Columns Archives

In the untrained hands of one so powerful as Grogu, the Force is a recipe for calamity.

We’ve had to do what we’ve had to do, which meant saying goodbye, for a time, to the good things—even some of the sacred things—in order to survive.

Power is no thing to love, only to bear with, as Tolkien teaches us.

This episode did for Boba Fett what Rogue One did for Darth Vader.

My favorite idea of any Star War is when that dusty old Jedi teaching is shredded and burned to the ground.

When you factor in the higher costs, the uncomfortable glasses, and the headaches, it was probably only a matter of time before the novelty wore off.

The female experience in life very frequently feels like that of a queen on a chessboard, especially when we get into traditionally male-dominated spaces.

And so it came to pass that in one fell swoop, the showrunners connected The Mandalorian to the worst ideas of the prequel and sequel trilogies.

Even if your inward-facing, self-replicating church—or Mandalorian group, for that matter—never becomes a cult, in my experience, it can (and does) start to get weird.

For anyone who didn’t live through the nineties, it’s difficult to explain how big a deal Beanie Babies were.

The thing about lies is that eventually they have to give out. No matter how badly liars want truth to be relative—it isn’t.

Look, I’m not a youth pastor, but if I were, I would tell you teens that just as the wages of sin is death, the wages of eating a Frog Lady’s eggs means getting eaten alive by a thousand baby space spiders.

But The Mandalorian also really really wants to delight and tickle its Star Wars fanbase. To a fault.

What I love about the creation and inclusion of the Enola character is how much she makes sense in the Holmes family and how much she adds to the ethos of the story. 

Under the extreme stress of plagues and environmental disaster, people were undoubtedly looking for someone to blame, which—hmm, that sounds familiar.

In a time when winning has become the ultimate morality, and the struggle to gain and maintain power has turned otherwise absolute standards of goodness into subjective opinion in the eyes of so many, we all need more of what Ted Lasso is dishing out.