[4.0/10] I gotta confess, I had a hard time staying focused on this episode. It’s just so aimless and generic. Our heroes have to escape yet another villain stronghold (a maze this time). There’s a bland game of keep away with a royal scepter. There’s the most generic, nigh-literal mustache-twirling villain I’ve ever seen in Star Wars, which is saying something. All of these characters are so paint-by-numbers and uninteresting. I can barely even remember their names. (Jan and Jes, I think?)
So what’s good about this one. Uh...I kind of like the pit beast’s designs, and it’s neat that they “defeat” him by Artoo removing the parasites from him and soothing him instead of just beating or escaping him. The reveal that “Old Iron Pants” is Jes is something, I guess. For as low quality as this episode has been, it sticks with Leia’s example in showing that women can be take-charge rebels or resourceful scrappers as much as anyone...but then she becomes a damsel in distress.
I don’t know. I don’t care about Mon Julpa or the other aliens, who feel abstract enough to not cross any lines but vaguely enough like ethnic stereotypes to be uncomfortable. Their line of succession dispute makes no sense. I guess it’s a good thing that Threepio actually helps for once by posing as the Vizier’s flunky.
There’s just very little here. The episode isn’t as much bad in a “Here’s these bad choices it should avoid” sort of way, as it is in a “So dull and jumbled that it’s hard to pay to attention to it” sort of way.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-05-01T21:47:09Z
[4.0/10] I gotta confess, I had a hard time staying focused on this episode. It’s just so aimless and generic. Our heroes have to escape yet another villain stronghold (a maze this time). There’s a bland game of keep away with a royal scepter. There’s the most generic, nigh-literal mustache-twirling villain I’ve ever seen in Star Wars, which is saying something. All of these characters are so paint-by-numbers and uninteresting. I can barely even remember their names. (Jan and Jes, I think?)
So what’s good about this one. Uh...I kind of like the pit beast’s designs, and it’s neat that they “defeat” him by Artoo removing the parasites from him and soothing him instead of just beating or escaping him. The reveal that “Old Iron Pants” is Jes is something, I guess. For as low quality as this episode has been, it sticks with Leia’s example in showing that women can be take-charge rebels or resourceful scrappers as much as anyone...but then she becomes a damsel in distress.
I don’t know. I don’t care about Mon Julpa or the other aliens, who feel abstract enough to not cross any lines but vaguely enough like ethnic stereotypes to be uncomfortable. Their line of succession dispute makes no sense. I guess it’s a good thing that Threepio actually helps for once by posing as the Vizier’s flunky.
There’s just very little here. The episode isn’t as much bad in a “Here’s these bad choices it should avoid” sort of way, as it is in a “So dull and jumbled that it’s hard to pay to attention to it” sort of way.