Jay Thoden van Velzen ☁️🛡️
instead of watching the #TotU, I'll be in the pub. 🍻
Darth Hideout 🏳️🌈Ep 1-3 of "Tales of the Underworld" pursue #AsajjVentress into the (brief) afterlife & right back into the land of the living, courtesy of #MotherTalzin. In case you’re not familiar, Ventress died in BBY 19 in a novel, around the time of O66. I always have to look up the novel; I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. She had an affair with Quinlan Vos, returned to the light, then died. She also showed up briefly in S3 of #TheBadBatch. I had assumed until now the appearance in TBB was still 19 BBY, before her death, but apparently after her return to the light.
In Ep 1 of #TotU, Vos & Obi-Wan Kenobi leave Ventress’ corpse in a cavern on #Dathomir, where she wakes up and encounters the ghosts of Talzin & other nightsisters. T offers her the choice to return to life, which she accepts, at the cost of “your heart’s desire,” presumably QV, whom she never encounters again during #TotU.
In the era of “Somehow, Palpatine returned,” I guess we can only shrug. At this point, in #StarWars 36, they’ll be using clones of the original actors, completely unable ever to let anyone go. But all right, so AV is back. Woot.
She joins up with a lost Padawan named “Lyco.” Together they seek & find the Path mentioned in the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series, by which surviving Jedi are led to safety. Neither of them takes it. Instead they ride off into the sunset.
Ventress is a favorite character of mine. I really enjoyed seeing her in TBB S3. And I enjoyed this arc, but I think I find it unsatisfying overall. It doesn’t really seem to progress anything. It just unravels a canonical end & sends AV drifting off post O66.
But from the beginning, I wondered who Lyco (Strata) might be. Since everything in Star Wars tends to connect (bc The Force, maxi big), one guess I haven’t exactly eliminated is Caleb Dume, later known as Kanan Jarrus, Padawan of Deepa Bilaba, who was killed during O66 in S1E1 of TBB. Dume has a central role in that episode as (nearly all of) The Batch refuse to comply with O66 & off little Caleb. Crosshair is the only one who insists, “Good soldiers follow orders,” setting up the schism among The Batch that isn’t resolved until Crosshair’s return in S3. (Spoiler: CD gets away & lives on to S4 of Rebels.)
Of course, in S4 of Rebels, we first learn the name Caleb Dume, when Kanan explains that the giant Loth-wolf shares his previous name. Lyco is from the Greek root for wolf. However, Freddie Prinze Jr, who voiced KJ in Rebels, also voiced Caleb Dume in TBB S1E1. Lyco was instead voiced by Lane Factor.
There’s no reason to assume Lyco has to be anyone in particular. It seems like it would complicate things considerably by suddenly making Kanan into Ventress’ sidekick/Padawan without it ever coming up in Rebels. But I’m sure Filoni will have considered all of this. Which is to say, Lyco is there to evoke wolves. Filoni has a thing for wolves, eg in “Ahsoka,” Baylan Skoll & Shin Hati are named after the wolves Sköll & Hati, who usher in Ragnarok in Norse mythology. It’s probably nothing more than a recurring theme in Filoni’s world, but it at least leaves two big questions: 1. Who is Lyco? Eg, who was his Jedi master? 2. What the hell happened to Ventress afterward?
Mike Taylor 🦕
ゆらのふ
Hanna
tofeo