The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: May 22, 2026
This is now a Stinky the Hutt newsletter
Hello there
It is the official release day for The Mandalorian and Grogu! Finally! I know there were people who got to see either a sneak preview on Monday in IMAX or saw it yesterday, but all May 22nd is the official release date and that’s when I saw it. So, I’ve got my spoiler-free thoughts about the movie, the Death Star HR Book Club returns, and a long time Star Wars voice actor has become one with the Force.
As always, thanks for reading Death Star HR. If you’re reading this and you’re not a subscriber, I’d love it if you entered your email below and smashed that subscribe button. There’s also an official Death Star HR Instagram and an official Death Star HR YouTube page as well and I’d love it if you subscribed there as well.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
Of course we had to go with a Mando and Grogu entry for this. Everyone’s been making the rounds to promote the movie. I have to give credit to Pedro, he might just be the hardest working man in showbiz right now. As both he and Grogu have to sit down and talk about all the Baby Yoda memes.
I appreciate any video that somehow combines Grogu, Mean Girls, and cats.
I Have Seen the Baby - Spoiler Free Mando & Grogu Thoughts.
I know, I know. I often say the official policy of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter is to post spoilers. However, given that the official release date is today, there are plenty of people reading this who haven’t seen it yet.
Therefore, I’m going to talk about the movie but I am not going give anything away that wasn’t already revealed in a trailer. And then whenever I post about it with spoilers, it will be clearly labeled so you can avoid them. If you’ve refused to watch any trailers or promotional material and want to go into the movie completely blind, I’d skip this. But if you watched the trailers, I’m not going to give any anything you hadn’t already seen.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Star Wars is meant to be seen on the big screen, While this the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, I have been fortunate to see Star Wars at the movie since between 2019 and now. I’ve seen the Original Trilogy a couple times, along with The Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith, and just a couple ago weeks ago I got to see Rogue One. So we’re going to start with that. This morning I fired up the landspeeder and made the treacherous drive across DFW to meet up with a crazy old hermit known only as the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Tarrant County. He bought two of his neighbors who were also awesome people. Movies are a communal experience, even if you’re supposed to be quiet. And sitting in the theater with your friends and a Mando and Grogu souvenir cup filled with Cherry Coke1 is how you should see Star Wars. Look, I’m an indoor cat. I love Disney+ and having pretty much all of Star Wars at my disposal any time of the day from the comfort of my couch, where I can usually watch them with my cat, is awesome. But it doesn’t match the experience of seeing it in the theater. The big screen and sound that you can feel really adds to the experience.
The best part about The Mandalorian and Grogu is that it gives you exactly what the title promises. It’s Mando and Grogu having an adventure. Yes, Zeb is there (and they did a fantastic job on him), so is Sigourney Weaver and it’s fun to see her. I won't say anything else but the return of Stinky the Hutt was great and I really liked what they did with his character. Unlike some other Disney Star Wars that feel too reliant on known characters showing up, we actually didn’t get any. If you were hoping Moff Gideon might still be alive, sorry you’re out of luck. There are callbacks to other Star Wars moments, both subtle and on-the-nose, but Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni made a conscious decision not to just use nostalgia. Or at least not anymore than having a Baby Yoda as your main character is using nostalgia.
Another area where the movie succeeds is that anybody can see it. The thing that season 1 of The Mandalorian did so well was it was so accessible. Anybody with a surface level understanding of Star Wars could watch the show and enjoy it. I know that both Mom Mothma and Darth Dad watched season 1. But then you get into seasons 2 and 3 when you get Ahsoka and Bo-Katan and Luke and you need to know what the Darksaber is, It can get tougher if you’re just someone who wants to watch because you like Baby Yoda. Hell, they reference Operation Cinder in season 2. You gotta be a real Sicko to know that one. The movie went back to that. Since the movie operates as a self-contained story, you could watch it with again, a fairly minimal background in Star Wars and still enjoy it.
One other thing I specifically loved was just how great the Grogu puppet was. The practical effects people really upped the game. He has way more in terms of range of motion and expressions. It’s not just tossing the puppet in the air anymore. That really allowed Grogu as a character to shine.
I have seen this complaint from some reviews, that it doesn’t really tie into the bigger story. It doesn’t set anything up for another movie or the possible season 4 of The Mandalorian. It’s Space Dad and his weird green son flying around the galaxy on a mission and getting snacks. It reminded me a lot of the standalone episodes from season 1 of The Mandalorian, before they brought in Ahsoka and Bo-Katan and the rest of the Mandalorians and expanded the story. You know what, that’s OK. There will (hopefully) be plenty of Star Wars in the future where we can get into the wider universe. There’s Ahsoka season 2 which has two galaxy’s and a long-rumored space battle between Admiral Akbar and Grand Admiral Thrawn. We have Simon Kinberg’s trilogy which may or may not be Episodes 10 - 12. Or X - XII. There’s nothing wrong with a self-contained story of Mando and Grogu doing their thing.
In the end, the best thing that The Mandalorian and Grogu is that it’s a fun movie. It doesn’t promise anything more than that. I had a smile on my face for pretty much time. That’s all you need. The world is on fire and kinda depressing right now. So why not spend a couple hours watching some adventures. It will make your day. This is the way.
The Death Star Human Resources Department Book Club
I hadn’t realized this, but it’s been quite a while since there’s been a Darth Vader-centric book. The last one was Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp back in 2015, which was Palaptine and Vader on a road trip to Ryloth. It’s a road trip buddy comedy, but with lightsabers and Dark Side powers. I have a piece2 about the use of Vader in live-action and animation coming soon. Disney’s version of Vader is more like an unstoppable Force-powered monster. No personality, but he looks awesome on the screen. The books are really where you can get Vader’s personality. I featured the Expanded Universe book Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno way back in the 10th issue of Death Star HR. It’s kinda fun to go back and look at early Death Star HR and see what’s changed. Unlike Master of Evil, Luceno takes the time to explain in Dark Lord how Vader uses the bathroom while wearing the suit. In a lot of ways, I think of this book as a spiritual successor to Dark Lord. It’s not a rip off of it, by any means. But it’s another book that explores
Title: Master of Evil
Series: Standalone.
Author: Adam Christopher.
Date published: November 11, 2025
Pages: 384
Status: Canon
Summary in less than 20 words: Everyone wants to learn the secrets of Darth Plagueis the Wise. But nobody wants to share.
Despite Vader being on the cover and one of the most iconic figures in movie history, there are stretches of the book where it feels like Vader is a secondary character in his own book. That’s not neccessarily a bad thing, although it’s slightly a case of false advertising. But I get it. What’s going to sell more books? Vader on the cover or a couple new characters you’ve never heard of? It’s a no brainer, and it’s certainly not the author’s fault.
The plot of the book involves an object of immense Force power, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s a temple that can create a vergence in the Force. Palpatine wants it. Vader wants it, maybe it’s enough to bring back Padme. The people who’s planet the temple is on obviously do not want to see it go. Palpatine instructions Vader to go find it and go find the Force Shaman. Palpatine also doesn’t trust Vader, you know, that whole Rule of Two thing, so he has the ISB send along terminally ill Imperial Royal Guard Colonel Halland Goth3 to “assist” Vader on his mission. And in Sith-speak, that “assist” really means “spy on and narc to Palpatine.” Goth is understandable a little concerned here. Fail Palpatine you get zapped with Force lighting. Fail Vader you get Force choked. Goth obviously does not know the extend of the Sith’s Force powers, but he knows that failure isn’t an option and both Vader and Palpatine wouldn’t hesitate to off him without a second thought.
Complicating matters is the fact that A) Goth is terminally ill and is only staying alive thanks to his droid, TC-99, shooting him up with medicine at regular intervals. Goth eventually realizes Vader is searching for the key to keeping someone alive through the Force and realizes that he could use this knowledge as well to, you know, not die.
The best part of the book was the relationship between Goth and TC-99, aka Nines. Droids in Star Wars are interesting. Star Wars obviously didn’t invent the thinking robot, for lack of a better way to put it. Given the current obsession with A.I. by some, I can’t help but think that Droids are what the A.I. evangelicals think the end result is going to be. Everyone has a C-3PO to help around the house or an R2-D2 to, I don’t know, drive your car. I personally think if A.I. ever advances past the LLM model and truly Agentic A.I., it will look less like a protocol droid and more like Skynet. But that’s just like, my opinion, man. ‘
Nines is different than a lot of droids we meet in that he seems to be completely free. It almost feels like he chooses to stay with Goth and help him, rather than he does it because he’s programmed to. Christopher comes up with a neat little trick to mostly explain this. Nines is basically a phone that’s been jailbreaked. He has the ability to essentially add a new SIM card of another droid and use its abilities. Think of the scene in The Matrix when they basically upload floppy disks of martial arts skills directly into Neo’s brain.
That’s essentially what Nines can do. If he needs to be a medical droid or a combat droid or an Astromech, he can just dip into his handy bag of SIM cards and turn himself into whatever type of droid he needs to. This of course comes with risks. Unlike Neo, whenever Nines pops a in a new SIM card, he becomes that droid. So normally Nines is pretty mild mannered, but if he say used the card of a droid like HK-47, he’d stop being himself and start being a murder-bot. It can present problems. Goth even notes that he’s not sure how it works that Nines is his own man…errr…droid. But just accepts it.
We even get a scene at the end where Nines chooses a path that potentially would allow another droid’s personality to take his over. He doesn’t do this because Goth orders him to or because it’s in his programming. But he makes the choice because Goth is his friend. We should all be so lucky have a friend like that.
The Good:
It’s a Vader book! Come on, that’s going to be good. The book opens with Vader on Mustafar bleeding his kyber crystal. It’s a great start.
Goth and Nines were great characters and I loved the relationship between them.
The Bad:
Getting a little nitpicky here since I genuinely enjoyed the book. As I said, for a Vader book there were times he felt like a side character. There’s certainly a “less is more” theory about using Darth Vader that I’m going to write about soon.
I would have liked the ISB officer, Korali Desler, to get a little more attention. I get it, there are a limited number of pages and you can’t flesh out every character. But still, a mysterious ISB officer in the early days of the Empire has a lot of potential, character wise.
Wild Card:
Count Dooku returns! At least in the prologue. Always good to see him make an appearance.
There’s a transformer in Star Wars. The ship that Dooku uses at the start of the book basically can morph into whatever shape is needed to carry cargo. Just read the book, they explain it a lot better than I do.
Next book up will stay in canon. Going to read the Galaxy’s Edge tie-in, Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson.
The Mouse Drops Batuu Into the World Between Worlds
This has been on my list of things to write about for a few weeks. I’ve mentioned it in the past, but it went live at the end of April. Disneyland retconned Galaxy’s Edge and made the timeline pretty fuzzy. You see, Galaxy’s Edge is supposed to take place at a very specific time and place in the Star Wars universe, specifically between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. You had Kylo Ren, Rey, timeline specific Chewbacca. And while Mando and Grogu being there was a bit of a stretch - The Mandalorian takes place around 9 ABY while The Last Jedi takes place in 34 ABY - it still at least made more sense than having say, Qui-Gon Jinn and Padme show up.
Now, the timeline is a lot more muddy. Disney has turned Galaxy’s Edge from a specific time and place to a more generic “Star Wars world” type of place. Rey is still there, but she’s banished to her corner by Rise of the Resistance. Now you’ve got Han, Leia, and Darth Vader walking around. I believe Smuggler’s Run is now Mandalorian and Grogu themed. I guess to tie in with the movie. While yes, there is a period in the Star Wars timeline where Darth Vader, Din Djarin, and Din Grogu are all alive at the same time, there is no period were Vader is alive and Mando and Grogu have teamed up.
Perhaps it was inevitable that change would come for Galaxy’s Edge. Creating an in-world Star Wars experience, not judge the Black Spire Outpost but the Galactic Starcruiser hotel. There are limited number of people who would pay a lot of money for a Star Wars LARP. Don’t let me wrong, there are a lot of people who would truly enjoy it. But it’s really a pretty small number compared to the number of people at DIsney who just want to get a picture with Darth Vader then go get a Dole Whip and not think about next month’s credit card bill.
It’s disappointing, to say the least. Large companies are inherently risk averse, and Disney is taking the coward’s way out. So I had a lot of thoughts on this. And then I found the piece linked below. Andrew Bloom does a great job laying out the history of Galaxy’s Edge, the ambitious plans Disney had for it, and how it all came…crashing down isn’t the right term…maybe how it never lived up to it’s potential4.
The whole article is fantastic, I pulled a few choice quotes but I’d strongly suggest reading the whole thing.
What was once a place deliberately situated within a specific moment in the Star Wars timeline is now sliced and diced between the Original Trilogy, the Sequel Trilogy, and the time of The Mandalorian, depending on where you happen to be standing at any given point. A section of the park whose creators prided themselves on its unique diegetic soundtrack saw their work replaced by the familiar movie score pumping through the speakers. Distinctive merchandise that made clever sense in-universe was replaced with garden variety Star Wars-branded t-shirts and Funko Pops of the usual suspects.
There’s nothing wrong with any of that, exactly. Even before the formal changeover, the effort to engross visitors within a coherent, consistent little ecosystem, one filled with life and character, had slowly but steadily fallen away. And yet, the official transition represents the end of something: not just a vision for a different kind of theme park land, but an aspiration to do more, to innovate, to offer guests something bold and new rather than safe and familiar.
The Imagineers didn’t build a land; they built a sandbox. Because in a broader sense, that’s what Star Wars’ setting is. It’s not a place to imagine yourself being whisked away to, like the Wizarding World. It is, instead, a place to play, a place to share in the experience, a place to be a part of the adventure.
And what’s disappointing is that, even at the height of Galaxy’s Edge, we only got about half of that vision.
But so it goes. Not every idea makes it from ideation to rollout. What’s more frustrating is that the concept art and the splashy announcements from an array of Disney executives as high up as the CEO himself presented Galaxy’s Edge as a land full of life and character. I mean that literally. Concept art and descriptions showed droids rolling around, alien brutes clomping through the market, and humble residents lingering in stalls and alleyways. It seemed to be an essential part of how the Imagineers conceived the environment.
That vision never came to pass, and it’s one of the biggest strikes against Galaxy’s Edge. Once fully realized, the actual Star Wars Land can feel surprisingly empty, even when plenty of tourists are milling about. It often has the sense of unwittingly visiting a city overseas only to realize that you planned your trip during the one month where the whole country is on vacation.
Trust me, read the whole thing. I should point out that I didn’t read it as an attack on Disney’s stewardship of Star Wars. But rather a lament of what was and what could have been for Star Wars fans.
Tom Kane is One With the Force
Long time voice-actor Tom Kane passed away on May 18th at 64 years old. He had suffered a stroke back in 2020 and retired from voice work in 2021. Most Star Wars fans probably know him for voicing Yoda in The Clone Wars, but he did so much more than that. Kane had been involved with Star Wars voice work starting back in 1996 when he voiced Leebo, Dash Rendar’s droid in Shadows of the Empire and an Imperial Officer and a Rebel Pilot in X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. And then starting in 1998, he appeared in at least one Star Wars project every year until his retirement. For a lot of younger people who grew up with The Clone Wars, it seems like Kane is their Yoda. Just like Sam Witwer is their Darth Maul.
Outside of Star Wars, Kane was Professor Utonium in The Powerpuff Girls and also appeared in Robot Chicken, Archer, and The Boondocks. Kane is survived by his wife and nine children.
This Day in Star Wars History
While there is a pretty big event happening today, May 22nd is otherwise a kinda slow day in Star Wars history.
Casting director Fred Roos was born in 1934. Roos won an Oscar for his work on The Godfather: Part II. It was Roos who suggested Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and James Earl Jones to George Lucas. Roos is credited with discovering young Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich.
Art director Harry Lange passed away in 2008. Lange worked on all three movies in the Original Trilogy. He also worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Great Muppet Caper, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
Author and astronomer Dr. Dinah L. Moché passed away in 2018. She wrote The Star Wars Question and Answer Book About Space which was one of the few books published by Black Falcon, a Lucasfilm subsidiary created to handle merchandising. As far as I can tell, the book is more facts about space in our galaxy, but maybe 3PO and R2 are the narrators. Going to have to keep an eye out for it at Half-Price Books.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
I’ve mentioned before something I always enjoy is when Star Wars takes something from our galaxy, but they have to make it “spacey”. So this week is the Gallian cobra. It’s like a regular cobra snake we’d have on Earth, but it’s in Star Wars.
Gallian cobras were a type of reptile native to the moon Gall. They were noted for darting their tongues in an inquisitive fashion while hatchlings.
The gallian cobras were introduced back in the early 90’s in a “choose-your-own-adventure” type of book, Surely I can’t be the only person who remembers those books. I don’t think I ever “beat” one of them, I’d always make the wrong choice and die.
News From the HoloNet
Interview with ‘Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord’ Writer Matt Michnovetz
Worth the read if you’re interested in how Shadow Lord came about.
I hope Lindelof nailed his script to Kathleen Kennedy’s door.
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.
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I really don’t drink pop, but Cherry Coke is my weakness.
It’s less of a "written draft” and more of “some vague ideas for a post” but it’s coming soon.
He’s named Goth but doesn’t wear all black. What are we even doing here?
Something teachers would write on my report cards.