The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: November 15, 2024
Andor is coming, sooner than expected. Mando turns 5. And I went record shopping.
Hello there
As you were all warned about, the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter has returned. It’s a pretty lengthy newsletter this week, so if you’re reading this in your email and don’t see everything, you should just be able to click “view entire message” and see this week’s Death Star HR in all its glory. The newsletter isn’t too long because I wrote too much, instead it’s because The Mandalorian turned 5 and there’s a lot of Baby Yoda memes. Remember those? There’s also some new Andor news, we’ve got a release date so mark your calendars. And I picked up some new Star Wars records, one of which was a lot more interesting than I was expecting.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
I know there were some people who didn’t like the Darth Vader scene at the end of Rogue One. They felt it was cheap fan service and distracted from Jinn and Cassian’s story. To those people I say, while I don’t agree with you, I understand your point, but to reiterate, you are wrong. I loved the scene in Rogue One, I remember seeing it in the theater and my jaw dropped when you heard the breathing and saw the red lightsaber turn on. Chills. But for those of you who weren’t fans, would some Metallica make you change your mind?
It’s interesting that in the Rogue One scene, Vader is just an unstoppable force (you see what I did there) while in A New Hope his duel with Obi-Wan is decidedly less “mowing through the opposition without breaking a sweat” and more “two old guys who know if they put too much into their back will be hurting the next morning.” Consistency isn’t always a thing in Star Wars.
The Rebellion Will Arrive Sooner Than Expected
Death, taxes, and the uncertainty of announced projects seems to be the only things you can count on out of Disney these days. So it’s nice when we get an actual date for something. The release date for season 2 of Andor was announced at D23 Brazil. Set your space-calendars for April 22, 2025.
The season premiere takes place two days after the end of Star Wars Celebration 2025 in Chiba City, Japan. This gives everyone who attended from outside of Japan time to get home and get in front of their TV because you know Disney wants those streaming numbers juiced after the less than stellar viewer numbers of The Acolyte.
Just as an aside, season one of Andor actually didn’t have great streaming numbers:
863k US HHs watched Ahsoka S1E8 (Disney+) during the L+5D window.
591k US HHs watched Andor S1E12 (Disney+) during the L+5D window.
1.5M US HHs watched The Mandalorian S3E8 (Disney+) during the L+5D window.
In a way, that’s not a surprise. Andor was the least Star Wars-y show out there. There’s no Jedi outside of maybe Luthen Rael and there’s really only one small hint at it with his ship. I’m not convinced Luthen was a Jedi, it seems more likely he’d be an admirer or a sympathizer of the Jedi but not one himself. As I almost always say, Andor is a bleak portrait of how fascism corrupts a formerly democratic society that felt like a grim warning two years ago when it aired and two years from now will probably feel like a warning that maybe we should have heeded. It is also the best of the shows because there’s no Skywalkers. I joke about how I want to see the suburbs in Star Wars, but what I really want is to see is how the regular people survive in a tyrannical dictatorship. Showrunner Tony Gilroy said as much back in 2022 when the show first dropped:
“I wanted to do it about real people,” Gilroy says. “They’ve made all this IP about the royal family, in essence. It’s been great. But there’s a billion, billion, billion other beings in the galaxy. There’s plumbers and cosmeticians. Journalists! What are their lives like? The revolution is affecting them just as much as anybody else. Why not use the ‘Star Wars’ canon as a host organism for absolutely realistic, passionate, dramatic storytelling?”
And I’ll admit I loved the Darth Plagueis cameo in The Acolyte as much as anyone…
…but was it really needed? I still maintain that Mother Korill has Qimir’s master would make a heck of a lot more sense. I won’t stop beating this dead bantha. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to be an issue in Andor though.
As for any other legacy characters who may pop up in Season 1, they are, Gilroy says, “never fan service.”
“It’s never cynical,” he continues. “It’s always meant to be there. It’s always protein; it’s never icing.”
That’s what I like to hear. I get that Andor is going to be the super serious entry into Star Wars canon, and I like the commitment to the bit. There’s no reason to think that isn’t going to continue.
So far there’s not much known of the plot for season 2, outside of we know it’s a lead-up to Rogue One. Back in August I made some predictions about what season 2 might entail. No official trailer yet, but we got a few glances in Disney’s 2025 preview trailer. If you want to see just the Andor parts, Discussing Film cut them into a video and tweeted it. You have to click the link, because the rotting corpse of Twitter won’t allow you to embed tweets.
And yes, that’s going to be everyone’s favorite sassy Rebel murder droid, K-2SO. I had to specify Rebel murder droid, because obviously HK-47 is the best murder droid.
The Mandalorian Turns 5. Or 50 in Grogu Years
Given that over the last 5ish years, time no longer has any meaning, it would be easy to forget that The Mandalorian hasn’t always been there. Din Djarin and Grogu, or Mando and Baby Yoda as we initially knew them, were such an instant hit and became such a big part of Star Wars so quickly, it’s like they were always there. But no, their small-screen debut was 5 years ago this week. November 12th, 2019 to be specific. It feels like the show was both released last week and 20 years ago, because again, time no longer has any meaning.
The Mandalorian was the first original streaming show for Disney+. Streaming is money-losing proposition, so you know the Mouse House wanted to start the service with a bang. It seems reasonable to say they caught lightning in a bottle with Grogu and they’ve been chasing that high ever since. Just remember how your jaw dropped when the carrier opened and it revealed a baby Yoda. Just watch it again.
Honestly…still kinda get chills. Just look at him. There’s a reason Grogu is ranked #1 in the official Death Star HR list of Cute Little Guys.
November 12, 2019 was probably one of the two high-points for Disney, at least when dealing with Star Wars fans. The first being December 18, 2015 when The Force Awakens was released. But when The Mandalorian was released, it washed away people claiming Disney ruined their childhood with The Last Jedi. It washed away the bad vibes of Solo under-performing at the box office. The good feelings probably only lasted another 5 weeks until Rise of Skywalker was released and the movie that Disney hoped would make everyone like them again instead got everyone fighting again.
Thinking about it, the story worked because it was a small story for the small screen. It’s a huge galaxy far, far away and I always say Star Wars should be telling stories that aren’t Skywalker-related. This one fit the bill. It was an orphan finding another orphan and their bond. It’s really as simple as that. Just a Mandalorian bounty hunter and his little green adopted son. You know, normal things.
The other reason is worked is Disney made a show for the Normies. If you were a regular person with a surface-level knowledge of Star Wars, you’ve seen most of the movies and know some of the basic facts but that’s it, you could still watch The Mandalorian and enjoy it. My parents, Darth Dad and Mom Mothma watch season 1. All you really had to know was it took place after Return of the Jedi. I have a hard time believing Disney would have had a huge hit on their hands if the big launch show for Disney+ was, say, Ahsoka. Not because Ahsoka was a bad show, but because you had to be a Sicko to know what was going on. Unless you had seen Rebels and The Clone Wars, it would be pretty easy to be lost with Ahsoka.
Unfortunately, The Mandalorian started to move away from this in season 2. It’s not awful, in terms of other knowledge you need, but when you start seeing Bo-Katan and Ahsoka show up, you know the world is expanding. I don’t think Dave Filoni can help himself, and I don’t judge him. If I had his job, I’d be cramming every moment of screen time with obscure Star Wars references as well. But when your bosses tell you to make a show that the Normies will watch and you’re over here having Bill Burr talk about Operation Cinder, well, I think you’re not keeping to the code.
As good as the vibes were 5 years ago when The Mandalorian was first released, they’re gone now. Hopefully Skeleton Crew can get some of that Mando-magic back. A fun, and contained story that you don’t need 5 shows worth of lore to follow along with.
Great Moments In Star Wars Merchandising
Last week was…uhh…not great. So last Friday I decided to head up to my favorite record store, Black Cat Records & Comics, and do a little retail therapy. I walked in, and the usual suspects are there. Think High Fidelity but there’s no Jack Black character. Everyone is always cool. Anyway, I walked in and they said “hey, we haven’t seen you in a while. We got a bunch of new Star Wars records from a collection, pick out the ones you want.”
The Story of Star Wars is exactly what you imagine. It’s a narrator telling the plot of A New Hope mixed in with some music and dialog from the movie. One with the London Philarmonic is also exactly what you’d expect. Where we get to the real fun is Meco’s Ewok Celebration and Patrick’s Gleeson’s Star Wars. Meco’s album is a disco version of “Yub Nub.” It wasn’t Meco’s first go-round with Star Wars either, it’s actually his last entry in the US pop charts. His first Star Wars album, Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk was known for it’s disco version of the Star Wars theme. The album has the remixed Ewok Celebration as a Club mix and a Dub mix. It also a has a rap, in Ewokese from Duke Bootee who was probably best known as one of the writers on “The Message”, recorded by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
I had never heard of Patrick Gleeson, but I wasn’t going to turn down a Star Wars related album I didn’t own. At least per his Wikipedia page, he’s considered a pioneer of synthesizers music. He also worked with Herbie Hancock, among many others in jazz, and was an engineer on two tracks of Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!. The album, as Gleeson write in the liner notes, came from him wanting to do the score for the film. Obviously he did not, but Gleeson still wanted to take the score and give it a more “surreal” sound. The record is interesting because it’s obviously a product of the late 70’s and synthesizers, but it’s not straight up disco like the Meco’s versions of Star Wars songs. This is a cool album, I’m glad I found it. This wasn’t Gleeson’s only work in the Star Wars galaxy as well. A few years later, he wrote and performed “Friends Together, Friends Forever,” the theme song for season 2 of the Ewoks cartoon.
This Day in Star Wars History
Quite a bit happened on November 15 in the galaxy far, far away.
Ed Asner was born on November 15, 1929 in Kansas City, Missouri1. While he was probably best known for his role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, he also popped up in two of my favorite TV shows, The Simpsons and The X-Files. In 1996, Asner voiced Jabba the Hutt in in the NPR radio adaption of Return of the Jedi. Asner also voiced Jedi Master Vrook Lamar in both Knights of the Old Republic video games. The whole story of Asner voicing Jabba is pretty entertaining, he signed on without ever having seen Star Wars.
The Revenge of the Jedi comic strip series debuted in 1982. I’m old enough to remember actual paper newspapers and reading the comic strips, or the funny pages if you will. The stripe features Admiral Ackbar and the Mon Calimari joining the Rebellion.
The Star Wars videogame for the NES was released in 1991. I honestly have zero recollection of ever playing or even hearing about this game.
It’s always a great Death Star HR when I get to mention KOTOR twice. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn, was published in 2011. I wanted to like this book more than I did, it felt like there wasn’t enough Revan in the book.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was released in 2019. I’ve never played it, but I know Fallen Order has a good reputation. I think the main character, Cal Kestis, was on the rumor list of Jedi who could have been Marrok, back in the Marrok-mania days.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
The Museum of Light, was in fact a museum. Wookieepedia does not specify what exactly was in the Museum of Light. Is it the light side of the Force? Or is it more literal and it’s about lightbulbs or fire or something. Unfortunately, nobody else in the galaxy will be able to see it, since it was destroyed by Count Dooku.
Always worth remembering, Dooku was actually right about the Jedi and the Republic. Or at least more right than he was wrong. But he was still a war criminal. People are complicated.
News From the HoloNet
‘Star Wars’ Legend Canceled, New Scandal Rocks Fanbase
Scandal is a bit strong of a word. I would not pay $400 for Mark Hamill’s autograph, but I bet for his sake, it weeds out the people who’d want to yell at him about The Last Jedi.
Andor Season 2 Will Pit Your Favorite Miserable Imperials Against Each Other
Tough to bet against Fascist Barbie.
Hallmark Recalls Cad Bane Christmas Tree Ornaments Due to Risk of Mold Exposure
I can’t offer anything more than the headline. But what a headline!
RUMOR: Samuel L. Jackson In Talks To Return As Mace Windu For Upcoming STAR WARS Project
Let the dead stay dead…
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
KCMO is low key a pretty great city.
This is always such a great read.
So pumped for Andor season two. Feels like forever since season one came out. I'm gonna have to go rewatch it.