ROS is bad, yes, we know. But why is this one line the thing that people always point to? — Page 2

Dagenspear said:

Shopping Maul said:

Well the problem is that there is no story after RoTJ. RoTJ was the ending - definitively. So all you can do is what has already been done ad nauseam - just posit a ‘new threat’ and dust off some TIE fighters. Snoke was useless because, in the end, no one cared. He had no connection to anything. Palpatine’s ‘return’ was silly, unexplained, illogical, and ruined the ending of a 6 film saga.
At least with Mothma you get someone with emotional weight - a beloved (despite her screen time) character whose betrayal of Han and Leia would actually mean something. And the idea that she was in the Rebel briefing room basically laying a trap on behalf of her boss because he’d promised her power (or to spare her world or whatever) is infinitely more satisfying than ‘a new threat has emerged from beyond the outer rim…’

Beloved to only really more heavily invested fans, from one scene in one movie basically I think.

I think you’re underestimating the nostalgic potential of minor characters. People are still whining about Boba Fett’s ignoble demise in RoTJ despite his minor status in TESB. There was major speculation about him in the early 80s - one magazine (Starlog?) did a massive article explaining how he was actually Luke’s father and had previously owned the Millennium Falcon!

Lucas included Mothma in ROTS. Okay, so she didn’t make the edit, but he thought she was worthy connective tissue to the OT. Rogue One agreed and placed her on Yavin in her traditional outfit. I think it would be so easy to exploit the feel-good factor of her presence (like I suggested in another reply - have her appear early in ep 7 in RoTJ-esque garb with Leia gushingly saying “Mon, so delightful to see you, we’ve missed you so much”)…

I think it’d kinda come out of nowhere really within the mainline movies, for me. And as for Han and Leia, they’re older characters. What does this mean for the newer characters? Beyond Kylo.

The fact that it would impact the older characters is the whole point. That’s what would tug at the heart-strings. All the newer characters need is a new villain, a new threat, and a reason to fight. And like I said, having Mothma be the family friend who corrupts Ben Solo is much more emotionally charged than “some new evil guy corrupted Ben Solo”. I mentioned in another reply that perhaps Ben could have been educated in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas.

To return to the OP’s point, the whole “somehow Palpatine returned” is ridiculous at so many levels. Palpatine’s death was crucial to the saga, so it undermines the PT and OT. Secondly, it strikes me as an odd thing for Poe and Rey and co. to be reacting emotionally to. Palpatine would just be a kind of evil legend to them - bad for sure but not necessarily carrying an immediate, visceral emotional weight. So that whole quote was playing for Leia, Chewie and us (fans) anyway. So swap “somehow Palpatine returned” for Leia saying to all assembled…

…“it was her. It was Mothma all along. She was in league with Palpatine. She killed the Bothan spies and led us into the trap on Endor. This is her revenge. That is where the First Order is striking from…the Bothan System!” (or something)…

If it was to spare her world, then I don’t see what she’d care about after Palpatine dies and empire falls. I maintain my stance, why would Palpatine offer anyone this, and why would he not use Mothma lead the empire to the rebels instead, and why would anyone buy what he says if he offers them a seat at his side?

Star Wars thrives on vague motivations, so we wouldn’t need some elaborate backstory (Matthew Stover would write one later anyway!). All we’d really need is the revelation that Mothma was working with Palpatine in secret, that he had promised her power of some kind, that she had killed the Bothan spies herself and delivered the false Death Star message on Palpatine’s behalf etc etc. When the rebels defeated the Empire, she was denied her ambitions.

Kylo had no backstory really, until Rian destroyed Luke Skywalker in order to give him one. In the Mothma version Kylo is betrayed by an adored friend, someone masquerading as an ally whilst filling his eager mind with distortions regarding his ‘true’ grandfather and using him for his power. Again, seeing Mothma as the nice robed lady on the Mon Calamari ship and realising she would later turn Leia’s son against her is way more interesting to me than ‘random Palpatine wannabe appeared out of nowhere for no reason and turned Kylo bad’.

A friend that has about as much weight as, as far as the movies gave, “a voice in his head” basically. Why would he trust her over his family? Why does she matter this much to Kylo? Why would his granddad Vader matter to him this way? These are more my questions.

Fair enough, but I would add - what exactly did Snoke add to the saga? What did resurrected Palpatine add to the saga? More pointedly, what did they take from the saga? The Mothma idea, to me, is a way to continue the story with all the good elements of the sequels intact without undermining the 6 films in any way. And it even adds a nice little twist to RoTJ.

I’m not defending Snoke or Palpatine (in this avenue, as in a post TLJ story I think he works more than Kylo to me) as a villain. I’m just not for this.

All fair enough - I’m not arguing with you per se…I just love nerding out over Star Wars!

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

I feel I’ve derailed this thread somewhat so, to bring it back to the main point, ‘somehow Palpatine returned’ is bad because it’s such a clumsy non-explanation for something we all know to be utterly ridiculous. It doesn’t even really feel like something Poe should be saying.

I guess, if Palpatine really needed to be resurrected, I’d prefer Poe say something like “the intel has revealed a huge planet-destroying fleet amassing in the Exegol system and preparing for war. It claims to be under the command of…Emperor Palpatine”.

Then everyone gasps and looks concerned. That’s all you need. Elsewhere in the movie you’d (theoretically) get some kind of explanation.

George Lucas’s ideas for the sequel trilogy were to focus on the reconstruction of the galaxy after the fall of the Empire. Although it’s not exactly the same, I think this lines up well with some ideas other people on this site have floated around, where the main conflict of the Sequel Trilogy is to prevent/contain a war before it becomes a galactic, existential crisis. In GL’s ST we might have seen the New Republic face similar stressors to what brought the collapse of the Old Republic, and prevail, demonstrating that the galaxy has grown and learned over the saga and that our heroes have brought about lasting change.

Here you don’t really need for there to be another BBEG. The story is no longer about a guy that has to be defeated for the galaxy to have peace. Bringing back Palpatine, or having Darth Plagueis or Mon Mothma be the villain of the ST all has the same problem, in different flavors. The ST’s story becomes based on how the heroes didn’t really defeat the bad guy yet, and there’s still a little more to go. This doesn’t work when for 32 years we’ve had a satisfying victory for the heroes. But making the ST about reconstruction in the aftermath of the BBEG getting defeated extends the story past Episode 6 more naturally without undermining it, and shows a clear narrative progression across all 9 movies.

Shopping Maul said:

I think you’re underestimating the nostalgic potential of minor characters. People are still whining about Boba Fett’s ignoble demise in RoTJ despite his minor status in TESB. There was major speculation about him in the early 80s - one magazine (Starlog?) did a massive article explaining how he was actually Luke’s father and had previously owned the Millennium Falcon!

Lucas included Mothma in ROTS. Okay, so she didn’t make the edit, but he thought she was worthy connective tissue to the OT. Rogue One agreed and placed her on Yavin in her traditional outfit. I think it would be so easy to exploit the feel-good factor of her presence (like I suggested in another reply - have her appear early in ep 7 in RoTJ-esque garb with Leia gushingly saying “Mon, so delightful to see you, we’ve missed you so much”)…

But what does her being a villain add to it? It seems like it’s just a betrayal with a twist for the sake of it to me.

The fact that it would impact the older characters is the whole point. That’s what would tug at the heart-strings. All the newer characters need is a new villain, a new threat, and a reason to fight. And like I said, having Mothma be the family friend who corrupts Ben Solo is much more emotionally charged than “some new evil guy corrupted Ben Solo”. I mentioned in another reply that perhaps Ben could have been educated in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas.

…“it was her. It was Mothma all along. She was in league with Palpatine. She killed the Bothan spies and led us into the trap on Endor. This is her revenge. That is where the First Order is striking from…the Bothan System!” (or something)…

But the older characters aren’t really what this story would be about, would it? Overall? I didn’t argue for Palpatine. I have different perceptions on that. Personally, I’m interested in Maul leading the criminal underworld type of story.

I also don’t see what this does as a sequel to the OT.

Star Wars thrives on vague motivations, so we wouldn’t need some elaborate backstory (Matthew Stover would write one later anyway!). All we’d really need is the revelation that Mothma was working with Palpatine in secret, that he had promised her power of some kind, that she had killed the Bothan spies herself and delivered the false Death Star message on Palpatine’s behalf etc etc. When the rebels defeated the Empire, she was denied her ambitions.

Star Wars only really gives vague motivations for the outright villainous characters in my experience. You’re suggesting a reveal of a character whose been seen as heroic for 30 years. I wonder what the point is if she has no real direct motivation.

All fair enough - I’m not arguing with you per se…I just love nerding out over Star Wars!

I thank God for the civil response!

Jesus is Lord! Love and worship God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit!

SparkySywer said:

George Lucas’s ideas for the sequel trilogy were to focus on the reconstruction of the galaxy after the fall of the Empire. Although it’s not exactly the same, I think this lines up well with some ideas other people on this site have floated around, where the main conflict of the Sequel Trilogy is to prevent/contain a war before it becomes a galactic, existential crisis. In GL’s ST we might have seen the New Republic face similar stressors to what brought the collapse of the Old Republic, and prevail, demonstrating that the galaxy has grown and learned over the saga and that our heroes have brought about lasting change.

Here you don’t really need for there to be another BBEG. The story is no longer about a guy that has to be defeated for the galaxy to have peace. Bringing back Palpatine, or having Darth Plagueis or Mon Mothma be the villain of the ST all has the same problem, in different flavors. The ST’s story becomes based on how the heroes didn’t really defeat the bad guy yet, and there’s still a little more to go. This doesn’t work when for 32 years we’ve had a satisfying victory for the heroes. But making the ST about reconstruction in the aftermath of the BBEG getting defeated extends the story past Episode 6 more naturally without undermining it, and shows a clear narrative progression across all 9 movies.

I disagree George having Maul as the big bad and likely the new emperor is just as bad. Its Jedi VS Sith again. Except Maul is no threat to Luke and reconstituted Jedi order. A system or two of rogue stormtroopers and planets. The New Republic would have no problem dealing with them.

And he likely would have doubled down on prequelisms. And fans would say my word this is prequel 2.0 This is no sequel to the OT. Maul, michiclorians, Whills. Darth Talon in the wrong era with the wrong Sith Master. They’d be a few Filonisms too i’d imagine, it would line up with Clone Wars as it existed before the sale but not Rebels.

Luke would be a prequel Jedi afraid of attachments just like in Disney. No wife or children of his own. At best the Jedi order and the Republic might be closer to how it was in the Expanded Universe and Luke, Han and Leia would not all be failures. You’d actually have a Jedi order and a New Republic. And Han and Leia would have twins a son and a daughter. The son would go bad like Jacen Solo, so original. I hated that in the books they took Jacen made him Hayden Skywalker 2.0. They killed Anakin Solo, they killed Mara Jade. In George’s sequel Ben Skywalker and Mara don’t even exist.

Rey nobody is fine with me, but I wouldn’t have been against Rey being adopted or something. The way the ROS does it self-adopted Skywalker is bizarre. You have to headcanon that Luke chooses her as his heir and passes the lightsaber, because the movies are not plain on what they are doing. He never trained her in the Last Jedi. And she certainly wasn’t a Palpatine. Luke knew she was the future and was going to be the next Jedi, but he wasn’t going to be there to see it, he killed himself in an astral projection to save Leia and the new rebellion or whatever Disney was calling it. The rebellion is reborn today and I won’t be the Last Jedi.

The topic somehow Palpatine returned. It’s an insipid line of dialogue that even George Lucas at his prequel worst wouldn’t have written. And I despise that they did a bad adaptation of Dark Empire. Without Luke and Leia in the story fighting Palpatine its meaningless. The story is the Skywalker’s.

JadedSkywalker said:

I disagree George having Maul as the big bad and likely the new emperor is just as bad. Its Jedi VS Sith again. Except Maul is no threat to Luke and reconstituted Jedi order. A system or two of rogue stormtroopers and planets. The New Republic would have no problem dealing with them.

I think only if you presume him to be acting as a sith in the function of the story or in being the same type of villain the emperor was I think, or if take “threat” as being a purely physical one, in this context against a Luke with a full Jedi order.

And he likely would have doubled down on prequelisms. And fans would say my word this is prequel 2.0 This is no sequel to the OT. Maul, michiclorians, Whills. Darth Talon in the wrong era with the wrong Sith Master. They’d be a few Filonisms too i’d imagine, it would line up with Clone Wars as it existed before the sale but not Rebels.

So what with the prequelisms? They’re all connected. I think Lucas can get up his own butt about these things sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I think the Maul idea is poor or that midichlorians effect much.

Wrong era? A legends character being used in a story seperate from that continuity, how does that contradict the movies?

Luke would be a prequel Jedi afraid of attachments just like in Disney. No wife or children of his own.

Even if I’d disagree with it (Luke not having a wife and child, not the no attachments thing), what does it really hurt, if Luke isn’t miserable?

At best the Jedi order and the Republic might be closer to how it was in the Expanded Universe and Luke, Han and Leia would not all be failures. You’d actually have a Jedi order and a New Republic. And Han and Leia would have twins a son and a daughter.

I think that all sounds far stronger to me.

JadedSkywalker said:

SparkySywer said:

George Lucas’s ideas for the sequel trilogy were to focus on the reconstruction of the galaxy after the fall of the Empire. Although it’s not exactly the same, I think this lines up well with some ideas other people on this site have floated around, where the main conflict of the Sequel Trilogy is to prevent/contain a war before it becomes a galactic, existential crisis. In GL’s ST we might have seen the New Republic face similar stressors to what brought the collapse of the Old Republic, and prevail, demonstrating that the galaxy has grown and learned over the saga and that our heroes have brought about lasting change.

Here you don’t really need for there to be another BBEG. The story is no longer about a guy that has to be defeated for the galaxy to have peace. Bringing back Palpatine, or having Darth Plagueis or Mon Mothma be the villain of the ST all has the same problem, in different flavors. The ST’s story becomes based on how the heroes didn’t really defeat the bad guy yet, and there’s still a little more to go. This doesn’t work when for 32 years we’ve had a satisfying victory for the heroes. But making the ST about reconstruction in the aftermath of the BBEG getting defeated extends the story past Episode 6 more naturally without undermining it, and shows a clear narrative progression across all 9 movies.

I disagree George having Maul as the big bad and likely the new emperor is just as bad.

I don’t know if Darth Maul is meant to be the “big bad” in George’s ST. Maybe he is, he is a Sith master and a clear primary antagonist for the Jedi. But on the other hand, he’s more associated with the criminal underworld of the galaxy while the primary antagonistic force of the story are Imperial ideological holdovers, ex-Stormtroopers in militias refusing to give up like Ba’athists joining ISIS. Maybe they’re in league with each other, maybe Darth Maul takes control of these guys, or maybe they aren’t working together at all. Who knows, George Lucas never made this trilogy. There’s a bunch of different ways it could have played out.

What I was saying wasn’t that George Lucas’s ST pitch had it all figured out, or that if he or Michael Arndt realized it, it would’ve been the objective, correct direction for the sequel trilogy. So talking about midichlorians or prequel-isms is really beside the point. Bringing the conflict of the story in this direction means that the story doesn’t place as much emphasis on beating a new BBEG at the climax of the saga. All these other ideas: Bringing back Palpatine, Snoke or some other knockoff Palpatine, Darth Plagueis surviving, and Mon Mothma, all make the conflict into how the Rebels didn’t actually win in Episode 6, and now they have to win for real this time in Episode 9.

Fair enough I just think Maul is weak as a character. Obi-Wan cut him in half in the Phantom Menace and by all means he should have stayed dead.

Sidious is dangerous and evil. Formidable opponent of the Jedi. In the OT and PT. Disney made him a joke.

I think even the Expanded Universe struggled with finding another enemy that was sufficient, The Vong, Grand Admiral Thrawn being the ones that worked.

Bureaucracy of the New Republic is one of those ones very seldom mentioned. And whether if those previously controlled worlds wanted to be ruled by the new Republic previously the Rebellion.

Which territories would the Empire give up in an armistice to keep whatever they had left.

The thing with the first order makes no sense if the Empire and New Republic exist.

Why a resistance why a first order, when the New Republic is the Rebellion and the Empire is the Empire. It is like Disney created Dark Siders who aren’t Sith and a new rebellion and a new Empire just to rehash. And that is exactly what I think they did requels. By the time of ROS and somehow Palpatine returned the Sith returned.

Dark side arts, cloning secrets only the Sith would know. Or whatever that Hobbit said.

In broad strokes I think the EU before the prequels finished got it right, with a lot of jank and nonsense in between. The Empire isn’t completely defeated and there are attempts at resurgence from various warlords and dark jedi, Thrawn being the most successful. Makes sense. Then eventually the writers figured out that was stale and went with something more ambitious in the Vong, before relapsing into garbage with evil Jacen Solo. An alliance of criminals would be a good temporary threat. Maybe Black Sun, the Hutts, the Corporate Sector, possibly some prequel Separatists or some other factions coming together to take on the New Republic as it’s getting on its feet.

As much as it goes against Lucas’s politics, it would also make sense to have terrorist guerilla fighters be the bad guys for a change. That’s how the First Order was sold to us in the beginning.

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

I didn’t mean ‘she was there all along’ to mean she was a spy or a baddie all along. I meant it in the sense that we’d seen her in RoTJ. Her actual conversion to the Empire/Palpatine could’ve been recent by RoTJ’s standards. None of us had seen or heard of Mothma prior to RoTJ - and there was no Rogue One or Andor. She was a blank slate at that point - basically just a nice rebel lady who was delivering some DS plans. As far as I can tell she wasn’t at the Endor celebration either, even though the space lobsters were! I just think it would be cool to have a connecting thread to the OT - which would make it feel a little more like a genuine Episode 7 rather than just more Star Wars.

For example when we watch Obi Wan talking about Luke’s father in ep 4, we now see all these huge implications in Obi Wan’s discomfort. Of course none of those implications existed at the time, but now the saga is richer for it. It’s a similar thing when Yoda says “there is another” or when Leia and Luke Force-connect at the end of Empire. These moments now have weight that binds the episodes, even though the intention at the time of writing was otherwise. In this instance the RoTJ briefing scene, when viewed through the lens of the 9-film saga, would now carry this kind of pre-emptive foreboding that would give the ‘new’ trilogy a sense of continuity to its predecessors.

NFBisms said:

Hypothetical villain Mon Mothma as a Robespierre or Stalin-type figure might work better than her having always been an imperial spy.

I like this idea but I’m still unsold on Mon Mothma being this character specifically

NeverarGreat said:

To try and explain why I think this line is so bad, let’s compare it to Return of the Jedi, which introduces in the opening crawl that somehow, the Death Star has returned. Granted, it strains credulity much less to believe that the Empire would rebuild the Death Star, but it’s still a hamfisted way of giving the final movie in the trilogy an instantly recognizable threat.

So how does ROTJ deal with this awkward plot device? By letting the crawl do all the heavy lifting. By the time we get to the briefing scene with Mon Mothma, nobody is questioning how the Empire managed to build a much larger Death Star than the first in a fraction of the time, they are too busy working on how to blow it up. Imagine if instead Han Solo learned of the new Death Star in the rebel briefing and he started asking questions. Maybe this could work if the writers really wanted to explain exactly how the new Death Star was built, but if the writers don’t have an answer, then Han Solo’s question would do nothing except draw attention to the fact that the writers don’t seem to have any idea either. It would go a long way to destroying the audience’s suspension of disbelief in the movie itself.

Thus, one reason why ‘Somehow, Palpatine returned’ is so bad is because it shines a spotlight on the movie’s weakest part, and in so doing lays bare the falseness of the entire narrative.

I think that this line is in large part a self-inflicted wound, since Rise of Skywalker could have taken the Return of the Jedi route and simply established Palpatine’s return off screen, as it had already done. Then the Resistance could behave in a way that illustrates that everyone believes that Palpatine has returned, regardless of the reason, and now the audience is swept up in the quest to destroy him instead of questioning his entire existence.

I’ve always had an issue with Palpatine returning, because I’ve always (like you said) questioned his existence. But, I really wonder if my thoughts would be different if handled this way. Very, very interesting concept.

If they weren’t going to handle it the way you outlined I wish they would have focused more on the cloning storyline to really flesh out how he returned.

NFBisms said:

Hypothetical villain Mon Mothma as a Robespierre or Stalin-type figure might work better than her having always been an imperial spy. It doesn’t undo the ROTJ victory and would contend with the reconstruction of revolution in an interesting way. The paranoia of imperial conspiracy leading to an extreme crackdown on counterrevolutionary activity, demagoguery for the sans-culottes, and maybe some dark side bullshit for good measure. It would be a fine line since you’d have to try not to indict the whole movement the OT is predicated on, but having our heroes struggle with their allies’ descent and questions of what a galactic government post-Empire would actually look like, feels the most like a natural progression to me. It synthesizes with the prequels too.

Yeah the EU had a lighter version of this, who coincidentally enough was a Bothan (Borsk Fey’lya.) Ambitious careerist striver who distrusts everyone and tries to get rid of Ackbar. Convenient foil whenever you need an antagonist figure within the New Republic itself.

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

I didn’t mean ‘she was there all along’ to mean she was a spy or a baddie all along. I meant it in the sense that we’d seen her in RoTJ. Her actual conversion to the Empire/Palpatine could’ve been recent by RoTJ’s standards. None of us had seen or heard of Mothma prior to RoTJ - and there was no Rogue One or Andor. She was a blank slate at that point - basically just a nice rebel lady who was delivering some DS plans. As far as I can tell she wasn’t at the Endor celebration either, even though the space lobsters were! I just think it would be cool to have a connecting thread to the OT - which would make it feel a little more like a genuine Episode 7 rather than just more Star Wars.

For example when we watch Obi Wan talking about Luke’s father in ep 4, we now see all these huge implications in Obi Wan’s discomfort. Of course none of those implications existed at the time, but now the saga is richer for it. It’s a similar thing when Yoda says “there is another” or when Leia and Luke Force-connect at the end of Empire. These moments now have weight that binds the episodes, even though the intention at the time of writing was otherwise. In this instance the RoTJ briefing scene, when viewed through the lens of the 9-film saga, would now carry this kind of pre-emptive foreboding that would give the ‘new’ trilogy a sense of continuity to its predecessors.

So she wasn’t in the alliance at all until shortly before ROTJ, but became the leader of the whole thing immediately? I wasn’t even referring to Andor or anything like that, I’m saying that just within the context of ROTJ by itself, she’s clearly the leader in some capacity. On the other hand, if you think that she could plausibly be just some common woman they appointed to deliver the briefing, there wouldn’t be any interest or shock value in her being a traitor.

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

I didn’t mean ‘she was there all along’ to mean she was a spy or a baddie all along. I meant it in the sense that we’d seen her in RoTJ. Her actual conversion to the Empire/Palpatine could’ve been recent by RoTJ’s standards. None of us had seen or heard of Mothma prior to RoTJ - and there was no Rogue One or Andor. She was a blank slate at that point - basically just a nice rebel lady who was delivering some DS plans. As far as I can tell she wasn’t at the Endor celebration either, even though the space lobsters were! I just think it would be cool to have a connecting thread to the OT - which would make it feel a little more like a genuine Episode 7 rather than just more Star Wars.

For example when we watch Obi Wan talking about Luke’s father in ep 4, we now see all these huge implications in Obi Wan’s discomfort. Of course none of those implications existed at the time, but now the saga is richer for it. It’s a similar thing when Yoda says “there is another” or when Leia and Luke Force-connect at the end of Empire. These moments now have weight that binds the episodes, even though the intention at the time of writing was otherwise. In this instance the RoTJ briefing scene, when viewed through the lens of the 9-film saga, would now carry this kind of pre-emptive foreboding that would give the ‘new’ trilogy a sense of continuity to its predecessors.

So she wasn’t in the alliance at all until shortly before ROTJ, but became the leader of the whole thing immediately? I wasn’t even referring to Andor or anything like that, I’m saying that just within the context of ROTJ by itself, she’s clearly the leader in some capacity. On the other hand, if you think that she could plausibly be just some common woman they appointed to deliver the briefing, there wouldn’t be any interest or shock value in her being a traitor.

So why can’t a leader become corrupt? Didn’t Dooku start out as a good guy? The interesting thing is that we never saw Mothma in the previous episodes at all - she wasn’t on Yavin, she wasn’t on Hoth. RoTJ showed the Rebels basically coming together, presumably from far and wide given all the new faces, for one last battle - so we have no idea where she operated from or in what capacity. She was a blank slate, irrespective of her rank (not that any rank was actually alluded to in the film beyond ‘here’s an important rebel lady’). All we know is that this important rebel lady delivered the false information - as intended by Palpatine - that lead the rebels into a trap. I’m merely suggesting that she was in on it, rather than just being a dupe along with everyone else, and that, like Dooku, or Grievous, or Darth Maul, or Anakin Skywalker, she had been offered power in exchange for aligning herself with Palpatine’s evil designs.

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

I didn’t mean ‘she was there all along’ to mean she was a spy or a baddie all along. I meant it in the sense that we’d seen her in RoTJ. Her actual conversion to the Empire/Palpatine could’ve been recent by RoTJ’s standards. None of us had seen or heard of Mothma prior to RoTJ - and there was no Rogue One or Andor. She was a blank slate at that point - basically just a nice rebel lady who was delivering some DS plans. As far as I can tell she wasn’t at the Endor celebration either, even though the space lobsters were! I just think it would be cool to have a connecting thread to the OT - which would make it feel a little more like a genuine Episode 7 rather than just more Star Wars.

For example when we watch Obi Wan talking about Luke’s father in ep 4, we now see all these huge implications in Obi Wan’s discomfort. Of course none of those implications existed at the time, but now the saga is richer for it. It’s a similar thing when Yoda says “there is another” or when Leia and Luke Force-connect at the end of Empire. These moments now have weight that binds the episodes, even though the intention at the time of writing was otherwise. In this instance the RoTJ briefing scene, when viewed through the lens of the 9-film saga, would now carry this kind of pre-emptive foreboding that would give the ‘new’ trilogy a sense of continuity to its predecessors.

So she wasn’t in the alliance at all until shortly before ROTJ, but became the leader of the whole thing immediately? I wasn’t even referring to Andor or anything like that, I’m saying that just within the context of ROTJ by itself, she’s clearly the leader in some capacity. On the other hand, if you think that she could plausibly be just some common woman they appointed to deliver the briefing, there wouldn’t be any interest or shock value in her being a traitor.

So why can’t a leader become corrupt? Didn’t Dooku start out as a good guy? The interesting thing is that we never saw Mothma in the previous episodes at all - she wasn’t on Yavin, she wasn’t on Hoth. RoTJ showed the Rebels basically coming together, presumably from far and wide given all the new faces, for one last battle - so we have no idea where she operated from or in what capacity. She was a blank slate, irrespective of her rank (not that any rank was actually alluded to in the film beyond ‘here’s an important rebel lady’). All we know is that this important rebel lady delivered the false information - as intended by Palpatine - that lead the rebels into a trap. I’m merely suggesting that she was in on it, rather than just being a dupe along with everyone else, and that, like Dooku, or Grievous, or Darth Maul, or Anakin Skywalker, she had been offered power in exchange for aligning herself with Palpatine’s evil designs.

The information wasn’t false though, it was completely true. It could be used as a trap because it was a tempting target. Palpatine takes credit for it himself. No one in particular had to deliver the information within the Alliance, other than the Bothans that found it out in the first place. She’s just giving the briefing, so she’s not introducing any deception right that moment.

Again if she’s a total blank slate and we assume that she’s not the main leader and she’s just some woman delivering the briefing, then the twist wouldn’t have any meaning or impact. At most it’s just “Oh, it’s her. Weird.” You’re relying on the context of her being some variety of fan favorite character, but those don’t exist in a vacuum. In the EU, Disney canon, and the ROTS deleted scenes, she’s high leadership from the start. That’s why people would care. You can have her as a blank slate or you can have her as a popular character turning heel, but you can’t do both.

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Shopping Maul said:

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…

Yes that kind of thing sucks, it’s something people both fans and outsiders complain about all the time. Seemingly every single character in the Mos Eisley cantina was given their own fleshed out backstory and adventures. Sometimes minor characters are just minor characters. The fondness some people have for minor characters out of universe does not mean they suddenly had more screentime retroactively added to the movies. Easter eggs are not the same thing as main characters.

“Uh, the Empire grew back” is not at all what happened in the Zahn books or the comics. The Empire is described as being on the back foot, fracturing into groups of warlords, not what it once was but not completely destroyed either. It makes perfect sense. The Empire starts winning in the Thrawn books because of Thrawn. He’s a singular, once in a generation military genius who lets them consistently win battles for the first time in a while, and he makes good use of technology like cloning, and various aliens. They also have help from a powerful dark jedi.

That makes so much more sense than Mon Mothma being a secret bad guy and rebuilding the Empire in secret, unless you basically made her into a Thrawn figure. That’s much more “Uh, the Empire grew back.”

I don’t disagree - indeed the fan service thing is annoying to me too (I never want to hear another Gonk Droid in my life!) but at the ‘nicer’ end of that scale is the fact that minor characters can and have been much loved (like Boba Fett as I mentioned in another reply and the ongoing disappointment regarding his demise, or a character like Wedge who is highly regarded). I think Mothma falls into that latter category - certainly enough for Lucas to include her in ROTS (edited out in the end but still…) and for writers to include her in Rogue One/Andor.

I’m not at all claiming that Zhan’s books or the comics are bad. I’m just saying that all they can really do is create a ‘new’ bad guy and/or a ‘new’ Empire. So really it’s just more Star Wars for the sake of more Star Wars, which is fine I guess. In a sense you’re right - I am positing Mothma as a ‘Thrawn figure’, but at least one where we go “damn, she was there all along!” rather than “well, there was another bad guy who we never heard of that has now emerged etc etc”. That’s just more appealing to me, but to each their own.

The specific individual we hadn’t heard of, just like we hadn’t heard of 99% of the imperial leadership, but the star destroyers and infrastructure were out in the open. The Mothma thing where it’s reversed and the Empire rebuilds without anyone noticing makes less sense.

Especially because there are plenty of ways you could sabotage the rebellion long before the second Death Star, if you were its main leader. Forgive the hacky comparison but if you were FDR or Winston Churchill and working for Hitler, there would be some serious differences in how the war played out before 1945. You could just give the Empire the location of Yavin or Hoth, for example.

I didn’t mean ‘she was there all along’ to mean she was a spy or a baddie all along. I meant it in the sense that we’d seen her in RoTJ. Her actual conversion to the Empire/Palpatine could’ve been recent by RoTJ’s standards. None of us had seen or heard of Mothma prior to RoTJ - and there was no Rogue One or Andor. She was a blank slate at that point - basically just a nice rebel lady who was delivering some DS plans. As far as I can tell she wasn’t at the Endor celebration either, even though the space lobsters were! I just think it would be cool to have a connecting thread to the OT - which would make it feel a little more like a genuine Episode 7 rather than just more Star Wars.

For example when we watch Obi Wan talking about Luke’s father in ep 4, we now see all these huge implications in Obi Wan’s discomfort. Of course none of those implications existed at the time, but now the saga is richer for it. It’s a similar thing when Yoda says “there is another” or when Leia and Luke Force-connect at the end of Empire. These moments now have weight that binds the episodes, even though the intention at the time of writing was otherwise. In this instance the RoTJ briefing scene, when viewed through the lens of the 9-film saga, would now carry this kind of pre-emptive foreboding that would give the ‘new’ trilogy a sense of continuity to its predecessors.

So she wasn’t in the alliance at all until shortly before ROTJ, but became the leader of the whole thing immediately? I wasn’t even referring to Andor or anything like that, I’m saying that just within the context of ROTJ by itself, she’s clearly the leader in some capacity. On the other hand, if you think that she could plausibly be just some common woman they appointed to deliver the briefing, there wouldn’t be any interest or shock value in her being a traitor.

So why can’t a leader become corrupt? Didn’t Dooku start out as a good guy? The interesting thing is that we never saw Mothma in the previous episodes at all - she wasn’t on Yavin, she wasn’t on Hoth. RoTJ showed the Rebels basically coming together, presumably from far and wide given all the new faces, for one last battle - so we have no idea where she operated from or in what capacity. She was a blank slate, irrespective of her rank (not that any rank was actually alluded to in the film beyond ‘here’s an important rebel lady’). All we know is that this important rebel lady delivered the false information - as intended by Palpatine - that lead the rebels into a trap. I’m merely suggesting that she was in on it, rather than just being a dupe along with everyone else, and that, like Dooku, or Grievous, or Darth Maul, or Anakin Skywalker, she had been offered power in exchange for aligning herself with Palpatine’s evil designs.

The information wasn’t false though, it was completely true. It could be used as a trap because it was a tempting target. Palpatine takes credit for it himself. No one in particular had to deliver the information within the Alliance, other than the Bothans that found it out in the first place. She’s just giving the briefing, so she’s not introducing any deception right that moment.

I mean ‘false’ in the sense that what the rebels thought was a great piece of covert discovery was actually Palpatine letting them know purposefully. He was deliberately letting them know about the shield on Endor, he knew about the “rebel fleet massing near Sullust”, he knew that a stolen shuttle had landed on Endor etc etc. All I’m adding here is that she knew what he was up to and was facilitating his wishes rather than being, like I said, another dupe.

Again if she’s a total blank slate and we assume that she’s not the main leader and she’s just some woman delivering the briefing, then the twist wouldn’t have any meaning or impact. At most it’s just “Oh, it’s her. Weird.” You’re relying on the context of her being some variety of fan favorite character, but those don’t exist in a vacuum. In the EU, Disney canon, and the ROTS deleted scenes, she’s high leadership from the start. That’s why people would care. You can have her as a blank slate or you can have her as a popular character turning heel, but you can’t do both.

That’s not what I mean by ‘blank slate’. Of course she’s a main leader, but that’s all she is (in RoTJ). We don’t get a backstory, and we don’t have a prior connection to her. She is a fan favourite of sorts, but only by virtue of showing up in a very popular movie and sporting a very recognisable look and being a lovely, regal figure who shows up to brief the rebels. I’m merely positing that the nice, regal figure who led the rebel meeting was actually in cahoots with the bad guy. From which naturally follows that she wasn’t thrilled when the rebels won and was politically in a position to plan some kind of retaliation, and was personally in a position to take her revenge on the Skywalkers by messing with their son.

I get what you’re saying about ‘fan favourites’, but I think she’d be fan favourite enough just by virtue of the above. For casual viewers who wouldn’t necessarily recall (or care about) the nice regal lady on the squid ship in RoTJ, it would still be something of a sinister revelation - especially if she’s given screen time in the sequels as her nice, nostalgia-baiting self (sharing pleasantries with Luke and Leia for instance). It’d be like “oh, so it’s that lady? Jeez, okay, that’s dark” (all the more so when viewed in a marathon with the OT). To me that’s so much more satisfying than Snoke being a random nobody or Palpatine just…returning.

I think I said this earlier but you could also have a red herring, like Holdo for instance, to generate tension. Look how invested we all got in TLJ when Holdo seemed to be a baddie, only to turn around and be secretly leading the rebels to Crait. You could create a similar tension in the sequels where Holdo comes off as a likely identity for the evil hologram lady, only to be revealed as a good guy while Mothma, having appeared as lovely fan service for Luke and Leia throughout the new trilogy, is actually the villain - an effect that is automatically heightened by her role in RoTJ.

Let’s say there’s a big showdown in episode 9, and Leia has figured out who the new bad guy/lady is (there could be a side-note for instance where Lando or a new character discovers journals that reveal the Bothan spies had been aware of the DS trap and were intending to reveal it before they were killed). Sparks are flying and stuff is going down, and Leia says something like “it was you! You killed the Bothan spies! You delivered us in to the trap on Endor! You were in league with the Emperor! And now this! Why Mon, why!”.

And the audience is like “yeah why? You were so nice in RoTJ. And we just saw you in the Hosnian system being so lovely and we cheered 'cos we recognised the white outfit and wow, you’re messing with our nostalgia!”

And Mothma’s howling like a madwoman (as sparks are flying and Tie fighters are blowing sh*t up) “he offered me power, power beyond my wildest dreams! And you took it away from me!”

That’s all you’d need. And of course, down the line, authors like Timothy Zhan and Matthew Stover would write EU about the fall of Mothma, and how she went from ex-Senator and beloved Rebel leader to Palpatine’s lackey.

I’m not saying all this because it’s the greatest piece of storytelling in the world. Heck, I don’t even like RoTJ! I just think it’s a potentially cool sneaky way to introduce/create a little sinister thread that can justify a continuation of the story beyond the usual ‘from beyond the Outer Rim came a new baddie’. We can still have new villains, new bounty hunters and Knights Of Ren and whatever the heck we want, but I just think it adds connective tissue to the saga to have the prime motivator of the new bad stuff be someone we encountered in the OT and, better yet, never suspected.

“Look how invested we all got in TLJ when Holdo seemed to be a baddie, only to turn around and be secretly leading the rebels to Crait. You could create a similar tension in the sequels where Holdo comes off as a likely identity for the evil hologram lady, only to be revealed as a good guy”

“Heck, I don’t even like RoTJ!”

It’s all making more sense now

Palpatine returning could work if it was intended but it wasn’t.

Lucas Palpatine does not get cloned or resurrected, Luke doesn’t have kids or get married.

Lucas idea of the chosen the one I always deride, is that Anakin brought balance to the force by doing away with the Sith which is undermined by his own return of Darth maul story treatment and Leia being the chosen one.

Some Disney employee clearly had heard of Dark Empire, either in passing or had read the comic and they did it very much worse story wise than Veitch did.

I don’t get how Rey has anything to do with the Star Wars story, it’s about the Skywalker’s. Disney inverted it and made it the Palpatine Saga. So unlike Dark Empire you don’t get Luke and Leia fighting the Emperor. You get self adopted Skywalker, who becomes the Skywalker and even takes Lukes’s story purpose and surname.

Just like Disney Thrawn is in the wrong era and Luke and Mara are not in the story. And he loses to Ezra the worst Jedi ever and space whales.

It’s what they did and now they have to own the Disney trilogy, they can do more stupid retcons, but I suggest not doing another Rise of Palpatine which course corrected an entire movie, the Last Jedi.

I understand that Disney wanted Rey to be a new character not tied to a particular legacy. I mean they ended up with is she is a Kenobi/Is she a Palpatine or Rey nobody. And they decided that the Saga’s heroes has to be a Skywalker. They could just as easily have started the trilogy with her as Leia’s daughter. And Ben her brother and drop the entire nonsensical Reylo. Ben could even have been Luke’s Son or Rey could have been Luke’s daughter. They could have been cousins. Just drop the romance.

Vladius said:

“Look how invested we all got in TLJ when Holdo seemed to be a baddie, only to turn around and be secretly leading the rebels to Crait. You could create a similar tension in the sequels where Holdo comes off as a likely identity for the evil hologram lady, only to be revealed as a good guy”

“Heck, I don’t even like RoTJ!”

It’s all making more sense now

Not sure if you’re taking a shot at me here but let me clarify…

I said the RoTJ thing in fun, only because it’s ironic I’m defending the story integrity of a movie I don’t really like. But the fact remains that RoTJ is a definitive ending to the saga and is thus easily undermined by potential sequels - which is why I’m so hung up on the sequels presenting a story thread that can preserve RoTJ’s conclusions (which included the prequels’ ‘balance’ theme) whilst allowing for a continuation.

I also don’t like TLJ - but I did at least like the idea (if not necessarily the execution) of Holdo’s duality, and I thought a similar notion could work (as it did for many in TLJ) in a sequel trilogy.

It’s less that the line is egregiously bad or anything, and more that it’s just so memeable. It’s like a perfect way to show incredulousness at something you don’t like that you thought was gone coming back, that I think makes people want to use it in memes. I also think it’s the way Oscar Isaac performs the line, and how hand wavy the explanation afterwards is that kind of makes it the most memorable line in the movie. I also don’t get why people are so caught up on the “they fly now” line either. Like yeah bad guys in Star Wars have flown and had jet packs before, but this is clearly just supposed to be a funny line to make the audience laugh, and it got one out of me. Like if you don’t think it’s funny, fine I just don’t understand why people keep saying how bad of a line it is when it really isn’t.