The World Between Worlds, THE MANDALORIAN, and Rebooting STAR WARS Without Nuking Sequel Trilogy

The following post contains massive spoilers for The Mandalorian, Star Wars: Rebels, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, etc. so if you don't want that, go away.

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As many of you know, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy--The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker--were quite divisive among fans. Many (including me) thought TFA was too derivative of the original film, while others disliked what The Last Jedi did to the character of Luke Skywalker. The Rise of Skywalker tried to stitch both competing narratives together, questionably. But recently there's the appearance of Luke in the Season Two finale of The Mandalorian, in which he recruits Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) for his new Jedi Order. There are even rumors of a Luke Skywalker series, either using younger Mark Hamill's image on a body double as a continuous "deepfake" or a new actor (like Sebastian Stan). Given what ends up happening to Luke's new Jedi Order before the new trilogy begins, not only is Grogu in grave danger, but if there's a Luke Skywalker series covering the new-canon events after Return of the Jedi, we know how this is going to end. The shadow of inevitable doom would be hanging over the entire concept and one wonders how viable such a TV series would be.

That said, there might be a way to avoid this--and to reboot the entire Star Wars universe while we're at it. Jack Conner, an independent fantasy and steampunk writer who blurbed my novel Battle for the Wastelands and hosted my alternative take on Rey on his blog posted on Facebook that there is an in-universe mechanism for time travel revealed in Rebels--the World Between Worlds. In Rebels, Jedi Padawan Ezra uses it to rescue Ahsoka Tano from Darth Vader. The World Between Worlds could be used on a much grander scale than that to create an entirely new timeline.

Hear me out. In the aftermath of the events of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey and one of the new Jedi she's trained (the broader SW canon states she eventually became a Jedi Master, meaning she trained a Jedi to knighthood), discover the World Between Worlds. They attempt to use it to stop all the horrors of the sequel trilogy--the Hosnian Cataclysm, the First Order takeover of most of the galaxy, the Sith cultists blowing up a planet, etc. To accomplish this, she decides the best way is to stop Palpatine's soul from escaping his body and fleeing to Exegol, where he was revived (something the Rise of Skywalker novelization describes). Although this would probably erase her from existence--she's the daughter of a clone of Palpatine created through the project--she's a Jedi and the path of the Jedi is selflessness. Or to quote Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

And in this effort she succeeds. Palpatine is permanently destroyed on the Death Star (maybe she materializes in the reactor shaft and stabs him before his soul can flee his body through the Force to Exegol) and the Sith Order is wiped out. Rey might be able to return to her own (changed) future via the World Between Worlds like Ezra did with Ahsoka, or could be killed when Palpatine's body explodes. Either way, this is a prologue to the new Luke Skywalker TV series--the next scene reveals that this is young Luke having a Force vision in which he realizes this mysterious stranger has averted a terrible calamity.

(It might also clue him into the World Between Worlds, setting the stage for future events.)

However, even though some fanboys would love this as an excuse to bring back the old Expanded Universe, there are still complicating factors. The Sith Eternal's operation on Exegol is still there, plus Palpatine being really dead as opposed to "mostly dead" won't affect the events immediately after Return of Jedi. We'll probably still have Ben Solo, Imperial die-hards embedded in the New Republic and various large corporations, etc. And, as The Mandalorian reveals, Thrawn is still out there plotting against the New Republic as of nine years after the Battle of Yavin and five years after Palpatine's fall. Without Palpatine being ultimately in control, Thrawn can seize the remaining Imperial assets in the Unknown Regions (creating a new-canon version of The Empire of the Hand), with the head of the Sith Eternal on Exegol standing in as this timeline's version of the insane Jedi clone Joruus C'Baoth.

And that in turn allows for a nice tie-in with the sequel trilogy--Dark Rey. One of the Kylo Ren comics strongly implies Palpatine's involvement in the events that ended Luke's Jedi Academy, so Luke's attempted murder of his nephew and his nephew's consequent attack on the Jedi Temple could be the result of his malevolent spiritual influence. This doesn't happen and so Ben stays good, Luke's new Jedi Order survives, etc. But the Sith Eternal cult on Exegol still plots to resurrect Palpatine and this timeline's Rey is born as a result. The Sith cultists decide that she'll do and she's raised as a Dark Jedi and groomed to be possible future leader. We can still have Reylo, only instead of canon's Good Girl Saves Bad Boy (a cultural meme that has hurt far more good girls than saved bad boys), we could potentially have Good Boy Saves Bad Girl.

(Hmm...if Rey survives going back in time to finish Palpatine and returns to neo-EU future, a love triangle between herself, Dark Rey, and Good Ben? Could be mined for laughs, especially if for whatever reason one ends up impersonating the other.)

And on that note, I'll end this with a fan film I found that seems to take place after The Force Awakens but was released before The Last Jedi.

Enjoy!

FALLEN EMPIRE What Might Have Been #2: Independent Stories

In a previous post, I described how I would have continued writing in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire science fiction universe had Amazon continued the Kindle Worlds program. My main focus would've been the "Choi and Watson" prequel series ("Ten Davids, Two Goliaths" and "Discovery and Flight"), but I had several ideas for independent stories.

Fallen Titan-This one takes place in the aftermath of "Ten Davids." The survivors of the Imperial warships the Tri-Suns Alliance rebels destroy--mostly trainees--have to survive on the swampy surface until rescuers arrive. Survive while being hunted by...something. This is loosely based on accounts I've read about the Battle of Ramree Island during World War II in which Japanese soldiers were attacked by crocodiles. The protagonist is an Imperial enlisted seaman ("starman" since we're dealing with spacecraft) under the thumb of an abusive superior who gets progressively sick of her to the point they he frags her and calls the Alliance salvaging crews overhead for rescue instead of waiting for the Imperials. In the canonical series Buroker has protagonist Alisa Marchenko reference the Imperial military's stern disciplinary practices (potentially including flogging), so many members of the Tri-Suns Alliance might've been Imperial personnel who'd deserted due to mistreatment. This one is fully outlined and partially written.

Rebellion of the Dead-I'd heard on a podcast that zombie fiction fans were voracious readers, so what better way to make some cash than by writing a zombie story set in the Fallen Empire universe? This ties in with the ruthless side of the Alliance mentioned in the canonical novels--the zombie virus is created by the Alliance, not the Empire, to compensate for their lack of numbers. The zombies can be controlled by pro-Alliance Starseers (more on them later) or simply unleashed as indiscriminate weapons like Arcturus Mengsk uses the Zerg in the original Starcraft. Fully outlined and partially written.

Apprentice-The Fallen Empire universe features a subspecies of humanity called "Starseers," who have psychic abilities. They're divided between a good (or at least neutral) faction and an evil group called the chasadski, which want to take over the Tribus Solis system much like their ancestors had attempted centuries past. Although some took sides in the rebellion, most stayed neutral and pursued their own goals. This particular story was inspired by "Darth Maul: Apprentice," a Star Wars fan-film in which Darth Maul hunts a group of Jedi who find his training ground. However, when the villainous chasadski Lord Thomas Smith has sole "Good Starseer" survivor Khaila Sokolov--powerful but young and relatively untrained--at his mercy, he decides not to kill her. Instead he claims her as his new apprentice (and heavily implied concubine). This is very much like Dryden Vos did Qi'ra in the back-story for the Solo film, even I don't recall using the movie as a model.


(I recall discussing this one with Lindsay and pondering this as the back-story for a member of the main villain's entourage in one of the later books. Given how...uncomfortable...the whole plot is, I was planning a second story in which a fully-trained Khaila gets the drop on Smith and disposes of him Sith Apprentice-style during a mission--incidentally like Qi'ra ultimately does to Vos in Solo. I don't have a synopsis in my notes for the second story, so I mustn't have gotten very far after outlining the first.)

It would have probably needed a new title, to avoid being too blatant a rip-off, but I didn't get the chance to get started on it.

Kurultai-In the Fallen Empire universe, the victorious Alliance was only able to take control of three planets, while the Imperial capital remained under the control of the dead emperor's successor. The rest of the Tribus Solis system fell under the control of various warlord types and Mafia bosses. In this one, a retired Imperial general of Mongol background deposes the corrupt Imperial governor of his largely Mongol-Chinese planet and is chosen by the people to be the new khagan (Great Khan). Once in power, he suborns some local Imperial spacecraft and launches a war of conquest against a nearby world that had been a historical rival of his own. Like "Apprentice," I outlined it but didn't get started.

Commander of the Faithful-Somewhat similar to the above, except it's an Islamist instead of a wannabe Genghis Khan. In Angle of Truth, the adherents of the Old Earth religions are shown to have been largely exiled to one outlying planet in the system and I can't recall any discussion of serious fighting on the planet during the rebellion. Either this happened somewhere else or got squashed pretty quickly. I don't even really have a plot here, just a concept.

Future STAR WARS Plot Ideas If (SPOILERS) Had Lived

As those of us who spend way too much time on social media know by now, there's a lot of discussion out there about The Rise of Skywalker and in particular a lot of fans are upset that

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Ben Solo, aka the Dark Jedi and First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, dies using the Force resurrect Rey, who fell in battle against her undead grandfather, none other than Emperor Palpatine. Given how The Last Jedi converted me to the "Reylo fandom" and the two of them are absolutely Adorkable when they have the Big Damn Kiss, this was a tad bit disappointing.

(Seriously, look at their facial expressions. It's so cute.)

However, given the magnitude of Ben's crimes, it would have been really awkward for him to just show up at the big Resistance victory party, especially given how many people he'd grievously wronged (mind-raping Poe, killing Chewbacca's best friend, lots of battle casualties for the characters without names) are all there and happy. That's why Redemption Equals Death is such a common trope--someone who'd done that much bad, even if they switch sides and do something useful (kill Palpatine the first time for Anakin, revive the dead or dying last Jedi for Ben), isn't going to be readily accepted by the good people.

That said, if one is willing to put in the work, one could come up with all sorts of interesting plots:

*Ben, owing to his brief tenure as the Supreme Leader, provides the intelligence necessary to more quickly destroy the First Order forces that weren't involved in the battle at Exegol. Realistically they'd be overextended (the movie references "free worlds" so the New Republic hasn't yet been completely conquered) and there's a major leadership vacuum with General Hux, Allegiant General Pryde, and Palpatine dead. Given how the First Order was formed out of Imperial survivors who were allowed to remain, albeit disarmed, or die-hards who fled to the Unknown Regions, nobody is going to want a negotiated peace or anything resembling the First Order left intact. Think WWII unconditional surrender.

If you want to torture Ben, this means he has to sell out people who were loyal to him when he was evil, including people who might well have been actual friends. Furthermore, as my uncle pointed out, "no one trusts a traitor" and Ben has betrayed both the New Jedi Order/Republic and the First Order at this point. He'd need to provide some really good stuff, with independent backup. If you want to crank the awkwardness up, he might even have to work with Finn, whom he'd deliberately sadistically injured but not killed in The Force Awakens, to engineer defections of stormtroopers from First Order armies units he knows are prone to discontent and mutiny. More on the drama with Poe and Finn next...

*Although Poe, Finn, and Rey are the new power trio in the vein of Luke, Leia, and Han in the original trilogy or Ron, Hermione, and Harry in Harry Potter, Rey's romance with Ben could destroy this. In The Force Awakens, Ben mind-raped Poe in what's clearly an extremely unpleasant process and let's not forget the lightsaber-to-the-spine with Finn. Although Poe only saw Ben with his mask on, it's my recollection he was unmasked when he fought Finn and Rey the first time. They're going recognize Ben (or at least Finn will and he'll tell Poe) and they're going to feel massively betrayed. Given how they're two of if not the two senior leaders of the Resistance at this point and will likely have correspondingly high positions in the New (New-New?) Republic, Ben might end up exiled or even a fugitive and Rey will have the sadistic choice of abandoning him to stay with her Resistance friends or joining him.

*When Chewbacca learns of Leia's death, he falls to his knees in agony and pushes away any attempt to comfort him. As someone pointed out on Twitter, this is the third friend he'd lost because of Ben--Han got straight-up murdered, Luke burned himself out Force-projecting to distract Ben from finishing off the Resistance at Crait, and Leia burned herself out Force-projecting to jump-start Ben's redemption. Although Chewbacca flew Rey to the First Order fleet in The Last Jedi in order to facilitate what everybody hoped would be Ben's defection, at this point he may well be of the opinion, "Screw that kid." He might be violently (emphasis on violently) displeased to see Ben again. I recall Han's comment about Wookiees pulling arms out of sockets and depending on just how remorseful Ben is for his bad deeds, I'm imagining him letting him do that.

*Per the above, the fleet that arrives to relieve Poe and his pilots over Exegol seems to have been organized by Lando. Lando, Han's longtime friend, friend enough to Luke to help him with his "rebuild the Jedi" project, and given his past I'm pretty sure "send Leia my love" was him trying to hit on Leia like in The Empire Strikes Back now that Han is no longer in the picture. Even though per some of the new-canon material he was a sort of uncle to Ben as a child, he's not going to be happy with him either. Since it was Lando who brought the fleet to Exegol and he has actual governing experience (running Cloud City), I'm imagining him as the new Chancellor (with Poe probably being naval commander and Finn being the commander of ground forces) once the Republic is re-established and he'll be able to express his displeasure far more forcibly than just punching Ben in the face until he wears out his arm.

*Given how Snoke had forbidden Ben's true name from being spoken by the First Order and most of the galaxy might be only vaguely aware of him (as opposed to Kylo Ren), he's not going to be most hated man in the entire galaxy, at least right away. However, word is going to spread and then he will be.

Perhaps the Resistance leaders agree to accept him back to help clean up the First Order survivors (depending on how well-known his defection is, he could order surrenders or withdrawals out of Republic territory as Supreme Leader in addition to the intelligence he can offer), but as word spreads, popular outrage builds. Think how in the new-canon novel Bloodline, the revelation that Leia concealed that her father was Darth Vader caused a massive popular outcry and derailed her political career. And in this case, said outrage would be far more justifiable given Ben's actual crimes.

Ironically enough, if a surviving Ben works with Rey to rebuild the Jedi Order, a separation between the Jedi and the New Republic--either the Jedi Order has to be rebuilt outside the Republic's borders because one of its two new leaders is going to be shot on sight or Rey and Ben are allowed to remain (probably as a favor for Rey rather than out of any love for Ben) but the Republic's leadership doesn't like or trust them--might be for the best. The Jedi aren't going to be part of the political system with all its distractions and corruption and can basically serve as an order of teachers, mystics, and knights-errant (I'm thinking a visit to Canto Bight to free some child slaves and recruit broom-boy for the New Jedi Order is a good idea) rather than a close ally or arm of the state.

How I Would Have Done STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (SPOILERS)

Here we go, folks. The final film of "The Skywalker Saga," the three Star Wars trilogies focusing on Jedi Knight turned Sith Lord Anakin Skywalker, his children Leia and Luke, and his grandson Ben who becomes the evil Kylo Ren. The Rise of Skywalker is here at last. Although it had its fun parts like the various lightsaber battles and the Big Damn Kiss, what were supposed to be stand up and cheer moments (like Kylo's betrayal of Snoke in The Last Jedi) didn't really work and plot/lore-wise there were some parts that could have been done much better. Spoilers below the image, so be ye warned...

The first part was pretty cool, although I would have the crawl to establish that the First Order, now having taken over most of the New Republic, is becoming overextended and various resistance movements (in addition to the actual Resistance) are causing them serious problems. No references to certain evil emperors. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver) and his generals, seeking to bolster their numbers, have learned where the mysterious Katana Fleet (for those not familiar with the old Expanded Universe, a fleet of low-crew mostly-automated starships long thought lost) is and seek it out. Kylo finds the fleet parked around a mysterious evil planet Exegol, lands, and makes his way through a labyrinth of weird mad science (but no clone Snokes in tanks--they didn't explain that and it raises more questions) to find...

The revived Palpatine and a cult that used various Dark Side schemes to raise him from the dead. Though his body is unstable and decaying, he is potent enough to bring Kylo on-board, offering him the Katana Fleet in exchange for Rey (Daisy Ridley). Kylo, however, has his own plans--he hopes to recruit Rey to help him defeat Palpatine ("let the past die; kill it if you must") to seize control of the Katana Fleet and ultimately the galaxy for himself.

Meanwhile, through their spy in the First Order whose identity we discover later, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) learn about the Katana Fleet. Given how the fleet was designed to operate without significant numbers of crew, this would be a boon to the depleted Resistance. Rey abandons her Jedi training under Leia (Carrie Fisher) to join a mission gathering support for an attempt to seize the Katana Fleet, including meeting Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams). The middle of the film goes roughly as the actual film does, although it's depicted explicitly that Poe had left Kijimi to join the Republic Navy rather than the Resistance directly--per the books and comics, Leia had poached him off the military for her budding private army and the canon needs to be consistent. And although their confrontation is similar to the canonical film, there's no reference to a "Force Dyad"--just have Ben pull his "become my apprentice/marry me" routine some more and have Rey turn him down.

Kylo/Ben's redemption plot--the duel aboard the ruins of the Second Death Star, Leia burning herself out to distract him psychically, Rey mortally wounding and then healing him, and Ben's vision of his father forgiving him and his subsequent throwing his dark saber into the ocean--remains, as that part I really enjoyed. However, in the process Rey learns her true identity--she's some kind of science-project spawn of the Dark Side cult, perhaps a female Palpatine clone--and in horror she flees to Ach-To.

(Palpatine having a son and daughter-in-law whom he later has killed raises all sorts of questions the movie doesn't have time to answer. Where was he during the Imperial period? Would he or Vader be the designated successor if Palpatine slips in the shower or something? Better that the people who left Rey on Jakku were dissidents who abandoned Palpatine's cult when he wanted to sacrifice Rey to the Dark Side to build his new body or something like that.)

However, before she can destroy Ben's TIE fighter and strand herself there, Luke's shade appears and we have a similar conversation. Rey is her own person--she isn't Palpatine, she isn't his "daughter," and Leia trained her as a Jedi despite her being a Sith science project because she knew that. Rey takes Ben's fighter to where the Katana Fleet is located, giving the Resistance the location. Seriously, Luke's X-wing flying again after having spent decades underwater was way too fan-servicey for me, plus it's more likely that a Rebel craft would attract attention from the First Order.

Rey descends into the depths of Exegol to confront Palpatine and face her fears as a Jedi should, only for Palpatine to start trying to suck the life out of her to regenerate his sickly decaying body. The redeemed Ben battles his way through the remaining Knights of Ren and interrupts, allowing for a two-on-one lightsaber duel like the scene in the animated show Clone Wars where Palpatine battles his former apprentice Darth Maul and Maul's brother Savage Opress. Meanwhile the Resistance tries to seize or destroy the Katana Fleet, only to find it much more manned and battle-ready than they thought. Things start to go pear-shaped for the good guys as Palpatine throws Ben down a convenient pit and battles Rey alone. Palpatine knocks her down and starts trying to do his soul-vampire thing again but Rey, spurred on by the voices of previous Jedi, rises to her feet to battle him again, this time using the Force lightning she's shown herself capable of using when sufficiently angered or stressed. Meanwhile, Lando and his allies come through, turning the tide against the Katana Fleet.

(Palpatine doesn't attack the Resistance fleet that's thousands of miles away with Force lightning--that was one of the most ridiculous parts of the old comic Dark Empire and in my scenario he's a little busy.)

Endgame time. Rey beats down Palpatine and kills him, but is mortally wounded herself. Then it's time for Ben to climb out of the pit and use the same Force Heal technique she used to save him to save her. Then they have the Big Damn Kiss like in the movie, but unlike the film Ben survives. The two return to the Resistance base and Rey has her emotional reunion with Finn and Poe while Ben stays aboard the ship (probably the one he used to get there in the first place, since a TIE is too small for two) to avoid the kind of complications his presence would cause.

In the epilogue, we see the stable-boy on Canto Bight from The Last Jedi getting abused by his masters at the racetrack and Ben and Rey show up and mind-trick them into letting them take the boy off their hands. They go back to the ship and we see other Force-sensitives, humans and aliens both, that they've collected from all over the galaxy.

(Hell, if you want some fan service you could have the older Ashoka Tano and Ezra from Star Wars: Rebels there as well. The trainees also don't have to be all kids--the fact Ben and Rey are still obviously a couple and recruiting adults as well as children indicates they're ditching the no-attachments/culty crap the Jedi Order had gotten into by the time of the Old Republic's fall.)

They go off into the sunset together to train a new generation of Jedi, with the Sith gone for good. All is well.

Film Theories and Subtext: ROAD HOUSE (1989) and IMMORTALS (2011)

Once upon a time in one of my writing groups I remember my as-yet-unsold novel Battle for the Wastelands getting criticized for its lack of subtext. At the time I didn't think that criticism was particularly valid, although at this point I don't remember the details and the work has undergone many revisions in the years since then. Overall it is a good idea to imply stuff in the text that's not stated explicitly in order to add depth to your work, get your readers discussing it with each other, etc.

Here are some subtext-driven film theories I've come up with, one very recently and a few years ago. Spoilers ahead, so be ye warned...

Road House-The other night, I saw Road House when my friend Nic was doing a comedy performance with the Atlanta comedy troupe Cineprov. Although nobody in the habit of editing the Wikipeda or TVTropes pages seems to have noticed, I got the implication that Doctor Elizabeth "Doc" Clay (Kelly Lynch) is actually the ex-wife of small-town bully and petty gangster Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara).

*She references having been married before, but it didn't work out.

*Another character refers to Wesley's wife having left him and him not taking it very well.

*Wesley's new wife or mistress (it's not clear which) looks a lot like Doc. They're both tall and blonde, although the new girl comes off as a lot ditzier and raunchier than, well, a medical doctor.

*Wesley gets REALLY twitchy when he sees Doc over at the room that James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) has rented from a local farmer, especially when she and Dalton start getting busy on the roof outside. He's watching from across the lake for an awkwardly long time and rather than deriving voyeuristic glee out of the situation, he's clearly not a happy camper.

*When Wesley and his crew show up at the Double Deuce club to make trouble, the way he and Doc talk implies they have some sort of history, or at least know each other.

*When Dalton goes to Wesley's house for the final confrontation, Doc arrives just when Dalton is going to finish Wesley after having killed or otherwise incapacitated his goons. That doesn't necessarily mean she's been there before, that she has access to the property, etc. but she would probably be familiar enough with the house and how to get there quickly if she'd lived there before. Someone online theorized that she'd been taken hostage, but Wesley's whole plan was to kill Dalton's friend/mentor Wade Garrett (Sam Elliot) and then have his goon squad waiting in the driveway with guns for Dalton to show up. Not only are all the goons there waiting for Dalton (i.e. nobody is kidnapping Doc separately), but there's no need for Doc to be present at all, since Garrett would have been provocation enough. Also, in their previous conversation, Wesley threatens Dalton, not Doc herself.

Immortals-I saw this a few years ago and although nobody seems to think this besides me, I got the distinct impression that the villainous King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is actually the father of the film's hero Theseus (Henry Cavill).

*Theseus is the town outcast, the product of his mother getting raped by a bunch of "peasants."

*When the slimy Lysander (Joseph Morgan) brings this up in front of Hyperion, Hyperion takes offense at his mockery of peasants, claiming that he had been a peasant himself.

*One of the seers has a Bad Future vision of Hyperion and Theseus standing together as allies, which might happen if Theseus learns Hyperion is his father and Hyperion plays his cards right--claims he didn't know Theseus's mother was pregnant, that the gang-rape story isn't actually true, etc. As a young man who grew up without a father, Theseus might be particularly susceptible to Hyperion much like how Luke was tempted by Vader's We Can Rule Together routine in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

(In the old Expanded Universe novel The Truce at Bakura that takes place immediately after ROTJ Luke momentarily fantasizes about how he could have ruled the Empire--only to realize that even if he had fallen to temptation, him, Vader, and Palpatine would have died with the Death Star.)

Of course, the fact Hyperion killed Theseus's mother in front of him would realistically put a damper on that...

Yes, fan theories are often ridiculous and silly, but I think these have some legs.

ANNIHILATION Theories: Is (SPOILER) Human or Not?

In my review of the new science-fiction film Annihilation, based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer, I said one of the positives of the film was that the ending of the movie was ambiguous. There are spoilers after this paragraph, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, don't keep reading. In fact, I'll plug in an image of the movie poster below so you don't see anything by accident.

In the climax of the film, biologist and military veteran Lena (Natalie Portman) finds a burned corpse in a lighthouse that's the epicenter of "Area X," a region of rural Florida that's being warped by an alien presence known as "the Shimmer." There's a camcorder set up in front of the corpse and when Lena begins watching the video, she sees her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) commit suicide on-camera after telling someone else to "find Lena." That someone else is revealed to be another Kane. That means (or could mean) the being that showed up at her home and soon became sick and had to be transported to the hospital wasn't actually her husband, but some kind of alien clone.

Soon afterward, Lena encounters the alien force at the heart of the Shimmer that transforms into a double of her that she's able to trick into committing suicide. When she returns to the military base built to watch Area X, she finds that her dying husband has returned to full health, but when she asks if he's Kane, he says that he doesn't think so. The two embrace and both their eyes do this weird iridescent thing, implying that neither of them is human, at least fully.

I said that the ending was ambiguous, and here's why. A case can be made that the being who came home a year after her husband left was an alien creature masquerading as her husband, but a case can also be made that it really is Kane, just seriously messed up by his experiences within the Shimmer. Here goes...

Alien

*This is the most straightforward explanation. Kane lost his mind in the Shimmer and committed suicide, but not before establishing some kind of rapport with his alien doppelganger. There's still enough of him left to want Lena to not be left alone, so he tells the doppelganger (which has enough of his memories that it could conceivably play the part) to find his wife before he ignites himself.

*One of the podcasts I listen is The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy and in the episode dedicated to Annihilation, they say that when Kane returns home, he's looking at the pictures on the wall (I can't remember what they were, but they might've been him and Lena, their unit back when they were in the military, etc). He doesn't know what they are, implying that he's some other being wearing Kane's face.

*When Lena asks Kane if he's Kane, his response is that he doesn't think so.

*The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy crew thought that the way Kane embraced Lena at the end seemed more like someone needing reassurance. If Kane is an alien intelligence of some kind, he's the last of his kind on Earth and he's in the hands of people who could very easily kill him. His only possible ally is Lena.

Human

*When Lena burns her double, the flames spread through the lighthouse and all the various alien growths begin catching fire, even alien structures well beyond the lighthouse. When Lena is being debriefed after returning from Area X, the scientist interrogating her reports that an expedition has been to the lighthouse and there's no trace of the Shimmer left. We then learn that Kane, who was dying when she went into Area X, has recovered.

If Kane isn't actually human, he would have died along with the Shimmer. Instead, he recovers from the brink of death as soon as the lighthouse goes up. That would imply that he might have been in the process of mutating and dying (like the other soldier whose belly he cut open to reveal writhing, eel-like intestines), but Lena's destruction of the Shimmer aborted whatever was being done to him before it was terminal. Lena herself experienced a similar process--she samples her own blood and sees her cells are mutating--but it's her who came back from the Shimmer, not the alien doppelganger. Although the eye-thing indicates neither of them is fully human anymore, neither of them isn't human either.

*The man that commits suicide with the phosphorous grenade speaks in a very thick Southern accent. In the flashback scenes with Lena and Kane before Kane leaves on his secret mission, Kane doesn't have a Southern accent. Although it's possible that one of his teammates who DOES have a Southern accent was being "refracted" into him, we don't see interpersonal "refraction" among Lena and her team--Josie (Tessa Thompson) begins sprouting leaves from her scars like a plant is being "refracted" into her and the alligator that attacks Josie earlier in the film has a shark-like mouth, but it's not like the women suddenly adopted each other's personality traits, accents, etc.

*I'm not the only one who has reached a similar conclusion. In the WMG page of the TVTropes for the film, someone else suggested that the man who kills himself is an alien doppelganger who absorbed a lot of Kane's memories, but since may be the first time it has fully mimicked a human being (the members of the other investigatory teams might've been killed by wildlife or mutated to death before reaching the lighthouse), it went insane.

*Kane doesn't recognize the photos in his house because he's suffering amnesia as a result of his exposure to the Shimmer and the mutations his body is undergoing.

*Kane says that he doesn't think he's Kane, but the Shimmer may well have done a number on his mind. To make a Star Wars analogy, from the moment Darth Vader arises from the operating table after being burned on Mustafar and rebuilt as a cyborg, Palpatine is trying to cultivate "Darth Vader" as a distinctive personality from Anakin Skywalker. In Darth Vader #1, Palpatine tells him that Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber belonged to "someone else, a Jedi" and in one of the old Expanded Universe comics, when Vader confronts Palpatine about the Empire practicing slavery, Palpatine says that "Anakin Skywalker" and "his mother" had been slaves. The trauma of the events of the previous expedition and his near-death might have caused something similar to happen.

I admit I prefer the second option because despite the horrifyingly cynical things I say sometimes I'm a hopeless romantic. Furthermore, as a Christian I believe in the sanctity of marriage--I'd like to believe that despite Kane being amnesiac and possibly experiencing an identity crisis, Lena having cheated on him due to his long military absences and the growing intellectual distance between them, and them both now being partly alien, their relationship can still be fixed. However, sometimes there are downer endings and I recognize there is such a thing as Confirmation Bias. However, a strong case can be made that Kane is still human and the other stuff is a bunch of red herrings.

What do you all think? Feel free to comment, discuss with each other, etc. below.

My Reylo Plot Bunny, Or Why I'm Going To Hell (LAST JEDI Spoilers)

One of my real-life friends is a major Star Wars fan and, in particular, is a Reylo shipper. Yes, she wants Kylo Ren, also known as Ben Solo, the son of Han and Leia who fell to the dark side, to have a romantic relationship with Rey. Based on what happened in The Force Awakens I didn't think that would be particularly healthy. Seriously, he tries to mind-rape her (only to get mind-raped himself), kills her new friend/father-figure (and his own actual father) in front of her, sadistically injures one of her friends, tries to forcibly recruit her to the Dark Side ("YOU NEED A TEACHER!") while shoving a lightsaber in her face, and then she proceeds to beat the crap out of him. Had she submitted to his recruitment/wooing at any point before she turned the tables and taken a chunk of his face and shoulder, it would have certainly been unequal and abusive.

However, the events of The Last Jedi have made me far more interested in the idea. Here there be spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, don't keep reading:

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver spend much of the film having telepathic Force chats and clearly have a great deal of chemistry. She clearly desires him physically to at least some degree, based on her reaction to seeing him with his shirt off. When Kylo reveals that Luke had tried to kill him as a teen, she takes his side immediately ("DID YOU CREATE KYLO REN?") and sets off to redeem him much like Luke had tried to save his father Darth Vader in the original trilogy. When his master Snoke has her at his mercy, he kills him to save her and then the two of them gloriously battle Snoke's bodyguard and wreck the hell out of them together. Kylo then asks her to join him...but she's not buying it because she wants him to call off the pursuit of the fleeing Resistance and he wants to finish them in order to "let the past die." They briefly battle over Anakin's old lightsaber, Kylo is knocked out, and Rey flees the ship. Someone pointed out online that her feelings are for Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren, and he's just "doubled down" rather than renounced evil.

Of course, beyond the fact that Rey isn't willing to betray her morals and let her Resistance friends get killed to get her hands on the beefy Darth Emo, there're additional problems. Kylo's attempt to woo her even after he's killed Snoke is manipulative and emotionally abusive. "You're nothing...but not to me." He's trying to break her down and make her emotionally dependent on him, which I believe is called "negging." That's probably the same kind of crap Snoke pulled with him. "Mom and Dad and Uncle Luke don't care about you, but I do." If Rey had gone along, it'd be continuing the cycle of abuse. Someone I've communicated with on Twitter suggests his intentions toward Rey are more benign than Snoke's were toward him and given how Rey is clearly more powerful he probably knows better than to overstep, but still. I pointed out on Twitter that it's Kylo's responsibility to repent of his wickedness, not Rey's responsibility to fix him. Seriously the "good girl saves bad boy" cultural meme has harmed vastly more good girls than it's saved bad boys.

However, there is a way forward that doesn't involve Rey sacrificing her morals and independence, even for Adam Driver. After Snoke's death the First Order General Hux nearly shoots the unconscious Kylo and when he attempts to stand up to his presumptuous power-grab, Kylo violently puts him his place. Kylo knocks Hux around sometime later...and then proceeds to look like a flailing maniac in front of the First Order's army when Luke does his astral projection thing. Not only does Kylo not remember Machiavelli's adage "never do your enemy a small injury," but he's just lost the respect of a lot of his troops. Hux is now in a good position to take revenge.

So I'm thinking Hux will finally find his balls and stage a coup against Kylo, probably once he gets a safe distance away. Kylo will survive and go on the run and end up hitting rock bottom, which might have been Luke's intention by showing him up so publicly in the first place. The Dark Side, seeking power over others, etc. has cost him his family, the power he'd briefly achieved, the woman he's got at least a Villainous Crush on, etc. After all, I believe everybody is redeemable, but you have to WANT to repent, and as of the end of The Last Jedi, Kylo doesn't. Getting overthrown and forced into hiding might change that. The image I had was him crying into blue milk in the Mos Eisley cantina. Meanwhile, Rey has recruited some young Force sensitives to be her new Jedi padawans (I'm thinking the stable-boy from the end of the film and for the purposes of this story an older girl who looks and acts a lot like Wednesday Addams). Upon hearing of a powerful Force user, she arrives on Tatooine and finds...him. They initially get into a confrontation only for the First Order troops to arrive and they have to fight them off together.

Then they give into all the unresolved sexual tension and hook up. I'm imagining that Force-sensitive stable-boy, now a little bit older, finding them in the Millennium Falcon bunk and the following exchange:

Stable Boy: "Master Rey, what are you doing with him?"

Rey (hastily covering herself): "We're having some...philosophical exchange."

Wednesday Addams: "Looks like something else was getting exchanged."

Yes, I'm going to hell.

On a more serious note this could be a retelling of the Expanded Universe story of Luke Skywalker's recruitment of Kam Solusar, a fallen Jedi who'd been forcibly converted to the Dark Side by Darth Vader, only with a romantic plot. It'd probably be more conflicted too--part of what makes Kylo interesting as a character is his emotional complexity, the tension between the Dark and the Light. Even though Kylo would know full well the bad end the road goes, the Dark Side might still have its attractions, and the power it can provide would be really helpful when the First Order is reconquering the galaxy, the Republic has been decapitated, and the Resistance is gutted. Meanwhile, Rey is clearly not going to approve of anything that could herald Ben Solo reverting to Kylo Ren and, voila, drama.

On the other hand, if we ended up with a synthesis of Rey's and Kylo's ideas re: the Force...Grey Jedi? Seriously Disney, if this is generally where you're going with it (obviously they're not going to have sex jokes in a Star Wars movie), don't just abandon the idea to avoid possible liability issues.

Untold Stories Behind Other Stories

Sometimes when you see a movie, read a book, etc., there's something that indicates there's another interesting story in this world waiting to be told. Think Obi-Wan's reminiscing about how Darth Vader "had been a pupil of mine before he turned to evil" and "was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force." Although the Star Wars prequels weren't all they could have been to say the least (I left Revenge of the Sith straight-up laughing after "NOOOOO!"), it's my understanding the Clone Wars cartoon (the various versions of them) is well-done and the fall of Anakin Skywalker could have been a great tragedy in the Greek sense. He has his tragic flaws...fear of loss, anger...and between the negative influence that drawing on the Force using these emotions has and the fact a dark lord has been grooming him since the age of ten, things don't end well for Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, the Jedi Order, etc.

Well, that can be applied to some other stories, ones much less well-known than Star Wars.

*I saw a high-school stage version of The Wedding Singer with a former girlfriend and there's a line where Julia reminisces that her young-Trump boyfriend Glenn used to be much sweeter before he got so much money. There might be a story there...Glenn could have entered the New York business world a much better person (perhaps emulating or working for a relative...there's a line in one of the songs "don't cry uncle unless your uncle's the CEO") and got seduced by the money, power, sex, perhaps drugs, etc. that this world offered and turned into a massive jerk. The Glenn we see in TWS is a selfish, controlling, narcissistic jerk, but the murderous warlord Darth Vader was once a pleasant little boy who loved his mother, had lots of friends, and wanted to free the slaves.

*Although I've never seen the Australian Western film The Man From Snowy River (at least in its entirety), I did become curious about it and found there was actually actually a live musical "arena spectacular." It tells broadly the same story as the original film--a penniless young cowboy proves his worth as a man and woos the daughter of a wealthy station owner--but look closely at the cast. One of the side characters is named "Harrison" and is a young cowboy who made a fortune betting on horse racing. The disapproving (until the sequel) father of the spirited young Jessica is named Harrison and he made the money he used to build his ranch betting on horses. The musical is actually a prequel to the film.

(Given how zealous he seems to be about keeping his daughter away from protagonist Jim Craig in the films, the love story from the "arena spectacular" might have ended badly and soured him on the whole "redneck cowboys wooing ranch heiresses" thing. Yes, Harrison is a controlling ass whose behavior alienated his brother, his dead wife, and his daughter, but if it turns out there's some actual wisdom hidden in the class prejudice, sexism, and narcissism it takes the events of both films to at least mitigate, it would make him more interesting.)

*In the Sharpe television series, there's a soldier named Harris who the other characters say should write a book. He's based on a real soldier, who wrote an enlisted man's account of the Napoleonic Wars entitled The Recollections of Rifleman Harris. How Harris "wrote" that book--an illiterate man, he dictated it to an officer friend who eventually got it published--could be an interesting story too.

(The fictional Harris is literate and dies at Waterloo in the TV series, but if Michael Crichton can do the "mostly dead" thing for Ian Malcolm in The Lost World--he dies in Jurassic Park but shows up in the sequel--so could Cornwell and friends if there's any interest.)

And there are plenty of other examples. The TVTropes "Hero of Another Story" and "Villain of Another Story" have plenty. The Avengers depicts Hawkeye and Black Widow bantering about something that went down in Budapest that I think could make a good basis for a prequel movie. In my Wastelands world (the first of many planned novels is under consideration by a major publisher, so fingers crossed), I have the villain Grendel's son Falki reference events I later turned into the novella "Son of Grendel. I also have another planned novella explaining just why Sergeant Ezekiel Thaxton fears the Blood Alchemy Host (an army of mutants bred in the shadow of an abandoned nuclear reactor) so much.

Book Review: Thrawn (2017)

Here it is, folks. My review of Timothy Zahn's 2017 Thrawn novel, in which the beloved (if that's the right word) Imperial Grand Admiral that Zahn created for the old Expanded Universe is given a back-story for his appearance as the Season Three Big Bad in Star Wars Rebels.

The Plot

A group of Imperials exploring a planet find themselves under attack by a mysterious foe who, though fighting on foot, manages by unknown means to bring down at least one fighter aircraft and kills multiple soldiers. They evacuate the planet only to find their enemy has come with them. They capture him, only to discover he's an exiled Chiss military officer named Mitth'raw'nuruodo--or as he tells them to call him, Thrawn.

Taken to Coruscant, he manages to impress Emperor Palpatine and is recruited into the Imperial military. The novel follows his rise through the ranks in the years preceding Rebels, with him having to deal with anti-alien prejudice on his own side while he fights pirates and the inklings of what will become the Rebel Alliance.

The Good

*The fact this book even exists is good. The first novel in the original Thrawn trilogy, Heir to the Empire, was the first new Star Wars material in over a decade and proved to be a major hit. It spawned two sequels, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command, as well as the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe. The EU got so clunky and contradictory I can't fault Disney for torching the whole thing when they bought LucasFilm, but they destroyed the good with the bad by nuking Thrawn, Mara Jade, etc. Now Thrawn's back, and they've brought a lot of his original back-story (his exile by the Chiss, for example) with him. And the book copy doesn't ignore the original Thrawn Trilogy--the story is being sold as a sort of "before he was famous" for Thrawn.

*Thrawn's characterization is very much like the original Thrawn trilogy. In my commentary on the trilogy, I described him as having a very Lie to Me focus on body language and little details. This is really depicted only in one or two scenes, but in Thrawn we see it a whole lot. The majority of the story is told from Eli Vatto's POV much like how Sherlock Holmes' story is told by Watson, but there are lots and lots of italicized portions from Thrawn's POV that show his hyper-focus on details of others' body language. Furthermore, he's not just a human with blue skin--he can see in the infrared spectrum, which allows to him to perceive more about people's reactions.

*Per the Sherlock Holmes comment, although we get Thrawn's POV in journal entries at the beginning of each chapter, they're not overwhelming. And we finally learn just how his examination of his enemies' artwork helps him anticipate their battle strategies.

*I've only seen bits and pieces of Rebels on YouTube, but Thrawn provides a lot of back-story for the planet of Lothal, Imperial Governor Pryce, Thrawn, etc. Rebels fans will really like this. If I'd seen more of Rebels, I'd probably enjoy the book at lot more. The last chunk of the book explicitly ties in with Thrawn's introduction in the show and the suppression of the insurgency on the world of Batonn, where civilian casualties were significantly higher than insurgent ones.

*In the Expanded Universe, the Empire was depicted as both extremely racist (toward non-humans) and rather sexist as well. Here Imperial racism is handled a bit more subtly. The Empire is a successor state to a multi-species Republic that has lasted for thousands of years, so going Nazi, even with the Emperor scapegoating non-humans for the Clone Wars (in the Revenge of the Sith novelization that seemed to be Dooku's idea about what would happen afterward), would be very difficult. Thrawn's time at the Imperial Academy shows this pretty well--the atmosphere is very prejudiced overall and there's a lot of ugly behavior thrown his way, but he's still able to attend and graduate. And sexism doesn't seem to be an issue at all, which matches the more gender-egalitarian picture of the Empire depicted in previous new-canon books.

*Over the course of the story, we see more and more about the logistical side of building a certain mega-project. In fact, said project's logistical demands play a major role in many of Thrawn's adventures in this period.

The Bad

*It initially isn't clear the italicized portions scattered throughout the text are from Thrawn's point of view.

*Given that this takes place during the period of peace (albeit a repressive one) that followed the end of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire and preceded the Rebellion, not a lot happens military-wise. Most of what Thrawn seems to be is detain smugglers and fight pirates. There's not really a lot of action. Like in the original Thrawn novels, a lot of the combat maneuvering and what-not is told rather than shown.

*We see the rise of Governor Pryce of Lothal, which is interesting if you'd like to learn about Imperial politics and how the Senate functioned under the Emperor. It's a nice bit of her Rebels back-story, but it wasn't super-duper interesting.

The Verdict

It's worth reading if you're a big fan of Rebels. I'd recommend getting it from the library. 7.0 out of 10.