First Order

Come on, George.

But the First Order itself isn't even a big empire yet.

You know? They're a fanatical, um, realm of the old empire that is hiding away in the unknown regions, and they shouldn't have, like, all this blistering new equipment.

It should be like a partisan rebels.

You can't do it better.

You know? That is part of a failed empire, you know? So instead, make it a hyperspace jammer.

Basically, the First Order disables hyperspace travel and destroys that Hosnian fleet completely in its dock where it is.

And with one super weapon like that, it cripples the entire m- uh, military of the Republic.

We are basically where we left off last episode, but worse.

So the gloves finally come off with the First Order on the Colossus.

Commander Pyre throws Doza in the brig and then rubs his hands and salivates about capturing Kaz and his friends.

It's very Looney Tunes style.

And Tam sees him in the hallway getting marched into his cell and confronts him about lying to her about Kaz and the resistance.

Because Agent Tierney is doing a number on her.

And then Tierney ends up making her an offer to be a First Order pilot.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Rey learns some stuff about herself along the way.

There's a First Order side plot where there's a First Order officer who's kind of being set up in a frame job.

From what I

understand, she's from a comic, or at least she was briefly...

Is I think the biggest problem.

Like if this book came out in this exact form eight years ago, I feel like that could get you set up for expecting what's going, like figuring out where Ray's head is at between episode eight and nine.

And you can do stuff like flesh out more of the first order resistance war in that, but none of that happens in this book.

Yeah.

Outside of that, everything else seems to be pretty independent.

Thrawn's return seems to have nothing to do with Palpatine or the First Order.

He appears to be pursuing his own endeavors, which honestly makes sense given Thrawn is more than a Palpatine minion, and while he may be loyal to the Empire on screen at least, I suspect he's okay with being in charge himself.

So I guess I'm asking, should the Mandoverse start linking up directly with the sequels or not? On the one hand, I think they need to be careful with the Palpatine plot points.

At this point in the timeline, Thrawn is, for lack of a better term, the emperor of the villains.

He is our big bad.

Connecting too much of his story to the First Order, Snoke or Palpatine could undermine his status as the primary threat.

on the other hand there have already been several vague gestures towards the sequel trilogy lore and i do think those setups should be paid off in some respect what do you guys think should the man divorce start tying these two eras together more closely or should it focus on standing on its own wrapping up the throne conflict and leaving hux's covert operations as background set up for another time i'd love to hear your thoughts joel davis um Here is what I'll say.

He's got to walk in, look intimidating and say like, do this and people do it.

Whereas like Hux is like, he is the first order.

Like I think arguably like right under Snoke.

I think so too.

I think that's how he feels about him, but he's also scared of him.

Yeah,

and so it's also like the cult nature of the First Order and the Empire.

It's like you have all these people looking to one guy just ready to go, and you see in you, it's like you are the face of...

Mm-hmm.

And that's really kind of dealing with the fallout of no- not having, uh, the First Order around and, uh, you know, all, uh, the big vacuum that exists again, this poor galaxy that's been just tarnished for the last 30 years.

Mm-hmm.

That's all that, right? Okay.

I would go a different direction than, you know, than Chris.

I'm, I'm like, okay, so we've...

The First Order's been, you know, it's out.

[laughs] So what, what are we doing? You know what I mean?

Right.

And then suddenly, 30 years later in Episode VII, there is a First Order with a new super weapon, there is a scrappy resistance again, and the Republic is completely useless.

It felt very jarring.

Totally jarring.

Reading Bloodline fills that massive narrative void.

It provides the vital structural connective tissue.

It answers the complex, frankly uncomfortable question of how a galaxy that fought so hard for freedom allowed a military junta like the First Order to rise right under its nose.

Yeah.