There's even a radio or broadcast program overheard in Pershing's apartment right before he finds the box of biscuits. You can hear them say that several planets in the galaxy are an ecumenopolis.
Yes, yes it is but it cuts against the grain of the idea in the OT that the heroes lived "happily ever after."
It's basically the same lot we saw on Cantonica 30 years later too. That's kind of how aristocracies work though. They control the wealth, so they're mostly immune to sweeping social changes Keep in mind that at this point Coruscant isn't the capital anymore. I think it's still Chandrilla, but it's meant to change every few years. So what you're seeing is mostly just an overworked bureaucracy trying to do five impossible things at once. It's always easier to destroy and oppress than it is to rebuild and liberate. If it looks like the New Republic is doing a worse job at governing, it's mostly because they way they're going about it (aka: the right way) is ten times harder than ruling by force and fear. Pretty sure that was just him scrolling through space wikipedia, because that's how weirdly sheltered the guy is. He needs to dutifully read though a travel brochure after he moves to a new planet, even though everyone in the galaxy likely knows exactly what Coruscant is all about. That's just how storytelling works. The hero can ride off into the sunset, and that may be the end of that story . . . but at some point that horse is going to fall over dead, and the hero is going to have other things to deal with, albeit rather more banal than whatever the grand adventurous narrative was all about. He'll make mistakes, maybe bad ones, and perhaps die forgotten and alone. This kind of thing is all through mythical storytelling (just go read the Epic of Gilgamesh or Beowulf), and 100% has a place in Star Wars.
It's basically the same shitty top-down bureaucracy, only this time you can vote for your leaders and speak your mind without spending six years in a prison making parts for a battle station.
Okay, left turn to Dr Penn .. See where it goes. My biggie.. The gauntlets wings can spin around .. They didn't.. Booo.
I don't know, after how things had been run over the last two or three decades; "how about not fascist?" probably counts as a new and refreshing concept. I mean seriously though; did anyone expect a utopia to just magically appear just by tearing down a few statues? This is the kind of thing that takes *generations* to unpack and recover from.
Russia post-1991 was a lot more democratic but it was also prone to serious corruption and kleptocracy that allowed another authoritarian to take advantage of the fears of the people, eventually claim sweeping power and sabotage the new freedoms that citizens had been enjoying. The New Republic just reminds me of a wealthier, more advanced Russian Federation from the 1990s.
At the risk of sounding flippant I believe many om the audience expect that. As you note, more mythological style storytelling doesn't have the happily ever after, but it has become the expectation, so anything outside of that nowadays is regarded as abnormal. Unfortunately, that's probably closer to the truth. The Rebel Alliance was made up of a lot of different people, but many were fighting for an organization not necessarily remembered by the entire populace. As @Reverend notes a dictatorship had been around for one generation, and much of the "order and security" promises of the Empire had taken root. It's why that Imperial officer was closer to the truth that when disorder and less fear grip the populace they'll come running back to a dictatorship. Perhaps you're on to something there. Perhaps the Rebel Alliance should have gone at it from a new idea rather than assuming the newer generation would accept their ideas rather quickly.
Yeah I wonder if some of the seemingly odd stuff about the amnesty program--giving them numbers instead of names, making them wear uniforms and badges to mark them--isn't intended to be punitive, but designed specifically to transition them into normal society, and actually prevent culture shock and alienation. I mean think about it; these are people for whom TK numbers instead of names is just normal. As are omnipresent uniforms and identification badges, strict rules and restrictions, hierarchies and the expectation of unquestioning obedience. So I think they're letting them keep those familiar elements while improving their standard of living and getting them used to just being around people. No Stormtrooper helmets, no fear that ISB are listening to every word, no threat that a co-worker or a neighbour will inform on them for any infractions, no matter how small or imagined. In time and counselling they might incrementally remove these things and encourage them to use their actual names, wear civilian clothes, and move out of that housing complex and into the general population. I think if they did that all at once it might just been too much for them to cope with. Probably causing a high rate of paranoia, behavioural relapse, even psychosis. A full generation of indoctrination is no joke. It's not just patterns of behaviour, it's patterns of thought. Even their vocabulary would have been paired down to reinforce it. So they must first unlearn all of that before they can move onward. As for how impersonal it all feels with the weekly droid counsellor visits: appreciate the logistical challenge of reintegrating *billions* of Imperial military and associated personnel across the galaxy, all while attempting to hold a fragile New Republic together, see to reconstruction of worlds ravaged by Imperial industry, deal with *thousands* of refugee crises as entire populations have been displaced, warlords digging in, pirates, bandits and marauders exploiting the chaos, to say nothing of the cartels. It's also probably why the judicial systems is so heavily dependent on droids; they simply don't have the people to spare!
That's an interesting idea that hadn't occurred to me. It definitely was a bit of a surprise to see how the New Republic is treating the former imperials. Definitely another example of the New Republic not really being as different from the Empire as a lot of people had probably hoped. It was interesting to see Pershing, who appeared to actually want to help the New Republic, unlike Kane, who is clearly still loyal to the Empire, despite everything the New Republic did. I'm curious what the end will mean for Pershing, it definitely didn't look good. I'm not sure if she killed him or was just making him loyal to the Empire again. The big ship chase through Bo Katan's homeworld was really cool. I didn't catch what she did to piss the Empire off so much.
Brendan Wayne is in the suit most of the time, unless its a fight scene and then it's Lateef Crowder. Their names were added to the closing credits this season.
The phrase "wipe my mind" was used. I think the implication is that she has effectively erased his memory/personality. Which seems to have been her ultimate aim, at least given what we've seen so far. First she discredited him (he's just an Imperial recidivist as far as the NR goes now), then keep any information he has on lockdown by deleting it. I'm mostly curious who she's working for. Is she still working for Gideon, or is there a new player in the game? Combined with the line at the end of the Mando/Bo fighter chase, about how that's a lot of fighters for a normal Imperial warlord, it kind of suggests a larger Imperial faction we've not seen before. But, on the other hand, bombing Kalevala is a very Gideon move. Could go either way.
I assume Pershing's mind is being erased to cover the Imperial loyalists' tracks regarding their possible conspiracy and in what was taken from the Star Destroyer. I assume the box of gear stolen from the Star Destroyer wound up in Imperial loyalists' hands, with possibly a benign box substituted, the purpose of the infiltration being to identify and obtain what gear was essential for keeping the cloning experiments going, experiments that seemingly won't pay off as intended until Episode IX, and that defining the extent of Pershing's further usefulness to the loyalists. Anyway, in betraying Gideon, Pershing had already demonstrated he was not loyal to the Empire. Of course, I could easily be wrong about any or all of this.
That was...unexpected. For a while I kept waiting for us to switch back to Mando et al, and then I realised I didn't want to, I wanted to keep up with Pershing's story. Anyone else wondering if there were originally two sperate episodes here at some stage, one completely devoid of Mando? Or do you think it was always planned this way? Anyway fantastic dog fights and then we, as others have said, slip into something that feels more like Andor. I knew a betrayal of some kind was coming but was actually surprised when Republic troops showed up, I genuinely thought Kane was delivering him to Gideon who'd somehow escaped from custody or A.N Other Imperial warlord (you know, him) There was definitely a feeling of the more things change the more they stay the same, the mind flayer rebadged and repurposed, taking former Imperials who are used to having a number instead of a name and wearing a uniform to define them, and then giving them a different number and a different uniform (I get the whole easing them out of the Empire gently idea but alternatively you're just reinforcing their initial indoctrination). I'm not sure corralling them all together in giant accommodation is necessarily a good idea either. I guess the Rebels made the classic mistake, they spent so long focused solely on defeating the Empire that they didn't necessarily give enough thought to what would come next, but that's understandable, they only found out late in the day about the second Death Star and that Palpatine would be on it, and I'm guessing even then they probably didn't expect much of the Imperial infrastructure to collapse on the back of Palp's death. This isn't like WW2 where Germany is basically completely defeated before Hitler dies, this is more like Hitler dying in '43 with the German military in fairly decent shape and in control of huge swathes of territory even if it was starting to be pushed back. Am I right in thinking though that the Emperor was supposedly holding a lot of Imperial forces together through the Force and sheer willpower? I thought I'd read that somewhere but maybe I imagined it! How many years past ROTJ are we here? I guess there may still be a decade or so of relative peace before the rise of the First Order or is my understanding of the timeline way out of whack? Is there anything in the EU to show where Mon Mothma is at this point? Anyway, a really good episode.
The episode is set somewhere between 5 and 8 years after Return of the Jedi. (the timeline is a little fuzzy due to recent interviews). The Mandalorian started five years after the Battle of Endor, and we are not entirely certain how much time has passed. Speculated to have been two years now, maybe three. Mon Mothma was the first President/Chancellor of the New Republic. I don't know how long her term would be, though I suspect they have term limits like the Old Republic did (Palpatine was using the Separatist Crisis to extend his time in office (which I believe was eight years, and he was already over that by two years in Attack of the Clones), followed by the Clone Wars, and finally declaring himself Emperor with no limits). It the limits are the same, Mon Mothma should still be in charge, but not for too much longer. Coruscant is not the capital of the New Republic at this time.