Episode 54: Ahsoka + Younglings Arc, Part 2

Hondo Ohnaka has a no-good, very bad day during the second half of the Ahsoka + Younglings arc (The Clone Wars 5.8–9, “Bound for Rescue” and “A Necessary Bond”). 

Our dashing crew of younglings have to infiltrate a traveling carnival to rescue Ahsoka from Hondo Ohnaka’s base — which Grievous promptly overruns. In our recap, we talk about all the ways Hondo Ohnaka would disappoint us if he was our uncle, the advice we would give to younglings, lightsaber fighting styles, and why this crew of younglings is so dang lovable.

Buckle up, because next week we’re covering the first half of the D-Squad arc! (The Clone Wars 5.10–11, “Secret Weapons” and “A Sunny Day in the Void”.

Transcript

Anna: Welcome to Growing Up Skywalker. My name is Anna.

Sam: I'm Sam. And today we're finishing up the Ahsoka and Younglings arc.

Anna: Woohoo! So we're doing the Clone Wars Season Five, episodes eight through nine, “Bound For Rescue” and “A Necessary Bond.”

Sam: So where did we leave off?

Anna: So we left off with Ahsoka getting Aliened out of her ship, where she was escorting the younglings back from making their lightsabers. She got sucked into Hondo Ohnaka's pirate ship. She's been captured. And we pick up immediately after that fact with the younglings, R-2, and Professor Huyang.

Sam: Who are calling for help.

Anna: They're calling for help. So they get in touch with Kenobi.

Sam: “Oh, wow, Master Kenobi!”

Anna: I know. They're so excited. They probably have posters of him up in their bedrooms. Cody, Commander Cody is supposed to go escort them home, but all of a sudden, right before he can leave, fighters pop out of hyperspace. It's General Grievous, and he has a bone to pick with Kenobi.

Sam: Yeah, and it's a crazy space fight.

Anna: It's a crazy space fight. It's been a minute since we had one of these insane intergalactic space fights, so it's very exciting. But more importantly, it's up to the younglings to figure out what they're going to do next. So they're in their ship, they're sitting around finishing their lightsabers, and Zatt, who is our Nautolan, Kit Fisto lookalike, comes in and there's a problem. The coolant system for the ship is effed, so they have to land on the nearest planet, which just so happens to be Florrum.

Sam: And by this point, they've been waiting for several hours or days for rescue and none is forthcoming, because they haven't received any word from Kenobi or Cody that they are involved in combat now.

Anna: So Zatt is like, “Okay, well, we’ve got to land. We got to let the engines cool. So, idk, might as well mess around and rescue Ahsoka while we're at it.” And I should mention that R-2 is still gluing Professor Huyang's head back on, so he cannot argue. There were no authority figures to be found near Florrum that day.

Sam: At his best, R-2 is a pretty dubious authority figure.

Anna: Right. In the meantime, the B-plot is that Grievous and Kenobi are dueling, and it's pretty intense. And Kenobi decides to leave him the ship — to abandon the cruiser — but he rigs it to self-destruct, and Grievous barely skitters away in time.

Sam: He has to fling at least two droids out of the way.

Anna: This is not a person who is afraid of a cowardly escape. So importantly, this leaves the younglings entirely on their own. Obi-Wan is a terrible babysitter. And Ganodi has flight simulator training, so they concoct this plan. They land on Florrum. Ganodi is going to stay with R-2 and the ship so they can make a quick getaway if they need it. And the others decide to storm Hondo Ohnaka's base with no plan. And nothing but their good attitude and a couple of lightsabers. On the way, with this dubious plan, they are picked up by a traveling carnival act. You cannot make this up.

Sam: So this carnival has got a Dug like Sebulba.

Anna: His name is Priego.

Sam: And he has a mustache that is 4 feet wide if it's an inch. And there's a whole bunch of Aleena who you'll recall from that crazy episode where C-3PO and R2-D2 go to the underground world. And they're like the craziest little tiny creatures just yelling and screaming. And these younglings decide that they are now a traveling acrobatics crew.

Anna: They stop Priego and his carnival ship and Petro says, “We…are…acrobats!” And they all pick a dumb pose in perfect timing, perfectly synchronous. It's like the best thing I've ever seen. And Priego takes one look and he's like, “You're artists, please join my traveling circus.”

Sam: Well, because they're using their Jedi powers and they're able to form, like, three person pyramids out of nothing. It's a bunch of ten year old kids.

Anna: They are so great. If this Jedi thing doesn't work out for them, I think they have a future in the carnival business. So they pull up to Hondo's base. The show begins immediately. Their costumes are fabulous. They have this amazing act. They pull Hondo into one of their stunts. So they stand him on the edge of a seesaw. I feel like I should mention here that Hondo is completely wasted.

Sam: He is hammered. And Katooni has light-fingered Ahsoka lightsabers from Hondo’s belt.

Anna: Yeah. So while he's on the seesaw, Katooni steals both of Ahsoka’s lightsabers out of his pockets. And then Byph is decked out in orchids and lilies. He's in this unitard. He waves some flowers around. He's standing at the top of the ship. He says something majestic, and he cannonballs off the ship. Hondo goes flying. They run for it. Exit, pursued by pirates.

Sam: Hondo is very excited about this act because once again, he is hammered. He is so drunk. It is the drunkest I've ever seen a cartoon.

Anna: It is absolutely incredible. So, yes, they grab Ahsoka. They zoom across the plains, they're pursued by pirates, and they call into Ganodi, and they're like, “Get the ship ready. We’ve got to take off.” And that is where we end the episode.

Sam: Priego is also running off as fast as he can because he's afraid of Hondo's retribution. And Hondo is pouring his tears out to a circus painted dinosaur.

Anna: It's such a wacky arc. So that was “Bound for Rescue.” What happens in “A Necessary Bond”?

Sam: “Choose your enemies wisely as they may be your last hope.” So now we're in a running gunfight as the younglings have stolen a tank. It's probably the same tank that Jar-Jar stole way back last time.

Anna: Very possible.

Sam: Apparently that one's got like, the key stuck in the ignition or something. So they're stealing it and they're in this crazy running gunfight and they're getting shot so eventually they're able to radio in to the ship, and they get a hold of Ganodi, and she's just in the back, chilling with Huyang and R-2, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, it's so cool, sucks it took so long to weld your head back on.” And then they're like…

Anna: Important to note that she gets his head back on but not his arms. So he is of limited use in this situation.

Sam: So then they get on the radio, like, “Ganodi. Help.” And she's like, “Hey, how are you guys doing?” And Ahsoka was like, “Hey, Ganodi, this is Ahsoka Tano.” She's like, “Oh, we rescued you!” And she says, “Yes. We have to tell you the plan now.” So the plan is that the ship is going to go extremely low. They're going to lower the ramp, and everyone is going to jump from the tank onto the ramp while pursued by pirates. And this plan…almost goes off without a hitch.

Anna: Yes. She grabs Byph and Gungi. She is holding onto them. They're swinging from her arms. Petro is down there steering, but he has to shove them over to the right so they don't go off a cliff.

Sam: Mhm and so they come back around. And right as they do, the tanks, which are following them, being driven by pirates, shoot the engines. The Crucible is about to go down.

Anna: Okay, you missed the part where tiny baby Ganodi is holding onto four younglings with her noodle arms. It's like a daisy chain of baby Jedi.

Sam: Some hot flying from R-2 as well. But as the ship is going down, they all decide to jump down to the tank, and R-2 pushes Huyang off. And then the tank crashes and they are captured by pirates. As they are brought back to the pirate base, they see that the Separatists, on their way through Obi-Wan's fleet, have come for revenge against Hondo. And Grievous is walking, he shoots his way into Hondo's base, he walks through Hondo's bar, stands up on Hondo's desk and says, “All your bases belong to us.”

Anna: He throws down a holocron, and it turns out Dooku is pissed about the last time that he hung out with Hondo Ohnaka and was Hondo's prisoner.

Sam: Yes. Which is like back in Season One.

Anna: Yes. It is early days.

Sam: Or he's mad because Hondo supplied Ahsoka and the Onderon rebels with missiles.

Anna: Does not matter. Dooku is officially not on Hondo Ohnaka’s good side.

Sam: It's pretty bad. So Hondo is very anti this plan, but all the pirates are captured. Asuka and the young ones are still outside the base. And because the pirates who captured them were like, “Yeah, we're being invaded. I'm not going to go in there and figure out what's going on.” And Ahsoka says, “You realize that you can't ransom me to the Separatists because they'll kill me, then they'll kill you. You won't get paid. Our only solution is to get a ship.” And they're like, “Oh, well, all of our ships are blown up.”

Anna: She's like, “Is Hondo Ohnaka a pirate or not?”

Sam: Yeah. And they're like, “Well, Hondo has a secret pirate ship stash, but only he knows where it is.” And she's like, “Well, I guess we'll have to rescue Hondo.” So all the Jedi get together. They all are ready to try out their lightsabers. Although Katooni's lightsaber, she is still a work in progress. She has not gotten it working yet. So there's a very funny scene where Grievous gets a holocron from a droid. He's like, “We're being attacked by miniature Jedi!” And Grievous is like, “What are you talking about?”

Anna: And then he's like, “Ow, my knees!” And then the battle droid goes down.

Sam: And Petro runs off. So they are under attack by miniature Jedi in the prison. They get there, and they're ready to cut Hondo down. And Hondo is either sobering up or something, he's got real weird energy going on. And he puts out this crazy speech of like, I need you all to be strong for me and show me your power. And Katooni's lightsaber is still not working. And so he gives her a speech of like, you can do it. You can do it to rescue us. This is the Jedi you are.

Anna: I mean, kind of.

Sam: Yeah. It's a weird moment.

Anna: There's a nice moment. The point is that they free everybody.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: And there's an absolutely cinematic battle scene. The younglings do great. And then they hop on speeders, and they flee into the canyons.

Sam: So all the younglings are on a tank, except for Katooni, who jumped on Hondo's speeder bike.

Anna: She's like, “I got your back.” He's like, “Okay,I guess. Great.”

Sam: The pirates speederbike off and make it to Hondo's secret base. But they get split off from the tank. The tank is being followed by General Grievous, and Grievous jumps on top of it and is fighting. Huyang, inside, is like, “R-2, do something.” And R-2 is like, “Oh, my God, these talking droids, I hate them.” And so he does a flip, which throws Grievous away. Also crashes the tank. Meanwhile, the pirates are all climbing aboard Boba Fett’s ship, Slave One.

Anna: That was Slave One?

Sam: It was.

Anna: Wow.

Sam: And they're like, all right, time to go. And Katooni is like, “Wait, aren't we going to rescue the rest of the younglings?” Hondo's like, no.

Anna: He's straight up going to leave them to die by Grievous attack.

Sam: And he says, you can come with us and be a pirate, or you can stay and try to rescue your friends. And we come back to Grievous crawling out of the wreckage of this thing, skittering along. All the younglings are pushed up against this cliff edge. They are ready to fight and die. Ahsoka is ready to defend them. When Slave One appears, Katooni comes down the ramp. The younglings start climbing aboard. Ahsoka and Grievous are fighting.

Anna: Ahsoka and Grievous 2.0!

Sam: It is a tough fight. Grievous grabs her face with his foot claw and slams her into the ground. Right then, Hondo starts shooting at Grievous, and Ahsoka is able to escape, and all the good guys escape. And we go to Kenobi, who is since — after blowing up his own ship to blow up Grievous — is now getting the earful from Hondo. And Hondo is trying to give them a bill for rescuing these younglings. Kenobi says, “So you're saying that you rescued them and you didn't blow up the cruiser?” Hondo’s like, “I'll just send you my bill.”

Anna: He gives Katooni a little wink, and then Obi-Wan says, “Be proud. You survived an ordeal that few younglings could.”

Sam: Huyang says, it hasn't been this much craziness since when Master Yoda got his lightsaber.

Anna: And they're like, “Oh, my God, tell us about Master Yoda!” And then…dah dah!

Sam: And they all put their lightsabers in a circle in the middle and are now young Jedi.

Anna: Yay. It was so nice.

Sam: The circus part is one of my very favorite moments in all of Clone Wars.

Anna: Oh, my gosh. There are so many times in the Clone Wars when we take these weird turns, and all of a sudden, everything is very surreal. I was calling back to the R-2 and 3PO arc when they go on this mystical, magical, Gulliver’s Travels adventure. That was the level of bizarreness that the traveling circus conjured up in me.

Sam: Yeah. And it's funny because in the first two episodes of this arc, we have, like, this very mystical element of finding the lightsaber crystals.

Anna: Yeah. It's kind of serious. And there's lore and there's this ancient Jedi tradition, and then, oh, my God, Ahsoka got sucked out into space, what's going to happen?

Sam: Yeah. And that part is wild.

Anna: It's very compelling.

Sam: Yeah. And it's like a space horror thing, right. Where you are being attacked in a spot that you thought was a spot of safety. Now we moved to now the younglings having to rescue their teacher, which is a fun element of Star Wars, that the young are always rescuing the old.

Anna: Yeah. I found myself thinking, especially with this four-part arc, that some of my favorite Clone Wars content is when you can boil the plot down to one sentence. Like, for me, this arc was basically: “All they wanted to do was build their stupid lightsabers and go home.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: That was the arc.

Sam: But instead they had to learn a bunch of crazy stuff and hang out with Hondo.

Anna: It was delightful. I mean, where do you want to start? What do you want to talk about?

Sam: Well, I want to describe this circus a little more because it's just amazing.

Anna: Okay.

Sam: First of all, is it Priego?

Anna: Priego.

Sam: Yeah. So Priego's ship, it's a starship that doesn't fly. It just hovers. It's being hauled, pulled by creatures and the crew up top. It's all these little Aleena, and it takes like, two of them to man the controls. And so he's yelling at them this whole time like, turn left or turn right. And they're hardly paying attention. They just have their own little language during the circus when they're playing the drums to increase attention of what's going on. There's two of them, one of them sitting on the other’s shoulders, and they're drumming by juggling balls into a drum. It is an absolutely delightful space circus.

Anna: There are such incredible costumes for all of the younglings.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Byph is, like, the most beautiful Ithorian who has ever existed. He's decked out in those cherry blossoms from Carlac.

Sam: Oh, yeah.

Anna: From “A Friend in Need.”

Sam: Yes. And he has a bunch of them all over.

Anna: Petro is dressed up as, like, a rancor.

Sam: Yeah. And then Petro has some crazy animal costume as well. They all have weird animal costumes.

Anna: There's a fun George Lucas piece of trivia, which is that Katooni's costume was styled off of Willie's from the second Indiana Jones movie, when she's performing.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Which is the only Indiana Jones reference that I will probably tolerate because as you know, I do not like Indiana Jones.

Sam: Well, that's funny, because when Willie sang that song “Anything Goes,” that is the song that Sy Snootles is singing.

Anna: Yeah!

Sam: That's a fun callback. This is a really crazy arc. And then the thing that got me on this watch-through is watching Drunk Hondo.

Anna: Drunk Hondo was a vibe.

Sam: Yeah. He's very mercurial and calls himself out on it.

Anna: I was going to say, I think Hondo was a little bit less self-possessed for parts of this arc. I do think he had a comeback. So the first three episodes, it is hard to like Hondo, but by the time we get to “A Necessary Bond,” I think maybe he'd sobered up. Like, maybe he had confronted the consequences of his actions, and he had some really lovely moments with the younglings.

Sam: So the most interesting one is when they're freeing him and he's giving Katooni a pep talk to build her lightsaber. And he's like, yes, put it together, because just watching a Jedi put together their lightsaber is priceless itself.

Anna: Well, and also it's such a cool mentor moment because Katooni, of all the younglings, has not been able to finish her lightsaber. And he's like, “We're going into battle. This is extremely dangerous. I don't need an unarmed Jedi youngling on my conscience. You have to finish your shiz.”

Sam: Right.

Anna: So he makes her finish it in front of him, and then he cheers. And then he wants Katooni to be the one to cut him down.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: I think that was just such a lovely small moment between them that humanized him a little bit.

Sam: It does. And so right after that, Ahsoka calls him out on his behavior, and she's like, “So what was that all about?” And he says, “I don't like bringing children into battle.” And Ahsoka says, “What about when you came and attacked us?” And he says, “Well, today is a different day, okay.”

Anna: The freedom, the absolute freedom of being Hondo Ohnaka! He's like, “I woke up today and I liked children. Lucky for you.” In the first two episodes, he's like, “I woke up today and I felt like making a profit. Unlucky for you.” Like, Hondo Ohnaka cannonballs around the galaxy, doing whatever he wants.

Sam: Yeah. And so it's interesting to me, seeing this over the backdrop of him being extremely drunk, because that back and forth thing is one of the behaviors you have when you're drunk.

Anna: I think there were a lot of pieces of plot armor floating around. So, Huyang's head being ripped off so he can't tell the younglings, “No, you can't go rescue Padawan Tano.” Hondo being drunk, because I think it would be very hard to slight of hand two lightsabers out of his pockets if he wasn't drunk. Even the Grievous assault on Kenobi and Cody's cruiser was very plot armory, so that the younglings have no one stopping them from mounting this kind of reckless rescue.

Sam: Yeah. Although that calls back to…so, Grievous was introduced in Episode Three, and then when they made him during the 2003 2D animated Clone Wars, he was a terrifying monster. Like, the first time we see him fight Jedi, it's like 25 Jedi and he kills 20 of them. There's like, five survivors. And he is running around on the ceiling and just killing Jedi. And it is very scary. But during the 3D Clone Wars, he's kind of a doofus. He's a Team Rocket villain a little bit, where he's always blasting off again. He never really has any victories, and he's often running away with his tail between his legs.

Anna: I think that's also one of the foibles of a prequel piece of content.

Sam: Right.

Anna: Because we know that Grievous has to make it to Episode Three. So you can't have anything too crazy going on with him, because it's like when people travel back in time and do one dumb thing, and then it ripples forward and the future has changed. You can't do that with Grievous.

Sam: But in this arc, he was scarier.

Anna: Oh, my God.

Sam: And I think that's cool.

Anna: The absolute rage and helpless indignation I feel when he duels Ahsoka. Every time I see Grievous going up against Ahsoka, something about…I get this feral response. I'm like, “How dare you tower over my Padawan, my baby, and threaten her with your four lightsaber windmills.” Like, he is so big, and she is so small!

Sam: She is able to hold her own in this fight as opposed to the previous time they fought, which was during the evil droid arc.

Anna: The Replacement Droid arc. Yes. In Season One.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: She has come a long way, but she is one Padawan. And she might be the best Padawan in the entire Jedi command structure, but she's one Padawan. And I just, like, my eyes welled up. I was like, this is so unfair.

Sam: Well, just previously, Grievous had run Obi-Wan off his own ship. So apparently Grievous got a firmware update or something. So he's doing pretty well.

Anna: He juiced up his lightsaber arms.

Sam: Yeah. He's got an extra battery pack today.

Anna: So one thing that I absolutely loved about these two episodes is that the meeting of Grievous and Hondo is like the first meeting of this major villain and this really nefarious, well known, morally gray figure. Because Hondo is like, “General Grievous, I presume.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Like, it's fun to think that all the characters that we see in the Clone Wars are on the scale of heroes and villains. They have reputations. They are known when they walk into a room. People know who they are without them having to announce themselves. And I think it lends this kind of, like, storybook feel to that meeting between Grievous and Hondo.

Sam: I do like that a lot. It speaks to this age, this epic age of heroes where someone walks into the room and everyone kind of whispers and already knows who they are.

Anna: Like, “That dude is Beowulf.” Or, “That dude is King Arthur.”

Sam: Yeah. And that's not something that we have in our modern society, because all the powerbrokers are interchangeable white dudes in suits. So it's like you can't really tell one from the other, but when you see someone walk into your sketchy pirate fortress and they have robot arms and an army of robots and lightsabers, like, that is definitely General Grievous.

Anna: Yeah. We don't have such distinct markers of reputation and power and prestige. The universal symbol of power these days is a suit and, like, a black AmEx credit card. So when Obi-Wan Kenobi walks into a room, he has a lightsaber on his hip, and he's wearing a Jedi cloak. And you're like, “That's Obi-Wan freaking Kenobi.” And General Grievous waltzes in. And you're like, “That dude's horrifying. I'm pretty sure that's General Grievous.” It would be different if we were all walking around in power suits.

Sam: Yeah. Although that's also, like, as part of that epic heroic feeling, you broadcast your identity, whereas powerbrokers in real life want to hide their identity, right?

Anna: Yeah. If you're the crimelord at the top of your weird pirating syndicate, you're not like, “My name is Hondo Ohnaka!”

Sam: Yeah. Although he is pretty famous.

[music break]

Sam: So another note that I have — and this, I found on the Internet from someone, from a superfan named Strictly Tales. So right when, at the beginning of this half, Ahsoka's held captive and Hondo says, “I have a buyer for female Jedi, dead or alive…”

Anna: Okay. Yeah. So last episode, we had Arianna, The Multiverse Kid, and her dad, Raphael, The Geeky Dad, on the podcast. So there were a couple of things that I didn't want to bring up, because we had a ten-year-old on the show, and that is absolutely one of them.

Sam: And you can find a lot of that on our Patreon “Leftovers” content.

Anna: Yeah, we recorded a 35-minute bonus episode after the first half of the Ahsoka and Younglings Arc, and we talked about a lot of this, but we didn't talk about the horrifying implications when Hondo looks at Ahsoka and says, “I'm going to make a profit off of you, dead or alive.” And the thoughts that came into my brain were so gruesome and so not even PG-13.

Sam: So here is what this superfan theorizes, is that it is someone named Latrans, who is a Zygerrian slave trader who — and this was somewhat partially run by Filoni — that Ahsoka had originally been picked up by Latrans, who had masqueraded herself as a Jedi in order to enslave padawans, and Plo-Koon rescued her from Latrans.

Anna: What!!

Sam: And this Zygerrian slave trader who trades in female Jedi might be in the market again.

Anna: So, where did Dave Filoni corroborate that?

Sam: I don't know. This is deep internet lore. That's like years and years old, so it's hard to corroborate anything. But some screenshots and stuff, like, this is an arc that was to be, but never was realized.

Anna: Interesting. I mean, we cover dark territory in the Clone Wars, but I think the closest we got to sexual violence was in the Senate Spy arc with Padmé and Rush Clovis, and in the Zygerrian Arc, when Ahsoka is enslaved and Anakin is having to pose as her slave master. And there's all kinds of horrifying undertones, especially in that arc. But the thought that you can even make a profit off of a dead Jedi, off of a female Jedi corpse, is so antithetical to everything that I care about. I don't even know how to broach that on our G-rated podcast.

Sam: So we have the Doctor Aphra omnibus, 1200 pages of comic books, which is canon — I think.

Anna: Yes.

Sam: It depends on when it was written. Okay, yeah, but there are some — I mean, it's a big galaxy, and there's creatures which are basically vampires who want to vampirize Force wielders, so they have access to the Force or mind control things. There's all these mind control devices, as well as being able to just take apart a body and vivisect or dissect to find out what makes a Jedi tick.

Anna: Or did they want, like, the midichlorians in her blood? Because you know, what is interesting is that if this fan theory — or this partially corroborated headcannon — is true, that actually mirrors Ahsoka's journey to Asajj Ventress’s, because Asajj Ventress was a Force-sensitive slave before she was rescued by a Jedi master who took her in as padawan.

Sam: The parallels between Ahsoka and Asajj are really intriguing. Not only do they both use two lightsabers, which I think shows like the sort of light side and dark side, they're both aliens, and they both have this very interesting journey with femininity, as well as the relationship with Kenobi and Anakin.

Anna: Right.

Sam: It's this back and forth. There's going to be a lot more of that in the rest of Season Five.

Anna: Interesting.

Sam: Yeah. So I think you're onto something there, that there is a parallel between Asajj and Ahsoka, not just a similar spelling of their names.

Anna: Yeah, that's interesting. I'm going to have to think about it, especially because we didn't get as much Ahsoka in these last two episodes, “Bound for Rescue” and “A Necessary Bond.” I think we got more of her in the first two. But what I remember thinking is that these four episodes put together really hammer home how far Ahsoka's journey has already progressed since The Clone Wars movie. When we met her the first time…She was always special. She walked off of that ship in The Clone Wars movie and was, like, ready for action. But we saw her in this almost distant and removed position of authority in this arc. That was interesting because normally Ahsoka is kind of an audience stand-in, right? She's relatable, she's warm.

Sam: I wonder how much of that is off of what we talked about last episode, about how this whole arc is taken from a pilot attempt to make a new younglings show — which, speaking of, there's one coming out. In between last episode and this episode was Star Wars Celebration, and apparently there's a new show about a bunch of younglings.

Anna: Okay, so in the last four days, Star Wars has announced six new projects, if I'm counting correctly. Everything from Mando Season Three to a new younglings show to an animated prequel show. So there's so much. The Star Wars canon is exploding. But yes, we did get two youngling-specific projects announced.

Sam: So I wonder if they're reviving this concept because this was an incredibly fun arc.

Anna: Oh, my God. Fascinating. Yes. Here's what I thought. We've gotten a lot of episodes that centered around or included youngling figures or like, padawan-age figures, but I have not loved a crew of younglings in my life like I love this crew of younglings.

Sam: So in comparison to the previous time we hung out with a lot of younglings, which was the Ahsoka Hunted arc…I think for me, it's the voices.

Anna: Interesting. Say more.

Sam: I noted in that episode that the voices of the younglings, they're basically voiced by adults. And that shows, perhaps, that they were aged by trauma.

Anna: Or that they had been stuck on this Trandoshan bounty hunting, big game hunting island for so long that they were aging out of youngling status.

Sam: Yeah, but then these all had very youngling mannerisms as well as voices.

Anna: Really distinct voices.

Sam: Like when Katooni finishes her lightsaber, they all cheer and all the younglings are hanging out and all of the adults in the room are like, having a separate conversation. Because that makes sense, that when you're a kid and your friend who's a kid does something amazing, the first person they're going to celebrate with is you. Like, it's not something you do for your parents. It's something you do, and you're expecting the accolades from your friends.

Anna: And it draws that really distinct divide that Ahsoka is an adult in this situation.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: She's probably 15 or 16, and she's so far removed. As heroic and dashing and capable as our little youngling crew is, Ahsoka can do more on her own than six younglings can do together. So it makes sense that she's over there with the adults.

Sam: And that goes back to the very first part of this episode, the third episode of the arc, when they're calling to Kenobi and Kenobi is like, “If Hondo has Ahsoka, he wouldn't dare harm her.” He says that because he knows that Ahsoka has beat Hondo a few times and is willing to do it again. Kenobi fully trusts Ahsoka to take care of the situation herself and get out of it alive.

Anna: That is a much more positive reading than I had of Kenobi's actions in this arc. So I actually really appreciate that. I was like, “Obi-Wan is a bad dad.”

Sam: I mean, it's extenuating circumstances, right? He gets off the phone with Petro and he's like, Cody, I need you to go rescue these young ones. Hyperspace warning, Grievous shows up, is on your ship, invades your ship, and you have to run away from your own ship and scuttle it and try to blow up Grievous on it. That's not bad. That's extenuating circumstances.

Anna: Did Kenobi really need Cody that badly?

Sam: To well, it's not like he could split his forces in the middle of a battle to send off, like, a rescue fleet in the middle of a battle. He had to be like, “It can wait until the end of this battle because this base battle is not going to take hours, hopefully.” And even if it does take hours, I think that if he had won, it would have been a matter of 15 minutes’ delay. But because he lost, it was a real problem. But if you have split his forces, then he might not even survive.

Anna: Yeah. Here's a little story that I spun up in my head. I was thinking about the long tradition of absent parental figures that are cast so frequently in youngling-centered media to create the space for younglings to do dumb stuff. Like in my foundational content, my foundational piece of media, Pokémon, Ash Ketchum and Misty and Brock travel around the countryside as ten year olds. There are no parents around.

Sam: That's true.

Anna: They’re all back in Pallet Town.

Sam: No, they all died in the war.

Anna: Sam! Okay, but it's such a fairytale/legend thing. Like, you have an orphaned teenager. Or like, you have a young person and they had loving parents. And then the mom died, and the dad married this horrible hag step-witch. And so the young person runs away and has adventures, right? Absentee parents allow for some of these kind of outrageous adventures that very young people go on, so we can have a story about young people.

Sam: Yeah, I really see that. What's funny is, as you're talking about that, I'm thinking of how, like, being of the exact age I am, there's this generational gap where all of the wealth belongs to people older than me and how my parents are like, “Oh, yeah, it'd be cool if you took over a family business or something, or took over the family land when we passed.” I'm like, “Why would I chain myself that way?” And when you go back to, like, the fantasy era, if you were just growing up on a farm on Felucia or something, then you have to be part of your family business to move forward. And that's because the Star Wars universe is fundamentally feudal.

Anna: Right.

Sam: Because there's dukes, there's duchesses, there's rampant capitalism, and there's really nothing to stop it. And so what you have then is, of course, only the people who are liberated from the bonds of their parents’ expectations are able to thrive.

Anna: Right. So they either do that through tragedy — their parents die — or they selfishly strike out to find their fortune. Like, there's an element of violence in all of it of: forcibly separating or being separated from your parental figures, your authority structures. And I think we totally saw that they, the screenwriters, have to rip off Professor Huyang's head to remove an authority figure and then stage a massive space battle to get rid of the other ones.

Sam: I think you're on to something there, because I'm thinking that one of the strongest parental bonds that lasts the longest is actually between Anakin and Shmi. And how that bond of him trying to live to be the person that she wanted him to be, but, like, doing all this evil stuff because she had this belief that he was fundamentally a good person, which meant that he was absolved of the guilt of doing evil things…

Anna: And the pressure of her believing that he was special. Because one of the most destructive things you can say to a child is like, “You are special.”

Sam: Absolutely.

Anna: Instead of saying “You are hard working, you are smart, you can do amazing things if you put your mind to it.” If you just say “You are special,” then that can go so many destructive ways. And it puts this pressure to be remarkable no matter what, whether it's good or bad.

Sam: And that's how Mama Ohnaka made Hondo an alcoholic.

Anna: Oh, my God, the flaky uncle energy.

Sam: I said drunken uncle energy, because that is like — he's sitting there and there's these kids around, and he's, like, teetering between creepy, dangerous, and lovable, like a metronome.

Anna: Yes, he's not a good uncle. He's that fun flaky uncle that occasionally shows up and promises that he'll take you to the baseball game and then disappears for three years.

Sam: Or he does take you to the baseball game, but it's the World Series, and you have to hide in the trunk with all this like bootleg Canadian Playboys and a bunch of duty-free Scotch from Mexico.

Anna: Oh, my God.

Sam: Yeah. That is the energy that Hondo brings to this place.

Anna: It's like, Hondo Ohnaka promises to pick you up from school, but he gets busy smoking cigars in the back of the Italian restaurant with his buddies from the Mafia, and then forgets to pick you up from school.

Sam: Hondo Ohnaka picks you up from school in a stolen car.

Anna: That’s the energy Hondo Ohnaka has brought into the studio today.

Sam: It's kind of stressful.

Anna: Honestly, I don't love it.

Sam: Don't hate it either.

Anna: But I do love it, because he's not my crappy uncle. He's just someone's crappy uncle. I'm like, you're a great time, my dude.

[ad break]

Sam: Did you notice some of the other ships that Hondo had in his stable of ships?

Anna: No. I was so stressed out that he was going to leave the younglings on Florrum that I was like, “Hondo, come on. How dare you? How very dare?”

Sam: So one of them is a G-1A, which is the same as the Twilight, which is the hero ship that Anakin rebuilt. And it might actually be that ship because, I know he crashed it.

Anna: From The Clone Wars movie?

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Oh, fascinating.

Sam: It is actually crashed above the secret hold of the wall entrance to Hondo's stable of ships. And the other one is a SoroSuub Yacht. Like, what evil Kenobi…what was his name?

Anna: Rako Hardeen.

Sam: Yeah, Rako Hardeen and Cad Bane were tearing around the galaxy in. And that ship, it might even be the same one, because they had to leave that one behind. There's some cool ships in there. There's a lot of really interesting detail on this one. But what really spoke to me a lot in the second half of this arc are the exceptional battle scenes.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: So, starting off with the starbattle at the beginning, it's really tight. There's no hero ships or anything. There's this beautiful scene as a Y-wing is flying along. It's got three Z-95s behind it, being just hunted by Vultures. One of the Z-95 does a slow, like, hits the brakes and pulls behind two of the Vulture droids and shoots them to pieces. But more Vulture droids are coming. The turret gunner of this Y-wing is shooting and shooting and shooting until the Y-wing gets shot and it crashes into the landing bay of Kenobi's ship. This whole thing takes like 20 seconds, and it's like, This is an intense space battle.” Then we get to this running battle through Kenobi’s ship. You hear gunfire everywhere. When Grievous lands, it's with a whole bunch of the HMP droid gunships from the Onderon arc. Apparently they can store, just, big Pez dispensers of battle droids underneath them, and the ship is just clobbered full of droids. And Kenobi is getting into this fight with Grievous and is pushed back. But it is a very quick, tight fight. The next fight that is so cool is when Ahsoka and Hondo and the younglings are all escaping. Because they get to the fortress yard, the pirate fortress training yard, drinking yard, whatever. It's full of droids, and they're shooting it up. and Ahsoka is running forward.

Anna: Oh, my God. It's absolutely so cinematic. You know that sound effect from action movies, that really deep [whoosh], like when something is hanging in midair. They give that to Ahsoka when she leaps into the air, basically turns a cartwheel, and comes down and slashes a super battle droid in one move, and lands in a crouch like Black Widow. That is the coolest Ahsoka move I've seen in so long.

Sam: Then we cut to Petro and Katooni working together.

Anna: Double teaming some battle droids.

Sam: They have different stances as well. Katooni is left-handed, and she has one hand behind her back, because she's in Makashi form, like Dooku. So they just take to these forms naturally and are dueling and they're both killing a battle droid. And Hondo is charging through them with some sort of vibro-saber, he's chopping through droids as well. You rarely get to see Hondo enact violence personally.

Anna: Okay, so I have a question, moving back to Katooni and Petro. So in the first two episodes of this arc, there's a moment when Petro is like, “I'm going to build my lightsaber and I'm going to kill General Grievous and I'm going to duel Obi-Wan Kenobi!” And he puts his two little piece fingers out in Kenobi’s Soresu form. Did you catch what form Petra was using when he was fighting with Katooni?

Sam: It looks more like Kotaro, which is Anakin's form, actually.

Anna: That makes so much more sense.

Sam: Yeah, it is the striking form.

Anna: The arrogant young boy Jedi form.

Sam: They all have their uses, although most people end up mastering one, maybe two. I think Anakin mastered three and Mace mastered one that no one has mastered in a thousand years and things like that. Yeah, the whole idea of lightsaber forms is kind of crazy, because it takes a lot from fencing and historical European martial arts, where you have all these different fencing styles. But really, a lot of those depend on the tool. And a lightsaber is such a weird weapon, because you cannot touch it. There's no false hits on it.

Anna: Right.

Sam: Or something like Kendo, which is Japanese sword fighting martial arts that is very strictly judged. Because when you're armored using samurai armor, and you hit someone with a katana, only certain cuts will actually penetrate the armor. So the referee is like, “That's good. That's not good.” It has to be a certain spot, it has to have a certain strength, it has to be a certain speed. But a lightsaber doesn't care.

Anna: So, all of these action scenes with the younglings, there's something that I picked up on that sent me over the moon. It's that we got to see some of the younglings internalizing their lessons from the beginning of the arc. So, I noticed at first with Petro, because Petro's journey has been learning selflessness. He was the one at the beginning of “A Necessary Bond” — when they're trying to outrace the pirates to get back to Ganodi and the ship, and Ahsoka, like, pops a helmet on the steering wheel to try to keep it straight.

Sam: That's fine.

Anna: Okay. I mean, like, spit and duct tape and bubblegum would have done a better job.

Sam: I'm surprised it doesn't have, like an auto go-straight button, but yes.

Anna: But Petro is the one who gave up his chance to get onto the boarding ramp, and he dove back down into the cockpit and was flying the ship, and I thought that was a more selfless thing than we have seen Petro do instinctively before.

Sam: It's interesting to bring that up, because the one who had to do the jump from the top of the ship onto the fulcrum to yeet Hondo Ohnaka…

Anna: …was Byph! Also, he was the first one to make the jump onto the boarding ramp when no one had done it before, and he's literally swinging from Ganodi’s spaghetti arms. And when Grievous threatens Ahsoka at the end of “A Necessary Bond,” Byph is like, ready to rumble. He trash-talks Grievous in Ithorian. It was the best. And then obviously, Katooni has been learning confidence and sat down in front of ten adults and finished her lightsaber without breaking a sweat.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And hopped on the back of Hondo's speeder and was like, “Don't worry, I got you.”

Sam: I know, isn't that cool? Although out of all the younglings, I do think in this second half of this arc, only really Petro and Katooni have anything going.

Anna: Oh yeah. Everyone else got a raw deal. Zatt basically was like, “Hey, the cooling system is broken.” And then Gungi got no speaking lines.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: But that's the difficulty with having six protagonists that you love and are rooting for. There's not a lot of time for everyone in the ensemble to have their moment of glory.

Sam: And I think that they did need to escalate the situation by introducing Grievous onto Obi-Wan, because otherwise at that point where they're on the ship, it's like, okay, yeah, you need to call for help. Because the failure to call for help is like just a trope-y cardinal sin for this type of thing. “Calling for help and then help doesn't arrive” is a much more interesting story than “We were too proud to call for help.” Especially because Jedi are — especially, presumably, younglings — are supposed to be beyond that.

Anna: Yeah. They wove this storyline very carefully and very meticulously so that you could still kind of root for everybody. Everyone got like a redeeming factor. Even Hondo Ohnaka. Someone write a fanfiction of Katooni running off to join Hondo Ohnaka's Merry Band of Pirates because of all the AUs, I want that one.

Sam: That would be fun. I mean, he offered. It was an interesting dynamic they had. It did seem like he was taking on the ability to be a father figure at some point.

Anna: They had a cool connection. It was nice. Is it that time?

Sam: Is it time for Bae Watch on the beach of Florrum?

Anna: it's time for Bae Watch.

Sam: Bae. Watch.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Anna: Sam, who's your nae?

Sam: Oh, man. I'm going to go with the one, the only, Hondo Ohnaka.

Anna: Hondo Ohnaka! Okay, tell me why.

Sam: Okay, so I hated him in the first episode of this arc. Because…

Anna: Sam has no patience for bad uncles.

Sam: It's not that. I guess — because my journey has been struggles with alcoholism, and I'm years beyond that now — but seeing that up and down is really tough to see. And the first time I saw this, I was still drinking, because it came out 10 years ago or whatever. So the idea of that up and down, happy and unhappy, was pretty weird. But then in the fourth episode, when he does pep talk with Katooni, when he does do that aside with Ahsoka…and also something that I recognize in myself a lot is like, “Today's a new day. I'm allowed to have a different opinion about what I'm doing today than yesterday.” And people get up in my biz about that. I'm like, “It's a different day.”

Anna: Oh my God. The freedom to be Hondo Ohnaka. May we all aspire to wake up and say, “Yes. Today I do like children, and I'm going to be nice to you.”

Sam: So then he does charge an entire battalion of battle droids with nothing but a vibro-saber, which is very cool. We've seen him fight before and he can actually fight like, up to Anakin Skywalker's level, almost with a vibro-staff.

Anna: And he knows how to pick his battles. That's how he stays alive. He very notoriously and very publicly does not get in the way of the Aurra Sing/Ahsoka battle the last time we were on Florrum.

Sam: I mean, he didn't get in the way last time he saw Ahsoka on Onderon, which is like the previous week, and he's like, “Oh, look at that!”

Anna: “I woke up and wanted to fund a revolution.”

Sam: Yeah, but at the end, when Katooni does in fact convince him, it means that he convinced himself that it was the right thing to do, because they did rescue him and it’s better to be in the good graces of the Jedi if he's not going to make any profit anyway, despite the fact that that meant getting into a tussle with Grievous. It's fun. What's interesting is that at the end of this, Hondo Ohnaka is a significantly reduced figure, is he not?

Anna: He has had to say “oh, hello” to the consequences of his actions. He has no ships except for the one he's on. His arsenal has been melted down.

Sam: He’s got two dudes.

Anna: His base is overrun, and he's made an enemy out of Grievous and Dooku. Where does Hondo Ohnaka go from here?

Sam: He goes to General Kenobi and says, “I’m charging you for rescuing the younglings.” Because he's got the Weequay cojones to back it up.

Anna: You know, I think that mercurial nature of his probably helps him be like, “Yesterday I woke up and thought, ‘I love being rich,’ and today I woke up and I'm not rich, and I'm going to have to wake up tomorrow and figure out what to do with my completely different life.” And I think he'll be okay.

Sam: I hope so.

Anna: Hondo Ohnaka seems like a resilient person. I think he's going to be fine.

Sam: We'll see. How about you? Who's your bae?

Anna: I thought long and hard about making Hondo my bae and I couldn't quite get there. My bae is Katooni.

Sam: Nice.

Anna: Because I think Katooni really shone in a really particular way of hers, which is kind of quiet and unassuming and not leading from the front like Petro, but having that independent streak — when all of her friends and her commander padawan are going one way and she goes the other. She hops on the back of the speeder bike with Hondo Ohnaka and says, “I've got your back. I'm going to keep you safe.”

Sam: Which, tactically, is the right move, because he's the only one who knows where they're going.

Anna: It is super smart. It was also, I think, very compassionate and kind.

Sam: And very brave.

Anna: Very brave. And I think it spoke to this inner trust that she's developing in herself. And I think that is one of the most important things for a young person to cultivate in themselves is trusting themselves.

Sam: For sure. Because very, very rarely is there something that you do that feels wrong, that is the right thing. And no matter what anyone tells you, if something feels wrong, stop and get a second opinion. And I feel like having that self confidence that Katooni had is a really compelling thing to aspire to.

Anna: Yeah. So, Raphael brought up that we don't know what happens with this crew of younglings. So I'm not going to futurecast at all. I'm just going to say in my brain, in my headcanon, Katooni grows up to be such an amazing Jedi warrior and such an amazing woman, and just, someone that you can look up to and know that she is wise and she has good judgment. I'm sorry, it's been 45 episodes since I've cried on the podcast.

Sam: I'm crying a little bit on the podcast. For different reasons probably.

Anna: Possibly. But yeah, I'm sending a lot of love to Katooni and the person that I hope she grows up to be.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And that's all I can say without absolutely dissolving into tears. So much love to our baby crew of younglings. I would freaking die for them. I don't even like children in real life. But I like these children a lot.

Sam: Well, they're fake children.

Anna: Exactly.

Sam: They're aliens who are very responsible.

Anna: They're very responsible children, which is probably why I like them.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Sam: So what's up next?

Anna: Okay, next we have the D-Squad Arc.

Sam: D-Squad!

Anna: Which is Season Five of The Clone Wars. Episodes 10–11 are the ones that we are doing first.

Sam: And they’re four-parters.

Anna: After that, we are doing 12 and 13.

Sam: We are continuing the trend of kind of goofy Season Five episodes. But this one, you're going to love it.

Anna: Okay. Stick it in my veins. I love these ridiculous episodes. They make me so happy.

Sam: You are going to love this one.

Anna: We have exciting news. After the D-Squad arc, we are doing the Revenge/Mandalorian Crime Syndicate arc, and we are having special guests from no one other but Wookieepedia on the show!

Sam: We are extremely honored.

Anna: We are losing our minds. We are so excited.

Sam: So that will be really cool, and also you can catch me on Monday talking about Kenobi, the first two episodes, on Funny Science Fiction Podcast.

Anna: Yay! So exciting! So as you know, I don't get to watch Kenobi for a little while, but Sam does. He's going to be your resource for everything Obi-Wan Kenobi, so feel free to tweet all of your thoughts and your theories and your screaming at Sam @GrowingUpSkywa on Twitter

Sam: Because I control the Twitter.

Anna: You can find me on Facebook and Instagram, and I will be talking about younglings and D-Squad.

Sam: D-Squad!

Anna: And Mandalorians and all the good stuff.

Sam: The D-Squad arc is hilarious. I love it.

Anna: I'm very excited. You can also check us out on Patreon if you want more Skywalker, and visit us online at www.growingupskywalker.com.

Sam: For these updated Bae Watch rankings, which put Katooni up there with the likes of…

Anna: With Qui-Gonn!

Sam: Yeah, amazing.

Anna: And we'll see you next Tuesday.

Sam: Bye.