what she does after the Empire's rise I think? I'll give you detailed episodes but at least the episodes people recommend watching are the stuff with (Darth) Maul (you're into men so there's a good chance you will be into him - I'm ace and I regularly experience the closest thing I can to sexual attraction when I see him on screen because they animated him in a very...... in a Way that is. yeah), and then probably the 2/3/4 episode arcs that tell a coherent story (Rako Hardeen, Umbara, Zygerria, the Clovis stuff, the baby Padawans on Illum, 99, the Ahsoka stuff at the end of S5, etc). Personally I think the movie might be worth it to establish the characters, it's not super good but at least that way you have an idea of who's who. Once again I'll give you a list with all the details later, but I'm assuming you're not going to want to watch the like, hundred episodes when a good part of that is 'Ahsoka looses her lightaber and learns an Important Lesson about Patience retrieving it', 'R2 & 3PO go on an errand for three episodes' or 'droids are incompetently looking for a mcguffin for four episodes'. There's like an episode that explains why Chewie and Yoda know each other I think too, so that's neat if you're interested. The short answer is that Yoda fought on Kashyyyk during the war and that's Chewie's planet. I'll bury it here but if you want a good website to watch stuff, r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH has lists of sites that work (I recommend watching/reading SW stuff in english personally)

You mentioned Rogue One and Solo in your ask so I'll talk about these too: Rogue One is generally thought to be really good (at least in my circles?), it's set right before ep4, the characters are good, and generally it's a recommended watch. Personally I liked it, though not as much as other people seemed to, but the central romance is neat, and I cried at the end (and everyone liked Chirrut, for good reasons). Solo is kind of less good, but one of the main characters gave me adult movie Remus vibes in a way, it has a Maul appearance at the end for the people who watched TCW, and it gives unnecessary backstory for Han. Also Donald Glover looks good.

The Mandalorian is I think a pretty good entry point to the universe, at least seasons 1-2, because the main character doesn't know anything about the lore of the universe, so the show explains who's who what's what and all that. That said season three came out a few months ago and I haven't seen that so I don't know how badly they fucked it up, but they already pulled a shitty one on the audience by having like three crucial extremely plot relevant episodes of the show after the climax of S2 happen in another show, The Book of Boba Fett, instead of putting them in S3, so. Yeah. The other animated shows I haven't watched yet, Rebels is apparently really good but in universe it's set after TCW so I want to finish TCW before I get started there (it's been like a year or two since I started TCW, I'm slow), and The Bad Batch get much more mixed reviews so eh, you can see about that one later, it's less important in the general story of the world anyway. Andor was apparently a masterpiece but I can't say cause I haven't seen it. Visions also is a thing, haven't seen it but it's like, anime loosely set in the SW universe? It looks cool. If you're interested in Padawan stuff, there's Tales of the Jedi, which didn't make a lot of waves I think but has episodes focusing on Qui-Gon and episodes focusing on Ahsoka.

I'm going to give it its own paragraph cause in the Obikin sphere (which I am in obviously) this show was a divine miracle but the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, though it got shat on by other fans for being too silly or something, was to me really good. I feel like it really goes in depth with the Anakin-Obi-Wan relationship, and I remember every time an episode dropped my dash would be full of gifs of new interactions and new lines of dialogue of them being absolutely insane about each other canonically for real. It was wild, it was great, it was a fantastic high. It's 6x 1h, so I think it's fairly watchable compared to all the other longer stuff. It's more about the personal relationship between them, as people, but that's inevitably linked to the Master-Padawan relationship too (there's a good scene of them just before the war sparring at the Temple in episode... 4 if memory serves me right).

Then it's going to be mostly legends stuff, and at that level you just need to pick a direction and dig a little. Off the top of my head, here are different niches I've seen people be into/pists of where you might want to look: there's the old Jedi Apprentice books, aimed at a younger audience, that talk about Obi-Wan's padawanship, though they've been made explicitly non-canon by the recent Padawan book by Kiersten White (which was apparently good, and featured the one line where Obi-Wan says he wouldn't mind kissing any of his friend group but wouldn't want to do anything else, which prompted homophobes to explode and The Gays to celebrate even if we knew), or for more Qui-Gon-Obi-Wan stuff, there's the Master & Apprentice book; there's people who are way way into the clones, but that has more of a Marauders fandom vibe because individual clones don't get that much screentime, so you can see people whose fave is the equivalent of Dorcas Meadowes and who just make their own stuff up in their corner; there's the Mandalorians fans, which I personally cannot stand the majority of because most of the legends Mando stuff (that might have been made non-canon by S3 of the Mandalorian?) was written by Karen Traviss, a woman whom I personally do Not vibe with (come back for the rant later if you're interested), but that's a possibility too, you do you; there's the novelisations of the movies, though the only one that I hear about is the ep3 novelisation by Stover which is a really great piece of literature... and also very homoerotic with the Anakin-Obi-Wan relationship; there's the Aftermath trilogy which makes the transition between ep6 and ep7 and explains how we went from no Empire to the First Order, with cool characters (ie Sinjir whom I love and who is canonically if subtly gay); if you're curious about legends stuff and you want to know who Mara Jade and Thrawn are (if you've never heard their names before they're really popular, Thrawn appears in Rebels as well, he's cool and part of a popular ship in the wider fandom) you'll want to read Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (also introduced the name Coruscant for the capital!). Obviously I am Highly Biased, this is stuff I know off the top of my head, but it should let you explore some different eras and characters. Heir to the Empire (& the rest of the books in that series) is definitely a classic in terms of legends stuff though, if you want to check out the fan favourites.

For comics I don't really read those so you'd have better luck either looking at rec lists online or just wandering around Wookieepedia until you find something that looks cool, but if you just want to read a quick thing, the Age of Star Wars series is neat. It's a series split in the three trilogies eras, and in each era it focuses on 4 heroes and 4 villains. Age of Republic has issues for Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Anakin & Padmé + Maul, Jango, Dooku & Grievous; Age of Rebellion for Leia, Han, Lando & Luke + Tarkin, Boba, Jabba & Vader; Age of Resistance for Finn, Poe, Rose & Rey + Phasma, Hux, Snoke & Kylo. If any of those interest you, you can find them on comics websites (like for example a website that would let you read comic online. for example. cough cough. I'm so subtle.) What I would NOT recommend are the Rise of Kylo Ren comics, they're just... I didn't like the artstyle, I didn't like the way it told the story of Kylo falling to the dark side, I really didn't like the careless way it both makes Kylo's relationship with Snoke worse but also doesn't address it at all, it was a big miss for me, Kylux fanfics do it better. If you're curious it's not a long read though. Can't help you more with comics, I haven't gone there much.

In general if you find a character/planet/species/group/etc that interests you specifically, you can go on Wookieepedia and go down to the appearances section, where you can see all the places that thing appears/is mentioned, in I believe in-universe chronological order.

I don't think canon does a lot of explaining the magic if you will, if it does I don't know where. You can try looking in a specific species' tag on here to check out what other people think of their biology maybe, but yeah I don't really know otherwise. In general canon does a lot of 'that guy's a spider. don't ask. shut up he's a spider that walks on his legs and that's it. no lore no culture no nothing he looks cool and evil. bam. we're killing him next episode anyway' but there are also 'little diagrams of the different parts of a lightsaber' moments (I know there's a drawing in the The Jedi Path book somewhere of the anatomy of Obi-Wan's saber). Good luck with that, I wouldn't know where to find it.

If you have questions you can look at @/gffa's sidebar to check out questions they've answered/what they rec, or ask them directly. They're The ressource for SW stuff in my mind, because they're pretty thorough when they answer I feel like. Once again, Obikin bias, be warned, but maybe they'll know where there's some more scientific stuff? They certainly read more than me haha.

I think that's all, I'm going to write down a non-exhaustive but very long list of TCW episodes I think are neat, with a summary behind to help you quickly decide if it's your jam or not. The order is arbitrary, it's half order of importance half chronological, but there's nothing specific from seasons 6-7, because I haven't seen them yet. (the format is episode number x season number, just in case)

Undoubtedly, the Maul stuff: that's the events of ep 5x16, which rest on eps 1, 14 & 15x5 (the start of the plotline that leads to the events), which themselves rest on eps 19-20-21-22x4 (who are the characters that are important and what are they doing here), but also on eps 12-13-14x2 (who are the other characters and what are they doing here), and on the other episodes where Ventress appears, but you can ignore her, just know that the bald lady with the red lightsabers is Dooku's apprentice early on before they part ways (but she's still a bad guy afterwards)

Random stuff that isn't too heavy: 6-7x1, Anakin looses R2 and goes looking for him; 11-12x1, which has some fun Anakin-Obi-Wan-Dooku banter AND Hondo (everyone likes Hondo); 17-18x1 which have the threat of death hanging over the main characters because of an evil scientist and some cool alien designs; (19-)20-21x1, the Ryloth arc where you can see clones being nice and the Jedi being cool, plus Twi'leks (I put the first episode of the arc in parentheses because it's not necessary to watch it to get the idea of what's going on); 8x2 which is the last part of a 5-ep storyline about mind-controlling brain worms, I recommend it because you'll probably like the interactions between Ahsoka and her friend Bariss + Bariss gets relevant waaay later; 16x2 which has the spider guy I mentioned that I like a lot and a bit at the start where I honest to god thought for a split second Obi-Wan and Anakin were going to kiss; 9x3, it follows 22x1 but you can go in kinda blind, it's just a little buckwild with its characters and I think you'll like Quinlan (if you do he appears more in some books & comics, and he's in fanfics a lot because he and Obi-Wan have a fun dynamic)

The Clovis stuff: Rush Clovis is an ex friend of Padmé that Anakin is really jealous of, he appears in 4x2 (and comes back in 5-6-7x6) and if you want to see Anakin behave like a jealous shit that's a good episode.

The Zillo Beast arc! 18-19x2, includes a big beastie, Palpatine being evil and kicking a dog (the beastie) to prove it, and Anakin's disability being visible. I give it here because it's often a trope in fics to have Palpatine killed by the Zillo Beast but it's not plot significant.

Clones stuff if you're interested: 5x1, with the first appearance of a group of clones that come back later; 10x2, it's part two of a plotline but the interesting clone stuff is mostly just in part two, in it there's an exploration of the clones outside of war (which they have literally been designed and created for); 1-2x3, introduce 99 who's neat and are mostly focused on clones

Padawan Lost arc: 21-22x3, Ahsoka being hunted for sport (literally), she kicks ass, and Chewie + another character I like show up in ep22

the Umbara arc: 7-8-9-10x4, a Jedi General is a real asshole to the clones we like, it's a little heavier and you can feel the transition from lighthearted start of the war stuff to the more depressing stuff that comes afterwards

the Zygerria arc: 11-12-13x4, the arc in which Obi-Wan gets hit & injured every episode I think, with cool designs because there's more Togruta and they look cool (warning though the Zygerrians are slavers, they enslave people). There's a cool moment at the end for Rex if you end up liking him (he's Anakin & Ahsoka's clone captain and one of the most important clones)

the Rako Hardeen arc: 15-16-17-18x4, more Obi-Wan violence! it's one of the arcs Obikin tumblr doesn't shut up about because basically Obi-Wan fakes his death and doesn't tell Anakin. It could have been better but it's trying something for sure

the Onderon stuff: 2-3-4-5x5, it's Ahsoka dealing with Romance (a little bit, the character she has Romance stuff with is already established from earlier seasons but you don't need to know him, just know he has a history with Ahsoka and he used to be a Separatist, ie on the wrong side) and I think you could like Steela & Saw Gerrera? Saw appears in Rogue One later on, but he's from TCW. The arc is about helping him, his sister and their people regain control of their planet.

the younglings: 6-7-8-9x5, little Jedi kiddos who go on their first big adventure to get their lightsaber crystal and then have to fight to come back home. They're really cute, the droid is voiced by David Tennant, and you can see Hondo in the last episode I think.

and finally, the arc you also gotta watch because it explains why Ahsoka isn't mentioned in ep3 when she was Anakin's Padawan and this boy gets attached way too fast: 17-18-19-20x5, which begins with Ahsoka and Anakin investigating a bombing in the Jedi Temple and ends with Ahsoka leaving. I put off watching it for so long because it's sad :(((

probably also the rest of the seasons, but you'll have to look at Wookieepedia descriptions to see if something sounds interesting (if I were you I'd focus on the Ahsoka stuff later on, apparently she does some cool interesting stuff). Wookieepedia has pages for every season and every episode with short & detailed summaries.

That'll be all, congrats on reading all that, ask me about stuff if you want I love never shutting up about this, I have discord if you want to chat, please give me impressions if you do end up watching/reading anything. Good luck with this monstrosity of a list lol.

[ct-hardcase]

You got most of the Rebels stuff right!

their primary purpose seems to be killing Jedi survivors rather than expanding their ranks by recruiting them. although it is a fear for those hunted by them, the inquisitors rarely try it, even if they do taunt their prey with the possibility (Masana's dialogue in JFO). this may have changed in the later years as the inquisitor numbers dwindled (i'm pretty sure they were actually trying to convert Ezra during Rebels. please correct me.)

As far as I remember (I'm shakier on this than s2), the Grand Inquisitor was absolutely trying to recruit Ezra as an Apprentice/Inquisitor of sorts in Season 1. For a time, the Seventh Sister was trying to recruit Ezra in Season 2 (the Fifth Brother was in favor of killing him from the start). She later seemed to shift her focus to killing also as Ezra was clearly unreceptive.

(i believe this is expanded upon in Rebels? it's a plot point in DV 2017 with Eeth Koth's infant daughter. also, i might have made this up but it seems to be the implied threat in Jedi: Survivor.)

Unfortunately, there's not much other focus on this in Rebels. Project Harvester's been one of inquisitor canon's most elusive aspects, and pretty much all we learn from there is that the Inquisitors find/kidnap Force Sensitive children to mysterious ends (though Henry Gilroy or Dave Filoni I think said at one point that those ends were too dark for a kids' show). Based on recent events in The Bad Batch, it could be related to Project Necromancer (related to the Palpatine cloning project), but they could also be similar and separate instances of kidnapping FS kids.

anyway since a lot of it might be getting overwritten soon now that filoni is revisiting the inquisitorius characters (i assume he is? he wrote basically all of tales of the jedi right): here's what i understand of the inquisitor lore outside of the rebels show

Palpatine was keeping an eye out for Jedi who seemed at odds with the Order and/or susceptible to the dark side during the war (and likely earlier, much like with Anakin), either in person or using various agents (can be assumed and is shown in Rise of the Red Blade). this likely includes Jedi with specific knowledge or skills (the implication i got from Cere in Jedi: Fallen Order)

the groundwork for what would become the Inquisitorius was already in place by the time of the war's end

the Grand Inquisitor was a former Temple Guard who felt held back by the order and had a grudge against Jocasta Nu specifically (pretty sure this comes from Rebels and shows up in Darth Vader 2017). he was recruited at some point prior to Order 66 by Palpatine personally and promised leadership of the organization. this happened before Vader's conversion, and neither Vader nor the GI were informed of each other's existence at first (DV 2017).

several former Jedi were recruited willingly (eg. the GI, Iskat Akaris/13th Sister, Prosset Dibs/10th Brother, 5th Brother according to Battle Scars, Reva Sevander/Third Sister)

most (?) inquisitors were recruited by force, specifically torture upon being captured, usually during Order 66 (eg. Trilla Suduri/Second Sister (JFO), Seventh Sister (described as feeling broken in the Force in RotRB), Tualon Yaluna (RotRB), Masana Tide/Ninth Sister (JFO))

their primary purpose seems to be killing Jedi survivors rather than expanding their ranks by recruiting them. although it is a fear for those hunted by them, the inquisitors rarely try it, even if they do taunt their prey with the possibility (Masana's dialogue in JFO). this may have changed in the later years as the inquisitor numbers dwindled (i'm pretty sure they were actually trying to convert Ezra during Rebels. please correct me.)

they do, however, often try to kidnap Force-sensitive children too young to have been pre-Empire Jedi. this appears to include any age group and be the continuation of Palpatine's project during the clone wars. (i believe this is expanded upon in Rebels? it's a plot point in DV 2017 with Eeth Koth's infant daughter. also, i might have made this up but it seems to be the implied threat in Jedi: Survivor.)

the numbered titles appear to reference the order of initiation, with the GI being implicitly the First but never referred to as such. the numbers do not change over an inquisitor's tenure and do not seem to be replaced when an inquisitor falls. there do not seem to be duplicates (except for the Third Brother, who appears in a reference book written before Obi-Wan Kenobi and whose existence seems to have been overwritten by the Third Sister's. her character's age and implied backstory do not fit this naming assumption, however.)

if the naming is sequential, then siblings 2 through 10 join very shortly after Order 66, and number 13 gets initiated within months (RotRB). we still don't know 11 and 12.

there is some number of active inquisitors without a numbered title, who still go by their old names. these seem to have similar duties and authority to their numbered colleagues and are also referred to as "brother" or "sister", at least by other inquisitors. (Tualon in RotRB)

there might (?) be some hierarchy to the numbers, with lower numbers corresponding to a higher position. or not. (Third Sister seems to think she's next in line after the deaths of Grand Inquisitor and Second Sister as per Obi-Wan Kenobi. there's a confusing exchange somewhere in Rebels where Seventh and Fifth pointedly emphasize their titles to each other while having a disagreement but i have no idea what that means.)

inquisitors do occasional solo missions but mostly seem to work in pairs or small groups. the chain of command during these missions seems ambiguous, possibly intentionally so. Darth Vader joins in for some missions, where all inquisitors defer to him.

originally recruited inquisitors are not trained after joining outside of sparring with each other, which seems entirely voluntary. sometimes Darth Vader drops in and tests them, often ending in mutilation. they are allowed and perhaps even encouraged to study the dark side on their own time, though they do not have many opportunities to do so, possibly by design. (RotRB)

inquisitors are not Sith, and are not officially intended to become Sith, though as dark side adepts they are a potential source of replacement apprentices. (i believe this is fan speculation and out of universe material more than actual text but would love to be proven wrong)

Inquisitorius personnel have authority over some other Imperial forces, and have a long-term rivalry with the ISB (JS). they are generally an unknown force.

the organization was founded on Coruscant and headquartered there for about 5 years after its founding. (DV 2017) afterwards, its HQ transferred to Nur. however, that facility was already in heavy use immediately after and possibly before Order 66 (backstory in JFO).

the members get killed off pretty quickly. 6th and 10th die within a year, 2nd and 13th (along with her bf without a number) within 5 years, 3rd and 9th 5 years after that (Reva actually leaves, as we know). the ones that make it to Rebels die in that show. Fourth Sister is unaccounted for.

inquisitors tend to die by Vader or Ahsoka and Maul.