#star wars opinion

[mistergreatbones]

I hate that all of ahsoka’s relationships are seen as secondary to her relationship with anakin.

(oh my god i need to stop making ridiculously loooooong rants about a children's show from 2008. anyways spoilers below.)

Like, we know she has a relationship with Obi-Wan, but we never really see it expanded on. They’re in a lot of scenes together, but anakin’s always there and the focus is always on him. There aren’t really any one-on-one moments between just the two them.

During the Rako Hardeen arc, Ahsoka watches Obi-Wan die in her arms and all she has to say is that she’s worried about Anakin. We see Anakin be angry and try to kill “Hardeen” and Ahsoka’s right there with him with no elaboration into how she feels. And then Anakin calms down after he learns the truth and Ahsoka is just… also chill. If she was even told it was fake it happened off-screen, and on-screen she just all of a sudden stops being angry and sad and is just joking around with Padmé likes nothing’s wrong?

And Padmé. They hug and joke about Anakin and go off on missions with each other. Ahsoka confides in Padmé and goes to her apartment uninvited, and Padmé always seems genuinely happy to see Ahsoka, but I don’t remember ever actually seeing them meeting one another. And, while we do see Ahsoka mourning Padmé’s death, but we don’t ever get to see Padmé’s reaction to Ahsoka leaving. Padmé was just as much Ahsoka’s friend and mentor as Anakin, but while it’s implied that Anakin’s so aggressive and cold during season six is because he’s upset about Ahsoka, Padmé’s just… the same as she always is. She gets to be sad and angry about Anakin’s behavior, but her own relationship with Ahsoka is almost forgotten. And when Ahsoka comes back, Anakin gets to be ecstatic and happy over it, but then we don’t even know if Padmé was told her friend had returned.

It’s kinda like the show just assumes Ahsoka has a relationship with the people Anakin’s close to, but no one’s allowed to, like, outshine him.

Ahsoka spends the entire series with the 501st, but we never see her have any meaningful connections with them. She knows everyone’s name and she defends them in battle and she talks about how she trusts them, but she never interacts with anyone outside of combat. And they defend her too and follow her orders without question and paint they’re helmets in her honor (painting over one of obvious and most important identifying feature, meaning they are literally giving up their individuality to welcome back the girl they missed so much, but that's a whole other conversation), and most of the time we see them they are dying around her and she doesn’t even blink.

And Rex. Oh boy, Rex. Ahsoka spends her entire padawanhood at Rex’s side, and we’re never shown how it affects either of them. Rex is a battle-harden soldier forced to take orders from an inexperienced child. He lived with her and he fought with her and he watched her mature but there’s nothing to suggest he helped raised her. He’s not her master or her mentor or her brother or her father or her crèchemate or her CO, he’s just a guy who works for her. She calls him her friend and “Rex ol’ boy” and jokes with him and confides in him like they’re equals, but he only calls her “Commander” or “kid”. We get to watch Anakin warm up to her, but we don’t ever see Rex get used to her. He isn’t allowed to question her, he doesn’t react when she gets his brothers killed, but by the end he clearly respects her. He doesn’t mention her once when they aren’t in combat, but he’s happy to see her whenever they reunite.

Which, like. It makes sense. While most of the time we see Ahsoka is during missions and battles, she still was a Jedi and missed out on a lot of missions because she was back at the Temple doing her Padawan duties. If Ahsoka's primary social sphere is the Jedi, it'd make sense for her to only have a working relationship with the clones, but when never really get to see Ahsoka's relationship with the Jedi either.

She has these really meaningful moments that shape her identity with Sinube and Aayla and Luminara and Jocasta, and then barely interacts with them afterwards. We see how important Plo is to Ahsoka, and then she never mentions him or mourns him, and he we never see her feelings on her leaving.

We see Yoda genuinely shook and haunted and guilty and regretful about what happened to Ahsoka. We see her go to him for advice and spar with him and be taught by him and helping him with the younglings during the Gathering. We know they know each other, but we don't know why Yoda assigned her specifically to Anakin. We don't see either of their feelings about Ahsoka being a member of Yoda's lineage. We don't know her feelings about being in the same lineage as Qui-Gon or Dooku either.

We get to see Ahsoka and Barriss become friends on Geonosis, but we don't get to see that relationship develop until all of a sudden Barriss is framing Ahsoka for terrorism. Which is. Something that deserves elaborating I believe.

And we don't get to see Ahsoka be friends with any other Jedi her age. Anakin was the one who introduced Barriss and Ahsoka, and Kanan is younger than her and didn't seem to know her super well. We never see any of the people Ahsoka was raised with. The only person from her childhood she ever mentions is Plo. Like surely Ahsoka had friends growing up that she missed, other Padawans on the frontlines or at the Temple when she was being accused. And is Ahsoka *was* friendless growing up, that would likely have reflected in her personality?

And for the other friends Ahsoka makes in her range: she doesn't talk to Saw or Lux again after Onderon, we know next to nothing about her relationship with Bo-Katan, and when Ahsoka and Riyo were playing Nancy Drew it's just casually brought up that they've been besties the whole time?

(Trace and Rafa were done well though. They and Plo can remain unelaborated.)

And after tcw, this doesn't get any better! We don't know why she stayed in touch with Bo-Katan to the point that she knows what backwater planet Ahsoka was liberating.

And fucking Rebels,,, like we know she was a close friend and mentor to Ezra, but we don't see many meaningful moments between them, until all of a sudden Ahsoka is sacrificing herself and Ezra is crying on Kanan's shoulder like he did when his parents died. And then Ahsoka is ignoring the rest of the galaxy, just trying to find Ezra.

We don't see her relationship or feelings with Kanan, one of the only Temple-raised Jedi left. We don't see her relationship with Sabine, just that they're working together to find Ezra.

And Tales of the Jedi ALSO brought up more questions. Bail and Ahsoka are friends?? Ahsoka regularly lets the clones give her a concussion, to the point they can just be standing in a circle shooting at her in the middle of the hanger on the Star Destroyer and no one blinks??

And, well it's no longer canon, Ahsoka was designed wearing traditional Togruta clothes in the form of her sash and her akul-tooth headdress, which you can only get from killing an Akul single-handedly. This implies she has a relationship with her culture, and has performed Togruta rituals, likely on Shili. She calls the Togruta colonists on Kiros as "her people", implying she sees herself as one of the Togruta, in addition to being a Jedi. But does she know her parents? Does she have Togruta friends, whether on Shili or within the Jedi? Certainly you can identify with the culture you descended from without being close to your parents (2nd and 3rd gen immigrant identity crises rise up!), but we don't get to know her thoughts and relationship to her people. We don't know who took her back to Shili, who taught her about her people since her parents couldn't. I mean we know there are other Togruta Jedi, but I don't recall Ahsoka even interacting with Shaak Ti, a Togruta Jedi who was already in tcw.

I mean, we don't even see how her species makes her different from the humans around her. We don't see her fangs or her roar or her echo-location. They even gave her human eyes when originally they were gonna look like Shaak Ti's.

When Ahsoka leaves the Order, she stops wearing Togruta clothes. She doesn't go to Shili or Kiros, places where it can be assumed she has a relationship with someone, even if it's not her parents. She doesn't go see Padme or Riyo, both established to be close friends not in the Jedi.

We know she feels angry and upset with the Jedi and the Republic who betrayed and abandoned her, but we only see her goodbye to Anakin, not to Plo or Obi-Wan, who were on the council that dismissed her and would have complicated feelings in regards too. Not to Sinube or Jocasta or Aayla. Not to Padme. Not to Rex.

After Order 66, she mourns Anakin and Padme and Obi-Wan and the clones and... no one else. No mention of the Jedi she knew. She lived fourteen years without knowing Anakin, Obi-Wan, or Rex, but it's like she appeared out of the ether to join their group!

She went from ~Togruta girl brought to the Temple by Plo~ to ~Anakin's sassy badass Padawan~ with no in-between stage! Absolutely no mention of her life as an youngling and initiate!

And like, I know she was literally created to be Anakin's Padawan, and was never meant to be anything more then a device to aid his fall, but it shouldn't feel like that. Sure, she looks cool and she has character traits and she has other relationships, but it certainly feels like they needed Anakin to have a Padawan so they made "Anakin's PadawanTM" without thinking of her in any other way beyond that. And when she became a character who was bigger than just Anakin, they didn't bother fleshing her out as anything other than the vague idea she started as of "Jedi Togruta teenage girl Commander".

[superectojazzmage]

Still on my Star War streak, so I’m gonna write out a post that I’ve kinda written the sloppy bare bones of in tags. So, like, this Mando episode really highlights Bo Katan’s big character flaw. And it’s the denial that she could do anything wrong. Even at her biggest Depression Era, she never lets the blame fall on herself or her family.

In her head, it’s not the Kryzes and Deathwatch’s faults that Mandalore fell into civil war and decline, it was because of all the other factions, it was because all the stupid lowborn peasants and True Mandalorians wouldn’t shut up and do what the Kryzes or Deathwatch said, because they believed in something bigger then an earthly authority. It’s not her fault that every time she gains power everything crashes and burns, it’s because other people won’t bend the knee and fall in line. It’s not her fault that people don’t like her and don’t respect her as a leader, it’s because they’re obsessed with superstition and arbitrary rules that distract them from doing what she thinks needs to be done (which just so happens to be “listening to what Bo Katan says”) and it’s because people like Din keep “dividing” them from her.

And this extends to her treatment of and dismissal of the Resol’nare and the larger Mandalorian religion as just pageantry and superstition. Because that’s how both her family (self-hating Mandalorians who sold out to the Republic and served as colonial authorities in the name of power) and Deathwatch (brutal heretics who went hard in the opposite direction and wanted Mandalore to be nothing but glorified pirates and conquerors) saw and treated it. Neither of the groups she was a part of truly believed in the Mandalorian faith or its cultural identity. They just followed a shallow, materialistic mockery of it, performing and appropriating crude equivalents of the Creed because it made them look good, while secretly rejecting all of its actual tenets (“no outsider will rule Mandalore!” declares Bo Katan, supposed member of a culture that places huge emphasis on being open to outsiders and held up outsiders as some of its greatest rulers, despite the fact the Kryzes were almost certainly outsiders themselves).

At best, these groups see things like the Living Waters, the Mines, the Darksaber, the Mythosaurs, the Resol’nare, the Beskar, and the Mandalorian Pantheon as tools to placate and control the masses, even though both groups continually fail to use them that way. Because they don’t respect those things and don’t understand why most Mandos take them so seriously and refuse to acknowledge the mysticism and spirituality and religious power behind their civilization.

And Bo Katan specifically refuses to do so because if it is all true, if it really all is more then just words and children’s stories… that would mean Bo Katan isn’t a good Mandalorian, and certainly not a good person.

If any of the Mandalorian religion were true — and it most certainly is — and if any of the bad things that happened under her and her family’s watch were their own faults, that would mean that other people are right to reject Bo Katan, right to call her out as a traitor and hypocrite and bigot and failure. It would mean she and her family really were bad or at the very least severely misguided people who betrayed their culture in order to suck up to and emulate an uncaring, decadent Coreworld government. It would mean her and her precious Deathwatch really were just terrorists spitting on everything Mandalore stood for instead of “bringing back the old ways”. It would mean she really was a bad leader who led the Mandalorians into a slaughterhouse by leading open revolt against the Empire instead of operating in secret like the rest of the Rebel Alliance did. It would mean that she really was undeserving of the Darksaber and the title of Mand’alor and that she really was just totally inept at rallying her people in the aftermath of the Empire’s defeat.

It would mean that Bo Katan didn’t deserve the one thing I think that she always really wanted deep down; acceptance and love.

Bo Katan was the child of a colonial quisling family who looked down their nose at all the other Mandalorians for being a warrior culture. Of course she wouldn’t have been popular and well-regarded, not really, and certainly no amount of childhood “pageants” held as insulting concessions to the old guard would change that. So she left that life and went in the opposite direction of the pacifism that Clan Kryze and their “New” Mandalorian government preached. She went to the terrorists that said they were bringing back the old ways and hoped that would make her a hero of the people… only for them to instead just be terrorists who followed a warped, twisted version of the Mandalorian Way where they fought for its own sake and nothing more. That didn’t really earn her popularity points either — a small cadre of loyal followers, but certainly not widespread adulation, especially after she went running to the Republic again when the political winds shifted out of her favor and got installed as a Republic-friendly ruler yet again.

But then, salvation came; she was handed the Darksaber on a plate in exchange for helping fight the Republic Empire that she and her family had previously relied on for back up. She had all the power she could ever want with that sword and with that power would surely come the love she always wanted. People would cheer her on as Mand’alor and she would be beloved for all time. But that didn’t happen. And she led her people into the worst catastrophe in their history. But if she could just get the sword back, properly this time, and be the one to avenge the Night of a Thousand Tears by beating Gideon, then they would all love her right? Except she fails again; someone else defeats Gideon and gets the saber, and even if she had gotten it, it may not have been enough.

And, of course, through it all she just kept losing people. Whether to death (her dad, her sister, her lover) or to abandonment (her followers, her friends, her allies), she just lost friend and family at every turn until what few people were actually able to put up with her before were all gone, and it was very often her own fault, at least partially.

And along comes fucking Din Djarin. Everything Bo wishes she was. A Mandalorian beloved by his people and outsiders alike. Someone with friends and family and people who care about him. Someone who actually believes in and follows the true Way of the Mandalore and is very obviously happier for it. Someone who lucked into the title of Mand’alor that Bo had spent decades trying to attain in any way she could. Someone who stumbles into the magic and wonder of the Mandalorian Creed in ways that Bo Katan has never been able to, like finding a fucking Mythosaur by stepping off a ledge. Someone who is a walking reminder of every failure and mistake Bo Katan ever made and she could oh so easily have avoided them.

No wonder she has such blatant conflicted feelings about him.

I will also note that this is all really brilliant when you keep in mind the larger cultural influences behind Mandalorian culture and the worldbuilding and lore around them. The Mandalorians were generally fleshed out and designed with significant influence from Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Welsh, etc.) and Oceanic/Pacific Islander (Māori, Hawaiian, Polynesia in general, etc… the Māori connection is particularly prominent given two of the most notable Mandos — Jango and Boba — are played by a Māori actor) cultures… up to and including being victims of colonialism and repression of their native culture and faiths from Britain/the Core. This all, I feel, adds an extra layer of depth to Bo Katan’s story, as she’s functionally a child of two worlds, being more or less of both colonial and native descent. She’s divided between two cultures, between simultaneously wanting to downplay or dismiss or do away with her native heritage and beliefs for the sake of respect from/fitting in with the colonials and outsiders, yet paradoxically also wanting the approval of her native community and relatives and wanting to defend their way of life. It’s very fascinating and shows a complex character.

[jvliaxox]

i love how at the start of the year only like 5 people were genuinely excited for the andor series and (it felt like) everyone else was just saying “oh i’m not watching the andor series like it’s just about some guy who appeared in one movie as opposed to the kenobi series”

and then the andor series came out and i’m yet to see one person (apart from that guy who complained abt bricks and screws) that didn’t enjoy the andor series.

like let’s be fr, they got a guy who appeared in one movie plus brand new characters and managed to make a show that had better visuals, story, people, and message than the obi-wan kenobi series, a show which had way more prior hype and was about a legacy character (who appeared in two trilogies and seven seasons of the clone wars, whose every line is made into a meme). and the fact that the show is on the same level as mando without all the cameos and force stuff really says a lot about the quality of the show.

[ohihopeicanchangethislater]

Disclaimer: I love The Mandalorian, and intend no hate toward the show, the characters or the filmmakers.

I'm loving The Mandalorian season 3 so far. It's growing Din and Grogu in new ways and is really giving the show a new tone, letting the outside galaxy go for a bit (M-ANDOR-lorian episode excepted, which I loved) and really focusing on the Mandalorians as a people and a culture. I'm excited to see where the rest of the season goes.

BUT

The music this season has just been... unremarkable?

I've had The Mandalorian theme stuck in my head since I heard it back in 2019, head bopping like the cat.

I listen to the soundtrack probably more than the average person should (Ludwig Göransson has been in my top 5 Spotify Wrapped artists for the last few years because of it.

But I'm just not feeling it this season. I don't think there's been one scene where the music stands out to me unless it's a theme I'm remembering from a previous season.

I feel the same way about The Book of Boba Fett. The only things I really found remarkable about that score was the Tusken Raider dance and the theme song because they actually said his name, which is something my mom actually does with the Star Wars theme.

I don't mean any hate toward Joseph Shirley, I'm sure he's a great guy, but I feel the same way about the Obi-Wan Kenobi soundtrack too.

The Mandalorian is Thematic, each episode and each character had its own sound, its own feeling like John Williams, and Göransson wasn't afraid to let the music take over the scene, very Ennio Morricone.

Andor is very subtle, grounded and gritty, matching the show, while also rising to anthemic heights when the scene calls for it. Very cinematic, epic, if not quite as much of a bop as Mando (more of a banger).

I just don't get the same feelings from BOBF and Obi-Wan as I do from Mando and Andor, and I'm missing Ludwig Göransson's touch on Season 3.

[iidigestive-readerii]

Hey there! Sorry you’re having a bad pain day! Just throwing out a question.. What would you say is your most controversial SW opinion? :)

Oooh, I like this one!

My most controversial Star Wars opinion is that Obi-Wan knew full well that Korkie was his, but he respected Satine enough to never broach the subject.

He's not an idiot, he can connect the dots, but his fatal flaw is that he waits for the other shoe to drop - sometimes until it's too late.

Say Satine kept him updated over the years, but kept it impersonal for a variety of reasons: Mandalorians view sex before marriage immoral (Legends), she had the majority support but was still dealing with issues now and then, little family support (based on what we currently know of the Kryze clan), she wanted him to make the decision to stay or leave for himself, and he wanted her to do it, etc.

It's also not hard to imagine that Obi-Wan knew, cared deeply, but left the subject alone, he was a general of a 1/10th of a freaking intergalactic army! By the time they reconnected during the Clone Wars (whether that means they deepened their current friendship or restarted a romantic one), it's old news.

Korkie is grown, on his way to becoming a powerful politician in his own right. There's no need to discuss it, because what's done is done.

Korkie had a happy childhood, every desire fulfilled, friends and probably relatives, or at the very least good friends of Satine's that she would consider family. What's there to discuss and fight about?

Satine and Obi-Wan grieved for the life they could have had long ago, accepting that they had bigger destinies than marriage and kids together. Had the Clone Wars ended, I can see them still in a relationship, Obi-Wan eventually settling on Mandalore in retirement, but not marrying.

Now as to Korkie knowing the truth about his parents - I've always suspected that calling her "auntie" is just a formality, because in some eras of England calling a child nephew or niece was just the polite way to say "hey, I fucked up, here's my kid, I will provide for him and include him in my inheritance, but don't be a jerk." And I think Korkie knew that and respected it. He probably figured out eventually how Obi-Wan fit into the puzzle with his mom still sighing wistfully after every Holo-call and maybe they did meet, who knows? (I mean, do the math?).

Mandalorian culture is one of respect, so even if people disapproved of how Satine parented, they wouldn't have said anything publicly. Or at least not to her face.

And as far as Obi-Wan having children - come on, are we really believing that a magic monk society based in respecting one's own anatomy, whatever that means to you, don't have little Force sensitive children running various parts of the galaxy???

[monako-jinn-stories]

We need Star Wars shows based around non-human characters

[vonvlue]

Like yeah, Reylo is cool with all that "two people on different sides of the war" thing but Kylux??? THEY ARE ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE WAR BUT THEY STILL HATE EACH OTHER AND WANT TO KILL EACH OTHER EVERY TIME THEY SEE EACH OTHER, and no less important, they are always fighting because they want to beat the other and want to be the best for snoke.

That's the kind of enemies to lovers I'm looking for and I love. One in which although they are on different or equal sides, they HATE each other and they compete against each other because they can't stand it and can't stand to be beaten. Not the one where they must necessarily hate each other just for being from enemy sides, but because they simply really DISLIKE each other.

THAT IS THE TRUE ENEMIES TO LOVERS.

[gigi-hadidnot]

So, I watched Star Wars (Original 3, Prequel 3, & Rogue One) for the first time in my life a month ago and I have a couple maybe controversial opinions about Rogue One that I am more than happy to expand upon upon request:

Rogue One felt like they had the cardboard cutouts of the characters and stuff I liked from the originals and prequels with a distinct lack of understanding what made those characters good and/or likeable.

They made AnakinVader sassy (Specifically when he force chokes Ben Mendelssohn's character and says "don't choke on your aspirations"). Imo, this is a crime. In all the other films I watched, Anakin/Vader frequently makes quips but the lines have always been cheesy in a dad joke kind of way rather than a line that actually sounds like a talented writer sat down to craft it.

[mistergreatbones]

i dislike in modern aus where every character who doesn't speak basic is a pet, so here are my ideas:

-chopper is hera's weird uncle from france/ryloth/whatever who pretends he doesn't know the language you're writing in to troll the others

-chewie is that one shy guy who doesn't like to talk. since han understands what his mumbles and grunts mean he doesn't see the need to change. when he roars that's just him yelling/growling in frustration.

-artoo we kinda already know what he's saying most the time he just has the charlie brown adult whomp whomp filter on so you can just write him like normal

[starwarjotta]

Day 3 - cloak thankfully Obi-Wan's robe cloak is big enough to wrap around a certain Commander who might've been tossed into the freezing river during a mission oh and when there's a chance to make something even more Codywan? ofc I'll do it, here's a bonus

it was a long mission, okay

[jvliaxox]

“Stop making Star Wars political”

Shut the hell up and this is why.

The original trilogy was created around the time of the Vietnam War and a lot of it is a commentary on that. George Lucas himself has outright said that the rebels are based on the Viet Cong, a group that fought during the War, and the Empire is essentially powers such as Britain and America. The stormtroopers even have the same name as Nazi soldiers, and the costume design for Imperial officers was based on Nazi officers. It pretty much makes the OT an anti-fascist story which is, OMG, political. Yet the same people who complain about politics in Star Wars love to call this trilogy the best one yet.

Now to the prequel trilogy, which is where George Lucas wanted to explore how democracies become dictatorships and it was created around the time of 9/11 (with the exception of TPM obvi). Anakin’s famous line “if you are not with me, then you are my enemy”, is taken out of George W. Bush’s speech where he says “either you are with us, or you are with the enemy”. The Trade Federation having a seat in the Senate despite being a corporation (not representing a group of people), is essentially commentary of how corporations buy the government and abuse their power like how the Trade Fed. did by invading Naboo. There are also so many scenes throughout the trilogy showing the Senate’s incompetency and corruption which leads to them not caring about the Republic, e.g. when Queen Amidala goes to the Senate asking for help on Naboo, but nobody even gives a sh*t and she’s left on her own. Palpatine even takes advantage of Naboo’s crisis, using it to convince the Queen to make a vote of no-confidence so Palpatine can take on the role of Chancellor.

In contrast, the sequel trilogy has barely any political themes, apart from Canto Bight and young people (Kylo Ren) falling down fascist pipelines. Yeah, it doesn’t have the best story (however I do love TLJ), but it is the least political trilogy. Yet because it involves more than one woman, one gay kiss (that can conveniently be cut out from the film) and people of colour, this is the only trilogy in Star Wars that is criticised for being “too political”. Not because it has political commentary, but because it has people. People existing isn’t f*cking political, it’s normal. You and I could walk into any public area right and we wouldn’t be just seeing crowds of Luke Skywalkers, Han Solos, Anakin Skywalkers, etc. We’d be seeing Leia Organas, Finns, Rey Skywalkers, Poe Damerons, etc etc.

At least in my opinion, to say that Star Wars shouldn’t be political is an insult to George Lucas because he made it as a commentary on politics and the world. Star Wars will always be political, I mean it’s about WAR for God’s sake.

If you wanna know more about politics in Star Wars I definitely recommend searching up articles on Google, it’s actually so interesting and when I first started reading about it I was fascinated as so many things in Star Wars have some sort of political theme/message to them.

[nalt0r]

Star Wars doesn’t have enough rivers

[st4r-t3ars]

Reasons to watch Clone Wars 2D Micro Series:

Anakin’s Pout 90% of his screen time

Incredibly competent clone troopers

A look into Yoda’s drama brain

Start of the Punching Droids Saga

[merrysithmas]

when ppl see this & this, directed by the same person, and think the narrative is "anakin is evil" not "anakin is a steward of the balance, a force demi god, as was foretold on Mortis" 😂

[courtofterrasen]

Alright, clearly some of you guys are just not getting it. So no more emotion from me; I am simply going to write in factual terms.

It takes a VAST amount of work to go into creating a series like Bad Batch. You have to go through writing, scene painting, 3D modeling, rigging, lighting, SFX, voice lines, editing, final production, etc; just to name a few. It takes hours upon hours upon hours of work for those animators to create all of the nuances in a scene, let alone in Bad Batch where there is an extremely high level of attention to detail. It’s not like anime where a character and background are mostly stationary while they talk. There’s constantly stuff happening in the background and they intentionally make choices that provide extremely little to the overall story and, in all honesty, take up a significant amount of their time and can be argued that they’re wasting their time and money and effort (I don’t think so, but I’m sure people could argue it if they thought that effort should be allocated elsewhere). But they do it because it provides a deeper sense of realism to the story as a whole and make it feel like a living, breathing world. For example, when a character trips a little bit or they animated them doing something slightly harder than it would have been otherwise or eyes darting around and studying someone. These are all very little things that take them hundreds of hours to get perfect. And those are the kinds of things that go unnoticed by the vast majority of people watching the show. Either because they don’t noticed the little detail that was put in at all, or they don’t understand the level of work that goes into creating little minute decisions like that. And all of those decisions that they make, both big and tiny, are given to them in specific instructions by the directors. When you think about the insane amount of work that goes into creating a show like Bad Batch, you realize that every single little detail that they choose to add in is intentional and was given to them via specific instruction. It’s not like in live-action shows where the actor can choose to make a subtle decision on the fly. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of work that go into this and every choice that they make is intentional. The lighting dept. has even confirmed this for us, saying that all of the lighting that they did was done very carefully and intentionally and to pay attention to what’s happening in the scene. Because there’s an extremely high level of detail that’s put into the show, based off of very detailed instructions that were presented to them.

Now. Taken all of these points into account, it’s critical to look at all of the little choices that were made when it comes to her character and the way that both she interacts with the world and the people around her, as well as how they, in turn, respond to her. Because, like the lighting dept. has already made very clear to us, every design choice they has been made in the creation of the show is 100% intentional. Even if that’s not something that they had said or wasn’t something you were aware of, when you focus on the aspect of animation, it’s sometimes hard to get a clear grasp on just how long it takes them to do these things. And that every little choice that they made was carried out under specific instruction. And that’s not even getting into the nuances of voice acting and understanding the subtle distinctions in the way someone talks and being able to discern the meaning behind their words based on dialect and the instructions they were given. And for someone who just casually watches the show, absolutely none of these are important. They’re watching it to watch it and no further thought is put into it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. People are allowed to watch things at a surface level and get enjoyment out of it.

For every character, they can be broken up into various parts:

•Their visual appearance

•Their behavior

•Their interactions with others and the world

•How others respond to their character

•Their small, subtle behaviors (such as a particular twitch or repetitive body movement that can be used to convey a deeper meaning)

•And their internal motives

In that order from the least to most complex. And these topics can also be used to understand the complexity of a character. For someone like Cid, all of these topics are touched on in a variety of ways.

•She’s different from them

•She’s gruff and money hungry

•She speaks to the Batch like they’re a bunch of kids and she knows better than them

•They never fully bring themselves to trust her and, at times, they see her has a burden

•Towards the end of their time together, she gets snappier, and whenever she’s around them her movements slow ever so slightly and she furrows her brows slightly a lot more than in the past

•And in the end, she betrays them

And that’s putting her character into a single sentence for every bullet point, which, for well written characters like Cid or Hemlock or Rampart or Nala Se, cuts a lot of things out.

When it comes to the way that Phee is written and what she contributes as a whole to the show, she is not a very complex character. I’m not going to go into every single scene with her, but I am going to touch on a few. And if I need to continue the discussion further to cover more scenes, then I will. On multiple instances, she puts the Batch into very dangerous situations, and overall appears to care very little for them as people unless it gets her something that she wants. This is made very evident when, for example, she gets Omega, a child, excited about a big grand adventure and Omega then convinced the Batch to go along with it. Even though they were very adamant about not doing it. This is said with both their words and their tense body language. They don’t want Omega to get hurt and they know it’s a bad idea; but in the end she’s able to convince them. Then, when they get to the site, she shows clear lack for them or their safety and proceeds to put them in a very dangerous situation where someone could have gotten seriously hurt or killed. And she shows no remorse for it. Her language, both verbal and bodily, are very loose and nonchalant, assuring them that she had everything under control and that they were able to handle it, despite their very clear frustration. This type of behavior is shown again and again and again as they continue to interact with her. Her actions relay to the viewer that she does not respect their boundaries, or arguably, them as people. Her words are designed to be rocks with a pretty bow on them. And again, this is not personal opinion or speculation. Every single word and action was carefully designed by the team. All the tensed muscles were created by a team of people working very hard to convey that to the audience. Every thinly veiled word was guided by a director when the VA came in to record the sessions. Every single choice was intentional for a very specific reason.

Tech likes things in a very specific way. He likes his ship to be in a particular order and takes very good care of its maintenance and upkeep. He prides himself on being able to maintain a good ship. He spends a lot of time on his data pad. It’s how he was designed on Kamino. That’s his link to his role in the group. He can do everything he needs to from there and, in certain scenarios throughout the show, you can see it provides him with a sense of comfort and stability. You can see this, not only in his subtle body language, but also in his fairly obvious body language with how he hunches over it. It’s reminiscent of a child hunching over a toy to bring it closer to them and protect it. It comforts him. You can also see, when he interacts with the rest of the Batch, his aversion to touch. It’s not significantly often that you see it, given that the rest of the Batch knows him better than anyone, but there are still times when physical contact or even just very close proximity happens and he either has a reaction by tensing up slightly or leaning away from it, or sometimes he doesn’t react to it at all and almost seems to not register it; such as when he’s focused on his work. Every little reaction that he has with his brothers was scripted and orchestrated for a very specific purpose. It conveys the nuances of who he is as a unique and individual person.

Keeping that in mind, when it comes to the way she interacts with Tech specifically and the Batch, it’s very clear to understand the dynamic behind them when you look close enough. To recall a few instances, there was a time when she was recounting a story about finding a big treasure and Tech says something along the lines of “she changes this story every time she tells it”. He’s conveying to both the people in the show and us as viewers that she is a liar. She is either changing the story to make herself seem cooler, or maybe it didn’t happen at all and she’s making the entire thing up. Which, I will briefly mention again, are traits synonymous with narcissists. In another instance, Tech, Omega, and Wrecker were having a conversation where Tech is reprimanding them for bringing items back from a junkyard that they were in that they thought were cool instead of what he asked them to go find and bring back for him. I’m this conversation, Phee inserts herself and tells Tech that it’s not junk; also, in that same instance, not calling him by his name, which I will get to in a minute. Tech, in that moment, is trying to work, and his conversation with the other two was interrupted and fizzles out as Omega gets excited about the idea of a treasure map. A third is when the group is on Pabu and Phee is trying to get Tech to converse with her. His body language is hunched, tense, and he averts eye contact with her. When she prods him further, he is unsure how to engage in the conversation. And when he doesn’t respond in the way that she’s wanting him to, she talks about him to the rest of the Batch as he stands there around him and says to them how he “doesn’t know how to have fun”. And then they proceed to laugh at him. And again, you can see in his body language that he is confused as to why they’re laughing at him as well as uncomfortable being in that situation. And going off of that for another small fourth instance, there is another moment when they are getting ready to leave Pabu and she approaches Tech, who is working alone and trying to avoid contact with anyone, and says to him “So you’re just going to leave without saying goodbye?” His body language immediately tenses, he hunches further in on himself around his datapad, and his words make it clear he is both unsure and unwanting of the conversation. And when he does not respond in the way that she wants him to, she moves the datapad away from him to make him focus on her. She removes the item that brings him the most security to force him into engaging in a conversation he is uncomfortable with having. And again, these are all very intentional choices. They are not left up for interpretation. They are there to tell us what the character is feeling in that moment. They are trying to convey to us that he is uncomfortable. Not that he’s shy around a girl he thinks is pretty. And given on other scenarios that have happened throughout the show, it’s very clear that interpersonal relationships with anyone outside of Omega and the Batch is not something that he’s interested in. If they wanted to convey that he found her attractive, there are routes they could have taken to ensure that that comes across correctly to the audience, such as a faint little blush or rubbing a hand through his hair. But they didn’t do that, and instead chose for him to shy away and hide from certain situations or tense up and keep his head down in others. They are conveying to us that he does not like being around her. Because every single action they made him carry out took hundreds of hours of work to execute, and they would not go through all that trouble for no reason.

Branching off of that, we reach the topic of Tech’s name. When you watch the series as a whole, you can count on one hand the number of times that Phee refers to Tech by his actual name, while she refers to the others as their actual names. This is different from Cid in the way that Cid made that intentional choice to call them different things as a way to maintain distance from them. It’s clear from both her body language and her words that she did not want to get close to them. And really, wanted nothing to do with them unless they made her money. These are intentional choices. Phee’s character is designed to be flighty and unbothered. And she wants what she wants when she wants it. The choice to call Tech names and refer to everyone else by their names is an intentional choice. Him not understanding why she does that is an intentional choice. She does not respect him, which is why she does this. She can see that he doesn’t know what to do about it, so she keeps doing it. Like when a person presses on a bruise. These are all intentional choices made by the directors.

There was also a comment that said she behaves exactly like Crosshair does. And there are a few things I think did not entirely process when they made that comment. The first being that Crosshair was written to be one of the main antagonists for the first two season. I know they appeared in Clone Wars as well, but I’m talking specifically about Bad Batch. He was designed to be a bad guy that goes through a redemption arc; just like Zuko did in ATLA, for those who enjoy it. They both started out as antagonists, had horrible things happen to them, realized along their journey that maybe they were wrong, and are able to redeem themselves in the end and side with, or in Cross’ case, return to, the protagonists. In the beginning Cross was very sharp and defensive and thought he knew what was best. But he grew over time and learned how to care for people and share his weaknesses instead of putting on a facade all the time. And that’s the difference. We are reaching the end of the series and Phee has never had character growth to the level that Crosshair has and softens and opens up to the rest of the group. She hasn’t had any character growth at all. She is still the same exact person she was when we met her. There have been characters who have appeared for significantly less time that her, and if you pay attention to them, they have had significantly more growth than her as well.

The problem that I have begun to notice with people who are so quick to defend her actions is that they seem to be focusing more on her than on anything else. When you focus on just her, I can see how someone could mistake these interactions for being positive. Because all they’re focusing on is someone who’s having fun, and of course that would translate to something positive for him. But for the people who focus on Tech, it becomes very evident that these interactions are not positive. When you watch Tech, and I mean actually pay attention to him and not just watch him, you see all the subtle signs that you would otherwise miss. Him being annoyed and uncomfortable and confused and tired and generally not enjoying being around her. And this, unfortunately, happens a lot in real life too. People don’t take the time to absorb both sides of what’s happening. And since we as humans are quicker to pick up on people who are happy as opposed to people who are not, it’s so easy to miss the signals and just assume that what you’re watching is a happy interaction and put forth no further effort into making sure that’s actually what’s happening.

There is no other way to say that these things are all intentional. They wrote, designed, and sent out something that they have spent the past few years creating. When you understand the level of work that was put into it all, there are a lot of things that become very clear. And sure, headcanons exist and people can speculate what happens between the episodes. But headcanons can only go so far before it becomes ridiculous. We cannot confirm that Echo didn’t run off to go have a quiet life with Cid, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s true. Inferring things that are not within the realm of possibility is not conducive. Assuming that Phee spent a lot of time talking about her adventures that she may or may not have had with the Batch between the episodes? That’s conducive and we have clear evidence that would support that. Assuming that her and Tech had a very close relationship and she always listens to what he had to say between episodes? As much as some people want it to be true, it’s just not. There is no evidence that supports that line of thinking, and, in fact, there is a vast amount of evidence that would actually conform the opposite; such as Phee talking over everyone and commanding the conversation, not respecting things that Tech says, etc.

I’m going to wrap this up by talking a bit more personally now. There are plenty of people assuming that I’m a racist or a misogynist or that my literacy skills are lacking or whatever, but because you’re upset that someone is calling out the awful behavior of someone you like doesn’t make it any less true. And that applies to both this type of situation and in real life. I know who I am and what I stand for, and you trying to tell me that I’m otherwise changes nothing. And defaulting to assumptions like that shows that either you do not watch the show with a more attentive eye, or that’s all that you see Phee for. A black woman. Both of which are issues.

People are allowed to not like black characters, even if they are black.

People are allowed to not like Asian characters, even if they are Asian.

People are allowed to not like female characters, even if they’re women (or AFAB people).

People are allowed to not like LGBTQ characters, even if they are queer.

People are allowed to not like neurodivergent characters, even if they are neurodivergent.

People are allowed to not like characters that display particular traits or thought processes, even if they share those same traits or thought processes.

People are allowed to not like characters if they think that the character is bad.

Also, for the people saying I’m using my autism as a shield clearly don’t understand how autism works? I don’t say that to be an excuse. I say that to provide context and reasoning behind the things that I say. Like many other neurodivergent people do. You all are getting pressed about the wrong things. If you want to debate the time and study I’ve put into the show because I genuinely enjoy it, then be my guest. But don’t throw out petty insults and waste everyone’s time. At least put forth some more critical thinking behind it and try to figure out why someone could be saying the things that they’re saying